Stephanie’s Road to Kings of War UK Masters 2025, Part 2

We did it.

Let’s recap on Part 1.

• Objective 1: Qualify for UK Masters 2025. Done! I’m confident enough to say nobody will be overtaking my score at this point.
• Objective 2: Have a score in the top three scores. Done! Not just a score, but the top score. I’d have liked more than one, but the maths is pretty difficult because of how high-scoring Clash is (due to the way ranking points work).
• Objective 3: I didn’t actually set a third objective, but it sounds better if I do this as a three. Objective 3 can be… not worsening my Paris Syndrome. Done!

So, from starting this article series in the lead for best in faction, I have now ended the season in the lead for best in faction. Truly, I am a master of dramatic tension.

You may be wondering what Paris Syndrome actually is. I made it up. It’s a me thing. It’s not the Japanese thing where you get really sad when arriving in Paris because it’s not all it’s cracked up to be – as an Englishwoman, I legally can’t admit Paris is a nice city.

What it actually refers to is a Warmachine event from years and years ago. Because the rest of my team was doing better than me, I got into an awful state about forcing myself to events until I won something, no matter how inconvenient. I was literally driving to any two dayer with standings, and became insufferable about it. Paris Masters was my last chance to get a podium in 2018, and it took my friends finally knocking some sense into me to convince me not to go. Since then, any descent into “I’m worse than everyone, I must force myself to go to every event I can reach” is Paris Syndrome.

After War Up North, I did have a bit of a relapse. Just a bit. (I looked at every single event on the calendar for the rest of the year and prepared to message our dogsitter). But the thing is, I was already going to all the two-day events remaining – which generate the biggest scores – and the one dayers don’t actually shift the needle much short of a win. And, if there’s one thing that’s the absolute bane of my life, it’s actually getting a win at a locals. Physically impossible, can’t do it, even when I do win them I trip and fall flat on my face on the way to get my prize. So, I just about managed to not go to more events. Truly, this is the kind of content you come to an article series for, when the highlight is not going to things – but trust me, it’s progress. (Also I kind of expected to have it worse when I threw in that teaser, so enjoy your disappointing payoff).

Anyway, having conquered this entirely self-imposed obstacle, it’s time to think about what comes next. 

You Have A Hangover On Day Two. I Have Overhang On Day One. We Are Not The Same

First on the docket? Hobby progress. I promised new and exciting frontiers in overhang on models last time, and I feel like I’ve delivered. My third unit of Mounted Sons of Korgaan are distinguished from their friendos by not having lances at all, and instead just having whatever spare weapons I had lying around. It’s nice to be able to easily differentiate – lances up, lances down, no lances. You’d think that not hefting several foot long spikes would mean the base space problem would be reduced, but, uh, no.

Yes, the banner guy’s horse legs are like a full two inches over the base. No, I haven’t had the misfortune of getting this unit rear charged. Yet.

Here’s some slightly better shots of the hobbying process, and of the result. If I’d been clever, I’d have catalogued the whole process, but as I’m only just getting the hang of taking regular pics during games, I didn’t think to make check-ins going through this. Bonus points to the readers who can identify which kits were pillaged for the weapons, and let me know in the comments if you want more detail on hobby content in the future – the only way to get me to do it is to tell me that the little commenting people who live in my phone will press the dopamine buttons if I do.

This overhang issue has kind of been the story of the hobby project overall. I’ve made myself adhere to a sort-of rule called Preferred Model Count, or PMC. Basically, the idea is that a regiment should look like a regiment, and so on – no units of like three bois pretending to be a horde. I didn’t quite understand at the start just how little the competitive community actually cared about this, and now I’m mostly just adhering to ‘does the base look full’, but this was the last unit I put together before that really sunk in. This is why all the cavalry have eight models on there – if I were doing this again, I think I’d have went with five apiece, as it would still give a decent sense of the weight of these bois (who are really hefty cavalry), while not overhanging further than a beer bracket day two.

You may notice some of the wooden areas look slightly different. Don’t make my mistake folks – it should be really obvious to you, even at 3am, which paint you previously used in a scheme. 3am you is a dumbass. Don’t rely on them to remember basic things like shades of brown.

I shouldn’t have that much to do before Masters itself, in theory. What’s likely going to inform my painting schedule more than anything is the list I end up putting together. So, that brings us to our next problem – spying on a bunch of indecisive nerds.

Stealth Is Maybe Not Good For My Health

There’s a certain point at which you kind of just have to accept your perception of what’s meta, and what people are actually taking to events, are not in fact one and the same. Such appears to be the case for my worries about gunlines in the present era. Looking objectively at the field, and at what I’ve faced generally through the year, I don’t think I need to expect literally all the guns in the world. There’ll be shooting, sure. But, the time of preparing for 100+ shot-count standoffs is past, I think. As for what replaces it, it’s kind of hard to get an exact read, but I do see the likely way things go as being stodgy in nature. Dwarfs keep taking bricks and keep winning, so they must be doing something right, and I expect most folks to either bring that or bring counters of some sort. 

Fortunately, I’m used to being wrong about everything, so it’s no major adjustment to throw out the truisms of yesterday for some new and exciting tech.

That means a few things are being dropped. No more Stealthy on every single model – sometimes, things just aren’t going to get shot. That means not blowing a bunch of points on a Lord to follow the Human Tribesmen around, as it’s a bit wasteful to effectively just tag a unit with a rule they don’t often make use of. Our nobility cull continues with the Lord on Frostfang, who despite his promotion from a Thegn on Frostfang just hasn’t done substantially more than a Snow Troll Prime would. Given that he costs half again as much, it’s time to yeet him – the extra stuff he does is nice, but I think I’d want to have more than one if I kept to that build, and that’s waaaay too expensive. 

First up, welcome back Kruufnir! The prophesied death of Individuals to to the change to Duelist doesn’t really seem to have happened. If I had to guess, I’d note that you kind of need to have baseline killing power to get through, like, a Garrek Heavyhand or an Eckter anyway, as triple attacks on some dweebo with Crushing Strength (1) and 5 Attacks isn’t really going to cut it. Fortunately, Bring Me Their Head allows us to buff up any unit we so desire (which enabled some very fun plays at Ribble Rumble), so Varangur have a bit of a unique edge in this regard. 

Secondly, I’m kind of vibing with a Magus and some Draugr at present. Famulus makes for decent consistency on Bane Chant, and Transfusion, besides being a ‘good’ source of trans joke material (heavy air quotes there), is a genuinely nice healing effect. Considering my defence of the Healing Brew, how could I fairly pass up the opportunity to have a renewable source on tap? Also returning to the fold are Draugr, as with a greater number of scenarios involving Loot counters and objectives comes a greater need for disposable idiots to sit on or carry things. 

Thirdly, as mentioned above, it seems folks are just going for pure unadulterated Beef. So, we’re going to respond with our own hitting power. I’ve been bouncing around a lot of builds over the past few weeks, and this likely isn’t permanent, but in theory this is what I’m looking at for Masters.

Army list - click to expand

This isn’t drastically different from previous builds, but we’ve got a whole bunch more Bane Chant to crack through those De6+ blobs. We also have a lot more to deploy, which has proven to be kind of important in the new scenarios I’ve played so far – you get a fair bit of value from being able to feint a board position early on, so having more drops of terrible chaff and Individuals whose position doesn’t really matter makes that more doable. The important thing, though, is that each individual element of it is something I’ve played before. Because of the holiday season, it’s going to be really difficult to get games in, so the play here for a high-pressure environment is falling back on old staples. 

You may wonder about the wisdom of talking about this stuff publicly, when a whole bunch of the people going will be easily able to have a look at this and get some advance prep in for what I’ll be going with. You, imaginary persn, are right. But, two things. Number 1, the unofficial Goonhammer motto is Always Post. I’m happy to sacrifice some small chance of success to the content mines. Number 2, far more importantly, is that I am a vanishingly small percentage of the field, and not likely to win the thing. I would not be a good use of prep time, and it is in that admitted incompetence that I take my refuge from deep scrutiny. There’s a certain liberation in accepting that right now, I suck and my takes suck, so it’s alright to just say my silly little words on the internet and see how things stack up on the table.

Which Way, Western Va(ra)n(gur)

It might be the midpoint of this series, but it’s likely the end of the road of me playing Varangur after Masters. Honestly, I’m just kinda bored, and I want to experience some classic Kings of War factions that I don’t get to play against as often as I would like. So, while the next part of this Road to Masters is going to be the grand finale where I play in the actual event itself, there won’t likely be any Varangur content from me afterwards (other than the faction reviews).

So, I need something to fixate on for the remainder of the time. I therefore propose to you, all three of you reading this, to look at the Masters attendee list for this year and tell me who to challenge in the comments (remember, I don’t see the Disqus ones!).

In the meantime, thanks, as always, for reading. Sorry this one was a bit short – some scheduling stuff happened – but I’ll make up for it next time with a bumper crop of Masters talk as we close things out.

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