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.

Happy Halloween everyone! And what would be a better spooky surprise than to not see a single Nighthaunt (or Lumineth for that matter!) in any of our showdowns this week? It’s no trick, we got 4 events of modest size that bring some new lists to the table. There’s a lot to discuss so let’s get into it.

Vienna Tabletop Championship – Age of Sigmar

34-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Wien, Austria on October 26 2024. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

The Showdown

Mission – Limited Resources

Benjamin Salomon – Skaventide
Army List - Click to Expand

vs.

Vincent Postel – Seraphon
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Thoughts

We’re seeing Skaven creep up into the showdowns more frequently. Ratling guns are extremely powerful but there’s a lot of other interesting tricks granting the ability to sneak around, teleport and get a few cheap shots in.

The trick is that the Seraphon here are resiliant. If the Skaven Player can lock their cav down before they charge they may have a shot of dismantling it, but there’s just a lot of meat to carve through. The Skaven player would need to spike high on Ratling Gun rolls, play well on objectives with Clan Rats and get real lucky with the Tectonic Splintering Warscroll spell from the warpseer to reduce charge rolls. It’s a pretty close game overall but the Seraphon win it.

Result

Seraphon Victory – 42 – 34

Vincent Postel – Seraphon – 1st Place

The List

See Showdown

Archetype

Mid-Range Seraphon

Thoughts

This list tries and hits the beats of most everything good in the list. The basically Mandatory Slann Starmaster is your primary spellcaster and Buff bot. The difference in this list from most other similar Seraphon lists is to sort of downplay the Slann a bit. It’s not supported by a Skink Wizard or a Astrolith Bearer, but this leaves room for other stuff.

Raptadon Chargers are the bread and butter unit here, they’re super fast and while their attack profile isn’t great, they get so many attacks (3 per model) that it makes up for the dice rolls. They are supported by a token unit of Raptadon Hunters, which grant +1 to hit if the Chargers attack the same unit the Hunters charged (and in turn get a free shot against that unit again) but even if they don’t get to do that, it’s still pretty solid damage output.

Building off of them, Kroxigor Warspawned are a huge boon against bigger targets, since their damage is suped up when within range of Raptadons, and they got Anti-Monster. The Bastiladon is also really helpful against high Save targets by rolling 20 Attacks with Crit Mortals.

The Hunters of Huanchi make nice cheap objective grabbers that can deep strike onto open points and also sabotage attempts to charge by shooting the potential cav charge in the foot early with their Bolas.

The Best of the Rest

There were 6 more players on X-1 records. They were:

• 2nd – Kamil Pocalujko – Ossiarch Bonereapers: Nagash and 30 Kavalos.
• 3rd – Benjamin Salomon – Skaven: See Showdown.
• 4th – Michael Öschlberger – Stormcast Eternals: Karazai with an eclectic list of different Stormcast models including Concussors, Questors and 2 chariots.
• 5th – Marco Wachter – Ossiarch Bonereapers: Arkhan and a Soulmason with Archai, Crawlers and Kavalos Deathriders.
• 6th – Alex Zobl – Fyreslayers: A midrange fyreslayers list of Runefather on Magmadroth and just about every unit in the book.
• 7th – Dominik Viehmann – Maggotkin of Nurgle: Glottkin with Blightkings and Blightlords.

Charlotte Carnage Fall Bash

34-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Concord, NC, US on October 26 2024. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

The Showdown

Mission – Close to the Chest

Fabien Barbusse – Disciples of Tzeentch
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vs.

Osvaldo Lievano – Seraphon
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Thoughts

Two Spell-slinging armies means a lot of this is going to come down to who can get more spells off, but the diffence really splitting these two up is the that the Seraphon list is far more reliant on its melee damage. The Aggradon Lancers and Kroxigors that take up a large chunk of this list are the hammer and they absolutely need to get to the two Lords of Change throwing spells at them from the back. However, they need to cut through a lot of horrors and thanks to Wyrdflame host, they’re going to have to deal with -1 to Wound and that sucks. 

While Aggradon Lancers do have the ability to compensate for being stuck in thanks to their Rage token mechanic, it’s still not ideal to be stuck there, especially when the follow up means getting pelted with spells and shots from Skyfires.

Tzeentch takes this by a pretty good margin.

Result

Disciples of Tzeentch Victory – 38 – 26

Fabien Barbusse – Disciples of Tzeentch – 1st Place

The List

See Showdown

Archetype

Tzeentch Good Stuff

Thoughts

Wyrdflame is king and this list loves it. While the generic Lord of Change and Kairos tag team are Tzeentch staples at this point, theres a bit of play room for the soldiers working under them.

The Reinforced Skyfires make their way into just about every list, and why not? They have excellent range, are hard to lock down, and cannot have their shooting modified. They fire a ton of shots that they’re pretty good and wittling down almost any target.

The horrors are a tarpit, but they also really help lean in on the Wyrdflame mechanic, which gives -1 to wound to a target in this subfaction which is absolutely painful as many armies don’t have much of a way to make up for this. So you’re going to get stuck into this big blob of horrors while you get pelted by spells from the big birds behind it. Ouch.

The Best of the Rest

There were 4 more players on 4-1 records. They were:

• 2nd – Damien Lopez – Nighthaunt: Nighthaunt Good stuff.
• 3rd – Osvaldo Lievano – Seraphon: See Showdown.
• 4th – Stuart King – Disciples of Tzeentch: Tzeentch Good Stuff.
• 5th – Sam Osborne – Sylvaneth: Alarielle and Belthanos with Kurnoth Hunters and Spirit of Durthu.

Kippers Melee 2024

34-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Nanaimo, BC, Canada on October 26 2024. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

The Showdown

Alex Butler – Idoneth Deepkin
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vs.

Taylor Gougeon – Cities of Sigmar
Army List - Click to Expand

Thoughts

Both interesting armies we don’t usually see in showdowns. The COS list went a little lighter on the Executioners than usual but they’re there, instead it plays defensive by adding the newly buffed Fusiliers and Pontifex Zenestra, who is a very versatile priest with a Warscroll prayer than can make those Cavaliers go faster or the Fusiliers more resiliant.

That said, it’s very difficult to weather an Idoneth attack head on if they time their strike right. If they can get in on round 3 it’s going to hurt and a lot of the matchup is going to depend on how much the Fusilers can wean down the enemy or the Cavaliers can pin the cavalry before they get their chance to strike.

It ends with a pretty strong victory for Idoneth.

Result

Idoneth Deepkin Victory – 34 – 26

Alex Butler – Idoneth Deepkin – 1st Place

The List

See Showdown

Archetype

Akhelian Beat Down with Eidolon support

Thoughts

This is an interesting list, focused largely around the Akhelian keyword. Volturnos, The Eidolon and the Leviadon are your three pillars of support here. Volturnos hands out +1 to hit to units within 12″ of him, and even grants +1 Attack to 3 units once per game, so save that for the big cavalry charge and cut everything to ribbons. The Leviadon is also an Akhelian unit so it benefits from this, being a pretty strong beat stick and handing out a 5+ Ward while within 6″ of it. Meanwhile the Eidolon adds +1 to wound, bringing the whole thing home.

So while they all make the Eels better at charging and killing their targets, they’re also really good beat sticks in their own right meaning this list becomes very difficult to dismantle without exposing yourself to serious risk in melee combat.

The Best of the Rest

There were 4 more players on 4-1 records. They were:

• 2nd – Taylor Gougeon – Cities of Sigmar: See Showdown.
• 3rd – Chris Hall – Slaves to Darkness: Be’lakor and Sorcerer Lord with Varanguard and Chosen.
• 4th – Ricky Fischer – Gloomspite Gitz: Squigs and Troggs.
• 5th – Brice Koppin – Stormcast Eternals: Karazai with a collection of Stormcast including Vanguard-Raptors, Prosecutors and Reclusions.

Haunted GT

27-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Chaska, MN, US on October 26 2024. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

The Showdown

Mission – Battle for the Pass

Joe Krier – Disciples of Tzeentch
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vs.

dustin Forman – Disciples of Tzeentch
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Thoughts

Mirror Match! The only real difference here is that Joe went with 6 Skyfires while dustin went with some Pink Horrors, which makes more of a difference than you’d think on paper.

Skyfires make Joe’s list more damage intensive, while Dustin is a lot more resiliant. Tzeentch would struggle to take down it’s own tarpits, so this does move things a bit in Dustin’s favor. However, Skyfires are also very mobile, which means they could snag objectives left open, or fly to snipe the Lords of Change which can be backbreaking in Battle for the Pass since stealing your opponent’s objective even for a turn can win the whole thing.

Dustin pulls an overwhelming victory.

Result

Disciples of Tzeentch Victory – 48 – 16

dustin Forman – Disciples of Tzeentch – 1st Place

The List

See Showdown

Archetype

Tzeentch Good Stuff

Thoughts

As stated in the Showdown, lack of Skyfires is definitely unique. Instead, this list leans more on the Horrors to create an impossibly dense tarpit and it’s not a bad investment at all. More Horrors means more targets for Wyrdflame after all, and the dense the tarpit the harder it is to clear them out with that -1 to Wound slowing you down. It also means stealing objectives from this list is very hard, as they will likely outnumber you with sheer model count. All while two Lords of Change are chucking spells at you from the back like dicks.

The Best of the Rest

There were N more players on X-1 records. They were:

• 2nd – Paul Wilmes – Nighthaunt: Nighthaunt Good Stuff
• 3rd – Joe Krier – Disciples of Tzeentch: See Showdown.
• 4th – Logan Wendt – Sylvaneth: Belthanos and Warsong Revenant with lots of Spiteriders
• 5th – George Coe – Maggotkin of Nurgle: Great Unclean one with Slimux with Drones and Plaguebearers. Surprise appearance of the Tzeentch Regiment of Renown for some extra magical support.
• BONUS 6th – Susan Niewoonder – Daughters of Khaine: One of our Patrons with her first 3-1-1 with Morathi and the Snake ladies.

Wrap Up

Things are really getting interesting now with the meta seeming to shift in a more Tzeentchian direction. Could this be the next target of the great eye of nerfs, or is it just a temporary hiccup on the evolution of the competitive circuit. We’ll find out next week!

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