This is the top three AoS lists for Gymhammer that took place in the UK on the 29th and 30th of July. It involved 21 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: Daughters of Khaine – Temple: Zainthar Kai – Grand Strategy: Bloodthirsty Zealots
LEADERS Bloodwrack Medusa (140)* – General – Command Trait: Zealous Orator – Lore of Shadows: Mindrazor High Gladiatrix (90)** Slaughter Queen on Cauldron of Blood (300)* – Artefact: Khainite Pendant – Prayer: Sacrament of Blood
BATTLELINE 15 x Blood Sisters (450)* 10 x Blood Sisters (300)* 10 x Witch Aelves (110)** – Pairs of Sacrificial Knives 10 x Witch Aelves (110)** – Pairs of Sacrificial Knives
OTHER 5 x Doomfire Warlocks (120)** 5 x Khinerai Heartrenders (100)* 5 x Khinerai Heartrenders (100)* Avatar of Khaine (130)**
Army Faction: Nighthaunt – Army Subfaction: The Quicksilver Dead – Grand Strategy: Dismantle the Brave – Triumphs: Indomitable
LEADER 1 x Krulghast Cruciator (150)* 1 x Guardian of Souls (150)* – General – Command Traits: Master of Magic – Chill Blade – Artefacts: Midnight Tome – Spells: Hoarfrost 1 x Spirit Torment (120)** 1 x Kurdoss Valentian (190)**
BATTLELINE 10 x Dreadscythe Harridans (170)* – Slasher Crone 10 x Dreadscythe Harridans (170)* 20 x Chainrasps (200)* 3 x Spirit Hosts (130)* 10 x Dreadscythe Harridans (170)** – Slasher Crone 3 x Spirit Hosts (130)** 10 x Chainrasps (100)**
ENDLESS SPELL 1 x Geminids of Uhl-Gysh (50)
OTHER 4 x Myrmourn Banshees (90)* 4 x Myrmourn Banshees (90)** 2 x Chainghasts (90)**
Army Faction: Maggotkin of Nurgle – Army Subfaction: Befouling Host – Grand Strategy: Overshadow – Triumphs: Inspired
LEADER 1 x Horticulous Slimux (200)* 1 x Poxbringer (130)* – General – Command Traits: Master of Magic – Artefacts: The Witherstave – Spells: Hoarfrost 1 x Be’lakor (340)**
BATTLELINE 1 x Beasts of Nurgle (100)* 1 x Beasts of Nurgle (100)* 1 x Beasts of Nurgle (100)* 1 x Beasts of Nurgle (100)** 1 x Beasts of Nurgle (100)** 1 x Beasts of Nurgle (100)** 1 x Beasts of Nurgle (100)** 1 x Beasts of Nurgle (100)**
ENDLESS SPELL 1 x Suffocating Gravetide (30)
TERRAIN 1 x Feculent Gnarlmaw (0) 1 x Feculent Gnarlmaw (0)
OTHER 6 x Plague Drones (400)* – Plaguebringer – 2 x Icon Bearer – 2 x Bell Toller 3 x Nurglings (100)*
This is the top three AoS lists for the AoS OGR CUBBthat took place in Poland on the 1st and 2nd of April. 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: Beasts of Chaos – Greatfray: Gavespawn – Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs – Triumphs: Bloodthirsty
Leaders Doombull (160)* – General – Command Trait: Bestial Cunning – Artefact: Slitherwrack Helm – Aspect of the Champion: Fuelled by Ghurish Rage Great Bray-Shaman (95)* – Artefact: Brayblast Trumpet – Lore of the Twisted Wilds: Vicious Stranglethorns Great Bray-Shaman (95)* – Lore of the Twisted Wilds: Tendrils of Atrophy
Battleline 6 x Bullgors (390)** – Great Axes – Reinforced x 1 3 x Bullgors (195)** – Axes & Bullshields 3 x Morghurite Chaos Spawn (230)* 3 x Morghurite Chaos Spawn (230)
Army Faction: Seraphon – Army Type: Coalesced – Subfaction: Koatl’s Claw – Grand Strategy: Continuous Expansion – Triumph: Indomitable
LEADERS Lord Kroak (450)** Saurus Astrolith Bearer (160)** Skink Starseer (150)** – Artefacts of Power: Arcane Tome – Spells: Hand of Glory – Aspects of the Champion: Fuelled by Ghurish Rage Skink Starpriest (140)*** – Spells: Hand of Glory Saurus Sunblood (130)*** – Artefacts of Power: Eviscerating Blade Saurus Scar-Veteran on Carnosaur (200)*** – General – Command Traits: Dominant Predator – Celestite Warspear – Artefacts of Power: Blade of Realities – Mount Traits: Beastmaster
BATTLELINE Saurus Warriors (200)* – Saurus Warrior Alpha – Celestite Club and Powerful Jaws – 2 x Stardrake Icon Bearer – 2 x Wardrummer Saurus Warriors (200)* – Saurus Warrior Alpha – Celestite Club and Powerful Jaws – 2 x Stardrake Icon Bearer – 2 x Wardrummer Saurus Warriors (200)* – Saurus Warrior Alpha – Celestite Club and Powerful Jaws – 2 x Wardrummer – 2 x Stardrake Icon Bearer
ENDLESS SPELLS & INVOCATIONS 1 x Chronomantic Cogs (70) 1 x Ravenak’s Gnashing Jaws (70) 1 x Malevolent Maelstrom (30)
Army Faction: Ogor Mawtribes – Army Subfaction: Underguts – Grand Strategy: Defend whaťs Ours – Triumphs: Inspired
LEADER 1 x Butcher (140)* – General – Command Traits: Reluctant Rabble-rouser – Cleaver – Artefacts: Gruesome Trophy Rack – Spells: Blubbergrub Stench – Aspects of the champion: Leadership of the Alpha 1 x Frostlord on Stonehorn (450)* – Mount Traits: Rockmane Elder
BATTLELINE 6 x Ogor Gluttons (260)* – Bellower – Tribal Banner Bearer with Lookout Gnoblar – Crusher – Paired Ogor Clubs or Bluntblades 6 x Ogor Gluttons (260)* – Bellower – Tribal Banner Bearer with Lookout Gnoblar – Crusher – Paired Ogor Clubs or Bluntblades 4 x Leadbelchers (170)* – Thunderfist
ARTILLERY 1 x Ironblaster (200) 1 x Ironblaster (200) 1 x Ironblaster (200)*
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.
This is the Top Eight AoS Lists for the Las Vegas Open that took place in Nevada, USA, on 27th, 28th, and 29th January. It involved a massive 324 players, all vying to be crowned champion in a 5-game tournament.
We’re particularly lucky this week as six of the top eight players agreed to give us comments on how their lists work. On top of this, we’ve also got comments from the Head Judge at LVO, Gareth Thomas.
So, thank you to; Jiwan Noah Singh, Kaleb Walters, Gavin Grigar, Cody Saults, Nate Trentanelli and Gareth Thomas for all agreeing to give us your thoughts.
Allegiance: Beasts of Chaos – Greatfray: Gavespawn – Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs – Triumphs: Indomitable
Leaders Beastlord (95) – Artefact: Mutating Gnarlblade Dragon Ogor Shaggoth (155)*** – Artefact: Tanglehorn Familiars – Lore of Dark Storms: Hailstorm Tzaangor Shaman of Beasts of Chaos (135)*** – General – Command Trait: Unravelling Aura – Lore of the Twisted Wilds: Tendrils of Atrophy Grashrak Fellhoof (150)*** – Lore of the Twisted Wilds: Wild Rampage
Battleline 30 x Tzaangors of Beasts of Chaos (525)** – 30x Pair of Savage Blade – Reinforced x 2 10 x Gors (70)** – Gor-Blades & Beastshields 10 x Gors (70)** – Gor-Blades & Beastshields
Units 6 x Tzaangor Enlightened on Disc of Beasts of Chaos (360)* – Reinforced x 1 6 x Tzaangor Enlightened on Disc of Beasts of Chaos (360)* – Reinforced x 1 5 x Grashrak’s Despoilers (0)***
Jiwan Noah Singh: The heroes all serve a function against different matchups, and with the Gavespawn ability, they can then serve a secondary function when they die.
The general has to be the Tzaangor Shaman to unlock Galletian Veterans for the big block, but also has the extremely helpful big cast once per game, and moves 16/19” if I need to go hold and up a huge threat. Mostly, I used the big cast for the bull spell, but in other matchups, I considered he would have used tendrils of atrophy to break armor stacking. His speed let’s him get there for that short ranged spell.
Grashrak gives out the +3 move, and because he can pass wounds, it is helpful against ranged threats who losing the move bonus would be difficult against. His spell is also a super combo with Gavespawn if I need to lift a gargant or something in one activation.
The shoggoth was there for his spell and having a starting monster, and the pre-phase move made anyone worried about that going off have to deploy really far back.
Beastlord was the newest addition but was a pretty fun vehicle for the gnarlblade. With run and charge, he moves 15” on an auto run, so throwing him across and 18” deployment means he can also make people worry about making me take top, for small only investment on my part. Additionally, if he got his attacks off and the bull was on something, it was a less likely but still redundant plus to wound, or hit and wound.
Gors are 10 potentially deepstriking bodies on a 4+ in combat for 70 points. They also have plus to run and pile in, which is so strange that it just confuses people when you tell them, but it is actually helpful.
Tzaangor are 60 wounds, have mortal banners, can zoom across the board and fight something with a billion attacks, but also rally on 4+. I generally deploy them in a cloud, all about 1” from each others bases, to maximize the board space, but also to be able to pull them out of 3” against things that shut down inspiring, and if I need to rally, recharge, ect. Let’s me save bodies if I pull them out of coherency too, which I did intentionally several times to be able to rally again.
The rest of the list is enlightened, in blocks of 6, in bounty hunters. These have tons of uses and can pump out massive damage. Turning off all our defense is like another rend in many cases. So with the fight last bull running around, some plus to hit (always try to end on damned if you can) from multiple sources, and the throwing an extra attack on them from a spawn, they are such a threat that an opponent must deal with them. When you stack a plus to hit, going second, and gavespawn attacks, I know of very few things with that output. And at 2/3 rend no cp, few things can eat it with saves.
The beasts summoning on top of all the threats to kill or hold things, and ability to run a hero into something, die, and lock them up, meant that in almost all my games I can lose tons of things and still keep taking points. I built in some tech to deal with specific matchups that concerned me, most of which didn’t happen, but in general it’s a 5 turn army with a ton of flexibility and lots of different things going on. Good proving ground usage was hugely helpful with the ability to summon Galletian Veterans, and the output meant the main armies I expected to see, Ogors, Gargants, Nurgle, Nighthaunt, all had something that was a big problem for them that I didn’t mind sacrificing.
That’s pretty much it.
That, and having distractingly beautiful hair, that helped too.
This list – piloted by Nicholas ‘Scooter’ Walters – is testament to the difference reps and familiarity with an army can make. Even if that army is considered underpowered.
Scooter nearly went all the way with what is a pretty common IJ list, with a sneaky ally in the shape of the Fungoid Shaman for the extra CP generation. I mean, it’s an ‘obvious’ list – but if you watch back the stream of Scooter playing Gavin Grigar’s Cities list for example, you can see the difference skill and knowing the intricacies – the limits, the averages – of your army can make. Keeping the Maw Krusha back until it’s absolutely needed – knowing when to smash that ‘Destroyer’ button on the foot boss – and making all the right calls with your pigs are all key to playing IJ well.
Even though the list will be hurt by losing bounty hunters, making the pigs half as effective, the inclusion of the Megaboss makes sense going into the new season – he’s a great, durable and fighty Galley champ. The speed and activation potential with smashing/bashing of the feral hogs will never go out of style.
Ironjaws might be suffering from a lack of units and power creep these days but Scooter is out here to prove that if you love your army, and you’re prepared to stick with it and get the reps in, ‘the meta’ be damned, you too can damn well near win LVO.
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Allegiance: Disciples of Tzeentch – Change Coven: Guild of Summoners – Mortal Realm: Ghur – Grand Strategy: Master of Destiny – Triumphs: Inspired
Leaders Ogroid Thaumaturge (170)* – General – Command Trait: Arcane Sacrifice – Artefact: Arcane Tome (Universal Artefact) – Lore of Fate: Arcane Suggestion Kairos Fateweaver (440)* Magister (120)* – Lore of Fate: Shield of Fate – Incarnate is Bound to the Magister Changecaster, Herald of Tzeentch (150) – Lore of Change: Bolt of Tzeentch
Battleline 10 x Kairic Acolytes (120)* – 7x Cursed Blade & Arcanite Shield – 3x Cursed Glaives 10 x Kairic Acolytes (120)* – 7x Cursed Blade & Arcanite Shield – 3x Cursed Glaives 10 x Tzaangors (180)* – 10x Pair of Savage Blade
Behemoths Krondspine Incarnate of Ghur (480)* – Allies
Endless Spells & Invocations Tome of Eyes (40) Umbral Spellportal (80) Purple Sun of Shyish (90)
Kaleb Walters: My main goal was to create a Swiss Army Knife style list. Bring as many solutions to the answers in my faction as possible.
Reason For Family: Guild of Summoners: 1 FREE Battle Tactic: Summon Lord of Change. LOC have 14 wounds, -1 Rend shots, 18 inch range, movement 12, +1 To casting for all Tzeentch casters, -1 to hit naturally and monstrous rampage abilities. While other families have more flexibility, the norm is to summon Blue Horrors that have 20 wounds, Movement 5, shoot 12 inches at 0 rend but have good board presence.
List Design: Min Max: Minimum Battleline Maximum Hero’s/Monster Damage. My list is designed to castle up and react to the deployment of my opponent. By staying low drop I normally have the option to decide how I want to engage. I either sacrifice my Acolytes (120pt a unit) to an alpha strike list, or I position aggressively with a front and center incarnate primed to go wild and level up. Either formation still allows me to throw powerful spells that can turn off Command abilities and unleash a possible 15 mortal wounds at 27 inches or more. In addition, as the game goes on, I become more magically dominant with the additional LOC while reducing the overall strength of my opponent.
The next part of my list design is increasing/ reducing my opponents armor. I have 2 spells & 1 Endless spell that can reduce my opponents armor and with the rend stacking of the Acolytes or the LOC natural -1 Rend shots and of course the already powerful incarnate -2/-3 rend I am able to turn normal attacks into Mortal Wound equivalent attacks.
I also know the future with my lame sauce guaranteed Grand Strategy & Destiny Dice…….
Opportunities of The Design: I have a difficult time dealing with Hordes and / or armies that can summon cheap disposable models on a mission with more than 4 objectives. I also find it difficult to face armies like KO that can stay outside my threat range and then engage on their terms.
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Allegiance: Cities of Sigmar – City: Tempest’s Eye – Mortal Realm: Ghur – Grand Strategy: Mighty Beachhead – Triumphs: Inspired
Leaders Celestial Hurricanum with Celestial Battlemage (290)* – General – Command Trait: Hawk-eyed – Lore of Eagles: Strike of Eagles Arkanaut Admiral (140)* – Artefact: Arcane Tome (Universal Artefact) – Lore of Eagles: Aura of Glory Battleline 20 x Freeguild Crossbowmen (200)* – Reinforced x 1 10 x Freeguild Crossbowmen (100)* 10 x Freeguild Crossbowmen (100)*
Units 20 x Arkanaut Company (180) – 2x Light Skyhooks – 2x Aethermatic Volley Guns – Reinforced x 1 4 x Dracothian Guard Tempestors (440)* – Reinforced x 1 4 x Dracothian Guard Tempestors (440)* – Reinforced x 1
Core Concept Bring guns… lots of guns. We recently had 2 books introduced into the meta (Ogors and Slaves to Darkness), and the resurgence of some old foes (Dragons, Ironjaws and Nurgle), that generate a ton of kill pressure and melee engagement on Turn 1. Tempest’s Eye combats this with great Turn 1 buffs (+1 Save/+3 Move) and efficient shooting (+1 Hit/+1 Wound) supplemented by a healthy number of mortal wounds (Hurricanum, Dracoth Breath). All these elements together are hopefully enough to keep even the scariest melee threats at bay.
Strengths Shooting Volume from Crossbowmen, Tempestors and Arkanauts combined with force multipliers centering around the Hurricanum (+1 Hit/+1 Wound). Adaptable Tech from the Admiral (+1 Rend/Ward Removal/Charge Debuff). Drop Control (2 Drops) typically allows the list to immediately threaten a double turn and forces your opponent to make hard decisions on Turn 1. Horrorghast allows the list to hit crucial damage break points against large units such as Tzaangors, Chosen, or Blood Sisters or spread damage across multiple units for greater efficiency.
Weaknesses 1 Drop armies or specifically being disconnected from the double turn, which forces the list to overextend and expose its firebase. Melee armies whose movement outranges the threat ranges of the list’s shooting units. Middling mobility limits the army’s ability to play proactively and aggressively.
Takeaways and Closing Thoughts As fun as it was to throw buckets of dice, the list has some glaring weaknesses that I was able to mostly avoid due to some fortunate pairings over the course of the weekend, but it does have undeniable strengths and when the list wins it really wins. Enjoy responsibly!
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Army Faction: Orruk Warclans – Army Type: Ironjawz – Subfaction: Bloodtoofs – Grand Strategy: No Place for the Weak – Triumph: Indomitable
LEADERS Megaboss on Maw-krusha (480) – General – Command Traits: Mighty Waaagh! Leader – Boss Choppa and Rip-toof Fist – Artefacts of Power: Destroyer – Mount Traits: Fast ’Un Orruk Warchanter (120)* – Warbeats: Fixin’ Beat Orruk Warchanter (120)* – Warbeats: Get ’Em Beat Megaboss on Maw-krusha (480)* – Boss Choppa and Rip-toof Fist
BATTLELINE Orruk Gore-gruntas (340)* – Gore-grunta Boss – Jagged Gore-hacka Orruk Gore-gruntas (170)* – Gore-grunta Boss – Jagged Gore-hacka Orruk Gore-gruntas (170)* – Gore-grunta Boss – Jagged Gore-hacka Shootas (120)*
CORE BATTALIONS *Battle Regiment
TOTAL POINTS: 2000/2000
Cody Saults: Ironjawz, for me, was the only choice for LVO this year. My standard approach to tournaments is to not play the same game everyone else is expecting to play. With GV being a thing, and folks running bounty hunters, 2 drops kept me tied or out dropping every opponent, and with the list’s raw damage potential, it has the potential to cripple opponents before they get a chance to interact with your units. Second consideration, with a tournament with as many rounds as LVO potentially has for those who do well, avoiding burnout is key. The list only has 4 unit profiles, which helps with keeping rules front of mind and always knowing your options.
The Maw Crusher is an absolute engine for this list, as Skull-Shaking Bellow allows you to spread Mighty Destroyers out to multiple targets, which helps with board control and damage potential. Its melee profiles allow it to put out a punishing amount of wounds, while its solid armor save prevents it from being an easy removal target. Moreover, it has several ways to help clear screens to make sure you get to your target. Its shooting attack is only 4 potential wounds at rend 1, and very short range, but combine that with the impact hits from the pigs, and enhanced stomp monstrous action, the crusher stands a very good chance of clearing screens and getting to the target it truly wants. A quick Finest Hour passing to your opponent’s turn, with an All Out Defense means that even after they deal their damage, they will continue to gum up the works for your opponent, while taking a monstrous amount of extra attention to move. Having 2 allows for redundancy, protect the one in the most vulnerable position, and then respond with the second. The mighty destroyers move means they are never out of position, as if they clear targets and need to pivot to another flank, they almost always have the movement to get there.
Gore Gruntas also represent a solid damage investment, as buffed by the Warchanta, and under the Iron Jaws WAAGH, there is very little in the game they can’t chew through. I went with two units of three, and one of six. The 2 three-man units can take buffs and present good screen clearance in matchups where the opponent has good screening, and for matchups you don’t need the initial sacrificial salvo, they can be used for fast objective grabbing, or counter skirmishing. The post-combat movement abilities from Bloodtoofs also allow for re-establishing screens or locking up units safely.
Warchantas are a must in any IJ list, as they can pass out solid damage bonuses to units about to be in combat, give out charge bonuses, and even heal a key couple of wounds. They have a surprising amount of beef for small characters, and receiving their own buffs can dish it right back.
The last inclusion in the list was shootas, an easy inclusion to give me some cheap screens. Shootas in 20 man squads can be strung out to prevent enemy outflank or deep strike, and the nets, positioned well, can punish an opponent for under-committing resources to remove them or what they are near.
All in all, the list was tailored with so much mobility and relatively low drops to force an opponent to play defensively. This works out either way for us, as the number of hard to remove wounds makes sure they stay in their deployment zone while we grind down their units. Every unit in the army punches up, able to drag down more costly targets, with the post combat mobility to shift our positions, removing the need to choose between damage and objectives.
All in all, the list performed well. The meta we had until the GHB transition had a lot of lists with hard DPS checks, and this list put out enough damage to meet that need and then some.
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Allegiance: Beasts of Chaos – Greatfray: Gavespawn – Mortal Realm: Ghur – Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs – Triumphs: Inspired,Indomitable
Leaders Beastlord (95)* – Artefact: Mutating Gnarlblade Great Bray-Shaman (100)* – Lore of the Twisted Wilds: Wild Rampage Dragon Ogor Shaggoth (155)* – General – Command Trait: Unravelling Aura – Lore of Dark Storms: Hailstorm
Battleline 10 x Ungors (65)** – Mauls & Half-Shields 10 x Ungors (65)** – Mauls & Half-Shields 6 x Dragon Ogors (290)*** – 2x Paired Ancient Weapons – 4x Draconic War glaives – Reinforced x 1 3 x Dragon Ogors (145)*** – 1x Paired Ancient Weapons – 2x Draconic War glaives
Units 10 x Ungor Raiders (80)** 10 x Ungor Raiders (80)* 6 x Tzaangor Enlightened on Disc of Beasts of Chaos (360)*** – Reinforced x 1
Behemoths Krondspine Incarnate of Ghur (480) – Allies
It’s the ‘other’ BoC list from LVO! As you can see, it damn near went as far as Noah’s, losing only to Scooter’s incredibly well piloted IJ list.
It’s a relatively normal archetype – with the usual 3 HQs for their wide variety of utility – the Dragon Ogor Shaggoth especially proving critical due to his incredible warscroll spell (heal d3 to a Dragon Ogor and give them re-roll wounds) and the Dragon Ogor scroll allowing re-rolls of 1s while near him.
A mix of Ungors for super cheap and speedy (+3″ thanks to the Bray Shama) trading pieces (once the rend starts stacking) and the more out-of-the-box Dragon Ogors make up the battleline – offering speed, punch, and plenty of board control.
Beyond that, it’s basically ‘the spindog’ syndrome. 6 Enlightened on Discs also provide an absolute missile – if you read any of these, you know by now they’re an absolute staple of BoC lists.
The body count, speed, and Spinedog allow Rigolet to care less about dictating first, and so he packs in bounty hunters plus a warlord for additional utility. A savage list that will operate very differently (and be like, double the cost) with the new book – but there you have it!
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Allegiance: Nighthaunt – Procession: Emerald Host – Grand Strategy: Fright or Flight – Triumphs: Inspired
Leaders Reikenor the Grimhailer (190)* – Lore of the Underworlds: Shademist Krulghast Cruciator (150)* Knight of Shrouds on Ethereal Steed (150)* – General – Command Trait: Spiteful Spirit – Artefact: Arcane Tome (Universal Artefact) – Universal Spell Lore: Flaming Weapon
Battleline 5 x Hexwraiths (170)** 5 x Hexwraiths (170)** 5 x Hexwraiths (170)** 5 x Hexwraiths (170)* 10 x Chainrasps (110)* 10 x Chainrasps (110)*
Units 10 x Craventhrone Guard (180)* – Reinforced x 1
Nate Trentanelli: The list began as a bit of a joke to include two famously “bad” units in the Black Coach and the Craventhrone Guard- or “Crossboos” as they’ve come to be known by. I decided that I couldn’t possibly take Top Nighthaunt in the ITC this season without ever having actually played these units. Not wanting to have no chance during games, I peppered in some more useful units in the Hexwraiths and the Krulghast- staples of Nighthaunt armies.
I’ve gone for an Arcane Tome Knight of Shrouds here for one reason. With his Command Trait “Spiteful Spirit”, when he takes damage in the Combat phase he will roll a number of dice equal to his wounds characteristic and do a mortal wound to all enemy units within 6” for each 4+ he rolls. Quite the useful little bomb. To make things even better, Arcane Tome makes him a wizard, allowing him to be moved by Lauchon. Almost guaranteeing a turn 1 charge wherever I want to maximize his chances of doing mortal wounds. Reikenor with his +3 to cast will almost guarantee Lauchon goes off.
Hexwraiths do what hexwraiths do – nearly unmatched speed to pin opponents in their deployment zones. With 4 units of them, I can either overload my opponent turn 1 with all 20, or simply move block them turn after turn. It may lose me all my hexwraiths, but I’ve functionally disallowed my opponent from actually scoring any objective points.
2 units of Chainrasp exist solely for 2 battle tactics. Start them in the underworld and bring them down on a turn. You don’t have a good battle tactic option. Put both in your opponents deployment zone for an easy Barge Through Their Lines with a bonus for 2 GVs. The next turn take Desecrate Their Lands for another Battle Tactic. 2 complete for no effort.
The unit of Craventhrone Guard I also put in the underworld. Though their damage output is poor, it is something Nighthaunt don’t really have access to anywhere else – shooting. Even that small amount of extra damage is noticeable and useful. They are also a great distraction piece, and the Spectral Bolts ability to shoot through terrain is better than it seems. I know, I know. It’s Crossboos. Trust me. They will work.
Last is the Black Coach. It really is the AoS equivalent to a tank. It’s base size makes it terrific at blocking key areas. With the Craventhrone Guard shooting it’s actually quite easy to power it up as well. Allowing you to shoot with the Craventhrone Guard first, slay 5 models from a screen, and fire the Black Coach into the thing you really wanted to shoot for 3D3 mortal wounds. Alternatively, keeping it on its 4+ ward makes it truly crazy at tanking. Keeping it in the Krulghast bubble also gives it -1 damage for even more craziness. It’s shocking how survivable it is.
The Mortalis Terminexus gives you the flexibility to heal your heroes and Black Coach or use it more as I did, which is an aggressive mortal wound bomb. 26” total threat range from casting is great, and it can pump out quite a bit of chip damage.
All together, the armies Battle Traits of Ethereal and Wave of Terror combine to make even the weakest looking unit truly scary. Roll enough 8s on the charge, and even Kragnos will fall to simple chainrasp. The army has 5 different units that do D3 mortals on a 2+ on the charge. Don’t underestimate how much that is. Simple averages tell you that’s about 8 mortal wounds. Which, by the way, you can retreat and do all over again every turn.
Because of the movement of this army- Hexwraiths, Lauchon heroes, Black Coach teleports, and Underworld Reserves – you can be anywhere and everywhere. Movement wins games, and it’s no surprise to me that most of my opponents had issues with catching me. Even if it they were close, you can simply use one unit to block for the rest to move to safety. Keep your units alive until the exact moment your opponent is out of position. And then pounce all at once. Be careful not to allow your opponent to single out units and be careful. You don’t pull your units away from each others support. Aggressive movement with supporting units will win you games.
Happy haunting!
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Army Faction: Ogor Mawtribes – Subfaction: Boulderhead – Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs – Triumph: Inspired
LEADERS Frostlord on Stonehorn (450) – General – Command Traits: Touched by the Everwinter – Artefacts of Power: Arcane Tome – Mount Traits: Metalcruncher – Spells: Flaming Weapon – Prayers: Pulverising Hailstorm Butcher (140)* – Cleaver – Spells: Molten Entrails Huskard on Stonehorn (400)* – Blood Vulture – Mount Traits: Rockmane Elder – Prayers: Keening Gale
Camaron has my thanks (but not quite my sword) for not taking any Ironblasters! What he’s taken instead is loads of big, angry cows! It’s almost a completely pure Beastclaw Raider army – love to see it.
This list essentially asks ‘can you handle 5 cows swamping you’, and the answer was ‘no’ for everyone other than Kaleb’s Tzeentch, who were able to puncture those super tough hides with his sneaky magic MW output.
Enhancement wise – which is where the tactics are in a list like this – you’ve got Metalcruncher on the Frostlord for dealing with tanky 3+ saves, along with Touched by Everwinter to make him into a priest and able to cast the excellent MW AoE ‘Pulverising Hailstorm’. The Huskard gets the Rockmane Elder (-1 to wound in melee).
A pack of Gnoblars act as a cheap add-on screen that still fits into the battle reg – crucial for a pressure list like this – in order to dictate first and almost certainly give it away every time to make an absolutely devastating round of turn 2 charges and a hopeful end-it-there double.
Big gratz to Camaron for losing only in the shadow round to a legendary player and a bad match-up.
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Head Judge – Thomas
Acting as Head Judge at LVO 2023 was a thrilling experience. I should begin by thanking both Front Line Gaming, and Scott Reed, the Head TO, for organizing such an amazing event.
LVO 2023 was the largest Age of Sigmar tournament in the world, by far, and 50% larger than previous LVOs. Whilst being involved in such a large event was a great experience, the logistics of organizing 325 players did throw up some challenges. To start, the release of the Battlescroll with new points one week before the list deadline (and after our rules cut-off) was a bit disruptive. We had to ensure that every player knew that we would be using the new points, and yet we still had quite a few lists submitted with the old points. Equally, we had to ensure that every player knew that we would not be using the new GHB, which was released the day after lists were due (and one week after rules cutoff). Of course, there were still a few players who submitted lists assuming the new GHB (comically enough, there was one player who we could not contact until round 1 to let them know that their Aspect of the Champion and Sharpshooter battalion had to go!).
The rest of the pre-event organization was handled by FLG and Scott, so my preparations beforehand were minimal. But I have been involved with the running of 36 events in the past 18 months and know that quite of bit of prep work is involved.
Due to the large number of players, LVO did not use the standard AoS GT format of 5 rounds. Instead, we used 5 rounds followed by a 3rd day of single elimination rounds for top 8 players. This year, 9 players went 5-0 which required us to run a Shadow Round 6th game for the players in 8th and 9th place to determine which of them would advance to Day 3.
The first five rounds were pretty straight forward from a rules judging point of view. The pack used at LVO, produced by Scott Reed, borrowed from the OTTD Generic Pack, which is something I was heavily involved in creating. Many of the players at LVO already have experience attending events that use the OTTD system, which helped keep rules and scoring questions to a minimum. When tricky questions did arise, I was able to fall back to the aosfaq.com website and team to provide answers.
The pressure as Head Judge only really started during the Shadow Round, which was the first round where we introduced active judging (where a judge watches the entire game and points out rules mistakes before and whilst they are made). Unfortunately, the game was a bit of a one-sided blowout – the choice to use Mighty and Cunning proved problematic when one player had essentially all GV and the other essentially none. Lesson learned! The only rules issue that cropped up was when one of the players declared Desecrate their Lands on a Defensible terrain piece. I had to remind him that you can only control Defensible terrain pieces by garrisoning them – the standard 3” rule does not apply. He was able to declare another terrain piece instead.
Day 3 was where the real excitement as Head Judge began, which entailed three rounds of active judging among the best players in the world. I was fortunate enough that James O’Brien who was a contender, had not made it to day 3, but as an experienced TO and judge was willing to jump in and judge half of the games.
When judging the final 8 of a 325-player event, there is really very little stress. These are fantastic players with a huge amount of experience and, more importantly, great sportsmanship. There was no confrontation to deal with, and all players played with intent at all times, meaning there were no disagreements to intervene with. If anything, I had to prevent players from giving too much benefit to their opponents!
Instead, the rule of table judging was just handling the occasional line-of-sight judging, pointing out often forgotten rules such as you need to jump into a garrison to control it (even the top players didn’t know that rule!) and mostly sitting back and watching some fantastic Warhammer being played. The biggest drama, up until the end of the final game, that is, was during the first round, when one of the games ended in a complete tie. With single elimination, a tie is not an option. It was also not something we had prepared for. Fortunately, the two players were able to agree that under any tie-break rules, there would be a clear winner. Of course, I couldn’t end without talking about that final game. What a game! I could watch both Noah and Scooter play Warhammer all day. Scooter is one of the great personalities to watch, and Noah is a fantastic human being. And their game was so close.
I suppose I should talk about the ending… By the end of the final game, the players had been through 3 days of extensive Warhammer. All with the backdrop of Las Vegas. I think it is fair to say that both players (and Judge) were drained. The game came down to control of an objective. Noah had a chaos spawn on it, Scooter had a goblin shaman. They fought in combat, but neither could kill the other (Scooter made the 4+ ward save to keep his Shaman alive on one wound – much to the crowd’s delight!). It was a great moment!
Of course, the spawn has 5 wounds, and so is worth 2 points on an objective, and the Shaman only has 4 wounds, so it is worth 1. But we were all too exhausted to notice. Noah assumed the Shaman was worth 2. Scooter assumed the spawn was worth 1 and I failed to notice the mistake (oh so easy to assume all heroes in the game are going to be 5 wounds or more!). That meant that they were tied on points, and Scooter won the match on battle tactics scored. It wasn’t until a few minutes later that we caught the mistake – where we had not considered that the Shaman was only 4 wounds (a friend texted me – thank you!). The way both players handled the turnaround in decision is a credit to them both. The level of joy each felt at the other being declared the winner was heartwarming.
The final, and LVO in general, left no doubt that Age of Sigmar has a fantastic community. And I am proud to be part of it.
This is the top three AoS lists for the March to War that took place in the UK on the 21st and 22nd of January. 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?
There once was a man from Wales, Who brought four cannons with tails, Some gnoblars as screens, Absolute scenes, He danced to his opponent’s wails.
This list was using old points – with updated points, it’ll run about 150 ish over. Wonder if three Ironblasters will get the job done instead of four!
All credit to Luke, however, who’s a great player from the illustrious Team LIT – Sylvaneth, Disciples, and LRL – would all have been tricky match ups too. Be curious to see what he can do with the big bois in the new season!
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Allegiance: Sylvaneth – Glade: Harvestboon – Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs – Season: The Reaping – Triumphs: Inspired
Leaders Warsong Revenant (305)** – General – Command Trait: Spellsinger – Artefact: Arcane Tome (Universal Artefact) – Lore of the Deepwood: Treesong
Battleline 9 x Revenant Seekers (705)* – Reinforced x 2 5 x Tree-Revenants (110)** 5 x Tree-Revenants (110)**
Units 5 x Gossamid Archers (220)** Gotrek Gurnisson (485)* – Allies
Mathmallow is back with the tree attack! His list is considerably different to the one he went 5-0 with recently – variety is the spice of life after all.
He’s dropped big momma and her chad-stag for the absolute bare minimum of an HQ – taking just a Warsong rev, tricked out with magic boosting enhancements to provide a MW cannon.
He invests the points savings into a mahoosive Revenant Seeker blob – reasoning (no doubt correctly) that this will just be an unkillable swarm of half anvil-half-hammer models.
The usual 2x tree revs for scoring. and his trademark 5 Gossamids make up most of the rest of the list, leaving just enough room for a little addition…Gotrek! He doesn’t show up much these days but having played against him in another Sylvaneth list, I can tell you that a psychotic, murderous and nigh on unkillable dwarf marching up the mid-board while stuff teleports and flies around you is rather a tricky proposition.
Losing only to Churchus’ cannonade, it’s a nasty, eggs-in-two-baskets Sylvaneth list that I can see being hugely oppressive to play against. Sylvaneth players would do well to take a leaf out of this book!
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Allegiance: Beasts of Chaos – Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs – Triumphs:
LEADERS Dragon Ogor Shaggoth (155) – General – Command Trait. Master of Magic – Lore of Dark Storms: Sundering Blades Dragon Ogor Shaggoth (155)** – Artefact Seed of Rebirth – Lore of Dark Storms: Sundering Blades
UNITS 10x Ungors (65)** – Mauls & Half-Shields 10x Ungors (65)** – Mauls & Half-Shields 6x Tzaangor Enlightened on Disc of Beasts of Chaos (360)* 6x Tzaangor Enlightened on Disc of Beasts of Chaos (360)* 6x Dragon Ogors (290)* – 6x Draconic War glaives 6x Dragon Ogors (290)** – 6x Draconic Crushers 1x Cockatrice (110)** 1x Cockatrice (110)
ENDLESS SPELLS & INVOCATIONS Geminids of Uhl-Gysh (40)
CORE BATTALIONS *Bounty Hunters **Battle Regiment
Total Points: 2000/2000
‘Ere we go, ‘ere we go, ‘ere we go again. All of the Dragon Ogres all of the time. Doubling down with our favourite Tzaangors on Discs (ToDs) to zoom about the place and lay some extra hurt down with the last flourish of Bounty Hunters. A couple of Ungor screens to hold off the eager. The list is built around the Dragon Ogre Shaggoths, moving up and buffing the Dragon Ogres while the ToDs and Cockatrice zip around scoring (or for the ToDs removing tasty snacks). Lots of threats, not a lot of fat. The list isn’t relying on summoning (no large units of sacrifices) but will still earn primordial points fast enough to summon a few times in an average match, particularly with the Cockatrices ability to pick up extra. Geminids backed by Master of Magic is a clever inclusion. It’s a great spell used for it’s ability to block areas as much as what it does.
A surprise 3rd round loss to the Beastclaw Raiders, surprise, mostly because you never see 5 of the big fellas together. With buffs, though, the Stonehorn are very tacky, have lots of wounds, and hit hard enough to remove most or all of Nick’s units in single turn. The screens are ripe to be torn apart before the charge as well, with the limited attack high damage range of the Beastclaws. Otherwise, he saw off most of the meta challenges (IJ ironsunz may not be meta… yet).
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Allegiance: Kharadron Overlords – Sky Port: Barak Thryng – Grand Strategy: Masters of the High Airs – Triumphs: Inspired
Missing the Incarnate and Purple Sun of previous Kharadron lists, James has chosen to give his Dwarves fight on death (on a 4+). This Kharadron list wants to mix it up. And shoot. Doubling down on that approach is the Admiral with Flaming Weapon giving him a Rend -2, 4 damage weapon. With one company of Arkanauts in Eternal Conquerors to act as bodyguards for the Admiral and probably some bait. It gets around an issue for Kharadron in holding objectives, particularly early, when they want to be in the air if possible. Otherwise, the remainder of the list is around their considerable shooting, giving a superior “overwatch” for the ground units. Mostly, that seems to have worked especially into the slower armies, but fire and fade appears to have been an issue.
His last round was a real life shoot out at the ok coral, with the Underguts bringing only Leadbelchers and Ironblasters versus the gunships. Scoring was low across the board, and neither would have much left by the end.
This is the top six AoS lists for the CanCon 2023 that took place in Australia on 21st and 22nd of January. It involved 202 players vying to be crowned champion in a 5 game tournament.
Before I jump into the Top Six 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 Six AoS Lists
Allegiance: Beasts of Chaos – Greatfray: Gavespawn – Mortal Realm: Ghur – Grand Strategy: Protect the herdstone – Triumphs: Inspired
Leaders Dragon Ogor Shaggoth (155)** – General – Command Trait: Unravelling Aura – Artefact: Arcane Tome (Universal Artefact) – Lore of Dark Storms: Sundering Blades Great Bray-Shaman (100)** – Lore of the Twisted Wilds: Wild Rampage Beastlord (95)** – Artefact: Mutating Gnarlblade
Units 6 x Dragon Ogors (290)* – 6x Draconic War glaives – Reinforced x 1 10 x Gors (70)*** – Gor-Blades & Beastshields 10 x Gors (70)*** – Gor-Blades & Beastshields 6 x Tzaangor Enlightened on Disc of Beasts of Chaos (360)* – Reinforced x 1 6 x Tzaangor Enlightened on Disc of Beasts of Chaos (360)* – Reinforced x 1 10 x Tzaangors of Beasts of Chaos (175) – 10x Pair of Savage Blade 10 x Tzaangors of Beasts of Chaos (175) – 10x Pair of Savage Blade 10 x Ungor Raiders (80)**
Bests of Chaos (sic) run roughshod over another big tournament. And why shouldn’t they? Unthinking beasts – they’re just following their nature, going with the flow – what fault is it of theirs if no puny tree-man, hungry-man, rat-man, green-man or hungry-man-but-further-away can stand up to them?
Composition wise, we have the core HQ, the usual dragon ogors, but only to the tune of 6 to make space for twelve Enlightened on Discs and 2x 10 Tzaangors. Plus, of course, some of the annoyingly good little chaps who don’t cost enough.
Anyway, the previews have started for their new book, so speculation is rife as to whether they’ll receive the necessary re-writes to corral the herd. I hope they do, because there’s only so many times I can think of new ways to sneak my ‘NERF BoC FOR THE LOVE OF GORS’ agenda into these top 3s.
Nevertheless, taking down any tournament this big deserves praise so well done to Geordie. And to be fair, you don’t see Tzaangors that often, and they’re cool.
Leaders Slann Starmaster (285)**** – General – Command Trait: Arcane Might – Artefact: Fusil of Conflaguration – Spell: Stellar Tempest Engine of the Gods (285)*** – Artefact: Incandescent Rectrices – Mount Trait: Beastmaster – Universal Prayer Scripture: Curse Skink Starpriest (130)**** – Spell: Hand of Glory Skink Priest (120)**** – Universal Prayer Scripture: Curse Skink Priest (120)**** – Universal Prayer Scripture: Heal
Units 30 x Skinks (225)** – Boltspitters & Moonstone Clubs – Reinforced x 2 10 x Skinks (75)** – Boltspitters Celestite Daggers & Star Bucklers 5 x Saurus Knights (110)* – Lances 5 x Saurus Knights (110)* – Lances Bastiladon with Solar Engine (250)*** Bastiladon with Solar Engine (250)***
So Seraphon just got a lot more expensive, and Corey’s list here will be one of the last to enjoy their old ‘bargain’ prices.
In the meantime, it works as we’ve come to expect. Slann as magic powerhouse, Engine of the Gods as a mixed phase utility, well, engine, and a mixture of skink support priests, one of the starry variety.
(Slightly) interestingly, Corey brings so many skinks you’d expect them to be in Fangs of Sotek – but no! We’re in Thunder Lizard still, so one of those two bastiladons can still double fire, stacked with Skink priest buffs. The big skink blob I imagine is meant to capitalise on the durable prayer platform that is the Engine, getting Curse off on a juicy target (on a 3+ while near terrain within their own territory due to their Primeval Domain rule) for the 60 skink shots to fish for some 6s.
We also have 2x 5 knights here, who made a surprise comeback this season as cost-efficient bounty hunters with weight of attacks – but obviously, that’s a tactic going more extinct than the dinosaurs dodo.
Big gratz on the 5-0 with a balanced Seraphon list – shame it’s now about 75 pts more expensive, lacking its most useful battalions, and doesn’t play nicely into the new realm rules. Seraphon could be about to experience a serious lull going into their new book – but that’s fine, they’re cold-blooded, they will have their time in the sun again.
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Allegiance: Maggotkin of Nurgle – Subfaction: Blessed Sons – Grand Strategy: Blessed Desecration – Triumphs: Bloodthirsty
Leaders Bloab Rotspawned (320)** – Lore of Malignance: Plague Squall Morbidex Twiceborn (320)*** Orghotts Daemonspew (320) Lord of Afflictions (230)** – General – Command Trait: Overpowering Stench – Artefact: The Splithorn Helm Plague Priest (100)** – Artefact: Arcane Tome (Universal Artefact) – Universal Spell Lore: Levitate – Universal Prayer Scripture: Heal
Units 10 x Rotmire Creed (125)* 10 x Rotmire Creed (125)* 10 x Rotmire Creed (125)* 9 x Corvus Cabal (80)*** 5 x Chaos Chosen (240)*** – Mark of Chaos: Nurgle
I hope everyone enjoyed those Expert Conquerors while they lasted. While not as egregious as Bounty Hunters, I can’t say that I’m sad to see it go. Joel made use of them with a triple Rotmire in the same way that many Nurgle players do. It’s interesting to watch Nurgle over the course of this edition since they evolved from pure fly spam to bringing hero hammer + Rotmire creed.
And what a hero hammer this list is. 5 heroes are in play, with all of them being the classic nurgle combination of decent damage output and great resilience (you could even say they are disgustingly resilient). Joel has also brought along a couple of Slaves to Darkness allies to fill in the gaps that Nurgle armies tend to have. The Corvus Cabal brings some much-needed mobility to grab early objectives and the Chaos Chosen are an excellent vehicle for damage output.
Looking forward, I’m not sure that this list will need much adjustment for the new season. Joel already has a pair of solid Galletian Champions, some excellent potential Bodyguards, and the ability to reliably score three or four battle tactics without sweating too much. Overall, I’m excited to see what changes are made for the next GT.
Congratulations to Joel. He brought a well-crafted list, and played it effectively to achieve a 5-0.
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Allegiance: Seraphon – Constellation: Fangs of Sotek – Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs – Triumphs: Inspired
Leaders Slann Starmaster (285)* – General – Command Trait: Arcane Might – Spell: Stellar Tempest Skink Starpriest (130)* – Spell: Hand of Glory Saurus Astrolith Bearer (155)* – Artefact: Serpent God Dagger
Units 30 x Skinks (225)* – Boltspitters & Moonstone Clubs – Reinforced x 2 10 x Skinks (75)* – Boltspitters Celestite Daggers & Star Bucklers 10 x Skinks (75)* – Boltspitters Celestite Daggers & Star Bucklers 2 x Salamander Hunting Pack (280)* – Reinforced x 1 2 x Salamander Hunting Pack (280)* – Reinforced x 1 Krondspine Incarnate of Ghur (480)* – Allies
Another 5-0 Seraphon list, this time with added Spinedog! Boy, am I glad that’s become a rare occurrence. Of course, it’s still a powerful piece, and on paper, it does make sense for Seraphon, given they lack an otherwise durable bully piece.
Henry has also brought some Salamanders in this particular iteration of the standard Fangs list (buff pieces, loads of skinks), which play really well into the Starborne teleport and provide an excellent dual-phase threat.
All in all it’s clear how this list hurts you – it’s a kind of techy twist on the ‘pin-cushion’ archetype, with excellent objective play in a handy one drop for, most likely, forcing opponents to move up into a much easier charge range of the Spinedog.
Gratz to Henry, and here’s hoping the new Seraphon book makes it less appealing than ever to take the ‘dog!
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Allegiance: Sylvaneth – Glade: Heartwood – Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs – Triumphs: Indomitable
Leaders Arch-Revenant (120)* Branchwych (130)* – General – Command Trait: Spellsinger – Artefact: Arcane Tome (Universal Artefact) – Lore of the Deepwood: Verdurous Harmony Drycha Hamadreth (335)* – Lore of the Deepwood: Regrowth
Units 6 x Kurnoth Hunters with Kurnoth Greatbows (460)* – Reinforced x 1 6 x Kurnoth Hunters with Kurnoth Scythes (500)* – Reinforced x 1 5 x Tree-Revenants (110)* 3 x Revenant Seekers (235)* 3 x Aetherwings (65)*
Drycha! You love to see it. The evil tree spirit in a mech suit is still a relatively rare sight given her competition in Durthu and Alarielle, but her ability to choose between 10 extra melee or shooting attacks makes her a fast, durable and flexible piece that I don’t think gets enough love.
Gary here has gone heavy with Kurnoh – a reinforced blob of both the shooty and scythy variety (both of which, as always, are backed up by the +1 to wound aura of the Arch-Revanant). Then, just the one unit of teleporty tree revs and a fantastic support unit of Seekers. It’s a nice balanced list with huge reach, two big blobs that will keep regrowing (via Seekers and Verduous Harmony) if you don’t have the ability to take them down fast enough, and the tactical Drycha option.
The fact it could handle such a diverse set of opponents – the magic dominance of Tzeentch, through the ranged punch of Underguts Ogors and even a semi-mirror – en route to the rare Sylvaneth 5-0 is testament to the general and how adaptable the list is. It’s really cool.
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Allegiance: Stormcast Eternals – Stormhost: Hammers of Sigmar (Scions of the Storm) – Mortal Realm: Ghur – Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs – Triumphs: Bloodthirsty
Leaders Knight-Vexillor (120)** – Meteoric Standard Knight-Vexillor (120)** – Meteoric Standard Knight-Vexillor (120)* – Meteoric Standard Knight-Vexillor (120)* – Meteoric Standard Lord-Relictor (145)* – General – Command Trait: Master of Magic – Artefact: Arcane Tome (Universal Artefact) – Spell: Thundershock – Prayer: Translocation
Units 2 x Dracothian Guard Tempestors (220)* 2 x Dracothian Guard Tempestors (220)* 2 x Dracothian Guard Tempestors (220)** 2 x Dracothian Guard Tempestors (220)** 5 x Judicators with Skybolt Bows (200)* 5 x Judicators with Skybolt Bows (200)**
If you follow Stormcast chat on Australian servers, this list might not be a surprise. Why such a skew list and why does it work – first credit to the General, but this is a durable shooting list which doubles down on Mortal Wounds. Each Vexillor can grant a re-roll charge to a unit within 12″. And each Vexillor can be deployed from Azyr (Scions of the Storm). So one play is to use the Vexillors to buff important charges after moving just outside 9″ (no redeploy). Or drop both just beyond 9″, allowing the Tempestors to shoot, then charge. Enormous flexibility and mobility. Backed by Judicators with a double shoot potential. The strength of this list is the extreme difficulty opponents have in stopping or limiting scorring. The Tempestor units with 12 wounds need serious attention to remove. They will tie up big threats turn after turn, unlike the larger units that some of the biggest hitters can remove in a turn.
Then there is the Mortal Wound output, another nice trick, Everblaze Comet to drop a bomb on any castles, with a CV of 6, Master of Magic makes it almost certain to go off when you want it. That with Thundershock to short those charges (leaving a CP for Unleash). And each of the Vexillors has a mini Everblaze. The list is a 2 drop (all of the best SCE lists try for minimum drops) for that small advantage. Scoring wise, this list wasn’t just good at scoring it’s own Battle Tactics but preventing some of the opponents (sometimes a lot of theirs). This list was rated as one of the strongest at Cancon and scored extremely well in the first 3 rounds before falling away in the last 2. Still major victories but not as many “other” points as some of the higher ranked lists. To be expected with the final pairings being into stronger opponents. It’s innovative and effective, and it is fantastic to see SCE from a different angle.
Tournament Placings
For a full run down of all the tournament positions, why not visit Stats and Ladders. It’s a brand new site that allows tournament organisers to… well… organise their tournaments. I have to say, it’s incredibly easy to use, and the best bit, it’s free!
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.
This is the Top Three AoS Lists for DaBoyz GT 2022 that took place in Texas, USA on 19th and 23th November. It involved 66 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: Beasts of Chaos – Greatfray: Gavespawn – Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs – Triumphs: Inspired
Leaders Dragon Ogor Shaggoth (155)*** – Artefact: Tanglehorn Familiars – Lore of Dark Storms: Hailstorm Tzaangor Shaman of Beasts of Chaos (135)*** – General – Command Trait: Unravelling Aura – Lore of the Twisted Wilds: Wild Rampage Great Bray-Shaman (100)*** – Lore of the Twisted Wilds: Savage Dominion Slaves to Darkness Daemon Prince (210) – Axe – Mark of Chaos: Khorne – Allies
Battleline 30 x Tzaangors of Beasts of Chaos (525)** – 6x Pair of Savage Blade – 12x Savage Greatblade – 12x Savage Blade & Arcanite Shield – Reinforced x 2 10 x Gors (70)** – Gor-Blades & Beastshields 10 x Gors (70)*** – Gor-Blades & Beastshields
Units 6 x Tzaangor Enlightened on Disc of Beasts of Chaos (360)* – Reinforced x 1 6 x Tzaangor Enlightened on Disc of Beasts of Chaos (360)* – Reinforced x 1
Danny: BoC stands for ‘Best of Chaos’ right now. The book as it stands is kluged, retro-fitted and duct-taped together, in a failed attempt to keep its leathery, behooved insides from spilling out all over the winners podium. Peek inside and you’ll find a sludgey morass of keywords, a bunch of new rules sellotaped in and the ability to use the new versions of some other chaos scrolls and the ‘old’ (well, in between…) versions of other stuff like blood-slick ground Khorne Daemon Prince to halve charges/run rolls.
GW are onto a good thing with 3e books and I’m sure the new BoC book will sort this mess out – because it turns out ‘keep the points the same, but give everything +2 rend and a 4+ rally, along with use of the best melee warscrolls from the new Tzeentch book’ kinda makes for a good army – despite the recent points ‘hikes’.
This list takes the usual stuff – a Shaggoth for cheap casting and a platform for the ‘tanglehorn Familiars’ which literally just stops an enemy wizard within 12″ from casting…anything… and access to the Hailstorm spell to halve the move/run/charge rolls of an enemy unit within 21″. Bet you didn’t realise even their lore was broken.
2x 6 Enlightened on Discs on loan from the shiny new Tzeentch portal because apparently everything with a beak and hooves has to stick together? A giant blob of 30 Tzaangors on hoof form a big, buffable blob and summons in god knows what else at a rate of knots.
Nothing in this game is an auto-win and it’s entirely possible to rupture your hamstrings while leaning over a table to push this many models around so congrats to Jiwan for staying standing and getting the 5-0.
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Army Faction: Orruk Warclans – Army Type: Ironjawz – Army Subfaction: Bloodtoofs – Grand Strategy: Waaagh! – Triumphs: Inspired
LEADER 1 x Orruk Weirdnob Shaman (90) – Spells: Da Great Big Green Hand of Gork, Foot of Gork 1 x Megaboss on Maw-krusha (480)** – General – Command Traits: Touched By The Waaagh! – Boss Choppa and Rip-toof Fist – Artefacts: Arcane Tome – Mount Traits: Fast ’Un – Spells: Bash ’Em Ladz, Flaming Weapon – Bonding: Krondspine Incarnate of Ghur 1 x Orruk Warchanter (115)** 1 x Orruk Warchanter (115)**
BATTLELINE 6 x Orruk Gore-gruntas (340)* – Gore-grunta Boss – Jagged Gore-hacka 3 x Orruk Gore-gruntas (170)* – Gore-grunta Boss – Jagged Gore-hacka 3 x Orruk Gore-gruntas (170)* – Gore-grunta Boss – Jagged Gore-hacka
Edit: We’ve edited the below and removed the reference to the Krondspine being a source of 3d6 charges. Danny was thinking of Kragnos at the time…. he really wants one….
Danny: Ironjawz have definitely struggled this season, due to a one dimensional playstyle and, frankly, their book having been seriously powercrept. However, they can still pile on a whole load of pressure and if you’re not prepared for it, they can start a chain reaction of activations that can end games fast if you can’t tank it.
One of their weaknesses is getting into position – something the Spinedog obviously helps with. The fact it can lock down multiple units also potentially allows the gore-gruntas to choose more favourable engagements and gives them something to chuck into targets that would ordinarily blunt their charges, or of course preventing scary stuff cleaning up the pigs that IJ rely on to do everything.
You don’t have a huge degree of flexibility in a pig-heavy list (which is all IJ can realistically field in this Season) so let’s look at the Maw-krusha, the one thing with tactical choices. Brian has opted for Touched by the Waagh and Arcane Tome combo, giving him the ability to do d3 MWs to a nearby unit (enemy or friendly) and get the same value as a bonus to cast – in this case the +1 to wound spell and flaming weapon (thanks to the magnificent from command entourage) for extra damage when necessary. Of course with Spinedog bonded, he can potentially be up to a +4 to cast!
Spinedog occupies a weird niche atm and may still be controversial, but if it has a home in any army it’s Orruks atm, thematically and in terms of shoring up their weaknesses. And going 5-0 with IJ these days is definitely an accomplishment. It would be great if they didn’t have to rely on the Spinedog to do it, but in the meantime – big gratz to Brian!
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Army Faction: Kharadron Overlords – Subfaction: Barak-Zilfin – Grand Strategy: Spend Shares to Make Shares – Triumph: Inspired
LEADERS Aether-Khemist (90)* – General – Command Traits: Collector – Artefacts of Power: Staff of Ocular Optimisation Arkanaut Admiral (125)* Aetheric Navigator (85)* Aether-Khemist (90)** – Artefacts of Power: Spell in a Bottle
BATTLELINE Arkanaut Company (90)* Arkanaut Company (90)* Arkanaut Company (90)**
BEHEMOTH Arkanaut Ironclad (490)* – Great Volley Cannon – Great Endrinworks: The Last Word Arkanaut Ironclad (490)** – Great Sky Cannon – Great Endrinworks: Zonbarcorp ‘Dealbreaker’ Battle Ram
OTHER Grundstok Thunderers (270)**
ENDLESS SPELLS & INVOCATIONS 1 x Purple Sun of Shyish (90)
Randal: Carl is at it again with another strong Kharadron Overlords list. This one tosses Gotrek to the side in favor of taking a second Ironclad. Also gone is the Flare-Pistol, a casualty of being a double Battle Regiment, but the list gains a Volley Cannon and two very important Great Endrinworks in the Zonbarcorp ‘Dealbreaker’ Battle Ram and The Last Word.
These two powerful mount traits add a level of resiliency to big wiffs from the dice, allowing the two boats to claw back into a game when something goes wrong. The Last Word allows the powerful Volley Cannon to fire at the end of the opponent’s Charge Phase if a unit ends their charge within 3” of that Ironclad making a scary Unleash Hell absolutely devastating, especially to big chaff units. The Ram, roll dice equal to the charge roll with mortal wounds on a 4+, serves as a risky backup plan if a shooting phase does not go well to finish off a unit giving the army a small amount of mortal wounds which the army overwise lacks.
This list is less of an alpha-strike list as his previous list was and more of a control and positioning army. It wants to play cagey, determining when and where engagements happen, and controlling the flow of the game. The big downside is that it is still weak to mortal wounds and has almost no mortal wound output itself. It is still a solid list but is going to require an experienced and knowledgeable pilot as mistakes are going to be harshly punished.
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Allegiance: Gloomspite Gitz – Option: Gloomspite Gitz – Grand Strategy: Show of Dominance – Triumphs:
Leaders Loonboss on Giant Cave Squig (110)* – General – Moon-cutta – Command Trait: The Clammy Hand Madcap Shaman (80)* – Artefact: Moonface Mommet – Lore of the Moonclans: The Hand of Gork Kragnos, The End of Empires (720)*
Battleline 20 x Shootas (120)* 20 x Shootas (120)* 36 x Squig Herd (420)** – Reinforced x 2 24 x Squig Herd (280)** – Reinforced x 1
Units 6 x Sneaky Snufflers (75)* 6 x Sneaky Snufflers (75)*
Declan: 4-1… with Gitz. Well done to Anthony for a cracking result. Obviously the key to the army is Kragnos for his ability to charge most monsters off the board, give 3D6 charges to the squig herd (and himself) and generally cause a distraction. But the tech here is the Squig Herds and Sneaky Snufflers. With Expert Conquerors they each count as 3 on objectives (that’s 108 for the full 36 herd). They also rally on a 4+ so that’s where a lot of command points are going.
Then add in the Snufflers for +1 attack for each squig and they are not just an anvil with loads of wounds – they can be a hammer too. I was surprised that they (squig herd) went down in points in November, but definitely worth taking now!
This is the Top Three AoS Lists for the Invasion AOS 22 Tournament that took place in Kristiansand, Norway, on the 17th and 18th September. It involved 44 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: Seraphon – Army Type: Starborne – Army Subfaction: Fangs of Sotek – Grand Strategy: Show of Dominance – Triumphs: Inspired
LEADER 1 x Saurus Astrolith Bearer (140)** – Artefacts: Serpent God Dagger 1 x Slann Starmaster (265)** – General – Command Traits: Master of Magic – Artefacts: Arcane Tome – Spells: Stellar Tempest 1 x Skink Priest (90)** – Prayers: Heal 1 x Skink Starpriest (130)*** – Spells: Hand of Glory
BATTLELINE 30 x Skinks (225)* – Skink Alpha – Boltspitter and Moonstone Club 5 x Saurus Guard (115)*** – Saurus Guard Alpha – Wardrummer – Stardrake Icon Bearer 10 x Skinks (75)*** – Skink Alpha – Boltspitter – Celestite Dagger and Star-buckler 10 x Skinks (75)*** – Skink Alpha – Boltspitter – Celestite Dagger and Star-buckler
BEHEMOTH 1 x Bastiladon with Ark of Sotek (165)***
ENDLESS SPELL 1 x Purple Sun of Shyish (70) 1 x Horrorghast (40)
OTHER 8 x Salamander Hunting Pack (280)* 8 x Salamander Hunting Pack (280)*
Comments: Fangs of Sotek continues it’s long run as a great list taking another 5/0 and 1st. This time there is no Kroak and only one Bastilidon but there are two terrifyingly large Salamander Hunting Packs. Otherwise it’s a fairly conventional list with one large (30) Skink unit and 2 x 10 skinks, 5 Saurus Guard (bodyguards), Astrolith, Starmaster, Starpriest and priest. 2 Endless Spells to take advantage of the strong spell casting – Horrorghast and Purple Sun. Noted elsewhere this works well as a combination with Fangs but increasing rend (for the Ark and Skinks) and making battleshock tests terrifying. Back to the Salamanders, each has 2 Salamanders with their 7 attacks, 4 ranged, all hitting/wounding on 3s with -2 rend and D3 damage, 6s do D3 mortal wounds. For each pack that’s an average of 8 damage + 3 MWs. But that could spike as high 21 MWs (extremely unlikely).
Again another list that really wants to make you come to them, the salamanders will stay behind Skinks where feasible to limit charges. Mostly avoid the 30 Skink block. For the most part Tom’s opponents had either limited shooting or limited range leaving them exposed to the Skinks/Salamanders. KO might have had the best of it but Skinks can be teleported or summoned aiding scoring and blocking ships. Good result.
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Allegiance: Skaven – Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs – Triumphs: Indomitable
Comments: Skaven in 2nd place with a rational list, still has a Warlock for humor but staying safe with solid heroes and clanrat/stormfiend battle line. The only endless spell is Cogs, that leaves point to run 2 x Verminlords and a Grey Seer with the now standard battleline. No Gnawholes listed but I assume some were taken. The Warpgrinder works as a Gnawhole for a single unit that can be placed in reserve with the Warpgrinder and placed at the end of a movement phase. You place the extra unit within 13″ of the Warpgrinder and 9″ from the enemy. Stormfiends to the rear? Like most Skaven lists there is a lot going on, the Grey Seer brings a mini Purple Sun (MWs and -1 to hit rolls for 1 unit).
The Deceiver has his dreaded skitterleap for a teleport that leaves him 6″ from enemies and Warbringer can grant fight on death for 3 units. This is a great combo, you can be aggressive with both the Stormfiends and Deceiver while holding the centre with the Warbringer and granting the Clannrats fight on death. The Warpgrinder teleport, with clanrats also gives some exciting options for scoring. He’s won qgainst very stiff competition with the 3 hammers and his options. That includes beating both flavours of DoK and an Annihilator SCE list.
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Allegiance: Soulblight Gravelords – Lineage: Kastelai Dynasty – Mortal Realm: Ghur – Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs – Triumphs:
Leaders Prince Vhordrai (455) – Lore of the Vampires: Amethystine Pinions Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon (435) – General – Deathlance – Command Trait: A Craving for Massacre – Artefact: Fragment of the Keep – Mount Trait: Foetid Miasma – Lore of the Vampires: Amethystine Pinions Mannfred von Carstein, Mortarch of Night (380)** – Lore of the Deathmages: Decrepify
Battleline 5 x Blood Knights (195)* 5 x Blood Knights (195)* 10 x Deathrattle Skeletons (80)** 10 x Deathrattle Skeletons (80)**
Units 10 x Grave Guard (140)** – Great Wight Blades
Comments: Really solid SBGGL effort, running 3rd after a 3rd round loss to Benjamin (2nd) and his evil Skaven. Who has the moral high ground between Chaos and Death? A selection of the best units in the codex with Blood Knights, Grave Guard, 3 really nasty Vampire Lords and a zombie dragon. 3 Behemoths, all dragons, are the primary hammers. The list doesn’t need to castle though – Mannfred works well with the Blood Knights with Vigour of Undeath (12″ aura of +1 to hit and wound). Prince Vhordrai works with the Vampire Lord giving the Vampire Lord the ability to fight in the hero phase. They massive movement (starts at 14″) so it’s hard to screen them out. All of the units gain a ward near a gravesite, try to fight them further than 12″ from gravesites if possible.
As always with SBGL controlling the gravesites becomes increasingly important. They can summon units back through them or use them to summon reserves. The 2 units of Skeletons and the Grave Guard can all be returned at half strength making it a bit like whack a mole trying to keep them down. I feel the 6″ charge from the Deceiver and the Warbringer’s fight on death for adjacent units would have been the keys to bluntening the impact of the dragons. It’s a remarkable list and 4/1 is a good result, in line with similar SBGL performances we’ve seen recently.
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Allegiance: Beasts of Chaos – Greatfray: Gavespawn – Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs – Triumphs: Inspired,Inspired
Leaders Great Bray-Shaman (100)** – General – Command Trait: Unravelling Aura – Lore of the Twisted Wilds: ViciousStranglethorns Great Bray-Shaman (100)** – Lore of the Twisted Wilds: Wild Rampage Tzaangor Shaman of Beasts of Chaos (135)** – Lore of the Twisted Wilds: Tendrils of Atrophy Dragon Ogor Shaggoth (155)*** – Artefact: Mutating Gnarlblade – Lore of Dark Storms: Sundering Blades
Battleline 20 x Bestigors (250)* – Reinforced x 1 20 x Bestigors (250)* – Reinforced x 1 10 x Ungors (65) – Mauls & Half-Shields
Units 10 x Ungor Raiders (80)*** 10 x Ungor Raiders (80)*** 10 x Ungor Raiders (80)*** 1 x Chaos Spawn (55)**
Behemoths Krondspine Incarnate of Ghur (400) – Allies – Bonded to Tzaangor Shaman Cygor (125)
Comments: A genuine horde list, makes me wonder why Expert Conquerors wasn’t one of the battalions. 87 models altogether with 4 small heros and a Krondspine. The spells are a mix of MWs and buffing spells (special mention to Wild Rampage – reroll melee wound rolls but -1 to your saves). Cogs and Ravening Direflock are the chosen endless spells, Cogs is interesting, most of the chosen spells have casts around 5 and 6 but this list is short on buffs for casting. Ravening Direflock prevents non BoC units within 12″ from using Rally or Inspiring Presence. That’s not bad for 50 points. I’m assuming that there is a Herdstone in the list but not shown.
This is a list that seeks to outlast it’s opponent,then clap back from Turn 3 onwards. Board wide they are -1 rend until Turn 3 when it becomes -2 rend. Bestigors from Turn 3 are -3 rend total. The play here then is to screen using the Ungors (both kinds) while the Bestigors stay close to the Herdstone for Rally on 4+ (starts at 12″ and increases 6″ per turn). The leaders can pray on the Ungor for additional Primordial Points that allowing summoning more units. Krondspine plays really well into this strategy – your opponent can’t ignore it and sometimes will concentrate early damage on Krondspine. That increases the number of other units that make it to Turn 3.
It worked really well here against armies that had smaller units with good saves. Against -3 rend even a 3+ save looks weak. Then there is the Skaven. Their hammer units would be removing 3 units from this list in a turn. The fight on death is really punishing as well, BoC have few wounds and poor saves so their increased rend most likely leads to their quicker death. Clever build and a deserving 4/1.
This is the Top Three AoS Lists for the Justice Series GT that took place in Liverpool, UK on 15th and 16th October. It involved 80 players vying to be crowned champion in a 5 game tournament.
The Justice Series has been going on for some time now and this is not the first iteration, and – whilst I haven’t been to the venue yet – it is getting good reviews. Ritchie is the manager of the store and gaming venue and he is very visible on Twitter, as well as being a very good player on the UK scene.
They have also just announced their new mascot / character – Justice – who is a female mage knight. You can find out more about her here.
(Pictures copyright Games Workshop)
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: Beasts of Chaos – Grand Strategy: Show of Dominance – Triumphs: Inspired
Leaders Dragon Ogor Shaggoth (155)** – General – Command Trait: Adamantine Scales – Artefact: Arcane Tome (Universal Artefact) – Lore of Dark Storms: Sundering Blades
Battleline 6 x Dragon Ogors (250)* – 4x Paired Ancient Weapons – 2x Draconic War glaives – Reinforced x 1 6 x Dragon Ogors (250)* – 4x Paired Ancient Weapons – 2x Draconic War glaives – Reinforced x 1 6 x Dragon Ogors (250) – 4x Paired Ancient Weapons – 2x Draconic War glaives – Reinforced x 1 10 x Ungors (65)*** – Mauls & Half-Shields 10 x Ingots (65)*** – Mauls & Half-Shields
Units 6 x Tzaangor Enlightened on Disc of Beasts of Chaos (360)* – Reinforced x 1 3 x Tzaangor Skyfires (190)** 3 x Tzaangor Skyfires (190)** 3 x Tzaangor Skyfires (190)**
Comments: Well, if ever there was a White Dwarf article that had a bigger impact on any gaming system I’ve not seen it. Dan & Freddie (see below) won their last two games with the Beasts, with very similar armies. The only reason you don’t see this as often is because the Dragon Ogre sculpts are big and expensive.
Games Workshop – tearing up a meta near you
Expect some changes in the new Battlescroll due to be released in October, but based on the previous Battlescrolls I wouldn’t expect them to suddenly become rubbish.
Well done to Dan for 1st, and a 5-0!
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Allegiance: Beasts of Chaos – Greatfray: Gavespawn – Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs – Triumphs: Bloodthirsty
Leaders Beastlord (95)* – Artefact: Mutating Gnarlblade Dragon Ogor Shaggoth (155)* – General – Command Trait: Unravelling Aura – Lore of Dark Storms: Sundering Blades Dragon Ogor Shaggoth (155)**** – Lore of Dark Storms: Hailstorm Great Bray-Shaman (100)**** – Lore of the Twisted Wilds: Savage Dominion
Battleline 6 x Dragon Ogors (250)*** – 3x Paired Ancient Weapons – 3x Draconic War glaives – Reinforced x 1 6 x Dragon Ogors (250)*** – 3x Paired Ancient Weapons – 3x Draconic War glaives – Reinforced x 1 10 x Ungors (65)** – Mauls & Half-Shields 10 x Ungors (65)** – Mauls & Half-Shields 10 x Ungors (65)** – Mauls & Half-Shields
Units 5 x Centigors (85)* 5 x Centigors (85)**** 20 x Bestigors (250)*** – Reinforced x 1 1 x Mindstealer Sphiranx (95)*
Comments: To say that I’m running out of things to say about Beasts is an understatement (see above). We’re seeing loads of them in the top threes at the moment and they seem to be a great counter to Maggotkin of Nurgle who Freddie beat twice on the way to his 5-0. Well done again!
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Allegiance: Slaves to Darkness – Damned Legion: Knights of the Empty Throne – Mortal Realm: Ghur – Grand Strategy: No Place for the Weak – Triumphs: Indomitable
Leaders Knights of the Empty Throne Varanguard x 6 (560)* – General – Daemonforged Blade and Warpsteel Shield – Command Trait: Inescapable Doom – Artefact: Grasping Plate – Mark of Chaos: Tzeentch Knights of the Empty Throne Varanguard x 6 (560)** – Daemonforged Blade and Warpsteel Shield – Artefact: Corrupted Nullstone – Mark of Chaos: Tzeentch Chaos Sorcerer Lord (135)* – Mark of Chaos: Tzeentch – Spell: Mask of Darkness Chaos Sorcerer Lord (135)* – Mark of Chaos: Tzeentch – Spell: Mask of Darkness
Battleline 8 x Iron Golems (75)** – Mark of Chaos: Tzeentch 8 x Iron Golems (75)** – Mark of Chaos: Tzeentch 8 x Iron Golems (75)** – Mark of Chaos: Tzeentch 8 x Iron Golems (75)** – Mark of Chaos: Tzeentch
Units 1 x Mindstealer Sphiranx (95)**
Behemoths Chaos Warshrine (215)** – Mark of Chaos: Tzeentch – Prayer1: Universal Prayer Scripture: Heal
Comments: It’s an Archaon list, without Archaon… just lots of Varanguard changing the definition of hero and letting Slaves to Darkness take loads of them.
Games Workshop / Wahapedia
And they come back – albeit in smaller numbers…! Wow. They are fast, hit like a ton of bricks and can use hero abilities. You don’t want to be on the receiving end.
This might be one of the last times we see them from this current book so it’s great to see Phil get them to 3rd in a tough tournament. Also a special shout out to Piotr who drew with Phil in the last game, but lost on points scored in the first four games — such small differences.
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Army Faction: Skaven – Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs – Triumph: Indomitable
LEADERS Verminlord Deceiver (405)* – General – Command Traits: Devious Adversary – Artefacts of Power: Shadow Magnet Trinket – Spells: Flaming Weapon Slynk Skittershank (225)* Thanquol (415)** – 2 x Warpfire Braziers – 2 x Warpfire Projectors – Spells: Skitterleap
BATTLELINE Gutter Runners (210)* Gutter Runners (210)* Night Runners (90)** – Nightleader Night Runners (90)** – Nightleader
OTHER Gutter Runners (210)* Skittershank’s Clawpack (225)*
ENDLESS SPELLS & INVOCATIONS 1 x Quicksilver Swords (60) 1 x Warp Lightning Vortex (80)
Comment: I love Skaven, and had an army of them in Warhammer 8th Edition (and have even rebased some of them), and so I keep an eye out on their successes. Gabe hasn’t gone with Stormfiends, but has taken Night Runners and Gutter Runners. The only thing it’s missing to make it fully Eshin, is the Assassins, but he’s got Thanquol and a Verminlord instead so it’s definitely a Skaven list.
This is another list where I say I don’t understand what it does, or how it does it.
Games Workshop & Wahapedia
At 225 points I’ve not seen Slynk or his Clawpack before… it’s more Eshin so Gabe’s keeping on theme, but they can deploy outside 6″ and near terrain at the end of turn 1, so Gabe can pin in the enemy a little. The blighter can fight as well… as you’d hope for 225!
It’d be really interesting to know how this works, so I’m not suggesting go out and replicate this list, but it is an example that there are still new lists out there that can compete.
