The Beachhead Brawl 2026 40k tournament saw some great factions hit the podium. Check out the top Tau Empire, Deathwatch, and Necrons army lists now.
The latest Beachhead Brawl 2026 results are real-time insights for anyone who likes usable tournament tech.
Now we’re breaking down the top 40k army lists from the event and calling out the choices that mattered so you can spot meta trends fast and tune your own roster.
Top Placings From Warhammer Beachhead Brawl 2026
Studying these winning army lists for their tactical synergies can provide great insights for playing your army since the latest balance dataslate rules changes and points updates.
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1st Place: Ross Tully, Tau Empire Army Lists
This is not a polite Tau gunline. This is a feral carpet of Kroot bodies backed up by stampeding Krootox, all wrapped in just enough tricks to make it a nightmare to pin down.
It floods the board early, trades constantly, and forces opponents to deal with waves of angry space mercenaries instead of chasing clean damage trades.
The detachment choice, Kroot Hunting Pack, tells the whole story. The army wants to scout, pressure, and overwhelm mid-board objectives while the heavier Krootox elements slam into whatever tries to push back.
The Character Web That Holds It Together
The five Shapers are not here for flavor. They are the glue.
Two Kroot Flesh Shapers slot into the big twenty-strong Carnivore units, juicing them up and making those blobs far more annoying than their datasheet suggests. They turn basic infantry into credible trading pieces that can actually punch back when someone tries to bully them off an objective.
The Kroot Lone-spear is the Warlord and a serious utility piece. With Kroothawk Flock, he plays the harassment game, picking angles, chipping wounds, and acting as a flexible threat that opponents cannot ignore.
The Trail Shaper with Nomadic Hunter keeps the army mobile and reactive. He helps key units reposition and lean into the Hunting Pack playstyle of striking where it matters. The War Shaper with Root-carved Weapons adds a bit more bite to whatever unit he joins, pushing Kroot melee from “annoying” to “actually dangerous if ignored.”
Together, these characters layer buffs across multiple units so that every trade the army makes is just slightly better than expected.
Carnivores: The Board Control Engine
Two full bricks of twenty Kroot Carnivores and four smaller ten-strong squads form the backbone.
The big units are primary objective holders. They spread out, screen deep strikes, and clog the mid-board. With Shaper support, they are not just speed bumps. They can throw out a surprising volume of attacks and chip damage while sitting on objectives and daring the opponent to commit real resources.
The smaller squads are pure utility. They screen, perform actions, sit on backfield objectives, and trade into weakened enemy units. Losing a ten-model Carnivore squad is expected. Losing the board because those squads were ignored is the trap.
This is how the list wins the early game. It simply has more bodies in more places.
Farstalkers and Hounds: Pressure and Disruption
Two units of Kroot Farstalkers bring forward pressure. They scout, threaten light infantry, and force opponents to respect angles early. With their mix of guns, hounds, and utility pieces like the Pech’ra, they are flexible harassment units that can chip, screen, or contest.
Three units of Kroot Hounds are pure movement tools. They screen out deep strikers, block movement lanes, tag enemy units, and trade up when possible. These units make sure the Carnivore wall does not get outflanked or alpha-struck.
Krootox Rampagers: The Real Damage Dealers
Three full units of six Krootox Rampagers are the hammer. This is where the list stops being cute and starts breaking things.
Eighteen Rampagers on the table is a serious melee presence. They hit hard, they are tough enough to demand real firepower, and they punish anything that steps too close to the Carnivore screen. The army uses its infantry to absorb the first wave, then sends in Rampagers to delete whatever is committed.
Multiple units mean redundancy. Even if one squad gets shot off the board, two more are ready to counterpunch. Against elite armies, they chew through heavy infantry. Against vehicles, volume of attacks adds up fast. Against horde armies, they simply out-muscle the midfield.
Krootox Riders: Mobile Fire Support
Three units of Krootox Riders add mid-strength shooting and secondary melee punch. The repeater cannons give the list some ranged presence, helping clear chaff and soften targets before the Rampagers charge in.
They also operate as flexible midfield pieces. Not quite as all-in as Rampagers, not as disposable as Carnivores, they fill the gap. They can hold an objective, support a charge, or peel off to handle lighter threats.
Vespid Stingwings: The Surgical Tool
A single unit of Vespid Stingwings rounds things out with speed and precision. They drop in, pick up a small unit, threaten a backfield objective, or score a key secondary.
How This Tau Army List Scores
This army scores by owning the mid-board early and never fully giving it back. The large Carnivore units sit on primary objectives while smaller squads and Hounds handle actions and secondary plays. Vespid and Lone-spear clean up flexible scoring tasks, while Rampagers remove whatever threatens scoring units.
It wins by trading efficiently, forcing bad engagements, and turning board control into steady primary and secondary points.
2nd Place: Stephen Box, Deathwatch Army Lists (Space Marines)
How This Deathwatch Army List Wins
If you like winning games the unglamorous way, this Deathwatch Black Spear Task Force list is basically a masterclass in taking the middle of the table and making it everyone else’s problem.
The Watch Master is the big “pick a unit, ruin its day” lever, backed by a Gravis Captain with Tome of Ectoclades, so your shooting plans do not bounce off the first save roll. Two Veteran bricks do the honest work, soaking punishment with shields while the hammers and blades cash the check, and the Rhino makes sure at least one squad gets to start the party on your terms.
Then the Terminators show up as the classic “try and move me” brick with cyclone missiles for reach and enough thunder hammers to turn a so-called safe objective into a crime scene.
Fortis and Indomitor Kill Teams round it out by flexing into whatever matchup you drew, and the Infiltrators handle the boring screens, so you are not losing to a random deep strike gotcha.
3rd Place: William Griffiths, Necrons Army Lists
How This Necrons Army List Wins
This Necrons build is the classic “pressure from every angle” problem: The Silent King parks himself where the game gets decided, the twin Doomsday Arks punish anything exposed, and the Deceiver plus Nightbringer stomp into the midboard like they own the place.
Your opponent can’t just play keep-away, because the Arks force movement, and they can’t just pile into the middle, because the C’tan turn prized units into scrap. Wraiths do the dirty work on objectives, the Technomancer keeps the engine running, and the little utility pieces show up exactly where they’re annoying.
If you like army lists that win by making every choice feel bad, this one’s got teeth.
Final Thoughts From Us on Warhammer Beachhead Brawl 2026 Army Lists
Beachhead Brawl 2026 was not some gimmick event with one weird spike list. This was three very different armies solving the same problem in three very different ways.
New Tau army lists flooded the board, and trade blows until you run out of answers. Deathwatch army lists took the center and dared you to shift it. And finally, Necron army lists said every option you have is wrong and backed it up with gods and artillery.
That spread matters. It shows the current 40k meta still rewards clear game plans over cute tricks. Board control, layered threats, and redundancy are doing the heavy lifting right now. If your list cannot hold the midboard, project real damage, and score under pressure, you are going to feel it fast.
So, if you are tuning for your next event, there is plenty to steal here, like bringing more bodies than your opponent expects, bricks that refuse to die, and threats that force movement instead of waiting politely.
None of these lists won by luck. They won on pressure and clean execution.
See the Top Warhammer Army Lists & Latest 40k Tournament Schedule
What do you think of the results from the Warhammer Beachhead Brawl 2026 40k Tau Empire, Deathwatch, and Necrons army lists?
