Two of the top three Mountain West Classic army lists were undefeated Chaos Space Marines, which were overshadowed by psyker-heavy Aeldari!
That’s right, two CSM lists locked the top at the Mountain West Classic 2026, which pretty much tells you where the Warhammer 40k meta sits right now for the most part.
The interesting part is that the two CSM lists weren’t even running the same detachment. John Holbrook’s Chaos Space Marines Renegade Raiders list ran the table at 6-0 for the win, while McAtee’s Pactbound Zealots also went 6-0 and took 2nd. Kyle Parry’s Aeldari Seer Council list went 5-1 and held 3rd, dropping only to McAtee in the final round.
This seems to cement CSM’s dominance regardless of detachments, making those builts two top Warhammer 40k army lists archetypes worth studying right now, especially if Chaos is on your radar for the next event.
Mountain West Classic 2026: Top 3 Warhammer 40k Army Lists
Updated on June 5, 2026, by Rob Baer with the latest winning armies
- John Holbrook’s Renegade Raiders list went 6-0 with 555 battle points to take the GT crown: Cypher, Huron, and Vashtorr leading two Defilers and twin Noise Marines down the board.
- Brian McAtee’s Pactbound Zealots Defiler list matched 6-0 at 522 battle points for second place: Abaddon and three Chosen blocks paired with Possessed under stacked Marks of Chaos.
- Kyle Parry’s Seer Council Aeldari held third on a 5-1 record at 531 battle points: Eldrad, two Fire Prisms, four Warlock units, and twin Wraithlords pushing damage from every angle.
Use these winning armies to sharpen your own lists alongside the latest balance dataslate updates and points changes.
Thanks to Best Coast Pairings, we can walk back through the whole event with real pairings and battle point data. Click this special promo link to save $20 on a year’s BCP subscription. And if you want to take your game to the next level, consider applying to Team USA to compete at the Warhammer World Team Championships.
John Holbrook’s Renegade Raiders Took the GT With Vashtorr and Two Defilers
Holbrook’s winning Chaos Space Marines tournament list runs Renegade Raiders, but the warlord is Cypher (not Abaddon), the “bodyguard” is Huron, and you’ve also brought Vashtorr the Arkifane along for the ride?
Renegade Raiders Roster Breakdown
From the top, Cypher acts as Warlord and applies his unique mortal-wound damage on objectives Holbrook already plans to hold. Huron Blackheart brings the heavy flamer and power weapon punch into the midboard. The Two Traitor Enforcer cells with their Traitor Ogryns serve as cheap durable bodyguards, and Vashtorr the Arkifane glues everything together with his claw-and-hammer melee profile when the time comes to swing.
Behind them, three Chaos Rhinos move two Noise Marines blocks, and the Chosen pack up the table. Meanwhile, Noise Marines are quietly the spine of the list: two five-marine units, with two Blastmasters each, ready to delete light infantry and chip wounds off the bigger profiles.
Then the Defilers, each pushing twin excruciator cannons and a Hades lascannon, are where the points concentrate the most. These two daemon engines are the mid-board pressure and damage platforms opponents have to have an answer for or they’ll watch their objective game collapse.
The Masters of the Maelstrom warband and Red Corsairs Raiders round out the list. The Maelstrom characters fit Cypher’s Renegade Raiders overall playstyle for scoring objectives, and the Raiders pack a meltagun plus power-fist champion for targets of all opportunity. Finally, a Cultist Mob and a 10-strong Accursed Cultists unit handle the blocking and screening.
How Holbrook’s Renegade Raiders Win the Mid-Board
Overall, Holbrook went 6-0 with 555 battle points, scoring 87 or higher in five of six rounds. One thing the list does well is force the opponent to commit to fighting Vashtorr and Huron in the middle while the Defilers eat the backfield from range.
His path to victory ran through the Chaos mirror in around three against Chris Forkner (also Xenos Petting Zoo CSM), where Holbrook still cracked 87 against another version of his own roster. Round four flattened Jordan Gledhill’s Emperor’s Children 99-3, oof. Then round five against Durante Bozzini’s T’au was an 89-2 punisher, and round six closed out Nicolas Wenker’s Death Guard at 94.
Six wins, with five rounds at 87 or better? That’s an army list that punishes every opponent in the same way each and every round.
Brian McAtee’s Pactbound Zealots Defiler List Was a Stack of Marks That Refused to Stop
McAtee’s second-place Chaos Space Marines tournament list runs the hot meta detachment of Pactbound Zealots, and it rocked three Chosen blocks and two Possessed units with Marks of Nurgle, Tzeentch, Slaanesh, and Chaos Undivided.
Pactbound Zealots Roster Breakdown
Unsurprisingly, Abaddon the Despoiler is the Warlord and the lynchpin. Drach’nyen and the Talon of Horus in one bodyguard package, paired nicely with the undivided 10-Chosen brick at 250 points, giving the Black Legion a single hammer that walks down the middle of the table and breaks whatever is in front of it.
Fabius Bile sits with the Possessed and turns one of the Marks into the extra wound that can win engagements. Huron Blackheart adds a second melee character at 120 points that can attach to a different Chosen unit and split McAtee’s threats. Then, a Traitor Enforcer and Traitor Ogryn package with the Mark of Nurgle bolts onto a Cultist Mob for an annoyingly durable objective sitter.
Overall, the Chosen are the backbone here with a 10-strong Chaos Undivided brick at 250 points, plus two 5-strong Chosen units (one Undivided at 125, one Slaanesh at 125) for flank pressure. The Possessed land in two flavors: a 10-strong Undivided unit at 240 points for the central charge, and a 5-strong Slaanesh unit at 120 points for the secondary or follow-upattacks.
Bringing up the rear is a Defiler with the Mark of Nurgle, who gets the big guns out of trouble with the extra wound. Three Chaos Bikers with Mark of Tzeentch and meltaguns handle the assassination targets. The Masters of the Maelstrom band of characters helps keep secondary scoring honest, and the Nurgle-marked Cultist Mob with a Beasts of Nurgle ally and a Nurglings swarm fill out the durable errand running.
Why Pactbound Zealots Locked Down Second Place
McAtee matched Holbrook’s 6-0 record at 522 battle points, but the path was a bit rougher around the edges for him. Round one was the lowest output of the day at 75, but rounds two through six all landed at 81 or higher. Then, round five against Chase Chappell’s Xenos Petting Zoo Aeldari was a 100-11 blowout, the cleanest round score in his column.
The key matchup, though, was round six versus Kyle Parry’s Aeldari, the eventual third-place finisher. McAtee took it 90-13, and that’s the result that locked Parry out of the title chase and put two Chaos Space Marines lists at the top.
Interestingly, round four was the Chaos mirror against Charles Metts, which McAtee won 82-42.
Kyle Parry’s Seer Council Aeldari Held Third Against a Chaos-Heavy Top Cut
Parry’s third-place Aeldari tournament list runs Seer Council, named “You’re a Wizard, Parry,” and for anyone keeping score on roster name energy, we love it. The detachment chooses to spend most of its character budget on psyker-flavored Warlocks rather than the usual Avatar and Phoenix Lord shopping list, and it kept Aeldari relevant when every other xenos faction in the cut fell off.
Seer Council Roster Breakdown
Eldrad Ulthran is the Warlord and the central engine per the usual, with his Mind War and the Staff of Ulthamar. Along with Eldrad, he takes a Farseer riding shotgun with Runes of Warding and Eldritch Storm, and two foot Warlocks fill out the character spots.
The Warlock obsession is both what makes this list weird and what also makes it work, honestly. Two Warlock Conclaves (a 4-Warlock unit and a 2-Warlock unit) plus three single Warlock Skyrunners on jetbikes push the council theme to ten Warlocks across the roster. Overall, that’s just a lot of singing spears, a lot of Destructor, and a lot of small fast units forcing your opponent to either chase them or get pinged to death.
His Battleline options are light but real: two Storm Guardian squads (with the Serpent’s Scale Platform support), and a Corsair Voidreaver unit for screening. Two Fire Prisms handle anti-armor, two Wraithlords with bright lances and ghostglaives provide melee mid-board pressure, and a Starfang adds another platform with its disintegrator cannon.
The Aspect Warriors chosen seem pretty deliberate: two Swooping Hawks units for objective pressure off the board edge, plus two Warp Spiders units for teleport-strike repositioning. Finally, the list rounds out with a small Rangers squad with long rifles handling the chip-damage character sniping.
Overall, it’s a Seer Council list that doesn’t lean on the obvious one-trick Avatar plan, and that’s why it doesn’t fold to the obvious counter Chaos brings now.
Why Aeldari Got Past Everything Until It Met Chaos
Parry’s 5-1 run started fast: 97 against Darick Post’s Astra Militarum, then 98 against Arther Hart’s Adepta Sororitas. Round three landed an 85 against Brad Gaddis. Round four was an 83 against Evan Stump’s Space Marines, and five was 86 over Jake Herrod’s Space Marines.
Then, in round six against McAtee, the wheels came off. McAtee won the matchup 90-82, which dropped Parry out of contention for the title.
An interesting note is that Parry’s 531 battle points outscored McAtee’s 522, but the head-to-head loss determines the tiebreak for placement. So you have an Aeldari list that put more total battle points on the board than the second-place CSM list, and still ended up at third because it couldn’t beat that CSM list when it mattered, sadly.
Either way, that’s pretty useful intel for anyone bringing Aeldari into a Chaos-heavy GT next month. The Warlock-stacked Seer Council can hang with everything that isn’t McAtee’s exact build, but the Pactbound “mark stack” solves something specific that Aeldari has not yet answered.
Final Thoughts on Mountain West Classic 2026 Army Lists & the Warhammer 40k Meta
If you ask us, the meta takeaway here is pretty interesting overall. Even though Chaos Space Marines locked the top two slots at Mountain West Classic 2026, with Holbrook’s Renegade Raiders at 1st and McAtee’s Pactbound Zealots at 2nd, the detachments aren’t even the same!
So now we have CSM showing up with multiple working builds (even at the UKGE Warhammer Open), and just not one unified cheese list anymore. Going into the next GT weekend, players should be watching both Renegade Raiders and Pactbound Zealots as Tier 1 starting points, and pre-loading the anti-CSM plan into their own rosters before they get to the table.
Aside from that, watch for whether Pactbound’s mark stack keeps beating xenos top-cut lists at the next round of GTs, and whether anyone outside Chaos can post a 6-0 win at a Warhammer 40k event of this size before 11th edition drops and changes it all again.
🔗 Related Reads:
- How to Play Chaos Space Marines
- How to Play Aeldari
- 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
Which Mountain West Classic 2026 40k army list are you copying into your next GT roster: Holbrook’s Renegade Raiders, McAtee’s Pactbound Zealots, or Parry’s Seer Council Aeldari?
“Ultramarines”
*Looks inside*
“Salamanders”