This is the top three AoS lists for the Dazmaul Wargaming Tournament that took place in the UK on the 18th and 19th of March. It involved 29 players vying to be crowned champion in a 5-game tournament.
Before I jump into the Top Three AoS Lists, I wanted to remind everyone of our friendly Discord server where you can join in the conversation with the Woehammer crew and suggest articles or series for the website.
If you like what we’re doing, why not join our Patreon and help keep it going?
Also if there’s a one day or two day tournament you’d like us to cover drop us a comment on this post and we’ll have a look at it for you.
Leaders 1 x Necromancer (130)* – General – Command Trait: Pack Alpha – Artefact: Arcane Tome (Universal Artefact) – Lore of the Deathmages: Decrepify – Aspect of the Champion: Leadership of the Alpha 1 x Radukar the Beast (310)* 1 x Vampire Lord (140)* – Lore of the Vampires: Amethystine Pinions
Battleline 40 x Deadwalker Zombies (240)* – Reinforced x 1 40 x Deadwalker Zombies (240)* – Reinforced x 1 40 x Deadwalker Zombies (240)* – Reinforced x 1
Units 1 x Corpse Cart with Balefire Brazier (80)* 20 x Grave Guard (280)* – Great Wight Blades – Reinforced x 1
Behemoths Zombie Dragon (270)*
Core Battalions *Battle Regiment
I can’t in good faith make any more jokes about Soulblight rising back up, so I’ll just jump right into it.
What we’ve got here is a Vyrkos list that gleefully flips off the last season and screams ‘RIP BOUNTY HUNTERS’ while pushing 120 zombies up the board and, presumably, cackling gleefully. They’re all backed up by the usual buff pieces allowing them to get extra attack (Radukar, if he makes a charge) and fight twice (Necromancer, with danse macabre) – and remember they do MWs on 6s to hit and bring back models killed as zombies on a 2+. So it’s not like they can’t spike a few rolls and do a surprise bunch of mortals to whatever tries to chew through them or pull from the front and rally back up.
On top of that, they’re backed up by a Corpse Cart, which projects a -1 to wound aura, making those zombos even more infuriating to kill, and the pretty standard 20 Graveguard – who also make an excellent target for the hero buffs – who always have and still absolutely slap. A newly bargain-priced Zombie Dragon provides access to monstrous rampages and some nice targeted damage, while fitting neatly into the battle regiment!
5 wins for Soulblight at the moment is a great result, and it seems like loads and loads of meat is well and truly back on the menu, boys (and girls).
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Army Faction: Flesh-eater Courts – Army Subfaction: Hollowmourne – Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs – Triumphs: Inspired
LEADER 1 x Abhorrant Ghoul King on Royal Terrorgheist (450) – Spells: Flaming Weapon 1 x Abhorrant Ghoul King on Royal Terrorgheist (450)* – General – Command Traits: Grave Robber – Artefacts: Corpsefane Gauntlet – Mount Traits: Gruesome Bite – Spells: Spectral Host 1 x Abhorrant Archregent (240)* – Artefacts: The Dermal Robe – Spells: Deranged Transformation – Aspects of the Champion: Tunnel Master 1 x Abhorrant Ghoul King (170)* – Spells: Blood Feast 1 x Varghulf Courtier (160)*
BATTLELINE 10 x Crypt Ghouls (80)** 6 x Crypt Horrors (220)** 6 x Crypt Horrors (220)**
Having just called a list with 9 x Flayers “the list” we’ve got one of the best variations. I say that because I played against a version of this a lot. 2 Dragons and 2 blocks of Crypt Horrors is a smart way to play the faction. It gives you more threats to push an opponent. You still have the ability to bring 9 x Crypt Flayers/Horrors (Flayers are probably better) on through summoning. You might have to do it earlier if the Terrorgheist are in combat though.
Still no Cogs, taking the risk that a spell will fail, and only one of the Crypt Horror units will have all of the buffs. The 6 strong units are a risk as well, against a Rend -2 attack even with a 5+ ward (and only one should have it), it’s only 36 effective wounds. A block of fulminators can overcome that on the charge easily. Still, they have fight twice near one of the Dragons on top of rerolls to hit. And additional attacks – they are very nasty threat.
Tunnel Master on the Archregent is surprisingly useful. He can grab an unattended objective easily and then summon friends. But just as easily, it lets him stay within range of either the dragons or Crypt Horrors. Lots of mobility and stacks of board control, it’s a very effective way to control your opponents’ scoring opportunities and really terrify them.
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Army Faction: Gloomspite Gitz – Subfaction: Jaws of Mork – Grand Strategy: Chasing the Moon – Triumph: Indomitable
LEADERS 1 x Skragrott, the Loonking (160)** – Spells: The Hand of Gork 1 x Squigboss (80)** – Artefacts of Power: Gryph-feather Charm 1 x Squigboss (80)** 1 x Grinkrak the Great (190)*** 1 x Fungoid Cave-Shaman (90)*** – General – Command Traits: The Clammy Hand – Artefacts of Power: Moonface Mommet – Spells: The Hand of Gork – Aspects of the Champion: Tunnel Master
BATTLELINE 20 x Moonclan Shootas (125)* – Moonclan Boss – Bad Moon Icon Bearer – Gong Basher – 3 Barbed Nets 20 x Moonclan Shootas (125)* – Moonclan Boss – Bad Moon Icon Bearer – Gong Basher – 3 Barbed Nets 36 x Squig Herd (360)*** 36 x Squig Herd (360)***
OTHER 1 x Grinkrak’s Looncourt (190)* 1 x Marshcrawla Sloggoth (150)** 1 x Gobbapalooza (145)*** – Spells: Itchy Nuisance 6 x Sneaky Snufflers (110)***
Our latest boogey man (for all of a month and then more demons arrived this week). Simon was keen to see a horde on the table and took over 100 models. Beyond that, though there is so much going on, it’s hard to know where to start. We’ve got a couple of sources of Hand of Gork (for teleports), and Grinkrak’s Looncourt can teleport themselves (if you don’t want the bodyguard). Fungoid Cave Shaman as General? Not sure I’ve seen that before, he’s a sneaky Tunnel Master as well, not sure you’d want to use that too early but he has a nasty Mortal Wound spell with a range of only 6″.
Squigboss’s for both Squigg units, of course, Skragrott (is he mandatory, certainly see him a lot) and a Sloggoth for monster action. The point, of course, is the heroes buff the Squiga (or Shootas), and you let loose the Squig’s. Individually, it’s not really an issue. The 30 Squiggs (and 6 herders) in each of the Squigg herds can hit, from the charge, 120 times. And if you kill some on the crack back, they do a mortal as they flee. With a 3 for bravery, there is a lot of fleeing. Their version of rally is once a game (2+ from each Squigherd) and kills the squiherd but unless you can clear the unit in a turn (difficult) you’ve probably got 2 turns of this from each unit.
That’s the name of the game for the squig build. Wear your opponent down in rounds 1 through 3 and then crack back. With the heroes handing out ‘shrooms granting wards or bonuses to the Shoota (only target) and the Sloggoth giving +1 to hit the Shootas start to be an issue. Sloggoth’s affect is an aura and will apply in any phase – charging the Shootas will be painful. Goes first, winds the squiggs up and unleashes them into your key units. Goes 2nd, hold the squiggs back at let’s the Shootas blunt your attack. If you try to hide, then the Shootas can even be teleported to punish you. If you injure them but don’t clear the unit, it can be rallied 3 times. If you do kill it, there is a 50% chance of them returning via the moon shrine.
I’ve only scratched the surface, but despite weak looking warscrolls, this is a very competitive army. 140+ wounds that can have multiple models or units returned is bad. Their overwhelming you with buckets of dice, which is worse. It’s probably a bit cheap with a lot of sources of mortal wounds. It’s an army that you have to try to outlast or watch them run away with things in the turn 4 and 5. Losing to Flesh Eater courts probably reflects the amount of damage even 3 Crypt Flayers (or 6 Crypt Horrors) can do with buffs and fight twice. They can kill anything in this list in a turn. Otherwise, more elite armies will struggle.
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Allegiance: Big Waaagh! – Grand Strategy: Waaagh! – Triumphs:
Leaders 1 x Gordrakk the Fist of Gork (500)* 1 x Orruk Warchanter (120)* – Warbeat: Get ‘Em Beat 1 x Orruk Warchanter (120)* – Artefact: Arcane Tome (Universal Artefact) – Warbeat: Fixin’ Beat – Lore of the Weird: Da Great Big Green Hand of Gork 1 x Gobsprakk, The Mouth of Mork (260)** 1 x Orruk Megaboss (140)** – General – Command Trait: Skilled Leader – Artefact: Gryph-feather Charm (Galletian Champion) – Aspect of the Champion: Tunnel Master 1 x Wurrgog Prophet (170)** – Artefact: Glowin’ Tattooz – Universal Spell Lore: Ghost-mist
Battleline 10 x Orruk Brutes (300)*** – Jagged Gore-hackas – Reinforced x 1 5 x Orruk Brutes (150)*** – Pair of Brute Choppas 5 x Orruk Ardboys (80)*** 5 x Orruk Ardboys (80)* 5 x Orruk Ardboys (80)**
Tom & I spent much of late 2021 and 2022 battling each other for top Ironjawz and top Big Waaagh in the UK… and whilst he always beat me, my fun run last year got me the Big Waaagh title…! Woot. Since then Big Waaagh has suffered with the new General’s Handbooks and it’s great to see Tom bucking the trend with a 4-1 result (and top table game 5 match.
Tom’s taken a mostly traditional Big Waagh list with Ironjawz as the base, but he’s gone with Gordrakk and Gobsprakk. Two big flying models in the era of Gallatian Champions is a brave decision but it does allow Tom to stop spells with Gobsprakk and kill characters with Gordrakk.
It’s a great call to bring a model that can cause mortal wounds to Galatian Champions and has the reach to get them. Being able to avoid shooting doesn’t help when a Maw Krusha gets within 1″.
The rest of the army is standard Big Waaagh… but I like all the pieces and it’s made me consider actually painting my Gobsprakk – so a great double result. Well done Tom!
This is the top three AoS lists for Sparkle Party Deathmatch VIII that took place in the USA on the 11th and 12th of March. It involved 52 players vying to be crowned champion in a 5-game tournament.
Before I jump into the Top Three AoS Lists, I wanted to remind everyone of our friendly Discord server where you can join in the conversation with the Woehammer crew and suggest articles or series for the website.
If you like what we’re doing, why not join our Patreon and help keep it going?
Also if there’s a one day or two day tournament you’d like us to cover drop us a comment on this post and we’ll have a look at it for you.
The Top Three AoS Lists
Allegiance: Soulblight Gravelords – Lineage: Legion of Blood – Grand Strategy: Vampiric Conquerors – Triumphs: Bloodthirsty
Leaders Neferata, Mortarch of Blood (350)* – Lore of the Deathmages: Fading Vigour Vampire Lord (140)** – General – Command Trait: Master of Magic – Artefact: Arcane Tome (Universal Artefact) – Expertise: Arcane – Universal Spell Lore: Levitate – Aspect of the Champion: Tunnel Master Lauka Vai, Mother of Nightmares (280)*** – Lore of the Vampires: Spirit Gale
Battleline 5 x Black Knights (100)*** 5 x Black Knights (100)*** 10 x Deathrattle Skeletons (80)* 10 x Deathrattle Skeletons (80)*
Units 10 x Blood Knights (400)*** – Reinforced x 1 20 x Grave Guard (280)** – Great Wight Blades – Reinforced x 1 1 x Corpse Cart with Unholy Lodestone (80)*
Some of our readers may remember that we interviewed Jeremy Veysseire some time ago on General Speaking. We reached out once more, and ever the gentleman, Jeremy agreed to give us a rundown of his list.
Jeremy Veysseire: The important thing about the Legion of Blood army I played at Sparkle Death party is that it was designed originally roughly 1 year ago to counter the hyper aggressive meta that was around Maggotkin Flies, Dragons and Ironjawz through the following important mechanics of Neferata’s spell allowing a unit of mine to ignore negative modifiers to saves (aka REND) for either Neferata and the Blood Knights on a 3+ save platform making them easily 2+ save during the crucial fights and the minus 1 to hit Aura from Neferata’s Command Ability, the reduction in attacks to 1 unit with the book spell. The additional mechanics that were more of a bonus such as the Bravery Reduction, the additional models fleeing and the Horrorghast combo really punished in some cases Dragons and the flies themselves since my army does not do straight raw damage per say but more of this “I will kill you by a thousand slow cuts while you scream for the hills.”
So we fast forward to Spark Death Party, why bring this army since the meta has evolved so much since then? Well, I wanted to see if the combo was a good counter to Gitz, Slaves and Mawtribes, which all fit those hyper aggressive archetypes. The difference being that all of those armies have abilities to deal out a lot more MW consistently than the previous meta (yes, even more than dragons) and still punch very hard. I made some tweaks by incorporating Lauka Vai and the Corpse Cart for the +1 to cast aura, hoping that in some games I could get Lauka Vai’s spell off allowing me to really control how my opponent could choose the engagement and the additional thought process was if the Gitz armies went deep in Squig Herd since they can’t reroll charges, it could potentially stop them when they want to charge.
Now lets cover some of the additional combos in the list that are less obvious, Levitating Blood Knights to always be able to move any enemy units when they retreat and plant themselves easily where they want while removing terrain to clunk them up. Making the Grave Guards Sworn protectors allows me the ability to do another Battle Tactic “A Matter of Honor” with them and just in the off chance I can get them to activate in the Hero Phase with the Vampire Lord. Lauka Vai’s MW on the Charge really allows me to sometimes get Neferata out of combat or lets me remove a GC consistently with her as she can be kind of a surgical strike unit and she provides the Blood Knights coverage if Neferata fails to cast her spell.
At the event itself, I played in order into FEC, Fyreslayers, Mawtribes, Gitz, Cities of Sigmar. My first 4 matchups were exactly the type of army I wanted to face, aggressive melee armies and man oh man did the combo work. Some highlights, keep Gotrek debuffed with less attacks and half charges while the army picked up everything else around him, into Mawtribes watching Stonehorn hit on 5’s with Neferata’s minus 1 to hit, into Gitz watching BK just absolutely lock units up and the Black Knights blocking avenues up the board. Neferata slayed a Terrorgheist, a Phoenix, a Grimwrath, and terrified the Heroes on Stonehorn with her dagger. The army obviously got to play the type of armies it was designed to fight into and it did incredibly well due mostly to its ability to keep my opponent’s army locked away and debuffed as I cut him ever so slightly to drain him of his life essence like perhaps…a Vampire. But honestly, all it took was probably a non Static shooting army like KO or Seraphon to just ruin my day. What a great last ride for this army before the new battletome.
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Army Faction: Stormcast Eternals – Army Type: Scions of the Storm – Army Subfaction: Hammers of Sigmar – Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs – Holy Command: Thunderbolt Volley – Triumphs: Inspired
LEADER 1 x Lord-Castellant (160)* – Artefacts: Quicksilver Draught – Aspects of the Champion: Tunnel Master 1 x Lord-Relictor (150)*** – General – Command Traits: High Priest – Prayers: Translocation 1 x Battlemage (100)**** – Ally – Realm: Ghur
BATTLELINE 5 x Judicators with Boltstorm Crossbows (190)** – Judicator-Prime – Thunderbolt Crossbow 5 x Judicators with Boltstorm Crossbows (190)** – Judicator-Prime – Thunderbolt Crossbow 2 x Dracothian Guard Fulminators (240)**** 5 x Drakespawn Knights (110)**** – Dread Knight – Standard Bearer – Hornblower
OTHER 10 x Protectors (440)* – Protector-Prime – 4 x Starsoul Mace 3 x Vanguard-Raptors with Longstrike Crossbows (240)** – Raptor-Prime 1 x Stormstrike Chariot (170)*** – Stormstrike Axe and Tempestuous Spear
Total Points: 1990/2000 Total Drops: 10 Total Units: 10 Total Wounds: 109
Through our friends at Stormkeep, we were able to reach out to Stark and ask if he’d give us a rundown of his list. Thanks again, Stark, for the comments, I’m sure we’ll be hearing from you again in the future!
Stark Pister: This list is a natural evolution of my HaXbows list from last season, with which I topped out at 4-1. Last season I played 15 Judicators + 3 Longstrikes in a 3 drop with double chariot bounty hunters and so this list pulls back on the shooting and chariots for a more durable anvil/hammer in the block of 10 protectors to fit the more midboard grind battleplans of this season.
In my opinion the strongest Stormcast lists tend to be mixed arms builds with durable screens protecting efficient shooting and high damage melee hammers to riposte threats that try to get through the screens to threaten the shooting, all supported by minimal characters since our faction synergies tend to be minimal. I tend to build my tournament lists with this a general philosophy as the balanced nature allows the flexibility to deal with most types of opponents. In a similar vein, I try to have units with diverse types of damage to have the tools to minimize polarized matches. I find Stormcast’s incredibly deep roster tends to provide the options to really customize what you want available in any given meta.
This new season presents a lot of opportunities and a lot of challenges for Stormcast lists. Fortunately, our main minimal support characters are all GCs (except Gardus). One of our big strengths is the ability to snipe out small enemy buff heros and now that is even better with enemy GC’s being critical for half the non-book tactics and several battle plans, incentizing use of the Sharpshooter battalion. However, they balanced sharpshooters well by forcing it to be 3 required units so you can’t be very low drop. High drops can be problematic for shooting armies because an early double can allow melee to close the gap and for opposing shooting to gain the upper hand in output, so this needs to be compensated for somehow. Longstrikes make the perfect GC hunters, and with scions, translocate, and Thunderbolt volley, they provide very flexible turn one threat that helps offset those high drops. The added threat of the Judicators forces conservative screening of heros while they efficiently clear those screens from a safe distance.
The Gallatian Command battalion provides the opportunity for a very strong combo in Stormcast when used alongside a Galatian Champion with the Quicksilver Draught and the new Tunnel Master makes it easy to set up even with a hero like the Castellant who wants to be on the board in the hero phase for his ability. More importantly, it allows the combo to be down at the start of the game as part of your initial deployment castle, and with the help of the Relictor, it can be anywhere it needs to be on turn one. This allows you to defend from alpha strike armies that choose to go first against you (or the rare person you outdrop), while being able to get them buffed and into the optimal position when given top of one. Lord Castellant is the perfect hero for this job not just because of his ability to buff them to a 1+ save but critically because he has a 40mm Gryph Hound that enables the whole 10 block to fit within the 2.5″ bubble to allow them to strike first with him when someone charges them. This provides a HUGE deterrent to hitting your midbaord castle from the front and specifically acts as protection of your main melee hammer against the double turn.
The Ghur Battlemage helps make up for the paladin speed issues in the mid game and pairs well with the Relictor for melee units in general throughout. I often lead with Mystic shield on one of the screens to help with weathering the potential double as well, before flipping to wildform to go on the offensive. He also provides the bare minimum magic defense, which coupled with heroic willpower and the relictor Dispel at least let you disrupt the low hanging fruit.
The efficient battleline slots provide the opportunity to pick up an all-star screen in the Drakespawn Knights, who pair well with the Chariot to safely claim objectives and pin large threats until their buffs are down. The Chariot even has vanguard battalion to reroll its first charge outside of hero range. Because the battleline are the riposte and ranged units, they can easily stay back to protect heros from shooting for a while.
Another critical consideration this season has been the battle tactics. The teleporting GC lineup and Sworn Bodyguard paladins make most of the new ones achievable with some planning, though This One’s Mine is rarely an option. Hammerstrike Assault and Draconith Desctruction can be good backup options, albeit riskier that come in handy against armies where killing the one thing needs to be your focus anyway. The spicy Drakespawn pick can even sneak a late game Pioneers of the Realms.
Shoutouts to my mentor Matt Beasley for helping refine the list and forcing me to get reps in (and for lending the Drakespawn), to my painting mentor Ricky Fischer whose squigs I beat in round 5 to finish the tournament, and to the whole of Dimensional Cascade. Special thanks to my partner Larc for the unending support of my unbelievably-high-time-commitment hobbies.
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Army Faction: Slaves to Darkness – Army Subfaction: Knights of the Empty Throne – Grand Strategy: Follow the Path to Glory – Triumphs: Bloodthirsty
LEADER 1 x Be’lakor (355) – Spells: Binding Damnation 1 x Chaos Sorcerer Lord on Manticore (265)* – General – Command Traits: Master of Magic – Artefacts: Arcane Tome – Spells: Daemonic Speed – Mark of Chaos: Undivided 1 x Chaos Sorcerer Lord (120)* – Spells: Chaotic Conduit – Mark of Chaos: Undivided – Leadership of the alpha 1 x Exalted Hero of Chaos (100)* – Rune-etched Blade and Chaos Runeshield – Mark of Chaos: Undivided
BATTLELINE 3 x Varanguard (290)* – 3 x Daemonforged Blade – Mark of Chaos: Khorne 10 x Chaos Knights (460)* – Doom Knight – Standard Bearer – Hornblower – Cursed Lance – Ensorcelled Banner: The Eroding Icon – Mark of Chaos: Nurgle 5 x Chaos Knights (230)* – Doom Knight – Standard Bearer – Hornblower – Cursed Lance – Mark of Chaos: Khorne 10 x Splintered Fang (100)*
ENDLESS SPELL 1 x Umbral Spellportal (80)
CORE BATTALIONS: *Battle Regiment
TOTAL POINTS: (2000/2000)
Another notch on Be’lakor’s bedpost! If you’ve not met him on the table before, Be’lakor’s man schtick is being able to stop a key unit from doing stuff (on a 3+ each phase) until your next hero phase. He’s been hotly debated in (all 9) S2D player circles because, while he offers a great amount of short-term control, which potentially allows you varanguard/10 knights (as in this list) to do their work, it’s also entirely possible that you roll a few crucial 2s, and then you’ve basically paid 355 pts for a not very durable, not very killy and kinda fast hero.
He has been cropping up recently though, suggesting that, overall, he’s worth it for the time he buys the hammers to do their work. Ricky here has actually gone for KOTET, which will allow the two units of knights, the Varanguard, and the Sorcerer on Manticore to all make up plenty of ground by running and charging. Obviously, that’s going to allow a fair bit of early pressure, especially with daemonic power being cast on 3d6 with a re-roll by the Manticore Sorc, allowing one unit to charge with 3d6 as well. I imagine the spell-portal is also there to allow the Manticore’s warscroll spell – one of the few good offensive spells S2D has access to – to reach out across the board to soften stuff up.
Finally, we have an Exalted Hero, who is utterly garbage, but only 100 points, and I imagine it is mainly there for GC based scoring.
Taking down one of the two mirrors and also managing to chew through NH and a monster heavy Ogor list means this is a great result with a techy list from Ricky!
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Army Faction: Cities of Sigmar – Army Type: Hallowheart – Grand Strategy: The Day is Ours! – Triumphs: Inspired
LEADER 1 x Battlemage (100)* – General’s Adjutant – Spells: Roaming Wildfire, Ignite Weapons – Aspects of the Champion: Tunnel Master 1 x Freeguild General (100)* – General – Command Traits: Veteran of the Blazing Crusade 1 x Celestial Hurricanum with Celestial Battlemage (290)* – Spells: Ignite Weapons, Sear Wounds 1 x Anointed on Frostheart Phoenix (320)** – Artefacts: Arcane Tome – Spells: Sear Wounds, Flaming Weapon 1 x Lord-Arcanum (140)** – Spells: Warding Brand, Roaming Wildfire
BATTLELINE 20 x Freeguild Handgunners (200)* – Marksman – 2 x Standard Bearer – 2 x Piper – Long Rifle 20 x Freeguild Crossbowmen (200)* – General’s Retinue – Marksman – 2 x Standard Bearer – 2 x Piper 10 x Freeguild Crossbowmen (100)* – Standard Bearer – Marksman – Piper 10 x Flagellants (80)** – Prophet 10 x Freeguild Guard (80)** – Sergeant – Standard Bearer – Drummer – Freeguild Halberd 10 x Freeguild Guard (80)** – Sergeant – Drummer – Standard Bearer – Freeguild Halberd
Once you get one player comment, you can often get two or three from the connections those players have. That was the case here as well when Stark said he could reach out to Louis-Philippe for his comments.
Louis-Philippe: The Anointed on Frostheart Phoenix should only have Flaming Weapon (The mistake has been spot before start of the tourney and opponents were dully advise).
Game plan: First of all, AoS is a dice game. Luck is part of the game, but careful planning can sway the odds in your favour. …sometime 😛
Flagellants are there for the easy ‘’Sanctify’’ battle tactic T1 (White dwarf). Since I always let my opponent go first (I was lucky not to face a 1 drop), he usually doesn’t kill anything. So that was a free one turn 1. (Aside from game 4, where the battleplan didn’t favour that BT (Position Over Power). Fun fact, that was the only game my opponent concentrated on his resource to kill my flagellant on his T1.
This list has 4 (double, cause Hallowheart) casters, meaning an 8 cast hero phase T1. The Hallowheart command ability lets you take D6 mortals for the same amount in casting bonus. Meaning this list is usually casting at +1, if not +2 or +3, but could reach a whopping +9! and since all your spells are cast on 6s (aside Flaming weapon) unless your opponent is able to unbind, everything goes flying out. Fun fact (not so fun for my opponent): In my 4th round T1 hero phase, I was casting with a +5 from that command ability since my phoenix failed all his ward saves. Got to heal 3 wounds back with Sear Wounds though.
I mostly face Melee lists (Fireslayer, Skaven (night/gutterrunners), Nighthaunt, nurgles (beast), Soulbright Grave lord)
So, the plan was to deploy away from their charge range. For the skaven, I deployed my shooting units 3’’ aways from the front of my shaft unit, so his deepstriking rats only had my shaft to shoot at (and my Fulminators which they killed with mortals). He also charged my shaft with his deceiver (one of them failed the charge). His deceiver didn’t like mortals from magic bottom of 1 (and the other rats didn’t like my shooting).
As for the Soulbright, well Jeremy is impressive, tactics wise and had a bit of luck, he stole initiative T2, forcing me to move forward by burning my ‘’back’’ objective, and had Neferata do 1 wound (yes only 1 unsaved wound to my Phoenix, mind you it was the dagger that got through, Phoenix was at 11 health, he rolled a 5… pouf no more Phoenix).
Units : The goal was to use the Freeguild Guards and Flagellants as chaff around the Handgunners and Crossbowmen. My general and the battle mage from Ghur had to be close to each other for the adjutant rule and my general was in the middle of the range unit, providing +1+1 with his CP and a 18’’ wholly whiting immune to bravery. The Phoenix was there to act as tarpit and increase survivability (if there’s any) of the chaff unit since his -1 wound bubble affects any enemy unit within range. Fulminators are there to act as a menace, which they did great since most of my opponents were scared of them and diverted resource to deal with them. Finally, th Lord-Arcanum was there to :
Be an extra GV
Give 1 more (possibility of 2) HP to the fulminators
But mostly give 6’’ more movement range on the Quicksilver Swords, which make them a 20’’ threat range on cast (remember the casting bonuses I talked about earlier)
Battleplans : R1-Prize of Gallet R2-Ours for the taking R3-Only the Worthy R4-Position over power R5-Jaws of gallet.
Possible upgrade : Swap ‘’Tunnel Master’’ from the battlemage to the Lord-Arcanum.
This is the top three AoS lists for Silverstream Smackdown 2 that took place in New Zealand on the 11th and 12th of March. It involved 26 players vying to be crowned champion in a 5-game tournament.
Before I jump into the Top Three AoS Lists, I wanted to remind everyone of our friendly Discord server where you can join in the conversation with the Woehammer crew and suggest articles or series for the website.
If you like what we’re doing, why not join our Patreon and help keep it going?
Also if there’s a one day or two day tournament you’d like us to cover drop us a comment on this post and we’ll have a look at it for you.
The Top Three AoS Lists
Allegiance: Sylvaneth – Glade: Heartwood – Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs – Triumphs: Bloodthirsty
LEADERS Warsong Revenant (300)* – General – Command Trait: Spellsinger – Artefact: Arcane Tome – Lore of the Deepwood: The Dwellers Below Treelord Ancient (330)* – Lore of the Deepwood: Verdurous Harmony Arch-Revenant (120)* – Aspect of the Champion: Stubborn as a Rhinox
UNITS 6 x Kurnoth Hunters with Kurnoth Scythes (500)* 3 x Kurnoth Hunters with Kurnoth Greatbows (230)* 3 x Revenant Seekers (240)* 5 x Tree-Revenants (110)* 5 x Tree-Revenants (110)*
ENDLESS SPELLS & INVOCATIONS Spiteswarm Hive (40)
CORE BATTALIONS *Battle Regiment
TOTAL: 1980/2000
This solid list from Lee Wilmot is almost a who’s who of Sylvaneth mainstays. The TLA and WSR combination allows aggression from turn 1, using the free tree placement to enable maximum value Warsong bombs followed by either use of the new realmspell Teeth of Gallet, or Dwellers below for better value on horde units like Squigs or massed cultists. This hero combo works with the strike and fading Kurnoth hunters – buffed by the Spiteswarm Hive – and the revenant seekers to ensure the Sylvaneth hammer is kept healthy and outputting maximum damage while the bows sit on a back objective and pick off wounds, or soften up targets, at artillery ranges. Tree revenants sneak off to pick up objectives and provide shooting protection for the warsong and archrevenant, little scamps that they are.
This lists’ real value is in how few truly poor matchups it has, it is a one drop, can alpha decently and loves the double turn, can score 5/5 Battle tactics consistently and really gives opponents few opportunities to interact with the list on their own terms. Even against lists which push the sylvaneth for board space early, like KotET and BoC the Sylvaneth units are often durable enough to weather the early storm and punch out, or alternatively simply relocate key pieces to safer locations and return to playing the objective game. Well done to Lee on his piloting – 5 games of sylvaneth is quite exhausting and mistakes are heavily punished – he’s done excellently to manage the tournament win with a 4-1-0!
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Allegiance: Beasts of Chaos – Greatfray: Darkwalkers – Grand Strategy: Protect the Herdstone – Triumphs: Bloodthirsty
LEADERS Doombull (160)* – General – Command Trait: Bestial Cunning – Artefact: Brayblast Trumpet – Aspect of the Champion: Tunnel Master Great Bray-Shaman (95)* – Lore of the Twisted Wilds: Wild Rampage
UNITS 10 x Ungors (80)* – Mauls & Half-Shields 20 x Ungor Raiders (230)* 6 x Bullgors (390)* – Pairs of Axes 10 x Ungor Raiders (115)* 6 x Beasts of Chaos Tzaangor Enlightened on Discs of Tzeentch (430)*
BEHEMOTHS Krondspine Incarnate of Ghur (480)* – Allies
CORE BATTALIONS *Battle Regiment
TOTAL: 1980/2000
Brett: With the new book Beasts haven’t set the world on fire but are providing consistent results even if a little back from their recent peak. Jimmy has gone with the Ungors and a Doombull which aren’t common picks but they have their reasons. The Ungors (and Ungor Raiders) are relatively cheap and meet battleline leaving enough points for an Incarnate. That’s important. With BoC’s herdstone increasing rend on turns 2 and 4 you don’t want to commit too early. Because BoC can ambush (deploy to reserve and bring them on in the first or second round) and fade into the shadows (teleport from within 9″ of the board edge to another location 9″ from the board edge and 9″ from enemy units) they can hide very well. But to do that you need something for your opponent to focus on – the Incarnate.
They need at least 2 rounds to do that and that means you can wait until you have at least -1 rend on everything to commit. The Tzaangors can still score a Battle Tactic first round (Desecrate seems likely) while your opponent tries to deal with the Incarnate. If they don’t then he can make their life hell pretty quickly. Still the list might be a little slow without the teleport. They have access to book tactics which are pretty competitive. The Doombull’s had a bit of a glow up, one of his most useful talents is a command that allows a unit to charge in the combat phase – avoiding unleash hell. He’s a Tunnel Master (teleport) and can use his trumpet to summon Ugors (or raiders) to the cause. The Bray Shaman is along to provide exploding 6s. If anything is alive to reach -3 rend from the Bullgors or Doombull (turn 4) pretty much nothing on the opponents army is going to survive.
Only drawing to Sylvaneth and otherwise winning all of his matches is a great effort. Sylvaneth with their fire and fade, mortal wounds and desire to make you come to them is a solid counter. Otherwise an unblemished run with a new books is a great effort.
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Allegiance: Skaven – Mortal Realm: Ghur – Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs – Triumphs:
LEADERS Verminlord Corruptor (350)* – General – Command Trait: Devious Adversary – Artefact: Blade of Corruption – Universal Spell Lore: Flaming Weapon Grey Seer (120)* – Lore of Ruin: Death Frenzy Master Moulder (90)* – Artefact: Rabid Crown – Aspect of the Champion: Tunnel Master
UNITS 20 x Clanrats (100)* – Rusty Blade – 1 x Standard Bearers – 1 x Standard Bell Ringers 20 x Clanrats (100)** – Rusty Blade – 1 x Standard Bearers – 1 x Standard Bell Ringers 6 x Rat Ogors (420) 10 x Gutter Runners (200)** 10 x Gutter Runners (200)**
We’re honoured to have Skaven aficionado and all-around top bloke Kieren Coates join our team. Kieren is well known on the tournament circuit down under and has featured in past editions of our top three. Who better to talk about the ratmen than him?!
Kieren Coates: A classic mixed arms MSU list with the unique twist of no clan Skryre, the list features 6 independently operating threats able to choke up the board while dealing surprisingly large amounts of damage.
Opting against the 1 drop race, the list has no issues in being forced to go first with 6 rat ogres able to hop through a gnawhole with death frenzy, mystic shield, +1 to wound and +3 to charge, leaving it with an impressive 82% chance to land its charge with one reroll.
If youre able to piece through 36 wounds of pure rat meat, that will fight on death to trade back you may just be unlucky enough for the Master Moulder to roll a 3+ upon the units death to bring the whole pack back to life again for round 2
Even beyond the alpha rat ogres, there is still 20 gutter runners skirmishing with ranged mortals, 2 hell pits ready to clear out any hordes or MSU which are not able to piece through 14 wounds in one swing, one of which is likely to get a mutation for 16 wounds at a 4+ save. at only 210 points, it’s incredibly efficient, and when it dies for some unfortunate souls, it has a 1/3 chance to come back to life with D6 wounds ready to swing again.
If you do manage to hit through respawning, death frenzied rate ogres, skirmished gutter runners and horde clearing hell pits, you still have to deal with the big boss which is the verminlord corruptor with the blade of corruption, 2D6 + 2 attacks (with command trait), often hitting at 2’s, 2’s, -2 rend, 2 damage with 6’s to wound being a whopping rend 3 damage 6. Did I mention he has another horde clearing spell to back up the two hell pits?
Once youre through all of that the real humble MVP of skaven, 40 clanrats for 200 points holding the objectives still need to be dealt with, healing D3 clanrats per pack in every battleshock phase.
Overall it’s lots of melle power with chance to revive, horde clearing power and MSU skirmish combined that many lists cant manage to crack through – well done to Locky
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Allegiance: Idoneth Deepkin – Enclave: Nautilar – Mortal Realm: Ghur – Grand Strategy: The Creeping Gloomtide – Triumphs: Inspired
LEADERS Sokatra, Leviadon Keeper (140)* Isharann Tidecaster – Lore of the Deeps: Steed of Tides – Aspect of the Champion: Stubborn as a Rhinox Allopleuron The Turtle Emperor (250)* Akhelian King – General – Command Trait: Unstoppable Fury – Bladed Polearm – Artefact: Arcane Tome – Universal Spell Lore: Flaming Weapon
UNITS Turtle Trappers (170)* 10 x Namarti Reavers
BEHEMOTHS Archelon the Ancient (460)* Akhelian Leviadon – Mount Trait: Ancient – Idoneth Deepkin Battleline (Enclave: Nautilar) Carbonemys the Cleaver (460)* Akhelian Leviadon – Idoneth Deepkin Battleline (Enclave: Nautilar) Definitely also a Turtle (480)* Krondspine Incarnate of Ghur – Allies
Monster mash hasn’t been the soup of the day for a couple seasons, so it’s nice to see a few heavies make their way back into the Idoneth’s menu. The turtles are going to be very heavy hitters, especially in Nautilar where they count as batteline and get a monstrous action increasing the rend on two of their weapon profiles to -3. Ancient is present to get some extra durability out of the first turtle, but both are there to absorb damage and dish it back out.
The third “turtle” is a krondspine. The addition of the Arcane tome means that the incarnate can be bonded to either the King or the Tidecaster, depending on what the match requires. The lack of druability on Idoneth’s heroes also opens up the option of getting the Incarnate as afar away from the friendly units as possible then just shrugging your shoulders when the bonded hero eventually dies.
Past there the list is self-explanatory. The King does King things. The Tidecaster casts some tides (Steed of, specifically). The reavers fill out the last battleline slot, and act as a decent harassing unit, with the ability to make good use of the turtles’ auras.
This is the top three AoS lists for the Midtcon GT that took place in Denmark on the 4th and 5th of March. It involved 20 players vying to be crowned champion in a 5-game tournament.
Before I jump into the Top Three AoS Lists, I wanted to remind everyone of our friendly Discord server where you can join in the conversation with the Woehammer crew and suggest articles or series for the website.
If you like what we’re doing, why not join our Patreon and help keep it going?
Also if there’s a one day or two day tournament you’d like us to cover drop us a comment on this post and we’ll have a look at it for you.
The Top Three AoS Lists
Allegiance: Sylvaneth – Glade: Oakenbrow – Grand Strategy: The Day is Ours! – Triumphs: Inspired – Burgeoning
Leaders Warsong Revenant (300)* – General – Command Trait: Spellsinger – Artefact: Arcane Tome (Universal Artefact) – Lore of the Deepwood: Treesong – Aspect of the Champion: Fuelled by Ghurish Rage Treelord Ancient (330)* – Lore of the Deepwood: Regrowth Spirit of Durthu (350)** – Artefact: Greenwood Gladius Knight-Zephyros (100)** – Allies Battlemage (100)** – Mortal Realm: Ghur – Allies
Sylvaneth are really putting their roots down recently – and the nice thing is it’s still with a variety of lists – it seems like a great season for them, which is allowing people to flex their list building muscles with them and still do well.
Sune here has gone big tree heavy – with two hero trees and a full complement of treelord battleline. Durthi with the Gladius just absolutely slaps, and when such a threat is backed up by an Ancient (for a source of auto-forest at the start of the game) and a Warsong Rev for nasty casting through said forest (usually) – it’s a hell of a pincer movement.
Making full use of some allied tech, not only has Sune employed the now fairly standard Ghurish battlemage for the additional charge bonus, but he’s also rocking a Zephyros, who is just an absolute bargain basement GC who can also teleport.
Overall, I can see the root to victory for this list just being so many hyper-mobile scoring threats backed up by a killer Durthu that it’s overwhelming trying to keep up. Gratz to Sune on the evil tree 5-0.
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Allegiance: Slaves to Darkness – Damned Legion: Host of the Everchosen – Mortal Realm: Ghur – Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs – Triumphs: Indomitable
Leaders Chaos Sorcerer Lord (120)* – General – Command Trait: Master of Magic – Artefact: Arcane Tome (Universal Artefact) – Mark of Chaos: Slaanesh – The Lore of the Damned: Daemonic Speed – Aspect of the Champion: Tunnel Master Be’Lakor, the Dark Master (355)* – The Lore of the Damned: Daemonic Speed
Battleline 5 x Chaos Knights (230)* – Mark of Chaos: Khorne 10 x Chaos Knights (460)* – Mark of Chaos: Nurgle – Ensorcelled Banner: The Eroding Icon – Reinforced x 1 15 x Chaos Chosen (720)* – Mark of Chaos: Slaanesh – Ensorcelled Banner: The Banner of Screaming Flesh – Reinforced x 2
A rare HOTE list! Often overlooked in favour of Cabalists casting shenanigans or the battleline and run/charge of KOTET, a HOTE list really wants something to take advantage of that 5+ rally – aaaand 15 Chosen might just be the unit to do it!
Interestingly, Jon has Marked the Chosen as Slaanesh – *outside* of Legion, meaning he’s committing to their native -1 rend being enough, combined with their weight of attacks, to act as the list’s main hammer. HOTE offers a free second banner – so as well as the ubiquitous Eroding Icon on the pinning unit of Knights, he’s taken the Slaanesh banner on the Chosen for an additional attack on the charge – quite possibly relying on the mortal fishing to deal with more heavily armoured targets.
I suppose Be’lakor – whiffy and unreliable as he’s likely to be – does offer the option of locking down the Chosen’s natural predator for a turn or two, allowing them to clean everything else up – although I do struggle to see the logic of not even being able to roll on the EotG table with such a heavy investment of a unit – still, it worked out, and congrats to Jon for a great result!
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Allegiance: Fyreslayers – Lodge: Vostarg – Grand Strategy: Master of the Forge – Triumphs: Bloodthirsty
Leaders Battlesmith (150)** – Artefact: Nulsidian Icon – Aspect of the Champion: Tunnel Master Battlesmith (150)** – Aspect of the Champion: Leadership of the Alpha Auric Runesmiter (120)*** – General – Runic Iron – Command Trait: Master Priest – Universal Prayer Scripture: Curse Auric Runesmiter (120)*** – Runic Iron – Artefact: Volatile Brazier – Prayer: Ember Storm Auric Runesmiter (120)*** – Runic Iron – Universal Prayer Scripture: Curse Celestant-Prime, Hammer of Sigmar (330)** – Allies
Battleline 20 x Vulkite Berzerkers with Fyresteel Handaxes (320)* – Reinforced x 1 20 x Vulkite Berzerkers with Fyresteel Handaxes (320)* – Reinforced x 1 20 x Vulkite Berzerkers with Fyresteel Handaxes (320)* – Reinforced x 1
Kevin Lathers: Now we see how far someone can skew a Fyreslayer list. Gustav has decided to deal with Fyreslayer’s innate slowness by just being able to deepstrike nearly the entire army. This list also lacks the usual Flamekeepers which accompany Vulkite Berserkers in nearly all Vostarg lists.
Between the Celestant-Prime, who can not only deepstrike but guarantee a charge, and three Runesmiters, Gustav can deepstrike all but two units in the list. Vulkites further benefit from this with their built-in +1 to charge rolls, thus making it an 8 on the roll to make a charge out of deepstrike. Twenty of them in GV is quite potent as well, even without the usual Flamekeepers.
I’m not certain how Gustav played things, but it seems the typical action would be to deepstrike two units of Vulkites and a battlesmith, along with the Celestant, leaving another brick with a battlesmith on the field; or deepstrike all three Vulkites and use Tunnel Master to bring a smith closer. In both cases this ends up performing almost like a pseudo-Beasts of Chaos list, only with a lot more wounds on the field and the ability to fight on death.
Once your opponent is boxed-in by warded up blocks of Vulkites and their big-daddy Celestant, holding objectives should be easy enough for the remaining group. It also retains the option of just sitting on an objective with the battlesmiths and making the opponent have to move the vulkites off in order to score anything, which can be daunting with 40 wounds under a 5+/6+ ward and the ability to rally on 4+’s.
Anything that can punch its way out of this is going to prove formidable and without Flamekeepers the Vulkites lose their incredibly hard punch-back ability, fighting on death more than once, and their combat phase charging. Further, having two battlesmiths eats up a lot of points that could move toward other heroes or more Vulkites. This list is sacrificing a lot for its strategy. This may have resulted in the two losses to both Ogors and Big Waagh who, depending on their build, should have no trouble weathering the storm and fighting their way out.
Still, it’s an interesting list with a great performance. Definitely an interesting way to take Fyreslayers.
Allegiance: Cities of Sigmar – City: Hallowheart – Grand Strategy: Mighty Beachhead – Triumphs: N/A
Battleline 30 x Freeguild Crossbowmen (300)* – 1 x Marksman – 3 x Standard Bearer – 3 x Piper – Reinforced x 2 10 x Freeguild Guard (80)* – Swords and Shields – 1 x Sergeant – 1 x Standard Bearer – 1 x Drummer 10 x Flagellants (80)* – City Role: Honoured Retinue – 1 x Prophet
Units 4 x Stormdrake Guard (680)* – 1 x Drakerider’s Lance (Stormdrake-Prime) – 3 x Drakerider’s Warblade – Reinforced x 1 Gotrek Gurnisson (480)* – Allies
With a new book almost here, Adam has proven there is still life in one of the oldest, and probably never the strongest battletomes. In the end, it’s a pretty conventional approach, drawing on really mobile Stormcast allies (Dragons, of course). 3 very magical and small heroes leave a lot of room for a real hero, and Gotrek, at his current 480 points, fits well. Hallowheart really helps the wizards. Each gets an extra spell. That means 2 instances of +1 to wound (Ignite), a heal (Sear Wounds), 4+ ward (Warding Brand), and a mortal wound ward. Soulscream gives a useful teleport if required, and everything is in a Battle Regiment to give options for the initial priority.
The army is really planning to castle. The heroes are effectively buff machines, mostly for the Crossbowman. The Flagellants and Guard are there to screen, and Gotrek can prowl around, ready to pounce on anything that trys to deal with them. They can stand and deliver (with 2 shots each) at 24″ with a fantastic unleash hell. There is still the option to Wildform Gotrek and send him through the Soulscream bridge to harrass something important. And all the while, the Drakes are there to cap and harrass your enemy. With Breathe and Lance, they are very dangerous and hard to manage. Adam lost to fire and fade (Sylvaneth), who really make you go to them, a weakness. And a faction that out castles castles, Fyreslayers. 6th is a very respectable result for cities.
Tournament that took place in the UK on the 25th and 26th February. It involved 74 players vying to be crowned champion in a 5-game tournament.
Before I jump into the Top Three AoS Lists, I wanted to remind everyone of our friendly Discord server where you can join in the conversation with the Woehammer crew and suggest articles or series for the website.
If you like what we’re doing, why not join our Patreon and help keep it going?
Warhammer World: Matched Play Event (UK) – 74 Players
Allegiance: Fyreslayers – Lodge: Greyfyrd – Mortal Realm: Aqshy – Grand Strategy: Master of the Forge – Triumphs: Indomitable
Leaders Auric Runefather (120)* – General – Command Trait: Spirit of Grimnir – Artefact: Axe of Grimnir – Aspect of the Champion: Tunnel Master Auric Flamekeeper (90)*** Auric Flamekeeper (90)*** Battlesmith (150)*** – Artefact: Nulsidian Icon – Aspect of the Champion: Fuelled by Ghurish Rage Auric Runemaster (130)*** – Artefact: Arcane Tome (Universal Artefact) – Universal Spell Lore: Ghost-mist – Universal Prayer Scripture: Curse Auric Runesmiter (120)*** – Runic Iron – Prayer: Ember Storm
Battleline 15 x Hearthguard Berzerkers (450)* – Poleaxes – Reinforced x 2 30 x Vulkite Berzerkers with Fyresteel Handaxes (480)** – Reinforced x 2 10 x Vulkite Berzerkers with Fyresteel Handaxes (160)** 10 x Vulkite Berzerkers with Bladed Slingshields (150)***
Peter: We previously mentioned that the flamekeeper charge was in the hero phase. This has been corrected to the combat phase.
Mike Stewart (of Team England fame) is on a personal mission to establish Fyreslayers as a meta-threat, and by Grimnir’s beard, he’s doing it.
There’s a surprising amount of tech and overlapping buffs in effect with this Fyreslayers list. The lynchpin to it all is the double Flamekeepers, who gain the ability to unleash a range of buffs depending on how many units have died nearby. Perhaps the most devastating of these options are a +1 damage effect to a unit, and the ability to make a unit charge in the combat phase – meaning a scary unit of 15 Hearthguard can suddenly threaten you in your OWN turn, which can make positioning/trading well for the opponent a complete nightmare.
To keep up on board control, given FS limited movement options, Mike has opted for a metric tonne of Vulkites. They’re not impressive on their own, but they provide excellent fodder for the Flamekeepers, and with their volume of attacks can still make for a great target for the +1 damage buff – or to just charge something and yoink the objective they thought they’d just taken, with relative impunity. Additionally, with Curse on the Runemaster, if it goes off, then the 30 Vulkites can pretty reliably just nuke something into oblivion with mortals.
Knowing a player of Mike’s calibre, I’m sure there’s all manner of extra sneaky plays baked into his list, but I think that covers the top line – a deceptively fast (with the out of phase charges) list full of ‘surprise hammers’ that creates plenty of ‘damned if you do/don’t’ scenarios for the opponent. Great work!
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Allegiance: Gloomspite Gitz – Gittish Horde: Jaws of Mork – Grand Strategy: Chasing the Moon – Triumphs: Indomitable
Leaders Fungoid Cave-Shaman (90)* – General – Command Trait: The Clammy Hand – Artefact: Moonface Mommet – Lore of the Moonclans: The Hand of Gork – Aspect of the Champion: Tunnel Master Grinkrak The Great (190)* Skragrott, The Loonking (160)* – Lore of the Moonclans: Nikkit!Nikkit! Squigboss with Gnasha-squig (80)** Squigboss with Gnasha-squig (80)**
Battleline 20 x Moonclan Shootas (125)* 20 x Moonclan Shootas (125)* 36 x Squig Herd (360)** – Reinforced x 2 36 x Squig Herd (360)** – Reinforced x 2
Units 1 x Marshcrawla Sloggoth (150)* 6 x Grinkrak’s Looncourt (0)* 5 x Gobbapalooza (145)** – Spell1: Lore of the Moonclans: Itchy Nuisance 6 x Sneaky Snufflers (110)**
Declan: Well it seems like Squigs are the go-to option from the new Gloomspite Gitz book at the moment and another 5-0 registered. It great that there are so many squig armies already painted or getting painted – good to see the ladz getting their time at the top. Simon has taken a lot of units that recent readers will have seen, but he’s got some new ones as well. The Gobbapalozza makes an appearance, and it is great to see it. The models were always georgous, but apart from some hardcore Gitz Players (looking at Nathan of Honest Wargamer fame), they were rarely used. They are now more streamlined and able to hand out additional rend to shooting units – hence the 2 units of Moonclan Shootas here.
Simon has also taken the new underworld warband which – Grinkrak the Great – who can give models the chance to fight on death. Great for the large units of Cave Squigs in Simon’s army. You’ll need shooting to deal with this, and even so, D3 Cave Squigs will come back for each herder in the unit. But they do run away with no command abilities possible.
It continues to be a great list, but I do worry about the Cave Squig’s chances long-term against shooting armies. Only time will tell as people get more experience playing with and against the new book.
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Army Faction: Maggotkin of Nurgle – Army Subfaction: Blessed Sons – Grand Strategy: Blessed Desecration – Triumphs: Inspired
LEADER 1 x Be’lakor (355) 1 x Lord of Plagues (140)* – Artefacts: Arcane Tome – Spells: Gift of Disease – Aspects of the Champion: Tunnel Master 1 x Bloab Rotspawned (320)* – Spells: Blades of Putrefaction 1 x Lord of Afflictions (230)* – General – Command Traits: Overpowering Stench – Incubatch – Dolorous Tocsin – Artefacts: The Splithorn Helm 1 x Orghotts Daemonspew (320)**
Ed: What an interesting and extremely top-heavy list! With only 630pts spent on battleline and a mere 25 models on the board, this list favours an intelligent approach where every piece needs to be played correctly. While 2 Maggoth Lords and 10 blightkings can both take and put out a decent amount of wounds they lack the footprint to reliably hold objectives on their own which means that Marco would be leaning heavily on the techy elements of his list and superior positioning to control the board. With a list like this, it doesn’t do to play cagey and reactively. You need to be aggressive and take decisive, perhaps risky, actions to get the best results.
This list has a lot of ways to inflict extra disease points to help supplement his damage output. If he chooses his battles carefully, Marco has the tools to remove important units from his opponent’s army with surgical precision. But he’d need to be cautious never to leave himself open to reprisal because with only 25 models in your whole army, even minor losses can cause big problems. Be’Lakor can neuter a particularly troublesome threat once per game if the dice are on your side. The Lord of Plagues with Tunnel Master is a troublesome Galletian Champion too – harder to put down than the average foot hero and thus requiring extra investment on the part of an opponent to deny your opportunity for battle tactics.
Surprisingly this list leans kind of heavily on magic. Bloab, Be’lakor and a Lord of Plagues with an Arcane Tome. They all have access to some great spells that really maximize this list’s potential but Nurgle is not a strong competitor in the magic game. Marco may have been lucky that his path to glory didn’t pit him against some of the wizardly boogiemen that are common right now like Tzeentch or Teclis.
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Allegiance: Ossiarch Bonereapers – Legion: Petrifex Elite – Grand Strategy: The Day is Ours! – Triumphs: Bloodthirsty
LEADERS Liege-Kavalos (160)* – General – Command Trait: Mighty Archaeossian – Artefact: Helm of the Ordained Mortisan Soulmason (120)* – Lore of Mortisans: Arcane Command Mortisan Boneshaper (110)* – Artefact: Godbone Armour – Lore of Mortisans: Drain Vitality – Aspect of the Champion: Tunnel Master
UNITS 6 x Necropolis Stalkers (340)** – 2 x Dread Falchions 6 x Necropolis Stalkers (340)** – 2 x Dread Falchions 10 x Mortek Guard (140) – Nadirite Blade and Shield 10 x Mortek Guard (140)* – Nadirite Blade and Shield 5 x Kavalos Deathriders (180) – Nadirite Blade and Shield
Alice: This season, Ossiarch Bonereapers really have to work with what they have. With only 2 Galetian Champions in the army, neither exactly standouts, they often have to compensate in other ways. The lone boneshaper exists to pick up a few battle tactics, and has a pretty nice horde clearing spell.
The primary lineholders are the mortek guard, with the Deathriders acting as outriders to grab some objectives and score the faction’s unique battletactic. The units really holding the list up are the Necropolis Stalkers, which benefit heavily from the Galetian Vets battalion so both ranks can attack. In precision stance they can hit with 20 Rend -2 Damage 2 attacks from the primary weapon, and 6 Rend -3 Damage 3 attacks from the special Dread Falchions. While fully buffed from the Soulmason they can reroll 1s and get a bonus attack per model from the Liege. Few things can face a fully buffed unit of these alive and live to tell the tale.
The Crawlers round off the list with the only shooting attacks in the army. While the Rend 0 shots can miss often, that 5 damage will absolutely chunk anything it successfully does hit.
This is the top three AoS lists for the Norseshammer Open that took place in Norway on the 4th and 5th of March. It involved 36 players vying to be crowned champion in a 5-game tournament.
Before I jump into the Top Three AoS Lists, I wanted to remind everyone of our friendly Discord server where you can join in the conversation with the Woehammer crew and suggest articles or series for the website.
If you like what we’re doing, why not join our Patreon and help keep it going?
Also if there’s a one day or two day tournament you’d like us to cover drop us a comment on this post and we’ll have a look at it for you.
The Top Three AoS Lists
Allegiance: Skaven – Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs – Triumphs:
Leaders Thanquol on Boneripper (430)* – 4 Warpfire Projectors – Lore of Ruin: Skitterleap Verminlord Warbringer (400)** – General – Command Trait: Devious Adversary – Artefact: Warpstone Charm – Universal Spell Lore: Flaming Weapon Warlock Bombardier (110)* – Lore of Warpvolt Galvanism: More-more-more Warp Power! Clawlord (110)* – Artefact: Arcane Tome (Universal Artefact) – Universal Spell Lore: Flaming Weapon – Aspect of the Champion: Fuelled by Ghurish Rage
Battleline 20 x Clanrats (100)** – Rusty Blade – 1x Standard Bearers – 1x Standard Bell Ringers 20 x Clanrats (100)** – Rusty Blade – 1x Standard Bearers – 1x Standard Bell Ringers 6 x Stormfiends (640)** – 2x Windlaunchers – 2x Ratling Cannons – 2x Doomflayer Gauntlets – Reinforced x 1
Units 1 x Warp-Grinder (60)*
Endless Spells & Invocations Lauchon the Soulseeker (50)
Peter: Luckily, one of our Discord members had seen that Ben had discussed his list on the AoS Coach Discord channel. We reached out and asked if we could use the comments on Woehammer. Ben kindly agreed.
Benjamin Flodda: This was my list this weekend testing the rats for upcoming teams tournaments mostly. Nice bonus to go through the weekend undefeated! I think the list is pretty strong and has play into most things, although it’s pretty fragile and it doesn’t take too much poor positioning for things to start to fall apart. But played carefully, I think it has legs.
So, the warpgrinder is basically to give yourself some deployment flexibility. It gives one-drop opponents something to worry about in their deployment if they plan to give away first, and it requires them to always zone out the rattling cannons. Once the fiends are on the table, they are way too easy to play around imo. So they mostly go in deep strike regardless, although deepstriking clanrats is definitely valid in some cases. And if you place the grinder close to a gnawhole it’s amazing how many points it can score you late-game.
The most fun thing in the list is definitely the clawlord combined with arcane tome and launchon. Everybody expects the boat to be for thanquol (which it certainly can be), but early game you can sling the clawlord into the opponent with the boat (taking a mortal which gives him an extra attack) and with double death frenzy, flaming weapon and with +2 attacks from devious adversary. You can shoot down a screen and often get into fun stuff, turn 1, and with +1 to hit and wound from the warbringer, he can really do work! If you then position him within 3 of something after he fought, if he dies he can fight (this time with 13 attacks on 2+ 2+ and damage 3) or he rolls a 3+ and survives, at which point he can fight in the following hero phase AND when he dies. That little dude took down a megagargant on his own this weekend.
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Allegiance: Fyreslayers – Lodge: Greyfyrd – Grand Strategy: Master of the Forge – Triumphs: Indomitable
Leaders Auric Runefather on Magmadroth (360)** – General – Command Trait: Blood of the Berzerker – Artefact: Draught of Magmalt Ale – Magmadroth Trait: Coal-heart Ancient Auric Runesmiter (120)** – Forge Key – Artefact: Ash-cloud Rune – Prayer: Prayer of Ash Auric Runemaster (130)** – Artefact: Volatile Brazier – Universal Prayer Scripture: Heal – Aspect of the Champion: Tunnel Master Auric Flamekeeper (90)*** Battlesmith (150)*** – Artefact: Nulsidian Icon – Aspect of the Champion: Leadership of the Alpha Doomseeker (80)** Knight-Incantor (120)*** – Allies
Battleline 15 x Hearthguard Berzerkers (450)* – Broadaxes – Reinforced x 2 10 x Hearthguard Berzerkers (300)* – Poleaxes – Reinforced x 1 10 x Vulkite Berzerkers with Bladed Slingshields (150)***
Kevin Lathers: The current GHB is starting to hit its stride and has allowed Greyfyrd to finally shine. This subfaction was always popular, but seldom winning, and now that’s changed. It gives Galletian Champions one extra wound and also two extra artefacts. That’s hard to pass up in the current GHN and Duardin glimmerlust always shines for more treasures.
Ole’s list has some interesting inclusions, particularly a Knight-Incantor and a Doomseeker. The Doomseeker is a cheap GC that can occasionally slap something hard if it can get near its “target.” The Knight-Incantor is a utility piece: he provides an automatic unbind for those pesky Lumineth, Skaven (and indeed, he saw two), and Sylvaneth matches while also giving the army a spellcaster for mystic shield. The biggest oddity here is the “Ash-Cloud Rune” which can block spell casting from targeting units wholly within 12” of the user for a turn. A very situational item that means he was very worried about spellcasting.
But the main crux of his list is the Hearthguard Berserkers and Runefather on Magmadroth. While the Hearthguard Berserkers can hold points and shred anything charging them, the DadDroth is the ultimate in Hammer Technology and with Blood of the Berserker can remove any one threat almost guaranteed. A common setup for the Droth is to use the rend rune, enhance it with the heroic action (or finest hour if the rune enhanced or you don’t need more rend), pray for +1 to wound rolls from the Runesmiter, and send him in as a missile of death.
The Hearthguard Berserkers see the common mix of one unit of poleaxes and one of broad. The broadaxes being buffed by a flamekeeper and benefitting from runes while Poleaxes provide much needed mortal wounds into matchups like Nighthaunt. The flamekeeper can really make Broadaxes shine giving them 3 damage swings, charge in their opponent’s combat phase, or fight on death.
The rest of the list reads as the usual suspects: Runemaster for prayers and fyrewall; Runesmiter for deepstrike and/or Runic Empowerment; and a Nulsidian Battlesmith for spell blocking and wards on the non-HGB.
Overall, the list is going to be a brick on objectives with a dangerous hammer inside.
Allegiance: Stormcast Eternals – Stormhost: Hammers of Sigmar (Scions of the Storm) – Mortal Realm: Ghur – Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs – Triumphs:
Leaders Knight-Incantor (120)* – Spell: Celestial Blades Lord-Relictor (150)* – General – Command Trait: High Priest – Artefact: Arcane Tome (Universal Artefact) – Spell: Thundershock – Prayer: Translocation – Aspect of the Champion: Tunnel Master Battlemage (100)* – Mortal Realm: Ghur – Allies
Battleline 4 x Dracothian Guard Fulminators (480)* – Reinforced x 1 5 x Liberators (120)* – Heavens-wrought Weapon and Shield 5 x Vanquishers (110)*
Units 6 x Vanguard-Raptors with Longstrike Crossbows (480)* – Reinforced x 1 10 x Protectors (440)* – 4x Starsoul Maces – Reinforced x 1
Core Battalions *Battle Regiment
Additional Enhancements Holy Command: Call for Aid
Brett; Classic, at least in this meta, Stormcast (SCE) list giving probably the best combined arms approach in the current game. Except artillery of course but a combination of hammers from Cavalry (Fulminators), Fire support (Raptors – since artillery really isn’t an AoS “thing”) and Infantry (Protectors). Fulminators going up 10 points have made a lot of people look to Desolators and Tempestors but Fulminators on the charge are still the most consistent high damage hammer around. With Celestial Blades from the Knight Incantor and all out defence they are still hitting on 2s and wounding on 2s with -2 rend and 3 damage. Slightly down with the loss of Bounty Hunters they are good enough to make your opponent either tar pit them (looking at you Gitz) or try to manoeuvre around them.
The Protectors have similar tech piece and are another target for the same buffs. They really benefit from the Battlemage (+2 to movement/charge) and Lord Relictor giving them teleport with an effective 7″ charge. And Starsoul maces, mortals on a 2+. They are a great defensive unit as well with 2+ saves. The problem is that both the Fulminators and the Protectors need to charge and are vulnerable to Unleash Hell. And that brings the Raptors out to play. Their long range shooting could remove screens or, just as easily most other ranged units. Scions of the Storm so they can be kept in reserve, Liberators and even Protectors for screens if they are on the board and really only Sentinels to outrange them.
Has to be said that the Lord Relictor is a very busy fellow, what with prayers, spells and Tunnel Master as well as being the general. That’s a weakness of this list in the Galletian Champion era, all of these heroes are needed elsewhere and none are stellar in combat. Losing only to Lumineth in the second round and coming in a very respectable 3rd Simen proves there is still some life in SCE. Can they get a 2nd book this edition already please?
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Allegiance: Sylvaneth – Glade: Winterleaf – Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs – Seasons of war: The Dwindling
Leaders Warsong Revenant (300)* – General – Command Trait: Spellsinger – Artefact: Arcane Tome (Universal Artefact) – Lore of the Deepwood: Verdurous Harmony – Aspect of the Champion: Tunnel Master Battlemage (100)* – Mortal Realm: Ghur – Universal Spell Lore: Flaming Weapon – Allies
Battleline 20 x Dryads (200)* – Reinforced x 1 10 x Dryads (100)* 5 x Tree-Revenants (110)*
Units 6 x Kurnoth Hunters with Kurnoth Scythes (500)* – Reinforced x 1 10 x Gossamid Archers (420)* – Reinforced x 1
A nice ‘sampling platter’ list here from Thomas. As ever, the core threats are a big blob of Scythe-noth and a Warsong Rev to handle the arcane side of things. Now, traditionally, Kurnoth are pretty ponderous, but with +3 to normal moves *and* charges from the Spiteswarm Hive, and an additional +3 from the Ghurish Battlemage, they now have an average threat range of 21″ – which is somewhat scarier. Of course, because of when both these spells proc, it means the Hunters also retain their charge bonuses if they choose to teleport – so really, very little of the board is safe, and if you don’t have adequate screens or a way to delete the Kurnoth (much more easily said than done given their durability), then you can expect these things to reap the rewards.
The rest of the list is basically supporting tech – a lone Treelord to fill the behemoth slot of the batreg while also offering Rampage access and the sneaky ‘enemy can’t pile in’ tech – Gossamids (reinforced no less!!) to potentially force melee armies to curl up and cry every time they want to charge something useful, or threaten a fair chance of some nasty spike damage – and plenty of dryads for board control and further screening. Never understimate how powerful -1 to hit and wound is by the way – doesn’t matter if you have a rubbish save if you don’t have to roll any dice.
Well done to Thomas for the 4-1 with a balanced list.
This is the top three AoS lists for Realmgate Rampage II that took place in the USA on the 4th and 5th of March. It involved 37 players vying to be crowned champion in a 5-game tournament.
Before I jump into the Top Three AoS Lists, I wanted to remind everyone of our friendly Discord server where you can join in the conversation with the Woehammer crew and suggest articles or series for the website.
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Also if there’s a one day or two day tournament you’d like us to cover drop us a comment on this post and we’ll have a look at it for you.
The Top Three AoS Lists
Army Faction: Slaves to Darkness – Subfaction: Cabalists – Grand Strategy: Follow the Path to Glory – Triumph: Inspired
LEADERS Chaos Sorcerer Lord (120)* – General – Mark of Chaos: Undivided – Command Traits: Master of Magic – Artefacts of Power: Arcane Tome – Spells: Chaotic Conduit, Daemonic Speed – Aspects of the Champion: Tunnel Master Chaos Sorcerer Lord (120)* – Mark of Chaos: Undivided – Spells: Chaotic Conduit, Daemonic Speed
BATTLELINE Chaos Knights (460)* – Mark of Chaos: Nurgle – Doom Knight – 2 x Standard Bearer – 2 x Hornblower – Ensorcelled Banner: The Eroding Icon The Unmade (80)* Corvus Cabal (80)*
OTHER Chaos Chosen (480)* – Mark of Chaos: Khorne – Exalted Champion – 2 x Icon Bearer – 2 x Skull Drummer Varanguard (580)* – Mark of Chaos: Khorne – 6 x Fellspear
ENDLESS SPELLS & INVOCATIONS 1 x Soulscream Bridge (80)
CORE BATTALIONS *Battle Regiment
TOTAL POINTS: 2000/2000
Peter: I reached out to Anthony to see if he would be able to give us some info on how this list works. The legend kindly responded:
Anthony: So I mostly just lifted the list from Big Phil Marshall, with a few tweaks to marks. The army has 3 key pieces, with a bit of utility to support them. First, the block of 10 Nurgle-marked Knights with the Eroding Icon is incredibly tough to shift, while also able to do a fair bit of damage on the charge. Next are two hammer units: 10 Khorne Chosen, and 6 Khorne Varanguard with spears. I chose to go with Khorne on both units because, for the most part, these units perform threat removal duty, and I want those threats gone immediately. Plus, it means you get even more value if you use the ability to activate a second time in the combat phase on the turn that they charged. All three units are 30 wounds on a 3+ save, but have drastically different roles, and you can further enhance with the 2 Sorcerer Lords. There are quite a few spells that you want to get off, hence the choice of adding Arcane Tome, Master of Magic, and being in Cabalists. Lastly, Corvus Cabal is a nice piece to be able to save and snag an objective after the battlelines shift, the Unmade help ensure that the units you want to charge cannot redeploy away and make the charge harder, and the bridge increases your threat range immensely.
Being one drop means you decide first turn in most cases. A typical game sees you giving away the turn, although you do have the speed to rush across the board to hit your opponent before they can set up any of their buffs if they misdeploy in an egregious way. The other advantage of going second is that it allows your Sorcerer Lord to use both the heroic action for 3d6 cast and 3d6 for rolling on the Eye of the Gods table. You want to be rolling for that early and often. Getting an 11-12 on 3d6, rerolling one die isn’t too unlikely, but it’s still something that relies on rolling, and all it takes is your sorcerer lords getting killed off to remove your ability to achieve your Grand Strategy. I typically use the Knights to block areas of the board off from my opponent and initiate trades. It will cost most armies more value to remove this unit than the 460 points that the knights cost, and the Chosen and Varanguard hit hard enough that most things will struggle to survive contact with them. You’re looking to value trade more efficiently than your opponent, which is what the Slaves to Darkness do incredibly well.
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Allegiance: Stormcast Eternals – Stormhost: Knights Excelsior (Scions of the Storm) – Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs – Triumphs: Inspired
Leaders Karazai, The Scarred (550)* Celestant-Prime, Hammer of Sigmar (330)* Lord-Imperatant (170)* – General – Command Trait: Master of Magic – Artefact: Arcane Tome (Universal Artefact) – Spell: Celestial Blades – Aspect of the Champion: Tunnel Master
Battleline 3 x Annihilators (180)* 3 x Annihilators (180)* 3 x Annihilators (180)*
Units 3 x Vanguard-Raptors with Longstrike Crossbows (240)* 3 x Praetors (140)*
Peter: We reached out to Joseph, who kindly offered a quick synopsis on how his list works.
Joseph: Use the longstrikes the aoe mortals and the charge mortals from the annilators to punch large holes in their army’s screens and key buff pieces. Then go for the kill with the prime and Karazai.
Brett: Joseph undersells his list a bit, there is a bit of tech in how he has set up the list to do exactly what he says it will. There is a Lord Imperatant to make sure those Annihilators only have a 7″ charge. Best case that’s 3 turns of skyfalling. The list is Knights Excelsior to give a Paladin unit +1 to hit and wound on top of being battline. The Annihilators don’t have Grandhammers so cheaper (by 60pts) and more durable. Rerollable 7″ charge that does D3 mortals on arrival, more mortals on the charge (on a 4+) and then hits on 2+, wounds on 2+, saves on 2+. Even if they don’t wipe a screen some will probably survive the counter attack. It also makes dropping 2 units in a turn more palatable, even if the second fails it’s 9″ charge it may survive to try again.
The Longstrikes have Thunderbolt Volley (and aren’t reinforced) to give a turn of double shooting. Praetors to bodyguard Karazi in the early game (he out paces them) wraps up the troops. After that the Lord Imperatant has Tunnel Master for a sneaky teleport and celestial blades just in case something needs help with wounding (melee weapons only). And lastly the Celestant Prime for another hammer mid to late game (when Karazai is normally running out of steam).
Not without it’s risks, in the end there are only 75 wounds in the list and it needs to dictate the engagement. Karazai is more rarely chosen because he is vulnerable to mortal wounds generally. Being a one drop army helps, Joseph will dictate the first round activation in most games. Competing well against combat armies, Joseph faced down a Tzeetch army which is a tall order for an army with almost no denies.
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Army Faction: Blades of Khorne – Army Subfaction: Reapers of Vengeance – Grand Strategy: The Day is Ours! – Triumphs: Inspired
LEADER 1 x Skarbrand (390) 1 x Archaon (860)* 1 x Bloodsecrator (130)* – General – Command Traits: Mage Eater – Artefacts: Skullshard Mantle – Aspects of the Champion: Fuelled by Ghurish Rage 1 x Slaughterpriest (100)* – Bloodbathed Axe – Prayers: Blood Sacrifice
A lot of armies in Age of Sigmar can be broken down into units of hammers and anvils. This is a useful distinction, since it gives a quick idea of what role a unit needs to play, why you would include them in your list, and what to expect from your opponent’s force. Blades of Khorne do not work this way.
Blades can be better broken into three categories: independent operators, tech pieces, and drones. In Samuel’s case, he has brought a balance of the three, with a skew towards independent operators.
In this list, the idependents are Archaeon and Skarbrand. Both are meant to be beatstick intimidation pieces with minor buffs to other units. Archaeon is the only wizard in Samuel’s list, and he will see some benefit from Mystic Shield, but the known spell are limited since Khorne does not have a spell lore (for obvious reasons). Skarbrand is an excellent intimidating force, and only opponents that have never faced him before will risk damaging him without being positive that he will die. At his lowest bracket (his best) he can guarantee 8 mortal wounds with his axe, Carnage. While he can’t score VP from killing a Galletian Champion, he can certainly deny his opponent a few battle tactics through the use of the rare rule: “you can just pick that one up.”
The Bloodsecrator, Slaughterpriest, and Cockatrice are Samuel’s tech pieces. The first provides two useful auras (forcing Wizards to re-roll successful casting attempts and providing Blades of Khorne units +1 attack). The second gives access to prayers (Blood Sacrifice in this case, allowing early blood tithe gains) and invocations (which Samuel has elected to leave at home). The Cockatrice brings a particularly interesting ability that is one of the few in this list that will benefit Archaeon. If the Cockatrice manages to ping some mortal wounds on an opponent, that unit can only hit on 6s in that combat phase. This can be used to either protect Archaeon and Skarbrand from the beatings Samuel’s opponents are surely going to throw at them, or can be used to add some additional protection for his drones.
A note for the above units: Skarbrand, the Bloodsecrator, and the Slaughterpriest can all be used at summoning points for daemon units. Khorne is in a great spot right now, partially because the summoning mechanic allows them to pull a GC out of thin air onto an objective for the measly cost of 2 blood tithe points. This allows for some seriously flexible scoring, ecen into the late game, assuming you have a hero or skull alter and some blood tithe points burning a hole in your pocket.
Back on the subject of drones, Samuel has chosen to take the mortal flavor of drone: 10 blood warriors and 30 blood reavers. The blood warriors’ 2 wounds and 4+ somehow make them one of the most durable units in the book (about equal with Mighty Skullcrushers), which is saying something. The blood reavers are fast and will die as soon as they connect with something, providing some early blood tithe points.
All around a deceptively technical list, and one that was piloted to a great 4-1.
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Allegiance: Flesh-eater Courts – Grand Court: Blisterskin – Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs – Triumphs:
LEADERS Abhorrant Archregent (240)* – Artefact: The Dermal Robe – Lore of Madness: Deranged Transformation – Aspect of the Champion: Tunnel Master Abhorrant Ghoul King on Royal Terrorgheist (450)* – General – Command Trait: Hellish Orator – Artefact: Eye of Hysh – Mount Trait: Gruesome Bite – Lore of Madness: Spectral Host Crypt Infernal Courtier (130)*
UNITS 9 x Crypt Flayers (540)** 10 x Crypt Ghouls (80)** 10 x Crypt Ghouls (80)*
BEHEMOTHS Krondspine Incarnate of Ghur (480) – Allies
CORE BATTALIONS *Warlord **Galletian Veterans
TOTAL: 2000/2000 WOUNDS: 83 DROPS: 7
Declan: Well I’m the first to admit that I’m not an expert in Flesh Eater Courts, but I have fought them a few times and this one has a Incarnate of Ghur – so there’s that. Frederic has gone for the 4-1 that’s difficult to pull off known as the submarine (LWWWW); and it’s a great result with a difficult army to use. This one is all about close assault, the Krondspine, Terrorgheist and Crypt Flayers.
Despite the increase in cost (480 points from 400 points in the latest balance update), the Krondspine is still good, and as he doesn’t die until the end of the turn so when it’s in combat you can guarantee it will dish out damage.
Games Workshop via Wahapedia
This allows teleporting Ghouls and gives the Terrorghiest a useful -1 to be hit with the Eye of Hysh, not to mention his warscroll ability to summon more Crypt Flayers. The Archregent can do the same, but also comes with a great utility spell:
Games Workshop via Wahapedia
It’s easy to cast and – crucially – lasts to the next hero phase. This means Frederic can make one awesome unit a turn with additional D3 attacks in combat. Sure, he may roll a 1, but you’ll never forget it if you’re on the other end of a 3 on a Terrorgheist or Crypt Flayers.
The army certainly has potential, but Frederic must have commanded it well to get a 4-1; they’re still not common with FEC.
Tournament that took place in the USA on 25th and 26th February. It involved 30 players vying to be crowned champion in a 5-game tournament.
Before I jump into the Top Three AoS Lists, I wanted to remind everyone of our friendly Discord server where you can join in the conversation with the Woehammer crew and suggest articles or series for the website.
If you like what we’re doing, why not join our Patreon and help keep it going?
Small Town Throwdown: Smoke on the Water (US) – 30 Players
Army Faction: Orruk Warclans – Army Type: Big Waaagh! – Grand Strategy: Waaagh! – Triumph: Bloodthirsty
LEADERS Orruk Warchanter (120)* – General – Command Traits: Master of Magic – Artefacts of Power: Arcane Tome – Spells: Da Great Big Green Hand of Gork – Warbeats: Fixin’ Beat Orruk Warchanter (120)* – Warbeats: Get ’Em Beat Skragrott, the Loonking (160)* Orruk Megaboss (140)** Wurrgog Prophet (170)** – Artefacts of Power: Glowin’ Tattooz – Spells: Gorkamorka’s War Cry Wurrgog Prophet (170)** – Artefacts of Power: Gryph-feather Charm – Spells: Gorkamorka’s War Cry – Aspects of the Champion: Abhorrant Ghoul King
BATTLELINE Moonclan Stabbas (125)* – Moonclan Boss – Bad Moon Icon Bearer – Gong Basher – Stabba – 3 Barbed Nets Orruk Ardboys (80)** Orruk Ardboys (240)*** – Ardboy Boss – 3 x Gorkamorka Glyph Bearer – 3 x Waaagh! Drummer – 6 x Orruk-forged Shield Orruk Brutes (450)*** – Brute Boss – Jagged Gore-hacka Orruk Brutes (150)*** – Brute Boss – Jagged Gore-hacka
ENDLESS SPELLS & INVOCATIONS 1 x Ravenak’s Gnashing Jaws (70)
Big Waaagh have been taking a bit of a back seat recently, with not many people playing it; but it’s great to see Gregory still repping it and grabbing the elusive 5-0 here. Big Waaagh is great, and often taken by people with Ironjawz armies who want to run a Wurgogg Prophet… and what has Gregory done? He’s taken 2! Great work here.
He’s also taken Skragrott which is interesting as he loses his access to the Gloomspite magic lore, and his Warmaster ability. However his spell (Fangs of Da Bad Moon) still has the potential to cause damage. I wouldn’t have considered it myself… but its an interesting shout.
The rest of the army is an Ironjawz core, with 15 Ardboyz and 15 Orruk Brutes as the reinforced units. They hit hard and the Brutes can cause great damage with the +1/+1 to hit/wound and extra damage from the Orruk Warchanter. Interestingly there’s no MawKrusha here, but that’s likely because of Galletian Champions – its good to see a GHB make some changes to army selection.
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Allegiance: Khorne – Slaughterhost: Reapers of Vengeance – Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs – Triumphs: Charge
Leaders Bloodthirster of Insensate Rage (280)* – Artefact: Armour of Scorn Bloodthirster of Unfettered Fury (300)*** – General – Command Trait: Mage Eater – Artefact: Skullshard Mantle Skarbrand (390) Slaughterpriest (100)* – Prayer: Blood Sacrifice Skarr Bloodwrath (110)* Slaughterpriest (100)** – Prayer: +1 to hit – Aspect of the Champion: Tunnel Master
Battleline 5 x Flesh Hounds (100)*** 5 x Flesh Hounds (100)*** 5 x Flesh Hounds (100)**
Peter: We’re lucky that for such a small site, we’re followed by some of the competitive players in the US and UK. As such, Gareth agree to share how his list worked for the event (though remember, this won’t apply for long with the release of the new book imminently).
Gareth: I’ve been running the same variation of this list for a few years now. I don’t play many tournaments and don’t have the brain power to change lists too much, so I just tinker around the edges. This latest iteration was a change from the list I was running last season. I removed a Khorne Daemon Prince and an Incarnate, and put in a Cygor, a second Slaughterpriest, Skarr, the Unmade, and the incantations.
The list is built primarily around the idea of giving your opponent headaches and making them doubt every move they make. Khorne has possibly more tricks than any other army right now, and this list is built to take advantage of all of them.
First let’s start with the anti-magic element, which, as with any Khorne army, is extremely strong. First off, the list has 8 unbinds; 1 from each Slaughterpriest, 1 from each unit of Flesh Hounds, 2 from the Cygor, and 1 from the Bloodthirster of Unfettered Fury wearing the Skullshard Mantle. Although none of these unbinds have any bonuses to unbind the Skullshard Mantle does have the neat little rule that an unmodified roll of an 8 automatically unbinds the spell, and the caster suffers D6 MW. If you save that unbind for a wizard who has one or two wounds left, it can throw doubt into your opponent over whether they want to chance it. Rolling an 8 is only a 14% chance, but in their mind, it is much higher.
Secondly, we have the Skull Altar, which causes any miscast to do D6 MW instead of D3 MW to the caster. Came in particularly handy this weekend in one of my games: a Master of Magic rerolled a miscast into a miscast, and then promptly died!
Thirdly, we have the use of 2 blood tithe points to auto stop a spell. Note that this is not an unbind, so even if the caster has a rule that says their cast can not be unbound, we can still use 2 blood tithe to say NO!
Fourthly, we have the Hexgorger Skulls. A handy incantation that has two nice rules – wizards within 12” get a -2 to cast debuff, plus if they’re within 8” and they roll an unmodified 8 to cast, the spell is unsuccessful, the caster, and any other wizards within 12” suffer D6 MW, and the wizard can no longer cast that spell for the rest of the game! Again, that 8 is only 14%, but in their mind, it is much larger.
Fifth, we have the ignore-magic on a 6. Any time any of your units are affected by a spell or endless spell, you can ignore its effects on a 6 (and you gain a blood tithe!). In one famous game against a Teclis-Sentinel list a few months back, Teclis managed to put Searing White Light through a portal to cause D3/D6 MW to my whole army during turn 1. I rolled well, and he caused a total of 4 MW across my whole army, and I gained 5 blood tithe. Thanks!
Finally, there is the Cygor’s ability. Any time a spell is successfully cast by a wizard within 30” of the Cygor, that wizard suffers 1 MW. Now that isn’t going to dent a huge monster-hero-wizard like, say Teclis, but I faced both Gitz and Skaven this weekend, and both had 5 wound wizards with two casts a turn. Quite a few times, I was willing to not even attempt an unbind, preferring to chip off 20% of their health for free. Again, it puts doubt into your opponent’s mind – “How much do I really need to cast this spell?”
The next trick we have is the use of blood tithe. Prior to this GHB, I almost exclusively used blood tithe for hero phase move and hero phase fight. That’s changed a little now that Galletian Champions are important – our ability to summon one for just 2 blood tithe is pretty great, so I’ve been doing that a lot. Before going into detail on blood tithe, let’s talk about Skarr. He’s in the list for one reason and one reason only – to die. He has an amazing ability that once he is dead, at the end of any movement phase (including your opponents) you can roll two dice and, on an 8,+ he comes back alive, anywhere on the board, 9” away from enemy units. That’s an amazing tech piece. I try to kill him as early as possible, and then during each of my opponent’s movement phases just take out my 9” stick and start measuring things, just to put doubt into their mind about where they can or cannot move safely.
Of course, to make sure he dies early, you need ways to kill him. That’s where he ties into blood tithe. One of my Slaughterpriests has the Blood Sacrifice prayer, which allows you to target a friendly BoK unit and cause them D3 MW in return for a blood tithe point. I was lucky that in four of my five games over the weekend, I had mystical in my deployment zone.
I placed the Skull Altar (which allows priests to re-roll prayers) within 8” of the mystical terrain, placed Skarr inside the Altar, and the Priest on the mystical. Turn 1 sacrifice Skarr, gain a tithe, and give him D3 MW. Then, since he is in the Skull Altar he can chant to bring out the Wrath-Axe, I use the Axe to cause another D3 MW on Skarr, and possibly another D3 with its secondary damage ability. Generally, this killsthis kills him, meaning I get 2 blood tithe (1 from his death, 1 from the sacrifice) in my first hero phase.
The blood tithe are then used later in the game as either a threat – using 3 to move the Bloodthirster of Insensate Rage or Skarbrand in my hero phase, giving them a much larger threat range, or, more commonly, to deny battle tactics. In your opponent’s hero phase they declare a battle tactic that involves killing something , and so you counter that by moving the thing they need to kill, out of range or behind a screen. Or, if you’re in combat in their hero phase, you spend 4 blood tithe to fight and generally cause carnage to their carefully laid out plans. Finally, there’s the summoning aspect. Many of the new GHB battleplans or battle tactics require GCs to be on an objective for extra points or to score the tactic. Rarely are they “starting army” GCs. The ability to just summon one onto an objective for just 2 blood tithe (a Blood Master) is fantastic. Particularly if you pair it with Skarr’s revival. End of your movement phase, you revive him on to one objective, and then use him to summon a GC on to either the same objective or sometimes a second one!
Now let’s talk about the actual units that do stuff during the game. The Bloodthirster of Unfettered Fury is there for one reason and one reason only – his command ability. At the start of the combat phase he can issue his command and all friendly BoK daemon units can pile-in 6”, and it’s the good 6” pile-in, meaning they can do it even if they’re outside of 3”. Note that this is an aura, but since the book is so old, none of the affected daemon units count as receiving a command ability, so are able to use other abilities at the same time. This is huge. Having, essentially, your whole army able to pile-in 6” is bonkers good. I very rarely charge any of my daemons during a game. Just move them to 3.1” away from their target unit, and then pile-in 6”. This has multiple benefits. First if you’re going against a monster, they cannot roar you (although the reverse is also true – you cannot perform a monstrous rampage). Second, you avoid any unleash hell. Third you can play activation games – although you’re going to fight with every single one of your units, your opponent is only able to activate their units which are within 3”, which is very often none (you activate first, put in a Bloodthirster, it kills the unit, it’s your opponent’s activation, they have nothing within 3”, so then you activate with your next 6” pile-in, and so on).
The 6” pile-in also interacts with the other tech piece in a Reapers of Vengeance list – all daemons have the start-of-combat-phase command ability to fight twice, and it’s an immediate fight twice. Note this command ability can only be used if you are within 3” of an enemy. The general idea is that you pile-in 6” with a Rage thirster or Skarbrand into two units, kill a bunch of stuff in one unit on the first fight, and then activate a second time, again going 6” to kill another unit. That second 6” pile-in often allows you to jump over a screen to target something more juicy. The Fury thirster is not that great in combat itself, typically doing only 5 or so wounds. But it does have a neat shooting attack – 4 attacks 3s/3s/-1/D3dmg that can kill a solo support hero or chip off some wounds from a screen etc.
Skarbrand is there to kill big monsters/heroes. It is relatively easy to keep Skarbrand at maximum rage for rounds 2-5. When at maximum rage, he does a guaranteed 8 MW per activation with his Carnage axe, and then has 9 attacks with Slaughter that are 4s/3s/-2/3dmg. That 4s to hit is horrible, even with the Locus of Fury ability that allows re-rolls of 1s to hit. We can mitigate that somewhat with either an All-Out-Attack (with the 6” pile-in he won’t have been roared), or earlier in the turn by using the Killing Frenzy prayer on him to give him +1 to hit. Skarbrand generally kills most heroes or does enough damage to seriously wound. If you’re going against multiple units, or a tough monster, you can use the double activate ability on him to cause a guaranteed 16 MW (with the potential of 24 or 32), and have 18 attacks.
Most seasoned Khorne players are surprised to see I don’t have a Bloodsecrator or Wrathmongers in my list. Either of these units give Skarbrand an extra attack, which works on Carnage, causing him to do a guaranteed 16 MW per activation instead of 8. That’s obviously a very nice buff, but I find Skarbrand generally kills everything he touches anyway, or is scary enough that people avoid him. Plus I hate the aesthetic of Khorne Mortals, so try to have as few mortals in my list as possible. Even my priests and Skarr are converted to look more daemon-like!
The Bloodthirster of Insensate Rage is the real scary piece in the army. His job is to clear hordes and support heroes. Particularly useful in this season where both are common. His basic attack profile is 5 attacks, 4s/2s/-2/D6dmg. That D6 damage is painful, as is the 4s to hit. But, he has this one little rule that changes everything. Any 6s to wound cause 4 MW (at top bracket) to all enemy units within 8” of him. That’s bonkers. If you roll two 6s, you’re doing 8 MW. That’s enough to kill most support heroes. And 8” with a largeish base is a big area. Couple it with the 6” pile-in and a double activation, and you can wreak havoc. I tend to use Killing Frenzy (+1 to hit prayer) and the double activation on him more than on Skarbrand. 3s to hit RR1s is actually fairly consistent to get enough hits through to then get one or two 6s to wound per activation. In my first game this weekend I faced the dreaded squig heavy Gitz list. Gitz have lots of over-lapping buffs, so tend to want to castle. They also have lots of support heroes. My Rage thirster killed 60 models in one combat phase.
Next is the Cygor. Although I’ve already spoken about his great anti-magic potential, he’s also a pretty handy monster. I tend to like monster-mash lists, so when I knew I had to include more GC in my list this season, I was looking for a non-leader monster to throw in. Cygor is the perfect match. 16 wounds means he’s tanky (even with the 5+ save). His flat 5dmg shooting attack is pretty good at finishing off a unit or solo support hero. He’s also decent in combat. For magic heavy armies he’s a good distraction. He usually is the first thing to die in my army (other than Skarr), but that means that my ‘Thirsters are not being targeted, which is fine by me! The Unmade are included for their debuff aura. Any enemy units within 12” (which is a crazy range for a unit of 9 models) can not redeploy or rally. Redeploy is the bane of the 6” pile-in. If you run your Bloodthirsters up the table, counting on the 6” pile-in to get into combat, a 4” redeploy kills you. Unmade for 80 points is a bargain to stop that. Also, with so many 4+ rallies in the game now, stopping that is handy, too!
The only remaining piece to describe is the Wrath-Axe. As well as being there to potentially first turn kill Skarr, it is handy to just have around all game doing chip damage and move blocking. Although incantations can be moved through as if they aren’t there, you still can not end a move on top of them. The Wrath-Axe has a large base, and being able to put it on one side of your army to prevent anyone charging from that side is pretty handy.
My choice of 2nd artefact is probably worth some discussion. Many Khorne players swear by Ar’gath, the King of Blades, as the artefact of choice on a Rage Thirster. This weapon gives changes the to-hit profile on the Rage Thirster from 4s to hit to 2s to hit. But only when targeting heroes. Since I generally use Skarbrand to hit big heroes and use Rage to target hordes (hoping to kill support heroes with the booms), I don’t like this choice. Harvester of Skulls is another choice – increase the number of attacks from 5 to 6 per activation. That’s a decent choice. An extra attack means more chances to get that 6 to wound. There’s also The Crimson Crown. This army is very command point dependent, so being able to use a command for free once per round is very useful. I can definitely see the attraction of that on the Fury Thirster. But I go for Armour of Scorn on my Rage. This gives him a 6+ ward, but 4+ wards against magic MW. I want my Rage thirster to live, and that 6+ ward is the nice little extra toughness to keep him alive a little longer. I’m very sympathetic to those who prefer Crimson Crown or Harvester of Skulls though.I’m pretty happy with this list at the moment, although with a new book on the horizon I think last weekend was probably my last competitive outing with it. Across two RTTs and the GT, I’m 10-1 with the list, which is pretty decent!
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Allegiance: Idoneth Deepkin – Enclave: Nautilar – Mortal Realm: Ghur – Grand Strategy: The Creeping Gloomtide – Triumphs: Inspired
Leaders Akhelian King (250)* – General – Bladed Polearm – Command Trait: Unstoppable Fury – Artefact: Potion of Hateful Frenzy – Mount Trait: Voidchill Darkness Lotann, Warden of the Soul Ledgers (110)* Battlemage (100)* – Mortal Realm: Ghur – Universal Spell Lore: Ghost-mist – Aspect of the Champion: Stubborn as a Rhinox – Allies
Battleline 6 x Akhelian Morrsarr Guard (360)* – Reinforced x 1 20 x Namarti Reavers (340)** – Reinforced x 1 10 x Namarti Reavers (170)** 10 x Namarti Reavers (170)** Akhelian Leviadon (460)* – Mount Trait: Ancient
Lotann + Leviadon + Big Namarti Parties are the soup of the day for Idoneth. The combination is a great way to improve the Namarti (Reavers or Thralls) in both offense and defense. The Leviadon provides an aura giving Namarti +1 to hit so long as the target is within 12″ of the Leviadon. With the Leviadon’s large base size, that 12″ is generous. He also provides a +1 to save aura in the same zone, meaning that the Namarti may be able to hold back and reap the benefits of the save and hit bonuses from the turtle while enjoying a bonus to wound from Lotann. Ultimately, a squad of 20 will be firing 40 arrows hitting on 2s, wounding on 2s, with rend -1 and 1 damage.
The King and Morsarr Guard are here to do King and Morsarr Guard things. Both like to move fast to get in their opponents’ faces. Both like to hit insanely hard for their cost. Both like to die if you sneeze near them while unsupported. a 6-strong unit of Morsarr can blend large blobs of chaff units using their once-per-game mortal wound bomb, and the king is one of the best duellists in the game. Careful positioning can lead to a blistering number of attacks, and on-demand strike first is nothing to sniff at.
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Army Faction: Slaves to Darkness – Army Subfaction: Legion of the First Prince – Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs – Triumphs: Inspired
LEADER 1 x Centaurion Marshal (145)* – Artefacts: The Conqueror’s Crown 1 x Chaos Sorcerer Lord (120)* – General – Command Traits: Master of Magic – Artefacts: Arcane Tome – Spells: Chaotic Conduit – Aspects of the Champion: Fuelled by Ghurish Rage – Mark of Chaos: Slaanesh 1 x Eternus, Blade of the First Prince (235)* 1 x Be’lakor (355)*** – Spells: Daemonic Speed
BATTLELINE 24 x Chaos Legionnaires (330)** 6 x Furies (90)** 6 x Furies (90)***
BEHEMOTH 1 x Chaos Warshrine (185)*** – Prayers: Curse – Mark of Chaos: Slaanesh
OTHER 1 x Cockatrice (105)* 3 x Gorebeast Chariots (345)*** – Exalted Charioteer – 3 x Chaos Greatblade and Lashing Whip – Mark of Chaos: Undivided
Legion of the First prince is starting to establish itself as ‘the third way’, after Cabalists and KOTET, and for good reason – it’s a much harder and more subtle sub-faction to get your head around. It does some offer some baked in synergy – and Kyle here (for the first time in this column that I’ve seen) has leant all the way into the fluffy, synergistic version.
The core fluff of a Legion list is the overlapping benefits to taking Be’Lakor, the Centaurion, Eternus, Legionnaires (double reinforced in this instance) and plenty of furies. The synergies are thus: Legionnaires gain +1 to wound while near Be’Lakor (making them a pretty respectable sub-hammer while relatively durable for their points); Eternus gets +1 to his ‘comes back from the dead’ roll while Be’lakor is still alive – and he gains a free CP while near either Legionnaires or Furies – the latter being more likely to keep up with him while Legionnaires guard Be’lakor; lastly, the Marshal allows the big blob of Legionnaires to rally on a 5+.
The rest of the list is worth commenting on to – it’s an early example of allying in the Cockatrice from the new Beasts book, for ability on a 4+ after one of its shots connects to make the enemy unit hit on 6s – which as you can imagine, could wildly swing the outcome of a key engagement – and at only 105 pts, it’s not a hugely risky gamble.
Ths list lost only to a no-doubt more traditional Slaves list, and again to Khorne – who love lists like this without ranged threats – with the most notable win being the on-form Sylvaneth for a 3-2, which is a good result with both a highly thematic and off-meta list. Gratz Kyle!
Tournament that took place in the USA on the 25th and 26th February. It involved 79 players vying to be crowned champion in a 5-game tournament.
Before I jump into the Top Three AoS Lists, I wanted to remind everyone of our friendly Discord server where you can join in the conversation with the Woehammer crew and suggest articles or series for the website.
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Cherokee Open (US) – 79 Players
Army Faction: Gloomspite Gitz – Army Subfaction: Jaws of Mork – Grand Strategy: Chasing the Moon – Triumphs: Indomitable
LEADER 1 x Squigboss (80)* – Aspects of the Champion: Fuelled by Ghurish Rage 1 x Skragrott, the Loonking (160)* – Spells: Itchy Nuisance 1 x Fungoid Cave-Shaman (90)* – General – Command Traits: The Clammy Hand – Artefacts: Staff of Sneaky Stealin’ – Spells: The Hand of Gork
BATTLELINE 10 x Boingrot Bounderz (280) – Bounder Boss 10 x Boingrot Bounderz (280)* – Bounder Boss 36 x Squig Herd (360)** 12 x Squig Herd (120)**
BEHEMOTH 1 x Mangler Squigs (260)
ENDLESS SPELL 1 x Scrapskuttle’s Arachnacauldron (50)
TERRAIN 1 x Bad Moon Loonshrine (0)
OTHER 1 x Marshcrawla Sloggoth (150) 6 x Sneaky Snufflers (110)
CORE BATTALIONS: *Warlord **Galletian Veterans
TOTAL POINTS: (1940/2000)
Dale returns with back to back 5-0s with Gloomspite Gitz. So there’s definitely something in the book. For those who didn’t catch that review, here’s what I said last time:
Dale has gone with Squigs for his main force with Bounders providing some great Spears of damage and the Squig Herd doing mortals when they run away, and the herders can get them back. The lack of command abilities on them worries me, however, a little as people get used to the army… especially with shooting. The buff pieces all have a place as well, with Squigs getting free moves, the moon doing as required, and 5+ward on one unit. It definitely requires some memory to keep all the moving parts in your head.
So, what to add? Well let’s use the time to talk about Skragrott:
Warscroll from Games Workshop via Wahapedia
He’s got loads of new abilities; most of which are build on the previous book. First up he’s a Warmaster so counts as a General in the army as well as your selected one. Great for Command Ability ranges. He’s still a 2 cast Wizard but he’s been reading those books in the last 3 years and now knows the full Lore (if in a Gloomspite List). This is great if the Fungoid is better placed to use his Hand of Gork.
He loses his extra command points, but gets a free command ability each turn – a great substitute. For me the best addition is that he also shines the Light of the Bad Moon so there’s a third source for the benefits – moon, shrine, Skragrott. He retains his 4+ ward and can move the moon… and then his new spell is great! 24″ mortal wound causer — you’re going to want some Mystic Terrain. I’ll do a deep dive into the Warscroll in the future, but he’s now a great addition to any Gitz army.
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Army Faction: Stormcast Eternals – Army Type: Scions of the Storm – Army Subfaction: Hammers of Sigmar – Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs – Holy Commands: Thunderbolt Volley – Holy Commands: Call for Aid – Triumphs: Inspired
LEADER 1 x Bastian Carthalos (300)** 1 x Lord-Relictor (150)** – Prayers: Translocation 1 x Lord-Castellant (160)** – General – Command Traits: Master of Magic – Artefacts: Arcane Tome – Spells: Thundershock – Aspects of the Champion: Tunnel Master
BATTLELINE 4 x Dracothian Guard Fulminators (480)** 5 x Liberators (120)*** – Liberator-Prime – Heavens-wrought Weapon and Sigmarite Shield – Grandweapon 5 x Liberators (120)*** – Liberator-Prime – Grandweapon – Heavens-wrought Weapon and Sigmarite Shield 5 x Liberators (120)*** – Liberator-Prime – Grandweapon – Heavens-wrought Weapon and Sigmarite Shield
OTHER 3 x Aetherwings (70)* 3 x Vanguard-Raptors with Longstrike Crossbows (240)* – Raptor-Prime 3 x Vanguard-Raptors with Longstrike Crossbows (240)* – Raptor-Prime
Before I jump into the list breakdown, I would like to note that I attended Cherokee this year (78th place, please don’t look at me), and faced Matthew’s list in the first round. He was an absolute pleasure to play, and he stomped me into the dirt.
Matthew brought a fair number of mortal wound-dealing and heavy-hitting units. Bastion is insanely tough with great damage output and the Slann-esque ability to place mortals anywhere on the battlefield. The Fulminators use their breath weapon mortals to soften up tougher opponents before charging in to finish them off. The longstrikes are there to fish for 6’s to hit froma safe distance, to try to pick off a unit left out in the open (and their Aetherwing buddies to make those standard shots a little more reliable).
Past that the list focuses on standard-issue units to perform standard-issue jobs. The priest uses translocation to sling his GCs into position (or throw Bastion into you backline). The Lord-Castellant uses his lantern to buff the saves for the Fulminators, leading to the sweet 1+ save, and the addition of the Arcane Tome allows him to weaken his opponent’s heavy-hitters to further protect units like Fulminators and Bastion, who might otherwise be at risk from volume-of-dice attacks.
Great work from Matthew to grab 2nd spot at such a huge event, and great game from me as well! I look forward to seeing where this army goes as we progress more into this GHB.
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Army Faction: Lumineth Realm-lords – Army Subfaction: Helon – Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs – Triumphs: Inspired
LEADER 1 x Archmage Teclis (700)* 1 x Scinari Calligrave (110)* – Spells: Overwhelming Heat – Aspects of the Champion: Stubborn as a Rhinox 1 x Scinari Cathallar (110)* – General – Command Traits: Master of Magic – Artefacts: Silver Wand – Spells: Total Eclipse
BATTLELINE 5 x Hurakan Windchargers (130)* – Windspeaker Seneschal – Standard Bearer 5 x Hurakan Windchargers (130)* – Windspeaker Seneschal – Standard Bearer 20 x Vanari Auralan Sentinels (300)* – High Sentinel – Spells: Protection of Hysh 10 x Vanari Auralan Wardens (150)* – High Warden – Spells: Etheral Blessings 10 x Vanari Auralan Wardens (150)* – High Warden – Spells: Solar Flare
ENDLESS SPELL 1 x Umbral Spellportal (80) 1 x Ravenak’s Gnashing Jaws (70) 1 x Rune of Petrification (60)
CORE BATTALIONS: *Battle Regiment
TOTAL POINTS: (1990/2000
Jon: Jonathan made sure to get every drop of effectivity out of his list when he made the bold decision to only include one group of Auralan Sentinels in his list. With a maximum shooting range of 24″, requiring line of sight, and two massive obscuring terrain features in the middle of the board it’s very impressive that he was able to surgically pull off his HVT’s.
Two Galatian Champions enable him to consistently play for the generic battle tactics while the full endless spell suite means you can almost assuredly score three to four Lumineth Realm-Lords specific tactics. The Calligrave’s signature spell that ONLY affects heroes that are in line of sight clearly was a great pick.
An interesting decision of giving the Cathallar a Command Trait instead of giving Teclis the nod as General means “This One’s Mine!” is almost never going to be achieved, but it doesn’t seem that Roberts missed it. Great showing from Jonathan! I look forward to hearing about it from attendees and fans in the coming weeks.
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Army Faction: Skaven – Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs – Triumphs: Bloodthirsty
LEADER 1 x Verminlord Deceiver (420) – Artefacts: Shadow Magnet Trinket – Spells: Flaming Weapon 1 x Verminlord Warbringer (400)* – General – Command Traits: Devious Adversary – Artefacts: Warpstone Charm – Spells: Flaming Weapon 1 x Grey Seer (120)** – Spells: Skitterleap 1 x Grey Seer (120)** – Spells: Skitterleap – Aspects of the Champion: Tunnel Master 1 x Thanquol (430)** – 4 x Warpfire Projectors – Spells: Skitterleap
BATTLELINE 10 x Night Runners (90)* – Nightleader 20 x Clanrats (100)* – Clawleader – 2 x Clanrat Standard Bearer – 2 x Clanrat Bell-ringer – Rusty Blade 20 x Clanrats (100)* – Clawleader – 2 x Clanrat Standard Bearer – 2 x Clanrat Bell-ringer – Rusty Blade
ENDLESS SPELL 1 x Warp Lightning Vortex (80) 1 x Ravenak’s Gnashing Jaws (70) 1 x Lauchon the Soulseeker (50)
Peter: We previously states that the Skaven book was one of the oldest books. This is obviously a mistake, with it being under a year old.
Skaven are currently struggling, but with the right pilot, they are still able to compete in the meta… and this army is full of lovely Skaveny tricks. I played a very similar list at Warfare last year and got a small win, but it was touch and go, and a double would have killed me. The army has lots of strike and fade tactics and can hit you wherever Zachary wants. There’s not much you can do to stop them striking where they want with the Gnawholes and Skitterleap.
The Big Combo here is Thanquol and Lauchon. The Soulseeker can move Thanquol who normally can’t Skitterleap… and get him closer than 9″. This means he is superb at horde clearing. If you’ve got a Squig Herd it’s going to die quickly! Just hope there’s some left to flee and cause mortal wounds.
Games Workshop via Wahapedia
With 4 Warpfire Projectors Thanquol is doing 2 mortal wounds for each model within 8″… easily killing any hordes out there. The only protection I found was a cunning redeploy and then try to catch him with a double turn… but it’s risky especially with his Unleash Hell having no negatives… so he can move, fire, unleash hell, fight in combat…! Ouch.
It’s not all Thanquol, the Verminlords are great models and can really dish out damage when they need to. It’s a great list – don’t underestimate it!
This is the top three AoS lists for Colonial Carnagethat took place in the USA on the 18th and 19th of February. It involved 45 players vying to be crowned champion in a 5-game tournament.
Before I jump into the Top Three AoS Lists, I wanted to remind everyone of our friendly Discord server where you can join in the conversation with the Woehammer crew and suggest articles or series for the website.
If you like what we’re doing, why not join our Patreon and help keep it going?
Also if there’s a one day or two day tournament you’d like us to cover drop us a comment on this post and we’ll have a look at it for you.
The Top Three AoS Lists
Army Faction: Gloomspite Gitz – Army Subfaction: Jaws of Mork – Grand Strategy: Chasing the Moon – Triumphs: Indomitable
LEADER 1 x Squigboss (80)* – Aspects of the Champion: Fuelled by Ghurish Rage 1 x Skragrott, the Loonking (160)* – Spells: Itchy Nuisance 1 x Fungoid Cave-Shaman (90)* – General – Command Traits: The Clammy Hand – Artefacts: Staff of Sneaky Stealin’ – Spells: The Hand of Gork
BATTLELINE 10 x Boingrot Bounderz (280) – Bounder Boss 10 x Boingrot Bounderz (280)* – Bounder Boss 36 x Squig Herd (360)** 12 x Squig Herd (120)**
BEHEMOTH 1 x Mangler Squigs (260)
ENDLESS SPELL 1 x Scrapskuttle’s Arachnacauldron (50)
TERRAIN 1 x Bad Moon Loonshrine (0)
OTHER 1 x Marshcrawla Sloggoth (150) 6 x Sneaky Snufflers (110)
CORE BATTALIONS: *Warlord **Galletian Veterans
TOTAL POINTS: (1940/2000)
Three years of an old book with Gloomspite Gitz mostly being seen as a wild-card entry in the top threes… mainly because Peter wanted to give me something to write about… and then a second 5-0 in as many weeks. So, it’s definitely an improvement so far.
Dale has gone with Squigs for his main force with Bounders providing some great Spears of damage and the Squig Herd doing mortals when they run away, and the herders can get them back. The lack of command abilities on them worries me, however, a little as people get used to the army… especially with shooting.
The buff pieces all have a place as well, with Squigs getting free moves, the moon doing as required, and 5+ward on one unit. It definitely requires some memory to keep all the moving parts in your head.
A 5-0 is impressive regardless of army and so we’ll done to Dale.
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Army Faction: Beasts of Chaos – Army Subfaction: Gavespawn – Grand Strategy: Desecrating Brayherd – Triumphs: Inspired
LEADER 1 x Beastlord (145)* – General – Command Traits: Bestial Cunning – Artefacts: Slitherwrack Helm – Aspects of the Champion: Fuelled by Ghurish Rage 1 x Great Bray-Shaman (95)*** – Spells: Wild Rampage 1 x Great Bray-Shaman (95)*** – Spells: Tendrils of Atrophy 1 x Beasts of Chaos Tzaangor Shaman (115)*** – Artefacts: Brayblast Trumpet – Spells: Tendrils of Atrophy
BATTLELINE 3 x Morghurite Chaos Spawn (Gibbering Congregation) (230) 20 x Bestigors (440)** 10 x Gors (110)** – Paired Hacking Blades 10 x Gors (110)** – Paired Hacking Blades 10 x Gors (110)** – Paired Hacking Blades 10 x Ungors (80)*** – Pitted Blade
OTHER 1 x Cockatrice (105) 1 x Cockatrice (105) 6 x Beasts of Chaos Slaangor Fiendbloods (260)*
Peter: We have updated this comment since initial publication. Ungors were initially referred to as ‘Hammers’, and this has been changed to Bestigors. A predicted text typo of ‘Tendrils of Apathy’ has been corrected to ‘Tendrils of Atrophy’. Finally, the reference to +2 to casting per game has been corrected to +3.
We all make the occasional mistake. Please remember our writers comment on a lot of factions and may not know each inside-out!
The Gor stampede emerges! This list takes a very interesting tact with the enemy in order to try and shut down and isolate enemy units to substantially blunt their output. With the Beastial Cunning trait, you can bring in a key unit within 7″ instead of 9, guaranteeing the charge. First, the Chaos Spawn charge in to reduce enemy unit attacks by 1, and since they can move separately, you can either spread them out or focus them on one unit as needed.
Bestigors, Cockatrice and Slaangors all function as hammers, with Bray-Shaman boosting them with Wild Rampage for exploding 6s to hit, and the other Bray-Shaman and Tzaangor Shaman casting Tendrils of Atrophy (with +3 once per game if you really need to get it off) to increase the damage. Even if the opponent survives this onslaught, they will still have to deal with the -1 to attacks from the Chaos Spawn, and are likely fighting last due to the Gors Gor Stampede ability and the General’s Slitherwrack Helm meaning any counter attack will likely bounce right off of you.
A clever and precise use of debuffs before charging in with the hammer makes this list very difficult to deal with in melee by all but the most hardy of targets.
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Army Faction: Stormcast Eternals – Army Type: Scions of the Storm – Army Subfaction: Knights Excelsior – Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs – Triumphs: Bloodthirsty Holy Commands Enhancement: Steadfast March
LEADER 1 x Lord-Castellant (160)* – General – Command Traits: Master of Magic – Artefacts: Arcane Tome – Spells: Celestial Blades – Aspects of the Champion: Tunnel Master 1 x Lord-Relictor (150)* – Prayers: Translocation 1 x Lord-Arcanum on Gryph-Charger (170)* – Mount Traits: Scintillating Trail – Spells: Azyrite Halo
BATTLELINE 5 x Retributors (210)* – Retributor-Prime 5 x Retributors (210)* – Retributor-Prime 5 x Retributors (210)* – Retributor-Prime
OTHER 4 x Stormdrake Guard (680)* – Stormdrake-Prime – Drakerider’s Warblade
3 x Vanguard-Palladors (200)* – Pallador-Prime – Boltstorm Pistol and Shock Handaxe
CORE BATTALIONS: *Battle Regiment
TOTAL POINTS: (1990/2000)
After the craziness that was Salt Smash, normal(ish) service returns. Still with Palladors as an action unit (everyone has some), with the points drop and ranged weapons on top of their movement, they are a great alternative to Draconiths. And dragons. A nice big block of 4. Beyond the Palladors JB threw in a Lord Arcanum on Gryphcharger (a personal favourite). He has his own built-in teleport and is both a decent caster and an ok combat character. He can keep up with and be covered by the Palladors and, in turn, cover for them with both his Cycle of the Storm (once per turn ignore a fatal wound) and Healing light. An effective way to deal with the 4+ save on the Palladors is a very efficient way to pick up remote objectives.
Conventional Lord Castellant (with celestial blades) and Lord Relictor. Celestial Blades can either be placed on the Dragons or a handy Retributor unit. Hitting on a 2+ is always welcome. Running 3 MSU Retributors as battleline reflects the points drops (they were 235) and some of their tricks. They lack the 2 up save of Protectors but with a Lord-Castellant that can be dealt with. They are slow, Steadfast March will help push them onto the middle or an objective out of deployment. They can be held in reserve and dropped via Scions. Most importantly, they are a solid 15 wounds with -2 rend and 16 attacks. That makes them harder to kill than an MSU Annihilator with Grandhammer while having more attacks, making them more reliable. Your opponent will have to make a serious effort to remove them, and if even one is left alive, the strike back is likely to have serious consequences.
A very well crafted SCE list taking advantage of the recent points drops to make it more competitive. Losing to the new Gitz is probably not unexpected. They can build strength as they go, which is a weakness of SCE, as key pieces go down their scoring options shrink fast.
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Army Faction: Soulblight Gravelords – Army Type: Vyrkos Dynasty – Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs – Triumph: Inspired
LEADERS Radukar the Beast (310) Vampire Lord (140)* – Spells: Amethystine Pinions, Invigorating Aura – Aspects of the Champion: Butcher Belladamma Volga (200)* – Spells: Invigorating Aura, Soulpike Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon (420)* – General – Command Traits: Kin of the Wolf – Deathlance – Artefacts of Power: Sangsyron – Mount Traits: Foetid Miasma – Spells: Flaming Weapon, Invigorating Aura
BATTLELINE Dire Wolves (130)* Deathrattle Skeletons (80)* Dire Wolves (130)*
OTHER Grave Guard (280)* – Seneschal – Great Wight Blade – 2 x Standard Bearer – 2 x Hornblower Grave Guard (280)* – Standard Bearer – Hornblower – Seneschal – Great Wight Blade
CORE BATTALIONS *Battle Regiment
TOTAL POINTS: 1970/2000
Soulblight two seasons ago was a different vibe. That was when zombie blobs shambled care free and nigh on unkillable Blood Knights trampled dreams. Soulblight now, post points hike and during a season that rewards having good GCs – exactly the thing Soulblight don’t have – are a different matter, so it’s cause for celebration when a list cracks the top 10.
William has opted for a Vyrkos hero-hammer here, with Radukar and Balladamma following on the bone-tails of a VLoZD. It’s a techy combo – Belladamma can be bodyguarded by the Dire Wolves and set up an exploding 6s aura, while Radukar can summon additional wolves and, so long as he makes a charge, put out a +1 attacks aura, making for a pretty potent set of overlapping buffs. It can be tricky to set up but I imagine the plan was to run a kind of hero-castle, setting up the Zombie Dragon – or one of the two big blobs of Grave Guard, who are still a super value unit – as super-buffed up hammers at the centre of the auras.
It’s hard to pin point exactly why Soulblight just don’t quite have the tools to reach the top tables atm, but I suspect this is about as good a list as they can field at the moment! Kudos to William for the 3-2.
