Hey there duders, this week we have three events to cover, one of which (Sheffield Slaughter) is one that I attended. Went 3-2 with Kruleboyz and just narrowly missing out on a 4-1 result so I’m pretty stoked as you can imagine. The dream of the Kruleboyz 4-1 lives on but I may end up swapping to a better army for my next tournament as in my opinion the army just doesn’t really have the tools to keep up with the metagame at the moment.

That all said, you didn’t come here for my own personal competitive blog, you came to read about some filth. And filth there is dear reader, with a capital F.

Sheffield Slaughter

99-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in England GB on February 18 2023. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission – Jaws of Gallet

Alex Bruce – Fyreslayers: Greyfyrd Hearthguard
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vs.

Dan Bradshaw – Gloomspite Gitz: Jaws of Mork Squigs
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Thoughts

Did you know you could stack Firekeeper effects? It’s an interesting little quirk of this list that could mean those Berzerkers could fight in a combat phase with +2 damage potentially, and getting the buff up to 6 will happen fairly quickly in a meta where combat damage is as high as it is. So what went wrong?

Well let’s start with the mission – Jaws of Gallet rewards a flexible army that can quickly move across the entire board, as well as an army that controls priority as their is a key advantage in this matchup: starting in the second battle round the player who goes second can remove one of the objectives on the board. This is important for Dan as if he can go *second* going into battle round two he can remove the center objective and put Alex’s dwarves in a bind, as they simply aren’t fast enough to play the spread out game when they have no Runesmiters for some deep strike capability.

Jaws of Mork Victory – 15 – 5

Dan Bradshaw – Jaws of Mork – 1st Place

The List

See Showdown

Archetype

Squig efficiency

Thoughts

Well friends, meet the face of the metagame’s new nemesis, and it’s teeth are many. Squig hoppers/Bounders both represent fantastic value when you consider that they have access to a 4+ rally and the ability to recycle the unit through the Loonshrine. What do you do with a bunch of these bad boys? Well stack one of many buffs/debuffs available in the book to make them hyper efficient murder machines.

Dan has opted to skip the Gobbapalooza and instead bring a Squigboss for access to extra attacks where raw output is needed or mortal wounds on 6s for high save situations. The Snufflers can also hand out a 5+ ward to one of those big bricks of squigs to make them a very difficult unit to profitably kill… especially when if you’re not careful Dan can remove the front ranks  of those Squig hoppers to get out of combat, rally back on a 4+ and then bounce over you in the movement phase to dump a sizable amount of mortal wounds on the unfortunate unit you were unlucky enough to have anywhere in their vicinity.

Andrew Hughes – Fyreslayers – 2nd Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Vorstarg Vulkites

Thoughts

Vulkites have long been somewhat overlooked within Fyreslayers in third edition. Not to say they weren’t efficient, but players were often either leaning into Hearthguard or Magmadroths as their hammers of choice, meaning Vorstarg and it’s buffs to hit and wound for Vulkites was overlooked. Andrew however doesn’t overlook (ha, short joke) these humble Vulkites and has combined them with the Flamekeeper tech to make a rather nasty set of hammer anvils that will do well in this metagame provided they can avoid having to spread out across the board.

The Best of the Rest

With such a large event let’s just cover the top 8, all 4-1 with 3rd being 5-0:

• Position – Player Name – Faction:
• 3rd – Stephen Follows – Disciples of Tzeentch: A guild of summoners list that skips the chickens in their starting army and summons them on instead, using the points saved to add two units of horrors on top of a boat load of wizards.
• 4th – John Dale – Stormcast Eternals: Karazai just barely misses out on the podium with a fierce 4-1 finish sporting 3 Knight-Vexillors for enemy Galletian Champion sniping potential and a mix of MSU battleline to keep the opponent honest on the objective contesting front.
• 5th – JP Stevens – Lumineth Realm-lords: It’s the template Helon list we’ve seen perform very well lately: A mix of Sentinels, Teclis and endless spells, with Windchargers for screening
• 6th – Russell Veal – Ogor Mawtribes: Ogors still putting in the work despite hefty price hikes, with Russ bringing a ton of Mournfang and a Billowing Ash Firebelly to combat the opponent’s shooting, while bringing ranged heft in 2 Ironblasters and several big beasties for his hammers.
• 7th – Nathan Prescott – Gloomspite Gitz: Nathan proves there’s more than one way to skin a squig with this Troggoth heavy (but not one-dimensional) gitz list that uses King’s Gitz for a better chance of recycling his Squig and Trogg units
• 8th – Freddie Leggett – Cities of Sigmar: One of AOS’s most ingenious list builders puts in another strong performance with no less than 12 freaking Palladors, 6 Demigryph Knights and a General on Griffon! The man cannot be stopped!

Battle at the Brook

55-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Lynbrook, VIC Australia on February 17 2023. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission –

Mathew Tyrrell – The Emerald Host: Ghostly herohammer
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vs.

Patrick Neven – Blessed Sons: Some kind of mad smorgasbord of stuff
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Thoughts

This is such an unusual pairing partly because both players are not running what I would consider as meta army list compositions. Matt hasn’t gone down the Bladegheist route and Patrick has taken advantage of coalition rules to bring freaking 15 Plague Censer Bearers, one of the most damaging for their cost units in the game, as well as a cheerful one of Chaos Chariot.

Does this mean I’m qualified to discuss how I feel this matchup may have gone? I’ll be honest dear reader, I’m less sure of this one than I have been of any for quite some time. What I do know is that the typical Nurgle plan of outlasting and grinding down through mortal wound attrition is particularly effective against Nighthaunt, as provided he can stack some Disease counters on the heroes via the Rotmire creed, he can really compromise Matt’s ability to keep what few objective contesting units he has upright and healthy. Note however how close this one was, as it’s easier said than done to just “kill the heroes”.

Result

Blessed Sons Victory – 25 – 23

Patrick Neven – Blessed Sons – 1st Place

The List

See Showdown

Archetype

*56k modem sounds*

Thoughts

Okay so let’s look at what’s typical – double Maggoth lord for very resilient herohammer pieces that operate well as individual operators or a power pair. There’s also Rotmire creed as battleline, which makes sense as a flexible and potent battleline unit that allows the army to spread disease in situations where combat is less than ideal.

From there shit gets wild, Ungor Raiders are using their old rules in this tournament, so they’re just a cheap 80 point unit for increasing unit count for Coalition purposes, while also getting a pre-game move in order to setup forward screens and protect the core of the army. The Skaven package is interesting, with the main thing being the inclusion of 15 PCB. If near the Plague Monks and making a successful charge, those 15 rats dump out 61 damage 2 attacks, with All-Out Attack hitting and wounding on 2s, with rend 1. Phew.

The Best of the Rest

The rest of the top 8 were all 4-1 and are:

• Position – Player Name – Faction:
• 2nd – Michael Clarke – Slaves to Darkness: A LOFP list that uses a bit of everything: Chosen, Varanguard and Splintered Fang
• 3rd – Matthew Tyrell – Nighthaunt: See showdown
• 4th – Alexander Krohn – Disciples of Tzeentch: A slightly unusual Guild of Summoners list as it brings a whopping 40 Pink Horrors and Be’lakor, trading out a lot of early spellcasting for extreme board control potency
• 5th – Sam Sims-Bailey – Sylvaneth: A Dreadwood list goes 4-1 with Drycha and 40 Spite Revenants… is their untapped potential in the book?
• 6th – Anthony Rowe – Nighthaunt: Ahhh here’s something comfortable, it’s Bladegheist spam with Awlrach to ferry units around for board control.
• 7th – Will Walters – Maggotkin of Nurgle: A rotcoven list, this one pushing out Shards of Valagharr and Geminids through Umbral Spellportal, while still leaning on the familiar tech of an Overpowering Stench LoA and Orghotts Daemonspew.
• 8th – Kieren Coates – Skaven: Lot’s of clan rats, Thanquol and 20 Plague Censer Bearers, supported by the enigma that is the Hellpit Abomination.

Sydney Salt Smash

28-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Sylvania, NSW AU on February 17 2023. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission –

Sean Haigh – Astral Templars: Palladors as far as the eye can see
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vs.

Yanxue Pang – Stormcast Eternals: Tempestors as far as the eye can see
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Thoughts

It’s stormcast on stormcast violence – what’s not to love? Notably due to low numbers this was a pairing where Sean Haigh was undefeated but his opponent wasn’t – Yanxue already had a loss by this point.

If you put a bunch of Palladors against a bunch of Tempestors I’m going to side with the Tempestors, it just seems like good common sense considering they have the armor save to tank the amount of chip damage those Palladors can put out. In the end Yanxue did win the match, but as the game was close…

Result

Yanxue Pang (Tempestors) Victory – 19 – 27

Sean Haigh – Astral Templars – 1st Place

The List

See Showdown

Archetype

Palladors

Thoughts

Sean won on overall score. The list wants to win by controlling the board through a horde of teleporting cavalry bases that can put out respectable shooting damage, supplemented by the somewhat limited spellcasting and the Celestant Prime.

I think it’s a fun list and it will have strong play into many armies simply because it can play guerilla warfare and try and win off primary scoring, but not sure this list will be dominating larger tournaments without some tweaks to bring in some more heavy hitters. I would absolutely love to be proven wrong though as Palladors are a fantastic unit.

The Best of the Rest

There were 5 more players on X-1 records. They were:

• Position – Player Name – Faction:
• 2nd – Yanxue Pang – Stormcast Eternals: See showdown
• 3rd – Ben Spinetti – Gloomspite Gitz: An almost entirely trogg based list that foregoes the Megamob for King’s Gitz, a move that makes sense when you consider how expensive their units are… you want to guarantee you can get that value back. 18 Rockguts and 6 Fellwaters make up the bulk of the army.
• 4th – Liam Burnett-Blue – Daughters of Khaine: Frostheart Phoenix and the Bow Snakes doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, but this Norathi list skips the Shadow Queen for another resilient Monster, bringing a total of 20 Combat Snakes on top of 10 Bows.
• 5th – Anthony Magro – Gloomspite Gitz: Proving how many different angles you can attack things with this book, Anthony goes 4-1 with a Squig herd heavy list that still has that same core of buff pieces like Gobbapalooza, Skragrott and some Sneaky Snufflers.

Wrap Up

A surprising variety here that is making this column a joy. Gloomspite is still getting figured out, and an army that we thought was going to make significant waves (Slaves to Darkness) has took rather a backseat to the madness unleashed by the bad moon. It’ll be interesting to see how much of an impact Beasts of Chaos have, an army I suspect is much better than people are giving it credit for.

Ellarr also has his own Youtube channel to cover other aspects of competitive Age of Sigmar which you can find here. If you have any questions or comments leave one down below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com.