Brian Daugherty’s 8-1 World Eaters took the NOVA Open 2026 army lists crown by beating the same player who’d already handed him his only loss.
The way NOVA Open runs its 40k Grand Tournament is what makes this one a bit wild. There were 383 players registered for nine rounds, and after Round 5 everyone gets sorted into a bracket with players sitting near them in win-loss record. Instead of the top tables drifting apart the way they can in straight Swiss, those players keep running into each other.
That’s how Brian Daugherty ended up across the table from Tony Phillips twice in the same weekend. Phillips got him first, 88-62 in Round 5. Four rounds later, Daugherty got the rematch with the whole event on the line and won 83-72.
So yeah, one weekend in Washington, DC isn’t enough to rewrite the 40k tier list, but four players finishing 8-1 is already something to check out. Especially when three of them are melee armies that spent the weekend running into each other multiple times.
NOVA Open 2026: Top 3 Warhammer 40k Army Lists
- Brian Daugherty went 8-1 with World Eaters and lost only to Tony Phillips: He got that loss back in the Bracket 1 final on Sunday, winning 83-72 with the title on the table.
- Phillips beat both other podium finishers head-to-head and still finished second: His Lions of the Emperor Custodes handed Daugherty and Jack Murphy the only losses either player took all weekend.
- Jack Murphy posted six perfect 100-point rounds and still landed in third place: Nobody in the top eight put together a smoother scoring run, and it still wasn’t enough to reach the final.
Thanks to Best Coast Pairings, we can walk through the event using the actual pairings and battle point data instead of reading too much into the final placings.
Brian Daugherty’s Berzerker Warband World Eaters Took the Crown With Pure Attrition
Daugherty named his list “I’m just here so I don’t get fined,” which tells you how seriously he took the pageantry around a 383-player GT. The army itself is a 2,000-pointCodex World Eathers Berzerker Warband built around getting multiple threats into your face before your own plan has much room to breathe.
Berzerker Warband Roster Breakdown
Angron is the warlord, but the rest of the list is built so he isn’t the only problem your opponent needs to worry about. A Slaughterbound with Battle-lust rides with Exalted Eightbound, Kharn the Betrayer leads a full Khorne Berzerker unit, and Lord Invocatus leads another. Invocatus is especially important because he helps the army actually move when it needs to instead of slogging across the board slowly.
Behind those character-led packages are two more Eightbound units and another Exalted Eightbound unit, so there are still plenty of threats that don’t need a character babysitting them. Goremongers and Jakhals handle the cheaper screening and objective work, while a lone Chaos Rhino gives one unit a ride.
Then Daugherty does something a pure World Eaters charge list doesn’t always want to spend points on: he brings two Forgefiends. Over nine rounds, those Forgefiends give Daugherty an answer for turns when the charges get screened out, or the melee models can’t quite hit the other side.
How Berzerker Warband Wins the Rematch
Daugherty opened with four maxed scores before Phillips handed him a 62-88 loss in Round 5. Normally, that could have ended the interesting part of the matchup, but NOVA’s bracket kept both players in the same ballpark.
By Round 8, Daugherty was still hanging on after beating Orks 82-79. Then came the final against the Custodes list that had already beaten him once, and this time Daugherty took it 83-72.
Tony Phillips’ Lions of the Emperor Custodes Beat Everyone Except the One That Counted
Second place gets a little weird when the runner-up already beat both of the other players on the podium. His list is called “Golden Aura Farming,” and the 2,000-point Lions of the Emperor build is about as subtle as the name. Our How to Play Adeptus Custodes guide has the detachment rules if you want to see what he’s working with.
Lions of the Emperor Roster Breakdown
A Shield-Captain on Dawneagle Jetbike carrying Admonimortis is the warlord, and he rides with Vertus Praetors. That’s the fast piece of the army, and it’s strong enough to punish any mispositioning.
Most of the rest is Allarus. Phillips has three units of them, sixteen models in total, plus a Shield-Captain in Allarus Terminator Armor with Superior Creation joining the pile. The plan is pretty direct: put Terminators on the objective you want, deep strike more onto the one you don’t have yet, and make the other player spend a ridiculous amount of effort trying to knock them off.
The cheaper stuff is thin on purpose, because two Prosecutor units, a Witchseeker unit, and a spare Vertus Praetor unit handle scoring jobs the Terminators are too busy to chase. Finally, an Inquisitor tucked into Custodian Guard rounds out the list.
How Lions of the Emperor Wins the Objective Fight
The scores against the other podium armies tell you a lot about how good this worked. Phillips beat Daugherty 88-62 in Round 5, then stopped Murphy 81-49 in Round 7 after Murphy had scored 100 points in every game up to that point.
With that many Terminators on the table, melee armies have to pour a huge amount of their army into removing units that don’t want to leave, and once they commit, the Praetors can go after whatever is still handling the backfield.
So overall he scored eight wins, including victories over both other podium finishers, and Phillips still walked away second, lol. That’s tournament 40k for you, I guess.
Jack Murphy’s War Horde Orks Scored Six Perfect Games
Murphy called his list “I like piggies,” and once you count fourteen squig-mounted models in a 2,000-point army, the name checks out. He finished 8-1 with the old Codex Orks build, six perfect 100-point rounds, the best-scoring run in the top eight, and somehow that was still only good for third.
War Horde Roster Breakdown
Ghazghkull Thraka is the warlord, sitting inside twenty Boyz with a Painboy carrying Follow Me Ladz. That gives Murphy a big central block that’s miserable to move, which lets the rest of the army play much more aggressively around it.
And most of that aggression comes on squigs. Mozrog Skragbad rides with one Squighog unit. Two Beastbosses on Squigosaur each lead a six-model Squighog unit, with one carrying Kunnin’ but Brutal. That’s three separate hammers coming from different directions, all fast enough that simply screening one doesn’t solve the problem.
Wazdakka Gutsmek and a Big Mek Dakkarig give him some shooting to work with, while three Gretchin units and a Lootas unit sit on objectives doing jobs nobody wants to waste premium attacks on.
How War Horde Wins the Movement Phase
Rounds 1 through 6, Murphy maxed his score every single time. Then Phillips stopped the run in Round 7, 81-49, as the matchup hit the exact strategic problem you’d expect. An army built to be everywhere at once has a much harder time finding useful places to go when huge Terminator units can sit where they need to be and refuse to move.
Murphy bounced right back, hammering T’au 100-45 in Round 8 and Votann 100-69 in Round 9. By then, though, the top bracket had already sent the final somewhere else.
Final Thoughts on the NOVA Open 2026 Army Lists & the Warhammer 40k Meta
One NOVA weekend isn’t enough to crown a new king of the 40k meta, but there are a few builds here that people are going to notice. Phillips’ sixteen-Allarus Custodes shell made it through eight straight games before the final; Daugherty showed that World Eaters can bring real ranged pressure without giving up the melee plan; and Murphy’s Orks put up six perfect rounds before Custodes finally stopped them.
Whether those builds survive the next points pass is anybody’s guess, and we’ll keep tracking where they land in the best and worst armies meta tiers roundups.
🔗 Related Reads:
- How to Play World Eaters
- How to Play Adeptus Custodes
- Top Warhammer 40k Tier 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 NOVA Open 2026 army lists, and would you rather have the army that beat everybody or the one that won the last game?
