Category Archives: Zaitrec

Top Three AoS Lists for Gourds of War GT

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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.

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: 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.

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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!

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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.

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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.

Final Tournament Placings

Top Three AoS Lists for the Shropshire Slaughter: Telford Onslaught AoS GT

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This is the Top Three AoS Lists for the Shropshire Slaughter: Telford Onslaught AoS GT that took place in England, UK on 30th and 31st July. 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: Beasts of Chaos
Greatfray: Allherd
– Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs
– Triumphs: Inspired

Leaders
Dragon Ogor Shaggoth (155)*
General
– Command Trait: Dominator
– Artefact: Blade of the Desecrator
– Lore of Dark Storms: Sundering Blades
Great Bray-Shaman (100)**
Lore of the Twisted Wilds: Tendrils of Atrophy
Be’Lakor, the Dark Master (360)***
Allies

Battleline
6 x Dragon Ogors (250)*
6x Paired Ancient Weapons
– Reinforced x 1
10 x Ungors (65)*
Mauls & Half-Shields
10 x Ungors (65)*
Mauls & Half-Shields

Units
1 x Cockatrice (95)*
1 x Cockatrice (95)*
1 x Cockatrice (95)**
1 x Cockatrice (95)**
1 x Cockatrice (95)**
1 x Cockatrice (95)**
1 x Cockatrice (95)**
1 x Cockatrice (95)***
1 x Cockatrice (95)***
1 x Cockatrice (95)***

Endless Spells & Invocations
Geminids of Uhl-Gysh (40)

Core Battalions
*Battle Regiment
**Battle Regiment
***Battle Regiment

Total: 1985 / 2000
Reinforced Units: 1 / 4
Allies: 360 / 400
Wounds: 159
Drops: 3

Brett: Beast of Chaos fresh (?) from their Tome Celestial update in the new infantry meta, at least according to GW, with a full monster list. Imagine being at the table, first round, and your opponent starts unpacking this. Finally a chance for Yndrasta to shine. If you are SCE anyway. It happened to Dan in the last round.

With the Tome Celestial changes the Herdstone now provides a board wide -1 rend in turns 1 and 2 and then -2 from turn 3. The Cockatrice plays into this ability, it’s main attack has no rend but on the charge increases from 4 to 8 attacks. With 12″ move and fly they are hard to screen or stop from charging. As monsters themselves they aren’t subject to monstrous rampages (other than Titanic struggle) and aren’t Galletian Veterans. They also get access to Primal Roar – an extra summoning point and possibly 3. Potentially they could summon a Chimera a turn. Nice. Rally can return models on a 4+ (not 6+) within 12″ of the stone as well.

That lets you game the Bravery characteristic as well, you can render them virtually immune to battleshock and pull from the front removing them from combat. Rally them at the start of your turn and you have a very short charge to get them back into combat. The Dragon Ogors re-roll hit rolls of 1 within 12″ of the General as well. They are a little short on spell casting, Belakor doubles the number of spells/cast himself. There are few buffs to casting here so Geminids (casting on a 6) is a good choice putting out MW and stopping commands. Sundering Blades on the Shaggoth suggests he was kept forward most of the time (an additional Rend within 18″). Tendrils of Atrophy is more situational, the Bray-Shaman doesn’t want to get too close.

Lots of monsters to push up the board and, without Hunters in the Heartland available anymore, able to switch off commands at will. That makes taking damage both more likely and more risky. On top of that12″ movement with -1 Rend board wide, which near the Shaggoth was -2 and then -3, makes this very hard to contain. Structuring the army to fit into Battle Regiment battalion. A good example of a skew list taking advantage of the rules, well done on getting Beasts all the way to No 1.

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Allegiance: Lumineth Realm-lords
Great Nation: Zaitrec
– Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs
– Triumphs: Indomitable

Leaders
Sevireth, Lord of the Seventh Wind (345)*
Hurakan Spirit of the Wind (265)*
Scinari Loreseeker (170)*
General
– Command Trait: Fast Learner
– Artefact: Gift of Celennar
– Extra Spell: Total Eclipse
– Lore of Hysh: Lambent Light

Battleline
20 x Vanari Auralan Wardens (290)*
Lore of Hysh: Protection of Hysh
– Reinforced x 1
10 x Vanari Auralan Wardens (145)*
Lore of Hysh: Lambent Light
10 x Vanari Auralan Wardens (145)*
Lore of Hysh: Lambent Light
30 x Vanari Auralan Sentinels (510)*
Lore of Hysh: Speed of Hysh
– Reinforced x 2

Endless Spells & Invocations
Chronomantic Cogs (40)
Emerald Lifeswarm (60)

Core Battalions
*Battle Regiment

Total: 1970 / 2000
Reinforced Units: 3 / 4
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 96
Drops: 1

Brett: Big block of Sentinels, Wardens everywhere, Sevireth, Loreseeker and a Hurakan Spirit of the Wind. All of the favourites with Chronomatic Cogs and a Lifeswarm. The Lifeswarm making it much harder to remove those Sentinels.

I think most people know how this list works; Cogs is unusual but overall variations of this list have been around for a while. Battle regiment to try and go first (giving up the double), make sure you get Cogs out (for rerolls), apply Power of Hysh on the Sentinels and then use Lofted shot to fire 30″ ignoring terrain and line of sight. The plan is to get 5+’s for mortal wounds (around 12 per volley). Power of Hysh can be cast multiple times, here both the Sentinels and 20 man Wardens will probably cast it most turns. The two smaller Warden teams are screens that can also push out a bit to apply Lambent Light. That gives the Sentinels +1 to hit against one unit.

The Loreseeker, 20 man Warden and Sentinals are all hammers in this set up and very dangerous. Given his mobility the Loreseeker is a great choice for Lambent Light as well. The Sentinals extra spell is Speed of Hysh to double their movement if they are threatened or about to be out of range. It’s an effective list and played well into most of the armies until he met Dan. Dan’s army, they are team mates, is a counter to shooting lists. The Cockatrice are individual units so the wounds don’t carry across but you need the full 30 Sentinels to be sure of killing one with MW.

Since they fly it’s very hard to stop them reaching the Sentinels and from round 3 onwards they instakill Sentinels (rend -2 into a 5+ save). The Grand Strategy is an interesting choice, Lumineth aren’t the most interactive army and yet his GS requires him to have 2 units in the enemies territory. That said both Loremaster and Sevireth can easily accomplish that. With infantry and hordes more common will we see a Lumineth return?

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Allegiance: Maggotkin of Nurgle
– Subfaction: Drowned Men
– Mortal Realm: Ghur
– Grand Strategy: No Place for the Weak
– Triumphs: Bloodthirsty

Leaders
Lord of Afflictions (210)***
General
– Command Trait: Overpowering Stench
– Artefact: The Splithorn Helm
Harbinger of Decay (140)*
Artefact: Arcane Tome (Universal Artefact)
– Lore of Malignance: Gift of Disease
Festus the Leechlord (150)*
Lore of Malignance: Gift of Disease
Orghotts Daemonspew (300)*

Battleline
5 x Putrid Blightkings (250)****
5 x Putrid Blightkings (250)****
2 x Pusgoyle Blightlords (220)**
2 x Pusgoyle Blightlords (220)**

Units
1 x Beasts of Nurgle (110)***
1 x Beasts of Nurgle (110)***

Endless Spells & Invocations
Geminids of Uhl-Gysh (40)

Core Battalions
*Command Entourage – Magnificent
**Bounty Hunters
***Vanguard
****Expert Conquerors

Additional Enhancements
Artefact

Total: 2000 / 2000
Reinforced Units: 0 / 4
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 123
Drops: 10

Brett: Interesting variation on the popular Blightking/Blightlord armies we’ve started to see a fair bit in Season 1. More heroes and a mix of castle and some mobility through the Blightlords and Lord of Affliction. Also interesting to see a return to the high number of drops as if they didn’t care about turn order.

Aaron has chosen to take limited spell casting but included Geminids for that MW and command prevention utility. The spells double down on the rolling castle by increasing how many disease points are handed out. The Lord of Afflictions will provide his normal redeploy/teleport like abilities to the Blightlord allowing them to fly with him. That maximises their usefulness in Bounty Hunters. Festus provides heals, mostly to the Blightkings. Orghotts and the Beasts are a threat in themselves able to control an area and deny it due to their attacks and disease production. The Harbinger is a very interesting inclusion, his two warscroll abilities farm CP and deny commands.

Interesting approach, this is still a list that is going to try to outlast you but includes a reasonable mobile punch. With all of the big boys on the table they are going to take some time to kill and apply disease points all of the time making them a tough opponent.

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Allegiance: Big Waaagh!
Grand Strategy: Tame the Land
– Triumphs: Inspired

Leaders
Megaboss on Maw-Krusha (480)
General
– Boss Choppa and Rip-tooth fist
– Command Trait: Master of Magic
– Artefact: Arcane Tome (Universal Artefact)
– Mount Trait: Mean ‘Un
– Lore of the Weird: Da Great Big Green Hand of Gork
Breaka-Boss on Mirebrute Troggoth (180)
Mount Trait: Fast ‘Un
Orruk Warchanter (115)
Warbeat: Get ‘Em Beat
Orruk Warchanter (115)
Warbeat: Fixin’ Beat
Swampcalla Shaman with Pot-grot (105)
Lore of the Swamp: Nasty Hex
Wurrgog Prophet (150)
Artefact: Glowin’ Tattooz
Lore of the Savage Beast: Gorkamorka’s War Cry

Battleline
5 x Orruk Ardboys (85)
5 x Orruk Ardboys (85)
5 x Orruk Ardboys (85)

Units
3 x Orruk Gore-gruntas (170)
Jagged Gore-hackas
3 x Orruk Gore-gruntas (170)
Jagged Gore-hackas
6 x Man-skewer Boltboyz (240)
Reinforced x 1

Core Battalions
*Warlord
**Warlord
***Expert Conquerors
****Bounty Hunters

Additional Enhancements
Artefact
Mount Trait

Total: 1980 / 2000
Reinforced Units: 1 / 4
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 127
Drops: 12

Brett: Alex has been talking about his Big Waagh lists for most of this year taking the best of Ironjawz and increasing their flexibility with Kruleboyz. Double warlord for mount traits. Does it work? Is it fun? I suggest you look up Alex in discord (AosCoach) to find out.

The Mawcrusha build is interesting, instead of the IJ approach of Destroyer and Fast ‘Un, Alex has built the Mawcrusha with Arcane Tome for the teleport. He’s then given his mount Mean ‘Un increase the damage done by stomp. The Break-Boss has Fast ‘Un to get it into the enemy quicker, in the end it’s only moving 10″ though without might destroys. Warchanters to hand out ++1 damage and increase the charge of the Gore-gruntas, the Shaman for poisons on the Boltboyz and finally the Wurrgog for his nasty stare. If you can pull it off it’s a very tough list to counter. Going with Tame the Land is a tough call to, you almost need to table your opponent to control all of the objectives outside your territory. It can also spread your army fairly wide.

Unfortunately I think people are beginning to have a good handle on Boltboyz. They need to move (it can be only 1″) to use Hasty Shot and even then with poison they only average 8MW or a dead Cockatrice. But if it was Stormdrakes or Fulminators then they would either not remove a model or only take one. And die the next turn. With only 24″(or 12″ on hasty) it’s hard to keep them out of trouble with out a lot of screens. I think that’s what the ‘ard boyz are doing, but that’s 345+ points tied up. Still it’s innovative army and has some solid punch. If the Wurggog goes off it will remove something important and provide space for the Breaka Boss/Mawcrusha to wreck face. Which is always fun.

Final Tournament Placings

The full tournament results can be found on tabletop.to

Top Three AoS Lists for Boise Cup O AoS GT

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This is the Top Three AoS Lists for the Boise Cup O AoS GT that took place in Texas, USA on 30th and 31st July. It involved 52 players vying to be crowned champion in a 5 game tournament. A larger event with a good spread of lists in the Top 5. The tournament used the CORRECT scoring system which awards bonuses to the Battleplan scoring including for denying a Battle Tactic. Something for TOs to consider.

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: Soulblight Gravelords
Army Type: Legion of Blood
– Grand Strategy: Lust for Domination
– Triumphs: Bloodthirsty

LEADER
1 x Neferata (365)
Spells: Decrepify
1 x Vampire Lord (140)*
General
– Command Traits: Master of Magic
– Arcane
– Artefacts: Arcane Tome
– Spells: Levitate, Invigorating Aura
1 x Mannfred Von Carstein (380)*
Spells: Fading Vigour

BATTLELINE
5 x Black Knights (100)*
5 x Black Knights (100)*
10 x Deathrattle Skeletons (80)*

ENDLESS SPELL
1 x Horrorghast (40)
1 x Chronomantic Cogs (40)
1 x Purple Sun of Shyish (70)

OTHER
10 x Blood Knights (390)**
Standard Bearer
– Kastellan
20 x Grave Guard (280)**
Standard Bearer
– Hornblower
– Seneschal
– Great Wight Blade

CORE BATTALIONS:
*Battle Regiment
**Bounty Hunters

TOTAL POINTS: (1985/2000)

Brett: It’s been a long time since we’ve seen Soulblight in the spotlight it seems. Quickly checking the stats it’s still a popular faction at tournaments (right around the middle in entries) but is slowly dropping in performance against newer books. After spending a year around a 50% win rate it’s now dropped in the last month to a 38% win rate. This underlines how good a performance this is. While in the states the army is interesting for taking a less popular Sub-faction and an uncommon battle line.

What this army does bring though is three Flying Vampires wizards (thank you for that nightmare), a whole mess of spells and a murder of summonable (not sure that’s a word – Peter) units that will keep coming back. Six casts across the three heros and the current staple Cogs and Purple Sun. Cogs for rerolls before casting the Purple Sun for it’s typical debuff and potential to eat something important. Lets assume you drop it near two units everytime (10″ separation is required to prevent the sun touching two units) then over the course of a tournament it will eat something 8 times. With flying multi cast Vampire Wizards that could drop it in a home objective castle on turn 2. I’m not saying that did happen, but lets say it ate a Bastiladon or a Storm Drake. Or even Thanquol. That’s possible.

The list has a lot of mobile threats with the Knights combining with Manfred and Neferata to give a lot of options on positioning. The Vampire Lord is most likely going to stay close to the Summonable (Still not sure – Peter) units he can heal. Importantly for the Vampire Lords they all have heals if they kill something. Otherwise they work to weaken their enemy and reduce their bravery. Combining Horrorghast with the effects of the army is a nice touch, you can potentially lose a lot of 1 wound models in a turn that way. Their spells mostly reduce the combat effectiveness of their opponents and, like most Death armies there is a 6+ ward

The Grand Strategy is an interesting one, it’s book specific and requires you to control more gravesites than your opponent. They either need to disperse their forces to cover one or two of them and risk being attacked by summonable units (like the Black Knights) or cede the GS to you. You pick how many points there are and where they are. Nasty.

It’s good to see a different list from a faction that is struggling do so well, congratulations to Jeremy for taking it all the way to number 1.

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Army Faction: Lumineth Realm-lords
Subfaction: Zaitrec
– Grand Strategy: No Place for the Weak
– Triumph: Indomitable

LEADERS
Sevireth (345)**
Scinari Cathallar (110)***
General
– Command Traits: Fast Learner
– Artefacts of Power: Gift of Celennar
– Spells: Overwhelming Heat, Protection of Hysh, Total Eclipse
Scinari Loreseeker (170)***
Artefacts of Power: Blade of Leaping Gold
– Spells: Flaming Weapon, Lambent Light, Overwhelming Heat
The Light of Eltharion (220)***

BATTLELINE
Vanari Dawnriders (140)*
Steedmaster
– Standard Bearer
– Spells: Overwhelming Heat, Total Eclipse
Vanari Auralan Wardens (145)**
High Warden
– Spells: Lambent Light, Overwhelming Heat
Vanari Auralan Wardens (145)**
High Warden
– Spells: Overwhelming Heat, Speed of Hysh
Vanari Auralan Sentinels (510)**
High Sentinel
– Spells: Overwhelming Heat, Speed of Hysh

OTHER
Vanari Dawnriders (140)*
Standard Bearer
– Steedmaster
Spells: Overwhelming Heat, Speed of Hysh

ENDLESS SPELLS & INVOCATIONS
1 x Emerald Lifeswarm (60)

CORE BATTALIONS
*Bounty Hunters
**Battle Regiment
***Command Entourage – Magnificent

TOTAL POINTS: 1985/2000

Brett: This tournament has been a bit of a blast from the past, Lumineth on the podium with a massive block of Sentinals and sporting Emerald Lifeswarm. So 2021. Still it’s hard to argue with 30 Archers that can shoot you even behind cover from across the map. That’s the heart of the list, a big block of archers with Wardens as screens. With Power of Hysh the 30 are still averaging 10 Mortal Wounds per turn. Unleash hell while they have Power of Hysh up is very painful. The Dawnriders in Bounty Hunters provide flexibility and threat across the board with much needed increased damage. No MSU is safe, particularly Galletian Veterans.

Severith is a unique threat piece with his extraordinary movement and fire and fade abilities. Exposing small heroes offers him opportunities, the Light and Cathallar are most likely going to remain near the shooting castle offering improved saves. increased bravery and spell protection. The Light of Eltharion is a good covering piece with his MW ranged attack and multiple attacks. The Scinari Loreseeker having Flaming Weapon (+1 damage) with Blade of Leaping Gold (+3 attacks) is very interesting combined with his Lone Agent ability. Drop him within 3″ of something important and apply 7 attacks hitting on 2s wounding on 3s with -1 rend and D3+1 damage.

Beaten into 2nd by one point this is a strong list harking back to the hey day of Lumineth. His opponents, apart from Nighthaunt, mostly had something big that would be a deserving target and without which the army would find it hard to recover. The final match up with Teclis would have been interesting, Dustin couldn’t have relied on his spells at all. The mobility of the Loreseeker, Seviarath and the Dawnriders would appear to be the difference. Loreseeker could do a lot of damage to a Sentinal block in one turn (and die).

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Army Faction: Hedonites of Slaanesh
Army Type: Invaders
– Army Subfaction: The Lurid Haze
– Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs
– Triumphs: Inspired

LEADER
1 x Sigvald (205)*
General
1 x Bladebringer, Herald on Seeker Chariot (185)*
General
– Spells: Hysterical Frenzy
1 x The Contorted Epitome (245)*
General
– Command Traits: Feverish Anticipation
– Artefacts: Oil of Exultation
– Spells: Flaming Weapon
– Bonding: Krondspine Incarnate of Ghur

BATTLELINE
22 x Blissbarb Archers (280)*
High Tempter
22 x Blissbarb Archers (280)*
High Tempter
11 x Blissbarb Archers (140)*
High Tempter

BEHEMOTH
1 x Krondspine Incarnate of Ghur (400)*

ENDLESS SPELL
1 x The Burning Head (20)
1 x Purple Sun of Shyish (70)

TERRAIN
1 x Fane of Slaanesh (0)

OTHER
5 x Centigors (85)*
5 x Centigors (85)*

CORE BATTALIONS:
*Battle Regiment

TOTAL POINTS: (1995/2000)

Brett: Archer meta? Krondspine, Purple Sun, 55 Blissbard and Sigvald, what a fun army. The Krondspine to threaten your heroes, block the board and eat endless spells. You don’t want to engage him but his movement makes him hard to ignore and you definitely don’t want to feed him. But if you do try to deal with him you give the opportunity for either the Epitome or Sigvald to wreck face. Sigvald is going to try to come from a board edge and the Epitome can move very quickly.

There aren’t a lot of buffs to their casting but the Epitome has reroll casts. That’s a big buff to getting the Sun out. Flaming Weapon with the Lurid Haze artefact and trait is good combo. 9 attacks at 2 damage particularly if it gets Overwhelming Acquiescence off. Sigvald will typically be entering from a board edge and using his charge to get into something important. Lots of damage, very small screens (Centigors) and a reason to get into your deployment. This is a fun army that is going to be very determined. It’s interesting that Matt’s only lose was to Lumineth.

That list was built around Teclis, so no Purple Sun and included a block of Sentials, the natural enemy of Blissbard. The Epitome and Sigvald would struggle with Teclis as well, this would have been a difficult army to engage. 3rd in a big tournament is a solid effort and reflects the value of Slaanehi lists.

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Army Faction: Flesh-eater Courts: feast day
Grand Strategy: No Place for the Weak
– Triumph: Bloodthirsty

LEADERS
Abhorrant Archregent (245)**
General
– Command Traits: Dark Acolyte
– Artefacts of Power: The Dermal Robe
– Spells: Deranged Transformation
Abhorrant Ghoul King on Royal Terrorgheist (445)**
Artefacts of Power: The Grim Garland
– Mount Traits: Gruesome Bite
– Spells: Blood Feast
Varghulf Courtier (160)**

BATTLELINE
Crypt Ghouls (85)***
Crypt Ghouls (85)***
Crypt Ghouls (85)***

OTHER
Crypt Horrors (220)*
Crypt Horrors (220)*
Crypt Flayers (360)*

ENDLESS SPELLS & INVOCATIONS
1 x Purple Sun of Shyish (70)

TERRAIN
1 x Charnel Throne (0)

CORE BATTALIONS
*Bounty Hunters
**Command Entourage – Magnificent
***Expert Conquerors

TOTAL POINTS: 1975/2000
9 drops

Brett : An army that is currently among the lowest ranked in the current meta with some potential in this season 17th is a good result. Flesh Eater Courts work by applying overlapping buffs from their Nobles (or Heroes) to the Knights (Horrors and Flayers) and Serfs (Ghouls). That means, at least early on, you can expect a pretty big castle.

That makes a lovely target for some serious shooting if you have it. The army has 3 casts with the Archregent having +1 to cast, unbind or dispel from the Dermal Robe. The command trait appears to add a spell but they aren’t gaining the wizard trait (since it is a wizard) and he add Deranged Transformation to throw those Horrors further faster. The Ghoul King and his Terrorgheist have some “interesting” abilities but they are let down in the execution. Death Shriek is only really effective against Destruction armies or Cities but the other attacks inflict serious damage. The Gaping Maw/Gruesome bite combo is extremely nasty, reroll hit rolls, it has 3 attacks, where a 6 does 6 MW. Enough to one shot a Stormstrike Chariot. Twice. In the same game.

The Horrors have 3 attacks hitting on 4s that can be improved, doing 2 damage and 3 on wound rolls of 6. Flayers have 4 attacks only doing 1 damage but can redeploy quickly and does MW on 6s. The Archregent and Ghoul King can return models on top of their summoning which can make clearing the Horrors/Flayers more difficult. To stop the army you need to kill the heros or they will heal and summon. Unfortunately this army has effectively 6 screens to stop you doing that. You can play around the bigger units and pick up the screens through MW attrition and shooting. Like most death armies their strength is often in numbers and if you are patient you can deal with them.

Cody did very well taking the army to 17th dealing with Ironjawz, DoK and SCE all of who have strong play into this list, well done.

Final Tournament Placings

Top Three AoS Lists for Armed Forces Day 5

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This is the Top Three AoS Lists for Armed Forces Day 5 that took place in Illinois, USA on 30th and 31st July. It involved 34 players vying to be crowned champion in a 5 game tournament.

If you’d like to listen to this article as a podcast it is available on Spotify.

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: Stormcast Eternals
Army Type: Scions of the Storm
– Army Subfaction: Hallowed Knights
– Grand Strategy: Show of Dominance
– Triumphs: Indomitable

LEADER
Gardus Steel Soul (150)
Lord-Relictor (145)
General
– Command Traits: High Priest
– Artefacts: Arcane Tome
– Spells: Celestial Blades
– Prayers: Translocation

BATTLELINE
Liberators (115)
Liberator-Prime
– Grandweapon
– Heavens-wrought Weapon and Sigmarite Shield
Liberators (115)
Liberator-Prime
– Grandweapon
– Heavens-wrought Weapon and Sigmarite Shield
Liberators (115)
Liberator-Prime
– Grandweapon
– Heavens-wrought Weapon and Sigmarite Shield

OTHER
1 x Stormdrake Guard (680)
Stormdrake-Prime
– Drakerider’s Warblade
1 x Stormdrake Guard (680)
Stormdrake-Prime
– Drakerider’s Warblade

CORE BATTALIONS:
Battle Regiment

TOTAL POINTS: (2000/2000)

Brett: Stormcast is an interesting faction playing a little more like Custodes than the Space Marines they are always accused of being. They have high moral and good saves making them hard to shift but they’re damage isn’t amazing. They don’t rely on amazing complicated synergies and casting certain spells the right way to unlock a combo. That also makes them a bit easier to know and counter so to get the best out of them you need a good general.

Alan’s gone 5/0 taking down some solid armies that play well into Stormcast. Unfortunately they were melee heavy which are maybe vulnerable to Stormdrakes. The army has 2 small heroes with 1 prayer, 1 cast and 2 denies, 3 small screening units and 2 massive hammers in the Stormdrakes. Stormdrakes in Bounty Hunters increases their damage (to Galletian Veterans) by 43%. Bounty Hunters has the biggest effect on Damage 1 weapons giving a 100% increase. Both the Relictor and Gardus are decent combat support charaters as well.

The Liberators are a screen and hold objectives, within Hallowed Knights they also fight on death. Not combat power houses but they have a 3+ save with a 5+ ward if within 12″ of Gardus. The Holy Command isn’t shown but was likely Call to Aid, which allows the return of a unit of Liberators. In a pinch The Lord Relictor can translocate a unit across the board, it has to be wholly within 9″ of him so the drakes will struggle. Translocation gets answered on 2+ (he gets +1 to prayers) and has a reroll so at some point you can expect him to move a unit. He could even respawn a unit of Liberators once they are killed next to him and then throw them to a lightly or unoccupied objective. Can be a really easy way to get a Battle Tactic.

The heart of this list is the 2 big mobile, 12″ move, hammers. Against armies with minimal shooting they are able to roam the board and not including shooting can put out 80 wounds a turn. Can they one shot Teclis – yes. Their shooting is swingy with each dragon having a 33% chance of doing nothing, D3 damage or D6 damage. A nice bonus but not something to rely on. It’s also good to punish small heroes or other units behind screens before hitting the screens. Scions of the Storm makes sense in Season 1 where the Stormkeep’s counts as 3 on objectives is neutered. If a list has a lot of shooting you can keep something back for later deployment or drop Gardus close to some Stormdrakes that are going to be in heavy combat.

Dropping Gardus from the sky ensures the drakes are within 12″ for his 5+ ward but also his ability to make Hallowed Knights fight again on death and his extra attack. 4 drakes will definitely destroy god models like Teclis in that scenario. Gardus also grants a reroll charges on top of the Stomdrake reroll charge on the turn they arrive. Pity we don’t have space for a Lord Imperatent to give a 7″ to the drakes. With 36 wounds they are very difficult to clear in a phase, once they are in they will tie up units for sometime. The drakes coherency rules and mobility give you a significant amount of board control and the ability to influence your opponent’s options.

Prime Hunters really hit Stormcast by putting a mark on their best units hitters (Fulminators, Stormdrake and Raptors). With Holy Command, Raptors aren’t that attractive, however the other units are. I wonder if we will see a resurgence in placings now, there are still a lot of Stormcast players.

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Army Faction: Lumineth Realm-lords
Subfaction: Zaitrec
– Grand Strategy: Show of Dominance
– Triumph: Indomitable

LEADERS
Scinari Cathallar (110)*
Artefacts of Power: Gift of Celennar
– Spells: Etheral Blessings, Overwhelming Heat, Total Eclipse
Archmage Teclis (740)*
General
– Spells: Overwhelming Heat
Alarith Stonemage (120)*
Spells: Crippling Vertigo, Overwhelming Heat, Voice of the Mountains

BATTLELINE
Vanari Bladelords (130)*
Bladelord Seneschal
Vanari Auralan Wardens (290)**
High Warden
– Spells: Overwhelming Heat, Protection of Hysh
Vanari Auralan Wardens (290)**
High Warden
– Spells: Etheral Blessings, Overwhelming Heat

OTHER
Vanari Dawnriders (140)*
Steedmaster
– Spells: Overwhelming Heat, Speed of Hysh

ENDLESS SPELLS & INVOCATIONS
1 x Umbral Spellportal (70)
1 x Horrorghast (40)
1 x Purple Sun of Shyish (70)

CORE BATTALIONS
*Battle Regiment
**Expert Conquerors

TOTAL POINTS: 2000/2000

Brett: A Teclis led Lumineth army takes second on the back of a 4/1, losing to Stormcast in the 4th round. Could be a tag line from an early 3rd edition tournament. In any event Jonathan has taken the “alternative” path with a Warden heavy list to support Teclis and his band of mages. To round out this approach there are 3 Endless Spells, because that’s what Teclis is for, getting that Purple Sun into your face. Even when he casts 4 spells they are auto cast on a 10, they are all auto matic. That leaves one spell on a 10 to cast; Protection of Teclis (5+ ward) for everything within 18″. On subsequent rounds he’s free to cast anything including Speed of Hysh and Transporting Vortex in case mobility is a concern.

In the current magic/endless spell meta, or what seems to be a magic heavy meta, Teclis is a great choice. He can automatically dispel 1 endless spell and automatically unbind one as well. No Purple Sun for you. Umbral Spell portal increases the range for him to hit you with Storm of Searing Light and he isn’t bad in combat. He is a lot of points. Otherwise the list includes bodyguards for the Scinari and Dawnriders for taking remote action, board control and harassment. 14″ move and with Speed of Hysh (28″) make them a constant threat. Then there are the 2 big anvil units. The wardens are slow moving but counting for 60 on objectives makes them something you need to deal with. You want to whittle them down early preferably before they can cast Power of Hysh (MW on 5+)

+1 to cast from the Zaitrec Nation, Teclis granting 4+ wards against spells and a spell reflect like ability mean that spells are trivial to this army. Despite a potential threat from archers Jonathan defeated an Idoneth list with 4 units of archers (3 x Reavers and 1 x Sentinals for good measure). I wouldn’t want to be those Sentinals when Teclis catches them. The results show the effectiveness of 4 Stormdrakes vs units of 2, Jonathan easily beat a SCE army centred on units of 2 but lost to the bigger unit. I feel sorry for the Seraphon casting list without Kroak (2nd round), talk about bringing a knife to a gun fight. Great performance.

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Army Faction: Daughters of Khaine
Army Subfaction: Hagg Nar
– Grand Strategy: Bloodthirsty Zealots
– Triumphs: Inspired

LEADER
1 x Morathi-Khaine (680)**
1 x The Shadow Queen (680)**
1 x High Gladiatrix (90)**
General
– Command Traits: Zealous Orator
– Artefacts: Crown of Woe

BATTLELINE
20 x Witch Aelves (230)*
Hag
– Death Pennant Bearer
– Hornblower
– Paired Sciansá
20 x Witch Aelves (230)*
Hag
– Death Pennant Bearer
– Hornblower
– Paired Sciansá
10 x Sisters of Slaughter (135)*
Handmaiden
– Hornblower
– Death Pennant Bearer
– Kruiplash and Bladed Buckler

ENDLESS SPELL
1 x Bloodwrack Viper (80)

OTHER
5 x Khinerai Heartrenders (95)
5 x Khinerai Heartrenders (95)
10 x Blood Stalkers (360)

CORE BATTALIONS:
*Bounty Hunters
**Command Entourage – Strategists

TOTAL POINTS: (1995/2000)

Brett: Daughters of Khaine have a new book and Witch Aelves are good again. A good run through the tournament taking the new hotness from Death (Nighthaunt) and the Tree loving Sylvaneth both fresh from their own recent books. AoS Coach just covered a list like this with Marcella Helu if you’d like a more in depth discussion. Also great to see the new Hero for DoK – the High Gladiatrix.

Before going into the army too far though I have to acknowledge that the tournament was allowing book Battle Traits and Grand Strategies. Bloodthirsty Zealots is very easy to accomplish (either fight or be destroyed) and the army itself is built to take advantage of at least 4 book BT. The Khinerai can easily accomplish 2 themselves with very little interaction. That’s all I’ll say about it.

Otherwise this is a very solid army. The Shadowqueen is able to tank a bit but really you want to go first to power up the Witch Aelves and unleash them. They are +1 to charge from in the first round, and +1 to wound and -1 rend if they are within 12″ of the Gladiatrix. Sisters of Slaughter outfitted to tank as well with an improved save and reflecting hits on 6s.

With all of Cheryl’s opponents being similarly combat based until the last round, the fights would have been brutal and resolved by who attacked first. As a low rend, 1 damage army they don’t give up much to Nighthaunt and each Witch Aelve has, at full strength, the ability to remove complete units. They are vulnerable to the 4 Drake block, you could play this destroying the troops and ignore Morathi.

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Army Faction: Legion of the First Prince
Grand Strategy: Show of Dominance
– Triumphs: Inspired

LEADER
1 x Sloppity Bilepiper (130)*
1 x Lord of Change (400)*
Staff of Tzeentch and Rod of Sorcery
– Spells: Flaming Weapon, The Master’s Command
1 x Slaves to Darkness Daemon Prince (210)**
Daemonic Axe and Malefic Talons
– Mark of Chaos: Khorne
1 x Bloodthirster of Insensate Rage (280)**
General
– Command Traits: Ruinous Aura
– Artefacts: Armour of the Pact

BATTLELINE
10 x Bloodletters (110)*
Bloodreaper
– Hornblower
– Gore-drenched Icon Bearer
20 x Plaguebearers (300)**
Icon Bearer
– Piper
– Plagueridden
5 x Flesh Hounds (105)**
Gore Hound
– Burning Roar

ENDLESS SPELL
1 x Soulsnare Shackles (50)

OTHER
3 x Nurglings (105)*
3 x Nurglings (105)*
3 x Nurglings (105)*
6 x Furies (95)**

CORE BATTALIONS:
*Battle Regiment
**Battle Regiment

TOTAL POINTS: (1995/2000)

Brett: Are you given to the dark side but not sure what faction suits you best? Do you love flexibility and never making a decision? If you said YES YES YES then Legion of the First Prince is for you. Taking the fallen(?) of the daemon worlds, Legions of the First Prince provides them a home. Mike has gone with the bigger daemons for punch with a few smaller daemons to hit objectives. But where is Belakor?

Unfortunately that means the army misses out on the rerolls for the battleline demons that Belakor allows, and the heals. But on the upside, beyond the power of the Greater Demons Mike was able to summon units from Khorne, Nurgle and Tzeentch depending on what he needed. The Plaguebearers are hard to move off objectives while the Flesh Hounds provide mobile threat. Some shooting from the Furies, stabby Bloodletters and the annoying Nurglings.

The results bear out that this approach can be effective. Along the way Mike beat armies that included 40 Sentinels and 30 Blood Sisters, elsewhere considered the scourge of daemons. Their nemesis appears to be red headed dwarfs who cut a swathe through them. An innovative list with a number of tricks from the Demon Prince from halving movement to spell eating (good in the Purple Sun meta). Good to see life in the Legion ahead of updated books.

Final Tournament Placings

Top Three AoS Lists for the Miniparadice Anniversary Tournament

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This is the Top Three AoS Lists for the Miniparadice Anniversary Tournament that took place in Germany on 23rd and 24th July. It involved 38 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: Tzeentch
Change Coven: Hosts Arcanum
– Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs
– Triumphs: Inspired

Leaders
Krysothea – The Lady Of Arcana (400)*
Lord of Change
Staff of Tzeentch and Rod of Sorcery
– General
– Command Trait: Spell Hunters
– Artefact: Wellspring of Arcane Might
– Lore of Change: Tzeentch’s Firestorm
Kai & Ross – The Surfing Bird(s) (435)**
Kairos Fateweaver
Lore of Change: Bolt of Tzeentch
Birdie Mc Birdface (140)**
Changecaster, Herald of Tzeentch
Artefact: The Fanged Circlet
– Lore of Change: Unchecked Mutation
– Krondspine Bonded
Vilitch & Thomin (180)**
Curseling, Eye of Tzeentch
Lore of Fate: Shield of Fate

Battleline
3 x Screamers of Tzeentch (100)*
3 x Screamers of Tzeentch (100)*
3 x Screamers of Tzeentch (100)*

Behemoths
Changespine, Incarnate of Tzeentch (400)*
Krondspine Incarnate of Ghur
Allies

Endless Spells & Invocations
Umbral Spellportal (70)
Chronomantic Cogs (40)
The Burning Head (20)

Core Battalions
*Battle Regiment
**Command Entourage – Magnificent

Additional Enhancements
Artefact

Total: 1985 / 2000
Reinforced Units: 0 / 4
Allies: 400 / 400
Wounds: 65
Drops: 4

Peter: This army revolves around the quick Screamers of Tzeentch (16″) and buffing them with heroes while the Krondspine eats stuff and the casters chip away mortal wound damage via various spells.

This Hosts Arcanum army will allow you to move D3 of those Screamers of Tzeentch units 6″ before the battle even begins. Meaning that with their 16″ move they have the potential threat range of 34″ in the first turn alone. They’re ok in combat as well with 3 attacks each hitting on 4+ and wounding on 3+, no rend though and only 1 damage per attack. That puts their average damage output at 3 damage before any saves are made. They’re better against monsters as the damage changes to D3 and means that average damage output jumps up to 9 damage.

The Fanged Circlet, which has to be taken in a Hosts Arcanum list as the first Artefact isn’t exactly a burden to take when once per battle it will allow you to summon a unit of 6 Screamers of Tzeentch near the Changecaster.

But really the Krondspine is here to do all the smashing while the Screamers of Tzeentch cap off the objectives.

This is a strong magic list made stronger by the ability to auto unbind one spell in the 1st, 3rd and 5th rounds. If they don’t want you to get Purple Sun off then it’s unlikely you’ll manage it unless in rounds 2 or 4. On top of that the Lord of Change has the Wellspring of Arcane Might allowing it to re-roll it’s casting and unbind rolls. The Chronomantic Cogs will also give this ability to other casters as well.

This list has three spells for causing mortal wounds on the enemy, Tzeentch’s Firestorm (CV9) allows the player to target an enemy unit within 18″ and roll 9 dice with each 6 causing D3 mortal wounds. Unchecked Mutation (CV6) also with a range of 18″ can also cause D3 mortal wounds on a unit, if that successfully removed a model then it will cause an additional D3 mortal wounds on the same unit. Finally there’s Bolt of Tzeentch (CV7) also with a range of 18″ which automatically cause D6 mortal wounds on a target unit within range. But where you’re reading 18″ these can be extended to 36″ with the use of the Umbral Spellportal.

In summary this list is designed to dominate the hero phase unbinding enemy spells and doing a lot of mortal wound damage with its own.

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Allegiance: Maggotkin of Nurgle
Subfaction: Filthbringers
– Grand Strategy: Blessed Desecration
– Triumphs: Inspired

Leaders
Rot Coven Rotbringer Sorcerer (120)*
General
– Command Trait: Master of Magic
– Artefact: Arcane Tome (Universal Artefact)
– Lore of Malignance: Gift of Disease
– Lore of Malignance: Cloying Quagmire
Rot Coven Rotbringer Sorcerer (120)*
Lore of Malignance: Gift of Disease
– Lore of Malignance: Cloying Quagmire
Rot Coven Rotbringer Sorcerer (120)*
Lore of Malignance: Blades Of Putrifaction
– Lore of Malignance: Magnificent Buboes

Battleline
10 x Putrid Blightkings (500)***
Reinforced x 1
5 x Putrid Blightkings (250)***
2 x Pusgoyle Blightlords (220)**
2 x Pusgoyle Blightlords (220)**
10 x Plaguebearers (150)***

Units
2 x Nurglings (105)**

Endless Spells & Invocations
Ravenak’s Gnashing Jaws (60)
Shards of Valagharr (50)
Purple Sun of Shyish (70)

Core Battalions
*Command Entourage – Magnificent
**Bounty Hunters
***Expert Conquerors

Additional Enhancements
Spell

Total: 1985 / 2000
Reinforced Units: 1 / 4
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 142
Drops: 9

Peter: Another Rotbringer Coven list that leans heavily into magic – it even has the much discussed Purple Sun.

It’s no surprise that it perhaps drew with the other magic heavy Disciples of Tzeentch list that won the event as they would perhaps cancel each other out.

With offensive units (Pusgoyle Blightlords) and defensive units (Plaguebearers) this army is going to try and get all over the objectives as soon as it can. All the while the Nurgle magic and disease points will be taking their toll on the opponent

Brett: Moggotkin are popular in Germany it seems with 2 of the top 3 armies from the faction. They represent the 2 most popular sub-factions (Filthbringers and Drowned Men) which are either side of the magic/combat divide. Colin appears to like variety, the Blightlords aren’t battleline of course. Nurglings in Bounty Hunters is interesting but there isn’t room anywhere else for them. How embarrassing to be killed by a damage 2 Nurgling.

At it’s heart this is a castle type army that can sit on objectives while being hard to remove. Including the Blightlords give it some offensive punch, particularly as Bounty Hunters but they will almost be sniping since you don’t want them to be isolated and unsupported. The Endless Spells round out the offensive part of the list. Shards of Valagharr (CV5) and Gnashing Jaws (CV6) are both reasonably easy to cast. Shards is an interesting and unusual inclusion, removing fly and having movement makes it much easier for slow moving Blightkings to come to blows. You want that because every 6 is a disease point. It’s easy for the large unit 10 thing unit to max disease points every turn.

One last point, each of the Endless spells is also diseased since it was cast by a Rotbringer. All up this is a pretty tight army that should outlast most others. If you can avoid the Blightlords and remove the Rotbringers it should be easier to tackle. It’s not flashy but board control and consistent mortal wound output will win games as you can see here. Even the chosen spells lean into the toughness (debuffing your opponent) and increasing the application of disease points. Host Arcanum into this army would have been very interesting to watch. The Host Arcanum army featured big daemons for the most part that aren’t also the best at combat. Into an army with 5+ wards that can resist a lot of their magic forcing them to rely on combat. Where the HA will get mortal wounds (from disease points) that they can’t shrug.

Otherwise the army saw off all comers including Sons of Behemat, I can’t see the list but I’m guessing it had Manchrushers. It’s an interesting win since this isn’t a DPS army and Sons are a DPS check. Goes to show that playing the mission and not the player is the important part.

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Allegiance: Maggotkin of Nurgle
Subfaction: Drowned Men
– Mortal Realm: Ghur
– Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs
– Triumphs: Inspired

Leaders
Lord of Afflictions (210)*
General
– Command Trait: Overpowering Stench
– Artefact: The Splithorn Helm
Be’Lakor, the Dark Master (360)*
Allies

Battleline
4 x Pusgoyle Blightlords (440)**
Reinforced x 1
4 x Pusgoyle Blightlords (440)**
Reinforced x 1
2 x Pusgoyle Blightlords (220)*
2 x Pusgoyle Blightlords (220)*

Units
1 x Pusgoyle Blightlords – Single (110)*

Core Battalions
*Battle Regiment
**Bounty Hunters

Total: 2000 / 2000
Reinforced Units: 2 / 4
Allies: 360 / 400
Wounds: 125
Drops: 3

Peter: This is a time honoured list from the earlier General’s Handbook and one that was fairly common. Lots of Pusgoyle Blightlords with their 8″ movement plus the pre-game movement as well. The Lord of Afflictions gives options to drop two fly units with him from reserve. The whole list revolves around pinning you in your deployment zone and making your way through the really tough Nurgle units. Board control is its key.

Be’Lakor has been added to this list in place of a second Lord of Afflictions. He’s a beat stick himself, but can add to the pinning effect with his once per battle ability The Dark Master where on a 3+ in each phase the chosen unit cannot act.

A quick army (8″ move) with a tough hide means you’ll be hard pressed to steal the objectives away.

Brett: As Peter said this is a fairly common army that reaches back to before Season 1 kicked off. It plays well into the new harder Battle Tactics with it’s combination of resilience and movement. Drowned Men giving everything other than Belakor a 8″ pregame move is a big part of this. You can see how your opponent deploys and reacts. That also makes taking Bounty Hunters and a Battle Regiment more palatable, reducing the sting if you don’t finish deploying first.

The inclusion of Belakor brings 2 casts/unbinds to a list with little magic and is a combat monster with several powers to enhance his combat effectiveness, or longevity at least. The army is very combat focused, his high mobility with the Lord of Afflictions The Swarm Descends giving long range and threatening home objectives. The Blighlords can chew through screens efficiently giving the army a strong chance to deal with shooting. Through the event he only lost to the winner (in the final round) and took down several armies with access to solid shooting. The mobility and robustness of the army would have been an issue for both Idoneth and Stormcast.

Disease points make staying in combat for any length of time a loosing proposition. It gives a solid advantage against Ossiarch and Stormcast who have good saves but whose damage output might not be as high as the elves.

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Allegiance: Lumineth Realm-lords
Great Nation: Zaitrec
– Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs
– Triumphs:

Leaders
Vanari Lord Regent (155)*
General
– Command Trait: Fast Learner
– Extra Spell: Lambent Light
– Lore of Hysh: Protection of Hysh
Hurakan Windmage (120)*
Extra Spell: Guiding Flurries
– Lore of the Winds: Transporting Vortex
Scinari Loreseeker (170)*
Artefact: Gift of Celennar
– Extra Spell: Lambent Light
– Lore of Hysh: Protection of Hysh

Battleline
10 x Vanari Auralan Wardens (145)*
Lore of Hysh: Lambent Light
10 x Vanari Auralan Wardens (145)*
Lore of Hysh: Protection of Hysh
10 x Vanari Auralan Wardens (145)*
Lore of Hysh: Speed of Hysh
30 x Vanari Auralan Sentinels (510)*
Lore of Hysh: Total Eclipse
– Reinforced x 2
30 x Vanari Auralan Sentinels (510)*
Lore of Hysh: Protection of Hysh
– Reinforced x 2

Endless Spells & Invocations
Chronomantic Cogs (40)
Ravenak’s Gnashing Jaws (60)

Core Battalions
*Battle Regiment

Total: 2000 / 2000
Reinforced Units: 4 / 4
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 107
Drops: 1

Peter: Players often complain about Lumineth, but right now after the release of the new handbook, they’re not in a good place with a sub 45% win rate. That’s why I chose this list, Daniel’s done exceptionally well to claim four wins in the tournament.

Brett: I’d complain about this list as well – that’s 60 archers with 30″ range and potentially MW on 5+. This sort of list was common on the release of Lumineth and faded when no one would play them. An average 20 MW a shooting phase is enough to get anyone’s notice. Here Daniel has played into the small heroes to maximise troops so has 3 x 10 Wardens, arguably better than the Sentinels, for screening and generally being painful to deal with. If you charge into them they get extra rend and wound on a 3+. Assuming they don’t redeploy and leave you hanging for the next shooting phase.

Everything in this list is a wizard and everything has unbinds so your hero phase is likely to be “interesting”. Their spell lore is incredibly good at buffing and protecting the slightly soft Aelves, Speed of Hysh, doubling movement, Lambent Light, rerolls hit rolls with missile weapons, Protection of Hysh, 5+ ward. Guiding Flurries adds range and Transport Vortex, well that’s just a teleport. To paraphrase Terry Pratchett, you’d be mad to give an elf a chisel lest he carve his initials in your forehead with it. This lot would probably expect you to thank them.

The heroes are here mostly as buff characters but do offer some combat capacity if pushed (not the Windmage though). The army can easily divide into 2 shooting castles and dare you to engage. If need there is still the ability to teleport using vortex. This style of army was popular in the past but faded with the rise of DoK and Sons. And probably the painting of so many Sentinels. There are definite counters and because virtually the whole army is Galetian Veterans they are very susceptible to Bounty Hunter units. Good work from Daniel in piloting such an army and particularly in taking out 2 armies thought to offer good counters.

Final Tournament Placings

For the full tournament placings and other lists see Tabletop.TO

AoS Meta Stats (w/e 10th July 2022)

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Here are the AoS Meta Stats for all the Grand Tournaments that have taken place between Monday 4th July and Sunday 10th July 2022. These are all the GT’s that I can locate on Tabletop.to or BestCoastPairing, if you know of any others please send me a link and I’ll add them.

Once again, another quiet week, with only 3 Grand Tournaments.

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Grand Tournaments

Ranked from largest to smallest.

South Coast Series July – England/UK
40 Players

PositionFactionSubfactionResult
1stSlaves to DarknessHost of the Everchosen5-0-0
2ndNighthauntScarlet Doom4-0-1
3rdSylvanethHeartwood4-0-1
4thSylvanethGnarlroot4-0-1
5thSeraphonFangs of Sotek4-0-1
6thIdoneth DeepkinFuethan4-0-1
7thMaggotkin of NurgleDrowned Men4-0-1
8thBonesplitterzDrakkfoot3-1-1
9thNighthaunt Emerald Host3-0-2
10thDaughters of KhaineZainthar Kai3-0-2
South Coast Series July

Summer on the Coast AoS GT – Washington/USA
37 Players

PositionFactionSubfactionResult
1stKharadron OverlordsBarak-Zilfin5-0-0
2ndDaughters of KhaineHagg Nar4-0-1
3rdBlades of KhorneGoretide4-0-1
4thHedonites of SlaaneshLurid Haze4-0-1
5thSlaves to DarknessHost of the Everchosen4-0-1
6thNighthaunt Scarlet Doom4-0-1
7thSeraphonThunder Lizard3-0-2
8thSons of BehematBreaker Tribe3-0-2
9thSylvanethHeartwood3-0-2
10thSylvanethGnarlroot3-0-2
Summer on the Coast AoS GT

Kingdom of Skrappa Spill – England/UK
28 PlayersGenerals Handbook: Pitched Battles 2022-23 Season 1

PositionFactionSubfactionResult
1stCities of SigmarHallowheart5-0-0
2ndDaughters of KhaineKhailebron4-0-1
3rdCities of SigmarHammerhal4-0-1
4thSkaven4-0-1
5thMaggotkin of Nurgle3-1-1
6thSeraphonThunder Lizard3-1-1
7thDaughters of KhaineKhailebron3-0-2
8thDaughters of KhaineHagg Nar3-0-2
9thNighthaunt 3-0-2
Kingdom of Skrappa Spill

Grand Alliance Stats

These stats reflect the last four weeks of GT’s that we’re aware of at Woehammer.

303 players (-182) took part in 12 GT’s (-4) over the last four weeks.

Grand AllianceWin RateArmies% Share of Armies5-0 Wins4+ Wins
Chaos56.4%6220.46%520
Order51.0%14949.17%421
Death43.8%5016.50%16
Destruction43.8%4213.86%03

Chaos continue to lead the way in the win rates, dropping only slightly from 56.7% last week to 56.4% this week. While Order pick up the most number of armies represented and most 4+. Chaos steal the crown this week for most 5-0’s.

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Faction Stats

The below stat show the results for those factions represented by 5 armies or more only.

FactionWin RateArmies% Share of Armies5-0 Wins0-5 Losses
Slaves to Darkness72.2%61.98%11
Beasts of Chaos63.1%134.29%20
Nighthaunt61.3%175.61%10
Blades of Khorne60.0%51.65%00
Sylvaneth58.5%134.29%00
Cities of Sigmar57.1%175.61%11
Seraphon56.3%247.92%21
Kharadron Overlords55.0%61.98%11
Big Waaagh!54.0%51.65%00
Maggotkin of Nurgle53.8%216.93%12
Bonesplitterz51.5%72.31%00
Lumineth Realm-Lords50.0%123.96%00
Daughters of Khaine50.0%175.61%01
Sons of Behemat50.0%82.64%00
Idoneth Deepkin47.8%185.94%00
Sons of Behemat48.5%214.33%01
Skaven46.7%61.98%10
Legion of the First Prince46.7%61.98%01
Stormcast Eternals45.6%268.58%03
Ogor Mawtribes44.8%61.98%01
Fyreslayers43.0%165.28%01
Flesh-eater Courts40.0%51.65%00
Soulblight Gravelords37.8%185.94%02
Gloomspite Gitz33.3%61.98%00
Ironjawz32.8%72.31%02
Ossiarch Bonereapers27.0%103.30%02

Slaves to Darkness and Blades of Khorne continue their run of good form in experienced hands. While the new battletomes of Nighthaunt and Sylvaneth can also be seen in the +55% area. Daughters of Khaine are smack in the middle with a perfect 50% win rate. While Skaven are beginning to climb.

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Subfactions

All factions listed below have been represented at tournaments by at least 5 players.

FactionSubfactionWin RateArmies% Share of Armies5-0 Wins0-5 Losses
Maggotkin of NurgleDrowned Men69.1%113.63%10
NighthauntScarlet Doom67.6%72.31%00
Beasts of ChaosNone61.4%72.31%10
Cities of SigmarLiving City57.1%72.31%00
SeraphonThunder Lizard55.7%216.93%21
Sons of BehematBreaker Tribe53.4%61.98%00
Stormcast EternalsHallowed Knights52.9%72.31%00
FyreslayersLofnir51.7%61.98%00
NighthauntEmerald Host48.3%61.98%00
Lumineth Realm-LordsZaitrec48.1%113.63%00
Daughters of KhaineZainthar Kai47.1%72.31%01
Legion of the First Prince46.7%61.98%01
Skaven46.7%61.98%10
Soulblight GravelordsVyrkos Dynasty43.3%61.98%00
Stormcast EternalsHammers of Sigmar42.3%154.95%03
Soulblight GravelordsKastelai Dynasty38.6%72.31%01
FyreslayersGreyfyrd35.2%92.97%01
Ossiarch BonereapersPetrifex Elite27.5%82.64%01

Drowned Men continue to lead the way with a win rate of 69.1% despite Maggotkin overall only having a win rate of 53.8%. Nighthaunt and Scarlet Doom find themselves near the top now as predicted by Danny some weeks ago. Meanwhile at the bottom of the table Ossiarch Bonereapers/Petrifex Elite are the only subfaction below 30% win rate.

Interestingly Fyreslayers have Lofnir (6 PLayers) with a win rate of 51.7% and the more popular Greyfyrd (9 Players) at 35.2%, are people playing the wrong subfaction?

Next Week

I’ll have graphs. Because nothing says stats like some graphs…..

AoS Meta Stats (w/e 3rd July 2022)

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Here are the AoS Meta Stats for all the Grand Tournaments that have taken place between Monday 27th June and Sunday 3rd July 2022. These are all the GT’s that I can locate on Tabletop.to or BestCoastPairing, if you know of any others please send me a link and I’ll add them.

Once again, another quiet week, with only 3 Grand Tournaments. Two of these were run using the new GHB, while the other was just a little event called the World tSports Champions…..

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Grand Tournaments

Ranked from largest to smallest.

From the Ashes – Scotland/UK
22 PlayersGenerals Handbook: Pitched Battles 2022-23 Season 1

PositionFactionSubfactionResult
1stSkaven5-0-0
2ndNighthauntScarlet Doom4-0-1
3rdIdoneth DeepkinMor’Phann4-0-1
4thBonesplitterzDrakkfoot4-0-1
5thSeraphonThunder Lizard3-0-2
6thDaughters of Khaine Zainthar Kai3-0-2
7thSylvanethHeartwood3-0-2
8thBeasts of Chaos3-0-2
9thSoulblight GravelordsKastelai Dynasty3-0-2
10thSons of BehematBreaker Tribe2-1-2
From the Ashes 2022

World tSports Champions – England/UK
16 PlayersGenerals Handbook 2021-22

PositionFactionSubfactionResult
1stNighthauntGrieving Legion5-0-0
2ndIdoneth DeepkinIonrach3-0-2
3rdBeasts of ChaosAllherd4-0-1
4thIdoneth DeepkinFuethan3-0-2
5thSlaves to DarknessHost of the Everchosen4-0-1
6thMaggotkin of NurgleDrowned Men3-0-2
7thCities of SigmarHallowheart2-0-3
8thBonesplitterzDrakkfoot2-0-3
9thLegion of the First Prince 1-0-4
10thStormcast EternalsHammers of Sigmar2-0-3
World tSports Champions

Coliseum of Sigmar Carnage GT – Florida/USA
9 PlayersGenerals Handbook: Pitched Battles 2022-23 Season 1

PositionFactionSubfactionResult
1stLumineth Realm-LordsZaitrec3-0-1
2ndNighthauntEmerald Host4-0-1
3rdStormcast EternalsHallowed Knights3-1-1
4thLegion of the First Prince3-1-1
5thIdoneth DeepkinNautilar2-0-3
6thStormcast EternalsHammers of Sigmar2-0-3
7thSlaves to DarknessHost of the Everchosen0-0-2
8thSons of BehematBreaker Tribe2-0-3
9thDaughters of Khaine Zainthar Kai0-0-4
Coliseum of Sigmar Carnage GT

Grand Alliance Stats

As promised last week, I’ve changed the stats to reflect the last four weeks of GT’s that we’re aware of at Woehammer. Also if you read all the way to the end of the article I have a little surprise for you!

485 players took part in 16 GT’s over the last four weeks.

Grand AllianceWin RateArmies% Share of Armies5-0 Wins4+ Wins
Chaos56.7%9419.38%627
Order50.7%21844.95%834
Death45.8%8216.91%211
Destruction45.0%9118.76%08

Chaos continue to lead the way in the win rates. While Order pick up the most number of armies represented, most 5-0’s and most 4+. When you compare army share to the number of battletomes each Grand Alliance possess you can see that Order are overrepresented, while Chaos are vastly under represented:

Grand AllianceBattletomesBattletome %Actual Rep %
Order937.50%44.95%
Chaos729.17%19.38%
Death416.67%16.91%
Destruction416.67%18.76%

What can we take away from this? Perhaps that Order factions are more appealing than Chaos? New players gravitate towards Order? The Chaos range needs updated miniatures? Or all of the above?

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Faction Stats

The below stat show the results for those factions represented by 5 armies or more only.

FactionWin RateArmies% Share of Armies5-0 Wins0-5 Losses
Beasts of Chaos67.1%142.89%20
Legion of the First Prince 61.5%132.68%00
Slaves to Darkness61.1%61.24%01
Seraphon59.7%306.19%52
Blades of Khorne56.7%61.24%00
Maggotkin of Nurgle56.6%357.22%32
Bonesplitterz55.4%102.06%00
Cities of Sigmar54.2%244.95%21
Daughters of Khaine52.8%224.54%02
Nighthaunt52.2%326.60%12
Idoneth Deepkin51.8%234.74%10
Flesh-eater Courts51.7%61.24%00
Lumineth Realm-Lords51.5%214.33%00
Kharadron Overlords51.4%71.44%01
Sylvaneth49.1%112.27%01
Sons of Behemat48.5%214.33%01
Soulblight Gravelords47.1%285.77%11
Stormcast Eternals47.1%6012.37%04
Ogor Mawtribes47.1%282.89%01
Ironjawz44.7%163.30%01
Kruleboyz44.3%112.27%01
Hedonites of Slaanesh44.3%71.44%00
Skaven43.0%91.86%10
Big Waaagh!41.3%81.65%00
Fyreslayers39.5%204.12%02
Gloomspite Gitz30.9%112.27%01
Ossiarch Bonereapers28.2%163.30%02
Factions in Bold are those with 3rd Edition Battletomes published before or during this time period

I’ve highlighted all those faction win rates in red which are outside of the parameters that players have stated would make the game roughly balanced (45-55%).

I’m looking at the bottom of the table as I’m writing this, and its hard not to overlook Fyreslayers, Gloomspite Gitz and Ossiarch Bonereapers with win rates of less than 40%! Gloomspite Gitz are getting their new book this year, so hopefully we’ll see that improve. Fyreslayers have been mugged by Games Workshop rules writers, and it just shows how awful that book is. I feel for long term Fyreslayers players…

At the top of the table Beasts of Chaos now currently lead the way with a win rate of 67.1%! They’ve gone from trash tier to S tier in the space of 3 months. Slaves to Darkness are a bit of an anomaly at the top there, and this is primarily driven by a few high level players who vastly our performed the faction this month, much like Anthony Trentanelli did a few weeks ago with Skaven. Maggotkin of Nurgle and Seraphon win rates have both dropped, but its too early to tell why, as the new rules for Seraphon only really came into effect last week.

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Subfaction Stats

FactionSubfactionWin RateArmies% Share of Armies5-0 Wins0-5 Losses
Beasts of ChaosNone70.0%51.03%10
Maggotkin of Nurgle Drowned Men68.0%204.12%20
Legion of the First Prince61.5%132.68%00
NighthauntScarlet Doom60.0%112.27%00
Beasts of ChaosGavespawn60.0%61.24%00
SeraphonThunder Lizard59.6%285.77%42
BonesplitterzDrakkfoot58.3%61.24%00
Cities of SigmarLiving City57.7%132.68%20
Ogor MawtribesBoulderhead56.0%51.03%00
Kharadron OverlordsBarak-Zilfin53.3%61.24%01
Idoneth DeepkinMor’Phann53.3%61.24%10
Lumineth Realm-LordsZaitrec52.9%153.09%00
Sons of BehematBreaker Tribe52.8%153.09%00
Idoneth DeepkinNautilar51.3%81.65%00
IronjawzIronsunz50.0%61.24%01
Daughters of KhaineHagg Nar50.0%71.44%01
Stormcast EternalsAstral Templars50.0%61.24%00
Daughters of KhaineZainthar Kai49.2%122.47%01
Stormcast EternalsHammers of Sigmar48.8%336.80%02
Soulblight GravelordsVyrkos Dynasty48.0%102.06%00
Soulblight GravelordsKastelai Dynasty45.5%112.27%01
Stormcast EternalsHallowed Knights44.7%153.09%01
KruleboyzBig Yellers43.4%81.65%01
Skaven43.0%91.86%10
FyreslayersLofnir42.9%71.44%01
Hedonites of SlaaneshLurid Haze42.0%51.03%00
IronjawzBloodtoofs41.7%102.06%00
NighthauntEmerald Host41.5%132.68%02
Big Waaagh!41.3%81.65%00
Maggotkin of NurgleBefouling Host40.0%71.44%11
FyreslayersGreyfyrd35.8%122.47%01
Ossiarch BonereapersPetrifex Elite28.8%153.09%02
Gloomspite Gitz25.0%81.65%01
Factions in Bold are those with 3rd Edition Battletomes published before or during this time period

Maggotkin of Nurgle are a bit of a strange faction. While you have one of the meta leading Subfactions inside the tome with Drowned Men (68.0%, at the bottom of the pack you have Befouling Host (40.0%). It’s not an irregularity either as 7 players have played that subfaction and one claimed 5 wins at an event and another 5 losses. This suggests to me that while Drowned Men is a simple list to play, Befouling Host is completely the opposite and requires good memory and skill from the pilot.

After almost a year of publication now, both Stormcast and Orruk Warclan battletomes are beginning to show a little lag behind the other updated factions (apart from Fyreslayers of course). As the first of the Battletomes perhaps this has played into their stats slightly as the rules writers learn from their mistakes (apart from Fyreslayers of course) when writing the newer tomes.

Scarlet Doom shows that its the faction of choice for a reason in the new Nighthaunt battletome (60.0%) however, its still early days for this battletome and the other factions could be more complicated to pick up and play. However 60.0% win rate for any subfaction is too high and so they may need a future nerf at some point.

Going forwards as the weeks go on, I’ll be keeping an eye out for Grinin’ Blades beginning to get some more play with their updated allegiance abilities after not being placed at all due to all the Kruleboyz players choosing Big Yellers – this will change. I expect to see them nearing the 50% mark and above. Likewise with Skaven, I expect them to begin climbing the rankings as their new rules come into effect.

THE SUPRISE

I said I had a surprise, and here it is!

Woehammer will be doing a player ranking system for the new General’s Handbook based on the Elo system used by Chess.

Who gets ranked?

Everyone who takes part in a two day event using the General’s Handbook: Pitched Battles Season 1 2022-23. Each week I’ll update the scores of the players as they happen and post them in a separate rankings post which will be published every Saturday.

All players will begin with a rating of 1,000 at the beginning of the season, player ratings will be carried over into season 2 and beyond in the future.

I’ve included the current rankings below (there’s only been two GT’s using the new Handbook) which includes everyone at present. However, I will limit this to the top 20 as more players are ranked. The full downloadable player rankings will be available on the site to download next weekend.

PlayerCountryRegionRating
John BScotlandEurope1,049.4
David JackScotlandEurope1,031.2
Leigh MartinScotlandEurope1,030.3
Zachary ShinnUSANorth America1,029.7
Nathan WatsonScotlandEurope1,029.4
Jonathon RobertsUSANorth America1,020.0
Daniel GomezUSANorth America1,019.2
Cara NewbyScotlandEurope1,010.6
Richard McQuarrieScotlandEurope1,010.3
Karl RohrUSANorth America1,010.0
Alastair MaxwellScotlandEurope1,010.0
Reece FraserScotlandEurope1,010.0
Jamie McHughScotlandEurope1,010.0
Ryan PothecaryScotlandEurope1,010.0
Ian (Yes, just Ian)ScotlandEurope1,009.7
Aaron Burns LeesScotlandEurope1,009.4
Allan GeorgeScotlandEurope1,000.3
Douglas KlemUSANorth America1,000.0
Frank KellyScotlandEurope999.1
Scott SempleScotlandEurope999.1
Alasdair RobertsonScotlandEurope990.0
Michael SmithUSANorth America989.4
James HobsonScotlandEurope988.3
Michael PetersonUSANorth America980.3
Lewis MitchellScotlandEurope971.2
Grant FraserScotlandEurope968.9
Andrew DowlingUSANorth America961.7
AoS Player Rankings on 3rd July 2022

Top Three AoS Lists for Coliseum of Sigmar Carnage GT

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This is the Top Three AoS Lists for the Coliseum of Sigmar Carnage GT that took place in Florida, USA on 2nd and 3rd July. It involved 9 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: Lumineth Realm-lords
Army Subfaction: Zaitrec
– Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs
– Triumphs: Inspired

LEADER
Sevireth (345)*
Vanari Lord Regent (155)*
General
– Command Traits: Fast Learner
– Artefacts: Gift of Celennar
– Spells: Speed of Hysh, Overwhelming Heat, Total Eclipse
Hurakan Windmage (120)*
Spells: Guiding Flurries, Overwhelming Heat, Transporting Vortex

BATTLELINE
Vanari Auralan Wardens (145)*
– High Warden
– Spells: Overwhelming Heat, Etheral Blessings
Vanari Auralan Wardens (145)*
High Warden
– Spells: Overwhelming Heat, Protection of Hysh
2 x Vanari Auralan Sentinels (510)*
High Sentinel
– Spells: Overwhelming Heat, Lambent Light

TERRAIN
Shrine Luminor (0)

OTHER
Hurakan Spirit of the Wind (265)*
Hurakan Spirit of the Wind (265)*

CORE BATTALIONS:
*Battle Regiment

TOTAL POINTS: (1950/2000)

Brett: A list that plays well to Lumineth’s strengths at the moment. The list is doubling down on mortal wounds with no less than 5 sources of Overwhelming Heat (hits do mortals on a 5+ not 6+). Something is always going to be in range. The Spirit’s of the Wind can dart out to make ranged attacks and then fall back to be healed and we all know what Sentinels are like if they can’t be shut down. This list makes that hard by not only providing screening (Warden’s), but Sevireth and the Lord Regent can punish a unit that gets too close. Looking at the matchups and that’s what has happened, with only Nighthaunt able to push Jonathan to a loss through a combination of ignoring rend and their ward save blunting the shooting. Legion of the First Prince may have had the bodies, but is too reliant on it’s Hero units to be really effective into this list and poor Sons. A well deserved win with a faction that is not at the top of the meta showing the overall balance in AoS is pretty good.

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Army Faction: Nighthaunt
Army Subfaction: The Emerald Host
Grand Strategy: Take what’s Theirs
Triumph: Bloodthirsty

LEADER
Guardian of Souls (150)
General
– Command Traits: Master of Magic
– Chill Blade
– Artefacts: Midnight Tome
– Spells: Seal of Shyish
Spirit Torment (115)
Dreadblade Harrow (145)**
Artefacts: Arcane Tome
– Spells: Seal of Shyish
Kurdoss Valentian (210)**
Krulghast Cruciator (150)**

BATTLELINE
1 x Chainrasps (220)
Hexwraiths (160)*
1 x Grimghast Reapers (320)*
Hexwraiths (160)*

BEHEMOTH
Mourngul (300)

ENDLESS SPELL
Purple Sun of Shyish (70)

CORE BATTALIONS:
*Bounty Hunters
**Command Entourage – Magnificent

TOTAL POINTS: (2000/2000)

Brett: An Emerald Host list with only 20 Chainrasp? But it also has 20 Grimghast and a host of heroes. What makes this interesting is eschewing Lady Olynder gives the list both Kurdoss and the Dreadblade Harrow (costing an extra 15 points). Great play for mobility because the Dreadblade can stay with the Hexwraiths and issue a command for free. So if the Guardian of Souls issues an All-out Attack to the Grimghast, the Dreadblade can issue the same order for free. The Mourngul is a rarer inclusion and I think still too expensive, but brings some useful abilities, mortal wounds and de-buffs on top of his reasonable damage. This is a very aggressive list with the ability to put out serious damage, the Grimghast will operate at 3 attacks each for most of the game. The Purple Sun is a natural inclusion with this many wizards, and since the new pack is a really useful spell. I expect to see this in a lot of lists (at least 2 here). Strong mobility with the 8″ natural movement for the infantry and the inclusion of highly mobile cavalry the list is good at playing both the mission and the opponent.

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Army Faction: Stormcast Eternals
Army Type: Scions of the Storm
– Army Subfaction: Hallowed Knights
– Grand Strategy: No Place For The Weak
– Triumphs: Inspired

LEADER
Gardus Steel Soul (150)*
Lord-Castellant (155)*
General
– Command Traits: Master of Magic
– Artefacts: Arcane Tome
– Spells: Celestial Blades
– Bonding: Krondspine Incarnate of Ghur

BATTLELINE
1 x Judicators with Boltstorm Crossbows (380)*
2 x Thunderbolt Crossbow
Liberators (115)*
Liberator-Prime
– Heavens-wrought Weapon and Sigmarite Shield
Liberators (115)**
Liberator-Prime
– Heavens-wrought Weapon and Sigmarite Shield

BEHEMOTH
Krondspine Incarnate of Ghur (400)*

OTHER
1 x Stormdrake Guard (680)**
Stormdrake-Prime
– Drakerider’s Warblade

CORE BATTALIONS:
*Battle Regiment
**Bounty Hunters

TOTAL POINTS: (1995/2000)

Brett: Stormcast making it to the podium with the help of the Incarnate. We have already seen a shift away from hero hammer in a few lists and this is a very clever way of using all of the tools SCE has. The inclusion of the incarnate sees 2 mobile threats on the table in combination with the 4 Stormdrakes. Keep the Incarnate close to the heroes and you can give it both a 3+ save and a 5+ ward making it very hard to lower it’s levels. Your best hope may be a more horde approach, because you wouldn’t want a monster anywhere near the Incarnate in case it levelled, but you need 18 wounds in a turn to force it down a level. Looking at the results that’s happened with Daniel’s loss in Round 2 to the 2nd place Nighthaunt list. The small heroes keep costs down to allow the list to include shooting, dragons and the incarnate. The Liberators are here just as the cheapest battleline. The Storm drakes in bounty hunters is a terrifying prospect – 36 D2 -1 and 16 D3 -2 attacks in melee (no rend against Nighthaunt though). The Judicators shouldn’t be ignored either, they get 2 hits for every successful attack, Unleash Hell from this unit, say protecting the Incarnate and Heroes, would be devastating but limits the Incarnate’s mobility. A good solid and a little counter intuitive list.

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Army Faction: Idoneth Deepkin
Subfaction: Nautilar
– Grand Strategy: The Creeping Gloomtide
– Triumph: Inspired x2

LEADERS
Eidolon of Mathlann Aspect of the Sea (325)*
General
– Command Traits: Endless Sea Storm
– Artefacts of Power: Arcane Tome
– Spells: Steed of Tides
Akhelian King (250)*
Bladed Polearm and Falchion
– Mount Traits: Voidchill Darkness
Isharann Soulrender (120)*

BATTLELINE
Namarti Reavers (170)**
Namarti Reavers (170)**
Akhelian Leviadon (500)***
Mount Traits: Ancient
Namarti Thralls (390)***
Icon Bearer

ENDLESS SPELLS & INVOCATIONS
1 x Purple Sun of Shyish (70)

TERRAIN
1 x Gloomtide Shipwreck (0)

CORE BATTALIONS
*Command Entourage – Magnificent
**Expert Conquerors
***Bounty Hunters

TOTAL POINTS: 1995/2000

Brett: Our last instalment had an Idoneth list on the podium, here we see another variation that didn’t quite make it. I feel like this is more of an Idoneth list with the Leviadon and bigger heroes (Eidolon and the Akehlian King). The new book seems to favour the smaller infantry units though, to me that feels more like Daughters. Anyway back to the list, the combination of Eidolon and the Leviathan gives some really strong mid board threat, forcing your opponent to decide if they want to play into it (and get shot) or play the fringes. The Purple Sun is an unusual inclusion for Idoneth but that shows just how strong it is. Underlining how useful the Arcane Tome is, there are no wizards in this list but there is an endless spell. I would prefer Master of Magic as the trait to ensure I could get the Sun out. Looking at the scoring for the overall tournament I wonder if the lack of bodies (800 points in 2 models) made playing the mission more difficult. A very flavourful list that still performed well in this format.

Looking at the overall placings it’s interesting to see that 3 and 4 out scored the top 2 who took the tournament on wins. Does this suggest a change with the new Battle Tactics/Grand Strategy where consistently scoring the same points is more difficult and there are a lot more swings?

Final Tournament Placings

AoS Meta Stats (w/e 26th June 2022)

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Here are the AoS Meta Stats for all the Grand Tournaments that have taken place between Monday 20th June and Sunday 26th June 2022. These are all the GT’s that I can locate on Tabletop.to or BestCoastPairing, if you know of any others please send me a link and I’ll add them.

There were only 2 Grand Tournaments last week, a quiet week! But both have 32 players with a nice mix of factions.

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Grand Tournaments

Ranked from largest to smallest.

Giga-Con: Age of Sigmar Teams Event – Georgia/USA
32 Players

PositionFactionSubfactionResult
1stSeraphon Thunder Lizard5-0-0
2ndBeasts of Chaos4-1-0
3rdBeasts of Chaos4-0-1
4thOgor MawtribesBoulderhead4-0-1
5thLumineth Realm-Lords Zaitrec4-0-1
6thHedonites of Slaanesh Godseekers Host4-0-1
7thCities of SigmarLiving City 4-0-1
8thNighthaunt Scarlet Doom4-0-1
9thStormcast EternalsHallowed Knights3-1-1
10thBig Waaagh!3-1-1
Giga-Con: Age of Sigmar Teams Event

Ironweld Open GT – Massachusetts/USA
32 Players

PositionFactionSubfactionResult
1stSeraphonThunder Lizard 5-0-0
2ndSeraphon Thunder Lizard 4-0-1
3rdLegion of the First Prince4-0-1
4thSeraphonThunder Lizard 4-0-1
5thBonesplitterz Drakkfoot 3-1-1
6thLumineth Realm-Lords Zaitrec 3-1-1
7thDaughters of KhaineHagg Nar3-0-2
8thDaughters of KhaineZainthar Kai 3-0-2
9thStormcast EternalsHallowed Knights 3-0-2
10thSoulblight Gravelords Vyrkos Dynasty 3-0-2
Ironweld Open GT
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Grand Alliance Stats

64 players took part in 2 GT’s over the last week.

Grand AllianceWin RateArmies% Share of Armies5-0 Wins4+ Wins
Chaos55.6%914.1%04
Order53.7%3046.9%26
Death50.0%1015.6%01
Death39.3%1523.4%01

Faction Stats

The below stat show the results for those factions represented by 5 armies or more only.

FactionWin RateArmies% Share of Armies5-0 Wins0-5 Losses
Seraphon 80.0%57.9%20
Lumineth Realm-Lords 60.0%57.9%00
Soulblight Gravelords 40.0%57.9%00

With very few tournaments this week there’s not enough data to draw reliable win rates from.

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Subfaction Stats

Next week, I’ll have built up four weeks worth of data and at this point I will transition the stats over four weeks rather than a single week. This will helpfully give us more reliable data. At some point I’ll go backwards as well to the start of AoS 3.

Top Three AoS Lists from the Ironweld GT

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This is the Top Three AoS Lists for the Ironweld GT that took place in Massachusetts, USA on 25th and 26th June. 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.

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Also if there’s a one day or two day tournament you’d like us to cover drop us a comment on this post and we’ll have a look at it for you.

The Top Three AoS Lists

Army Faction: Seraphon
Army Type: Coalesced
– Subfaction: Thunder Lizard
– Grand Strategy: Beast Master

LEADERS
Engine of the Gods (265)**
General
– Command Traits: Prime Warbeast
– Artefacts of Power: Incandescent Rectrices
– Mount Traits: Beastmaster
– Prayers: Heal
Saurus Astrolith Bearer (150)***
Artefacts of Power: Fusil of Conflagration
Lord Kroak (430)***
Celestant-Prime (325)***

BATTLELINE
Skinks (75)**
Skink Alpha
– Boltspitter and Moonstone Club
Skinks (75)**
Skink Alpha
– Boltspitter and Moonstone Club
Saurus Guard (115)***
Saurus Guard Alpha
– Stardrake Icon Bearer
– Wardrummer

BEHEMOTH
Bastiladon with Ark of Sotek (165)*
Bastiladon with Ark of Sotek (165)*
Bastiladon with Ark of Sotek (165)*

ENDLESS SPELLS & INVOCATIONS
1 x Horrorghast (65)

TERRAIN
1 x Realmshaper Engine (0)

CORE BATTALIONS
*Alpha-Beast Pack
**Battle Regiment
***Warlord – Magnificent

TOTAL POINTS: 1995/2000

Declan – Seraphon have been good throughout GHB21 and they end here also on top. There’s loads you can do with the list and that is why they remain on top. Normally people take the Solar Engines but Michael has taken 3 Ark of Soteks. These have some advantages over the Solar Engines – they are cheaper, don’t give up additional Hunt points, and they are great into the mirror. Lots of attacks, with mortal wounds and damage 1 mean a Thunder Lizard list has minimal impact on this.

Added to this Kroak throws out a tonne of mortal wound magic to be able to take down support characters at range with ease. There’s no surprise this list came out on top with all it’s tools!

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Allegiance: Seraphon
Constellation: Thunder Lizard
– Grand Strategy: Beast Master
– Triumphs: Inspired

Leaders
Engine of the Gods (265)**
Artefact: Fusil of Conflaguration
– Universal Prayer Scripture: Curse
Skink Priest (80)**
Universal Prayer Scripture: Guidance
Skink Priest (80)**
Universal Prayer Scripture: Heal
Skink Starpriest (130)***
Spell: Hand of Glory
Slann Starmaster (265)***
Artefact: Itxi Grubs
– Spell: Stellar Tempest
Stegadon with Skink Chief (305)***
General
– Command Trait: Arcane Might
– Artefact: Cloak of Feathers
– Weapon: Skystreak Bow
– Mount Trait: Beastmaster

Battleline
30 x Skinks (225)****
Boltspitters & Moonstone Clubs
– Reinforced x 2
10 x Skinks (75)****
Boltspitters Celestite Daggers & Star Bucklers
10 x Skinks (75)****
Boltspitters Celestite Daggers & Star Bucklers

Behemoths
Bastiladon with Solar Engine (250)*
Bastiladon with Solar Engine (250)*

Core Battalions
*Alpha-Beast Pack
**Command Entourage – Magnificent
***Command Entourage – Magnificent
****Hunters of the Heartlands

Additional Enhancements
Artefact
Artefact

Total: 2000 / 2000
Reinforced Units: 2 / 4
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 111
Drops: 11

Declan – a totally different type of Thunder Lizard army goes to show the strength in depth to the book. This relies on the Bastiladons shooting at range, and buffing the 30 skinks with 4 or 5 buffs (most automatic) and rending through an opponent at range.

If your opponent is lucky enough to reach you, the Bastiladons provide excellent blockers of space with their 1+ armour save. Unless you bring mortal wounds this a monster list to defeat. I tend to go for the big unit of Skinks, but you need to charge a sacrificial unit first to make them use unleash hell. That said I’ve always struggled against this list, and I imagine others do as well.

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Army Faction: Legion of the First Prince
Grand Strategy: Beast Master
– Triumphs: Inspired

LEADER
Be’lakor (360)
Spells: The Master’s Command
Bloodthirster of Insensate Rage (280)
General
– Command Traits: Ruinous Aura
– Artefacts: Armour of the Pact
– Bonding: Krondspine Incarnate of Ghur
Kairos Fateweaver (435)*
Spells: The Master’s Command

BATTLELINE
Flesh Hounds (105)*
Bloodletters (115)*
Plaguebearers (150)*

BEHEMOTH
Krondspine Incarnate of Ghur (400)*

ENDLESS SPELL
Umbral Spellportal (70)
Emerald Lifeswarm (60)

CORE BATTALIONS:
*Battle Regiment

TOTAL POINTS: (1975/2000)

Declan – the Incarnate! Emma has brought a monstrous beast in the Incarnate, backing up a Legion of the First Prince list which has all the tech. If you’ve not seen it before it is very difficult to play against due to all the moving parts. It also does surprisingly little damage – although the Incarnate will change this.

This army wins by stopping opponents getting objectives and battle tactics with Belakor turning off one unit for a turn and Kairos to change a dice roll. If you think you’re running 6″ to get that objective, you’re probably not. This means it’s difficult to reliably score points against it whilst it racks them up. Nothing in GHB22 suggests this won’t work just as well.

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Army Faction: Lumineth Realm-lords
Army Subfaction: Zaitrec

LEADER
Archmage Teclis (740)
General
Scinari Loreseeker (170)
Spells: Lambent Light, Solar Flare

BATTLELINE
Vanari Auralan Wardens (145)
High Warden
– Spells: Overwhelming Heat, Total Eclipse
Vanari Auralan Wardens (145)
High Warden
– Spells: Overwhelming Heat, Speed of Hysh
2 x Vanari Auralan Sentinels (510)
High Sentinel
– Spells: Overwhelming Heat, Lambent Light

ENDLESS SPELL
Purple Sun of Shyish (70)
Rune of Petrification (75)

OTHER
Vanari Dawnriders (140)

TOTAL POINTS: (1995/2000)

Declan – LRL and the first Purple Sun of Shyish we’ve seen. And boy… is it a monster.

Games Workshop – GHB22

Whilst it’s difficult to cast the LRL shouldn’t have too much trouble, and they you’re looking at a huge area that big monsters can’t go into and – even they risk it – they’ll be at -1 save. An extra pip of rend is worth it’s weight in gold.

The rest of the army is based around Teclis who can auto-cast spells (look a Purple Sun!) and 20 Sentinels for some long range non-LOS shooting with mortal wounds and re-rolling thrown in for good measure.

I’ve fought Teclis before, and the answer I think is to charge en-masse and kill everything that isn’t Teclis – oh… and don’t roll a 1!

Final Tournament Placings