Two weekends past I attended a one-day, three-game Age of Sigmar event at Ragnarok Hobbies. There were 16 players total and we used all the standard rules you’d expect for a 2,000 point tournament with the current General’s Handbook. The TO also had optional “AoS+” rules in hidden envelopes for anyone that wanted to use these, my first game we decided against them then I promptly forgot they existed the rest of the day. Held at Ragnarok Hobbies it was a nice set of tables and terrain to play on! Thanks to Luke for organising. 

The Beginning of the End

This is my last Age of Sigmar third edition event and, if I can get away with it, my last games of third edition AoS in general. I really have enjoyed this edition a lot, played primarily Fyreslayers throughout, a handful of games with Kharadrons before just shelving them due to being un-fun to play with, and have absolutely loved building and painting this Gitz army that I started in November ’23; though I do sort of wish I’d started playing a “good” army a bit sooner…

I’m always quitting while I’m ahead with a win-rate in third edition of about 80% across 34 games between those three armies. That’s not all of third to be fair, just since Tabletop Battles App started supporting third; frankly it’s probably a bit lower but there’s no proof, is there! I’ve played in teams events, one-day three game events, and even a couple five game grand tournaments. One thing I like to brag about is just how incredible the community at all of these events have always been, even on top tables when games are intense there’s mutual respect and understanding; I’ve had a grand total of one bad experience with a single opponent in one game at an event, that’s it. Some of my best friends have been made through gaming and specifically through Age of Sigmar, being invited along to attend the Brotherhood Teams event this past January easily peaks as my favourite event I’ve attended and that’s down to my teammates.

Really this is by far the best version of Age of Sigmar that has existed since it came out, and I’ve played every edition from the start pre-points which was a hell of a time. Armies have the right feel across the board. Rules are as clear as they probably can be with very little ambiguity or cause to call TOs during events. Balance will never be perfect but a quick look at AoS Stats and everything looks pretty solid, actually. The miniatures are also just incredible and easily the best range consistently across what Games Workshop puts out.

I am both hopeful and a little fearful of the next edition. A clean slate is, in my honest opinion, a great thing to be able to work from. While I do love this edition to bits there are a few things that I’d like to see toned down to removed like save stacking and returning slain models to the extent third allows you to. We’ll just have to wait and see! Until then I’ll be playing Conquest, Old World, Necromunda, Burrows and Badgers, Star Wars Legion, and who knows what else.

Get on with It…

Now to get to the real reason you’re here: how these games went and what list I played!

But first there were free pastries included and served up during the first game. This ruled.

My list:

Army Faction: Gloomspite Gitz
Army Subfaction: Glogg’s Megamob
Grand Strategy: Chasing the Moon
Triumphs: Indomitable (not that I ever get to use it!)

LEADER

Dankhold Troggboss (210)**
General
Command Traits: Alpha Trogg
Artefacts: Glowy Howzit

Trugg (320)***

Skragrott, the Loonking (230)***

Madcap Shaman (70)*
Spells: Merciless Blizzard

Madcap Shaman (70)*
Artefacts: Moonface Mommet
Spells: Itchy Nuisance

BATTLELINE
6 x Rockgut Troggoths (340)***

3 x Rockgut Troggoths (170)***

20 x Moonclan Stabbas (120)***
Bad Moon Icon Bearer
Moonclan Boss
Gong Basher
3 Barbed Nets
Stabba

TERRAIN
Bad Moon Loonshrine (0)

OTHER
Dankhold Troggoth (190)**

5 x Sporesplatta Fanatics (90)***

5 x Gobbapalooza (180)***
Spells: The Hand of Gork

CORE BATTALIONS:

*Andtorian Acolytes

**Troggherd Heavies

***Battle Regiment

TOTAL POINTS: (1990/2000)

This is a very simple list. It uses Trugg and troggs as its core, making use of the Troggherd Heavies to free up my Madcap Shamans for the Acolytes battalion while still getting that second artefact for the ever-important Moonface Mommet. Glowy Howzit keeps my General alive for a very easy Grand Strategy. Glogg’s Megamob is an easy pick, the amount of healing that the three bigger troggs get to do is just insane, keeps them alive and kicking, and means that a savvy opponent needs to put a lot of hurt on any of them all at once for a chance to kill one. Combine that with the innate +1 save they gain from the light of the Bad Moon and they’re very tanky, even without a Ward.

Skragrott and Trugg gives me two Warlords (for 18″ commands to troggs which can’t command themselves!) and are very important for the list. Skragrott gives me an additional aura of Bad Moon light, a free command each turn, an incredible damage spell, and 2 casts/dispels at +1 each with the flexibility of knowing the entire spell lore. Never leave home without him! Trugg is something that I get asked about constantly if he’s “worth it” outside his Army of Renown and the answer is yes, a massive YES! In this list having one element that can wander off away from my support auras and just cause havoc all on its own is massive for many battleplans; slapping him with a Hand of Gork deep in enemy lines turn 1 is huge.

The best use I’ve found with that, too, is to use the Gobbapalooza’s +1 charge potion for an 8″ charge after a teleport (game 3 spoiler) since the extra rend is often not needed, especially in the matchups I had this weekend. Having the choice, however, is massive! Combine as needed with Moonface Mommet against a particularly tough enemy unit for an effective -4 Rend to just remove all that save stacking they meticulously applied.

Sporesplatta Fanatics combined with the Troggboss’ ability to just stack extra attacks where I needed also invaluable. This quickly becomes a list of keeping tight 9″ and 12″ auras as well as command range across multiple units for maximum output and flexibility. It’s incredibly fun to play! It’s also just very, very good as an army. With a total of 6 casts and unbinds (2 of which are at +1), very hard hitting melee units that are also very tough and heal up every hero phase and each time they fight, mortal wounds at range and teleporting for objective play there’s really not much this army can’t do. I’m not too sure why we don’t see Gitz more placing in Competitive Innovations!

Game One – No Reward Without Risk vs Steve’s Daughters of Khaine

First game Saturday morning was against a local gamer who I’d not had the pleasure to play against before! Shockingly this was only my third game against Daughters of Khaine but with the last two having gone very well in my favour I was optimistic (especially since he didn’t have that dreadful snake spell that eat troggs up so easily!).

Easily my favourite battleplan of the season, which I would say as a Fyreslayer and Gitz player! Being able to deploy into combat with each other, much further up the board, with a tight set of objectives is incredibly fun.

Steve brought a pretty typical Daughters list with Morathi, a bunch of snakes, and the mandatory two units of Kinerai for an incredibly easy battle tactic and some mid-game screening that did their job well. I deployed my one-drop first slapping a bunch of Troggs right on the line and he followed suit by placing Morathi in combat to start the game off with her fighting before any other dice were rolled! Thanks to a bit of luck though I only lost one Trogg to her hero-phase attacks and lost a second to some shooting. That unit of six was whittled down to just two by the end of the game, but they stayed strong and killed Morathi as soon as they were able.

As you can see things just continued to go well for the Troggs. I lost my unit of 20 stabbas, freeing up space for Trugg to move through and remove five snakes and five Kinerai in one round of combat on his own; Steve didn’t have much a choice here on attacking them due to my placement of units from the angle he attacked. Then 10 stabbas returned through the Loonshrine to go and take objectives like the good little grots they are!

A very solid game but the Troggs really pulled their weight and did an incredibly amount of damage, removing all of the aelves from the table by the top of turn three. We played and scored through of course for the sake of tournament scoring.

Lunch

With my first game over a bit sooner than some others a friend who also finished his game early, and I walked down the road to Subway for a quick bite and some fresh air. I had a 12″ teriyaki chicken on toasted herb and cheese bread with lettuce, red onion, grated cheese, tomato, and sweet onion sauce. Might be an off-meta sub for your local scene but a real staple to my rare Subway visits.

Game Two – Limited Resources vs George’s Beasts of Chaos

This is where I promptly forget to take more than one photo each game; I’ll blame the 12″ of bread and filling I just consumed for this one. My next game was up against George’s Allherd Beasts of Chaos army. George is another local, is 14 years old, and hasn’t been playing wargames that long; despite all that he’s a very smart player. This was easily my toughest game of the day, and one of the toughest and best games my Gitz army has had since I started playing them. There’s something incredibly unnerving about an enemy army that can just null deploy against you, arrive ultimately where they want, and cause damage from off the table with ease. My little unit of sporesplattas didn’t have a chance of surviving past turn one (and they didn’t!).

Where do you move against and army that just isn’t there? What do you screen? In short: you just don’t, really.

I also really despise this battleplan. It involves far too much thinking that, as you’ll see on the scoreboard, I messed up early on and hindered myself from a potentially very important single point! Less missions with this much thinking in fourth please.

The troggs were victorious on this one but for one very big reason: the Beasts failed about eight rolls for 8″ charges in a row, including the use of two re-rolls. Nothing over a 6 rolled that whole turn two charge phase from the army that appeared behind and around me. If he’d made even a few of those charges this game could have gone the other way or at the absolute minimum ended in a much tighter score or draw. But that’s dice games sometimes! We’ve all been there at one point or another. Removing the Herdstone turn 1 with a Hand of Gork on Trugg and rolling the 3+ definitely helped, too, even if it did put Trugg in a weird spot by himself for the rest of the game.

Despite that, the Beasts still put up a great fight and lasted out until turn five ending in the tightest score of the day.

Game 3 – Geomantic Pulse vs Kelvin’s Hedonites of Slaanesh

Last game of the day and now blaming mental exhaustion of 9″ auras and casting spells in the right order all day for only taking one photo here.

This is the second time I’ve played against Kelvin, the last time being in late 2023 during the same General’s Handbook but I had Fyreslayers and he was rocking a Belakor-lead Slaves to Darkness army. A great opponent once again and I was more concerned about this matchup with the amount of potential mortal wounds combined with an army-wide -1 to hit which hurts my low-volume high-value attack army quite a lot. We both came to the

Geomantic Pulse is a funny battleplan for my army. He had a one-drop and given the amount of buffs as well as potential turn-1 damage he could throw out I anticipated going second. Going second in the first turn is fantastic in this battleplan: it means that if I win the roll off into turn two I get to choose where the pulse goes by not taking the double turn and if my opponent wins that roll off they have a very difficult choice to make! Troggs are able to be doubled against and withstand it. Because of that I decided to deploy hard to one side of the table and this paid off. With only one point to score in the first turn, as well as a battle tactic, you don’t have to rush for all the objectives all at once and Kelvin was very smart to not move too close, aside from cavalry which tried to take out Trugg and failed. Trying to take out Trugg before he’s able to get any buffs or before I can cast protective magic is absolutely the right play, he needs to be killed in one turn.

Turn two came around, Kelvin won that roll-off, and decided that he needed a turn more than he needed to choose the pulse’s location. Probably the correct call here but allowed me to place it on the left side of the table and you can imagine how that looked. A couple turns later and there weren’t any Slaanesh on the field by the bottom of the third turn.

The best play I was able to make was giving my Dankhold Troggoth a +1″ charge potion, casting Hand of Gork from outside dispel range, and making that 8″ charge right into the mirror-holding wizard to take it out in one big swing. That unit is absolutely nuts and since it can’t give commands to itself doesn’t really care about the mirror-wizard’s ability for no commands! Turns out four attacks that hit on 3+ wound on 2+ with Rend -2 and an incredible D3-3 damage each kills stuff fast so long as you don’t roll 1s. So just don’t roll 1s!

The End of an Era

And that’s it! Three game and three wins of Age of Sigmar third edition to finish out the season and the edition. A great way to do so, too. Great opponents, a great crowd to spend the day with, and a great TO organising it all. Plus free pastries!!

That’s not quite the end, however. After the games finished we were asked to choose one model to put up as our “best painted single mini.” I’d asked Kelvin his opinion between my Skragrott and Shroomancer since they’re about the same and I went with his opinion: my Shroomancer. He also said “why did I say that, the last time I helped someone pick a model for a painting competition they won!” and I think he must have the magic touch or something, because I won! My second-ever painting award! I really wish I’d taken a photo of the competition for this because it was very amusing to see my little grot wizard next to a Glottkin, Belakor, Morathi, and other equally-large models.

I did also place second overall in the event and just one single point behind first place (a Daughters of Khaine list with a Treelord and the horrendously good snake endless spell) which meant I was kicking myself for my misplay in game two the whole way home. One point! That said, it is the best I’ve ever done in a non-teams event and can’t really complain, I even got these cool little placards! Not to mention the £10 store credit that immediately got spent on a pre-order for a box of Blood Bowl Gnomes.

Roll on fourth edition!

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