Welcome to Competitive Innovations, our weekly feature for a number of game lines across the tabletop wargame space. Each week our army list and tactics experts canvass the top tournaments for their game of specialty, looking at the week’s top match-ups and how they played out on the tabletop to let you know what’s hot, what’s not, and what might be coming next as the competitive meta evolves year-round.

We only got one event this week, but it’s a big one! The almost 100 person Everwinter event in my hometown of Boston is the first major of the year and the results are…surprising to say the least.

Everwinter: Age of Sigmar Grand Tournament

96-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Boston, MA, United States on January 04 2025. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

The Showdown

Mission – Focal Points

Jeremy Veysseire – Fyreslayers
Army List - Click to Expand

vs.

Thomas Guan – Hedonites of Slaanesh
Army List - Click to Expand

Thoughts

I didn’t expect we’d see either of these armies in the showdown any time soon but color me surprised. Both armies are leaning very strongly on a specific unit. The resilient Hearthguard Berzerkers vs the fast ranged Blissbarb Seekers and Archers.

For once, the Fyreslayers have a bit of an advantage here. The goal of a Blissbarb Seeker list is to pelt enemy units holding the objectives they don’t, because Seekers get +1 rend attacking units on objectives they don’t control. Throw enough Rend -2 shots at something it’s eventually going to drop, or be weakened enough you can charge in and outnumber them. Hearthguard Berzerkers really do not care about their save. It’s already a 6+, they’re relying on the Ward to save them. There is a real concern about sniping out heroes, which is where the Cloud of Ash prayer can save their butt by reducing the rend, or as an emergency button hit the Ash-cloud Rune to shroud them for a full turn of shooting.

These are both extremely top tier players who played very well, and Fyreslayers pull a very impressive victory.

Result

Fyreslayers Victory – 43 – 33

Jeremy Veysseire – Fyreslayers – 1st Place

The List

See Showdown

Archetype

Foot Dorfs

Thoughts

Well this isn’t a list I expected to see in the top spot any time soon. Fyreslayers have not exactly suffered in the new edition, as that implies they were doing hot before, but they haven’t had a good time. The Fyreslayers lists we have seen generally do run at least 1 Magmadroth, and this says, no actually I’ll take it on foot thank you very much.

Fyreslayers did get a few Ws in the battlescroll. Their points got slashed pretty heavily across the board, and they’re one of the biggest beneficiaries of the new Field Sergeant Honour Guard ability. Since the army is almost entirely foot heroes and has many subcommanders, it doesn’t require a lot of work to get the most out of it. +2″ to move is a 50% speed increase for the Dwarves. Combine it with the Rune of Relentless Zeal for Run and Charge and that’s a potential 12″ move before charging. Given the lack of speed is one of the key weaknesses of Fyreslayers, this is a huge boon.

Hearthguard Berzerkers are the Bread and Butter of this list. Both strong and resilient, they have a 5+ Ward near heroes, while also gaining an extra attack if the hero has taken any wounds. 30 Rend 1 Damage 2 attacks hurts! Augmenting their damage is the Grimwrath Berzerkers, which make excellent little Cruise Missles that often shoot their shot and then die, but tend to take down large targets while they do it.

Gotrek is an interesting addition here, as he’s mostly been by the wayside in 4th. He’s not nearly as scary, still doesn’t benefit from most faction abilities but he can still benefit from Field Sergeant, so him being able to move a fair bit quicker does put him in play a lot sooner. He’s far from his 3rd edition terror, but he’s not bad.

Gavin Grigar – Beasts of Chaos – 2nd Place (Undefeated)

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Bestigors

Thoughts

After Matt Nguyen debuted the new year last week with a modified list on the Bestigor meta, Gavin has decided to fire back by running the same list at a larger event (check the list name of both this and last week’s for the ongoing feud).

If you’ve been keeping up with this article, you know the deal by now. Bestigors are gnarly, 3 attacks per model at Rend 1, Damage 1 and incredibly cheap for that price point. Even though they lost their +1 attack when the enemy uses All Out Defence, Critical (2 hits) on a 5+ is not a bad compromise. At 2 wounds a piece and a 4+ save, they’re a lot to cut through.

The Great Bray-Shaman lets a unit Run and Charge, while also casting excellent control spells that pull the enemy closer to them. It’s just a solid all around list that does a lot of damage and can take it.

Carl Ong – Maggotkin of Nurgle – 3rd Place (Undefeated)

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Blightkings

Thoughts

Blightkings are another unit that benefit heavily from the Honor Guard ability. They’re genuinely a solid unit, they just often struggle to get where they need to go. Once they’re there though, they are tough to dislodge. 3+ save, 5+ ward, and 3 wounds while also kicking back with 4 attacks per model at Rend 1 Damage 1 (potentially Rend 2 if the Lord of Blights is near granting Anti-Charge).

Rotigus is an excellent support General, able to deal a lot of mortal wounds to potentially every enemy unit on the field and heal every friendly unit. He’s not even bad in combat, should it come to that.

The interesting left turn here is the Regiment of Renown, which Nurgle is probably one of the bigger beneficiaries of. The Regiment grants a nice fast outrider unit to capture an out of the way objective – the exact thing Nurgle struggles with so it’s not a bad way to spend the last 310 points.

The Best of the Rest

There were 13 more players on 4-1 records. Due to the size of the event we’re going to cut it down to the top 8. They were:

• 4th – Jiwan noah Singh – Stormcast Eternals: Lord-Relictor and Astreia Solbright with Palladors, Prosecutors and Reclusians.
• 5th (Tied) – Dylan Therriault – Cities of Sigmar: A bit of everything here, Duardin with Hammerers and Irondrakes, Aelves with Executioners and Dark Riders and Humans with Callis and Toll.
• 5th (Tied) – Ricky O’Steen – Slaves to Darkness: Chaos Lord on Karkadrak and Gaunt Summoner leads 2 units of Chosen, some knights and Fellriders
• 7th – Michael Sabetti – Stormcast Eternals: Karazai with the Stormcast Good Stuff.
• 8th – Thomas Guan – Hedonites of Slaanesh: See Showdown.

Wrap Up

Thanks for another week in Competitive Innovations in the Mortal Realms. As January marches on we’re coming up on the biggest event of the year, the Las Vegas Open in just over a week! I’ll be there myself, reporting on it. But we still got one more CI until then, so I’ll see you next week.

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