Stephanie’s Road to UK Masters 2025, Part 1

There are two options open to a wargamer who used to be good at wargames but has fallen out of practice due to quitting a game system, life getting in the way, or falling out of love with the hobby. The first is to become an annoying person on the internet. You get to complain about how X game is so much less balanced these days, and things were better in the past. Nobody will like you very much, but that’s okay, you’ve earned your undignified retirement.

The second option is to earn redemption.

Welcome to the Road to UK Masters series, in which I, Stephanie Bee (the Bee stands for Has-Bee-n), either git gud again, or fail spectacularly – there is no middle ground. Our target? Funnily enough, UK Masters, an invite-only event in February 2025.

Operation Big Number Good

Here’s how we get in. This is complicated, so buckle up. Huge thanks to Steve H from the Masters Committee, who kindly walked me through my many questions.

Kings of War in the UK uses a player ranking system. Scores for each event (capped at 90 for a sufficiently big one-dayer, and 100 for a two-dayer) go towards your overall score. Your overall score is made up of your four best event performances that year, so the absolute best you can do is 400. The rankings at the end of the year determine who qualifies for the UK Masters. The top 16 players automatically qualify. Last year’s winner also gets an invite. If anyone from the top 16 can’t make it, players are invited in rank order until 16 are found.

But, there’s another way in. Kings of War has a dizzying 28 factions. Their performances are tracked too. They get a ranking using the same points system. Their score is calculated by taking the best three scores achieved by players of that faction across the year. This gives us a cap of 300 for scores.The top player for each faction, who doesn’t already qualify through top 16, also qualifies.

We now know where I’m going, and how to get here. Let’s take a step back, and look at the story so far.

The Daemons Problem, or, Why Stephanie Can’t Choose Her Factions Any More

I should probably give more context on why I’m all washed up. A few years ago, I was decently good at Warmachine. Then, a whole bunch of Stuff happened, and I quit. I tried some 40k (which is how I found out about Goonhammer), then quit and started playing an obscure skirmish game with a playerbase of like 16 people, then quit that at the start of this year. I hadn’t really enjoyed competing at either nearly as much. I started playing Kings of War in January, because my partner got me into it (having been playing for a couple years on and off), and found it distinctly okay. I understood why it was a good game, but I made a really bad mistake at the start by choosing a faction that wasn’t right for me. I like to call this the Daemons problem.

See, for some reason, despite my best efforts not to do so, I get drawn into playing factions that work like early 9th edition 40k Chaos Daemons. The way I played them was a very objective-focused style, where your swarms of little idiots die, and your big idiots die but slowly and maybe taking something off with them, and at the end of the game you’ve got the lead on the scenario but with no army left. That was fine for me at first. I was getting back into competitive games, it was fun, I took some wins, and took some losses. But eventually it got boring. Watching people take your army off while you play five minute turns starts to grate. I have ADHD, which makes it worse still. 

Naturally, this means that every single army I have played since has been some variation on this theme. It’s infuriating. I am not trying to do it – in fact, I am actively trying not to. But, for some reason, game designers just think factions with the aesthetics I like should just be bouncy pillows that explode when you flick them and hold objectives until death. My start to Kings of War was no exception. I had no idea what I was doing, and so my starting faction, Nightstalkers,went through the wringer of being played as a board presence list until I was about ready to quit. (I will stress that not only have better players than I succeeded with them, but in varying builds as well). 

Instead, for a change, I listened to what literally all of my friends had been telling me. I decided to play something that hits things. I decided to use models with the stats and subtlety of a flying brick. I decided, my readers, to choose violence.

The Antithesis of Daemonmoding Is Violence

For the uninitiated, Varangur are basically Warriors of Chaos from Old World, with the serial numbers filed off and Slaanesh references gone. They’re the spooky evil mirror to the poster-boy Northern Alliance, and share a lot of units, but have a fair few unique things of their own. Generally, they put aside the icy themes of Northern Alliance in favour of a Marks Of Chaos-esque system, where some units can devote themselves to aspects of their god, Korgaan.

A note – I’m wedded to using GW models for my army. Kings of War is a model-agnostic system, meaning that you can use anything, so long as it’s representative. So, I’m living out a long-time fantasy of mine, by using some dope Age of Sigmar models I’ve always wanted to have. You’d think this might constrain me, but I actually have a plan to represent every single model currently available to Varangur with a GW equivalent. Before anyone complains that I’m not using Mantic stuff, note that most of the core of my faction doesn’t have anything in their range to represent it – my first army, Nightstalkers, was entirely Mantic, so I’ve done my bit to support their business!

Here’s the list I took to Clash of Kings 2024.

Army list - click to expand

You can read about its performance here, but it’s enough to say I was broadly happy with things. That said, no list is perfect, and while I’ve since analysed my play to an unreasonable degree (as that’s the most important thing), it’s also useful to look objectively at what I took, and to see if I could make my life easier with different tools.

The good news is that a whole bunch of the list performed excellently. Night Raiders with the Wolf Handlers upgrade absolutely slapped, and were a fantastic unit for their cost, picking off targets they had no right to with a deceptively powerful lategame presence. At least one unit of them survived every single game. Likewise, the Sons of Korgaan proved powerful and tanky, hitting hard enough in most games to put me in a decent situation.

My screening/chaff package was also solid. Snow Troll Primes do some very silly things, especially in combination with Snow Foxes. My Draugr had an uncanny ability to avoid notice, which led to them racking up points for me (most notably keeping games 3, 4, and 6 from going too far against me). 

Then, we come to the big damn heroes. Magnilde was, as always, absolutely Mag-nificent. In game 5, Chris L kindly taught me that not only does she get a start-of-movement turn, but is also Nimble, which immediately came up in Game 6. I’m really excited to see what absolute nonsense angles I can get out of her in future, and have learned my lessons about where best to send her. The Lords on Chimera, meanwhile, had a bit of a variable weekend, as did Kruufnir. The former tended to have a problem where one of them could find a good target, but not the other – so, I’d rather have had something with a bit more thiccness in place of the second one. This wasn’t a universal issue, and I definitely made big mistakes with them that impacted on their performance. But, I do feel like I can do better list-wise. Kruufnir, sadly, was kind of just a slightly better Snow Troll Prime for a lot of the weekend – he certainly didn’t feel like he justified a 40 point premium. 

This is where we’re starting from. Now, the road begins. Where do we go from here?

The Road Goes E-var(ang) ur-n and Urn

So, here’s the plan. I’m going to qualify for UK Masters this year.

Aaaaaaand I’ve done it.

Wait, what?

So, remember that section you only skim-read at the start? That was important. 

The thing is, life doesn’t always line up neatly in a way suitable for articles, formulaic movies, or DHOTYA submissions. Sometimes, success happens before someone gives you the tap on the shoulder to write for their website. But, in this case, success has came with some caveats.

Remember when I said this earlier?

“Their score is calculated by taking the best three scores achieved by players of that faction across the year”

Take another look at that bolded bit.

“playerS of that faction”

I don’t actually need to be the successful one for the faction to qualify. But how, you might ask, could this work? Well, reader, let’s look at things as they stand when I’m writing this (20th September 2024).

Here’s the top scores for Varangur at events this season. The top three sum to more than 200, so the faction qualifies. But, you’ll notice that most of the names don’t repeat (except mine). This gives the hilarious result of…

Me being in the top spot for the faction, but having contributed exactly nothing to make it qualify for Masters. Absolutely hysterical. Truly, I am standing on the shoulders of giants. 

But, this approach comes with consequences. Firstly, there are still events left in the year. People may well be able to beat my score as it stands, simply by working their way to three events with Varangur and doing better than my mediocre early performances. I’m going to have to fight to keep my crown, especially after pointing out its vulnerability in public like this. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, it feels dishonourable. I already get iffy at invitationals about whether I deserve to hang at that level – imagine how bad I’d feel if I objectively didn’t. I don’t want to face going in without being able to say, clearly, “I have smacked enough nerds in Kings to earn my place here”. 

So, the goal is to improve my scores. I, in theory, have three events left this year. In October, I have War Up North, a smallish two dayer. In November, I have a local one dayer, and Warfare, a big two dayer with a smaller points size. Thanks to the work of the folks who make the rankings page, we actually have a calculator that tells us the score available for placings at any given event size. The October event has 92 points available for first place, descending by 4.18 for each place drop. The big November event has 100 points available for first place, but until the player count is known, it’s hard to tell what the drop-off will be. It’s at least 40, though, so likely around 2.5 or less. The one-dayer is heavily dependent on numbers, but is probably going to be between 70 and 80, with a steep drop-off. So, with high placings, I could likely get some results in that top spot.There were a couple of formative experiences for me both during and shortly after Clash ‘24. The first was getting rocked by Ogres twice – they were clearly a matchup I needed to play better. I’d made identifiable mistakes in both games and they cost me, but some would have been easier to avoid with better tools. The second was surveying the field for my next event, War Up North.

In the Good Old Days where I was an Is rather than a Has Been, I wore a few hats for my team. One of those hats was opposition research – knowing what the other teams were playing, and making sure we were prepared for it. I’ve been doing something similar here, and, thankfully, this piece is now going live after the list submission deadline, so I’m comfortable talking about it!

I’m lucky enough to belong to a very competitive and dedicated local meta, and be in a very competitive and dedicated team within that. So, for the four of us going (myself, my partner, and two other teammates), I’m fairly familiar with our matchups and lists. I’ve been a bit limited in reps due to illness, but I still know roughly where I stand into all of them. The bad news is that there are a lot of other sharks in the tank. Fortunately, my captain had some motivating words in his arsenal.

When prepping for the event, I’ve known that the following needs to be on my ‘deal with this’ hitlist, based on who’s attending and what they’ve played most recently.

• Ogres, of various flavours.
• Goblin Gunline.
• Salamanders Gunline
• Northern Alliance Gunline
• Various Other Flavours of Gunline
• You Get The Picture

Indeed, during my prep, another Salamanders gunline player was confirmed to be showing up in the most English way possible.

Basically, I’m gonna get shot. A lot. That much is a certainty. But, that’s not the entirety of the field, nor can I know for certain folks haven’t switched it up since their last events – I’ve learned over the years that research is never infallible. So, I can’t just bring some kind of silly anti-gunline skew.

Naturally, this means I’m bringing an anti-gunline skew. But it’s a sensible one, I promise.

Stealth Is Good for Your Health

An advantage Varangur have over their goody-two-shoes Northern Alliance counterparts is being weirdly difficult to shoot. I learned from playing Nightstalkers that Stealthy makes guns sad, especially when you can stack up the hit penalties, and Stealthy plus De5 means that even a dedicated gunline is probably only shifting one thing a turn tops. So, it was time to cut a bunch of easily shootable things – the Draugr went, along with the second Lord on Chimera, as both were far too tempting a target. Kruufnir likewise didn’t survive his performance review, and was deemed surplus to requirements (for now).

In their place, a third unit of Sons of Korgaan with Guise of the Deceiver, for that delicious Stealthy. Much less shootable, perfect – though it required some conversion work to make the third unit distinct, which I’ll show off in the next part of this series once they’re done. But, there were still more lessons learned from my Nightstalkers days that once again seemed relevant – namely, I missed the healing power of the Mind-screech. So, I went on a scrounge through my roster, and noticed that Celestial Restoration was a spell available to me. Take a Magus, park them right at the back of the board, have them throw out some value every turn. Job done, for a much better investment than throwing random Magical Artefacts on stuff. My last easy decision was to play at this shooting thing everyone seemed to like, and put in a fourth Regiment of Night Raiders.

Then came the heartbreaking choice – I cut the Trickster’s Wand. At Clash ‘24, I’d loved having the threat of Hex on the table, and used it frequently. Granted, it meant a Snow Troll Prime wasn’t bombing up the table, but they often didn’t need to anyway. I had even put in a Thegn on Frostfang in place of Kruufnir – a piece both slightly more expensive and arguably slightly worse than a third Snow Troll Prime – purely for it being Ht4, and therefore able to see (and Hex) Nomagarok wherever he hid. Unfortunately, the allure of the more efficient unit loadout came first, so this particular darling was murdered in pursuit of optimality. Weirdly, though, I found myself appreciating the former carrier on its own merits, so it got to stay. The fact that it was already painted had nothing to do with it, honest.

I didn’t have many points left, so stuck to the essentials. Sir Jesse’s Boots of Striding are all-timers in my view, truly the Air Jordans of Pannithor. A Staying Stone on the big lad was likewise a very inexpensive way to lower the risk of getting Wavered. This left only 5 points, which after a quick scan of the field looked like a good way to get Fire-Oil – plenty of Regeneration at the event, so I may as well dial up the power of my shooting and late-game melee a bit. 

Here’s what maybe 21 of you at most have been waiting for – the list I’m going to be taking, with all the trimmings.

Army list - click to expand

I don’t think it’s anywhere near optimised yet – for one thing, it’s written with this specific event in mind. But, there’ll be time for that later. Right now, there’s a War Up North to win. 

Tune in next time for Part 2, in which we check up on hobby progress (hopefully a recurring segment), raise awareness of Paris Syndrome, and break new ground in overhang on bases.

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