Best Armies of European Championship 2020

“Dust” has settled after EU Champs 2020. Victors bask in glory, while defeated generals work on new army lists. Which forces came out strongest at biggest 2020 event? What combos were most efficient? We invite you to take a look at a bit of statistic and witness best players army lists!

The final player count showed 56 participants. As you can see on the diagram below the most popular forces are still SSU and Axis. The growing interest in Mythos and IJN looks very promising. Thanks to big reinforcements in last 12 months these armies get better and better results lately. Was that enough to claim the champion title?

This is how detailed faction split looked like. It’s sad to see so little dedicated People’s Liberation Army generals – twin heroes showed multiple times that their faction can wage war like any other. Probably the new releases planned for the end of 2020 will increase the popularity of this force. Dedicated Steel Guard squads and new PT-47’s will present itself as a tasty catch for new SSU commanders. Due to lower amount of international players coming in this year we saw a great decrease in NDAK and Blutkreuz armies count. The situation of the latest will greatly increase by the end of year – when a new BK Army Box will premiere. Despite low amount of Allied players more and more commanders decides to lead the tactically demanding Desert Scorpion faction.

It’s time to look at the detailed army lists. Third place was won by debuting player – Martinus – who decided to lead IJN force. He managed to win 4 out of 5 games. It’s worth noting that he fought against the best players in the tableau (Strength Of Schedule at 54 points total) proving to many Dust vets that they need to watch their backs against young wolves ready to challenge them.

Let’s go to the list itself – we can see that the main point is “Kamikaze” platoon. Which can be swapped before battle for the classic “Shadow Of Death” platoon. Which he decided to do in the last battle – and regretted it as in the end he finds “Kamikaze” more useful. The list itself is quite classic Japanese army. What’s interesting instead of using dedicated, block command squad he decided to pay some mercenaries to do the job. Points saved there allowed for some more investments in a different field – anti tank walkers. A little tip here – Martinus  is part of greatly growing Bydgoszcz gaming craw, that has lots of Mythos players in it. Having that fact in mind he decided to go for TWO Tengu’s instead of classic diversification. This might seem odd- until you realize that typical Mythos list on EU Champs included two of powerful avatars of Cthulhu.

Below you can find the full army list. Each name schould lead you to unit page in our store – where you can see some detailed pictures and unit cards. 132 / 120 (+12 Faction Bonus)
| Kamikaze Walker Platoon |
Command: Tengu Combat (1): Enenra
Combat (2): Tengu
——————————————–
Hitomi (x1)
The Traitor (x1)
Shadow Of Death (x1)
Fumiko (x1)
Ninja Infiltration Squad (x4)
Kill Squad (x2)
Mercenary Command Squad (x1)

At the second place you can see Balint- who commanded a Spetsnaz force. He is an expirienced commander who showed his tournament skill many times. And that he can reach for the highest prizes at tournaments and other events. This time he lead a force based on a very large command squad and overwhelming amount of activations. To this interesting mix he added a classical support of some mercenary heroes.

An interesting mix of 4 light vehicles can also be seen here. 2 PT-47’s (one troop transport/support and one command vehicle) plus 2 Red Rain’s provided crucial support for waves of Russian soldiers. From all top 3 armies this one is the most “classic” looking at last few years of Dust 1947 meta. It has a strong artillery/smoke support, high reactivation chance and a lot of activation based on universal infantry forces.

An unexpected part is the 2 officers play. It gets even more interesting when we realize how much spies and Luftwaffe armies are out there – hunting for high valuable targets. Looking at the 2 commanders – this way when one of the is eliminated our army is not crippled. Even after we are back stabbed (falschrim-stabbed?) there is still the second general to command the army and provide officer actions.

Spetsnaz 132 / 120 (+12 Faction Bonus)
| Spetsnaz Taskforce Platoon |
Command: Vasiliy
Combat (1): Spetsnaz Saboteur Squad
Combat (2): Spetsnaz Kill Squad
Combat (3): Aleksei (TSH)
Combat (4): Spetsnaz Kill Squad
Support: Natasha (TSH)
Support (1): Spetsnaz Anti-Tank Squad
Support (2): Spetsnaz Anti-Tank Squad
Support (3): Spetsnaz Anti-Tank Squad
Support (4): PT-47A (Spetsnaz)
Support (5): PT-47B (Spetsnaz)
Support (6): Iron Joe
Support (7): Red Yana (Spetsnaz)
Support (8): Spetsnaz Observer Squad
Support (9): Spetsnaz Observer Squad
Support (10): Red Rain (Spetsnaz)
Support (11): Red Rain (Spetsnaz)
——————————————–
Nathalia (x1)
Emma (x1)
Gregor the defector (x1)

It’s time to look at the winners army! MichaZu is one of the most experienced Japanese Empire commanders. He led the IJN force right from it’s beginning. And as you can see this experience and tons of games did pay for themselves. He managed to surprise his opponents, outplay the veterans and take the trophy of European Champion for himself.

His army is based on the classic IJN army building. A very strong starter set platoon – Shadow of Death Ninja Platoon allows for easy objective captures, forcing enemy to use more aggressive strategies. You can see a bit less AT focus than in the previous IJN army list – one Tengu and a railgun team. But there is an interesting twist here – the VK stash! As we all know – powerful AT weapons (well apart from lasers) have a low dice count. So those re-rolls provided by fresh delivery of VK can be invaluable! And surely help when this army faces a heavy armored target.

An important part of this army is its variety! Apart from IJN units we can see a wide range of mercenary forces and some “double agents” that the Japaneese Navy placed in major blocks. “Kaori” is a known Luftwaffe veteran and “Traitor” is no other than famous allied “Priest”. This untypical mix led by a experienced general became a challenge no-one menaged to defeat and gave MichaZu the ultimate win. Below you can find his full army list:

IJN 131 / 120 (+11 Faction Bonus)
| Shadow of Death Ninja Platoon |
Command: Shadow Of Death Combat
(1): Ninja Infiltration Squad Combat
(2): Tengu
Support: Ninja Infiltration Squad
Support (1): Ninja Infiltration Squad
Support (2): Ninja Infiltration Squad
——————————————–
Hitomi (x1)
Yukiko (x1)
The Traitor (x1)
Kaori (x1)
Emma (x1)
Gregor the defector (x1)
Nathalia (x1)
Tito (x1)
Kill Squad (x1)
Railgun Team (x1)
Command Squad (x1)
VK Stash (x1)
Enenra (x1)