Quite a large event to cover this week with 3 5-0 lists to take a look at, with this event coming from the Atlantic City Open in the US. I find it interesting to take a look at larger events from across the pond (as a long time suffering citizen of the UK) because we often see either slight tweaks on what I see as ‘standard’ metagame threats, or in the case of Australia sometimes just a straight up different metagame entirely, as things like product availability or simply player preference create a different environment and subsequently different lists created to attack said environment.

ACO 2023 Age of Sigmar Championships

87-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Atlantic City, New Jersey US on June 17 2023. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission –

Alex Cosgrove – Mortis Praetorians:
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vs.

Kaleb Walters – Guild of Summoners:
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Thoughts

Spoilers: The OBR list won – but why? Well I had to step back and spend a bit of time just thinking about the nature of this matchup to try and find an answer (outside of one player massively outplaying the other, or bad dice rolls skewing things). What is it about this matchup that gives the OBR player the edge? In this case I think it has to do with the ability to replenish models to the Immortis Guard units. Between Boneshaper (with Key), Katakros and Arkhan, Alex has three to four separate 3+ chances to put a Immortis Guard back into the unit, which is significant when each model has the output of a combat foot hero.

Tzeentch wants to grind you down with value over time, but trying to put all it’s damaging spells into one unit is going to be tricky when Arkhan can unbind at +2, meaning it would be very difficult to fully finish off any of the units in this army outside of the Deathriders without committing everything he has including the Incarnate to that task… and it still might not be enough. Tzeentch lacks pure raw hammers outside of the expensive Enlightened on discs, which I think will have influenced the outcome here.

Result

Mortis Praetorians Victory – 32 – 10

Alex Cosgrave – Mortis Praetorians – 1st Place

The List

See Showdown

Archetype

Immortis Walls

Thoughts

It’s the same core we’ve seen find success of a Mortis, Katakros, 6 Immortis and a unit of Deathriders, but Alex has gone all in and taken 6 more Immortis – he only has a total of 6 units even in this list! The gameplan here is simple – push the Immortis down his opponent’s throat in his turn and his opponents (Thanks to the Mortis Praetorian subfaction ability to counter charge in your opponents turn) , then grind their hammers down until they don’t actually have any hammers capable of killing them in a single round of combat… which is necessary because as discussed above this list can keep putting models back into the unit unless the unit has been completely wiped out.

It’s strong, and flexible as different command traits/artefacts/subfactions can change how the army plays while keeping the core the same. In this case, Dark Acolyte means the Mortis’ first spell cast each turn cannot be unbound, which is very useful for guaranteeing the Bonetithe Shrieker or Drain Vitality at 24″ range (a nasty spell that subtracts -1 to hit and save from an enemy unit, normally 18″ but Arkhan makes it even longer range).

Emma Mangels – Vyrkos Dynasty – 2nd Place

The List

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Archetype

Zombies

Thoughts

Good grief Zombies are cheap aren’t they? Emma is packing 140 Zombies and still has about 1200 points for the rest of her army. They’re perhaps a little too effective at their cost for their specific role – existing in space and being annoying to kill. Why are they annoying? Well thanks to the Ulfenkarni Phylactery they have a 5+ Ward if they’re within 9″ of the Necromancer, and if they’re killed in combat each model will deal a mortal wound back to the attacker on a 5+.

So hammer units will have a hard time clearing off multiple units of these guys without taking a lot of chip damage on the way back – let’s say you kill 40 zombies in one activation in combat – said unit will take about 13 mortal wounds off the mortal wounds on death ability alone. Then said 40 man zombie unit can be recycled as a 20 zombie unit and you get the idea. Is it any good against shooting? Well kind of, because those lists have historically struggled to actually hold objectives, and this list is capable of moving a lot of zombies very quickly onto the objectives and grinding primary scoring out… most shooting armies (for good reason) simply don’t have the raw output to shoot off 140 zombies before they start losing key pieces to the grave guard or the zombies, especially when Belladama can fling a wolf at them (kind of?) through her warscroll spell to shut off unleash hell.

Christopher Johnson – Legion of Blood – 3rd Place

The List

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Archetype

Legion of Blood ethereal nonsense

Thoughts

Yup it’s this list again! Neferata and friends has become a tournament mainstay, and there’s not really anything to discuss I haven’t already touched on in previous weeks of CI. It’s good and cranking out 5-0 results at an astonishing rate! Expect nerfs to SBGL soon I should expect.

The Best of the Rest

The top 3 were all 5-0 and the rest of the top 8 went 4-1:

• Position – Player Name – Faction:
• 4th – Nicholas Walters – Bloodtoofs: A classic feeling list from earlier in the edition, this IJ list has a Mawcrusha, a Destroyer megaboss, 12 Pigs and even a brick of 10 Brutes
• 5th – Josh Bennett – Pretenders Host: Another Be’lakor blissbarbs list, this one running 66 of them with a total of 10 Blissbarb Seekers to help the list better deal with high armor save units
• 6th – Kaleb Walters – Guild of Summoners: See showdown
• 7th – Cody Saults – Fangs of Sotek: A starborne list that gets all it’s damage from Kroak and Slann spamming mortal wounds at range, with waves of MSU skinks and summoning (plus 10 Saurus Guard) there to protect the inner castle
• 8th – Dale Ervin – Jaws of Mork: The typical mix of Bounders and Squig Herd supplemented by the typical buff pieces – but no Gobbapalooza or Grinkrak here – instead 2 units of 20 Stabbas for better board control

Wrap Up

Quiet one this week as we enter summer in earnest – hope you enjoyed and see you next week!