Welcome back folks for a two event article and our first in a while where I don’t have to specify whether or not recent rules are allowed – we are into Battlescroll Andtor in earnest, and it might surprise you to learn which lists we’ll be discussing today. I will drop a little nugget for Idoneth fans and say you’ll want to read on for perhaps the first exciting thing you’ve seen in this column for a while. Let’s press on.

The LGT AoS Singles

82-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in England, United Kingdom on September 30 2023. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission –

Owen Jackson – Darkwalkers:
Army List - Click to Expand

vs.

Phil Marshall – Jaws of Mork:
Army List - Click to Expand

Thoughts

It’s two international level players meeting in the finals of the GT, so the level of play here was likely very high. As a result, any edge obtained in list construction will have had a significant influence on the game. The mismatch I do see here favours Phil, because of how Beasts of Chaos armies are designed and intended to be used.

For those unfamiliar, Beasts of Chaos armies are all about ambushes, alpha strikes and prying apart your opponents combos through either assassinating support pieces or moving units out of position using their unique rituals. Most competitive units within the army are balanced to be very powerful on the charge, but are not very good at winning prolonged engagements due to poor armor saves and bravery.

Owen’s list is about utilising Ungor Raiders to soften up targets and create a landing zone for the Bullgors to drop into. Many players first instinct when playing against a deep strike army is to use one of their worst and cheapest units to screen out their weakside corner, or position it behind their army to act as a buffer against potential charges. Ungor raiders can do *just* about enough damage with their Hidden Volley ability (when combined with the d6 mortal wounds from Warping Curse) to punish the line of play by being able to kill a 10 wound screen – this interaction works because Hidden Volley is a trigger at the beginning of the movement phase, whereas the timing of dropping their units from reserves is at the end of the phase. So then your opponent is put in a difficult position: do they leave a more valuable unit in their spot which is tougher to deny Owen the opportunity to clear the blocked space out, or risk having their protection screen killed and expose their inner castle to 12 Bullgor with a Doombull for insurance charges?

Well… Phil’s list loves the idea of going up against this style of list, because he has enough bodies between the Squigs and a few Bounder screens to create multiple layers of defence on his weak side, and if a unit is destroyed early game he can just recycle it from the Shrine. Bullgors will hate the idea of going up against Squig Herd in particular, as they can absorb a charge from Bullgors (the unit has 72 wounds!), deal enough damage to force a battleshock in return against them and then use the battleshock triumph to prevent themselves from running away… before replenishing on average 5d3 squigs back into the unit on Phil’s next turn.

Result

Jaws of Mork Victory – 14 – 6

Phil Marshall – Jaws of Mork – 1st Place

The List

See Showdown

Archetype

Squigs

Thoughts

It stands as a testament to just how strong the Gitz book is when its had a sledgehammer taken to its kneecaps about 3 times now (Squigs in particular) by GW in battlescrolls, yet the army still has such a strong core and is managing to stand the test of time.

Phil’s an exceptional player of AoS but has been roaming from army to army lately trying to find a faction which fits with his desired playstyle, and he noted after this victory that he may have found it in the lunatics worshipping the moon. Squig Herd are still one of the premiere ‘do-it-all’ units in the game, being able to soak up an absurd amount of damage, dish it out in kind and has two different forms of recursion built in between the Shrine and the Herders themselves.

Boingrot Bounderz shouldn’t be overlooked either, as they are an incredibly fast hammer with an innate 4+ save, and with the Sneaky Snuffler buff they can also have a 5+ ward, making them a surprisingly tough unit which they can use to charge, kill a unit or two, pin their opponent in and then are

recycled when your opponent has expended significant units just to kill them.

The rest of the army is mostly standard support fare between Skragrott, the Squigboss, Snufflers & Gobbapalooza – I will note however once again that units which are already great but have a 4+ to hit melee profile absolutely love hoarfrost, because if they roll a 1 or a 2 they can be hitting on 2s, and if they roll a 2 or a 3 they could instead choose to upgrade the rend of said profile to eye-watering levels. This interaction is great on both Squig Herd and Bounderz, easily justifying why Phil has two dudes capable of casting this spell in his list.

Michael Attali – Vyrkos Dynasty – 2nd Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

5+ ward Zombies

Thoughts

As I have speculated in this column before, the strengths of Soulblight armies lie within their battle traits, and while this army has been hit with significant price hikes over the course of six months to many of its core summonable units, the fact remains that the strength of these battle traits make them absurdly efficient anyway. The easiest way of justifying this point is with an example – how many armies in AoS do you think wouldn’t be interested in spending between 150-450 points for between 20-60 wounds on a 5+ ward, which can be recycled like Gitz units, do mortal wound splash back damage just for dying in combat, and are innately bravery 10? The answer is not many.

I’m cheating a bit here by assuming the 5+ ward is here from Vyrkos, as the actual cost is higher because you need to take the Phylactery artefact, but it illustrates the strengths of this army. What the battlescroll has done is create somewhat of a weakness – the sizeable points increases have meant many Soulblight armies can’t really run dedicated hammer units anymore if they want to reach a critical mass of bodies in the list which can stand on objectives and grind out primary scoring points… but while Soulblight has so many non-interactive and easily achievable battle tactics its a bit of a moot point. The army doesn’t really need to win, it just needs to survive long enough to build up an insurmountable lead on primary scoring.

The Best of the Rest

This top 8 was riddled with international level players, who all finished 4-1 or better – they were:

• Position – Player Name – Faction:
• 3rd – Brent Evans – Barak Urbaz (4-1-0): This rather traditional looking Urbaz list is still using a block of 15 Thunderers in an Ironclad to absolutely dominate the midboard against all but the bulkiest of armies, but by cutting down the Thunderers to 15 Brent has brought Gotrek along to give the army some combat bonafides and a unit which scares the shit out of many fair combat armies
• 4th – Geir Vedeld – Knights of the Empty Throne: Team Norway’s Geir put in an impressive showing with a 9 Varanguard, 10 Chosen & Be’lakor list which can fit a ton of beef with the armies recent points drops
• 5th – Jack Armstrong – Ymetrica: Another team England player with a new and shiny LRL list. Jack does away with the old paradigm of Sentinel spam and Teclis and instead leverages two things: Just how good the big cows are now against many combat armies (especially with the amount of to hit debuffs this army puts out), and the surprisingly efficient Ballista units, which can’t compare to Sentinels in their prime but can put out 12 rend 2 damage d3 shots at 36″ range, giving them incredible reach to act as a long range scalpel
• 6th – Hazel Moon – Fuethan: Hazel has been putting up impressive result after impressive result over the last 12 months as her competitive career reaches new heights, and she’s making full use of the recent Idoneth buffs with a shark spam list which is going to put out a LOT of damage. Shivers now buff both the shooting and combat phases thanks to their new exploding 6s ability affecting everything (melee and shooting), rather than just bites
• 7th – Benjamin Flodda – Null Myriad: The Kata cookie cutter v2 build is yet to be nailed down, but Ben makes a case for swapping out the Morghasts and/or Stalkers for a Mortek Guard package with a Harvester
• 8th – Davy Sabo – Hammers of Sigmar: A top finish with a stormcast list which doesn’t even use any of the newly price dropped units! This list is running a lot of cavalry between Tempestors, Evokitties & Vanguard-Palladors, plus Prime-Time

Crucible 2023 AoS GT

44-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Orlando, FL, US on September 30 2023. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission – Geomantic Pulse

Michael Smith – Fuethan:
Army List - Click to Expand

vs.

Zachary Shinn – Vyrkos Dynasty:
Army List - Click to Expand

Thoughts

It’s really nice to see Idoneth back in a showdown after what felt like a long absence due to the sheer power of the books that have come out since rather putting a damper on their relatively benign strengths. That said, Fuethan has been supercharged by the latest battlescroll, with the sharks benefitting from exploding 6s to hit from Bloodthirsty Shivers on all their profiles, shooting and melee (as opposed to just the shark bites previously). This small but meaningful change alongside the healthy points drops across the army means this list can put out a lot of damage on some very mobile platforms.

Going up against it is an interesting Vyrkos list which brings Nagash to give the Summonable units (in this case 30 skeletons act as the nightmare-anvil of choice) a significant boost in their durability, as well as just being a bit of a challenge to deal with himself.

This is the sort of match whereby Michael was one sequence of a great shooting phase followed by a great combat phase from wiping out the unit of Skeletons and some Dire Wolves and leaving the army unable to really hold onto objectives  – but both phases have to be very good and they have to come early, or Nagash can quickly take over the game and disrupt things just enough (like deleting the Murder King) to leave the army with not enough chess pieces on the board to kill the skeleton unit at all.

Michael failed his grand strat, which isn’t too surprising as Zachary has random chaff units like the bats or banshees to leave hanging out near one of the Shipwrecks, and Zachary’s army lacks the bodies to hold the midboard long enough to tally up serious primary points in the face of all these Dire Wolves and Skeletons.

Result

Vyrkos Dynasty Victory – 28 – 22

Zachary Shinn – Vyrkos Dynasty – 1st Place

The List

See Showdown

Archetype

Summonable stuff

Thoughts

Not too much more to comment on with this one – the army is very dependent on that Vampire staying alive to really utilise the Vyrkos battle traits, but taking Vyrkos means that this Nagash list technically is a 2150 point list, as it comes with a free unit of 10 Dire Wolves due to the Kin of the Wolf heroic action.

There’s enough summonable stuff here to lock down the midboard, and the hope is that the Nagash show is able to pick apart and crush the opponent’s units whom are capable of killing 30 Skeletons in one turn (a difficult feat). If they don’t, the unit will very quickly replenish between Nagash, Grave sites and their own warscroll replenishment ability.

Chris Kennedy – Badsnatchers – 2nd Place

The List

Army List - Click to Expand

Archetype

Combined arms Gits

Thoughts

Oh man this is like, classic Goblins, the kind your mum dad used to make play with. There’s a distinct absence of Skragrott, as well as Squigs (well… the commonly competitive ones anyway), leaving this huge open space to fill with Moonclan gits, an Aleguzzler Gargant and even some Mangler Squigs.

Badsnatchers makes the army’s spellcasting more consistent (though it plays awkwardly with Primal Dice), and the army largely wants to play pretty standard AoS stuff. Geminids and 40 shootas gives the army the ability to threaten to do at least a notable amount of damage in the shooting phase, and in general has -1 to hit debuffs for days, making it difficult to make any headway into these pockets of Gits units if the Troggs keep near the net units. It’s a mad list which is mad precisely because of how… straight forward it is. It’s not leaning into any one thing and just wants to outplay you on objectives and apply a toolbox approach to problems. I love it.

The Best of the Rest

The rest of the top 8 were:

• Position – Player Name – Faction:
• 3rd – Cody Saults – Dracothion’s Tail: A summoning list that drops the Incarnate for 2 Ark Bastiladons and another spellcaster (keep an eye on this army going forward, I think they’ll be consistent podium performers!)
• 4th – Zach Smith – Legion of Night: The Mannfred + Morbheg’s Claw style list has adapted to summonable units getting significant hikes by stripping this element back to mostly pivot around one unit of 30 Deathrattle Skeletons and using all those points left over to bring a VLoZD & a Terrorgheist – when in doubt, Herohammer it out
• 5th – Ryan Lavoie – Knights Excelsior: AoE mortal wound spam was an archetype I had my eye on after Annihilators got a price drop, and Ryan has a total of 7 MSU Anni units (across both flavours) plus 5 Knight-Vexillors for an absurd amount of mortal wound output in one short but absurd burst turn. Ryan’s only loss was round 1 on Spring the Trap against a Gore-grunta heavy Bloodtoofs list with 2 Maw-krushas, an unfortunate matchup on an otherwise impressive weekend for this skew filth
• 6th – Benjamin Fults – Reapers of Vengeance: Be’lakor plus Bloodthirsters (Wrath, Fury, Skarbrand) in a top heavy list which was 4-0 in round 5 and only lost out to Chris’ Badsnatchers. Another strong showing from this gambler’s paradise of a list that wants to roll 6s and blow shit up
• 7th – Jonathan Weretka – Legion of Blood: This list looks a lot like the classic ones LoB generals utilised (Neferata plus a VLOZD), only this iteration downgrades to a Vengorian Lord instead of a Dragon and orients itself around 30 Deathrattle Skeletons (see a pattern?)
• 8th – Emi P – Hallowed Knights: Another stormcast list which uses Gardus to ensure a 5+ ward for it’s core brick of Vindictors, with a total of 12 Annihilators plus Lord-Imperatant for a threatening forward element and Gotrek to help dominate the midboard

Wrap Up

I’ll finish off today by doing a bit of a victory lap – indulge me, as this section is to me like a blank letter tile from Scrabble, to use as I wish. This is regarding Soulblight post Battlescroll:

I think the nerfs to Soulblight were substantial but I questioned at the time whether they would be enough because the power and potency of the army is tied up in its battle traits, and Skeletons were an incredibly efficient unit anyway, which only suffered from being slightly less efficient than Zombies.

To be clear, this isn’t me calling for more nerfs to Soulblight – we don’t have nearly enough data yet to make any kind of declarative statement, this is far more infantile and vain as I just wanted to blow my own trumpet and do a victory lap. Hope you have a fantastic week guys, see you next time.