This is the top three AoS lists for the Aotearoa Masters Grand Tournament that took place in New Zealand on the 20th and 21st of May. It involved 18 players vying to be crowned champion in a 5-game tournament.
As this event had less than 20 players attending there won’t be any list comments here as the guys will be concentrating on the larger events of the week.
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: Disciples of Tzeentch – Change Coven: Guild of Summoners – Grand Strategy: Master of Destiny – Triumphs: bloodthirsty
Leaders Changecaster, Herald of Tzeentch (150)** – Artefact: The Eternal Shroud – Lore of Change: Bolt of Tzeentch – Lore of Change: Treason of Tzeentch Curseling, Eye of Tzeentch (200)** – General – Command Trait: Cult Demagogue – Lore of Fate: Shield of Fate – Lore of Fate: Arcane Suggestion – Aspect of the Champion: Tunnel Master Magister (140)** – Lore of Fate: Glimpse of Future – Lore of Fate: Shield of Fate Contorted Epitome (190)* – Universal Spell Lore: Flaming Weapon – Universal Spell Lore: Ghost-mist – Allies
Battleline 20 x Pink Horrors of Tzeentch (500)* – Reinforced x 1 10 x Kairic Acolytes (120)* – 7x Pair of Cursed Blades – 3x Cursed Glaives 10 x Kairic Acolytes (120)* – 7x Pair of Cursed Blades – 3x Cursed Glaives 10 x Tzaangors (180)* – 10x Pair of Savage Blade
Allegiance: Beasts of Chaos – Greatfray: Darkwalkers – Mortal Realm: Ghur – Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs – Triumphs: Bloodthirsty
Leaders Doombull (180)* – General – Command Trait: Bestial Cunning – Artefact: Brayblast Trumpet – Aspect of the Champion: Leadership of the Alpha Great Bray-Shaman (95)* – Lore of the Twisted Wilds: Wild Rampage
Battleline 10 x Ungors (80)* – Mauls & Half-Shields 20 x Ungor Raiders (230)* – Reinforced x 1 9 x Bullgors (630)* – Pairs of Axes – Reinforced x 2
Units 6 x Beasts of Chaos Tzaangor Enlightened on Discs of Tzeentch (430)* – Reinforced x 1 10 x Chaos Warhounds (110)*
Leaders Dankhold Troggboss (200)* – General – Command Trait: Loonskin – Artefact: Glowy Howzit Fungoid Cave-Shaman (90)*** – Artefact: Staff of Sneaky Stealin’ – Lore of the Moonclans: The Hand of Gork Skragrott, The Loonking (210)*** – Lore of the Moonclans: The Hand of Gork Webspinner Shaman (65)*** – Lore of the Spiderfang: Curse of da Spider God Squigboss with Gnasha-squig (100)** – Aspect of the Champion: Tunnel Master
Battleline 3 x Fellwater Troggoths (160)* 6 x Rockgut Troggoths (320)* – Reinforced x 1 3 x Rockgut Troggoths (160)* 40 x Moonclan Shootas (250)*** – Reinforced x 1 24 x Squig Herd (260)** – Reinforced x 1
Units 5 x Gobbapalooza (160)* – Spell1: Lore of the Moonclans: Itchy Nuisance
This is the top three AoS lists for the Wartilyo GT that took place in the Philippines on the 13th and 14th of May. It involved 24 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.
Wartilyo Top Table
If you get a few minutes, have a look at the making of the Wartilyo GT Top table. It’s a thing of beauty!
The Top Three AoS Lists
Kieron: And the crown for one of the first, if not the first Philippines GT goes to Tzeentch with another Krondspine/Guild of Summoners combo. There are a few interesting choices here compared to other similar lists, the first of which is the Shards of Valagharr. What all of the Guild of Summoners lists want more than anything is time to get the big birds on the board and an Endless Spell that halves the movement of models and prevents units from flying or being removed from the board and set back up again are always going to be good value. It’s also an easy spell for the Krondspine to eat after killing your own Magister and making the Krondspine go wild with a casting value of only 5. Staying with the theme of slowing your opponent down, nothing puts a unit off making a charge more than having one of its members turn into a gibbering chaos spawn via the Burning Sigil.
Unit wise, two units of pinks is a great start to the list as there’s only summoning of Lords of Change in Guild of Summoners and, alongside the Krondspine, and good use of terrain, it’s going to be difficult to get to the casters for several turns. The Magister is a mainstay of these lists – giving you two potential casts, with the Krondspine giving an additional +1 on top of the +1 from Kairos as well. The other caster is a Thaumaturge, with the Gryph Feather Charm adding a 5+ ward save to this model – really key as if there are no Arcanite heroes alive (i.e. the Magister and the Ogroid) then there’s no summoning in Guild of Summoners.
In terms of how Carlo probably planned each battle to go, it would be to either Cunning Manoeuvre or Tide of Anarchy (take an objective with 9+ models) while building up to 8 summoning points. T2, Call for Change by earning one more summoning point through your opponent’s hero phase or simply through one of your own and then dropping in your first bird. T3, potentially finish off a 9 model unit or 9 wound hero/monster for Ninefold Dismantlement. T4 could easily be whichever of Cunning Manoeuvre or Tide wasn’t done in T1 and then, assuming you have at least two big birds and Kairos on the board and in range of each other, getting Kairos to cast 3 spells with +3 to cast is very straightforward or, just use Destiny Dice to cast them. Make sure you’ve got 9 on Destiny Dice at the end and that’s the Grand Strat as well. You may not even have had to use Desecrate Land or Eye for an Eye, two of the easier tactics to score, with This One’s Mine with the Ogroid being very viable too. And this is how Tzeentch wins – 13 points on the battle tactics and Grand Strategy meaning that even if you only score 10 points on the primary, you still have a very healthy score of 23. If your opponent doesn’t quite finish off enough Horrors to take an objective on a turn they chose Gaining Momentum…a one or two point turn is probably game over against this kind of list.
Congrats Carlo on the result and congrats to the Filipino AoS community!
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After a couple of seasons in the shadows, their hunger building, Soulblight are finally back for blood – Legion of Blood, to be precise. And it’s a list archetype you’re going to see a lot of for a while.
The core of the list revolves around a vampire lord on dragon (VloZD) with the Cloak of Mists and Shadows to make it ethereal, aka a 3+ save that can’t be modified either way. Combined with the Doomed Minion trait, allowing it to apply the following effect to d3 enemy units that aren’t heroes/monsters they into engagement with: ANY friendly unit hits that enemy unit on unmodified 2+s. With the new hunger ability – healing up to 6 wounds of damage done – this makes the VloZD a terrifying utility piece that is insanely hard to kill and can make killing key units trivially easy.
Neferata brings up the rear, bringing two key pieces of utility to bear – the ability for her and 3 units to redeploy before the first battle round begins and her spell to make something _unrendable_, i.e. it can still benefit from positive save modifiers. The 10 blood knights are obviously a great receiver for that spell, but it works well on herself too, or the giant blob of Deathrattle to make them an absolute nightmare to fully deal with, especially given the new timing on their ability – essentially a free 4+ rally at the start of the combat phase.
All told, it’s a list with huge utillity, super anvils and fantastic board control – which as you might expect was only dealt with successfully by DoT and their sheer MW output being able to bypass all that tankiness and access to horrors etc to compete with the chaff hordes on objectives. This is a great result for John Paul and certainly not the last we’ve seen of this list.
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We’ve a new commentator who joins us this week, and boy, does he love his Chaos armies! Roland Rivera is a US player who’s big into his Khorne, Nurgle, and Slaves to Darkness. As well as that, he also plays Ironjawz, Ogors, and Stormcast. So we’ll probably be hearing a lot from him going forward!
Roland Rivera: Ah, Nurgle. The more things change, the more they stay the same. We’ve been seeing lists built around Pusgoyle Blightlords and the Drowned Men subfaction place well for over a year now, and this is the latest entry in that file. The pregame move Drowned Men provides is very powerful, as it can help you position the Blightlords to engage in midboard attrition scenarios (where they excel) ahead of schedule, or otherwise adjust to your opponent’s deployment and counter the disadvantage of being a 1-drop. Once in combat, Pusgoyle Blightlords can be very hard to deal with, because of their high wound count, solid saves, 5+ Ward, and multiple mortal wound generation abilities. The Blightlords are also paired with the customary Lord of Afflictions General with the Overpowering Stench command trait, which turns off the ability to issue and receive commands. This ability has only gotten stronger as the edition has progressed, as more and more powerful command abilities enter the game. The list also has Bloab as an efficiently costed Hero Monster with a powerful warscroll spell. A unit of Nurglings rounds things out by providing backfield pressure, which in Nurgle also translates to faster generation of Contagion Points you can then use for summoning more Daemons. An interesting bit of tech here is the inclusion of a Plague Priest. This Priest plays multiple roles in this list – he helps interact with Invocations (which Nurgle cannot do with its main roster), he is a Galletian Champion with Tunnel Master for sneaky objective capturing, and he can chant a high-upside prayer in Curse. The Pusgoyle Blightlords have lots of attacks but lack Rend, so Curse provides a nice source of extra damage. Do note that mortal wounds generated from Curse will not stack with disease points – you’ll have to pick one. Overall, this list is very good at what it does – it’s an attrition meatgrinder that can shove tough, elite units in its opponent’s face and pin them down.
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Brett: Bullgors centre stage in a list that focuses on board control as much as power with Ungors and Raiders for days. With summoning going away there is more play in Ambush (starting unit, up to the whole army off the board). That pairs well with the Herdstone which increases Rend from Round 2. Combined here with Darkwalkers to let a unit within 9″ of a board edge to leave the board and teleport back on;
4 Ungor and Ungor Raider units to take advantage of that mobility. The raiders being in Galletian Sharpshooters is surprising – their shooting isn’t strong but it does give them more utility. With the Doombull and Bullgors to hold the centre and be buffed by the Sharman this is a durable list with some punch especially later. However both of the Bullgor units only have 5+ saves which might have hurt them (although they can have a ward save). The Ungors (all of them) are free to score points and just be annoying all over the place. Unfortunately, even with their new book, their output can be disappointing since they mostly hit on a 4+. Combined with initially low rend they don’t hit hard until the later part of the game. The Bullgors are loaded for maximum damage but are also vunerable to being roared. If they are removed then the rest of the list lacks punch.
Looks like the Sons of Behemet used that against them and inflicted enough damage early enough to force a loss. Very respectible effort beating Soulblight, Seraphon and Slaves (Nurgle Knights?).
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.
With the release of the Battlescroll: Galletian Reinforcements I’ve been able to go back through the data from the release of the General’s Handbook and tidy everything up. In doing so, I though it may be cool to give you a run-down of how each faction performed under the current General’s Handbook until the Battlescroll took effect.
The data used for analysing these results was taken from 110 Grand Tournaments between 3rd July 2022 and 6th November 2022.
Beasts of Chaos
Region Comparison – Popularity
Beasts of Chaos saw their highest popularity in Scandinavia with 4.3% of players choosing the faction for tournament play, while at the opposite end of the world the uptake was only 1.6% in Oceania
Region Comparison – Win Rates
Their popularity in Scandinavia transferred to their regional win rates as well with 69.2%. While players in North America had to make do with 57.5%.
Subfaction Analysis
Subfaction
Players
Win Rate
Allherd
38
64.63%
Gavespawn
35
60.06%
Darkwalkers
8
56.10%
Unknown
34
58.53%
Faction Total
115
60.82%
Allherd sees the most success and also the most popularity with the 38 players achieving a combined win rate of 64.6%. Darkwalkers drags the faction total down being the least successful faction with 58.5%.
Top 10 Beasts of Chaos Players
You may notice that some players have a better World/Nation ranking than players above them in this table. This is due to players playing with multiple factions. These players have been ranked on their top 4 Beasts of Chaos results only.
