Conan Jennings’s 5-0 Space Marines took the Arch City GT 5 army lists crown in a top three where nobody lost a game.
Ninety-nine players rolled into Newark, Ohio, and somehow there were three undefeated players when awards went out Sunday afternoon. Five rounds will usually sort that down to one player, maybe two when the pairings get weird. But with three from different codexes, it gives us a much more interesting result.
Space Marines, Dark Angels, and Chaos Daemons all finished 5-0, which shows just how much 11th Edition rewrote the meta, and the fact that no one has it 100% figured out yet.
Arch City GT 5: Top 3 Warhammer 40k Army Lists
- Three players finished Arch City GT 5 undefeated at 5-0, and all three brought different faction books: Space Marines, Dark Angels, and Chaos Daemons split the podium in a 99-player field.
- Conan Jennings won the whole thing with twenty Terminators and six Centurion Devastators: the slowest army in the top three is the one that walked away with first place.
- Geoff Perry scored a perfect 100 in all five rounds and still finished third: the sharpest reminder all weekend that battle points alone don’t set the podium.
Thanks to Best Coast Pairings, we’ve got the real pairings and battle point data to see how all three lists got there.
Conan Jennings’s Librarius Conclave Space Marines Ground Out the Crown
Jennings called this one “Centurion Sendoff,” which is a pretty solid warning about what’s coming with the recent Legends-ing. He’s running Raven Guard through Librarius Conclave and Shadowmark Talon across three Detachment Points with a Reconnaissance disposition, then loading the army up with Terminators.
Reconnaissance isn’t exactly where you’d expect to find this many slow models, but the rest of the list gives them enough help to make it work.
Librarius Conclave Roster Breakdown
Aethon Shaan is the Warlord. Then the army starts with two ten-model Terminator units, and both have a Librarian attached. A Librarian in Terminator Armor with Celerity runs with the Assault Terminators, who bring thunder hammers and storm shields with four sets of lightning claws mixed in. The second Librarian carries Temporal Corridor and leads a standard Terminator Squad with nine power fists, nine storm bolters, and two cyclone missile launchers.
Behind them sits a six-model Centurion Devastator Squad loaded with grav cannons and Centurion missile launchers, giving the army its big ranged threat (RIP Kings). Two Intercessor Squads and a Scout Squad deal with the less glamorous objective work; two Inceptor Squads can drop in where they’re needed, while a Lieutenant in Phobos Armor with an Incursor Squad and a Reiver Squad cover screening and deep strike denial.
It’s a pretty old-school army setup. You’ve got a brick, a nasty gun unit, and enough smaller stuff running around to keep the mission from falling apart. Temporal Corridor and Celerity help with the problem Terminators have always had, because all that armor isn’t worth much if it’s still trudging toward the fight when the game is already getting away from you.
How Librarius Conclave Wins the Attrition Race
Jennings scored 100, 86, 98, 100, and 94 across five rounds. That 86 in round two was the only time he dipped below 90 all weekend, and even that still ended in a win.
This isn’t really an army built to chase every last point as fast as possible. The Centurions make committing into the middle expensive, the Inceptors can go after things trying to stay out of trouble, and the Terminators keep hanging around after the first couple of fights are over.
Either way, Jennings didn’t need the highest score in every round. He just needed the army to keep doing its job for all five of them, which is pretty similar to how 11th Edition’s first crown got taken.
Gabriel Baughman’s Company of Hunters Dark Angels Never Stopped Moving
Baughman got to 5-0 with a lot more speed involved. He even named the list “Yes, Sammael is Broken. No, I dont feel bad,” so nobody can say they weren’t warned. It’s Company of Hunters and Darkflight Pursuit across three Detachment Points, also using Reconnaissance, with most of the army built to get wherever it needs to be in a hurry.
Company of Hunters Roster Breakdown
The obvious starting point is six speeders. There are two Land Speeders with multi-meltas and onslaught gatling cannons, three Land Speeder Vengeance with Nightforged Battery on their plasma storm batteries, and a Storm Speeder Thunderstrike carrying the las-talon and Icarus rocket pod. A huge chunk of the army can reposition quickly, so opponents don’t get much room to assume a unit is safe just because it’s on the other side of the table.
Sammael runs with a Ravenwing Command Squad carrying Recon Hunter and an Outrider Squad, giving Baughman another fast unit that can lean straight into the mission. Azrael joins Assault Intercessors as the steadier piece that can hang onto whatever the mobile half of the army takes. Lion El’Jonson is the Warlord, while Deathwing Knights, another Outrider Squad, and two Scout Squads with missile launchers and sniper rifles finish things out.
Baughman has enough movement here that he doesn’t need to wait around for the right fight to come to him. He can pressure the board, back off when a fight looks bad, then show up somewhere else before the opponent has much time to adjust. If you want the broader picture of how these pieces work together, our How to Play Dark Angels breakdown covers the chapter now.
How Company of Hunters Wins the Movement Phase
These scores get ridiculous fast because Baughman went 100, 100, 100, 99, and 99, so his two worst rounds were both one point away from maximum.
With this much speed, he can get onto primary early, swing over to whatever part of the board suddenly matters, and grab secondaries when the opening is actually there instead of trying to fix things a turn later.
Geoff Perry’s Legion of Excess Chaos Daemons Scored a Perfect 500
Perry’s list name isn’t getting reprinted in full here, although it involved Jack and Coke and somebody named Brian. What we can print is the score: the Legion of Excess and Warptide, with a Priority Assets disposition, took him to 5-0, and he didn’t leave a single battle point behind all weekend.
Legion of Excess Roster Breakdown
The Masque of Slaanesh is the Warlord, while two Keepers of Secrets are doing most of the heavy lifting, with one carrying the Dreaming Crown and the other the Soul Glutton, while a Tormentbringer with False Majesty comes along for the ride. Four units of Daemonettes give Perry plenty of bodies for objectives; two are led by Contorted Epitomes, and one squad gets Bane-forged Weapons. There’s also a unit of Beasts of Nurgle mixed in to sit around being difficult to remove.
Then you get to the Fiends. Perry brought three units at 180 points each, so 540 points of the army is tied up in them. There isn’t even a gun anywhere in the list because Perry built the army around getting into combat and staying on top of the mission. Everything is either moving quickly toward a fight, hitting once it gets there, or helping one of those units reach the right target.
How Legion of Excess Wins the Damage Race
Shockingly, Perry scored 100 points in all five rounds for a perfect 500 battle points and still wound up third.
Once three players finish a five-round event at 5-0, the standings have to go deeper into the tiebreakers, and that’s where Perry ended up. We saw a similar situation when Necrons went a perfect 5-0 earlier this year.
Either way, Perry maxed every round with a Slaanesh-heavy army that had enough speed and melee pressure to do it without bringing ranged damage at all.
Final Thoughts on the Arch City GT 5 Army Lists & the Warhammer 40k Meta
Arch City gave people a few very different lists to start poking at instead of one obvious winner everybody is going to copy wholesale. Jennings made a pile of Terminators work, Baughman nearly maxed the event with speeders and bikes, and Perry actually did max it with melee Daemons.
Librarius Conclave is probably the result worth watching most closely from here. Twenty Terminators winning a 99-player GT is exactly the sort of list other players are going to test, and the next few events should tell us whether Jennings found something that travels well or just hit the right combination for this weekend.
If versions of it without the centurions start showing up deeper into upcoming events, the best and worst armies in the meta picture could look pretty different before the next dataslate arrives.
🔗 Related Reads:
- How to Play Space Marines
- How to Play Chaos Daemons
- 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 Arch City GT 5 army lists?
