Warhammer 40K GT Recap: Level Up Games GT October 2025

This past weekend I had the chance to head down to Level Up Games in Pensacola, FL for a 2 day Grand Tournament. My team, Scions of War, took down 5 players to the event including myself. I decided to take out the Blood Angels for a spin. The event is only a couple of hours drive for me so Friday evening I packed up and drove down. Now, this recap will be a bit abbreviated as I unfortunately had to leave the event right before round 4 on Sunday due to a family emergency (which turned out to be ok in the end thankfully.) So let’s get into my day 1 recap.

My List: Blood Angels Liberator Assault Group

I had been on the fence on whether to take Angelic Inheritors or Liberator Assault Group to this event and mulled on this for a week or two before finally settling on the Liberator Detachment. I tried several practice games leading up to the event with my Inheritors build, and while it was very good and I certainly see the benefits of running the army, I felt Liberator just fits my playstyle more. I tend to favor fast, maneuverable armies in general and prefer the more hard hitting combat power of Liberator over Inheritors which favors a more shooting based build supported by Sanguinary Guard for combat. I am in no way suggesting that Liberator is better than Angelic Inheritors, simply that for me, Liberator seemed like the better choice. Let’s look at the list.

I have run Blood Angels at events for most of 10th edition and have had a lot of success with them. I have won RTTs with them and even Best Overall at Warzone Atlanta this year running them. They are my “main” faction I play competitively even though I dabble in others such as Aeldari and Thousand Sons etc. So I have played just about every version of Blood Angels that exists since the codex was released. You probably noticed an absence of characters like Dante, Lemartes, Mephiston and Sanguinor. While I feel they are strong, with recent changes to the points from the Balance Dataslate, and some rules changes to the way Death Company interact with Blood Angels characters and being less dependent on Chaplains, I have dropped the named characters in favor of cheaper buffing characters to allow me to bring more units. This is an effort to take advantage of some of the army’s points efficiencies in relation to unit cost.

For example, a unit of Death Company Marines with Jump Packs with the Death Company Captain attached is 195 points and in Liberator especially are really able to punch way above their points level, making “trading up” much easier. This is a unit that can reliably bring down a 200-350 point unit fairly reliably and that gives them excellent trade value.

With the latest update to the Sanguinary Guard datasheet, giving them WS 2+ on their attacks, I find taking Dante less necessary (he gives the unit he leads +1 to hit). So for 20 points less I can take a Jump Captain that gives them +1 strength, a reduced strat use and once per battle can get Fights First making them a threat to other combat armies who want to be aggressive early.

The Sternguard and Sanguinary Priest along with the BA Captain with Rage-fueled Warrior are surprisingly effective at taking down big threats. Prior to the latest update, the Sanguinary Priest was far too expensive to consider taking for a leader who has somewhat limited options for units he can attach to. Dropping him down to 75 Points makes him worthy of consideration now in a unit like Sternguard with the Rage Captain as now they have quite a bit more survivability with the 5+ Feel No Pain rule and the extra AP on their combat attacks. This combination served me quite well in the event. Generally the Rage-fueled Captain would go with Assault Intercessors to get the wound re-rolls on objectives and while I find that quite good to help the Captain pump out mortals, I did not want to be limited on having to play the objectives. The Sternguard having the ability to re-roll wound rolls against the Oath of Moment target helps them attack points of the board where the Captain can have a more broad impact on targets when he pops off the enhancement/datasheet combo for Devastating Wounds and Sustained Hits 3 from the Enhancement.

Round 1: Tyranids Invasion Fleet

In round 1 I played against a Tyranids player named Caleb. He informed me that it was his first GT event, but that he had been playing for a while and had played several other smaller RTTs. The mission was Take and Hold on Tipping Point. He had a unit of Von Ryan’s Leapers he deployed aggressively on my natural expansion objective early which proved to be more of a pain to deal with than I would have liked. He only had a single Exocrine in his list (thankfully for me as they rip Space Marines apart) which he deployed on the far upper flank so he could move and get a shooting lane all the way down the mid-board (we played on layout 2). As the game progressed Caleb mistakenly left a spot for me to rapid ingress a Death Company squad behind a wall near the Exocrine which allowed me to charge it the following turn and destroy. This freed up most of my units to attack the mid-board and take control. In the end it was a big win for me. Caleb was a pleasant opponent and was incredibly sporting throughout the game even after timing out on the clock.

Result: Victory 84-47

Round 2: T’au Empire Retaliation Cadre

In round 2 I faced off against a guy named Phil and his T’au army. It featured 3 Riptides, 3 Crisis suit squads with Commanders, Pathfinders, Stealth Suits, Kroot Carnivores and Farsight. This was going to be a tough game for me for sure. The mission was Terraform with Crucible of Battle deployment and Layout 1. This game was a slugfest. We both terraformed our natural expansion objectives early me with my Scout Squad and he with his Pathfinders. This game was back and forth with incredible moments of frustration for both of us. On Turn 3 I charged a squad of Sanguinary Guard with the Jump Captain and my foot Captain (who had already popped Rage-fueled warrior) into a Riptide near the center objective. Between the sheer volume of attacks I felt certain I’d bring it down. The Sanguinary Guard dropped him to 2 wounds, then my foot Captain swung and landed 6 wounds to which Phil proceeded to make 6 4+ saves and the Riptide lived. In another example, on turn 5 Phil drew Marked for Death and shot into a lone Death Company Captain which was one of the Marked for Death targets, doing 6 wounds after my saving throws only for me to roll two 6s on Feel No Pains to keep him alive on a wound and deny 5 points for Marked for Death. This is just how this game went for us both back and forth.

In hindsight there was a huge mistake I made early in the game. On Turn 2 I drew Marked for Death and chose a squad of Pathfinders Phil had on his natural expansion as my gamma target (to get 2 VP to destroy). I moved up a squad of Intercessors and decided to shoot the Kroot Carnivores behind the Pathfinders and charge the Pathfinders with the Intercessors after. The charge was successful, but I did not kill the Pathfinders leaving them at 2 models in the squad. I should have simply focus fired that squad down instead of trying to do too much with one unit. This was a blunder that would cost me the game in the end. Why? Check the final result.

Result: Loss 57-56 (if I kill the gamma target in Turn 2 I win 58-57…costly mistake)

Round 3: Dark Angels Wrath of the Rock

So, going into round 3 I am 1-1 and still trying to recover mentally from a close but disappointing loss to T’au. I was kicking myself post-game in round 2 because I felt that was a game I could have and should have won had I not gotten greedy with those Intercessors. This is why decision points can be crucial in competitive 40K even minor ones that seem not so impactful early can end up costing you a game.

Needless to say coming into round 3 I tried to put it behind me and focus on having an enjoyable game in the last round of the day. Fortunately I was paired into a young man named Grayton and his Dark Angels army. Grayton was only 16 and I would find out after the game, was part of the local High School’s Warhammer Club and the TO was one of the teachers there at the school and ran the club. I think this is an amazing program Games Workshop runs for educators.

This mission was Linchpin on Search and Destroy. Grayton’s list wasn’t exactly optimized as he did not have any Deathwing Knights and had instead opted to use Deathwing Terminators with a Terminator Captain with the turn 1 Deep Strike enhancement. I deployed defensively to zone out the unit from having a significant impact in turn 1. Grayton was full of energy and excitement to play and learn and through the game I tried to take the opportunity to teach him some of the more nuanced mechanics to which he was very receptive. He was an absolutely fantastic opponent and my favorite of the day. We both bantered a lot and just chatted about the game, but this ended up costing us valuable time and we clocked out in turn 4, but the game was very much already decided by that point anyway.

Result: Victory 56-31

Day 2: Having to Drop from the Event

After hanging with the guys Saturday night and enjoying dinner we headed back to the hotel and got ready for day 2. The next morning we head back over to the store and get ready to check in for round 4. I get a text about 15 minutes before the round is scheduled to start. My daughter had fallen down the stairs and had potentially hurt her back! We weren’t sure how severe it might be so I informed the TO and apologized but packed my stuff and raced home. Ultimately it turned out she was fine and just suffered some bruising with no fractures. While I would have loved to stay and finish out the event that is sometimes the life of a father. I was more concerned with her health as any father would be of course. Fortunately all was well in the end.

Final Thoughts

While I only got to play in the first day, I will say the store there in Pensacola was wonderful. Huge shoutout to Level Up Games for being wonderful hosts. It is a huge store with tons of tables and a great selection of various different games and hobby supplies. If you’re ever in the area, stop by and check them out! Also shout out to the TO Gary Moore for running a fantastic event. There was tons of prize support and even a bounty system where you could gain bounty points for accomplishing certain things in your games. The player in the end who got the most bounty points would win a painted Be’lakor model to which my teammate Troy Clayton won and came home the event bounty hunter. I very much enjoyed the event and the community there and look forward to attending more events there in the future.

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See you on the tabletop.