The Six Nations AoS Teams Tournament is coming up soon, where England, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Sweden and Wales will compete against each other and the lists have just been released. To give you an overview of the kinds of matchups that will be coming up and what we can learn from the submissions of these national teams, we’ve come up with six takeaways from the lists.

For reference, here’s all the army lists in one handy download (courtesy of AoS 6 Nations, Underworld Gaming and Mediocre Hobbies)

Blood for the Blood God…Apart from in Scotland.

Of the Six Nations, all countries took a Khorne variant apart from Scotland, underlining how powerful Khorne are in the current meta with their ability to march across the board and stomp their authority on any game. Prayers are clearly going to be a key part of the Khorne strategy alongside the ubiquitous Murderlust for those out of phase movements. Only one Skarbrand out of the five lists, but lots of Wrathmongers and Flesh Hounds with one Bloodlords list with waves of Bloodletters. Other popular lists included Soulblight Legion of Night with Manfred appearing in three of the four lists; Seraphon Fangs of Sotek with double Ark of Sotek Bastiladon; three King Brodd’s Stomps, with three bigs and three littles and three Disciples of Tzeentch Guild of Summoners lists with 12 Enlightened on Discs.

Give me ALL of the Primal Dice!

While there are lots of battle regiments in the lists as expected, the next most common battalion is Andtorian Acolytes for those extra Primal Dice. In most cases, the lists in question could not fit into a single battle regiment, but rather than going for a second battle regiment, those extra Primals seemed to be worth going to a three drop list minimum. Alongside a high frequency of Merciless Blizzard, the potential for a single hero phase to turn around what should be an easy win to a loss (or vice-versa) is definitely there. Even just being aware of the threat will impact on the opponent’s strategy, which might be enough to get a positive result for your team.

Fight me, you coward!

We are clearly in a combat-heavy meta at the moment, with the vast majority of lists focusing on winning the battle by fighting in combat as opposed to relying on ranged shooting attacks. Both Daughters of Khaine lists have eschewed the Bow Snakes for the Fighty Snakes; there are no Lumineth Sentinels at the event; even Kharadron Overlords are much more focused on fighting out of a Frigate rather than Thunderers blasting away from range. There are a couple of exceptions, with all of the Idoneth lists having a healthy amount of shooting, with even the Namarti-heavy list having 40 Reavers and the Shark lists having a huge number of attacks that will also explode on 6s. It will be interesting who these will be matched up with because the lack of return shooting from their opponents could really swing the matchup in the fish-elves favour!

OB – Where?

One of the more underrepresented armies of the top echelon recently are Ossiarch Bonereapers, with only two nations choosing to collect the Bone Tithe and both of these being Null Myriad lists. The points increases on Immortis seem to have done the trick as there are only two units at the event, with Deathriders and Mortek picking up the slack. Perhaps this isn’t surprising as only a quarter of the armies at the event are heavy magic-users and the pairings process can potentially avoid a single anti-magic army. Other notable missing armies include Beasts of Chaos, Ogor Mawtribes and Kruleboyz – just kidding! As recently as a few months back, there would be less variation than we have represented, with nineteen of twenty-four battle tomes in attendance, showing how healthy the meta currently is.

An Age of Heroes.

Across the lists, there is definitely a flavour of what unique heroes can bring to an army, not only narratively, but competitively too. Named characters who will be fighting it out include Gobsprakk, Katakros, Skarbrand, Brokk Grungsson, Kairos Fateweaver, Manfred Von Carstein, The Glottkin, Severith, Morathi and everyone’s (least) favourite angry dwarf, Gotrek. One of my favourite aspects of AoS is how cool it looks on the tabletop to have these centre-piece models battle it out and there will be ample opportunities for epic showdowns across the event with this array of heroes.

Skewl List, bro!

Most of the lists submitted are relatively close to a take-all-comers singles list too, but there are a couple of more skew lists that look really interesting that will cause absolute headaches for whoever gets paired into them. The IDK shark lists come close to this, but they’ve become a bit more mainstream, with several players running this list successfully. What might become more of a meta-list after this event and with the arrival of Belthanos on the scene is Andreas Angermund’s 18 Spiterider and 6 Seeker list. Firstly, respect to Andreas if he is transporting that many models with fragile and awkward wings but then to also give your opponent the dilemma of having these 24 flies be able to pre-game move 12″ before the game even starts…yikes! Another interesting list that could very quickly get across the table and punch you in the mouth is Greg Shelton’s 30 Black Knight list. Black Knights appear in several of the Soulblight lists, but no-one has gone as hard in as Greg has. If all three Black Knight units make a charge, Greg will be rolling 60 dice and expecting at least 20 mortal wounds as his return – scary stuff indeed.

So that’s six takeaways from the Six Nations lists. Best of luck to all competitors at what I’m sure will be a great event. Are there any interesting combos that I’ve missed? Please comment below if I have and let us know which list(s) you think will do the most work!