Aaron Hermstedt took Death Guard 6-0 at Flying Monkey Con 26, with Mortarion and a Knight Despoiler doing most of the heavy lifting.
Flying Monkey Con 26 packed 112 players into downtown Wichita for six rounds over two days. Mortarion and an allied Knight Despoiler won it all, while the two army lists chasing them couldn’t have been more different.
Compared with last year’s Flying Monkey Con, those top tables look pretty different now that 11th Edition rewrote the meta and Detachment Points changed how rosters are built. All three ran two detachments for 3 DPs; they just spent that flexibility in completely different ways.
Top 3 Warhammer 40k Army Lists
- Death Guard went 6-0 at Flying Monkey Con 26 behind Mortarion and a Knight Despoiler: Aaron Hermstedt went undefeated across six rounds of Swiss.
- Genestealer Cults finished second at 5-0-1 without ever losing a single game all weekend: John Indellicate’s round one draw is the only reason he isn’t the champion.
- Two Midwest Monstars players landed in the top three of a 112-player GT: Hermstedt took first, and Dan Sammons took third with Orks, both with the same team shirt.
Thanks to Best Coast Pairings, we can go back through the event using real pairings and battle point data.
Aaron Hermstedt’s Paragons of Putrescence Death Guard Never Gave Up a Game
Death Guard have spent plenty of this edition getting written off as too slow to keep up. Hermstedt’s list leans straight into what the army already does well, packing in enough Nurgle bodies that clearing away the disposable stuff can eat up a huge chunk of the game. Paragons of Putrescence plus Shamblerot Vectorium gave him 3 Detachment Points, and from there the list makes figuring out what to shoot first a pretty big headache.
Paragons of Putrescence Roster Breakdown
Start with the Poxwalkers, because there are fifty of them. Typhus leads a twenty-model block, a Malignant Plaguecaster with Sorrowsyphon leads another ten, and two more ten-model units are free to wander off and be irritating somewhere else. That’s four separate chunks of chaff the opponent has to physically remove while the models they’d rather be shooting sit behind them.
Mortarion is the Warlord and can actually win the game on his own. A second Plaguecaster runs solo, a Chaos Rhino adds another body to work around, and three Myphitic Blight-haulers bring the melta fire Death Guard otherwise struggles to find. Next, the Defiler carries the Hades battle cannon for targets the Blight-haulers can’t get to.
Then, finally, there’s the allied Knight Despoiler sitting behind all of that.
How Paragons of Putrescence Wins the Attrition Race
Hermstedt’s battle points barely moved across the weekend: 100, 97, 82, 100, 100, and 80. Three perfect rounds make it pretty clear he wasn’t just hanging around and waiting for opponents to run out of turns.
The only real dips came in rounds three and six, where he scored 82 and 80, but he still won both, obviously. Overall, though, the Despoiler is a huge threat that has to be dealt with right away, and every shot going into it is another shot that isn’t clearing fifty Poxwalkers off objectives.
John Indellicate’s Xenocreed Congregation Genestealer Cults Never Actually Lost
John Indellicate got about as painful a second-place finish as you can have. He went 5-0-1, so technically nobody at Flying Monkey Con actually beat him. But that one draw was still enough to keep him from first place. We wouldn’t have put Genestealer Cults this high on our own 40k tier list going into the weekend, until we saw this, to be honest.
Xenocreed Congregation Roster Breakdown
Xenocreed Congregation plus Xenocult Masses gave him 3 Detachment Points, and he spent all of them on attached units. There are five of those attached units, with characters packed into them all over the list. A Primus with Deeds that Speak to the Masses joins a Biophagus and ten Hybrid Metamorphs carrying eight hand flamers, giving him a nasty short-range unit to drop where it hurts. A Magus with Incendiary Inspiration and a second Biophagus lead ten Acolyte Hybrids, while a third Biophagus joins another Metamorph unit.
Then you get to the Neophytes, and there are a whopping forty of them taking objectives. Two Acolyte Iconwards each lead twenty-model Neophyte Hybrid blocks, with Devious Disguises on one of them, and both units haul mining lasers, seismic cannons, webbers, and grenade launchers. Then there’s a Kelermorph and three more Acolyte units, because apparently forty Neophytes still weren’t enough bodies.
Behind all those bodies are four Achilles Ridgerunners split across three slots, with some carrying heavy mining lasers and others running heavy mortars. Atalan Jackals and five Purestrain Genestealers round it out, so the ranged damage gets plenty of models to work behind while the opponent tries to clear enough space to reach anything, really.
How Xenocreed Congregation Wins the Board Control Fight
His round one draw came with 100 battle points, so Indellicate wasn’t hanging on for a tie here. His opponent simply scored right alongside him.
After that, he posted 97, 94, 100, 100, and another 100. So closing out a six-round GT with three straight perfect scores is about as strong a second-place finish as you’re going to see.
Dan Sammons’s Dread Mob Orks Turned Killa Kans Into a Wall
Sammons made it two Midwest Monstars players in the top three with a 5-1 finish, and his Orks are pretty interesting. He went with Dread Mob plus Shoota Boyz and Wreckas at 3 Detachment Points, just like the other 3DP builds in the top 3.
Dread Mob Roster Breakdown
Start with twelve Killa Kans split into two mobs of six. Kans have never been subtle, but a dozen of them coming forward with Kan Blastas isn’t something you take on with whatever spare unit happens to be nearby. Seeing that many Kans on a top-three tournament army lists sheet isn’t something we’ve run into much lately, either to be fair.
Behind them are twenty Flash Gitz split into two mobs. A Beastboss with Kaptin’s Hat and a Mek run one unit, while a Big Mek with a Traktor Blasta and the Supa-snazz Dakka upgrade runs the other.
Two Big Mek Dakkarigs handle the longer shots, with one carrying Dreadherder to keep the walkers moving, and Boss Snikrot does what Snikrot does. Three Gretchin mobs grab the objectives nobody’s watching, while a Trukk, a Battlewagon, and three Deffkoptas keep the rest of the army moving.
How Dread Mob Wins the Shooting Phase
So, overall, the Kans hold things up long enough for the Snazzguns and Dakkarigs behind them to keep firing. Sammons scored 97, 94, 100, 95, and 100 through the first five rounds.
Nobody managed to drag him below 94 until the final game, where he finished on 60 battle points and took his only loss of the weekend.
Final Thoughts on the Flying Monkey Con 26 Army Lists & the Warhammer 40k Meta
A 112-player GT ending with Death Guard, Genestealer Cults, and Orks in the top three isn’t what most tier lists would have pointed toward. Plenty of players brought the “correct” armies to Wichita, but the lists that actually placed leaned hard on bodies, screens, and something nasty sitting behind them.
Now we’ll see whether Poxwalker-heavy Death Guard starts showing up at the next couple of majors. If it does, we’ll know Hermstedt wasn’t the only one who could make this Poxwalker-heavy build work. If it doesn’t, Hermstedt still went 6-0 with an army people keep writing off, which says a lot more about the guy playing it than the meta itself.
đź”— Related Reads:
- How to Play Death Guard
- 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
What do you think of the Flying Monkey Con 26 army lists, and is Death Guard actually back?
