Oscar Kelly’s 5-0 Necrons took the Warhammer World GT army lists crown with teammate Patrick Harrison’s 5-0 Drukhari right behind at 436 battle points.
Two Warwickshire Warhawks teammates just went 1-2 at the Warhammer World GT without ever pairing off, locking out the top of GW’s home event and reshaping the Warhammer 40k meta read going into the next round of GTs.
The two armies that beat the field had almost nothing in common. Oscar’s Necrons ran Starshatter Arsenal with The Silent King, two C’tan, and a pair of Doomsday Arks. Patrick’s Drukhari ran Spectacle of Spite with forty-plus models on jet bikes and jump boards. Jordan Penning’s Ultramarines went 4-1 for 3rd on a Guilliman list with a Repulsor Executioner pair, dropping the final round 89-76 to Patrick when the bikes outran the lascannons at Table 01.
T’au Empire put two players in the top 8 at GW HQ, with Dan M.K at 5th and Josh Gates at 7th, but neither made the podium. Either way, the Starshatter Arsenal and Spectacle of Spite are the Warhammer 40k army lists archetypes to study from this event.
Warhammer World GT: Top 8 Warhammer 40k Army Lists
Updated on April 26, 2026, by Rob Baer with the latest winning armies
- Starshatter Arsenal answered T’au at range with Silent King plus two C’tan shards: three survive-into-turn-four characters kept Oscar’s damage race alive through all five rounds.
- Spectacle of Spite answered T’au with 40+ Hellions and Reavers on jump boards: Patrick’s list was in melee before the shooting phase had a chance to matter.
- Blade of Ultramar held 3rd place on heavy armor with a Repulsor Executioner pair: Jordan’s Guilliman list was the only top-3 plan that didn’t bet on speed.
- T’au Empire made the cut at 5th and 7th but never broke into the podium: Dan M.K and Josh Gates couldn’t match the Xenos range and movement answers Warwickshire brought.
- Warwickshire Warhawks produced both 5-0 winning plans at GW HQ without ever pairing off: Oscar and Patrick went 1-2 on two completely different takes on the same meta.
Thanks to Best Coast Pairings, we can walk back through the entire event with real pairings and round data. Click this special promo link to save $20 on a year’s BCP subscription.
Oscar Kelly’s Starshatter Arsenal Necrons Took the Crown With a Damage-Race Anchor
Oscar’s winning Necrons tournament list is a Starshatter Arsenal damage-race engine anchored by The Silent King at 400 points. Szarekh leads two Triarchal Menhirs into the midfield and turns every shooting phase into a math problem the opponent loses more often than they win.
Starshatter Arsenal Roster Breakdown
A Hexmark Destroyer carrying Chrono-impedance Fields handles deep-strike character hunts, while a Technomancer with Demanding Leader keeps the infantry scoring engine rolling, and two C’tan shards do the heavy work across the board. The Deceiver carries Cosmic Insanity for midfield disruption, while the Nightbringer at 340 points anchors the melee counter-punch.
Ranged damage comes from two Doomsday Arks, parked in the backfield, where the Doomsday cannon deletes whatever the C’tan haven’t already cracked. A six-model Canoptek Wraith block handles midfield objective duty, and a smaller squad of Ophydian Destroyers plus five Flayed Ones cleans up scoring positions from turn three onward.
How Starshatter Arsenal Wins the Damage Race
Oscar went 5-0 with 478 battle points, and four of those five rounds were blowouts. He maxed out 100-18 against Astra Militarum in round one, hit 100 again at 100-45 against Emperor’s Children in round four, and never dropped under a +48 BP margin until the final table. Round five was the only one that ran tight: Tristan Whitehead’s Space Wolves held him to 91-72, the one round on Oscar’s card where the Starshatter Arsenal actually got tested.
What separated Oscar’s Starshatter from the mid-table Necron builds at the event was coverage at every range band paired with three characters that survive into turn four. Most lists give up one of those when the damage race tightens. This one didn’t.
Patrick Harrison’s Spectacle of Spite Drukhari Ran Down a 5-0 With Bikes and Hellions
Patrick played the opposite game from Oscar with the same 5-0 result. His Drukhari tournament list is Spectacle of Spite, with Combat Drugs on top, and it already starts the game faster than almost anything else in the format.
Spectacle of Spite Roster Breakdown
Lady Malys is the Warlord at 100 points, Lelith Hesperax runs her own kill zone, and a Succubus carrying Morghenna’s Curse leans into the detachment’s character-hunt loop.
The body of the list is 25 Hellions across three squads and 15 Reavers across three more. That’s 40 models on jet bikes and jump boards starting the game at top-end movement before Combat Drugs gets involved. Four ten-model Wych squads with Blast Pistols anchor the ground-level melee work, and a single Cronos pushes pain tokens around to keep the whole engine re-rolling.
Anti-armor coverage runs through two five-model Scourge squads with Dark Lances dropping in from reserve, and the transports (a Raider and three Venoms with twin Splinter Cannons) carry Wyches where the Hellions can’t reach.
How Spectacle of Spite Breaks the Movement Phase
Spectacle of Spite buys movement phases nobody else in the format gets, and with Combat Drugs on top, the Hellion and Reaver blocks stop being paper and start putting real pressure on the board. Patrick’s tightest game of the weekend was round two against Dan M.K’s T’au, the only T’au list he played all weekend, and Spectacle of Spite still ran out an 88-77 win with bikes already in the gunline by turn two.
Every other round, Patrick pushed the margin past +27 BP. The final-round Table 01 match against Jordan’s Ultramarines closed 89-76, with the Repulsor Executioners never getting a clean lascannon shot at the Hellions before the bikes were already on top of them.
Jordan Penning’s Blade of Ultramar Ultramarines Went Heavy While Everyone Else Went Fast
Jordan was the only top-3 finisher running armor. His Ultramarines tournament list, “The Ultrafists,” is a Blade of Ultramar Mastered Doctrines roster built around Roboute Guilliman at 340 points. Uriel Ventris rides at the head of the list, and a Lieutenant with Combi-weapon fills in the third character slot for the primarch-adjacent package.
Blade of Ultramar Roster Breakdown
Two Repulsor Executioners delivered anti-armor damage through the Heavy Laser Destroyer profile, and two Ballistus Dreadnoughts stacked more lascannon-and-missile coverage layer at range. A Victrix Honor Guard block of six, led by a Chapter Ancient with the Banner of Macragge and a Chapter Champion, moves with Guilliman as the melee hammer.
The scoring infantry runs a lighter footprint than his top-8 peers: an Intercessor Squad, an Incursor Squad with the Haywire Mine, Assault Intercessors with Jump Packs, two Scout squads with Heavy Bolter and Missile Launcher, and a Wardens of Ultramar block doing character support behind Aemelia Minervas.
Overall, the list scores off fewer bodies because it expects the Repulsors and Guilliman to close games before infantry counts come into play.
How Blade of Ultramar Closes Games With Guilliman
The Repulsor Executioners are Blade of Ultramar’s closing tool, and against the top 8, it worked everywhere except the one matchup where movement outran damage.
Jordan rode the lascannon plan to a 4-0 start with three blowouts and one tight 75-68 mirror against Chris Brookes’s Marines in round four. Going into round five, he was sitting at Table 01 with Patrick, the only two Warhawks who hadn’t paired off yet. Patrick’s Drukhari never gave the lascannons a clean shot, and Jordan dropped the final round 89-76, a 13-point swing that locked him into 3rd while his fellow Warhawk took the runner-up plaque.
Final Thoughts on the Warhammer World GT Army Lists & 40k Meta
At 65 players, the Warhammer World GT wasn’t going to settle the meta on its own. But it did confirm two things instead: Starshatter Arsenal is a ranged version answer to T’au, and Spectacle of Spite is a movement one.
Custodes at 4th and Dark Angels at 8th rounded out the top cut behind them, one of the more diverse GW-run top 8s of the year.
So if you’re list-building for the next GT on your calendar, the Warhammer World GT top 3 just posted the cheat codes to beating Tau: character-anchored at range, or full speed. Two Warwickshire Warhawks went 5-0 at GW’s HQ on completely different plans the same weekend, and that’s the clearest Xenos response to a T’au-heavy cut the format has produced all year.
See the Top Warhammer Army Lists Meta & 40k Tournament Schedule for This Year
🔗 Related Reads:
- How to Play T’au in 40k
- How to Play Drukhari in 40k
- How to Play Space Marines in 40k
- More Top Warhammer 40k Army Lists
- 40k Tournament Guide
- Latest 40k Balance Dataslate
- Munitorum Field Manual Points Updates
What do you think about the Warhammer World GT army lists and the Warwickshire Warhawks 1-2 over a T’au-backed top 8?
