This is the Top Three AoS Lists for the Gourds of War FT that took place in Texas, USA on 12th and 13th November. It involved 18 players vying to be crowned champion in a 5 game tournament.
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The Top Three AoS Lists
Army Faction: Lumineth Realm-lords
– Subfaction: Zaitrec
– Grand Strategy: Defend What’s Ours
LEADERS
Sevireth (320)
Scinari Cathallar (110)**
– General
– Command Traits: Loremaster
– Artefacts of Power: Silver Wand
– Spells: Protection of Hysh, Solar Flare, Total Eclipse
The Light of Eltharion (240)**
Vanari Lord Regent (170)**
– Spells: Protection of Hysh
BATTLELINE
Vanari Auralan Wardens (150)**
– High Warden
– Spells: Overwhelming Heat
Vanari Auralan Wardens (150)**
– High Warden
– Spells: Solar Flare
Vanari Auralan Sentinels (450)**
– High Sentinel
– Spells: Total Eclipse
OTHER
Vanari Bladelords (130)*
– Bladelord Seneschal
Vanari Dawnriders (140)*
– Steedmaster
– Standard Bearer
– Spells: Speed of Hysh
Vanari Dawnriders (140)*
– Steedmaster
– Standard Bearer
– Spells: Speed of Hysh
TERRAIN
1 x Shrine Luminor (0)
CORE BATTALIONS
*Bounty Hunters
**Battle Regiment
Ed: Dustin’s List seems simple at first glance, but it is a deceptively hard list to run. All his units have the potential to be stars depending on match ups and battle plans, but they are fragile. You need to be thinking at least a turn ahead to ensure your key pieces are in the right place ahead of time. It is a common mantra that “Games are won in the movement phase”, and I feel like Dustin’s list takes this to heart with his highly manoeuvrable choice of units. Don’t leave an objective open around Dustin!
The Zaitrec subfaction gives all wizards a +1 to casting, unbinding and dispelling rolls. That added reliability is key for getting off important spells, particularly Power of Hysh which represents a huge increase in damage and Protection of Hysh which keeps your army alive.
After so long on the bench, it’s nice to see Eltharion included in a list that’s performing well. As a mid-level threat with a small presence on the table he is often able to fly under the radar until he connects with something important. He is much more reliable since the new battletome, and has been referred to as a Diet-Gotrek – although mortal wounds will bring him down very quickly.
To have achieved 5 wins with this list, Dustin must have played wonderfully. It is an army with a high skill ceiling and an extremely techy set of core mechanics. It’s not your typical netlist army that can be copied by a novice and still do fairly well. But if you’re looking to improve your skills, playing a list like this is a good challenge to test your mastery of strategic buff placement, unit positioning and long term thinking.
Allegiance: Soulblight Gravelords
– Lineage: Kastelai Dynasty
– Mortal Realm: Shyish
– Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs
– Triumphs: Bloodthirsty
Leaders
Nagash, Supreme Lord of the Undead (955)**
Wight King on Skeletal Steed (110)**
– General
– Command Trait: Rousing Commander
– Artefact: Fragment of the Keep
Battleline
5 x Blood Knights (195)*
5 x Blood Knights (195)*
5 x Blood Knights (195)*
10 x Deathrattle Skeletons (80)**
10 x Deathrattle Skeletons (80)**
Endless Spells & Invocations
Umbral Spellportal (80)
Purple Sun of Shyish (90)
Core Battalions
*Bounty Hunters
**Battle Regiment
Total: 1980 / 2000
Reinforced Units: 0 / 4
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 88
Drops: 4
Edited: Sorry I somehow forgot (it’s wishful thinking…) that Blood Knights aren’t summonable! That’s what you get for re-reading Nagash’s scroll after a 1-dayer when your brain is mush. Post is now accurate!
Danny: It’s Nagash! Again! What is happening??
Well, there’s a fairly standard core at play here, with 3x msu Blood Knights in Kastelai providing a roaming set of both tanky AND killy – especially in bounty hunters – fast movers. Aaron will have had the option of layering them up or splitting them off for board control, and either way the Wight King on Steed is a relatively budget general acting as a ‘Rousing Commander’ caddy – which allows the best of the Kastelai ‘kill a unit and gain a buff based on its type’ effects to pop off once per battle ‘for free’, as it were. And the battleline is rounded out by the 2x msu Deathrattle are cost-efficient grave-site lurkers.
So in this context, Nagash seems to really be offering the magical dominance. He can’t buff Blood Knights in the same way Mannfred/Coven Throne etc can, but with Spellportal (and no Cogs – living dangerously!) he can stay at a safe range and shut down a lot of the usual magic threats that would ordinarily threaten the Blood Knights. Soulblight have some excellent debuffs too.
So overall, your opponent has a tough choice. Try and take down Nagash – not easy unless you have excellent ranged firepower – or focus down the Blood Knights and leave the magic powerhouse at liberty. Clearly making his opponent make tough choices paid off, with a brutal anti-aelf campaign, losing only to Zaitrec LRL who could probably stand up to the magic and shut down most of Nagash’s utility. Big congrats to Aaron for the 4-1 with Nagash!
Army Faction: Blades of Khorne
– Subfaction: Reapers of Vengeance
– Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs
– Triumph: Bloodthirsty
LEADERS
Bloodthirster of Insensate Rage (280)
– Artefacts of Power: Skullshard Mantle
Bloodthirster of Unfettered Fury (295)
Skarbrand (380)*
Bloodthirster of Insensate Rage (280)**
– Artefacts of Power: Ar’gath, the King of Blades
Bloodsecrator (125)**
– General
– Command Traits: Mage Eater
Slaughterpriest (100)**
– Bloodbathed Axe
– Prayers: Resanguination
BATTLELINE
Bloodletters (110)*
– Bloodreaper
– Gore-drenched Icon Bearer
– Hornblower
Flesh Hounds (105)*
– Gore Hound
– Burning Roar
Bloodletters (110)*
– Bloodreaper
– Hornblower
– Bloodsoaked Banner Bearer
OTHER
Karanak (150)*
ENDLESS SPELLS & INVOCATIONS
1 x Hexgorger Skulls (50)
TERRAIN
1 x Skull Altar (0)
CORE BATTALIONS
*Battle Regiment
**Command Entourage – Magnificent
TOTAL POINTS: 1985/2000
Peter: Our new colleague, Alice, needs no introduction! You may know her as Ragnarok Angel, the lead AoS writer for Goonhammer. Alice has kindly offered her skills and expertise to help us with top three commentary.
Alice: Blades of Khorne is a real underdog that is often underestimated when faced (Source: Me being the receiving end of it not too long ago). “It’s a bad book, the changes to priest nerfed them!” you say and you aren’t wrong, but piloted by a skilled player and a far too eager opponent, Khorne can put out a lot of damage.
Reapers of Vengeance is still considered the best subfaction, Devour the Craven causes D3 extra models to run on a failed battleshock which is fine but the real meat is the Leave None Alive command ability, allowing a Daemon model to fight a second time. When you look at the quadruple Bloodthirsters, you start to see the profit here.
On top of this, the change to Blood Tithes so they no longer burn all their points at once has had a bigger impact on the faction than is generally understood. For 4 Blood Tithe points, a unit can fight at the beginning of the Hero phase, including your opponent’s, before your opponent has had a chance to set up their buffs. That means a Bloodthirster fighting potentially three times in a single turn of gameplay, assuming something even survives that many hits.
The Bloodthirsters are the showstoppers, but rounding off the list is some decent anti-magic. The forced artefact is a 2+ shrug for spells, which while not ideal is still really good at forcing an enemy wizard to choose different targets. The mandatory Mage Eater is much better, allowing the General, Karnak and Flesh Hounds to unbind spells and even do Mortal Wounds with the General and Karnak. Hexgorger Skulls force -2 to casts, and can potentially cause more mortal wounds. It won’t stop an overwhelming number of spells, which explains the one loss against Lumineth, but it’ll shut down armies with only a handful of crucial spells.
When brought together it creates a list that is just incredibly difficult to engage in close combat. If you fight a Bloodthirster you better go first and you better win because if it hits you on the kick back it’ll kill most things. A blunt instrument, but a reliable one, as Khorne would wish.
Allegiance: Flesh-eater Courts
– Grand Court: Blisterskin
– Mortal Realm: Ghur
– Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs
– Triumphs:
Leaders
Abhorrant Archregent (245)**
– Artefact: The Dermal Robe
– Lore of Madness: Blood Feast
Abhorrant Ghoul King (165)**
– Lore of Madness: Miasmal Shroud
Abhorrant Ghoul King on Royal Terrorgheist (445)*
– General
– Command Trait: Hellish Orator
– Artefact: Eye of Hysh
– Mount Trait: Gruesome Bite
– Lore of Madness: Spectral Host
Abhorrant Ghoul King on Royal Zombie Dragon (430)**
– Lore of Madness: Monstrous Vigour
Battleline
9 x Crypt Flayers (540)*
– Reinforced x 2
10 x Crypt Ghouls (85)*
10 x Crypt Ghouls (85)*
Core Battalions
*Battle Regiment
**Command Entourage – Magnificent
Additional Enhancements
Artefact
Total: 1995 / 2000
Reinforced Units: 2 / 4
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 97
Drops: 4
Peter: Another new writer, and perhaps a familiar name to those on the Canadian tournament circuit. Jake Seguin is currently ranked 20th in Canada.
Jake: Don’t call it a renaissance, but things have been looking up of late for our favourite Bretonnian roleplayers. Harnessing both the power of the Incarnate and the frightening damage and recursion of max-size Knight units, a few ghoulish generals have successfully piloted an off-meta army to notable tournament success. Eddy Andrews ascends to abhorrent greatness with his take on a Blisterskin list that foregoes the Incarnate in favour of expanding his royal family with the oft-overlooked King on Zombie Dragon.
You’ll find much of the familiar FEC architecture here: an Archregent, the King on Terrorgheist, and MSU ghouls to fill the battleline slots. What the Zombie Dragon lacks in the spiky mortal wound output of his batty brother, he makes up for in force multiplication. His signature spell (at only a CV of 6) provides a 16” wound reroll bubble for friendly FEC units, juicing the double-fighting Flayers to incredible heights of carnage and closing his own average damage gap significantly with the Terrorgheist.
With 36 wounds, a natural 6+ ward, and conditional access to a 5+ ward from the Terrogheist, the Flayers are sporting some real beef to complement their reach and offence. As FEC can now get an additional Muster from any hero courtesy of White Dwarf, any failed attempt to remove this unit can become a game-losing swing. It may fall short of turning water into wine, but a single hero phase can certainly turn one remaining Flayer into nine. Presenting a tough force allocation dilemma and providing the frail FEC army with an actual anvil, 9 Flayers can threaten to take over any matchup where there isn’t a strong Bounty Hunters threat opposite them.
The four Kings will cast their respective buff spells, supercharge something with up to +4 attacks and run+charge, and slam into the enemy until someone is tabled. Leveraging the ability to summon up to four units from any board edge, the list is also deceptively wide and can play a more cagey objective game if the situation calls for it. While flesh-eating enthusiasts will continue to debate the merits of Blisterskin over Feast Day/Crusading Army until the next End Times, Eddy decided that the army-wide +2 movement and teleport utility was worth giving up his first artefact slot. Instead, he took a Command Entourage for the dermal robe, giving his Archregent that extremely important casting buff in a list where he couldn’t fit Cogs.
Excellent work by Eddy, who only dropped his last two games to the eventual 1st and 3rd-place finishers.