All posts by Fitts

4th Edition, Age of Sigmar, Cities of Sigmar, Competitive, Daughters of Khaine, Fittsy, Flesh-Eater Courts, Games Workshop, Gloomspite Gitz, Helsmiths of Hashut, Ironjawz, Kharadron Overlords, Kruleboyz, Nighthaunt, Sons of Behemat, Tactics

Age of Sigmar September Battlescroll Updates

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There’d been a few rumours going round that this battlescroll would focus on top performers… this was partly true, plenty of changes there but points wise we’ve seen changes across the board with plenty for players to look at for how it impacts their lists!

Seen some touches to NH and BoK too which are appreciated but a little unexpected so shortly after the book.

We got a little bit of bonus news for us Helsmiths tragics:

Ooh, it looks like we wont have to wait long for the rest of the Helsmiths

Bit of an issue is that the pdf has gotten to the point where it loads really badly… that made this review harder to check for changes but I hope I’ve caught some of the interesting stuff in my read through! For sure, I will have missed some stuff too, please do let me know!

Looking back at the latest big stats update, we’ve got some armies that definitely need some tuning (I’m looking at you KO) and some others who really need some help to get back to a competitive level (poor little Ironjawz).

Battle Tactics

GW have taken the chance to update Scouting Force with no more scoring it off faction terrain (boo… literally as this impacts a nice easy option for Nighthaunt) but it has opened it up for units with deployment phase moves to be scouts as the wording has changed there slightly.

How hard were the big bads hit?

Kharadron Overlords

-1 to hit the infantry is now just with the big boats and not when they’ve charged taking out a bit of the tech of using the boats to lock opponents in combat. The Frigate also only gives Strike first to one unit. This combination will make things a bit riskier on those big charges and KO players will have to play a little more cautiously.

Celestium Burst Grenade got “corrected” to once per battle again. Fair really. It was too strong as it was.

One boatefact (great endrinwork) less which makes sense but it was fun to get to choose 3 every battle.

Points up fairly high for a couple of the key units… in the end though for most lists, it really just reduced them by one unit which feels about fair. Will this push the lists in a different direction? Unlikely but it’s definitely dropped the attractiveness of spamming the new balloon fellas. This is quite a slew of nerfs for KO and I think this will bring them back down to a pretty sensible place. It could be a little heavy handed but time will tell on that front.

Cities of Sigmar

The Command Corp rightfully went up a lot and Soggy Zenestra got a wopping 10 pt increase but with the modifications to her abilities, it’s toned her down especially the no more pulling the cannons out of combat. I really expected to see cannons go up in points too but we can’t have everything. Cities should stay good but feel a bit less oppressive now.

Daughters of Khaine

Points have gone up for the dangerous lists… 10 points doesn’t sound like much on a lot of the units but when you’ve got 3 reinforced units, that’s an impact of 60 points. Plus, the other tech pieces have gone up in general too. It might push some DoK players back towards teh snake ladies but in general DoK looks like they’ll stay good but this should help pull them back down a little.

Kruleboyz

Pretty much as expected for points increases here. A lot of the formation/trait/artefacts went up so overall it will have a fair bit of a points impact on Kruleboyz lists. Due to the relatively shallow unit pool they have, there aren’t other options to shift into for the bulk of the army so not many ways to play around this for list building.

Flesh Eater Courts

The book has come out from the gates pretty strong and reigning them in a little already will be healthy for the meta. 20 points up on the Cryptguard feels fair but this looks like it’ll just push lists towards some of the other options. This looks like fair changes across the board but I reckon this will leave FEC looking pretty good in the overall meta. They’ve been borderline top tier since the book and I think with the impacts to the others, we’ll see them stay up there at the top for now.

Those who needed help…

My general impression is that there wasn’t enough focus on them and some more rules changes or higher points drops would have been in order. If you’re playing one of these armies though, don’t be disheartened… get out there and prove me wrong!

Sylvaneth

A slew of points drops… should help them to get an extra unit into the army. Is that enough? It doesn’t quite feel like it.

Seraphon

Lots of points drops here too, should open up new opportunities for them in list building. I know the local Seraphon player is pretty positive about the changes for them.

Gloomspite Gitz

Plenty of points drops across the army … some of which look like they’ll help Gitz players get another unit into the army which is good.

Sunsteela Wheelas got a cool movement shenanigan with the change to their ability allowing them to go off and steal objectives in the opponents turns. I reckon we’ll see these as a staple in Gitz lists now. This is what we could have seen more for these lower performing armies!

Ironjawz

Poor Ironjawz, I think they needed more than they got here. Megaboss on Maw-Krusha went down 20 which could help and Brutes down 20 as well open them up as an interesting option again. In my opinion, Ironjawz really needed more help than this.

How Ironjawz players might be feeling right now… at least it can only get better from here!

Other interesting changes

Gargants

Got the bad touch (not the good kind…) with Kragnos up 10 to mess up the Kraggy, Brodd, Warstomper, Pigs RoR. You can just blame this one on Sabetti who has been terrorising the Canadian scene.

Here’s some Bloodhound Gang to cheer you up Sabetti
This list got a one way ticket outta here…

Nighthaunt

Glaivewraiths got their rend dropped and points up. GW, why do you hate Glaivewraiths so much?

The apparently undercosts Pyregheists also got tuned up which looks fair in comparison to the other units NH has available. Myrmourns came down though by 10 so we might see them start to get spammed again as the army struggles for damage otherwise.

Skaven

An expected points change to that damn Soggy Screaming Bell 😉 but also a 20 pt increase on the Deathmaster which will really hurt Deathmaster spam lists… I guess we’ll see them go away with that change.

RoRs

Callis and Toll up 20. Good!

KO RoR up 30. Also good!

I think both stay good at these points but they’re now a harder choice to fit into army lists.

Stumblefoot Gargant RoR

No more damage to yourself from the vomit ability and only in your shooting phase…. Booooooooo! This one was fun!

GW, why can’t you just let me vomit on myself!

Impacts and Conclusions

General changes to artefacts/traits/formations, seems to have hit the commonly picked ones even for armies that are struggling a bit at the moment. It’d be better if we had more interesting/competitive choices which seems to have been the case for the more recent books. I wouldn’t mind seeing GW adding some more in for the lower performing armies (especially those with a book already… sorry Ironjawz you got a rough deal there), this would be a different and interesting way to help them out.

Overall these changes look good for the armies who were already doing well but not too well like IDK, LRL, SCE, and Soulblight who all mostly saw points drops (although whether these are really consequential is another question). It doesn’t feel like they’ve helped out the bottom tiers enough to bring them up enough so we might be waiting a bit to see things settle (and then it’ll almost be time for the new GHB).

Get out there, play your games, and generate more stats!

4th Edition, Age of Sigmar, Battletome Review, Fantasy, Fittsy, Games Workshop, Helsmiths of Hashut, News, Tactics

Fittsy’s Foughts: It’s Helsmith Time! Leaks & Thoughts

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Let’s dive into all the leaked info on Helsmiths today! At first reveal, I convinced myself I didn’t need to get them. Chaos Dwarves were my 2nd army back when I was a wee lad… and despite needing to proxy almost the entire army, I have fond memories of sitting on the floor moving my infantry around whilst bombarding the enemies with rockets and cannons. I’ve still even got some of my old models packed away in a box somewhere!

So today… I’m going to go through what looks to be the rules as according to leaks. Now these are a bit of a collection of some different leaks I’ve managed to lay my eyes on and now that most of the book has leaked out onto the internet I figured I’d pull all these notes together and set them free!

Warning:

This is all based on a couple of different leak sources (reliability unclear) so things may not match up 100% to the released book.

(c) Games Workshop – needs more bull centaurs… see below

Desolation and Daemonic Power Points

We have to talk about DPP to start with since it’s core to the army but on the other hand… this seems to be the least consistent… we’ve got Warcomms explanation which doesn’t fit with the other couple of leaks. So I’ll try and lay out how it seems to be right now.

So planning around collecting and how to use these best is going to make a serious difference in tight games (if this info is correct because under this system it won’t be many that we’re getting each turn).

Start of any turn, opt army (opt means once per turn)

Pick a terrain feature or objective that does not have a friendly desolation token and is contested by a friendly HoH unit that is not in combat to be the target (as noted above, if this can be more than one desolation marker a turn, then there will be a lot more to go around).

Give that target a desolation token

So to get our economy rolling, we need to be next to different terrain at the start of each turn… easy to begin with but if we want to get lots of DPP, then we will need to push forward

Next step is to remove all the DPP from the units who have them and distribute them up to a max of 3 per unit

Command ability is: 3 or fewer DPP, give 2 DPP to a unit, otherwise just 1. That’ll play at effectively 1 CP down but some of the abilities are worth a CP

Early game, effect will be beneficial but not game deciding… in games of attrition, this will make  a bigger effect towards the end of the game when you can stack full 3 DPP on multiple units

Can conditionally gain more DPP via an artefact and one of the units too

The DPP then have different benefits for each unit (abilities are on their warscrolls) with some definite winners and losers for these. Like Hobgrots! Big losers, no DPP for Hobgrots!

Massive side thought: I hope we get a few more Hobgrot units and can run a hobgrot army at some points. But Fittsy, why not just play GSG and run wolves… fair point but I still want rebel hobgrots!

Second side thought: This is going to be a bit of a pain to manage each turn… personally I’m definitely going to have in mind conditions under which I’ll want to have it on certain units or not so that I don’t have to think too much during the turn.

(c) Games Workshop – Gotta collect ’em all

Battle Formations

All need 3 DPP on the units to activate. In summary they are:

  • +3 rally dice for infantry -> meh
  • +2” move for cavalry -> spicy as with 3DPP Bull Centaurs get +3” to charge too
  • +1 to cast, unbind, banish and chant -> good if running Uruk Wizards/Priests
  • +1 attacks for war machines -> slightly more interesting as the Tauruses are War Machines too

BUT! You need 3DPP to get at these benefits so it’ll be 1 unit maybe 2 from 3 onwards

Heroic Traits

We’ve got 3 to choose from here and they’re some interesting options:

Pick a visible enemy unit in your hero phase within 18” add +1 to wound rolls for combat attacks

                This looks solid, no roll to get it off. Wish it was both hero phases but I like this one.

A complicated conditional shooting attack (trigger an infantry unit wholly within 12” not in combat), then they can shoot an enemy unit who charged but only hit on 6s

                Hard pass for me… this is too tricky for me to pull off

Pick an Automaton unit during deployment, becomes the “bodyguard” it gets first strike when within combat range of the hero, if hero is infantry, it gets a 5+ ward

                Really cool. This is the sort of thing I’ll take for PtG and could have play in certain lists. This first strike is really good on the fight twice against heroes Big Fella as the strike first cancels the strike last on the second attack from them

Artefacts

Another 3 to choose from here and they’re pretty flavorful but a bit funny in general:

OPB 3DPP to the unit but no more DPP can be assigned for the rest of the game

                Sounds bad but with Uruk, he can shift those DPP around so it could be used to power up turn 1 or 2

D3 on a 2+ mortals in each of your shooting phases

                This sounds pretty nice to me and will probably be my default choice (points depending)

OPB give a unit a 2+ ward for the turn but they then can’t use any active abilities

                This sounds really interesting… they become immobile blockers, great for holding down an objective BUT! Watch out for ward removals in the game, we’ve got a fair bit of that nowadays. Great for flavour but I wont be taking this one often

(c) Games Workshop – Some hot duardin on duardin action

Spells and Prayers

I think GW has already covered all of these… so here’s just a quick overview.

First up for spells, we’ve got one on a 6+ which halves moves, one which does serious mortals against high armour targets (it’s an 8+ to cast though but when it goes off, that’s 7ish mortals against a 2+ save, and one on a 7+ which makes terrain obscuring and does mortals against nearby enemies (D3 on a 2+). I like the three spells here for their flavour and each of them feels very chaos dwarfy.

Yay priests…

Horde clearer on a 4+, roll per model on 5+ do a mortal, buffed to on a 4+ for 8+

Give a unit more rend on a 4+, crit mortals on a 8+

D3 mortals and -3 control score on an enemy unit on a 4+, 2 units on an 8+

Now… the one priest we’ve got here has an ability to generate extra ritual points so hitting these 8+s are going to be easier than it looks!

No terrain and manifestations (yet) so we can move onto the units next!

(c) Games Workshop – I look forward to casting mortals on these golden fellas!

Units

Now… I know I’m meant to pick out a few to cover but it’s only 16 so I’m giving you my thoughts on each of these!

Uruk Tarr

Feels like a good warscroll will depend on points, really good wizard and with DPP plus the subfaction get get to +3 to cast. He’s got the move 2D6 after a charge ability we’ve seen in other battletomes so he’ll get around pretty well. He’s pretty fighty too! We need to talk about his ability to move DPP around in the Enemy Hero Phase… This gives you a lot more value out of the DPP. On the other hand, he looks like he needs the DPP for survivability (gives ward and bonus to cast), so he’s going to be a drain on the economy. Is he a must take? I don’t think so… but he’ll help when starting out with the army to be able to react before the enemies turn, especially if you get double turned.

Other wizard on a Taurus

Do I wish it was a Lammasu? Yes. Do I like this warscroll? Also yes. Real good for bulls enabling the retreat and charge (one of my favourite abilities in AoS). Also has a roll higher than the health of a model and just smash it (end of turn rampage though). Giving it a pip of ward per DPP also good for a 15 health 3+ save model.

Daemonsmith

Cool healing ability that with DPP can be extended up to 24” which is a bit funny

Ashen Elder – a Priest

Is a priest, gets an extra ritual point in X hero phase when next to desolated terrain/objective so probably going to hang back with your war machines. Can also give out an aura of ignore first damage per phase which I’m a big fan of (see the ever-present Kruciator in my Nighthaunt lists) but it starts at wholly within 6” and gets bigger with DPP. Still even if it just effects him, it’s a cool one to have.

War Despot

The disappointing hero… is always control 5 and gives an extra attack to infantry but as we’ll get to, the infantry hit like a wet rag

(c) Games Workshop – Ok fine, I’ll paint up 20 of these but I’m still a bit disappointed 😉

Infernal Cohort Spears

Best thing on the warscroll is can generate a DPP on a 3+ when contesting an objective you control… so maybe a good screen in front of your war machines

Infernal Cohort Swords

Somehow worse than the spears and run 4 if you roll 1-3. Enough said. Build spears.

Hobgrots

Units of 20, pregame move (for a 5” move) in the deployment phase, could be good for screening your war machines or giving some breathing space and going out and desolating terrain

Infernal Razors with flamers

These don’t look crash hot with a short range and a 3 shots 2+, 4+,-,1 shooting profile. One rend per DPP makes them look better but it’s not where I want to spend my DPP. 5 model base units make this even harder to look good on paper.

Blunderbusses

And now we get a profile that looks a lot more interesting! For a reinforced unit, it’ll be 18” 11 attacks at 3+, 2+,-,2 but no shoot in combat. With an all out attack and some DPP they’ll definitely sting when they hit. They can also give out strike last on a 6+ (add one to the roll  for each model you kill). So I might buy two boxes of these for running a shooting focussed castle.

Bombard

30” range does a bit of damage… with DPP on it, it can give units nearby no commands on a 3+. I like this one for the range and the ability which both have value against different types of lists and with a 2+ to hit (for units 5 or more over 12″ away) on 4 shots, it’s going to be relatively reliable for plinking those annoying teleporting units and other crap which score objectives and tactics.

Deathshrieker Rockets

OHHHHH YES! 24” 3 shots 4+,2+,-2,D3+2 damage anti-warmachine and anti-monster plus (opt army), you can make it flat 5 damage against monsters and war machines. I will have one of these in my lists! Also just because of good memories of the old one in the Old World. It also has a cool splash damage effect with DPP.

(c) Games Workshop – This is one of my favourite bits of art… and not just because it’s Cities getting smashed!

Anointed Centaurs

You’ve probably already read about their strike first on the counter charge… now having tried to make that work for me with KO and the frigate, this is good, primarily from a psychology perspective for your opponent. Otherwise, they’re not bad and hit slightly less well than the Bull Centaurs. Both Centaurs get +1 to charge per DPP so you can definitely throw a unit up into the enemy’s face turn 1 if you want. Health 4 control 1… that part didn’t excite me much.

Bull Centaurs

Yum yum yum… 4 attacks each, 3+,3+,-1,2 +1 damage on the charge and crit mortals. They’re also doing mortals on the charge. To get value out of them… there’s going to be a very Daemonsmith on Bale Taurus shaped tax to get them the retreat and charge. But hey, that warscroll looks pretty good too.

Dominators with flamers

This warscroll  has a really interesting ability, they get +2 ranged attacks per enemy unit targets when they split their attacks… which could be a shitload of attacks. But then they’ve only got range 8” so they probably aren’t hitting many units. Still not a bad warscroll if you build into the war machine side of things. They appear to have +1 to ranged and melee on their warscroll per DPP so that could be a nice place to use the DPP. Guess the writers did these early and got tired by the time they got to the infernal cohort.

Dominators with maces

10 wounds on a 2+, fight twice when in combat range of enemy heroes, could be a bodyguard unit. I like them.

(c) Games Workshop – I just love the art they’ve released this time!

Have we got Combos?

Definitely yes, Daemonsmith on Bale Taurus and Bull Centaurs for Retreat and Charge.

Priests can nicely buff some of our units with the crits etc.

Bodyguard and fight twice Dominator… nice for a bit of fun

Uruk and the trait to get 3 DPP in a turn

I don’t see a need to lean hard into one side or the other in general which has a benefit for list building. As soon as we see points, I’ll be back with some list options for you… I wonder how many Bull Centaurs I can fit in a list 😉

General Impressions

Don’t forget everyone, points make armies… the KO book looked pretty good but then we’ve had really generous points on them which gives them an edge over a lot of other armies.

Not an elite army. Where are my 2 health for duardin GW? How do the Bull Centaurs come in at 4 health? Have you seen bulls? I’ve seen bulls and even without half a duardin on top, I’d rate them at 5 times the health of a Cities human. At least they can lay the smack down!

Am I still hyped? Yes. It definitely isn’t what I thought it would be after their descriptions. I sort of like the range of units available here and it does feel like a new army. Will the bookkeeping be a shit to keep track of? Very much yes, this feels like some strange combo of old Lumineth and Ossiarch Bonereapers. There are some nice looking warscrolls in here (and a couple of really shit ones, sorry Infernal Cohort) and I’m looking forward to getting my grubby little hands on these fellas and painting them up! After these leaks, I think I’ll be leaning a bit more towards Dominators and Bull Centaurs supported by some artillery and I’m excited to see how they play on the table in the end!

Don’t worry Infernal Cohort… I’m tired too after a long day of desolating
Games Workshop

Fittsy’s Kharadron Overlords New Book First Impressions

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Dear readers, first up, an apology, I flat out forgot to let all of you know that I’d be taking a bit of a break over summer (I may have even forgotten to tell our dear Overlord Woehammer Peter). Well, I decided to take a break from AoS for 4 weeks for myself, trying to give myself a bit of a break… I got through 3 weeks until the leaks really started to get going for the new KO book and the previews for Chaos Dwarves. Now I’m deep back into it organising new games, waiting for the Nighthaunt leaks to start too, and trying to not buy my dream army from when I was a kid!

As always I’ve got a lot of topics on the back burner with a few from the Woehammer readership added to my list too. For now though, I’m going to go over a first pass on the new battletome. Now that people have had a bit of a read. There’s plenty of stuff going over what’s good or not at the moment… so I’ll have a bit of a focus on some of the combos

Now before we get into… here’s flight of the Valkyries in case you haven’t listened to it in a while.

P.S. Soggy means that they’re part of this SoG (Scourge of Ghyran) Season… that’s going to come up a bit in this article!

What’s changed

The big loss: Bringing Skyfarers along for a redeploy and power through is completely gone with the changes to how Transport Skyfarers works

But we’ve gained 3 new units and some pretty nifty terrain

Better saves pretty much across the board, this coupled with the -1 to hit near boats is definitely going to up durability. The ships going to a 2+ feels even feels like a bigger impact.

Except for “Take two artefacts”, the Battle Formations are totally different and lean a bit too much towards specific units for my liking.

We get to add an Endrinwork to the ships during List writing and a second one during deployment! Plus the Soggy version, “Skyvessel Upgrades”, which theoretically you get to take on top of the other Endrinworks currently (although I’d guess this gets FAQ’d out soon).

2 new AoR, both of which are tickling my fancy a little, I won’t cover them here or the article would be way tooooo long

Battle Formations

These are in summary:

“Take two artefacts”

“Make Arkanauts even tougher to kill (but conditionally)”

“Make the new balloon units harder to kill (but conditionally but it’s not too hard to achieve)”

“Make Gunhaulers transport slightly better” (but who isn’t taking Soggy Gunhaulers anyway)

If you lean into Arks, obvious choice, same goes for the new Balloon Fellas, if not, you’re probably taking a second artefact and that might impact your lists to try and get a 2nd hero in. The Arkanaut one here looks pretty strong at first glance if you want to put 60 Arkanuats on the table but the buff requiring them not to move and not to be set up is really restrictive on a unit with a move of 4. If you’re keen on throwing 30 of the new balloon troops (whichever flavour you prefer), then they’re ward on objectives makes them even more cost effective than they already are.

Artefacts

With effectively 6 to choose from including the soggy artefacts there end up with quite a few good options.

The big winner here is Celestium Burst Grenade which went to “once per turn, your shooting phase”. For me, this is a must take… or take as the 2nd artefact after deployment if the opponent has wards.

We’ve got a really interesting new one in something something Flakgun which can remove a dice from an opponent’s charge (if you roll equal or higher and they’re within 12”). This one is a nice combo with the Khemist who take -1 off the opponent’s charge too.

Combat Rig – 5+ ward can make the difference if you’ve got one of those key heroes you want to keep alive.

Spell in a bottle is back! KO with manifestations sounds awesome but somehow less exciting because of how many cool artefacts there are to choose from and needing to pay for the good manifestations.

There is also the Emberstone Flare which means that you can teleport a ship to the unit… it has to not be in combat though which makes it much more awkward to use.

Heroic Traits

Combat Grafter – fight twice with a strike last? Nice. Charge with a Frigate to negate that strike Last and now we’re talking! This would also pair awesomely with Combat Rig. I am finding in list writing though that I can’t afford two heroes who are going into fights and then Celestium Burst Grenade is winning out. This one is good on the Admiral or the Endrinmaster with Balloon (if you have the points to spare).

Bold as Brass – +5 control score on a teleporting Navigator or a wandering Codewright who can get shot out of a duardin sized cannon onto an objective, this one might win you games sometimes but is less fun than fighting twice

Shrewd Opportunist – this is probably the sensible choice if you’ve got balloon boys to bring forward with it. Pairs nicely with a hero with a balloon. It let’s you move the hero and two units forward in the deployment phase to sneakily pop onto an objective or push up aggressively if you can outdrop your opponent.

Ship Artefacts (Endrinworks)

Technically called “Great Endrinworks”… because these are pretty great 😉. Also, you can stack these on the same boat(s) when you use the deployment phase additional endrinwork. I’ll try to go through these descriptively

5+ ward against shooting – situational but may be a good choice for the flagship upgrade

+2” move – probably the take it if nothing else is really important one for the flagship

+1 to each bombing racks roll – solid on an ironclad, especially if you’ve got the Endrinmaster on foot to help it retreat each turn

Ignore negative modifiers to hit – the boats shooting got a bit worse but this turns the Ironclad into hero sniper or just helps against those armies with -1 to hit

+5 to control characteristic – this is quite good for bullying people off objectives with boat charges… on a reinforced Soggy Gunhauler +10 to control, rude!

D6 mortals to manifestations at end of turn – meh… the others are just better

Soggy flavoured Endrinworks:

Shoot a hero 18” away OPB – funny, and could win a game from time to time. Especially if you add the +5 control score heroic trait

4+ spell ignore reaction for KO units within 12” and inflict d3 mortals – this will be great going into certain armies and on an ironclad a really big aura. Not an auto include but a fantastic one for the flagship if you’re going into a magic heavy army.

Battle Ram! Roll dice equal to the charge roll, every 4 is a mortal  – more mortals more fun… this is a great pick for a gunhauler or two 😉 but also good on Frigates. You’ll want to keep those CP spare to Power Through at the end of each turn!

Check out Carl’s amazing work here

Standout units

I’ll try to keep this one brief because… apart from a couple of heroes being a bit meh, practically everything is useable and a lot of it looks like good values at points as of today (13/08/2025). Prepare yourselves for points increases KO players!

Brokk

Was good before, is still good but now there are more hero options so don’t worry if you’re leaning in a different direction. The ships are more durable so fair chance you’ll want to charge them more often.

Navigator

Gives us fly high without bringing units with the ships… so a bit less awesome but adding a teleport to the army is pretty neat.

In general, my feeling is that most of the heroes are useable… even the ones which don’t look that exciting at first glance because their pointed low enough for now.

Vongrim Salvagers

Wow! These should not be as good as they are at the points they are. This is a dream unit for most armies. You can also happily spam these fellas to your hearts content… if you’re willing to pay for all those boxes of 5.

Vongrim Harpoon Crew

If the points are right, these are a phenomenal screen! Again, incredible value for 10 wounds on a 4+ with a 12” move!

Skywardens

Oh, my poor Endrinriggers. I can see what they tried to do with shifting their identities a bit but this has left the Skywardens looking much more interesting especially paired with Brokk. Not being able to Power Through with the ships and take the Riggers with them makes the Skywarden ability look pretty good all of a sudden!

Soggy Gunhaulers

Oh my! Gunhauler stocks went way up. With their ability to move d6 after shooting… you can use these in all sorts of ways. See below for my favourite combo. Again, this is about efficiency, for 140 pts, we get 14” move, 2+ save 10 wounds, and they can do a bit of damage over time.

Ironclads and Frigates

These feel costed about right at the moment… now they’re not doing as much damage as before but they slot in nicely in lists and enable good army compositions. 2+ save is doing a lot of the work now. You can throw these into combat and really bog things down.

Thunderers

I almost forgot them because they changed so much! This is really just for their ability… against some armies they won’t do as much but for their points, reducing a unit to a control score of 1 is massive and can really help enable tactics. Also, they can strip wards but this’ll be harder as you’ll often want to strip wards of heroes with higher control scores and then you’ll need to do some damage to trigger this effect.

Wombo Combos

© Nintendo… As much as I loved Fox, Captain Falcon and DK were my favourites!

Admiral + Ironclad + Endrinmaster on foot

Add 1 attack to each profile, reroll 1s to hit, why not ignore negatives to hit with the Endrinwork while we’re at it. Keep that Endrinmaster safely at the back though to keep pulling the Ironclad out of combat!

Navigator + Soggy Gunhauler with a ram + probably Grandiose Fuselage (for +10 control)

This is probably my favourite combo… doesn’t mean it’s good but it feels good. You can teleport the Navigator and Gunhaulers, then shoot, then move d6, then charge, do the mortals from the ram, a couple of extra wounds in melee and power through back to protect the navigator and block an objective… then do it all again. However, might not really be needed with being able to deploy the Gunhaulers in the sky in the first place and with a 14” move…

Khemist + Flakgun + 20 Arks

Want to make it look really shit to charge at anything… then this isn’t bad

5 Thunderers in a Gunhauler

Who wants to make the enemy unit control 1… I do… but this means I can’t have Soggy Gunhaulers so it’s out for now

Brokk + 12 Skywarden + Frigate

This was there before and it was good. Now, it’s still good and the Skywardens and the frigate got a bit tougher.

What can we do with the army now

Lean into lots of Arks

                But their shooting back at the enemy is only once per turn and the other combos such as Khemists really means

Lean into lots of balloons (Vongrim flavoured)

                This is viable both in vanilla KO and with the Magnates AoR

Slam boats into the enemy

                This looks like fun. Throw some damage around, box your opponent up. All whilst opening up primary and secondary scoring with the mobility.

Play clever and steal objectives off the opponent while racking up points

                This certainly looks viable and plays into tactics too. I’m sure we’ll see some lists lean into these shenanigans with the Vongrim Harpoon Crew and the Navigator

Couple of Example Lists

My list to start out for now… stuck a bit between wanting to take an Ironclad vs the Navigator / Gunhaulers combo so it’ll either be this list:

Or this one (which is pretty much what Tom Guan was running at OTTD):

Or you could just spam Gunhaulers 10 wounds on a 2+ with a 14” move at 140 pts is goooood value! Legitimately though… 4 Gunhaulers and 30 Salvagers looks like a really points efficient list, topped up with a Frigate and Brokk to really juice some Salvagers on a charge.

Now it’s time to get those KO back off the shelves and fly like an eagle:

4th Edition, Age of Sigmar, Chaos, Competitive, Death, Destruction, Disciples of Tzeentch, Fantasy, Fittsy, Games Workshop, Kruleboyz, Nighthaunt, Orruk Warclans, Sons of Behemat, Tactics, Tournaments

A First Little Tournament for the New AoS GHB (or “Come and Learn from my Mistakes”)

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So I won’t go on too much about the Wesersturm which is a tournament I help to run as if you’ve seen some of the other battle reports, I think I’ve said it all there. It’s held at a local games store (Kutami) who support us to organise the tournaments there. It was also supported by Playmats and Micro-Art Studios this time as sponsors.

You may have read my last article which was my tips for the new GHB… well, I took my last piece of advice and instead of going easy on myself. I challenged myself by switching to different battle tactics and trying to play my army differently. Part of this challenge was taking 1st turn every game. Something I really should have practiced a bit before going into a tournament :D. The idea behind the list was to push hard for the secondaries and score without rolling. I’m definitely going to need to practice this some more (and paint up some new units to make the list work better). This came about from my coaching with Onwards AoS (for which they gave me a couple of free trial sessions to help out with these articles and I will be continuing with them too).

Instead of going turn by turn through… I’m going to focus on how I did play and how I could have approached it differently with the tools I had on the table. Yeah, also, without the Tabletop Battles app ready for the new GHB, I found out that if I’m not reminded to take photos I just flat out forget it! I’ll also try to highlight my mistakes (and boy did I have quite a few on this day).

I have been trying and failing to make more time for some tabletop simulator games… as soon as I get one or two more in, I’ll get up a starter guide for that! Sorry to those I’ve mentioned I would have it up in these weeks… but you know, life and stuff!

My list

This little old thing is going to look pretty familiar… what I changed was to move the Grimghasts into the second regiment so that I could split the Hexwraiths, this was to open up Scouting Force as a viable option… In hindsight, it really needed both units of Hexwraiths split into 5s (and some teleporting action from Vanishing Phantasms and/or Awlrach/Dreadblades/Vanilla Coach)

Here’s the link if you want to listen to a classic Aussie Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnigc08J6FI

Game 1 – Mega Gargants on Linked Ley Lines

Christoph is a newer player and going into Gargants made me pretty confident and him not so much. This meant I could really focus on the secondaries whilst whittling down the gargants.

I fucked up my deployment here by deploying an inch back from where I should have with my first drop, this meant I had to use a command point just to get 2 units within 3 inches of the centre. At least I recognised it myself and knew how to solve it but it restricted my early choices!

As you may see from the list, this was also really not a bad choice. 4 megas sitting around the middle of the battlefield let them dominate the primary for the first few turns just scoring their 10s as long as they can. It let me score up some of my tactics and then come back in to start removing the gargants. Good positioning and blocking by Christoph meant that I had a tougher go of it than either of us expected. Some early really swingy rolls meant for some more impactful attacks early on from the gargants putting me on the backfoot… turning into me saving everything two megas had hit me with in a turn. That’s ethereal saves for you!

Little mistake I made here was putting my terrain too close to my front lines letting the Gatebreaker use its ability on it which hurt me a little more than I needed at the time.

I think the gargants might be controlling that objective for a few turns 😉

What I did: Focussed on secondaries then came back in to remove his scoring options

What I could have done: Pushed hard into those gargants, this would have locked them back in deployment and started to deny their board presence earlier allowing myself to score bigger on primaries and win by more

Result: 63 to 51 for me

Game 2 – Double Chicken with Horrors and a Daemon Prince on Passing Seasons

Fabio is a good player and I always find it hard going into Tzeentch, so this was clearly going to be a bit of a tough one!

First turn I got really lucky with 2 miscasts on Kairos’ first cast and the other bird’s second cast and that alone might have turned the result.

Roughly my game plan was working… just a little too slowly and I struggle to get my Scouting Force tactics due to the deployment zones and need to pop onto the objectives turn after turn. My Grimghasts were able to wipe the Horrors pretty easily but I could never really get close to those big chickens (due to good play on Fabio’s part). Turn 3 and 4, when the spells started to go off… they really put the hurt on.

Things were looking pretty good in the early turns

My mistake for this game was a complicated one in turn 3… I was too worried about losing Lady O to score my Strike for Attuned to Ghyran, she was on 1 wound left but I should have taken the chance (Krulghast ignoring 1st damage in the phase helps with this) and even if I’d lost her it would have been worth it at this point… consequently, I lost the 5 points for the battle tactic as I never had a chance to score it again and she was also used to charge into then pile in off my terrain onto my back objective. That Daemon Prince was a thorn in my side the whole game (even if he managed to do zero damage into Lady O first time he long bomb charged her). If I had done this one, it would have been at least 5 more points for me and maybe 5 less for Fabio.

In turn 4, I had a choice of primary and kill a unit, or get my tactic… in the end, it was the same points so I went and took another unit off the board.

At this point, we had a full complicated turn 5 to go and the time was up for the round. After this really intense game and not knowing how the last turn would go, we checked through the score and it was a pure draw on Battle Tactics.

What I did: Took first and it was a good decision. Tried to play to the secondaries but chickened out on them twice.

What I should have done: Score those secondaries! Throw a unit away for an additional 5 points when you need to!

Ah, so what did we learn… shouldn’t have stuffed up one tactic and should have also taken the tactic in turn 4 instead of wiping a unit.

Result: 45 to 45 for a pure draw!

Game 3 – Kragnarok and pigs with a few Kruelboyz friends on Roiling Roots

What a fucking list! Henne is a great player who rocks some wild lists! Although people looked at the matchup and saw Kragnos and me with Nighthaunt and thought it was a good one for me. However, There is a pretty rough counter to my 800 pts of Hexwraiths with one of the Dirty Tricks removing the +1 damage on the charge and being able to give me fight last. Plus that dirty vulture with Kragnos pumps out the mortals into target units too! Also, cleverly, the Hogs receive the benefits from the Endless Spells here too.

I took first and threw my 10 Hexwraiths into the pigs to hold them up but they ended up failing at that spectacularly going down end of turn 1 (to a wound), a countercharge from the other big pig was my plan but it hurt after I got the strike last on me from the dirty tricks (and the no bonus damage on the charge of course). I took Kragnos and the Bird to the face turn 1 which wasn’t too bad and I was in a good place to recover having scored my 20 first turn).

This looked and felt clever but was a definite tactical error!

Henne took the double into me turn 1 into 2 and started to put the hurt on me. Here is where I made my big fuck up mistake for the day. I completely forgot that this made me the underdog and I could have made the two objectives in the middle strike last completely mitigating the damage he could have done to me. Ouch ☹

Doesn’t look that terrible end of turn 1 (except for the missing 10 Hexwraiths who are hanging on the bottom right waiting to be resurrected)

But not to worry, I could still pull a double 2 into 3 to potentially save the game. I rolled the big 6 and could have it… and Henne took his reroll and threw a bloody 6! And that was that.

I also was playing into Intercept and Recover and put it on my big unit of Hexwraiths when I should have just left it on the Krulghast and Lady O instead to keep it safe for longer.

What I did: Scored big and crumbled against the double because I forgot the underdog ability

What I should have done: Probably taken second turn in this one, I think this swung the game clearly here and next time… don’t forget the underdog bonus!

Result: 37 to 70 for the Kragnarok!

Summing things up

I really struggled taking the double against me in all 3 games early on… I like the idea that it’s meant to force that choice on the opponent and that did impact the scoring in games 2 and 3 but it caused me more problems and cost them 5 points each. What I did really like was being able to use the terrain for Nighthaunt is great for Scouting Force Strike and Domination tactics. The new terrain is really great! The artefact I took was poop (it popped off 3 times only but it’s a bit of a 5 crappy artefacts one good-ish one for 20 pts situation).

I definitely wasn’t at my best, I made key mistakes as well as other small ones, really making life a bit or a lot harder for myself. Turns out I was getting sick and spent the next 4 days lying around feeling sorry for myself which helps explain a bit about how I felt on the day. On the other hand, these were 3 really great games, Christoph was a lovely opponent, Fabio gave me a real challenge and it was an amazingly exciting game, and Henne and I had a great time watching my army crumble with plenty of laughs. Sorry about all the fucks here… but at least they highlight where I made my mistakes 😀

I didn’t follow my own tips! I think I would have had a smoother day if I had and things could have worked out very differently. Does that mean I don’t think that using NH to play this way is wrong… no way! I just think it needs a list more focussed towards doing it… and a lot more practice!

Hope you’re having fun in the new GHB. Get out there, have fun, and get some Ws!

P.S. Birds are weird (and my new nemesis)

This is a very old but slightly relevant comic. Fucking birds!

4th Edition, Age of Sigmar, Competitive, Fittsy, Games Workshop, Tactics, Tournaments

Fittsy’s 5 Tips for the New GHB

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This is for all you mid-level competitive players out there looking to get a leg up on your opponents (that means getting the edge to win your games… not what you were thinking if you’re unfamiliar with the saying) and for anyone else who’s just looking for another perspective on these things. If you’ve already played 10+ games with the new General’s Handbook… this article probably isn’t for you. I’ve had a few people ask about a bit of guidance going into this new GHB (which feels like a new edition). So, I’m here this week with a nice little short collection of tips (literally just what I’m doing myself).

No… It’s going to have a full 4-5 tips if you’re lucky 😉

Tip 1: Take it easy, mate!

Keep things easy for yourself and take a look at the battle tactics which match to the sort of things you do in the game.

Don’t take Wrathful Cycles… you’ll get distracted trying to work out how to be the underdog. Pick something which does what your army wants to do… and if you really don’t know what to take. Throw Intercept and Recover in and make your opponent make more decisions. Restless, Scouting, and Attuned are all pretty fair choices depending on your army.

Check out my article on the Battle Tactics for a bit more discussion on each of them.

Just take your same old army from the old GHB or something else that feels familiar and see how it goes. Focus on what’s new and don’t worry if your’e learning things step by step

Tip 2: Focus on the Primary

If you’re not here for horrible puns… Fittsy’s Foughts is the wrong place for you!

50 points are there for the Primaries and 30 there for tactics… you’ll probably be able to get 2-4 tactics and your opponent something similar so the difference will probably not be so huge. Controlling the primaries will get you points and deny your opponent theirs so the value per turn is still better than chasing your battle tactics.

Tip 3: Get in practice on the Battleplans

You’ve got an event coming up and the battleplans are published? Stop reading and get out there and practice a couple of games on each of the battleplans. These battleplans are wild (pun intended)! Each one feels really unique (some of them look ridiculous) and you need to have an eye on how to score turns 1-5 on each of them to make sure you’re in it with a chance to win it.

Don’t have enough time? Maybe watch someone else like the good ol’ fellas over at Season of War!

Tip 4: Manage your expectations

Don’t sweat these first games under the new GHB! This is not like the old GHB and you won’t be expected to score 4-5 battle tactics to win a game. Most of us are all learning how to play in a new way all at the same time so find some friendly opponents and just give it a shot.

We all overestimate our own abilities sometimes

Tip 5: No Fear

I believe that somehow this used to be considered cool!

You want to do something else? Fucking go for it. Follow your gut! Maybe you want to write a list and lean into scoring your battle tactics. That can work for sure too. Maybe just follow these tips if you feel like that. Go and find out what works for you!

Now get out there and get those games in. Stop reading silly little articles on the internet about how it works 😉 Good luck out there everyone… it’s the wild wild west!

Now you too can have this song stuck in your head!
4th Edition, Age of Sigmar, Competitive, Fantasy, Fittsy, Games Workshop, New Releases, Tactics

WTF are these new Battle Tactics

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Yeah, that title is click-bait… what are you going to do with guys like those fine fellas over at Plastic Craic stealing all your Age of Sigmar Competitive article reading time and Goonhammer releasing the battlescroll. But seriously, what a shake up this is! Regardless of all the other changes that the new season brings, this is for me the biggest impact.

I’m still left in a little wtf shock at these and I’ll be honest, they’re confusing me a bit still even after a couple of reads and trying to write this article.

Should I be trying to select cards to fit my list or fitting my list to the cards? How will I adapt to different battleplans? How many should I realistically be expecting to score each game?

There’s going to be a lot of trial and error here. For sure, one of the best things you can do is get out there and start getting games in the new GHB!

I really want to write Battle Tictacs every time I refer to the tactics in this article but then it’s going to screw up things for people searching for this article. However, if you quietly sneak in saying battle tictac once or twice a game, good on you! I’ll probably come back to these in a month or two once we’ve started to see the dust settle and take a look at the impact and my thoughts as the meta evolves.

Don’t be the kangaroo, read this articel and shake those wtfs off. Fucking Kangaroos!

How does it work?

Well… this part doesn’t seem too complicated…

  • Pick two cards during army composition
  • At the end of the turn, can achieve one tactic per turn per card
  • Each card has three steps which are unlocked by achieving them in order
  • If you take the double (and aren’t 11 pts behind) then you can’t select a battle tactic

Nothing to stop you attempting a tactic again (and again and again)

Opponent is then the underdog until they seize the initiative

That’s important for 2 of the cards where you are then doubly punished for taking a double

The Cards

Thanks to whichever champ took those screeenshots and turned them into something comfortable to read… if you know who did it, let me know and I’ll credit them!

Master the Paths

Affray: is going to be tricky against some opponents in the first turn or two

Strike: can be potentially blocked easily by opponent, side benefit, forces the opponent to try and block this, oddly hard for the half/half battleplans (of which 1/3 are this)

Domination: this one is a bit weird, if you’ve tabled the opponent all fine and good. 9 inches is pretty far from the corners but you’ll need quite a few units still on the board to pull this off

Restless Energy

Affray: Nice start, this is the sort of thing a lot of armies will want to do turn 1 or turn 2

Strike: And then we get to one which will be really tough in a lot of matchups, still, with a bit of a focus on army comp that can enable this maybe not too bad for turn 3 or 4, for most of the battleplans there is just 1 within enemy territory so that helps

Domination: Well, if you’ve already won, you’re going to win slightly bigger on this one

Intercept and Recover

Affray, Strike, Domination: This one doesn’t even get 3 comments! I really like this one for if you want to have a fun game… playing cat and mouse. Fun idea: Both choose this and chase each other round all game. This one has a big con that it’ll be easy for your opponent to play against it across the game, a good player will be able to deny you points or force you to target the units you won’t want to. Side benefit, your opponent then has to play against it the whole game 😉. Oh yeah, also if you take a double… you auto lose a chance at 5 points. Hmmm, maybe there’s a cool trick here where your opponent won’t expect you to take the double and then you do it anyway because you were never going to score all 3 tactics on the card.

Wrathful Cycles

Affray: Nice easy one early in the game

Strike: Aha, you wanted to double your opponent. Well, nope, this card isn’t for you. Also a fun concept which plays against achieving the Affray Tactic.

Domination: Ah, the destruction battle tactic. Not for destruction armies… just a silly amount of conditionals. Another if you’ve already won you’ll get more points tactic.

Bonus comment: This is one of the most clever cards, if you’ve got a big brain, go ahead and take this one 😉

Scouting Force

Two conditions here which you’ll need to lean towards, infantry and cavalry and not being in combat. That means that for the first 2, you’ll need 3 units out of combat. Certainly a little boost to shooting units who otherwise copped a few nerfs.

Affray: Wholly outside friendly territory is pretty easy on 2/3 of the battle maps making this an easy early score

Strike: Conversely, the enemy territory is small on 3 of the maps making this one tricky when the first is easy

Domination: Same as the Strike, but now it’s even deeper in enemy territory

Attuned to Ghyran

This one is almost an auto-pick for some armies and a never-pick for others in a way the others don’t feel like

Affray: This is seize the centre

Strike: This is bait and trap (which I always really liked because it feels fun to do)

Domination: Can you pin your opponent? Alternatively, have you wiped them out? Then this isn’t too bad but otherwise, this is an easy one to deny

Now how to pick our cards / tailor our lists

Wrong cards Fittsy! Get back to working on the article… hmmm, I haven’t actually played Balatro in a little while.

Also bullet points again for some reason… I’m really digging bullet points at the moment for some reason.

  • I reckon you need to pick one of 2 cards which is achievable in turn 1 or 2 at worst
  • Watching out for cards which are going to block achieving them
  • Watching out for tactics which push us away from how we want the army or list to operate
    • I’m not even going to get started with whether you pick your cards then your army or vice versa or something in between
  • Lots of MSU beneficial? Certainly for some of the tactics cards
  • Wild take… what about picking cards which are going to put decisions on your opponent instead

I didn’t even answer the heading here did I… bugger. Well, I’m still trying to figure that out myself so maybe that’ll be the focus of the follow-up article.

How important is it to score these battle tactics?

A strange question but thinking about maybe not scoring all of these… maybe a more important question than it looks. Over the course of the game, we have a max of 30 points to score if all 6 tactics can be scored. From the objectives, we’ve got a max of 50. So the Battle Tictacs are worth 37.5% of the total points you can score (look at me, I did a maths). It’s more than it feels like at first glance when we compare 5 points a tactic vs 10 points for full objective score. Going just by gut feel, I’m going to wanting to score minimum 4 of the 6 possible tactics so this is going to factor into the cards I choose.

Fittsy’s Faves

Warning: I definitely looked at these with Nighthaunt goggles on… also, I’m a combat sorta fella. I’ve been thinking about which ones I’d take for Khardron and they would be pretty different, hello Scouting Force

I like the look of Master the Paths and Restless Energy giving me options early to unlock and they don’t seem too complicated (I’m a simple sorta fella). I’m oddly coming around on the idea Intercept and Recover (force the enemy to use their units differently) or Wrathful Cycles (an extra disincentive to your opponent to take the double against you.

Final Foughts

Wow, I think it’s going to be tough to even think about scoring all 6 tactics in the game but enabling scoring them is going to make all the difference. Vice versa, denying your opponent their tactics will be important but even harder than under the old system. On the other hand, when it’s hard for you to score those dominion cards, I think it’s also going to be hard on your opponent. I reckon that’ll mean some really tense exciting close games and others which are a complete blowout.

At first I was afraid, I was petrified (after a charge from a Nighthaunt hero into me) but I’m coming around to these now and I am looking forward to sink my teeth into the new system. Am I a bit nervous about managing this on top of all the other changes and new battleplans? Fuck yes. A bit over a week and these are all out officially. Time to get practicing to get those Wins!

4th Edition, Age of Sigmar, Competitive, Fittsy, Games Workshop, Tactics, Tournaments

Fittsy tries to understand Play Styles: Proactive or Reactive in AoS

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Oh no, Fittsy missed a week! Is everything alright? I’m sure that’s what at least 2 of the readers have thought recently. Work has been a bit busy and I had a 3 day Necromunda Campaign Weekend. Also, I’m because of that I haven’t been hitting the AoS tables as much and although I’ve got a few ideas to throw words at… most of them need a bit more time to swirl around in the old brain until they’re ready.

I did hit up another RTT (Age of Hiltown VII), little shout-out to the crew over there who set up and ran a really lovely tournament with a great bunch of players!

I ended up going 2-1 with the same Nighthaunt list but up against 3 uncommon matchups for me which was good for getting some more practice in against Kroak (I believe there were also some other Seraphon on the table), a mixed Ogors list, and FEC against Luca who I travelled there with. That was the most exciting of the three games where it was pretty close and grindy with plenty of tactical play on both sides and in the end I timed out but with just enough time to score my last battle tactic to pull in a win. Lady Olynder’s Control Score reduction was what pushed the game in my favour… which is making me look at more options to manipulate control score with my lists. I’m really looking forward to trying out the new Nighthaunt terrain and have been playing around with some new lists to lean into that.

It looks a bit hairy here… but things were going to plan

We’ve got just over a week to wait for the new GHB which is always an interesting time to be in… some people are slowing down a bit waiting for the new scenarios and season rules. I bet a lot of you are waiting to see what other surprises we will have in those rules!

I think that’s enough stereotypical waffle from me to start things off. It’s time to start talking about proactive and reactive players. Apologies in advance, this is going to be a wordy one with zero picture from here on out.

What is this proactive/reactive stuff?

This is a way to describe different styles of play… this is something that people with too much time to think about how they play keep themselves busy sometimes when not actually playing. Is it perfect? Fuck no. You may have also heard about the Johhny, Timmy and Spike classifications which stems from MtG and goes a bit deeper into what the player tries to get from their experiences… Plastic Craic has some good coverage about that and list building over here.

Proactive and Reactive at its core

A proactive player focuses on anticipating, initiating, and preparing

                Prevention and long-term solutions

A reactive player focuses on responding, following, and adapting

                Immediate solutions and problem solving

That sounds a bit wanky and I’m definitely no psychologist so I tried to keep it top level. You’re here for Age of Sigmar coverage (or have accidentally come across this for some other random reason… if so, you should give AoS a try, it’s a lot of fun)… so what do these two types of play look like on the tabletop?

Proactive:

Going in with an overall game plan

List may lean heavily into one archetype

Pushing problems on your opponent for them to deal with (i.e. pinning)

Aggressive play with an aim to create opportunities

Reactive:

List may contain problem solving units or a spread of units to give you play against different types of opponents

Watching opponent’s play and reacting to their moves and focus

Adapting to changes in the game state over the turns

More defensive countering opponent’s play

What type of player am I?

I thought I was reactive… but I’ve since realised that although I may not be someone who plays classic proactive lists (alpha strike, ranged spam), I am definitely proactive leaning and my reactiveness tends to take a back seat to how can I react to force more decisions on my opponent.

Thanks to Darren Watson at Onwards AoS for pointing this out to me!

I represent primarily the aspects of having an army which has a plan on the table top and I am definitely an aggressive player (always be charging) even if I don’t push damage heavy armies around. I prefer consistency in my armies which is why I don’t lean heavily on the magic phase or random attacks characteristics (which might explain my absolutely terrible run with Skaven).

This is me being a good little proactive player pinning those big fellas up the back

How can we use this?

The game starts before the game… so here we can think about our lists. Does the overall list play into our strengths? Am I using units which fit to how I play? When we look at top players and coverage of their lists or interviews… for sure we see different aspects of each of these represented with some all-comer lists performing incredibly well and others which represent clearly thought-out plans carried out.

Take a look at your lists and take a chance to reflect on whether you think the list fits you as a player (not just in the context of this but more generally too). You might find you’ve got a unit which you feel constantly underperforms even though you keep seeing it in top lists… maybe it doesn’t suit your play style.

You might realise like me that you’re a proactive player… do you have a plan for each battleplan or matchup? No, like me, that might leave you feeling bewildered and flustered at the tabletop. Sit down, think things through a bit. I made the decision to choose a plan before turn 1 starts and see it through… Trying to see what would happen and play reactively led to some pretty bad losses for me.

Of course, plans don’t always work and this is my army collapsing regardless of my good forethought

You’ll find of course that you probably lean into one aspect or the other. Something I’ve been looking at in the last weeks is to watch others playing (online or in person) and thinking about how what they do differs to how I play it and tring to think about whether their plays are proactive or reactive. In my own games, I’m then using that to give me a better idea of how they’re going to react to my moves.

I’ll end this section with a bit of a thought… I realise that I although I’m proactive, I certainly maintain certain reactive elements within my armies where I have units which can utilise their movement to start reacting in the later turns (that’s a strangely proactive thought). I’m not going to switch over to a completely reactive playstyle but I certainly do intend to work more problem solving elements into my decisions as I play. Maybe this will work… maybe not but as much as I do like to lean into my strengths, I also recognise I need to think about my weaknesses too.

Rounding things out

Is this crucial to being a better player? No, I don’t think so… but it can help. As with many of these topics of diving deeper into how we think about how we play, similar effects can be achieved organically. You might choose to play your reps, shuffle your list, change how you react and slowly come to more or less the same conclusion as you would by thinking things through in advance. You may just use your gut feel and come to exactly the same point too.

Either which way, I hope this gives you some food for thought… maybe like me you’ve thought of yourself as one or the other but now see things a little differently. Maybe you’ve never thought about it before. Let me know here in the comments or jump on Discord… I’m always keen to hear other viewpoints and then I’ve got the chance to learn more too.

Fingers crossed, this gets you an extra Win where you might have had a loss out there. Get out there and get those Ws!

4th Edition, Age of Sigmar, Chaos, Competitive, Death, Fittsy, Nighthaunt, Order, Skaventide, Slaves to Darkness, Stormcast Eternals, Tactics, Tournaments

Am I Getting Better? Insights from My Latest AoS Tournament

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Am I getting better after my aim to improve my AoS skills? Maybe a bit… this time I’ve got another recap of the last RTT I’ve been to Wesersturm V. It’s the one I organise with Luca, Dirk, and Janis who have done an amazing job making these tournaments better and growing it up to enough stuff to fill up 24 spots. I took my Nighthaunt again (of course) and went into the probably not unexpected Stormcast, StD, and Skaven. These three armies make up a lot of the meta locally (Seraphon are on the rise too) and being able to play against them is important for getting those Ws at tournaments. After going back and forth over different list compositions, I’ve stuck with what’s working for me at the moment. It’s designed with answers to all three of these armies… which means so long as I can stick to the plan and focus on scoring my point I’ve good a good chance into each of these armies. Also, winning a bloody priority once in a while would be really bloody helpful!

I’m trying to think more about my games so I’ll also try to comment on what went well or poorly for me and the same for my opponent from my perspective (which might differ from theirs).

The tournament itself

Good Stuff

Quick shout-out to our 2 sponsors this time round:

Kutami – the LFGS who aren’t just an LFGS anymore and have become one of the biggest stores in Europe. They are really quick to respond and help out this doofus who seems to mess up one in three orders. Also, on the day, they helped me to make sure I could get in my order for the terrain.

Micro Art Studio – I mentioned these guys last time… and here they are again supporting us time after time with sponsorship. Also, they make an awesome range of resin basing bits which I’ve used on some of my projects.

The venue is just awesome, table height is perfect and this time, the staff at the store moved the tables so that we could have an additional avenue between them to make it easier to move around the table and just to feel like we had a bit more space.

I think we’re in a good place for terrain now, thanks to the local player who lets us borrow quite a bit but also thanks to Luca and Janis who’ve been working on making sure we have good sized “woods” for all the boards by cutting up neoprene mats 😀 Sounds crazy but it turned out to be the best value way for us to get what we wanted.

The orga staff are a fantastic bunch… I mean the other 3 who did most of the work to prep the event. They’re friendly and always working hard to improve the tournaments.

Great Stuff

So many local players! This time, we had an awesome turn out from the locals with 9 registered from in and around Bremen including a couple of new players which we love to see.

On the day it was an awesome vibe, just a fucking lovely bunch of people. Sounds like a small thing but we noticed and it made the day feel even better.

Bad stuff

It’s not like it gets proper hot in Bremen but with the humidity a warm day and a bit of sun, it got pretty hot for the 2nd game.

The venue doesn’t have enough chairs for everyone… so it’s something we’re working on… now we have more chairs but we expanded the event up to 24 people, oops! Can’t win it all but we can keep trying to get more chairs 😊

I had a fantastic night the night before so unfortunately I was incredibly hungover! So bad that I was fumbling my dice sometimes… which meant that to be fair to my opponent I would take out the ones I knocked over and couldn’t tell the result of from before. That coupled with running late and having trouble to park the car meant I rocked up in a bit of a sorry state but more on that in a moment.

My List

Still running my Hexwraith/Grimghast focussed list. The special sauce here is Lady Olynder… I know everyone thinks she is there to bring models back once per game… but she’s really there for her spell… I joke because I can’t seem to manage to get the spell cast! -3 to Control is winning me games consistently and winning them for me with a better points margin. The combination of her and the bodies to push opponents off or block up objectives is something this list can do well and helps me out in matchups where I might struggle otherwise. The combo of Hexwraiths and Grimghasts is to give me that extra slap into infantry units whilst having hte super flexible Hexwraiths to be wherever my opponent doesn’t want especially with the run/retreat and charge from Death Stalkers.

Ethereal 65 1990/2000 pts

Nighthaunt | Death Stalkers
Drops: 2
Manifestation Lore – Primal Energy

General’s Regiment
Lady Olynder, Mortarch of Grief (310)
• General
Cairn Wraith (130)
• Lightshard of the Harvest Moon
Grimghast Reapers (300)
• Reinforced
Hexwraiths (400)
• Reinforced
Hexwraiths (400)
• Reinforced

Regiment 1
Krulghast Cruciator (150)
• Ruler of the Spectral Hosts
Grimghast Reapers (300)
• Reinforced


Created with Warhammer Age of Sigmar: The App
App: 1.12.0 | Data: 259

Game 1 – Benjamin with Skaven or is it StD on Border War

Mixed Chaos Relay 1990/2000 pts
—–
Grand Alliance Chaos | Skaven | Warpcog Convocation
Drops: 2
Spell Lore – Lore of Ruin
Manifestation Lore – Primal Energy
—–
General’s Regiment
Verminlord Deceiver (410)
• General
• Foulhide
• Scurry Away
Clanrats (300)
• Reinforced
Doom-Flayers (260)
• Reinforced
Ratling Guns (170)
Warplock Jezzails (280)
• Reinforced
—–
Regiments of Renown
Lord Skaldior’s Chosen (570)
Chaos Knights
Chaos Lord on Daemonic Mount
Chaos Warriors
—–
Faction Terrain
Gnawhole
—–
Created with Warhammer Age of Sigmar: The App
App: v1.12.0 (1) | Data: v259

A really lovely opponent who offered to speak English with me when he recognised that I was stressed and brought that up with me in a really respectful and tactful way. This made all the difference at the start where I’d turned up a bit frazzled.

It was an interesting puzzle with the Skaldior RoR and I knew that they were going to be the problem I would need to solve to get to a good win here as I’m pretty familiar with how to deal with Skaven with my Nighthaunt.

This is a prety standard deployment for me when I’m not in threat of being charged and want to control the flanks with my Hexwraiths

I gave him first turn and he moved up going for Take the Flanks but decided to throw the battle tactic when he rolled up a good charge to get into one of my units of Hexwraiths. I had a relatively easy Do Not Waver (which I often like to take early when the risk is low to lose a unit) and was able to just tag the Jezzails with a good charge from the Grimghasts.

The Warriors had parked themselves on the home objective. On one flank, I needed to hold the chaos knights up and my Hexwraiths did a great job of that… slowly whittling them down (except for 1 round where his Knights did zero damage and my 9 Hexwraiths also failed to do any).

Turn 2, with most of his army already tied up and Lady O giving me the advantage to take a side objective, I was able to already hurt his scoring and mobility for future scoring. Here, he also retreated then gnawholed his jezzails away forgetting that they wouldn’t be able to shoot afterwards. I then pivoted away from the right flank where I had thought I would more quickly take some units down and jumped on the Warriors with everything I could to take them down, get myself Take Their Land and his home objective.

No more warriors on that back objective was a clear win condition for me… almost 40 Grimghasts with +1 attack from the Cairn Wraith and +1 from Lightshart is really nice. Here’s Lady O just happily sitting there reducing control!

From there on… it was pretty clear that I held a significant lead and could control the board state from then out. But then he pulled off a fucking star play with his Deceiver… I made sure he couldn’t deny me holding his objective very carefully and then he casually teleported over, stopped my attack on two fronts and scored another 5 pts for objectives in the next round. Nice work mate!

He made a few mistakes which I could capitalise on and push for a good win… but based not just off that recognition of the opportunity but also that he could see errors as he made them (without me pointing things out), Benjamin is going to be a force to be reckoned with at tournaments in the future!

Result: Big first W for the day

Game 2 – Christian with SCE on Jaws of Gallet

Army – Stormcast Eternals
Subfaction – Vanguard Wing
Drops – 2

Bongstrikes – 1990 / 2000

General’s Regiment – 1510 pts.

Karazai the Scarred – General 480 pts.

Aetherwings 80 pts.

Preators 150 pts.

Vanguard-Raptors with Longstrike Crossbows – Reinforced 400 pts.

Vanguard-Raptors with Longstrike Crossbows – Reinforced 400 pts.

Regiment I – 480 pts.

Knight-Arcanum – Mirrorshield & Envoy of the Heavens 120 pts.

Stormstrike Chariot 140 pts.

Vanquisher – Reinforced 220 pts.

Faction Terrain – Stormreach Portal – 0 pts.

Spell Lore Lore of the Storm

Prayer Lore /

Manifestation Lore Krondspine Incarnate

This is a relatively good matchup for me and I’m happy to play into Stormcast Longstrikes as I can tank the shots and I’m mobile enough to catch them. I do have to be careful of Karazai bogging me down and stopping me from taking out the other units.

The deplozment zones in Jaws results in some strange looking deployment but I like to take the chance to get a unit of Hexwraiths off on their own to start controlling more objectives if I’m not shooting for the underdog bonus

I got given first so I took my chance on one flank to get rid of the chariot and start removing scoring options whilst pushing up towards the centre to take an easy battle tactic. I used the good trick of tagging the unit of Vanquishers with my Hexwraiths to allow myself to push up past the centre and to avoid the risk of a countercharge to make sure I can score the battle tactic. He dropped the Longstrikes in and whittled down a few of my units. Then he charges in with Karazai into my Hexwraiths which I’d left to screen out my other units so that they’d be free-ish to choose targets in the next turn.

This gave me a very good opening for my turn 2 where I could go and wipe a lot of his units leaving Karazai with the middle objective but few other units left across the board.

This is at the start of my turn 2. Those Hexwraiths at the top of the image are going to retreat and charge into the Longstrikes in the back while the Grimghasts in the middle go up to clean the Vanquishers up

He took a double going into Round 3 as it looked like his last chance to score which I think was the right call there. I mopped up some annoying aetherwings with my endless spells in the back corner leaving my other units free to go where they were needed. I went in for Karazai to finish off the game but failed to really damage the damn praetors! And then, my Grimghasts spiked and he rolled really shitty saves and Karazai was gone. After this, the board was more or less wiped of Stormcast and we talked out the last two rounds.

I think this ghost is giving me the finger but happily… I don’t know but it was a happy little surprise at the end of that turn 2

My opponent expected much more damage from the Longstrikes and Karazai against NH which made it a tougher game for him. He also had some pretty terrible luck on saves a couple of times.

Result: Win 2 for the day… and perking up a little bit after the night before after a couple of burgers

Game 3 – Bjorn again! This time rocking a really cool StD List on Better Part of Valour

HH Major 1990/2000 pts

Slaves to Darkness | Godswrath Warband
Drops: 2
Spell Lore – Lore of the Damned
Manifestation Lore – Primal Energy

General’s Regiment
Be’lakor, the Dark Master (460)
• General
Chaos Chariot (80)
• 1x Chaos War-flail
Ogroid Myrmidon (130)
Ogroid Theridons (360)
• Reinforced

Regiment 1
Daemon Prince (270)
• Radiance of Dark Glory
• The Conqueror’s Crown
• 1x Wings
• 1x Pledged to Nurgle
Chaos Warriors (200)
Ogroid Myrmidon (130)
Ogroid Theridons (360)
• Reinforced
• The Banner of Screaming Flesh

Faction Terrain
Nexus Chaotica


Created with Warhammer Age of Sigmar: The App
App: 1.12.0 | Data: 259

This was a great surprise! Bjorn had done pretty well in the first two rounds and so we met on the top table. Bjorn is a great guy and a pleasure to play against every time… you will have seen me refer to him from the last two tournament reports from Hamburg and Bremen. He always puts hard decisions in front of me and is a solid player.

I’m counted among very few Nighthaunt Players who enjoy seeing Slaves on the other side of the table. I’ve played against them quite a bit now and have a pretty good idea of what I need to do to get to a win. The two units of Grimghasts are key there to wiping out the strong infantry that a lot of StD lists are bringing. Compared to the Chosen matchup which I know pretty well now and am confident to handle, this list gave me a bit more uncertainty about how I would face it.

I deployed pretty heavily over on one side with the plan to work at killing a 3rd of his army whilst being Dork Mastered before turning to attack the rest. I was pretty sure he was going to Belakor me turn 1 so I had to deploy with either my turn or his turn in mind to give him a number of threats which was the two Grimghast and a unit of Hexwraiths up on the line. Which was great except I had deployed my other Hexwraiths too far forward and he nearly wiped them with a unit of the Theridons when he surprised me by taking first turn.

I slow dropped and pretty heavily focussed on that right flank where the Daemon Prince was as I didn’t want it slapping things around later in the game

Despite that I knew I had to stick to my gameplan and start chewing up his army, so after having my Hexwraiths Dork Mastered, I sent all my Grimghasts and the Cairn Wraith up to try and clear a flank in a bit of a risky manoeuvre for a Do Not Waver. I took the strange choice here to run and charge my Cairn Wraith to make sure I was getting the extra attacks on the Grimghasts and then proceeded to get all 3 units in killing everything except for leaving the Daemon Prince with 2 health left.

After losing 26 wounds, a good rally and a lifeswarm made those Hexwraiths look a lot better but they’re actually positioned poorly. Right Flank looking pretty good after that turn though.

Then came the next turn for Bjorn where he took a pretty safe Take Their Lands. I then managed to shoot off that Nurgle Daemon Prince with Lady Os covering fire 😀 But… then Belakor got a nice charge off, flew over my screen and took his revenge by one shotting Lady O with 11 damage going through! This really hurt in terms of winning big although I could still see how to push the game in my favour, losing her before returning the d3+3 health worth of models to each of my big units is always a bummer. I recognised this trigger and made sure I focussed on what I could do with what I had. I used the Dominant buff from the Grimghasts up on the corner objective to slowly chew through the warriors but in the next turn then lost my Cairn Wraith to give Bjorn a Slay the Entourage. In order to deny battle tactics, I focussed on tagging what I could and slowly chewing through the remaining Theridons, Myrmidon and the chariot back in my deployment zone.

I more or less left Belakor alone and really focussed on ensuring I would have the board control and objectives for the last two turns. With a couple of easy battle tactics letting me full score turns 3-5.

Those Grimghasts are all alive… last turn of the last game… just showing where they’d be I can get a bit lazy

I expected too little from his own units and was surprised by almost losing that unit of Hexwraiths in the first turn and then with a bit of bad luck losing Lady O (which was really just because of bad screening giving Belakor a unit to hop over into combat with her). Bjorn played a good game looking for his outs to win in what is a tough matchup for him.

Result: a bloody lovely game with a lovely opponent to end the tournament on and taking the 3rd win for me!

How was the day

Couldn’t win a prio for the life of me across all three games, got it once and had to give it to the opponent anyway.

I was forgetting things, especially my Kruciator ignoring a damage each phase but I was using my OPBs early to start pushing an early lead for models on the board. I even completely forgot to move my Kruciator one turn in the last game.

But… I did a really good job on watching my opponents, keeping a board state overview, and pushing for the win and for points.

3 wins and good points across all 3 games resulted in me winning a tournament… which I’ll recognise is a bit of a dick move but with 4 of us in the orga team and with 2-3 normally playing it was bound to happen eventually and I’m really proud of my win. I put the prize back in the prize pool for someone else to draw instead and went home with a happy little golden trophy.

Am I getting better already?

Am I getting better? Yes, I’ve improved in a few areas. Focussing on trying to get my wins alone is helping me to play better. I’m more concentrated on scoring points and instead of just playing things out once I’ve got it in the bag, I keep pushing to deny my opponent and score big in my turns.

I’ll be off to another tournament on the weekend taking this list out for probably its last run at a tournament before the new GHB so I’ll be looking to try and utilise the experience with this list so far and see how I can go. Maybe this time, I’ll try and take it easy the night before!

P.S. I’m trying to get better at writing these mini batreps because it’s something I personally like to read so I’ve incorporated a bunch of feedback already. If there’s something that people feel like is missing or would like to have differently, please do let me know (nicely 😉). Oh but if you want it shorter or less rambling… tough cookies!

4th Edition, Age of Sigmar, Competitive, Fittsy, Games Workshop

Scourge of Ghyran – Hot or Not?

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So in the meantime, I’ve been active getting started with TTS, getting in another couple of games and prepping a little one dayer for this weekend. In the meantime, GW have been busy too! They’ve announced a series of article leaking faction rule updates for the next General’s Hand Book one by one until the releease of the GHB (which we can guess we’ll see mid to end June on that basis but you never know for sure until they go up for pre-order). At time of writing, we’ve seen three articles, Skaven, Stormcast, and FEC, and they’ve already given us an impression for what we’re going to get for each of the factions. Every man and their dog with an AoS webpage and Podcast is covering this… so let’s jump on the bandwagon and draw our own wild conclusions!

I won’t go through these detail by detail but if you want to check out the rules released you can find them all here: https://www.warhammer-community.com/en-gb/downloads/warhammer-age-of-sigmar/

Scourge of Ghyran – What is it?

Here in our context, I’m referring to and talking about the additional rules for each faction. They’re new rules… and they’re free! Each faction update should be one page of new faction rules and one page of updated warscrolls.

The new faction rules that we’ve seen so far have been related to heroic traits, artefacts, monster traits, and probably most excitingly is new battle formations! We should see new spell lores for some factions. Apparently, these are focussed on aspects within the factions which aren’t working as GW wanted or aren’t seeing competitive play.

A wild mix of new artefacts for the Stormcast

The 2nd page of each update should be one or two new warscrolls. These are optional warscrolls which means that if you want to use the vanilla one, that’s fine too. The primary restriction here is you can’t mix and match but generally at least from the ones we’ve seen so far, they aren’t units that traditionally are taken en masse. We’ve already seen some pretty spicy abilities being thrown out there really changing the utility or strength of the warscrolls.

Updates like these could really help out some of these neglected heroes in a lot of the factions

This means that for everyone playing in the new GHB, we’re going to have a lot more options when building our lists! That’s pretty good news for all us list nerds!

What is it good for?

Well, obviously this is great news for list addicts. Competitive play will be shaken up quite a bit between the faction changes and the GHB changes dropping all at once. This means that for those of us playing a fair bit and looking for variation that’s what we’ll get (at least for a while until the meta settles again).

Changes of this scale across factions is going to be a bit of a shake-up for players not hitting the table as often. Understanding how other factions play is going to be a bit more confusing and it may discourage these more casual players from picking up these GHB rules (as we saw with some of the seasons in 3rd Edition).

Regardless of who you are… if you get a solid buff or a cool option of another way to play your army, that’s pretty nice. I can’t be the only who is waiting impatiently to see my armies rules drop!

It’s not absolutely nothing, huh?

Hot or Not?

Well… the first thing I expect to cause problems especially at the beginning is not being able to visually identify which warscroll a model has. So we’re going to have to remember what our opponent tells us at the beginning… ewwww. Over time, this will get better for sure but it’s going to stay a bit of a problem. Personally, I’ll be doing up some tokens to highlight when I use the Scourge of Ghyran warscrolls.

More choice! Good for a lot of us deep in the game. I hope this reinvigorates the list writing community to throw more wild lists out there into the meta (hats off to Jonas Ahm for going balls deep on the Pyregheists at Worlds by the way).

This is a chance to prop up some of the factions where things haven’t worked out as they were planned… this one feels a bit meh because GW don’t need massive rule changes to get this to happen and could be adjusted within the GHB seasons themselves… so a bit meh for me.

Battle formations are what get me most excited about these updates!

I’m most excited about opening up more playstyles, I think we saw this one the most from the FEC rules which looks like it may enable some Monster Mash lists which I honestly always like to see on the table. I do hope we see more variance in the competitive play but even if it gives me more options to base my lists around that’ll be a bonus for me.

Who am I fucking kidding? I’m excited! Give me more rules!

Fittsy: “HOT!”

Rereading my statement… it almost sounds like I’m just letting you all know that I’m pretty hot. A compliment is a compliment… I’ll take it even if it’s from myself!

But enough about me… what do you all reckon? Let us know here or join us on the Woehammer discord if you want to shoot more shit about all the changes and the massive shake-up this is going to cause. Let’s try something new and see what you all think! It’s POLLING time!

Loading poll ...

OK… it turns out the poll may or may not be working… maybe this old dog has not learnt a new trick this time. Maybe someone clever will figure it out soon and give me a hand to fix this up. Update: got it working for PC but not for mobile… I’ll see if I can figure things out for the next poll!

My Final Foughts

There will be hiccups. That’s for sure… we’ll probably see some factions shoot ahead early in the season and it may take a bit longer for GW to balance things out with the combination of more rules and dropping these and the season changes at the same time. I think there’s a positive that they’re putting different points on these alternative warscrolls so that will help take out one issue.

Will we see more list variance because of the new options and the playstyles being opened up a bit more within the factions? Will we see a shift away from unit spam? I’m not so sure… but I’m looking forward to find out!

4th Edition, Age of Sigmar, Competitive, Fittsy, Games Workshop, Tournaments

Getting Good at AoS

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I always talk the big talk that I think narrative is the way the game should be played. Well, stuff that, it’s time to get competitive. Realistically, almost most of our games are played in a “competitive-ish” fashion and I very rarely actually get around to a narrative game… at best, it’s probably 1 in 20. So I’ve decided to focus a bit on my competitive play and become more consistent. I was having a good run towards the end of 3rd and I haven’t yet found my groove in 4th yet. This’ll be a bit of a start of articles witha focus on competitive play in general and improving my own performance. But don’t worry too much, I’ll still be dropping my own brand of waffle from time to time and plenty of tournament reports.

Where I’m at

I see myself as a solid 3:2 player who’s able to surprise some opponents with tactical play with slightly off-beat lists. I’ve had some success but I’ve also had off days where I’ve just bombed. I’ve played in a fair few one dayers now at this point but just a couple of GTs and 1 teams event. My two best results have been a 4:1 for 3rd place at my first ever GT and helping get our team to 2nd place in our first ever Teams Tournament. At heart, I am a competitive person and I want to play better and more consistently. Consistency is a key word here… I sometimes just play a crappy game or lose my drive (and tactical overview) and just go through the movements. Now, I want to make that step to really focus on getting better.

Goals

Let’s try and keep this as simple as possible:

+ become a consistent 4:1 player with a shot at 5:0

In the mid-term, there are a few minor goals that I think will help me get towards that aim:

+ make less mistakes

+ be more consistent

+ be the best Australian AoS Player in Germany

+ get another 3-0 or two

Ok, the last one is jsut a gimme as I’m the only one on the tournament circuit… but I might be in trouble if another one turns up!

Now, I’m not expecting this to happen tomorrow (maybe it doesn’t even happen at all), so in the meantime, I’m going to keep my eyes out for iterative improvement as I go along.

If you kick it through the middle, you score a goal worth 6 points, otherwise it’s just 1 point. Aussie Rules is the best football. Ok, that was a stretch but this article is going to be pretty low on images otherwise!

The Path to Glory

I’d say I’m pretty in touch with the AoS community in general and I consume a fair amount of competitive podcasts, articles, and videos so I’m not inventing this out of thin air but just sort of collecting different recommendations here and reflecting on how I’m going to get towards those goals.

I’ll ravage your coast!… Alas, I need to stay focussed even if Path to Glory does sound fun, we’re here for the Path to Tournament Glory!

Getting in more games

This looks to be the most obvious way to get better… simply playing more. I had a bit of a slow start with the beginning of 4th as I was a bit distracted by Spearhead and getting my KO ready. Now, the focus will be on getting more games and with a pretty lively AoS community in Bremen at the moment, that should help!

Getting reps with my army / list

Is this the same as the previous point? Feels pretty much the same for me… as generally I stick to a list and play it over and over until I feel like I’ve mastered it. At the end of 3rd, I hit 40 reps with the same list which meant that a lot of playing with the army became second nature and this really helped me focus. For now, I’m going to stick with my Nighthaunt because there I have the biggest collection and that means I can focus a bit on playing rather than hobbying up a new army (or otherwise acquiring one).

Getting in games with other armies

So I’ve been looking at getting in some games with different armies, bringing my KO back out, digging my Skaven out from the bottom of the shelves, or even finishing off my Soulblight. I’ll probably dust off the KO if I can get a good day or two of painting in and finish up a new list to try out but I’m also chatting with some friends about swapping armies just to practice with different options. Really though, the easiest option for this is getting into TTS and just throwing different armies down on the virtual tabletop. So this is something I’ll be trying to learn and get some games in on and I’ll get back on how that goes.

Start looking at other armies

Hmmm…. those Soulblight are looking pretty interesting!

Don’t we all love to do this? I daydream a lot about playing other armies and I sit and write lists for all sorts of armies I don’t have and probably never will (OBR proxied with Tomb Kings… hmmmm). So yeah, this is a bit meta-chasey but I’m not too worried about that. I don’t want to jump armies every three months but would be happy to have some more options on my shelf at home (or to borrow from friends) so that I can switch over when I would be pushing the metaphorical boulder up the hill by sticking with Nighthaunt.

Heading into tournaments to win

So although I’ve talked about myself as being competitive and I try to win when I play… I still tend to gravitate towards wacky lists with my Nighthaunt (or my doomed pure Skryre Skaven army :D). So this one keys into some of the stuff above. It also links over to something I’ve focussed on in the past which was trying my best to give my opponent a good game. Now, I will shift that focus a little to try and get the best result out of each game (whilst still being a good opponent, don’t worry about that).

Changing my mindset about scoring

I’ve always tended to say that I play to win but I don’t care about the score… as I started to see top tables at the end of 3rd, I realised this was affecting my placings so this has to change. I mentioned it a little about changing my mindset going into tournaments… sometimes I would just ride out the game when I knew I had won without crushing my opponent. Now, I have already started to change this… prior to the teams torunament, I was trying to practice focussing on the score. This will help me in the placings but will also help in those close games where I might have been losing by a couple of points.

Coaching

Most of the stuff in this list is jsut thinking differently or playing more… well, this is the next big step. I’d always thought I’d rather put my hobby money into more models but I made the decision to join the the Onwards AoS Patreon which I’d been eyeing for quite a long time. I’ll go into the coaching in a later article covering whether I think it is worth it for me and what sort of difference it makes.

Baby steps

I ended up deciding to start down this road by thinking about what sort of player I am and what sort of player I want to be. By no means am I finished with this… I really do like my Nighthaunt and my wacky lists but if I really want to win then I’m going to have to start challenging that mindset. I definteily feel ready to chase those Ws.

Is the Chaser still a thing? I dunno… but they kepy coming into my mind when thinking about meta-chasing and chasing wins.

So I’ve fallen a bit for the idea of Gargants and their slightly easier play on the table so that I can focus on the tactics of the game and my opponents moves so I’m working on them as an army now as I teasered in one of my other articles.

Finally a relevant image 😀 Gotten a bit of a start on my little fellas including trying my hand at sculpting

I’ve started to learn my way around TTS and I’m going to try and get a first game in over the next week or two now.

I’ve got 2 one dayer tournaments locked in over the next month so we’ll see what that starts to look like and if I can start putting some of this into practice.

Will this work? I don’t know… but I hope I’ll be back to report on more success and if nothing else, maybe you can all learn something from my efforts 😉 Come chat on the Discord server if you’ve got any other tips for me!