TLDR: I dunecrawlers and histarii were the mvps of my GT list and I ended the event 3/3. Run what you find to be fun
As stated in the title, this past weekend I went to the Rocky Mountain open with 3 dunecrawlers and the new Histarii Exterminator unit. To start off I did fairly well, not stellar, but I came 3rd in our glorious faction going 3/3. The list I took consisted of the following:
1 cawl
1 marshal with the cantic thrallnet enhancement
1 marshal
1 sydonian skatros with clandestine infiltrator
4 rangers
2 vanguard
1 Dunerider
1 histarii exterminators
1 squad of 2 las ironstriders
1 nuetron dunecrawler
1 eradication Beamer dunecrawler
1 Icarus array dunecrawler
1 5 man skystalkers
1 ferrumite disintegrator
General strategy: stay in protector the whole time. My histarii led my the basic marshal in the boat in reserves aswell as the skystalkers. Skatt man to lone op get early points, followed up by infantry and dunecrawlers to hold objectives as long as allowed, overwhelming one objective to guarantee control, taking control of a second from my opponent whenever possible with single waves of skitarii bodies, and dismantling the 3 objective from afar or if an opening presented itself, taking the opponents home with the skystalkers. Histarii would be there in the boat to shore up whatever flank needed their help the most.
Conclusions based on the event: the histarii and dunecrawlers did exactly what I set out to do with them. In every game the dunecrawlers held firm and gave my opponents a beast of a tank to shift that many just couldn’t manage to do so. The infantry tended to do their job at harassing what was usually the center objective, and skystalkers did what they do best every time, either move blocked or took the home of my opponent, and gave me valuable secondaries. The skatt man did not preform as intended and often died horribly round 1 or 2. The 2 games where this strategy didn’t work at all was against world eaters where I was charged turn 1 and never recovered, and chaos knights where again, I was charged turn 1, and the 5 big knights systematically killed every threat to them while also killing ever infantry blob as quickly as possible. Every other game was a close nail biter that could have gone either way and I had a blast. The best stratagems for this list where definitely the return to Strat reserve, 18” lone op, and the add 1 ap to 2 units if they target the same unit. Cawl is very important to make this all work.
Point of the post: some of the less optimized units in our army can be successful and fun to run. While this list isn’t going to win a GT any time soon, it’s not the goal of the list. The goal was for me to run a lot of my favorite units and it did that job with as much success as I had hoped it would