Author’s note: Oh man, I wrote this back in December and I’m only just getting it out to you now… so it’s a bit out of date, the meta has shifted and so have I, for the better. This tournament was a bit of a bummer for me and that’s one of the reasons it took me so long to get this out and I even thought about skipping it. You’ll see it touched on in the article but it was all on me really. A bit of reflection has helped thinking about how I want to play and the type of opponent I want to be. I figure sharing this is still good though as we should address not just the good times but also sometimes the bad (that sounds overly dramatic but here goes nothing).

Finally, I’m back again! My avid fan will be happy (cheers to you Dirk)! Crap, I just realised this is my first one since start of 4^th… well I haven’t been getting as many games in as I thought (life ya know) but I have been enjoying 4^th with KO in general although I’m still finding myself adjusting to their playstyle.

I was touch and go whether I’d make it in the end after getting sick the weekend before… come Wednesday I thought I was feeling well enough and I didn’t want to miss out on my first big event ever! I could tell it was going to be a bit of a tough slog though with all the travel and battling through 6 games in 3 days. Luckily for you, dear reader, I pulled myself together got my things packed up and headed on down to Hof which turns out was way further from where I live than I’d realised.

This was only my second GT (I’ve racked up quite a few one-dayers but it’s hard for me to get a weekend free)… and I wanted to set myself a realistic aim of winning 2 games out of 6 😊 in my heart of hearts though I really wanted 3 and 3 or 4 and 2… I’m playing an off meta mixed arms KO list which I’m not doing too badly with in general but it’s been a bit of a shock to the system after really good success with my crazy Nighthaunt list at the end of 3^rd.

What it was

Raccoon Rumble is “the big one” here in Germany and the roster was full of the big AoS names from all across Germany and quite a few visitors from nearby countries and some from afar. The room was split 50/50 AoS and 40k. I didn’t check out much of the 40k action but from the few chats I had with some of the players, I heard things went well over there too. There were 192 players for 6 games over 2 days 9-11 November 2025.

Webpage here: https://raccoonrumble.de/

Top three lists here: https://woehammer.com/2024/11/26/top-three-aos-lists-for-raccoon-rumble-2024/

The good

The tables looked fantastic with some really meaty pieces of scenery on the tables. The forests were done with Perspex bases and that really helped to make it clear when you were on the terrain or not. Some of the terrain was a bit too big for the small terrain pieces. After realising that this could have a big effect during my second game, I talked it through with my opponents and we placed them to make sure they weren’t stopping big bases from passing on the sides of the table. I don’t think this actually made any difference to any of my games though and I was happy to be playing on nice looking tables!

The organisation of the event seemed from an outsider’s perspective really solid. Things were almost all of the time really clear and they were very communicative in advance of the tournament too. The people who had to help me out from time to time were really nice and patient too. Hats off to the people running around in the giant Racoon costume, it must have been hot in there!

I was generally happy with the judging… it was always quick to get a call or a clarification, I reckon they did a really good job in a tough environment!

Even though it was a German event, all of my opponents agreed to play in English until the last when I tried to play in German again (my choice). I really noticed the impact of that especially after 5 other games. So thanks to all my opponents again for playing in English, that made a big difference for me! Oh yeah, that hardly makes sense without context, I’m not a native German speaker, I think I wanted to point this out for all you fellas out there playing AoS even if English isn’t your first language, kudos mates! Edit: reading this last sentence back makes me understand why people tease me saying I’m not a native speaker either.

The bad (nah, I’m just calling it that because I couldn’t think of better titles)

Could have done with some more reminders about time during play, my army often needs a good 1:30 to play through to turn 5 and I know it’s a tricky list to play against. Even though the clock was up most of the time I happened to have my back to it 5 out of 6 games which was trickier for me to keep track. What I did was set a timer on my phone for some of the games… that also gave me a good indication that I was still playing quickly enough. In hindsight, I wished I’d just used my chess clock. I know KO can be a bit of a feel bad to play against from a time perspective because of the long move, shoot, fight first chain which tends to happen so I’m also conscious of making sure I am moving the game along quickly enough. Little update: This is part of what made the tournament hard for me, there’s a lot if thinking to be done with KO, and now a lot of pre-measuring and moving too, coupled with time pressure, that’s a big old drain on the old brain.

The ugly

Oh wait, I have to criticise something… the food sucked! It’s not a cheap tournament to head to and I honestly expected better from the food. I’ve got some dietary restrictions which does makes it harder but I wasn’t hearing anything much nice said about the other food either. Luckily for me, on the day when the food did have something I’m allergic to in it, the server double checked after the manager said there wasn’t any in there and I avoided what could have been a really unpleasant afternoon! Honestly, fuck you whoever that manager dude was. It wasn’t the fault of the organisers but I hope they make some changes there (one of the organisers was there and helped out from a moral support perspective but wasn’t much she could do either at the time).

My List – a boring heading for a boringly named list

KO Double Trouble 1990/2000 pts

Kharadron Overlords | Aether-runners
Drops: 2

General’s Regiment
Aetheric Navigator (130)
• General
• Endrinmaestro
• Voidstone Orb
Arkanaut Company (200)
• Reinforced
• 2x Light Skyhook
• 2x Aethermatic Volley Gun
• 2x Skypike
Arkanaut Company (100)
• 1x Light Skyhook
• 1x Aethermatic Volley Gun
• 1x Skypike
Arkanaut Frigate (320)
• 1x Heavy Sky Cannon
Grundstok Thunderers (280)
• Reinforced
• 4x Grundstok Mortar or Aethercannon
• 4x Aetheric Fumigator or Decksweeper

Regiment 1
Drekki Flynt (160)
Arkanaut Frigate (320)
• 1x Heavy Sky Cannon
Endrinriggers (240)
• Reinforced
Endrinriggers (240)
• Reinforced

Games Recap

This may well be the bit you were actually here for… I don’t know, this is my first tournament report so if you’d like more of one bit or another, let me know!

1^st up, Mirko with Beasts of Chaos

Oh, how I wish I could play this one again. I could see that Mirko was a strong player, BoC is a rough matchup for my list, and I haven’t played BoC since 1^st edition. Ok, look I’m just trying to make my loss look better with all those excuses. He was rocking a unit of Centigors, Shamans, 2 x full Bestigors and Phulgoth’s. I went in with two options. Take 1^st and go hard and try to fight in the middle of the battlefield or give up 1^st and stay back using my counter charge as a deterrent. I went for the exciting option straight up the middle and unleashed practically every gun I had… and the game was decided before we even got to the 2^nd turn after an absolutely miserable round of shooting into Phulgoth’s Shudderhood and some other targets. I had a good chat with the PATAP discord about this matchup in the week before but in the end, I’m a sucker for taking a big chance when I think the other option might be a slow death.

So yeah, start of the tournament was a 20:0 on the matrix. Nowhere to go but up from there!

2^nd game, the nicest cheeriest Pawel I’ve ever met with Flesh Eaters

Good solid game for my KO, was a good scenario and I could use my strengths to take out quite a lot of his troops, this is a bad matchup for FEC. I started with my two frigates split apart to whittle his forces down and then brought them together in the middle to try and push my scoring up a bit earlier and that helped me in this game.

Pawel wins my award for Best Opponent. We had a great game, I got a bit chatty which didn’t help us to finish on time but even when things weren’t going his way, he always had a charming smile on and I hope he had a good game too!

14:6 for KO

Game 3: Florian with Stormcast

I was dreading this game… the Vice is really tough for my list and going into Stormcast, I wasn’t sure if I could do enough damage to the army. He was rocking an Annihalators heavy list with Ionus, Bastian, and Stormdrakes.

The one game where I actually did what I should be doing with my army… could split his forces and take them out bit by bit, got some silly good luck on the shooting too. Played one Frigate with the 20 Arkanauts and Thunderers on one flank and the other with my Riggers on the other side. Of course, I accidentally killed the dragons in shooting when I was meant to be charging for Do Not Waver because I misunderstood how many wounds they had left.

This dude was super nice and he had a supporter with him who was also super nice. I hope they both had a really nice weekend. This was the best painted army that I played against and he even had a sweet as display board to go with it!

16:4 this time for me

Game 4: Markus with Tzeentch

Could have easily gone my way if we could’ve played through 5 rounds but that’s one of the downsides to what I’m playing. It’s not a quick army although I know I can knock out my 5 rounds in under 1:30… but because it is hard to see where my army is going and a lot of different shooting attacks, there is a lot of back and forth for the opponent’s saves as well. I did manage to take Kairos down pretty quickly… the Tzaangors were slowly grinding towards me though. This was my first taste of Tzeentch annoyingly teleporting about in my turn… and I didn’t like it. I was feeling pretty tired at game 4 on the 2^nd day.

9:11 for Markus

Game 5: Michael with Tzeentch

Again! After a drop caused a re-pairing, I’d just met my friendly Seraphon opponent and was looking forward to that game.

Michael was really tired but played a solid game, even if I managed to put him on the back foot, he kept in the scoring game and knew how to stop me from scoring too. With double chicken and all those -1s to hit.

This was the one game where I really screwed myself over… did a classic redeploy to take my Thunderers out of threat but I didn’t take them as far away as I could which left open the charge from the Tzaangors into my Arkanauts and then let them pile straight in and wipe the Thunderers off the board. If I had had the Thunderers, the game would have looked very different from there onwards. Fought a good fight and just couldn’t crack through all the -1 to hits and I found tactics really tough with the constant potential teleporting in either turn. I did the right thing I think after that and kept playing a cat and mouse game on one side with Kairos whilst threatening his castle with the Riggers and Frigate but when I did go in, it wasn’t enough and Markus took the win here with a series of teleports.

8:12 for Tzeentch but the moral loss was all mine for the lazy redploy

Game 6: Tobi with Blades of Khorne

Oh come on lady luck… paired into my teammate, Tobi, for the last round with Blades of Khorne. I was absolutely zonked at this point and I couldn’t grasp the impacts of the redploy and blood tithe move. He was running two big blocks of letters, hounds for tactics, a priest on the altar and a “Blood”thirster. Although I decimated his army early on, he kept up the scoring turn and turn again. The Bloodthirster was more like a Pointhirster and boy did he do that well! We ended up on a bang on draw which I wasn’t expecting but even in the last turn (after realising that the terrain he’d been setting up to take was half in his territory) he managed to eke out as many points as possible. Tobi is a good player and he’s got a good eye for the board state and really knew what he could do with his list.

10:10 and 10/10 for Tobi being a great fella

How did things go for me?

Shit, this article is getting really long. Thanks for sticking it all the way through to here! I’d say something about wrapping it up quickly but I’ve still got a few words to throw out to finish this one off.

6 games was tough for me mentally… impacted by the army I chose and those I had to play up against. Honestly, it felt too tough and it left me feeling so drained by the end of it and this impacted how happy I was with the tournament overall.

I didn’t come out of this tournament happy with how I played. At times I felt salty and was becoming a bit of a grump. My sincerest apologies to all my opponents for not being the best opponent I could be which is a really important aspect of my game for me. For myself, I set the bar really highly in this regard and perhaps I should just relax and throw dice a little more. Luckily, I was propped up by a bunch of friendly faces there who I know from past events and I did meet some really nice new people too.

Looking forwards…

I’m now at a bit of a point where I was really bummed out about how it felt and I might have bought some Mancrushers (I always wanted to take a crack at converting some) and am at the same time really thinking about getting my Nighthaunt back out for the next GT I’m planning to head to in January. I did listen to an episode of PATAP the other day where they had a really good discussion about losing and how to deal with it and I’m ready to get out there and lose better again now. It’s taken a couple of weeks of reflection (and Necromunda) to really feel ready to throw dice for AoS again but I’ve got the bug and I’m finally excited for a couple of games before Christmas. I guess that’s why I’ve finally gotten around to finishing off this article too.

Edit: since it took me so long to get this out, I’ve gotten back into things by switching back over to Nighthaunt for a bit which I’m enjoying a lot more… so I’ll be back soon with a quick update of what playing NH after two nerfs is like (it’s in a much better place than before)

We’ll just have to see how it goes from here! I hope you’re doing all well in the new edition and I wish you all the best of luck in your games (unless you’re playing against me… then roll some more 1s please)!