This is the Top Three AoS Lists for Realm of Geddon 2023 that took place on the 4th and 5th February. It involved 14 players vying to be crowned champion in a 5-game tournament.
As a reminder, as this tournament has less than 20 players, there won’t be any comments from the Woehammer guys here. This frees up their time for the bugger tournament write ups.
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: Hosts Arcanum – Grand Strategy: Master of Destiny – Triumphs:
Leaders Kairos Fateweaver (440)** Curseling, Eye of Tzeentch (180)** – General – Command Trait: Cult Demagogue – Lore of Fate: Arcane Suggestion – Aspect of the Champion: Fuelled by Ghurish Rage Fatemaster (140)* – Artefact: Arcane Tome (Universal Artefact) – Lore of Fate: Shield of Fate Fluxmaster, Herald of Tzeentch on Disc (170)** – Lore of Change: Fold Reality Great Bray-Shaman (100)* – Universal Spell Lore: Ghost-mist
Battleline 10 x Tzaangors (180)** 10 x Tzaangors (180)** 3 x Screamers of Tzeentch (110)** 10 x Kairic Acolytes (120)*
Allegiance: Slaves to Darkness – Damned Legion: Despoilers – Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs – Triumphs: Bloodthirsty
Leaders Chaos Lord on Karkadrak (220)* – General – Command Trait: Idolator Lord – Mark of Chaos: Khorne – Prayer: Heal Chaos Sorcerer Lord (120)* – Artefact: Arcane Tome (Universal Artefact) – Mark of Chaos: Nurgle – The Lore of the Damned: Chaotic Conduit Exalted Hero of Chaos (100)*** – Mark of Chaos: Slaanesh – Aspect of the Champion: Tunnel Master Slaves to Darkness Daemon Prince (195)* – Axe – Wings – Command Trait: Bolstered by Chaos – Artefact: Helm of Many Eyes – Mark of Chaos: Nurgle
Battleline 5 x Chaos Knights (230)* – Mark of Chaos: Nurgle 5 x Chaos Knights (230)* – Mark of Chaos: Nurgle 9 x Corvus Cabal (80)** – Mark of Chaos: Khorne 10 x Splintered Fang (100)** – Mark of Chaos: Khorne 10 x Splintered Fang (100)** – Mark of Chaos: Khorne 10 x Ungors (65)** – Mauls & Half-Shields
Units 10 x Chaos Chosen (480)*** – Mark of Chaos: Slaanesh – Ensorcelled Banner: The Banner of Screaming Flesh – Reinforced x 1
Allegiance: Daughters of Khaine – Temple: Khailebron – Mortal Realm: Ulgu – Grand Strategy: Bloodthirsty Zealots – Triumphs: Inspired
Leaders Melusai Ironscale (120)* – General – Command Trait: Zealous Orator – Artefact: Crown of Woe – Aspect of the Champion: Fuelled by Ghurish Rage Morathi-Khaine (350)* The Shadow Queen (350)*
Battleline 15 x Blood Stalkers (540)** – Reinforced x 2 10 x Blood Sisters (300)* – Reinforced x 1 10 x Witch Aelves (120)* – Sacrificial Knives and Blade Bucklers
Units 5 x Khinerai Heartrenders (100)** 5 x Khinerai Heartrenders (100)**
This is the Top Three AoS Lists for the Quest of Champions (Heat 1) that took place in the UK on the 4th and 5th February. It involved 30 players vying to be crowned champion in a 5 game tournament.
Before I jump into the Top Three AoS Lists, I wanted to remind everyone of our friendly Discord server where you can join in the conversation with the Woehammer crew and suggest articles or series for the website.
If you like what we’re doing, why not join our Patreon and help keep it going?
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: Ogor Mawtribes – Army Subfaction: Underguts – Grand Strategy: Ready for Plunder – Triumphs: Indomitable
LEADER 1 x Icebrow Hunter (120) 1 – General – Command Traits: Voice of the Avalanche – Aspect: Leadership of the Alpha 1 x Slaughtermaster (140) 2 – Artefacts: Gruesome Trophy Rack – Spells: Blubbergrub Stench 1 x Bloodpelt Hunter (140) 3 1 x Bloodpelt Hunter (140) 3
BATTLELINE 2 x Frost Sabres (80) 2 x Mournfang Pack (170)* – Skalg – Culling Clubs and Hackers and Ironfist 2 x Mournfang Pack (170)* – Skalg – Culling Clubs and Hackers and Ironfist 2 x Mournfang Pack (170)** – Skalg – Culling Clubs and Hackers and Ironfist
ARTILLERY 1 x Ironblaster (200)* 1 x Ironblaster (200)** 1 x Ironblaster (200)***
OTHER 20 x Gnoblars (120)*** 20 x Gnoblars (120)***
Did you think Ogors were just Ironblasters and giant cows at ramming speed? Think again! Rory here leans heavily into the new season’s Galletian Champ rule by taking four of them – and Ogors happen to have an excellent selection to choose from.
In this instance, Rory starts with an Icebrow hunter – relatively unremarkable save for the fact they make Frost Sabres battleline as a General, and can also deepstrike along with one said unit of chill-cats. So already you can see the scoring potential – now add in two Bloodpelt hunters who are relatively slappy, invisible while in cover and can move at the end of an opponent’s movement phase (if 9″ away) – starting to feel insecure about your objectives?
Rory also opts to spread the meat-by-square inch between three msu Mournfang rather than packing it into one large Frosthorn, no doubt further aiding with the scoring heavy and board control game plan.
I mean, yes, sure, there are also three ironblasters and 40 Gnoblars – but the rest of the list is a really cool, Seasonal spin that shows off the Ogors’ diverse hero roster and really plays a balanced game of AoS – as evinced by taking down a motley crew en route to the 5-0: Slaves; Tzeentch; Ogors and Sylvaneth, all of whom ask very different questions, to which this list had all the answers!
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Allegiance: Disciples of Tzeentch – Change Coven: Hosts Arcanum – Mortal Realm: Ghur – Grand Strategy: Master of Destiny – Triumphs: Inspired
Leaders Kairos Fateweaver (440)* Gaunt Summoner of Tzeentch (230)* – General – Command Trait: Daemonspark – Artefact: Arcane Tome (Universal Artefact) – Universal Spell Lore: Ghost-mist – Aspect of the Champion: Tunnel Master Fluxmaster, Herald of Tzeentch on Disc (170)* – Universal Spell Lore: Ghost-mist
Battleline 10 x Pink Horrors of Tzeentch (250)* 10 x Kairic Acolytes (120)* – 7x Cursed Blade & Arcanite Shield – 3x Cursed Glaives 3 x Screamers of Tzeentch (110)*
Units 6 x Tzaangor Enlightened on Disc (360)* – Reinforced x 1 9 x Corvus Cabal (80)* – Mark of Chaos: Undivided
On to the second place list now and the one that pushed Rory, the eventual winner, the hardest, missing out on a 5-0 by only one battle tactic. Speaking to Sam after the event, it was the “Cast 3” tactic that just let him down with another book tactic being available and probably the easier option. While we’re talking about matchups, Sam also had an epic battle against Peter and his 9 (yes 9!) Revenant Seekers, so clearly Sam knows his Tzeentch!
Onto the list itself, Sam went for a one-drop list for this event and doesn’t plan to go back to more drops any time soon! The ability (most of the time) to make your opponent take the first turn and potentially come within range of those spells is excellent and, even if your opponent retains priority into turn 2 they have a really difficult choice: give it away and take Kairos bombarding you with spells into oblivion OR allow opponent to take advantage of the ‘going second’ battleplan bonuses.
Speaking of bonuses to going second, one of the MVPs of the list are the Enlightened on Discs. Lots of attacks with all of the profiles and with a couple of buffs on them and debuffs on opponent, they’re not going away any time soon. With the help of Destiny Dice, they could have a guaranteed 28″ threat range (move 16″ + 12″ charge) to reach out and wipe out whatever it touches. Combo that move with a double turn and you’ve got a unit that can take out two of your opponent’s key pieces and still be hanging around causing mayhem.
In terms of spells, Sam is a little limited in numbers, but Kairos knows all of the Lore of Change and the Gaunt Summoner (a Galletian Champion, by the way) knows all of the Lore of Fate. Combined with the Fluxmaster generating those Fate Points with his spell, it’s not unreasonable to be able to put 10 Blue Horrors down every turn.
Overall, a fab list that has given me a lot to think about in terms of how I build my own Tzeentch list (featured twice in the ‘L’ column of this rundown!) and one that I’m sure Sam will have a tonne of success with in the future.
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Allegiance: Ogor Mawtribes – Mawtribe: Boulderhead – Mortal Realm: Ghur – Grand Strategy: Ready for Plunder – Triumphs: Inspired
Leaders Frostlord on Stonehorn (450)* – General – Command Trait: Touched by the Everwinter – Keening Gale – Artefact: Arcane Tome (Universal Artefact) – Mount Trait: Rockmane Elder – Universal Spell Lore: Flaming Weapon Slaughtermaster (140)* – Lore of Gutmagic: Molten Entrails – Aspect of the Champion: Tunnel Master Tyrant (150)* – Big Name: Deathcheater
Battleline 2 x Mournfang Pack (170)* – Culling Clubs and Hackers with Ironfists Stonehorn Beastriders (310)* – Weapon: Blood Vulture Stonehorn Beastriders (310)* – Weapon: Blood Vulture
A little more of a traditional Ogor list here from Peter – with a big ol’ Frostlord, your top tier value Tyrant, and two large-and-in-charge Stonehorn Beastriders. It’s a pin and pressure list, the likes of which many of you will be familiar with by now – with one Ironblaster for a little sniping and lots of mortals on the charge.
One unit of Ironguts stomp along for the ride to double-fight and mince whatever is stupid enough to let them catch up to them. A good, honest, hungry list that avoids spamming anything but is still more than capable of just boxing you in and scoring you out!
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Allegiance: Cities of Sigmar – City: Hallowheart – Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs – Triumphs: Inspired
Leaders Battlemage (100)* – Hallowheart 2nd Spell: Warding Brand – City Role: General’s Adjutant – Mortal Realm: Ghur – Lore of Whitefire: Ignite Weapons Luminark of Hysh with White Battlemage (270)* – Hallowheart 2nd Spell: Sear Wounds – Lore of Whitefire: Warding Brand Nomad Prince (110)** – General – Command Trait: Veteran of the Blazing Crusade – Artefact: Arcane Tome (Universal Artefact) – Hallowheart 2nd Spell: Ignite Weapons – Lore of Whitefire: Warding Brand – Aspect of the Champion: Leadership of the Alpha
Battleline 5 x Sisters of the Thorn (130)* – Hallowheart 2nd Spell: Crystal Aegis – Lore of Whitefire: Sear Wounds 5 x Sisters of the Thorn (130)* – Hallowheart 2nd Spell: Crystal Aegis – Universal Spell Lore: Ghost-mist 20 x Eternal Guard (240)** – City Role: Honoured Retinue (Must be 5-20 models) – Reinforced x 1
Units 6 x Vanguard-Palladors (400)* – Boltstorm Pistols and Starstrike Javelins – Reinforced x 1 3 x Demigryph Knights (170)* – Lance and Sword 6 x Vanguard-Palladors (400)* – Boltstorm Pistols and Starstrike Javelins – Reinforced x 1
Endless Spells & Invocations The Burning Head (30)
For the wildcard list at this event we have Freddie Leggett’s Cities of Sigmar list, variations of which he has been playing with great success over the last few months. Freddie not only specialises in being an absolute top bloke and lovely guy (David Wymer and I were fighting over who would get to ‘grudge’ Freddie round 1 – David got round 1; I got round 5) but also in taking units that most generals wouldn’t take and making them work.
The joke at the event was that it was the Eternal Guard who were the linchpin of the army, especially with the new Galletian battalion, it’s really the Palladors that make this list tick with the help of the Hallowheart wizards.
With the combination of spells Freddie has at his disposal, the unit of 6 can redeploy instead of move anywhere on the battlefield with Ride the Winds Aetheric at which point they can open up with their shooting attacks that all have +1 to wound. They can then attempt a 9″ charge, which is actually a 7″ charge thanks to the Battlemage of Ghur. The +1 to wound buff also helps in the fight phase and with All out Attack, this means that they’re all hitting and wounding on 2s. When they are hit back, they can have a -1 to hit from the Luminarch, have a bonus to their save with Mystic Shield and All out Defence (3+, ignoring rend -1) and, if the opponent does wound the Palladors, another spell turns them into little fluffy Magmadroths and bounce mortal wounds back on 4s. If a Sisters of the Thorn unit is nearby, they can boost the spell ignore for Hallowheart up to a 4+ to mean that not even magic can reliably clear them (I have personal experience of that).
But it’s okay. They did some damage and it took more resources than you’d like to take care of them, but they’ve been lifted now. Then Freddie sends in the second unit of 6!
Well done, Freddie, for a fab list, a great 4-1 and a huge congratulations on being named Captain of the UN Worlds Team. Fingers crossed the stars align to have you lead the team, maybe even with 12 Palladors along for the Ride Aetheric.
This is the Top Three AoS Lists for the 2D6 Oslohammer tournament that took place in Norway on 27th and 28th December. It involved 20 players vying to be crowned champion in a 5 game tournament.
Before I jump into the Top Three AoS Lists, I wanted to remind everyone of our friendly Discord server where you can join in the conversation with the Woehammer crew and suggest articles or series for the website.
If you like what we’re doing, why not join our Patreon and help keep it going?
Also if there’s a one day or two day tournament you’d like us to cover drop us a comment on this post and we’ll have a look at it for you.
The Top Three AoS Lists
Allegiance: Stormcast Eternals – Stormhost: Hammers of Sigmar (Scions of the Storm) – Grand Strategy: No Place for the Weak – Triumphs: Inspired
Battleline 5 x Liberators (115)* – Heavens-wrought Weapon and Shield 5 x Liberators (115)* – Heavens-wrought Weapon and Shield 4 x Dracothian Guard Fulminators (460)* – Reinforced x 1
Units 10 x Protectors (450)* – 4x Starsoul Maces – Reinforced x 1 6 x Vanguard-Raptors with Longstrike Crossbows (480)* – Reinforced x 1
Core Battalions *Battle Regiment
Additional Enhancements Holy Command: Call for Aid
Brett: Classic 3rd edition Stormcast army made up of 1st and 2nd edition units. Absolutely nothing here with the Thunderstrike Keyword. Geir has chosen Scions of the Storm here mostly for the Vanguard Raptors I think, it’s standard for SCE armies to keep them safe from their opponents shooting. The Battlemage and Lord Relictor can team up and grant teleport (Translocation) and a 7″ charge (Wildform grants +2 to move, run and charge). They can do that from outside of deny range, that can drop either the Fulminators or the Protectors close to your ranged units unless you have very good screens. Both can eat an Unleash Hell through either wounds (4 x Fulminators is 24 wounds at 3+, Protectors are 30 wounds at 2+) or saves.
Ideally the Knight Incantor gives the Fulminators +1 to wound rolls (Celestial Blades) before they are teleported to within 7″. They still have a shooting attack and then do 3 damage on the charge. Defensively the Lord Relictor has Thundershock to subtract 1 from the opponents wound rolls and the Liberators as screens and objective holders. The Holy Command, Call for Aid returns a Redeemer unit (the Liberators) outside of 9″ of enemy models and within 12″ of a Hero unit.
So long as those criteria are met you can place them anywhere on the board. Situationally, it’s great for moving a screen, protecting a hero or grabbing an objective. At at the worst it gives you back 10 wounds of Galletian Veterans. Looking at the opponents they really don’t have the answers. Only one of the Ogor lists included multiple Ironblasters and Leadbelchers but both units are badly outranged by the Vanguard Raptors. Fulminators would average 20 wounds on the charge into the Bladegheist and there are no screens in that army to prevent it. Combinde with the shooting it’s likely that they are gone in one turn. And for anything more durable, the Protectors and Raptors can all do mortal wounds in abundance. Without something like the teleport/fight on death of DoK or mortal wound shooting this is a hard list to counter directly. It has elements that want to hold back and pound you and others that are trying to get at you. Importantly, through Scions and Translocation, they have mobility on top of durability.
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Army Faction: Seraphon – Army Type: Coalesced – Army Subfaction: Thunder Lizard – Grand Strategy: Defend What’s Ours – Triumphs: Inspired
LEADER 1 x Engine of the Gods (285)** – General – Command Traits: Prime Warbeast – Artefacts: Incandescent Rectrices – Mount Traits: Beastmaster – Prayers: Curse 1 x Skink Priest (120)*** – Prayers: Heal 1 x Slann Starmaster (285)*** – Artefacts: Fusil of Conflagration – Spells: Stellar Tempest 1 x Celestant-Prime (325)***
BATTLELINE 10 x Skinks (75)* – Boltspitter – Celestite Dagger and Star-buckler 10 x Skinks (75)* – Boltspitter – Celestite Dagger and Star-buckler 5 x Saurus Guard (115)***
BEHEMOTH 1 x Bastiladon with Solar Engine (250)** 1 x Bastiladon with Solar Engine (250)** 1 x Bastiladon with Ark of Sotek (165)**
Danny: Seraphon are in an interesting place at the moment – in the last year they’ve received new rules (Tome Celestial) and two rounds of point hikes (with more coming in the new GHB) – and yet they still occupy a strange space of having some busted 2e style rules in both good and bad ways, awful internal balanced and absolutely the ability to take down tournaments.
Here, Tom takes a relatively common spin on things – a core of the Engine of the Gods which just offers insane utility for its price, along with the ‘buff core’ of a Slann and Priest – supplemented by the lizards’ favourite ally, C-Prime. Seraphon in general have a good mixed phase output but lack something that can really hit hard and fast in melee – hence the big shiny boi’s inclusion.
Thunder Lizard battleline units are, as usual, built around the minimum taxation, which we see here with 2x 10 skinks and the Saurus guard to help keep the Slann alive.
And then we have the bastiladons. Double Bastis have fallen out of favour recently due to their lack of objective play but Tom opts for 3, 1 of which is the bargain-basement CHONK loadout – basically it’s a tonne of wounds on a 1+ save with -1 damage for 165 pts.
Now, you look at the the path to 2nd – double Disciples? One of the only armies able to out-magic a Slann? Top of the win-rate pile? And then you remember Bastiladons do +1 damage to chaos daemons. Losing to Ogors makes sense, as the shooting output in Underguts is easily enough to just blast through any lizard capable of holding an objective.
Without spoiling anything, let’s just also say this list gets WREKT by the incoming points changes. I don’t know where Seraphon go from there that isn’t a ditch until their new book to be honest, but for now, gratz to Tom for a podium finish¬!
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Allegiance: Disciples of Tzeentch – Change Coven: Hosts Arcanum – Grand Strategy: Master of Destiny – Triumphs: Inspired
Leaders Ogroid Thaumaturge (175)* – General – Command Trait: Arcane Sacrifice – Artefact: Arcane Tome (Universal Artefact) – Lore of Fate: Arcane Suggestion Magister (120) – Lore of Fate: Shield of Fate – Bonded to Krondspine Kairos Fateweaver (435)* Fluxmaster, Herald of Tzeentch on Disc (170)* – Lore of Change: Fold Reality
Battleline 6 x Screamers of Tzeentch (200)* – Reinforced x 1 3 x Screamers of Tzeentch (100)* 10 x Kairic Acolytes (120)* – 7x Cursed Blade & Arcanite Shield – 3x Cursed Glaives
Kieron: New book; same old Krondspine holding the line for Disciples of Tzeentch. Despite the points increase, Krondspines are still useful for Tzeentch as a combat anvil that can hold units in place long enough for the mortal wound hammer says hello (and goodbye shortly after!). Arcane Suggestion from the Ogroid can also make the Krondspine’s attacks more potent by reducing the armour of what it is currently trying to eat OR make what it is trying to eat less effective in combat by subtracting one from hit and wound rolls. Coupled with Mystic Shield and All Out Defense, that monster is probably hanging around for an annoying period of time. Another sneaky tricky the Tzeentch player can pull is to have the Magister, to whom the Krondspine is bonded, kill themselves by first casting a spell and then casting a second that is a double, guaranteed by the Destiny Dice. Instead of turning the Magister into a spawn, the Tzeentch player can choose to slay the Magister, turning the Krondspine wild for run and charge and +1 to hit. On top of that, if the Magister cast an Endless Spell, Burning Sigil, for example, the Krondspine can then eat that spell to go up a level. Please note, however, this cannot be done with the spell automatically cast at the start of the game with Arcane Armies until battle round 2 at the earliest.
In terms of the rest of the list, Screamers are very fast and can be brought back to full strength with the Fold Reality spell that both Kairos and the Fluxmaster can cast, but not as effective as they could potentially be in a unit of 9…but that would ruin the list composition as there would not be three battleline units. The 9 could have been handy for the only battleplan Danny failed to win – Lurkers Below – to be able to speed on to that third objective for the auto-win. As it happened, the second place army of Tom Kenneth Solli managed the auto-win instead (hence the 20-0 loss), the Celestant-Prime potentially being a great bit of tech to hold back in Azyr until that key turn to swoop in and snatch the opponent’s home objective and meet the auto-win conditions.
Otherwise, Danny cleaned up very effectively, with the next closest result being a 7 to 8 point victory over Nurgle and then 15+ margins of victory in every other battle. The ability to generate 2 spawn a turn (through Burning Sigil and the Magister’s warscroll spell) would have probably been key shutting down the Kruleboyz Boltboyz in Round 5 but the most impressive result has to be against the 7 dragons of Stian Engebretsen with their 4+ ignore magic ability on their warscroll, meaning that Danny had to beat them in other ways and not just magic (or was aided by some unlucky dice rolls from Stian!) It would be interesting to see what would have been the outcome were Lurkers Below not included in the pack as a 5-0 could have been on the cards. With this battleplan being one of the 6 carried forward into next season’s General’s Handbook, it’ll be interesting to see if it continues to be a bit of a wild card battleplan.
Allegiance: Nighthaunt – Procession: Scarlet Doom – Grand Strategy: Fright or Flight – Triumphs: Indomitable
Leaders Awlrach the Drowner (175)* Guardian of Souls (150)*** – Artefact: Midnight Tome – Lore of the Underworlds: Shademist Krulghast Cruciator (150)*** Spirit Torment (115)*** – General – Command Trait: Master of Magic – Artefact: Arcane Tome (Universal Artefact) – Lore of the Underworlds: Seal of Shyish
Battleline 5 x Hexwraiths (160)* 30 x Bladegheist Revenants (525)** – Reinforced x 2 3 x Spirit Hosts (125)***
Units 3 x Fell Bats (75)* 3 x Fell Bats (75)* 10 x Dreadscythe Harridans (160)** 10 x Dreadscythe Harridans (160)**
Endless Spells & Invocations Purple Sun of Shyish (90)
Declan: Despite an increase in points and a reduction in power Eirik is still rocking the purple sun in this Nighthaunt army and it’s great to see it still getting use. The main benefit here is not the mortal wounds on a 1 (but that’s fun), it’s the -1 rend to all units within range… an effect that doesn’t change ethereal saves of the Nighthaunt. So all the benefit, none of the disadvantages – it’s a great piece of tech!
From Games Workshop / Wahapedia
And that’s before the Nighthaunt start charging to really rack up those negatives to armour saves (or increases to rend if you prefer)
Games Workshop via Wahapedia
Those 8-9 really hurt, but when you consider you can drop a level, it’s really 8+ (almost 42% before re-rolls). I’ve given my opinion on this before, but there doesn’t seem to be a FAQ and Nighthaunt players have definitely paid with their time in the wilderness (what is it with the non-Stormcast box armies? – Bloodbound, Nighthaunt, Kruleboyz!)
The army itself is all about the Bladegheists – if you can kill them in one turn (or in a double) then you’ve likely won… but wow what a unit to have to kill. And if it charges you, with any small units and characters also charging expect to have no armour. And how do you beat a Nighthaunt army… shooting! None-the-less great work from Eiric on a 4-1. I think Nighthaunt are much closer to a 3-2 army so he’s done well to get 4th here.
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.
Disciples of Tzeentch
Region Comparison – Popularity
2nd Edition Player %
Disciples of Tzeentch saw their highest popularity in North America with 1.3% of players choosing the faction for tournament play, while in Scandinavia the faction wasn’t even chosen.
Region Comparison – Win Rates
2nd Edition Win Rates
Oceania saw a massive win rate of 80.0% for the Disciples of Tzeentch, while UK & Ireland could only manage 46.0%.
2nd Edition Book Results
3rd Edition Book Results
North America and Europe were the only locations where 5-0 were achieved. under the 2nd edition tome. While Oceania id the only region so far where the 5-0 has been achieved with the 3rd edition tome.
Subfaction Analysis
Subfaction
Players
Win Rate
Hosts Duplicitous
7
68.42%
Hosts Arcanum
28
55.94%
Guild of Summoners
2
50.00%
Eternal Conflagration
3
40.00%
None/Unknown
3
63.33%
Faction Total
43
57.24%
Results under the 2nd Edition Battletome
Subfaction
Players
Win Rate
Cult of the Transient Form
1
100.00%
Pyrofane Cult
3
60.00%
Hosts Duplicitous
7
59.09%
Hosts Arcanum
16
55.13%
Guild of Summoners
6
50.00%
Eternal Conflagration
9
30.00%
None/Unknown
2
60.00%
Faction Total
44
52.43%
Results under the 3rd Edition Battletome
With the Tzeentch book coming out part way through the first half of the season, the effect was interesting. Under 2nd Edition their win rate was at a slightly unhealthy 57.2%, this then dropped to 52.4% under the 3rd edition book.
Top 10 Disciples of Tzeentch 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 Disciples of Tzeentch results only.
This is the Top Three AoS Lists for the Leicester City AoS GT that took place in the UK on 3rd and 4th December. It involved 28 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.
Pre-Tournament Analysis
I thought I’d add a bit about the meta at the event before we jump into the meat of the article. If this is popular I’ll continue doing this on future top three articles.
Ranked Players
Below shows the players already ranked in our Woehammer rankings form events before the Leicester GT.
Of the 28 players, 21 Players had already taken part in at least 1 GT before this event, with the highest ranked player (Phil Marshall) being 1st in the UK and currently 2nd in the World. Remember these rankings are based on our own handicapped rankings system explained here.
Faction Breakdown
The Leicester GT had a fairly close representation of the current meta with a few notable exceptions. No Sylvaneth armies where present despite this currently being the 2nd favourite faction with players. Like wise there was also no representation of Ogor Mawtribes or Kharadron Overlords at this event.
The Top Three AoS Lists
Allegiance: Slaves to Darkness – Damned Legion: Knights of the Empty Throne – Mortal Realm: Ghur – Grand Strategy: Show of Dominance – Triumphs: Inspired
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
Phil Marshall: Knights of the Empty Throne – How does it work? In Knights of the Empty Throne, you are able to take Varanguard as Heroes, the first unit which is your general has Inescapable Doom and Grasping plate, meaning it can pile 6 inches and you cant retreat from this unit, the other unit has Corrupted Nullstone which is an auto unbind.
The list is designed around two units of six Varanguard with the Mark of Tzeentch which allows the re-rolls of 1s to armour saves and gives units a 5+ spell ignore. Then you’ll look to really capitalise on these mechanics with other buff pieces in the army, which include two Sorcerer lords. Sorcerer lords have a built in mechanic called Orcular Visions which gives a unit +1 to save (this ability can stack), they are also wizards so offer the ability to cast mystic shield, demonic power (re-roll all hits and wounds) and mask of darkness (teleport).
The final buff piece is the Warshrine, the prayer for Tzeentch is +1 save and a 4+ spell ignore, the only other prayer that may be used is Undivided which allows a unit to re-roll all hits and wounds. On top of this the Warshrine has an aura of 6+ ward which degrades as it takes damage. With all of these buff pieces it allows you to essentially make an unkillable unit (or two) of Varanguard. You can get +6 to your save re-rolling 1s once per game (oracular visions twice, mystic shield, Tzeentch Prayer, all out defence and finest hour), on top of this you can have a 4+ 5+ 5+ spell ignore as the Varanguard have a warscroll ability for spell ignore, mark of tzeentch grants spell ignore and then an additional spell ignore from the warshrine.
As a result there are very few things that can deal with these units once they have the buffs on, you need to be able to do mass mortal wounds in the shooting and combat phase, otherwise there is a strong likelihood that you will never do any damage to this unit. I tend to evaluate the main threats of my opponents army and see how they have deployed, if I can capatalise on getting my general into the bulk of it and keeping them locked in combat for as long as possible. The rest of the list is designed to be very hard to kill with four units of iron golems who get +1 to their save if they havent made a normal move, meaning before rend they will be a 3+ re-rolling 1s.
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Allegiance: Disciples of Tzeentch – Change Coven: Hosts Arcanum – Grand Strategy: Master of Destiny – Triumphs: Indomitable
Leaders Curseling, Eye of Tzeentch (180)* – General – Command Trait: Cult Demagogue – Lore of Fate: Arcane Suggestion Kairos Fateweaver (435) Lord of Change (400)* – Artefact: The Eternal Shroud – Universal Spell Lore: Flaming Weapon Fluxmaster, Herald of Tzeentch on Disc (170)* – Artefact: Arcane Tome (Universal Artefact) – Universal Spell Lore: Ghost-mist
Battleline 10 x Pink Horrors of Tzeentch (250)** 10 x Pink Horrors of Tzeentch (250)** 10 x Kairic Acolytes (120)**
Kieron: Ryan is the captain of Team Malta and a combination of one of the finest Tzeentch players in the world and one of the nicest people you’re ever likely to meet. Speaking to him at the event about his list writing and tactics, he explained that he’s very confident in his approach and then plays the list repeatedly – around 350 reps with the current iteration, losing very few games along the way. The only downside – headaches after each match due to the mental load of channelling the will of The Changer of Ways. Malta has a relatively small AoS scene and there’s only so many times a person can take a beat down from Ryan, no matter how charming he while doing so, and games on TTS don’t really allow for the precision of measurements that cause aforementioned headaches.
Onto the list itself and it has somewhat of a retro charm about it with two big birds: a combo that, while clearly effective in the right hands, is seen less frequently due to Kairos and the Lord of Change sharing the same warscroll spell now instead of Kairos having his own spell. The Lord of Change offers a good amount of shooting with the Rod of Sorcery and can do some work with a damage 3 Staff of Tzeentch thanks to the Flaming Weapon buff. Together, they give everything within range +1 to cast each, meaning that Ryan can afford to leave Cogs at home in favour of Horrorghast.
The list can also expect to generate over the magic number of 10 fate points a turn, meaning that 10 blue horrors should be summoned every turn. When talking to Ryan about Screamers, I explained I was excited about how fast they could go and his response was that a Fluxmaster moving 22” and then summoning 9” away is even faster!
The final little wrinkle for this list (valid for the next month or so at least) is the fact that all Ryan’s battleline are Expert Conquerors – annoying enough for the 10 Kairics to count as 30, but absolutely infuriating on the Pink Horrors that start off counting as 30, but peak at counting as 60 until the 31st wound is done to the unit, at which point it starts the slow decline back to counting as 3 and then counting as dead!
It clearly worked, with Ryan achieving the maximum possible differential on Day One, with the only loss being into the event’s eventual winner, Phil Marshall, and a tonne of 2+ re-rerolling 1s saving throws and an equally hefty amount of spell ignores and wards.
Kieron: And so on to the third placed army, piloted by the very dry Toby Resnick, including the named units “An Undercosted Priest”, “Kroak’s Ablative Wounds” and the “Raveshaper Engine”, which is like a “Realmshaper Engine” but with flashy LEDs that are operated by remote control depending on who wins priority. I almost felt sorry for the Seraphon player on the table next to us at Leicester as they jealously eyed up the craziest terrain piece you’ll ever see!
The list itself has a couple of lovely converted chariots that are really good at zipping around the board early game while one of the Engine of the Gods or the Bastiladon is double activating with one of the 5+ CP Toby generally has to play with each turn. Cogs consolidates Kroak’s absolute magical supremacy with a double miscast pretty much being the only way that Kroak fails a spell and, usually, the unbind required when a spell does go off is double figures or flat out impossible. “Big Frog Goes Ribbit Ribbit” indeed.
All the other buffs that Seraphon players can dish out are also present here, with re-rolling 1s, run and shoot, +1 to hit in addition to the normal All out Attack etc. buffs that can be added. Skinks running about the place, doing all the dirty jobs that score the points while the bigger immediate threats (particularly the resurrecting Engine of the Gods – 50% of the time, it comes back with full wounds every time) draw the enemy’s attention away.
I’m sure once Ryan had finished with the paracetamol, Toby was ready for some with the number of rules he has to keep in his head, even with more tokens than models to help him keep track. While one of the Order Battletomes from the latest Roadmap is probably another Lumineth book (maybe two!), it would be great to have a Seraphon book to combine some of these into the Warscrolls themselves and make it so players like Toby can fly their Dino Flag and not feel a bit guilty about it.
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Allegiance: Flesh-eater Courts – Grand Court: Morgaunt – Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs – Triumphs: Indomitable
Leaders Abhorrant Archregent (245)** – Artefact: The Dermal Robe – Lore of Madness: Spectral Host Abhorrant Archregent (245)** – Lore of Madness: DerangedTransformation Abhorrant Ghoul King on Royal Zombie Dragon (430)* – General – Command Trait: Savage Chivalry – Artefact: Decrepit Coronet – Mount Trait: Razor-clawed – Lore of Madness: Miasmal Shroud Varghulf Courtier (160)**
Battleline 20 x Crypt Ghouls (170)* – Reinforced x 1 20 x Crypt Ghouls (170)* – Reinforced x 1 20 x Crypt Ghouls (170)* – Reinforced x 1
Units 6 x Crypt Flayers (360)* – Reinforced x 1
Endless Spells & Invocations Chalice of Ushoran (50)
Brett: Flesh eater courts is still centred around their heros and lean on their summoning and buffs to make their other units dangerous. They reward a patient player who is happy to screen the heroes and summon more models early game before striking out. 3 Abhorrants (one mounted and 2 foot) and the Varghulf at the heart of the list and maybe a little unusually 3 x 20 Crypt Ghouls. Bounty Hunters can tear through these quickly and a lot of lists have minimised them. 3 Wizards granting fly to 1 to 3 units (Spectral Host) however if they can fly (like the dragon) then granting run and charge, additional movement (Deranged Transformation) and lastly a small MW spell with the chance of affecting opposing hit and wound rolls (Miasmal Shroud).
Spectral Host on the Zombie Dragon gives up to 20″ of movement + a charge at the top of first turn if they go first. Try not to leave room for it to land near something important early game. Then there is the summoning, a Serf unit is Crypt Ghouls, Knight is 3 Crypt Flayers/Horrors and a Courtier is a Varghulf Courtier. Each Archreagent can summon 20 Serfs or 3 Knights or a Courtier every turn. The Ghoul King can only summon Courtiers. This is a command ability so forcing them to use CP can help but it is done at the end of the movement phase. The Courtiers are both mobile threat and healers rolling 6 dice and healing Serfs on a 2+ and Knights on a 5+ within 10″ (as well as themselves if they kill a model).
As a Morguant host the Serfs can return once destroyed at full strength (4+). It’s a 50% chance that you can kill a screen and achieve very little. All of this is just to build the scene, the army can afford to wait but with the ability to snipe something with either the Flayers or the Zombie Dragon. If they get their buffs off it’s possible for most of the army to reroll 1s to hit if they are close to the Serfs. And those serfs, while they don’t hit hard, can easily get to 3 attacks each making them a reasonable threat to anything with a 4+ save. They’re cheap and trade really well. Castling though means they can struggle to score well in early rounds if you don’t feed them units and tactics. Shooting obviously is a weakness as are ranged Mortal Wounds from spells (they have a lot of denies though). Stretching them out and making them react to you is a good tactic as well.
Simon lost to a Soulblight army with a lot of mobility (Blood Knights, Dire Wolves) and Grave Guard. They were able to hold Simon scoreless. The other loss was to a Seraphon Thunder Lizard with Kroak. Kroak can deny pretty much all of their magic while the Solar Engine Bastiladon tears big holes. Seraphon are a hard counter to the army and very difficult to deal with.
This is the Top Three AoS Lists for the Ragnarok AoS GT that took place in the UK on 5th and 6th November. It involved 32 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: Disciples of Tzeentch Change Coven: Hosts Arcanum Grand Strategy: Master of Destiny Triumphs: Indomitable
LEADERS Curseling, Eye of Tzeentch (180)* – General – Command Trait: Cult Demagogue – Lore of Fate: Arcane Suggestion Kairos Fateweaver (435)* Lord of Change (400) – Artefact: The Eternal Shroud – Universal Spell Lore: Flaming Weapon Fluxmaster, Herald of Tzeentch on Disc (170)* – Artefact: Arcane Tome – Universal Spell Lore: Ghost-mist
UNITS 10 x Pink Horrors of Tzeentch (250)** 10 x Pink Horrors of Tzeentch (250)** 10 x Kairic Acolytes (120)**
Ed: This list is a very competent summoning/control list and Ryan is focusing all his resources into that style of play as the best lists tend to. Hosts Arcanum gives automatic unbinds on turns 1, 3 and 5 which has valuable synergy with the Curseling. After successfully unbinding a spell, the Curseling can cast his own spell in the enemy hero phase which teaches him his target’s warscroll spell and, crucially, grants the Tzeentch player a fate point despite having denied his opponent a spell. Add together the Curseling’s in-built ability to re-roll unbinds and the extremely reliable casting/unbinding from the Lord of Change and Kairos and Ryan seems to be throwing down a challenge. “I dare you to cast a spell. I dare you to stop me casting a spell.”
The Curseling also has the Cult Demagogue command trait, which gives double fate points to any spell cast on a double and Tzeentch players can guarantee that by using destiny dice. Then the Fluxmaster’s warscroll spell is a bona fide summoning battery all by itself, and can be thrown through the Umbral Spellportal to ensure maximum gain while keeping him safe and sound behind your screens. Add together the spells from the birds and (even the battleline) and Ryan has the potential to generate a huge amount of summoning points in each turn. Enough to summon whatever he needs to most effectively combat his opponent whether that be bodies, ranged damage, melee damage or just more spellcasters. The force potential and versatility of his summoning really can’t be understated.
Finally between Kairos and the Eternal Shroud artefact, Ryan is recycling his spent destiny dice every round. This means he doesn’t need to be precious about spending them to ensure success on a crucial roll and helps to ensure he will meet his grand strategy of having a combined value of 9 or more in his destiny dice at the end of the game. Removing the chance from a game of chance and simply being able to say “I do this” is strong. It’s easy to see how, in the hands of a good player, this list could do so well.
Double Trouble
We reached out to Ryan who shared a picture of the winning army (above) and commented that understanding your opponent’s list is absolutely key to his strategy, as “one screening mistake and you lose the game”. He also shared that this list is not fun to play against as it is “denial heavy” and I can believe it! It’s looks like a hard list to get right, and not one you play to make friends, but rewarding if you can pull it off. Thanks, Ryan and good luck at LGT! Hopefully we’ll see him in another article soon!
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Army Faction: Maggotkin of Nurgle – Subfaction: Drowned Men – Grand Strategy: Show of Dominance – Triumph: Inspired
LEADERS Lord of Afflictions (230)* – General – Command Traits: Overpowering Stench – Incubatch – Dolorous Tocsin – Artefacts of Power: The Splithorn Helm Lord of Plagues (145)*
Ed: The eagle eyed will notice that Luke drew against the previous list, meaning that he was close to taking the event if it weren’t for tiebreakers. That just goes to show how much work Pusgoyle Blightlords do, even after their price hike. People worried, or perhaps hoping, that the age of flies was over should take note: they’re still something to worry about. I’m sure you’re bored to death reading about flies by now though, so I won’t re-tread old ground.
Luke’s special flavour includes a Lord of Plagues and 2 units of Blightkings who can benefit from the Lord of Plague’s +1 attack buff. This really is a list that concentrates it’s power in small, elite groups which can both hold their own and dish it out in equal measures. When you’re playing an army like Nurgle which excels at the attrition game having such a small, focused force like this can be great for speeding up your play and ensuring you get to turn 4 and 5 where your army really comes into its own.
The Mindstealer is a fun touch. It’s 10″ move makes it quite zippy for a Nurgle list, which is good for nabbing an objective while the rest of your Rotbringers gum up the board. It’s -2 bravery aura can help to clear hordes or waste your opponent’s command points on Inspiring Presence. It also gives out a fight-last effect once per round which can be disruptive enough to swing important battles in your favour. Plus, if the opponent uses resources to focus the Mindstealer down it’s only 95 points and it has given a reprieve to your more important units. A worthy unit to fill up those awkward leftover points for any chaos army.
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Allegiance: Skaven – Mortal Realm: Ghur – Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs – Triumphs: Bloodthirsty
Battleline 20 x Clanrats (100)* – Rusty Blade – 2x Standard Bearers – 2x Standard Bell Ringers 10 x Night Runners (90)* 20 x Clanrats (100)* – Rusty Blade – 2x Standard Bearers – 2x Standard Bell Ringers 10 x Night Runners (90)**
Declan: Skaven again, but this is a very different one to the one I reviewed last time. This one has none of the Warp Lightning shenanigans, but does have 2 Verminlords and Thanquol. Backed up by 2 Grey Seers and there’s not going to be much difficulty casting the Warp Lightning Vortex. On it’s release it was a very popular spell (particularly with KO players with suspicious bottles), but it’s seen less now. However it’s still good tech as it messes with your opponents move and it’s casting value (8) can make it difficult to dispel, but the Skaven have +1 to cast from their mystical Gnawholes.
Games Workshop via Wahapedia
The damage can take a little of getting used to – and you’ll definitely need to explain it – but it’s played for preventing running.
Alexander has also gone for Flaming Weapon on his two Verminlords meaning he can power one up, send it in, kill stuff, and then repeat with the 2nd Verminlord. It’s a hell of a one-two – especially as Thanquol’s there to make it a ‘one-two-three’. There’s a lack of models (for a Skaven army) and the 9 drop means he’s not choosing to go first or second but that’s fine and Alexander did really well.
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Allegiance: Gloomspite Gitz – Option: Grimscuttle Tribes – Mortal Realm: Ghur – Grand Strategy: No Place for the Weak – Triumphs: Inspired
Leaders Dankhold Troggboss (220)**** – Trev the Troggboss – General – Command Trait: Alpha Trogg – Artefact: Glowy Howitz Fungoid Cave-Shaman (95)**** – Freddie the Fungoid – Lore of the Moonclans: The Hand of Gork Madcap Shaman (80)**** – Madcap Max – Artefact: Moonface Mommet – Lore of the Moonclans: Itchy Nuisance Breaka-Boss on Mirebrute Troggoth (180)* – The Celestant Slime – Allies
Battleline 6 x Rockgut Troggoths (290)*** – Reinforced x 1 6 x Rockgut Troggoths (290)*** – Reinforced x 1 3 x Fellwater Troggoths (155)** 3 x Fellwater Troggoths (155)**
Units 5 x Spider Riders (90)* 3 x Rippa’s Snarlfangs (70)* 1 x Marshcrawla Sloggoth (150)* – Drummer Dave
Behemoths Skitterstrand Arachnarok (160)* – Big Bert & Nipper
Endless Spells & Invocations The Burning Head (20) – Steve the Swamp Trogg Mork’s Mighty Mushroom (40) – Marv the Misunderstood
Declan: Gitz on a 4-1… hurrah! Peter knows how to get my comments and Dominic has not let Skagrott’s Asylum (the WhatsApp Group for Gitz players) down here. Every unit is named — even the Endless Spells. He has Troggs which can hit hard especially as Bounty Hunters and a Marshcrawler and Rippas. The only disadvantage here apart from it still being a weak book is that Bounty Hunters against him – especially those on mounted units – really hurt. You can lose a whole Trogg unit in a turn.
Dominic may have had an interesting first three games dodging most of the worst out there, but he did very well to beat Nurgle in game 5… a battletome that is ripping up tournament results everywhere. In fact his only defeat was to Tzeentch piloted by 1st placed Ryan. Great result Dominic.
This is the Top Three AoS Lists for the Flying Monkey Con Grand Tournament that took place in Wichita, Kansas , USA on 24 and 25 September. It involved 51 players vying to be crowned champion in a 5 game tournament. The top 10 has 10 different factions represented, that is certainly representative of the wide open meta we have right now.
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: Cities of Sigmar – City: Phoenicium – Mortal Realm: Ghur – Grand Strategy: Mighty Beachhead – Triumphs: Inspired
Leaders Anointed on Frostheart Phoenix (315) – General – Command Trait: Seeker of Vengeance – Artefact: Arcane Tome (Universal Artefact) – Universal Spell Lore: Flaming Weapon Anointed on Frostheart Phoenix (315) – Artefact: Phoenix Pyre Ashes Assassin (80)** Assassin (80)** Celestial Hurricanum with Celestial Battlemage (290)** – Lore of the Phoenix: Golden Mist Haskel Hexbane (180)
Battleline 10 x Phoenix Guard (175)*** 10 x Phoenix Guard (175)*** 10 x Phoenix Guard (175)***
Units 10 x Flagellants (80)* 10 x Shadow Warriors (120)* 5 x Hexbane’s Hunters (180)*
Brett: A Cities list without allies on the Podium? This is something exceptional even in our current meta, and Phonecium has the lowest representation of all of the Cities at just 2%. So Jeremy is doing it the hard way(?) but with a good reason. The Phoenix heros gain a wound and the Phoenix Guard gain +1 to hit and wound rolls (and a 4+ ward) within 12″ of Phoenix Temple hero (the Phoenixes). The result is the Guard become a capablable pining unit with some punch. The Guard are all in Expert Conquerors for objective control. Flagellants are very cheap screens, Shadow Warriors for mobile threat (strike from reserve) and Hexbane’s Hunters. All of these have mostly damage 1 weapons but are Bounty Hunters. Nice play, you’d normally use GVs to clear the screening units. Extra bonus, Flagellants get extra attacks if you don’t wipe the unit.
Hexbane’s Hunters were only announced recently so they are a bit a surprise. Slow moving they are a pair of assassin units with a preference for wizard heroes (they do additional damage to Hexbane’s chosen target). If you use an Underworld squad your opponent might not know what they do. In this case it’s 2 units with a combined 15 wounds and a 5+ ward that can do some annoying damage, including MW at the end of combat. In fact good luck getting Hexbane’s warscroll (it was taken off the Warhammer site). Special mention for the pair of Assassins. They appear with any unit of 5 or more at the start of the combat phase. No need to note which unit at the start off the game.
Shadow warriors striking from reserve could charge and if successful have an Assassin added. Or they can be dropped onto a unit you’ve charged at the start of your combat phase. The Phoenixes and Hurricanum are clearly the hammer units here but are falling behind a little (the Hurricanum through spell damage and buffing adjacent units). Despite the detail this isn’t an army that wins through list tech. There are a lot of old data sheets here with lowish rend and random damage, making the most of that to go 5/0 is pretty remarkable. His first 4 opponents had units that are hard to take down (Gargants, Mawcrushas, Be’Lakor and a Stardrake). At the same time this list is hard to concentrate your forces against and very hard to prevent it scoring. Throughout the competition Jeremy scored consistently taking the even from the other 5/0.
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Allegiance: Tzeentch – Change Coven: Hosts Arcanum – Grand Strategy: Show of Dominance – Triumphs:
Leaders Changecaster, Herald of Tzeentch (140)* – General – Command Trait: Spell Hunters – Artefact: The Fanged Circlet – Lore of Change: Unchecked Mutation – Bonding: Krondspine Incarnate of Ghur Kairos Fateweaver (435) – Lore of Change: Bolt of Tzeentch Lord of Change (400)* – Lore of Change: Tzeentch’s Firestorm
Battleline 10 x Kairic Acolytes (120)* – 7x Cursed Blade & Arcanite Shield – 3x Cursed Glaives 10 x Pink Horrors of Tzeentch (250)* – Split and Split Again 10 x Kairic Acolytes (120)* – 7x Cursed Blade & Arcanite Shield – 3x Cursed Glaives
Behemoths Krondspine Incarnate of Ghur (400)* – Allies
Endless Spells & Invocations Chronomantic Cogs (40) Purple Sun of Shyish (70) The Burning Head (20)
Brett: More familiar territory now with a Kairos/Lord of Change double act. All squeezed into a Battle Regiment with some crowd favourites – Purple Sun and Krondspine. Changecaster as General, freeing up the Lord of Change to be aggressive. Mortal Acolytes, MSU Pink Horrors and 3 Endless Spells round out the list. The endless spells are fairly normal choices – Cogs, Purple Sun and the Burning Head, the Burning Head is very cheap MW on demand. Be ready for Kairos to use Gift of Change with both Cogs and the LoC making it much more likely to succeed, the Spawn are a useful boost to melee. Otherwise we’ve seen similar lists a few times, the Krondspine and Horrors will slow your advance while Kairos and the LoC pepper you with spells. This list is easily generating 5+ fate points a turn, units can be summoned from Turn 2.
Dwarves seem to have been decent counters to the list otherwise scoring was strong across the board. KO shooting and mobility can be difficult to counter for an army with essentially 18″ range (but Dalton still won). Fyreslayers on demand ward can be an issue for spell based MW (you aren’t spamming attacks to generate damage). As a known quantity going 5/0 takes skill, the lack of units hampers scoring which probably Dalton the event.
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Allegiance: Lumineth Realm-lords – Great Nation: Syar – Grand Strategy: Tame the Land – Triumphs: Indomitable
Leaders Hurakan Spirit of the Wind (265) Hurakan Spirit of the Wind (265) Hurakan Windmage (120)* – General – Command Trait: Goading Arrogance – Artefact: The Perfect Blade – Lore of the Winds: Howling Gale Hurakan Windmage (120)* – Lore of the Winds: Transporting Vortex Sevireth, Lord of the Seventh Wind (345)*
Battleline 30 x Vanari Auralan Sentinels (495)* – Lore of Hysh: Lambent Light – Reinforced x 2 10 x Vanari Auralan Wardens (145)* – Lore of Hysh: Total Eclipse 10 x Vanari Auralan Wardens (145)* – Lore of Hysh: Protection of Hysh
Brett: Lumineth (and Sentinels) back in the winner’s circle with a 4/1, 3rd. The dual Spirit of the Wind/Windmage combos is a diversion, the Spirits can move 24″, shoot and move another 12″ and still charge. The Windmage heal them if they are within 12″. Severith shares the Spirits mobility with a MW ability if he crosses over an enemy unit. The core of the army is the Sentinels with their long range shooting. But instead of windriders the army is using extremely mobile heroes to apply pressure and complete Battle Tactics. Typically using terrain is the best way to avoid the Sentinels even with their indirect shooting. Sevireth and his band can still reach you.
We don’t see Geminids enough, turning off commands is underrated and very powerful as are the incidental MWs. It offers board control in the same was as Purple Sun at half the price. Cogs is potentially significant with so many units self buffing via spells. It worked with consistent scoring throughout with the exception of the Idoneth who have the ability to drop the combat range to 12″.
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Allegiance: Gloomspite Gitz – Option: Gloomspite Gitz – Mortal Realm: Ghur – Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs – Triumphs: Indomitable
Leaders Fungoid Cave-Shaman (95)** – Lore of the Moonclans: The Hand of Gork Dankhold Troggboss (240)* – General – Command Trait: Alpha Trogg – Artefact: Arcane Tome (Universal Artefact) – Universal Spell Lore: Levitate
Battleline 6 x Fellwater Troggoths (310)* – Reinforced x 1 6 x Rockgut Troggoths (290)* – Reinforced x 1 6 x Rockgut Troggoths (290)* – Reinforced x 1 3 x Rockgut Troggoths (145)** 3 x Rockgut Troggoths (145)** 3 x Rockgut Troggoths (145)** 3 x Rockgut Troggoths (145)**
Brett: Picking our last list was a bit more controversial, at least in our virtual office. Double battle regiment Gitz army (yes a 2 drop army). This Gitz/Troll army has minimum HQs or other distractions and is relying on the unreliable Rockgut Troggoth for everything. There’s 24 in this army with 6 Fellwaters, led by a Dankhold and partnered with a Sloggoth (he broke free from the Kruleboyz somehow). The Cave-Shaman gives extra CP on a 4+ and might do some MW. Ranged attacks at very close range (6″ and 9″) this is a slow moving combat army. They can hit very hard but there are a lot of D3s and D6s for number of attacks or damage, fitting for an older book but guaranteed to make things “interesting”. The Sloggoth giving +1 to hit (or free all out attack) within 18″ makes things a bit more spicey.
Beau went all the way to the final round without dropping a game, that’s a stellar piece of work. In the last round he ran into the overall winner and his regeneration (most units get D3 wounds in the hero phase) just wasn’t enough.
And we’re back! Sorry about the long hiatus. I’ve been on holiday for the last two weeks which has meant a lull in the posts. We’ll be trying to catch up on what we missed over the next couple of weeks, so on many days you can probably expect two top three articles per day!
This is the Top Three AoS Lists for the Nova Open 2022 that took place in the USA on 2nd, 3rd and 4th September. It involved 135 players vying to be crowned champion in a 5/8 game tournament. After the first 5 rounds the top 8 contested an additional 3 rounds in a seeded event to determine overall winner. There was a separate “renaissance winner” for the winner, including modelling scores, from the first 5 rounds. Separately those outside the Top 8 had the option of playing a 3 round RTT on the last day. Nova attracts a lot of the top ranked players in the US (and overall) and it’s an important place to get a feel for what is working at least for the best players.
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: Tzeentch – Change Coven: Hosts Duplicitous – Mortal Realm: Ghur – Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs – Triumphs: Inspired
Leaders Lord of Change (400)* – General – Bound To The Incarnate – Command Trait: Will of the Phantom Lord – Artefact: Brand of the Spirit Daemon – Lore of Change: Treason of Tzeentch Kairos Fateweaver (435) – Lore of Change: Bolt of Tzeentch Changecaster, Herald of Tzeentch (140)* – Lore of Change: Tzeentch’s Firestorm
Battleline 10 x Kairic Acolytes (120)* – 10x Cursed Blade & Arcanite Shield – 3x Cursed Glaives 10 x Kairic Acolytes (120)* – 10x Cursed Blade & Arcanite Shield – 3x Cursed Glaives 10 x Tzaangors (175)* – 4x Savage Greatblade – 6x Savage Blade & Arcanite Shield
Behemoths (Spinedog) Krondspine Incarnate of Ghur (400)* – Allies
Endless Spells & Invocations Ravenak’s Gnashing Jaws (60) Umbral Spellportal (70) Purple Sun of Shyish (70)
Brett: I caught up with his last of Kaleb’s games on a Season of War stream, he handled it masterfully and defeated his brother handily. The Incarnate provides some real impact in the early rounds allowing this list to avoid committing the Lords of Change too early (which he did against his brother) and maintain his screens for a while longer. No Horrors here to take advantage of the 5+ return 10 models once they are defeated. However the Will of the Phantom Lord command trait granting reroll casting and unbind’s within 9″. Backed up on the Lord of Change by a +1 to save (Brand of the Spirit Demon). That takes up the mandatory choices as well.
Between them there are 8 casts in the list, Kairos knows the spells of the other casters as well as his own and has 3 of them. That’s on top of his fate (dice) changing and automatic dispel (Purple Sun isn’t really an issue for Tzeetch). The Mortals are bringing their own, at least until some one hits them and drops a model or 2. The Lord of Change has a command ability to grant +1 to casting to a model within 18″ (often Kairos). The endless spells are 20% of the list but critical as well. The Purple Sun is included as much for the chance to eat something – Kairos can guarantee that will happen at least once per game. Umbral Spell Portal for that extra range and Gnashing Jaws – great into slow moving units (particularly punishing for infantry with a move < 6″).
The battleline aren’t combat power houses, although they can sting if you let them. Between the Tzaangors mortal wound on a 4+ for every wizard within 9″ (5 in the list alone), to the ability to add rend to their ranged attack both Tzaangors and Acolytes are very good at chip damage. The Greatblades on the Tzaangors can do more than chip. This list is mostly going to screen using the battleline and Incarnate to discourage charges while hitting you with mortal wounds from spells. Bolt of Tzeetch (D6 MW), Treason of Tzeetch (roll a die/model in a unit and 6s do MW) to Tzeentch’s Firestorm (9 dice, 6s do D3 MW). Ideally you want to deploy and let the screens take the damage, chipping away until it’s time for the coup de grace with the big chickens cleaning up.
Destiny Dice and summoning using Fate Points go a long way in helping Tzeentch (new screens from Turn 2?). They introduce an interesting game, you gain Fate Points if you don’t unbind your opponents spells. do you wan them to have the spell or do you what to deny it? All of this is at 18″ though so you can see how important Spell Portal is into longer ranged opponents. Once within that range there are spells and ranged attacks galore. The list is crafted to fit within a Battle Regiment to control the initial turn order with a general preference to go second. The list has all of the tools but is fragile as well in the right circumstances, it takes a lot of skill to take it to 8/0.
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Army Faction: Orruk Warclans – Army Type: Ironjawz – Army Subfaction: Bloodtoofs – Grand Strategy: No Place for the Weak – Triumphs: Inspired
Leader 1 x Orruk Warchanter (115) 1 x Fungoid Cave-Shaman (95) 1 x Megaboss on Maw-krusha (480)** – General – Command Traits: Mega Bossy – Boss Choppa and Rip-toof Fist – Artefacts: Armour of Gork – Mount Traits: Fast ’Un 1 x Orruk Megaboss (140)** – Artefacts: Destroyer 1 x Orruk Warchanter (115)**
Battleline 6 x Orruk Gore-gruntas (340)* – Gore-grunta Boss – Jagged Gore-hacka 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)** – Jagged Gore-hacka
Core Battalions *Bounty Hunters **Warlord
TOTAL POINTS: (1965/2000)
Brett: A list showing there’s still life in Ironjawz yet, it’s not all Big Waagh. Kaleb’s brother, as I mentioned you can see the pair of them play. Single Mawcrusha with as many pigs (Gore Gruntas) as possible. Nick has swapped the Weirdnob Shaman for a Fungoid Cave-Shaman, costs 5 points for a chance to get an extra command point (on a 4+) and an extra spell in one round. The extra command points make it a great 5 point upgrade. Megaboss on Mawcrusha is the General, with Armour of Gork and bearing the Boss Choppa and Rip Tooth fist, for a 6+ ward and 3+ save. The Mawcrusha is still using Fast ‘un to maintain mobility. 2 Warchanters and a foot Megaboss complete HQs.
The foot Megaboss has Destroyer, he’s more than capable of being teleported to deal with an MSU on an objective or holding the rear and can issue Mighty Destroyers. Most of the Gore-Grunta’s are in Bounty Hunters, the advantage is blunted a bit by how many people don’t have Galletian Veteran’s in their lists at the moment. 2 big and 2 small units of pigs (possible when you don’t go double Mawcrusha) is a really good choice. You have the option of throwing the big units down range (with or without the Mawcrusha) or holding them and screening them with the smaller units. The Mawcrusha has a defensive build while maintaining speed (36″ move is possible with Fast ‘un). Nick only dropped the last game all weekend (7/1) , a fantastic result for Ironjawz.
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Allegiance: Seraphon – Constellation: Thunder Lizard – Mortal Realm: Ghur – Grand Strategy: Show of Dominance – Triumphs: Inspired
Leaders Lord Kroak (430)* Saurus Astrolith Bearer (140)* – Artefact: Fusil of Conflaguration Skink Priest (90)* – Universal Prayer Scripture: Heal Engine of the Gods (265)*** – General – Command Trait: Prime Warbeast – Artefact: Arcane Tome (Universal Artefact) – Mount Trait: Beastmaster – Spell: Hand of Glory – Universal Prayer Scripture: Curse
Battleline 10 x Skinks (75)** – Boltspitters Celestite Daggers & Star Bucklers 10 x Skinks (75)** – Boltspitters Celestite Daggers & Star Bucklers 20 x Skinks (150)** – Boltspitters Celestite Daggers & Star Bucklers – Reinforced x 1 5 x Saurus Guard (115)*
Behemoths Bastiladon with Solar Engine (250)*** Bastiladon with Ark of Sotek (165)*** Bastiladon with Ark of Sotek (165)***
Brett: Gavin is currently the top ITC ranked player in the world so definitely a list worth paying attention to. Skinks as battleline with Bastiladons as the workhorses and Lord Kroak at the centre. Thunder Lizard for the 2 wounds on the big boys. Still a magic based list (with just 2 wizards and 2 priests) but Kroak with 4 casts, and a +2 dominates. He can shutdown endless spells anywhere on the board and use a Skink Wizard to cast through and extend the range of his mortal wound spell. He also knows the full Lore of Celestial Dominance and can very reliably provides Command Points throughout the battle. The Astrolith Bearer provides a 6+ ward wholly within 12″ and a +1 to cast (useful for the Engine of the Gods).
The Skink Priest is bringing a potential run and charge, +1 to save and + 1 to hit rolls and a Heal. Engine of the Gods for summoning, battleshock play and melee combat supporting the Skinks and backing the Bastilidons. Opting for the larger Skink unit gives them a lot more play, they have an extra attack and absorb buffs well. They don’t become as threatening as Fangs of Sotek but they are likely to do at least chip damage to even a 3+ save. With Horrorghast available that’s potentially very damaging. Skinks can also be summoned or teleported and as GVs they excel in grabbing uncovered objectives. All of the Skinks are Eternal Conquerors, making them much harder to clear away from objectives (you need to kill them all). The Skinks can achieve 2 or 3 battle tactics almost independently of the rest of the army or enemy.
The list has a lot of flexibility, strong melee punch of the Bastildons and Stegadon (Curse + free all out attack on a Ark of Sotek?) backed by artillery (Solar Engine) and magic. The bigger unit tends to need to castle to ensure short range buffs provide coverage. This isn’t an alpha strike army, it’s going to build up damage in the first few turns and hopefully force some moral issues. Once units are weakened the Bastildons, that are very hard to bracket initially, can go in. Some weakness to MW shooting (who doesn’t) but the teleport, Solar Engine with buffs with run and charge for Skinks makes it possible to play around the shooting. Really great tournament result for a favourite army, just pipped at the post.
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Allegiance: Cities of Sigmar – City: Tempest’s Eye – Grand Strategy: Show of Dominance – Triumphs: Inspired
Leaders Runelord (95)*** – General – Command Trait: Hawk-eyed – Artefact: Arcane Tome – Lore of Eagles: Strike of Eagles – Universal Prayer Scripture: Heal – Bound to Incarnate Doralia ven Denst (115) – City Role: General’s Adjutant
Units 10 x Longbeards (105)** – Ancestral Weapons & Shields – City Role: Honoured Retinue (Must be 5-20 models) 10 x Darkshards (115)** 20 x Irondrakes (340)** – Grudgehammer Torpedo 1 x Grundstok Gunhauler (155)*** – Main Gun: Sky Cannon 6 x Skywardens (210)* – 2 x Aethermatic Volley Guns – 1 x Skyhooks – 1 x Grapnel Launchers 2 x Dracothian Guard Fulminators (230)* 3 x Vanguard-Palladors (215)* – Boltstorm Pistols and Starstrike Javelins
Behemoths Krondspine Incarnate of Ghur (400) – Allies
Brett: First of the armies from the regular rounds, Nick only dropped his second round match, otherwise scoring well throughout the tournament. Doing so with a less favoured battletome (Cities) that doesn’t even use the Storm Drake/SCE coalition is a fantastic effort. Instead he’s chosen to make it a KO heavy army (Tempest Eye’s coalition partner), light on HQs with a small SCE contingent. Slimming the HQ slot frees up space for units and in this case Krondspine without compromising too much. Also unusual with the lack of spells from the HQs, instead this is an anti magic cohort. The Runelord can dispell an endless and normal spell with a +2, Doralia can take aim at an endless spell. Doralia is a witch hunters with bonuses to hit and number of attacks if she doesn’t move, doing double damage to wizards (and Daemons).
The Runelord isn’t finished yet, he takes Arcane Tome to be bound to the incarnate, and cast Strike of Eagles (a very long range mortal wound spell). His artefact provides +1 to hit for ranged attacks (within 12″) and his warscroll provides with 6+ or an extra point of rend. All for 95 points. The coalition units are the Gunhauler and Skywardens, that’s a really cheap way to provide one of your ranged units with dedicated teleport. Skywardens can hitch a lift on any Skyvessel before it flies high to move themselves to a location 9″ from the enemy. The advantage with this method is you can drop the Gun hauler further back and land the within 6″ which may keep them safe or let them deploy more aggressively. Say put the Gunhauler in Shrapnel range (18″) and the Skywardens further back (24″ range).
The list goes on to have 2 more hammers, the Fulminators and Irondrakes. The Fulminators are well known, slightly fragile as a pair but it’s still 12 wounds at 3+ and they are still bringing 16 rend -2, 2 and 3 damage attacks on the charge (potentially 42 damage). With the Longbeards and Darkshards to screen the Irondrakes should have an extra attack and the Darkshards will be shooting earlier anyway making approaching them and charging either Longbeards or Darkshards costly. Palladors haven’t seen a lot of work lately, they are costly but they are extremely mobile and can potentially pick up exposed objectives or snipe out a character with their inbuilt teleport (Ride the Winds Aetheric). A more expensive prosecutor. All and all an innovative list with a high degree of complexity but plenty of tools.
Final Tournament Placings (Limited here to Top 32)
This is the Top Three AoS Lists for the Emerald City Open 2 (Electric Boogaloo) that took place in Puyallup (Tacoma), USA on 27th and 28th August. It involved 41 players vying to be crowned champion in a 5 game/2 day tournament.
Before I jump into the Top Three AoS Lists, I wanted to remind everyone of our friendly Discord server where you can join in the conversation with the Woehammer crew and suggest articles or series for the website.
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Also if there’s a one day or two day tournament you’d like us to cover drop us a comment on this post and we’ll have a look at it for you.
The Top Three AoS Lists
Allegiance: Daughters of Khaine – Temple: Hagg Nar – Grand Strategy: Bloodthirsty Zealots – Triumphs: Indomitable Leaders Melusai Ironscale (115)** – General – Command Trait: Zealous Orator Hag Queen (110)** – Prayer: Martyr’s Sacrifice – Universal Prayer Scripture: Curse Hag Queen on Cauldron of Blood (270)** – Prayer: Blessing of Khaine – Universal Prayer Scripture: Curse High Gladiatrix (90)* – Artefact: Crown of Woe Battleline 30 x Witch Aelves (345)* – Pairs of Sacrificial Knives – Reinforced x 2 10 x Sisters of Slaughter (135)* – Barbed Whips and Sacrificial Knives 10 x Sisters of Slaughter (135)* – Barbed Whips and Sacrificial Knives 10 x Blood Sisters (280)*** – Reinforced x 1 10 x Blood Sisters (280)*** – Reinforced x 1 Units 5 x Khinerai Heartrenders (95)* 5 x Khinerai Heartrenders (95)* Endless Spells & Invocations Heart of Fury (45) Core Battalions *Battle Regiment **Command Entourage – Magnificent ***Expert Conquerors Additional Enhancements Prayer Total: 1995 / 2000 Reinforced Units: 4 / 4 Allies: 0 / 400 Wounds: 130 Drops: 6
Brett: Daughters of Khaine (DoK) small heroes list this time, a solid alternative to Morathi focused on the big block of Witch Aelves. (Going to go with the Honest Wargammer here and call this a Death Ball not the more common, 40k derived Death Star). In a spell heavy meta this army doesn’t have any Wizards but there are 2 priests (they can unbind endless spells of course). Both have Curse (1MW on a hit roll of 6, Answer Value (AV) 4), and otherwise provide reroll on the ward roll (Blessing of Khaine) or inflicts MW on a 5+ after a model dies (Martyrs Sacrifice). They can also summon the Heart of Fury which usually reduces multi damage weapons by 1 damage but on a 6 does that and adds an attack to units within 12″.
The combination of 3 Battleline units does open a battle tactic not often seen right now (Clash of Arms) Situationally they can use Witchbrew on a unit to advance the Blood Rites Table (Hagg Nar already advances them one, giving +1 to charge in the first round). The Hag Queen on Cauldron buffs the prayer rolls of the other Hag Queen and improves the saves by 1 for units within range on a degrading profile. The High Gladiatrix can grants + 1 to wound and -1 rend to both types of battleline unit and is a solid combat unit, as is the Melusai although her best ability is to grant run and charge to a unit.
Each game will be different but the key play her is to get the Witch Aelves into combat as quickly as possible through a combination of additional movement and run and charge with the High Gladiatrix and The Hag Queen on Blood Cauldron close. 90 attacks, hitting on 3s and wounding on 2s, -1 rend averaging 50 hits before saves, with Curse they’d average 15 MWs on top. Nice.
The list has a lot of flexibility through commiting the heroes (other than the Melusai) to combat. Sisters of Slaughter to hold objectives and for board control and Blood Sisters for even more of both (they are Expert Conquerors and count as 3 on objectives). Death Ball with wings?.The Heartrenders are on hand for deep strike, battle tactics and objective games. They will use their fire and fade ability at least once. Not much to say about his opponents, 2 x Nighthaunt, mostly MSU, 2 x Gitz lists (Shootas and a Troggoth list) and Seraphon skinks list. Everything is dying too fast to heal, and while the priests can be blocked by the Seraphon priests it’s not as certain as their magic counters.
Lots of units and hard to keep track of but that means lots of tools and a very difficult list to counter, unless you can stand back and shoot. Scores weren’t amazing through the weekend (until the last round) but very solid.
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Army Faction: Sons of Behemat – Army Type: Breaker Tribe – Grand Strategy: Make the land tremble! – Triumph: Inspired Leaders Gatebreaker (525)* – General – Command Traits: Louder than Word – Artefacts of Power: Enchanted Portcullis Gatebreaker (525)* – Artefacts of Power: Arcane Tome – Spells: Flaming Weapon Gatebreaker (525)* Battleline Mancrusher Gargant (170)** Mancrusher Gargant (170)** Endless Spells & Invocations 1 x Horrorghast (40) Core Battalions *Bosses of the Stomp – Magnificent **Bounty Hunters Total Points: 1955/2000
Brett: Rerolling 1s own Bear with his current Sons list, he covered this in more detail with in a session with AoS Coach recently, check the video out if you want to know more. 3 Gatebreakers with Arcane Tome for a little magic and 2 Mancrushers rather than 3 to fit an endless spell. No Fierce Loathing shown in the list (Idiots with Flags is popular to counter elite units that issue their own commands). The general has Louder than Word for an additional 2 flail attacks (because 10 is never enough – it’s a good counter to the degrading profile) and Enchanted Portcullis for a 6+ ward.
Flaming Weapon is a nice touch (4 damage on the Flail) but Horrorghast is more interesting. Gate Breakers have a natural -1 to bravery for units nearby and their prodigious output almost always guarantees a battleshock roll. Focing and extra D3 to flee particulary against Multiple Small Unit (MSU) or elite armies (Stormcast/Ironjawz) is really strong. Another nice touch is Mancrushers in Bounty Hunters, doubling the damage of their main weapon. It’s a list with some ranged but basically mostly strong melee attacks and abilities that wants to get close early for impact hits, lots of damage and hopefully some battleshock fails. 5/0 with a decent differential through out, really good result for Sons who are often a bit harder to score Battle Tactics with (no GV and very few units).
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Army Faction: Disciples of Tzeentch – Army Subfaction: Hosts Arcanum – Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs – Triumphs: Inspired Leader1 x Kairos Fateweaver (435)* – Spells: Unchecked Mutation 1 x Magister on Disc of Tzeentch (145)* – Spells: Bolt of Tzeentch – Bonding: Krondspine Incarnate of Ghur 1 x Tzaangor Shaman (135)* – General – Artefacts: The Fanged Circlet – Spells: Arcane Suggestion Battleline10 x Kairic Acolytes (120)* – Kairic Adept – Cursed Blade and Arcanite Shield – Scroll of Dark Arts – Vulcharc – 3 x Cursed Glaive 10 x Kairic Acolytes (120)* – Kairic Adept – Cursed Blade and Arcanite Shield – Scroll of Dark Arts – Vulcharc – 3 x Cursed Glaive 3 x Screamers of Tzeentch (100)* Behemoth1 x Krondspine Incarnate of Ghur (400)*Endless Spell1 x Umbral Spell portal (70) 1 x Purple Sun of Shyish (70) 1 x Chronomantic Cogs (40) Other6 x Tzaangor Enlightened on Discs of Tzeentch (360)* Core Battalions*Battle Regiment TOTAL POINTS: (1995/2000)
Brett: Old book Tzeetch with a last podium before the new book hits? Probably not, there will be a couple of weeks before the new book hits the shelves and a little while longer until the FAQ, Tzeetch remains pretty strong. Appropriately for a Tzeetch list this leans heavily on spell casting, not just their own but endless spells and aggro endless spells (Incarnate) as well. Interesting take with so many mortals given the composition of the new battlebox. All of the heroes are wizards, 5 casts in total. Kairos has some interesting warscroll abilities. Beyond replacing a D6 once a battle and a nasty spell that can do 6 MW (top bracket) he can set the lowest D6 to match the highest every time he casts.
The chosen spells are damage spells except Arcane Suggestion, either D3 + D3 if any models are slain (Unchecked Mutation), D6 MW (Bolt of Tzeetch). Arcane Suggestion is more fun with 3 possible outcomes (D3 MW, -1 to hit and wound rolls or -1 to save rolls, you pick). While the wizards are within 18″ of Kairos he knows there spells as well. With the Spell Portal that means he can drop a Bolt of Tzeetch into your back field. Kairos is also the likely choice to cast Purple Sun and with Cogs dropped before hand they probably won’t miss many (any) of their spells. With Bolt of Tzeetch, Kairos can guarantee 6 MW if it’s important – that’s enough to take out most foot heroes. And eat an endless spell per turn (bye Purple Sun)
There is a lot to keep track of with Tzeetch armies including Destiny Dice (affect rolls with dice that are rolled at the start of a game), Faith points (summoning currency) and Agenda’s. What’s important to remember is that they can change their dice and summon additional forces pretty easily. Even the troops are complicated. Kairic Acolytes are all casters, they only know one spell but it grants -1 rend to their ranged attack. They cause mortal wounds to Wizards near them regardless of the outcome of the spell and have a 6+ ward. Screamers move 16″ and can travel over opponents trailing MW (on a 5+) in their wake. The Tzaangor Enlightened are very fast (16″ move) with a lot of attacks they are capable of dealing reasonable damage.
They are also quite likely to achieve an agenda or two on the way and improve their stats. The incarnate is a worthwhile inclusion, giving a substantial boost to combat capability. However it costs as much as a 2nd Lord of Change or a block of Pink and a block of Blue horrors. Which is better depends on your play style. Matt faced some very tough lists and did well not to drop more games. He lost to a Seraphon list with 2 reinforced salamander packs, that’s a lot of damage that this list doesn’t have an easy answer to. It will be interesting to see where Tzeetch goes with the new book.
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Army Faction: Skaven – Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs – Triumphs: Inspired Leader 1 x Master Moulder (90)* – General – Command Traits: Cunning Mutator – Warpstone-tipped Lash – Artefacts: Foulhide 1 x Warlock Engineer (105)* – Spells: More-more-more Warp Power! 1 x Warlock Engineer (105)* – Artefacts: Esoteric Warp Resonator – Spells: More-more-more Warp Power! Battleline 6 x Stormfiends (640)** – 2 x Windlaunchers and Clubbing Blows – 2 x Ratling Cannons and Clubbing Blows – 2 x Doomflayer Gauntlets and Warpstone-laced Armour 5 x Skryre Acolytes (75)* 6 x Giant Rats (60)* Artillery 1 x Warp Lightning Cannon (150) 1 x Warp Lightning Cannon (150) 1 x Warp Lightning Cannon (150) Other 2 x Rat Swarms (55) 2 x Rat Swarms (55) 2 x Rat Swarms (55) 2 x Rat Swarms (55) 1 x Warp-Grinder (65) 2 x Rat Swarms (55)* 2 x Rat Swarms (55)** 2 x Rat Swarms (55)** Core Battalions *Warlord **Bounty Hunters ***Expert Conquerors TOTAL POINTS: (1975/2000)
Brett: A very different take on Skaven that performed pretty well throughout the event. There are no Deceiver’s or Thanquol or even clanrats just a lot of cannons and rats. One of the lower scores in the top 10 despite only dropping one battle tactic in the competition and taking all 5 Grand Strategies. Only defeated in the 2nd round, fittingly by 2nd in the event, the list struggles to control objectives or stop their opponent from scoring. In this tournament that was the difference between 4th and 6th.
With a Master Moulder (with a 3+ ward thanks to Cunning Mutator) to return Giant Rat and Rat Swarms (on a 3+) and the Warlock Engineers to buff the cannons. The Warlocks have More More More Warp Power to give +1 to hit and wound rolls. Mostly useful on the Stormfiends (they can take the D3 damage that occurs next turn). There’s not much more to it, rat swarms for screening the cannon, cannon’s to spew MW whenever necessary. One benefit of a the list is there is nothing for Death Ball to go into other than Stormfiends. Doing that will leave you open to the Cannon’s MWs though.
Good run through the event taking down Archaeon in one round bout as noted above not the highest scoring army.
This is the Top Three AoS Lists for the G&T GT2 that took place in England, UK on 6th and 7th August It involved 14 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: Nighthaunt – Procession: Scarlet Doom – Mortal Realm: Ghur – Grand Strategy: Show of Dominance – Triumphs: Bloodthirsty
Leaders Guardian of Souls (150)* – General – Command Trait: Master of Magic – Lore of the Underworlds: Shademist Krulghast Cruciator (150)* Krulghast Cruciator (150)** Spirit Torment (115)* – Artefact: Arcane Tome (Universal Artefact) – Lore of the Underworlds: Seal of Shyish
Battleline 30 x Bladegheist Revenants (525)*** – Reinforced x 2 20 x Bladegheist Revenants (350)*** – Reinforced x 1 3 x Spirit Hosts (125)* 3 x Spirit Hosts (125)*
Units 8 x Myrmourn Banshees (210)** – Reinforced x 1 2 x Chainghasts (95)**
Brett: Are things beginning to settle following the GHB Season 1 introduction? At least in the smaller events the same sorts of armies seem to be placing consistently and a few key elements standout. Of course this is anecdotal and I haven’t done the statisical analysis. What I do know is that if you start with Krulghast, Spirit Torment, Bladegheist and Scarlet Doom and you have the core of a good army with decent potential. Dennis dialled that up a bit giving himself 2 mini castles or tactical groupings to pursue points with.
Most Scarlet Doom lists have a sincle Krulghast backed by a collection of Spirit Torments and Guardian of Souls for the heals, to return models and debuff spells. That tends to mean you need to play with a castle around a fully buffed hammer unit. Dennis dialled back the Spirit Torments to take 2 Krulghast for that sweet damage reduction. WIth 2 units of Spirit Hosts to provide bodyguard or wound offset you can run the 30 model and 20 model Bladegheist as independant action units. You’d have to choose which healing character went with each or try to keep them close together to maintain ranges/auras. My preference is propoably the Spirit Torment with the Chaingasts on the 20 model unit and Guardian with the 30. That way the Chaingasts additional attack for units within 12″ offsets the fewer models.
It’s also easier to keep the smaller unit wholly within 12″ for the buff. This way the 20 model unit has 80 attacks on the Charge to the larger units 90. I would probably have split the Myrmourn as well given the 2 Battle Regiments on top of Bounty Hunters (this is a 4 drop list). They need to be wholly within 12″ to eat a spell so maybe only one unit will have their “favours”. Shademist and Seal of Shyish are the usual choices (for now) and including the Chainghasts (or extra Banshees) precludes the Purple Sun. I wonder if Dennis is like me and hasn’t secured a model yet? Top result with a flexible army that deserved to win. He’s beaten a selection, including 2nd and 3rd, of the top factions at the moment on his way to the win.
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Allegiance: Sylvaneth – Glade: Heartwood – Season: The Reaping – Mortal Realm: Ghyran – Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs – Triumphs: Inspired
Leaders Warsong Revenant (305)* – General – Command Trait: Master of Magic – Lore of the Deepwood: Treesong Arch-Revenant (120)* – Artefact: Arcane Tome (Universal Artefact) – Lore of the Deepwood: Verdurous Harmony Battlemage (100)* – Mortal Realm: Ghur – Allies
Battleline 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)* 5 x Tree-Revenants (110)*
Brett: Sylvaneth are an interesting army, they have an awesome God model that is a bit prone to dying and their best offensive unit is best used defensively (Kurnoth). But this army is a bit more aggressive than that by adding +2 to charges, handy if a unit is going to teleport away (or walk the rootbourne paths or something). Choosing big blocks of Kurnoth limits some of your options because they are so expensive but they are a very effective unit. You know your opponent is going to try to remove those Greatbows because their range and hardiness can control the board.
Bounty Hunters don’t receive ++1 damage into the Kurnoth either (5 wounds) but they are able to be healed/have a model returned by the Seekers. Tree Revenants do what they always do, provide mobile threat with their ability to quickly grab an untended objective and they are ok in combat, certainly against other battleline units. Seekers are an interesting unit that despite being life given heals if it kills something – normally that is left to the death or chaos “healers”. The Battlemage, Arcane Tome and Warsong add up to 4 casts/unbinds. Listed with only the single spell the Warsong can take 2 and has Master of Magic for a reroll once per turn. The Arch-Revenents spell creates an interesting circle with the Tree-Revenants and Seekers (particularly the Seekers).
Verdurous Harmony is particularly good for healing revenants (returns D3 models instead of 1). So the Seekers maintain say the Kurnoth Greatbows and the Arch Revenant keeps the Seekers topped up so the Seekers can attack and hopefully heal themselves. The Arch Revenant isn’t finished there simultaneously buffing itself and giving Kurnoth Hunters +1 to wound, wounding on 2s in other words. The Warsong Revenant is another strong caster but also a fighter if need be. She has a 4+ ward and +1 to cast near activated terrain or Wyldwoods. Heartwood allows you to designate 3 enemy units at the start of the match and receive +1 to hit rolls against them. The army performed very well overall losing only to Dennis. Did the 2 units of Bladegheist spread the forces of the woods?
Brett: Since the release of their battletome in AoS 2.0 Tzeetch has risen and fallen in both popularity and power but mostly floated near the top. This is an interesting army because it is a pure Tzeetch list without horrors. The ubiquitous Purple Sun and almost as popular Chronomatic Cogs which makes sense in a casting army. As a pure Tzeetch army, it’s a very elite army with only 19 models. One reason there are no horrors is Krondspine, helping an army that otherwise has limited combat.
The army is in Hosts Arcanum granting a auto unbind/dispell in the 1st, 3rd and 5th rounds. As a 2nd Ed book there are mandatory traits and artefacts. Since these give you a redeploy for up to 3 units and 6 Screamers once per battle there isn’t a lot to complain about. Otherwise we have Fateweaver with his 3 spells, ability to change dice rolls for casts, auto dispel an endless spell every round. Oracle of Eternity isn’t as powerful as it is when he is paired with Archeon and can guarantee a death for something important. The Changecaster and Curseling bring more spells and unbind shenanigans including stealing a spell off their opponents warscroll. You only get Faith Points (the summoning currency for Tzeetch) if you successfully cast a spell and it isn’t unbound. So expect 6 casts per round from them.
Screamers and Skyfires are ok but they don’t have a lot of attacks, this is an army that is mostly going to wait for you to come to it, use spells to weaken you (and bows) before engaging. The Skyfires do D3 damage on a hit with their bows, but it’s only 3 shots each time. Both do mortal wounds for 6s. Having Krondspine to either attract fire or just block something in conjunction with a casting castle. So long as they can stay back and have a chance for a few Tzeetch’s Firestorms or more summoning they are going to be difficult to handle.
Looking at the path through the event it was the alpha striking armies (Nighthaunt and Ironjawz) that caused issues. Nighthaunt in particular were in a good place to counter Tzeetch, their large blocks can easily absorb the hits from spells and heal back the lost units.
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Allegiance: Ironjawz – Warclan: Ironsunz – Mortal Realm: Ghur – Grand Strategy: No Place for the Weak – Triumphs: Inspired
Leaders Kragnos, The End of Empires (720) Big Drogg Fort-Kicka (525) – Allies Chad Longjohnson (480) Megaboss on Maw-Krusha – General – Boss Choppa and Rip-tooth fist – Command Trait: Hulking Brute – Artefact: Destroyer – Mount Trait: Mean ‘Un
Brett: An Ironjawz list with a view to the future? Lower drops by choosing bigger models maybe? Either way this is an interesting idea which probably didn’t quite work out but worth a go, Kragnos, Mega Gargant and a Mawcrusha. 3 MSU Ardboy units at the rear. The Mega doesn’t benefit from Mighty Destroyers but they do receive Kragnos’s buff to charge range,
Hold the back line and slap anything that looks tasty, strong or important. The Mega Boss has all of the important things to give him a 36″ move and still hit unreasonably hard. I’d tend to use the Gargant/Kragnos to clear screens exposing the underbelly to the Mawcrusher. It looks like the army struggled into summoning armies mostly. That makes sense because as Ironjawz you lose steam after Turn 2 maybe 3 just when Tzeetch and Beasts start bring extra friends. Still a good performance and really awesome to see people testing the meta.
