Home Nations 2024

As I mentioned last week, myself and my brother travelled to Dublin for the 2024 Home nations tournament, where we joined Ireland and 7 other countries for 5 rounds of 8 man teams 40k.

As I have touched on before, this format is my favourite way to play Warhammer by far. This year was Irelands turn to host, and the visiting nations were:
England
Northern Ireland
Wales
Scotland
Belgium

The Netherlands
Barbarians (a mix of players)

By no means a stiff field, and with England and Belgium coming off of strong performances at the Alpine Cup last week everyone was expecting a tough weekend and plenty of stiff competition.

The List

This list is the latest update to the 18 Wraith archetype, with additional doom stalkers.

The list:
Imotek the stormlord
The Void Dragon
The Nightbringer
3 x Technomancers
3 x 6 Wraiths
3 x Canoptek Doomstalkers
2 x 3 Scarabs

This list provides me with a few key elements; durable, melee board control with the Ctan and wraiths and significant firepower from the Doomstalkers. This list has very stable scoring in most matches and in certain cases can punch up very well. This was chosen to provide us a stable “draw plus” option in pairings.

The format for this tournament was slightly different, with the nations being split into 2 pods. Each pod would complete a round robin on day 1, and then the top 2 from each pod would play against the other 2 teams from the other pod. The initial pods were:

England, Belgium, Wales, and the Barbarians

Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and The Netherlands.

In order to guarantee a spot in the top pod you would need 2 Wins on day 1. So with the format explained, lets get into the games. As usual for teams, these scores will be reported in the WTC 20-0 format and IRE-OPP scores.

Game 1: The Netherlands

Round 1 I was paired into Chris and his grey knights, this was an interesting list 6 Dreadknights and Canis. This list has so much speed and output, especially when the librarians rolled a 6 for each of their abilities to deal with the C’tan very quickly. This was a fantastically fun match, however thanks to a good map choice from him I was unable to get enough score on Bring it down to keep the score as close as I had hoped.

Grey Knights Win: 8 - 12

However, thanks to other matches we were able to take the round with a final result 97-63

Game 2: Northern Ireland

Our sister team from the north were up next, and this was setting up to be a good match, both teams had won round 1 and so winning this round would lock you into the upper bracket for day 2. I ended up into Marty and his Black Templars, a horde list with plenty of sword brethren and crusaders this list definitely had the chops to be able to deal with my melee heavy army. What happened was a 3 hour slog fest with swings back and forth, until at the end of the game the result came in, 90-91 resulting in a near perfect 10-10. A fantastic game and a result I was super hapy with as it neutralised one of their strong lists for out comp.

Game Draw: 10-10

Overall we were able to take the round and thus guarantee our place in the upper pod for Sunday.

Ireland Win the match: 89-71

Game 3: Scotland

Our final game after an already long day was into the Scots, and I ended paired into Ryan and his Grey Knights, a slightly different list from round 1, still with dreadknights but a few terminator squads to provide some more solid mission play. This was also on the ritual, and Ryan got first turn, which heavily limited my chances to get my power matrix, however I was able to utilise the map to connect my damage and limit the scoring elements available.

Necrons win 12-8

We were able to get favourable pairings across the board and so took the round in fairly convincing fashion.

Ireland win: 92-68

With this we had gone undefeated for day one and very much looking forward into day 2 where we would take on England at 2-1 and an undefeated Belgium.

Game 4: England

So bright eyed, and bushy tailed I was overjoyed to then see the pairings process unravelled to result in me being paired into a certain Mr Cheema and his Thousand sons. This ‘bussing’ was chosen in order to enable us to get better matches across the board and my goal was to try and score if/what I could in my worse match on a very Tsons favoured map. This game was a lot of fun, especially after Mani had a bit of confusion having played Brendan the round before - questioning if I had swapped Armies (And Teams) overnight!

I learned a lot about the match up which prepares me for the future if I replay it.

Tsons Win 0-20

Unfortunately my sacrifice to protect other matches didnt pay off and we narrowly lost the round.

England win: 66-94

Game 5: Belgium

Following that unfortunate result we prepared for the final game, Belgium. This had a lot of excitement around this round, as if we took this round we would be able to cause a potential 3 - way split for the podium as no team would be undefeated. For this pairing my army was held to the end and ended up paired into a Canoptek Court Mirror. Typically this is 5 turns of 36 wraiths punching eachother, and on Purge the foe can be a fairly consistent draw. However, my opponent did not have as much familiarity with Necrons or even the mirror and so I was able to deploy in a way to capitalise and look for a push. This gamble paid off and I was able to bring a solid score back for the team.

Necrons (IRE) win 16-4

This result was just one of a few games that swung our way to take the round.

Ireland win 104-56

Closing thoughts

This was a fantastic event for us, and we had managed to force the 3 way tiebreaker as no team went undefeated.

Unfortunately as close as it was (only 2 battle points in it) we narrowly missed getting second, and so the final podium shook out as:

England (520 points)
Belgium (450 points)
Ireland (448 points)

None the less this was a fantastic result from the lads and we are super proud of what we were able to achieve, especially as we begin the run up to WTC. So be sure to tune into that.

Next week I am off to Oxford the UKTC Major taking the guard again, cant wait to try that out and letting you know how it goes!