Steal the winning tech from the CaptainCon 2026’s top Warhammer 40k army lists for Imperial Knights, Chaos Knights, and Space Marines.
Want “unbeatable” energy? The CaptainCon 2026 had a very interesting top 8 placing of Warhammer 40k factions, tested under the kind of mission pressure that makes bad builds fold fast.
This breakdown of the latest top 40k army lists highlights the tech worth stealing for your list this week!
CaptainCon 2026: Top 40k Army Lists
Checking out these winning army lists and their tactical synergies can really help you sharpen your strategy, especially with the latest updates to the balance dataslate rules and points.
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1st Place: Jonas Beardsley, Imperial Knights Army Lists
This is a “big Knights, little Knights, and one tiny band of snoops” game plan that’s trying to win on two tracks at once: bully the mid-board with towering threat pieces, while the Armigers do the unglamorous work of trading, screening, and vacuuming up secondaries.
Knight Atrapos: The “Nope, That’s Not Allowed” Button
The Atrapos is the list’s hard veto. Point it at the enemy’s scariest high-value piece and start deleting options. It also plays perfectly with the pressure plan because if your opponent tries to hide, they are just giving your Armigers more breathing room to own the edges and bully the mid-board.
Cerastus Knight Lancer: The “Go Time” Wedge
The Lancer is your tempo hammer. It wants the mid-board early, it wants a long charge lane live, and it wants the opponent spending real resources just to keep it from tagging something important. It is the wedge that shoves the fight forward, even when it is not outright picking up a unit.
Pennant: Turning Annoying Into Unavoidable
The Pennant matters because it leans into what the Lancer already does best: being a fast, aggressive headache that forces awkward defensive play. The Lancer does not always need a kill to be worth it. Sometimes it just needs to be there, in the way, daring a response, and setting up the trades behind it.
Knight Defender: The Calm Anchor That Deletes Something Every Turn
The Defender is the “sit back and remove a problem” half of the big Knight package. It anchors your angles, builds firing lanes, and punishes anything trying to contest the center after the Lancer has shoved the fight forward. Wyrmslayer Divination is there to keep the shooting plan reliable into the targets Knights actually care about, so the Defender feels like a real warlord piece instead of just another gun platform.
The goal is simple: delete key threats at range while quietly making huge chunks of the table unsafe to stand in.
Two Armiger Helverins: Honest Work, Dirty Angles
Helverins are the “do your job” unit. They pick up annoying light and midweight pieces, pressure enemy skirmishers, and make sure the opponent cannot just freestyle the flanks. They also help with board shape, because Knights hate getting boxed in. Helverins fix that by existing in the lanes that force respect for overwatch, angles, and threat ranges.
Three Armiger Warglaives: Walk Onto The Point And Dare An Answer
Warglaives are your “flip primary” tools once the brawl starts. They walk onto objectives, threaten anything pretending it is safe nearby, and they are thrilled to trade up if it steals a key scoring swing. The meltagun plus thermal spear keeps opponents honest, and the chain-cleaver makes sure it is not just a gun with legs.
Inquisitorial Agents: The Sixty-Point Problem Solver
Agents are the one true “small unit that does small unit things,” and they are doing a ton for the points. They sit home, do actions, screen deep strike angles, and keep your Knights from wasting real bodies on chores. The tome-skull adds utility, and the multi-melta servitor is the hilarious little bonus that occasionally makes someone regret trying to bully them off a point with something that is not quite tough enough.
How This Imperial Knights Army List Scores
This list wins by stacking problems. The Lancer creates immediate pressure and forces early decisions. The Atrapos and Defender punish bad ones from range. The Armigers slide in behind that chaos to flip objectives and trade efficiently. Ignore the big Knights to score and the Armigers eat your scoring pieces. Overcommit into the Armigers and the big Knights pick up whatever had to step into the open.
On primaries, it’s the classic Knights rhythm: Armigers touch and flip objectives while the big Knights make the mid-board too dangerous for the opponent to stand on comfortably. The Helverins help keep flanks clean and stop cheap enemy units from running away with the mission, while the Warglaives do the dirty work of contesting and stealing.
On secondaries, the Inquisitorial Agents are the quiet MVPs, handling actions and backfield chores so the actual robots can keep doing robot things: pressure, trade, and remove anything that looks like it might score more than it should.
2nd Place: Jaime Paris, Chaos Knights Army Lists
How This Chaos Knights Army List Scores
If someone’s tired of playing polite 40k, this is the list that fixes that. Two Chaos Cerastus Knight Lancers sprint straight at the center and start asking the kind of questions that only a shock lance can answer, while the Despoilers park behind them and turn the table into a no-infantry zone with Gatling cannons and heavy darkflamers.
Wyrm Slayer juiced up with Fleshmetal Fusion is the spear tip that either punches a hole through something important or eats an embarrassing amount of return fire, and that’s the point: the opponent spends the early turns scrambling, screening, and second-guessing every move.
Finally, the Despoilers clean up whatever the Lancers crack open and keep scoring honestly by making “standing on objectives” feel like a dare.
3rd Place: Tony Phillips, Space Marines Army Lists (Ultramarines)
How This Space Marines Army List Scores
This Ultramarines list is the kind of polite handshake that turns into a parking ticket the second someone steps into the center.
Guilliman and Calgar sit up top calling the shots, while the real work gets done by a chunky armor package that dares opponents to show a toe on an objective. Scouts and Incursors handle the early positioning and screening, the Intercessors do the unglamorous mission labor, and then the Executioners and Vindicators start removing anything that looks like it might survive a trade.
The Victrix crew and Calgar’s bodyguard setup keep the important pieces from getting clipped by random nonsense, and the combi-Lieutenant is the sneaky utility wrench that pops up where it hurts. If the tanks get rolling, the list turns the mid-board into a no-fun zone and wins by making every objective play feel expensive.
Final Thoughts from us on The CaptainCon 2026 Army Lists
CaptainCon 2026 made one thing painfully clear: the lists that climbed to the top were not trying to be cute.
Imperial Knights’ army lists stacked layered threats, so every “deal with this” decision turned into two more problems. Chaos Knights’ armlist also went full throat-punch with double Lancers and dared anyone to keep their feet under them. Ultramarines, well, the Space Marines army lists showed up with that calm, clinical armor grind that turns the mid-board into a fee-based service.
The common thread is pressure with a plan. Big pieces force the first bad choice, the support pieces cash the check, and the scoring stays steady while the opponent is busy putting out fires. Steal the parts that fit the local meta, steal the sequencing, and steal the discipline on target priority. The rest is just practice and a little bit of spite.
See the Top Warhammer Army Lists & 40k Tournament Schedule for This Year
What do you think of the results and top Warhammer 40k army lists at the CaptainCon 2026 for Imperial Knights, Chaos Knights, and Ultramarines?
