Evan Tomchin’s 5-0 T’au Empire took the New York Open army lists crown by destroying tanks and scoring strong all weekend.
Table 2 in the last round of the New York Open looked pretty great if you were rooting for Guard. Jason Du showed up with five Leman Russ tanks, a Rogal Dorn Commander and Lord Solar Leontus, while Evan had a T’au army packed with battlesuits, in the end, the suits won by 22 points. Evan also never scored below 94 all weekend, which is the kind of 11th Edition, Warhammer 40k tournament result that has players checking Tau’s anti-tank math again.
Evan wasn’t the only one who went undefeated, either. Maxwell Lawrence’s Adeptus Mechanicus also went 5-0 and finished second, and the two never actually played each other.
New York Open: Top 3 Warhammer 40k Army Lists
- Evan Tomchin’s Retaliation Cadre T’au went 5-0 and never scored below 94 points: four Commander-led Crisis units brought the firepower, while Pathfinders and Stealth suits handled the board work, giving 40k army lists one pretty clear battlesuit template to look at right now.
- Maxwell Lawrence’s Ad Mech also finished 5-0 without ever facing the eventual winner: Kastelans, Disintegrators and Onagers got through Marines, Sisters, Deathwatch and Votann, with the margins getting tighter as the weekend went on.
- Jason Du’s five-Russ Guard list went 4-1 after two one-point wins along the way: the tank company squeezed through close games in rounds 1 and 4 before Evan’s battlesuits beat it 100-78 in round 5.
Thanks to Best Coast Pairings, we can go back through the event with real pairings and battle point data.
Retaliation Cadre T’au Took the Crown on Crisis Suit Firepower
Evan’s Tau army list is about as battlesuit-heavy as you can get. Four Commanders each bring a Crisis team, then The Twin Lance, a Riptide and a pair of Broadsides pile even more guns onto the table. If you’ve been following the T’au 11th Edition detachment rules, Retaliation Cadre is pretty much built for this kind of rapid suit response to the enemy
Retaliation Cadre Roster Breakdown
The Warlord is a Commander in an Enforcer Battlesuit with a Starflare Ignition System, leading a missile-pod Fireknife team. Then you’ve got three Coldstar Commanders, one with plasma Fireknifes, one with burst-cannon Starscythes and one with fusion Sunforges. So whatever’s across the table, there’s probably a Crisis brick built to deal with it.
The Twin Lance comes with a fusion eliminator and an ion scattercannon, then you’ve got a Riptide with an ion accelerator and two Broadsides with heavy rail rifles doing the long-range work. An Ethereal rounds out the characters.
Then you’ve got the scoring crew. Three Pathfinder Teams, each with three rail rifles, two Stealth Battlesuit squads with a homing beacon, and five Kroot Hounds can sit on objectives and move around while the suits handle the shooting.
How Retaliation Cadre Wins the Firefight
Evan started with a 100-83 win over Vinny D’Arco’s Death Guard, and that turned out to be his closest game of the weekend. After that, the scores got pretty wild: 100-54 over Orks, then 97-45 over Dark Angels. Round 4 was a 94-75 win over Thomas Ferrante’s Custodes, who still came back to finish fourth.
Then came table 2 against Jason’s tank company, which was the kind of list you’d think could trade shots with Tau pretty well, but it turns out it wasn’t. Evan won 100-78, finishing the event with 491 points across five rounds and first place.
Cohort Cybernetica Ad Mech Walked Kastelans Through Five Straight Wins
Maxwell’s Adeptus Mechanicus army list mixes Cohort Cybernetica with Lords of the Forge and Belisarius Cawl as the Warlord. He also left a pretty funny note on BCP, explaining that Adeptus Mechanicus has “every rule in the game but only sometimes” before rattling off a small novel’s worth of tricks, including Robots walking through walls.
Cohort Cybernetica Roster Breakdown
The centerpiece is a Cybernetica Datasmith, attached to four Kastelan Robots with incendine combustors and twin fists. That’s a big robot brick, and yeah, it wants to get into combat as fast as possible. Cawl, Thulia Ghuld and two Enginseers, one with Necromechanic, make up the Tech-Priest crew behind it.
Then you get to all the vehicles. Two Skorpius Disintegrators with ferrumite cannons and two Onager Dunecrawlers with twin heavy phosphor blasters bring the mid-range shooting, while the Ironstrider Ballistarii add twin autocannons and can reposition. The cheaper units are there to do the boring (but important) stuff: one unit of Skitarii Rangers, one unit of Vanguard, five Sicarian Infiltrators, and a Servitor Battleclade.
How Cohort Cybernetica Wins the Midboard
Maxwell started with a 98-37 win over Space Marines, then ground through an 80-56 win over Sisters and an 82-66 over Matty Johnson’s Deathwatch. The games tightened up from there, with a 97-87 win over George Gennis’s Marines in round 4.
His last game was a 94-84 win over Dominic Galeano’s Votann, who finished fifth. So his last two games were both 10-point wins, but he never got to see what those Kastelans would do against Evan’s Crisis-heavy T’au.
Abhuman Auxiliaries Guard Parked Five Russes on the Objectives
Jason’s Astra Militarum army list combines Abhuman Auxiliaries and Combined Arms, with Lord Solar Leontus as Warlord. The Abhuman Auxiliaries detachment explains the Bullgryns and Ratlings, but come on, the five tanks are probably what you noticed first.
Abhuman Auxiliaries Roster Breakdown
Five Leman Russ make up the armor: two Battle Tanks, an Eradicator, an Exterminator, and a Vanquisher. Sitting on top of all that is a Rogal Dorn Commander with Grand Strategist, packing oppressor and pulverizer cannons plus multi-meltas. That’s a lot of hulls to work through.
Between the tanks, two Bullgryn squads with mauls and brute shields handle the forward pressure, while two Kasrkin squads bring plasma and melta for anything that gets too close. Two Commissars and two Ratling squads fill the gaps, with the Ratlings giving him cheap bodies that can still snipe from the back line.
How Abhuman Auxiliaries Win the Objective Grind
Jason’s weekend was a lot closer than a 4-1 record makes it look. He beat Pierce Hipp’s Emperor’s Children 91-90 in round 1, then had a much easier 100-50 win over Guard in the mirror. Next came an 89-72 win over Andrew Malvasio’s Custodes, followed by a 97-96 squeaker against Junchen Lu’s Orks.
Two one-point games in the same weekend is plenty of stress, and then unfortunately Evan finally cracked the tank wall on table 2 with that 78-100 loss, leaving Jason one game short of his own 5-0.
Final Thoughts on the New York Open Army Lists & the Warhammer 40k Meta
If T’au can outscore a five-Russ Guard list by 22 points, tank-heavy players will probably think a little harder about how much armor they bring to the next GT. We’d guess suit counts go up at the next few East Coast events, while Guard players start looking for more ways to screen Crisis teams before the shooting starts.
We’d keep an eye on Maxwell’s build too. A 5-0 Ad Mech list that never got to play the winner is going to get copied, and at some point, we’re going to see those Kastelans run into four Crisis bricks, somewhere.
🔗 Related Reads:
- How to Play T’au Empire
- How to Play Adeptus Mechanicus
- Top Warhammer 40k Army Lists
- More Top Warhammer 40k Army Lists
- 40k Tournament Guide
- Warhammer 40k Factions Guide
- Latest 40k Balance Dataslate
- Munitorum Field Manual Points Updates
What do you think of the New York Open army lists, and could your army have handled Evan’s battlesuits?
