Euro Trash Cup 2024

This weekend I hit a massive 40k milestone for this year: Represent Team Ireland in an international event. Myself and 7 others made the trip over to Amersfoort in The Netherlands to attend the Euro Trash Cup. One of several warm up events leading up to the WTC. This was an amazing experience and my first time in an 8 man team at this level. Including a last minute army switch onto the undying legion of the Necrons. If you want to understand more about the Teams format and particularly how the scoring works, I explain it here. Again final aggregate scores will be reported as Ireland - Opponent.

As it happens - You can fit 18 wraiths in a citadel battle box for hand luggage

This event had some big teams in attendance, Germany, Poland, and a super team made up of some of the biggest names in 40k being the favourites to win. So Naturally we drew Germany round 1…

Before I get into the nitty gritty - lets talk about the list, and all its Canoptek Glory.

Due to a last minute drop for work, our team was suddenly lacking a Necron player 3 days before list submission. Now, whilst I have been having a good run with the Votann in the run up and my practice games, I was not completely convinced on their viability in a teams environment - especially when paired with the fact that it would prevent us from taking a Necrons list. So it was that with a few days notice I was asked to pick up the Necrons codex and come up with something to learn and take.

Given the short notice of this I chose to lean on what was currently performing well in the UK meta recently, and took inspiration from Josh Roberts who has recently taken down several Majors with the canoptek court. I removed Szeras in favour of the nightbringer as I felt this made the list both easier to play (less reliant on positioning to get the buffs) and also - much better into the mirror where AP doesnt matter as much and the ability to easily precision out a technomancer can completely neuter the wraiths tankiness. My list thus was:

3 x Technomancer (One has the infiltrate enahncement)
3 x Plasmancer
1 x Nightbringer
2 x 5, 1 x 10 Immortals
2 x 3 Scarab Swarms
2 x Canoptek Doomstalkers
3 x 6 Canoptek Wraiths
1 x 3 Canoptek Acanthrites

This low datasheet count really helped me in quickly learning the army and playstyle, in short its: Wraiths + C’tan go forward, doomstalkers control firing lines, and Immortals are my reactive play. So with that covered, lets go into the games:

Round 1: Germany - Aeldari

Our first round pairing was into team Germany, probably the 2nd best 40k team in the world, and one of the favourites to win the entire event. We had a strong pairing round resulting in me pairing into Leif and his Eldar. My matrix had this as a big win, and certainly is favoured for the Necrons, being able to throw so much pressure and OC that the Elves struggle to shift. This game went about as expected, with my immortals being able to chew through the Avatar thanks to the sheer number of shots and mortals from the plasmancers, the Nightbringer was able to counter the wraithblades thanks to soloing out the character and a lucky roll on the end of phase mortals clearing the unit to the wound. I made a large mistake turn 1 and over extended my wraiths meaning he was able to clear a block and get the wraithblades active a turn early, which lead me to be too passive with another unit of them. Allowing him to claw the score back from a big 20-0. But still a strong result for game 1.

Necrons win 14-6.

Germany however took the round. 54 - 106

Round 2: Luxembourg - Thousand Sons

Following the loss to Germany we regrouped over lunch and prepared for the next round, this time we took on Luxembourg who had also had a hard round 1 into the Super Team. In this match my lack of experience with Necrons showed through, as we completely missed the matrix for the Thousand Sons, having it as fairly heavily Necron favoured, and failing to consider the importance of first turn for the mission (the ritual) in allowing me to create my power matrix to utilise my army rule.

In reality the amount of damage that faction can put out is insane, I made a mistake round 1 and fell for a bait unit and by underestimating how much he could do to me, I lost essentially 2 wraith units turn 1. This enabled him to run over me in a few short turns. However special shout out must go to the Scarab unit that used their fight phase ability to finish Magnus off and allow me to get some scoring on the board.

Thousand Sons Win 19 - 1

With Luxembourg also taking the round: 63 - 97

Round 3: Norway - Astra Militarum

The final game of day 1 was the Norwegians, a lovely group of lads with a history into Ireland, in the previous 3 meetings neither team was able to clear an advantage over the other with 3 draws being the record. I was paired into Kjetil and his Guard list, an indirect list with only 9 Bullgryn, I was initially confident in this match up as again, guard can struggle to deal with the early pressure that the Necrons create. However despite taking an early lead, the Mission Supply drop caused me some issues as thanks to double orders on the Kasrkin and the reinforcement strats Kjetil was able to engineer a huge points swing in the last round, denying me 15 points and scoring himself 15 for the final objective - A 30 point swing! This really skewed the score out of my advantage.

Game draw 10 - 10.

Also yet again, a 4th draw for the teams: 84 - 76

Round 4: Belgium - Necrons

Overall day 1 had some ups and downs, however when day 2 dawned we had paired into Belgium, another strong line up. This round I was paired into another 18 wraith Court list, funnily enough Yan had also been moved onto necrons last minute in order to get the faction represented. This was a tremendously “fun” game of wraiths failing to kill eachother for 5 rounds straight. The plasmancer / immortal combo allowed me to stabalise and shut down his Nightbringer/C’tan push to match his early game board position thanks to him going first. Despite the hilariously bad Wraiths into Wraiths maths, this game was a lot of fun all 5 rounds.

Round Draw 10-10
However, Belgium were able to take the round: 62 - 98

Round 5: Iceland - Necrons

Final round saw us pair into Iceland, I had played a few of their players in singles events and so knew that they were not to be taken lightly. This time I was again paired into Necrons, and John was running Josh’s list exactly. We set up for Take and hold with John taking Fixed and myself taking tactical I knew that first turn would be so important as it would enable you to lock down objectives with wraiths, and so my stomach dropped when I rolled a 1 for first turn. However, thanks to some truly below average rolling I was able to surprisingly kill 11 wraiths turn 1, allowing me to take a dominant board position and start to push the differential. Unfortunately my good luck did not hold and the remaining wraiths were able to hang on long enough to grind that score up to get the points back.

Ireland Necrons take the game: 14-6

However Iceland were able to take the round: 70 - 90

Closing Thoughts

Overall the team went 0 - 1 - 4, which whilst dissapointing it was a fantastic event to introduce myself to the international scene and 8 man format. It was a completely different experience to any other event I have been to and I cannot wait for the next one, which will be Home Nations Cup in April. The Necrons list performed well, and I have already started having a tinker with how I will change the list to better suit the role that the team need it to perform. I will however be taking the same list to the Manchester GT this weekend and so will report back next week on how that goes!