Kyle Jackling’s 5-0 Blood Angels took the Mektoberfest 2026 army lists crown on tiebreakers over an undefeated Genestealer Cults list.
Mektoberfest 2026 had three very different armies fighting for the top spot, and none of them were taking it easy on, well, anyone, really. Kyle Jackling’s Blood Angels beat up other melee armies, Robin Roberts’s Genestealer Cults put up perfect 100-point games, and Daniel Holladay’s Adeptus Mechanicus brought enough robots and tanks to make life miserable for just about everyone.
The final round got pretty spicy. Kyle ended up facing his own Hunter Killers teammate, Daniel, with both players still undefeated. Not exactly the matchup either of them probably wanted, but it made for one heck of a finish.
Mektoberfest 2026: Top 3 Warhammer 40k Army Lists
- Kyle Jackling’s Blood Angels army list went 5-0 and won the event on tiebreakers: His melee-heavy list beat four straight combat armies before edging his own teammate 87-75 in the last round.
- Robin Roberts’s Genestealer Cults matched him at 5-0 but never got the head-to-head: Four of Robin’s five wins were 100-point games, and the one close call was a 54-52 squeaker in round 2.
- Daniel Holladay’s Admech robots and tanks went 4-0 before losing to his own teammate: Only Kyle beat him all weekend, and his 458 battle points topped Robin’s total despite the loss.
Thanks to Best Coast Pairings, we’ve got the real pairings and battle point data to see how everything played out.
Blood Angels Took the Crown Without Dropping a Game
Kyle’s 1,995-point Blood Angels army list runs three detachments (Assault Brethren, Encarmine Speartip, and Ironclad Champions), and it’s pretty clear what it wants to do. Get across the table, get into combat, and start smashing things. Best of all (for Kyle), nobody managed to stop it all weekend.
We’ve also seen Marines doing plenty of winning at 11th Edition GTs, with Salamanders taking the Napalm Hobbies Summer GT, so this Blood Angels list being on top isn’t exactly coming out of nowhere.
Encarmine Speartip Roster Breakdown
First up, you’ve got a Captain with Jump Pack as the warlord, carrying a Relic Shield and Thunder Hammer. He’s running with six Sanguinary Guard packing Furious Assault, and that’s your big hammer unit. But it’s not the only thing coming at you. A Chaplain with Imperium’s Sword leads five Death Company Marines, giving opponents another nasty melee unit to deal with at the same time. Then there are three more Sanguinary Guard with Furious Assault ready to jump on whatever survives.
And the Dreadnoughts aren’t exactly sitting around, either. Kyle brought a Brutalis Dreadnought and two Death Company Dreadnoughts, one with Venerable Champion and the other with an Artificer Sarcophagus. All three have twin multi-meltas, so they’ve got plenty of ways to crack armor while the Sanguinary Guard handle infantry. Throw in six Inceptors with Plasma Exterminators and a melta Eradicator squad, and that’s a whole lot of anti-tank firepower for Blood Angels.
What about objectives, though? That’s where the Incursors, Reivers, Scouts, Phobos Librarian, and Impulsor come in. They’re handling the scoring while the heavy hitters get into fights, which works pretty well for a Take and Hold list.
How Encarmine Speartip Wins the Damage Race
Round 1 was Rob Gailey’s World Eaters, which he beat 98-51. Then came Christopher McGeorge’s Orks at 100-68, Weston Slaght’s Space Wolves at 100-49, and Tyler Petrie’s World Eaters at 95-58.
That’s four armies that love getting into combat, and Kyle beat every one of them by at least 32 points. The Blood Angels clearly handled those fights just fine.
Round 5 got a lot tighter. Kyle and Daniel were both sitting at 4-0, with the event win still up for grabs. Kyle’s Blood Angels pulled out an 87-75 win, which was easily his closest game of the weekend. So, beating his own teammate by 12 points was enough to keep that undefeated record intact and send him into the tiebreakers alongside Robin.
Biosanctic Broodsurge Genestealer Cults Buried Four Opponents at 100 Points
Robin’s Genestealer Cults army list was doing something a little different, with four 100-point games across five rounds. That’s some serious mission play, not just beating people up. He’s running Xenocult Masses alongside Biosanctic Broodsurge, with characters packed into pretty much every important squad.
Biosanctic Broodsurge Roster Breakdown
The Patriarch is the warlord, with Mutagenic Regeneration, leading ten Purestrains. That’s already a nasty bunch of claws to worry about, but Robin doesn’t stop there. He’s also got three Primus and Biophagus pairs spread across three units: one full squad of Acolyte Hybrids and two units of Hybrid Metamorphs.
That’s six characters across three squads, which is a pretty big investment. But it also means each of those units has plenty of punch on its own, so you can’t really afford to ignore any of them.
Both Neophyte squads have a Benefictus leading them, too, so even the shooting units get character support. There’s also an Abominant, a Jackal Alphus, another Acolyte squad, and five more Purestrains to help get bodies onto objectives. Two Goliath Trucks and two Achilles Ridgerunners take care of getting around the board and scouting ahead.
We’ve seen Cult players pull off big results before, like when Genestealer Cults stole the show at the Texas Open. What’s interesting here is how Robin trades a bunch of raw shooting for those character-heavy units that opponents really have to deal with.
How Biosanctic Broodsurge Wins the Mission
Robin got things rolling with a 100-55 win over Jake Smith’s Necrons, but round 2 almost ended the undefeated run right there. Thomas Fields’s Space Marines pushed him all the way, with Robin barely winning 54-52.
Two points was the difference between having one undefeated army at Mektoberfest and having two. After that scare, though, Robin went straight back to putting up 100s. He beat Nathan Flood’s T’au 100-47, John Tatusko’s Emperor’s Children 100-58, and Aiden Artes’s World Eaters 100-75 in round 5.
That left him with 454 total battle points against Kyle’s 480.
Cohort Cybernetica Adeptus Mechanicus Marched Robots to 4-0
Then we’ve got Daniel’s Adeptus Mechanicus army list, and this one’s bringing the guns. A lot of them. He’s pairing Cohort Cybernetica with Eradication Cohort, with Thulia Ghuld as his warlord. Daniel went 4-0 before running into Kyle’s Blood Angels, and three of those first four wins were by at least 51 points.
Cohort Cybernetica Roster Breakdown
The big centerpiece here is four Kastelan Robots with a Cybernetica Datasmith attached, carrying the Martial Signatum Amplificator. There’s also a Tech-Priest Enginseer with Necromechanic keeping everything running. Good luck trying to move that chunk of metal off an objective.
Then you get to the tanks. Three Onager Dunecrawlers and three Skorpius Disintegrators. That’s six vehicles throwing out firepower, and if you’ve been across the table from Admech recently, you probably know just how annoying that much shooting can be.
For scoring, Daniel’s got four Skitarii squads, one Rangers and three Vanguard, plus two Sulphurhound units to cover the board. There are plenty of Adeptus Mechanicus playstyles, but this one is definitely going all-in on robots and tanks doing the damage while the Skitarii handle the ground.
How Cohort Cybernetica Wins the Shooting War
Daniel started strong with a 100-45 win against Troy Johnson’s Chaos Daemons. He followed that with a 94-43 win over Kaydien Moore’s Emperor’s Children and a 96-44 result against Benjamin Essner’s Grey Knights.
Round 4 was an Admech mirror against Stuart King, and Daniel won that one 93-73. So by the time round 5 came around, he was still undefeated and looking pretty good.
Of course, that’s when he ran into his teammate Kyle and lost 87-75. Not exactly the finish he wanted, especially with the crown on the line. But Kyle was the only player who beat him all weekend.
Either way, Daniel still finished with 458 battle points, four more than Robin’s 454.
Final Thoughts on the Mektoberfest 2026 Army Lists & the 40k Meta Now
Every army in the Mektoberfest top five used the Take and Hold disposition, but they were playing five different factions: Blood Angels, Genestealer Cults, Adeptus Mechanicus, Orks, and Space Wolves.
Now, one GT in Georgia doesn’t prove anything about the whole meta. But if we keep seeing that same pattern at the next few big events, the disposition you choose might matter more than which codex you bring.
We’ll have to see what happens at the next batch of 11th Edition GTs. If Take and Hold keeps filling up the top spots, don’t be surprised if more 40k army lists start looking like Kyle’s, with a big melee hammer doing the fighting and a bunch of cheap scoring units holding things down behind it.
🔗 Related Reads:
- How to Play Blood Angels
- How to Play Genestealer Cults
- 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
Would you rather run Kyle’s Blood Angels or Robin’s Genestealer Cults at your next GT?
