In honor of facing (and losing) to Pontifex Zenestra, Matriarch of the Great Wheel (AKA Lady Pope; AKA the Dog-Faced Gremlin) I’ll be outlining my sins in the mortal realms in regards to hobby and most especially play on the table as I prepare for LVO. In my last write-up I outlined some potential armies that I was thinking about taking. As part of my repentance I’ve basically settled on a shell of a list (stolen from a WCW player) and will be working to refine my understanding of it in December and January.

Hobby Catch-Up

Sin Level – Venial (Sloth); Mortal (Gluttony)

Forgive me Dog-Faced Gremlin, it has been 22 days since my last Age of Sigmar models were assembled or painted. I had thought, in a very confident way, I might finish off my Age of Sigmar backlog before the end of the year. Over the past month I just haven’t had the motivation to paint models that I’m not taking to events and don’t need to put on the table. It would be a mortal sin to have completely put down the brush and clippers and most of my hobby time has been spent putting together an army for Warhammer 40,000 a game that I have limited desire to play. It’s a true hobby project that has mostly consisted of building models and following the rule of cool.

My two most painted Age of Sigmar armies both had a consistent basing background with my gitz bases modeled after the thick orange/brown Georgia mud and my Kruleboyz having a swamp aesthetic pulled from a river delta. This Votann project, that may be abandoned at any time, is pulling from the frequently under construction Interstate 285 that surrounds Atlanta as a base. I’ve got a pretty good handle on a color scheme, one that’s going to be the best there is, the best there was, and the best there ever will be. For the past 18 months I’ve avoided technics that require strong brush control but think the large number of edges will help me develop a new skill or become very very sad.

The much worse sin that I’ve undertaken is purchasing models before painting the ones that I own. Since the vast majority of the models I need for events are painted and I rarely paint models just to sit on a shelf I’m dependant on shifts in the meta or my desire to play a list to find the motivation to paint anything. Based on my recent games (below) I need 20 more stabbas with little pointy weapons and think some of my loonsmasher models are beyond help so I’ll be painting them up over the next few weeks. I’ve got 15 bounders “battle ready” in the most technical sense but would rather just muck about building space dwarves. That hasn’t stopped me from buying more models that might just be sitting in a box if I don’t take them to LVO or another event in the near future.

On a more positive note the custom chapter of the Thunder Lizards that my son has been painting have gotten a new color that builds on the greens, blues, and gold that my son had picked out before. While I’ve suggested using a wash on some of the parts of the models that have already been painted I’ve been told that those parts are already painted. It’s hard to argue this point and I”m just glad that the lesson of waiting for a color to dry before painting over it has been internalized so we avoid muddy browns. My hope is to bring up the possibility of the idea that a second layer of paint could enhance the look and vibe of the Thunder Lizards but, unfortunately, there appears to be no wrong way to hobby.

We’ve also been having some epic battles where we put a ton of models together and just tell a story of who is winning and losing (the bad guys always lose). Lately we’ve starting using a measuring tape to tell us how far a unit can move. This slow progression to the principals of playing minis is a lot of fun and keeps things really open ended. Plus, it provides us endless opportunities to go “pew pew pew pew”.

Gaming Catch-Up

Sin Level – Venial (Envy); Mortal (Pride;Sloth)

After playing around with some weird spider/troll lists and some pure troggoth lists I was getting frustrated with my games. Trolls felt very matchup and dice dependant and are an easy list to pilot – you’re basically competing in the combat phase and can outfight just about anyone. I added spiders in for the speed, battle tactics, and avoided taking Skragrott. I was likely too proud to change up my list since I finished my games so quickly and when trolls won they won big. If you lost it was easy to blame it on your opponent having more tricks than you. More recently I’ve been playing around with weird little gitz lists that have lots of casting and stabbas in big blocks. These are fun (and use fun dice and a wizard hat) but have struggled on battle tactics.

As I talked about in the review of the World Championships of Warhammer I was going to steal Phil Marshalls gitz list list and play it at my next event. After playing four games it’s a really good list that matches up with the majority of the armies and allows for a great deal of skill expression. I’m going to make a few adjustments and work to play into some of the newer armies but the squigs and loonsmashers serve as a pretty effective starting point for an army. The army moves, controls objectives, hits hard, and does magic fairly well without being reliant on it. Most importantly, I had every single model painted to a battle ready standard.

Stolen Goods

Warzone Atlanta is a long-running 40K event that added a single day RTT on Friday and a GT on the weekend. Due to a double booking I wasn’t able to attend the two-day event but had already taken off of work for the RTT so I ran the list through the paces. Attendance to the RTT was pretty sparse with only eight people going but I was really fortunate to get in three games against new opponents. While I enjoyed the event I didn’t like the 2.5 hour rounds.

Going into the event the only thing that I was nervous about was not having a strong fighting hero for Led into the Maelstrom. Gitz have a pretty easy set of battle tactics so I’m not overly concerned but every since list I’ve run has had at least one fighty hero on board. Ultimately the mobility, damage, and tricks to fight first outweigh the need for more heros.

Game 1 - Vs. Tzeentch on Nexus Collapse

Sin Ratings – Venial (Sloth); Mortal (Pride)

Like me my opponent was using a list that somebody else designed. Unlike me, I don’t think they had been able to play with the army too much before hand. However, that wasn’t the biggest issue with this matchup. Nexus Collapse is a weird mission where starting on objectives is a bad thing since you’re able to destroy objectives if you have fewer points than your opponent. I out dropped my opponent and made sure that my stabbas were more than 9 inches from the center of any objective to prevent myself from holding too many objectives in the first turn. As he dropped he put models on both his home objectives allowing me to burn his home objectives after the first round.

The goal is always to score fewer points in the first two turns and burn objectives forcing your opponent to go where you want to fight them. With a flexible army with a large amount of recursion like gitz I’m perfectly fine throwing out models to attempt to kill his heros and other big threats. My opponent was nice guy to play and I enjoyed the game and I felt that I was rewarded for being aggressive.

This forced him to move and split his forces to be able to contest the primary objectives and broke up his casting castle. I rolled fairly well during the game, with my five loonsmashers getting a total of 29 attacks into a big bird taking it down. One area that I completely blanked on was spell casting where I put an extra squig lore on my unit of bounders. It was completely unnecessary and ended up giving my opponent an extra summoning point.

The game was basically over when I killed all three of his big birds with a unit of bounders and loonshamers. Without the mortal wound output from spells, or the ability to destroy my loonshrine, I could just sit back and pick up primary points until I had an advantage and end the game.

Game Two – Vs. Morathi and the snakes on Icefields

Game 2 - Vs. Daughters of Khaine on The Icefields

Sin Ratings – Venial (Lust); Mortal (Pride;Gluttony)

I think this was one of the most enjoyable games of Age of Sigmar I’ve played in a long time.

My wife made me a token that says “game face” to remind me to play my best and not help my opponent. In my first game I kept my mouth shut when my opponent deployed on the points. Before this game I got a warning from my opponents first round opponent indicated that he didn’t do takebacks. I’m a big fan of tight games where people measure things before moving, think about what they’re doing, and react when they are supposed to. If I was intent on being a better player I’d rerack this game two or three more times and I anticipate we each would have improved our strategies and find the optimal play path.

I’m sort of familiar with the list and understood its power but hadn’t played against it in a long long time.  As we both were two drops we rolled off and I lost and became the defender. I positioned four wyldwoods in the middle to reduce the effectiveness of the bow snakes and make it difficult for a large number of stabby snakes to pile into a combat. Since bounders fly I was pretty confident that I would get over the pile of dead bodies on a charge or movement.

I was given first turn (and lusted after it) and cast a single spell for magical dominance and buffed up my forward unit of bounders with the an extra pip of rend. After doing some measuring I realized that my loonsmashers would be pretty close to charging into little morathi and I started my movement phase with a snuffle that got my a 5+ ward and an extra attack. I didn’t want to, but I felt forced to charge forward with my bounders to attempt to kill the general, hit the stabby snakes, and start the clock on Morathi dying. After my movement my opponent redeployed big morathi so I would be forced to engage the big murder snake. I didn’t like my odds but had committed too much and rolled an eight on my charge, did enough mortals to kill the general, and was in engagement range of both morathi models. My opponent unleashed hell and did 6 damage that I declined to ward and I pulled out of engagement range of the Big M. However, if Morathi was still in engagement range there is a good chance that my unit would have been killed and I could have attempted to bring it back from the loonshrine. Since I rolled an eight, as opposed to a ten, I wasn’t able to pile in and maximize my damage to the stabby snakes and didn’t want to let them provide a free crystal touch on my unit.

On my opponents turn he picked reprisal and I prepared to lift my bounders. However, instead of putting the Shadow Queen into my bounders he teleported her to the back line basically losing a battle tactic but put himself in position to destroy my loonshrine and kill my general extremely early in the game. Even if he had put everything into my bounders and killed them I felt good about having my loonsmashers (with fight first) in combat with little morathi.  This time he was able to roll much better on his saving throws and I didn’t get to do three damage putting me behind the pace I needed. Adding to this disappointment I miscast with Skragrott twice in the game preventing me from teleporting and getting three wounds in two turns. Having Skragrott on a single wound forced me to pop out my loonsmashers in a protective bubble to prevent a charge into my last remaining hero.

I got doubled from 1-2 allowing him to stabilize and didn’t do a single wound to either Morathi on his turn leading to a very disappointing realization that I needed to kill everything on the board that wasn’t Morathi. My units were slowly being taken out without the ability to respawn them but I still had more units on the board and was able to take points. With the Shadow Queen and bow snakes able to move wherever they wanted I attempted to stay away from his units. After round 3 the two and a half hour round was up and we talked out to a tie where I had 5 battle tactics with no grand strategy and he had 4 battle tactics with a grand strategy. After consulting the mission pack I was given a minor loss as the first tiebreaker is grand strategy.

I really want to say that this was one of my favorite games of Age of Sigmar that I’ve played all year and I would have loved the ability to rerack it a few more times. Neither of us played a perfect game but we were making high level plays to counter what the other was doing. At the end of the game we both were agreeable with accepting what we thought would happen.

This game really solidified my desire to take this list over a trogg list. I wouldn’t have had the tools to deal with the mobility in this list and the potential to have multiple fight firsts from the loonsmashers was a big factor in all of my games. Having the tools to adjust to different lists is going to be a priority over ease of travel and pushing around fewer models.

Game Three – Vs. New Cities (Mortal – Sloth; Ignorance; Pride)

Game 3 - Vs. The Dog Faced Gremlin and Friends on Geometric Pulse

Sin Ratings – Venial (None); Mortal (Sloth; Pride)

I finally got to fight the Dog-Faced Gremlin herself after hearing so many stories about how overpowered cities is going to be. I generally stay away from reading about armies and lurk in chats until a few people that I trust have played against an army as people tend to overestimate the impact of warscrolls (like Felwater Troggoths) and underestimate the impact of things that actually impact the game (like the mawgussy being impassable and deployable in neutral territory). There has been a fair bit of hype for cities but they’ve already absorbed a points increase. I can see a similar tightening of support units (like gitz) over time as they seem to function extremely well.

If my last game was the kind of high wire play that makes playing competitive games fun this was the sort of rolling dice and pushing models around to see what happens. Both of our armies did stuff, and we got to do stuff against each other. My opponent, using the new Cities of Sigmar rules, offered to explain his list but I demurred and told him I’d figure it out as we go along. I felt good about the battleplan but the minor loss really combined with an army that I haven’t played really took the competitive spirit out of me. I wanted to see what it felt like to play against some of these newer units (especially jug man) and through out my army with a huge error in deployment that ended up costing me a chance to win the game.  See if you can find the error in the deployment below.

Cities has morphed from a weird book with lots of low-save bodies to a save stacking fast moving and healing machine. They’re to be treated more like OBR, where every single unit needs to be killed to the woman rather than allowing a few models to linger around. My list is great at getting to rend 4, basically the magic number needed to move nearly any save to a 5+ at best, and I wasn’t able to position my general to use the moonfaced mommet to get those knockout blows. The new horses and steelhelm units won’t be ground down easily (like a Tzeentch army) the healing and ability to bring back models means that fighting a cities list is like fighting a tanky tanky army. Weird abilities tipped the math away from me and I should have flooded the center left side of the board and ignored the mass to the right. I like the order system even if it feels like it’s going to add A LOT of extra time to games unless your opponent knows what they want to do. Learning and guessing orders is going to bring a bluffing type of to playing against cities. The ability to heal and bring back units and heal 2d3 wounds on the lion lady wasn’t something that I expected to happen. The humanpolooza, with its board wide abilities and extra fun stuff, is a real problem in a castle that can move pretty quickly.

I ended up conceding after getting his lion lady down to 3 wounds only to have her heal 8 wounds in the next hero phase and rally some models to a unit in combat.

Next Steps

Since I’ve abandoned any hope of painting my models before the end of the year I’m going to focus on painting my gloomspite gitz for LVO. Some of these, like the bounders, just need a few coats of paint to finish. Others, like the Gobbapalooza, needs some extra work before the end of January. Others, like a unit of stabbas and loonsmashers, are going to be replaced as they were among the first units I ever painted and I’d like a chance to redo them.

I’m also assembling a list of potential matchups that I need to get reps in before LVO. Last year I was focused on prisoners with jobs and Ogres while this year I”m going to look at cities, the sons AOR, and whatever FEC has going on. My goal is to get in 20-25 in person games between now and then and look at where the meta is compared to my local meta.

Looking above, the biggest sins I consistently are pride and sloth – just a result of not playing enough games (a fixable problem) and learning the army that I’m going to take from Atlanta to Vegas in a few months.

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