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Age of Sigmar | Goonhammer | Core Games
Competitive Innovations in the Mortal Realms: It's a New Life for Me & I'm Feeling Ghur
Alright duders and dudettes, it's finally time to begin examining the impact of GHB 2022 on listbuilding in earnest, as we've got our first trickle of events using the new battlepack to contend with. Let's get to it.
28-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in England, GB on July 09 2022. All the lists for this event can be found in <a href="https://web.bestcoastpairings.com/event.php?eventId=0pg0Ji27QR&embed=false">Best Coast Pairings</a>.
Daughters of Khaine - Baz Norman Jr - Morathi & The Bow Snakes still has legs (wait... tails???) with some minimal tweaks.
Cities of Sigmar - Freddie Leggett - Freddie has already had good success with a Hallowheart Pallador/Protectors list, and this incarnation of it trades out a few pieces in order to leverage the new and improved Purple Sun.
It's an unusual matchup to start off the new GHB CI, with Freddie bringing a magic and mobile heavy list that has a lot of moving parts and toolbox elements to it that aren't immediately obvious when looking at just the warscrolls themselves. Speaking broadly, he has rock solid mobility as the Palladors can teleport all over the show (and with Wildform cast on them from the Battlemage they can consistently charge after the teleport), with the Demigryph Knights and Protectors acting as dual-role Hammer/Anvils thanks to the added punch Bounty Hunters affords them. At it's most basic, being able to present 24 3+ save wounds and 30 2+ (effectively) wounds is something that some armies will just inherently struggle against, though the spread out nature of The Silksteel Nests (an 8 objective battleplan with raiding!) means that the Protectors could get stranded away from where the action is. Baz on the other hand has better ranged punch with the Blood Stalkers and a useful teleporting unit of his own in the Shadowstalkers for the purposes of raiding objectives. Morathi is as good as she's ever been (with HOTH gone the value of Monsters to shut off command abilities goes up a bit) and the pesky combo of Zealous Orator and Crown of Woe on the Ironscale means that any Snake units that take chip damage may just come back revitalised... whereas your units will struggle to stick around if they fail battleshock when they can't use Inspiring Presence *or* Rally near her. As for problems... it's mostly that Baz just doesn't have anything particularly durable outside of Morathi; and means that he will have to be very surgical with his offensive moves as although he can rally on a 4+... the bounty hunter hammers that Freddie has can just blow straight through the Blood Sister units and put him in a position where he concedes board control very quickly due to lack of *stuff*.
Cities of Sigmar - Major Victory (16-4)
Demigryph Knights. Credit: SRM
Freddie's List - See Above
Freddie leverages two very statistically efficient warscrolls (Protectors and Demigryphs) with a suite of buffs (+1 to wound from Ignite Weapons, 4+ mortal wound bounceback thanks to Warding Brand, Bounty Hunters) to present a very imposing front line that will weather most damage sources outside of heavy mortal wound output. He can pretty consistently power his spells *through* by taking advantage of Arcane Channeling to grant each of his 4 wizards fantastic casting bonuses; and they have an easier time than most casting endless spells because they get an additional +1 to cast them thanks to Amplified Sorceries. So we can leverage Purple Sun well, we throw out an appalling number of high casting values spells, and we have strong anvil/hammer units. What more could we need? Well Palladors make a useful board control piece that can lift medium strength units pretty easily when lightly buffed, and their teleport a turn shenanigans means that they pressure your opponent to screen well *throughout* the game or risk losing support pieces to rear charges. Crossbowmen are also here! Yay! While not particularly inspiring a ranged unit, they still fulfil a useful role here as they make cheap and cheerful Expert Conquerors fodder to cling on to rear objectives against enemy Skirmishers long enough for help to arrive (i.e. the Palladors).
Credit: Dan Richardson
Baz's List - See Above
It's primarily interesting because it indicates that we can't just wipe the slate clean and assume all the old lists just won't transition well to the new metagame. What we have here is a list that is largely playing the same game it used to; though it's gone up in drops significantly by dropping Battle Regiment for Expert Conquerors/Bounty Hunter battalions. It speaks to the strength of Morathi and Blood Stalkers that they can see the whole landscape shift underneath them, but with a few tweaks they can still keep putting up podium results.
Sadly I was unable to get the rest of the top 8 lists as they were never submitted to BCP and I was unable to get a response from the TO in time.
40-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in England, GB on July 09 2022. All the lists for this event can be found in <a href="https://web.bestcoastpairings.com/event.php?eventId=bQLZmfqyUX&embed=false">Best Coast Pairings</a>.
Sylvaneth - Matthew Brooks - Dryads make an unexpected return to the tabletop, acting as an efficient tarpit for this ranged and spellcasting heavy skirmishing list.
Slaves to Darkness - Max Soule - Bounty Hunters Sixth Circle Varanguard may end up being a mainstay in STD lists going forward and this may be a good template. Archaon, Varanguard and a Purple Sun are 3 huge headaches for your opponent.
Matthew has a pretty simple but strong plan - Summon a Wyldwood near your opponent's army turn 1 thanks to the Treelord Ancient, then utilize Spellsinger, The Dwindling, Keepers of the Arcane and the Warsong Revenant to do the following: Roll 3 dice and pick the 2 highest for casting, with a +1 to cast. If you're unhappy with the roll, you get to reroll it. Use that high roll to cast Unleash Swarm of Spites with it's range measured from the Wyldwood you just put in your opponent's face. Roll a number of dice equal to the casting roll for EACH enemy unit within 9" of the Wyldwood, and do a mortal wound to said unit for each 5+. That's a pretty impressive combo, but it's not the only combo here. The Kurnoth Hunters with Bows can throw out (with All out Attack and an Arch-revenant nearby) 12 shots at 30" range, hitting on 3s, wounding on 2s, rend 1 and 2 damage each. While it's not potent enough to dominate the game by itself, it is perfect for finishing off units that the Warsong Revenant weakens. The problem that Matthew is going to experience however is down to the matchup - the Varanguard and Archaon have spell shrugs that may make it difficult to chip down Max's most valuable units. For that, he'll need the Sword Kurnoth Hunters, who can punch well and can be fairly resilient. On Max's side, his gameplan is simply to get to the juicy inner centre of Matthew's castle before he starts losing the units that matter. He's a higher drop than his opponent so he can't bank on a double turn in the early goings to dominate proceedings, unless Matthew gives him second turn (which I doubt due to the nature of this matchup). Max will likely be without his buffing suite in the Chaos Lord and Chaos Sorceror Lord fairly quickly into the match, but the Varanguard will absolutely blow through the Dryads with damage 3 attacks so it's just about getting that one teleport spell off or spell shrugging Matthew's damaging spells enough times that enough of that core of Max's army make it to the frontlines. It's a straight forward game plan, but that's often the case with Host of the Everchosen armies.
Slaves to Darkness Victory - Major Win (28-12)
Credit: Silks
Max's List - See Above
There's not really too much to say as this is a GHB 2021 list that's transitioned well into 2022, so let's talk about why. Varanguard aren't vulnerable to Bounty Hunters (Mounted) and make excellent Bounty Hunters themselves, and with Ensorcelled Weapons and sixth circle they can throw out an insanely high number of damage 3 attacks against enemy Galletian Veterans. Marked in Tzeentch, they're also benefiting from a 3+ save rerolling 1s, which is easily buffable to 2+ thanks to Oracular Visions from the CSL (or Mystic Shield/AOD). Untamed Beasts make excellent front line chaff thanks to their pregame move, and Iron Golems are insanely efficient at just sitting on a point and not dying, as 75 points will get you 10 3+ save wounds rerolling 1s to save - NICE. Oh and Archaon *is still a threat*.
Mymourn Bansheed Credit: Fowler
60 Bladegheist Revenants in Scarlet Doom (50 of them Expert Conquerors) is an alarming prospect for a lot of armies to deal with for a few reasons:
The typical Death recursion mechanics are here to keep their numbers up; and the Spirit Hosts help the support heroes stick around.
The other 4-1 players:
A 35-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Washington, US on July 9 2022. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.
Kharadron Overlords - Jeremy Veysseire - Do not adjust your monitor, a KO list running a custom Sky port, 30 Arkanauts, a load of Ships and a dream made it to the big leagues.
Nighthaunt - Alexander Gonzalez - Scarlet doom Bladegheist spam makes another appearance this week, this time with 2 units of Hexwraiths to block out space.
Jeremy has a fortuitous matchup here, as he suffers less from Nighthaunt charge debuffs than many other armies for the simple fact that his stuff sucks in melee anyway. To offset that, this list has enough mobility and ranged punch to 'interact' (read: Murder in cold blood) with his opponent without needing to necessarily get stuck in combat.
As for Alexander, he has a different problem to contend with: He has to *catch* the ships in order to do any meaningful damage. He's also without any Spirit Hosts, so Jeremy could seize the initiative, take first, kill all the heroes in the shooting phase and try to box him in his own deployment zone with ships while the Arkanauts pile up a healthy lead. If Alex can get an early double and pile on those charge mortal wounds he could run away with this thing all the same. It's an unusual and exciting matchup!
Result
Kharadron Overlords - Major Win
Instagram: bair_paints
Why It's Interesting
It's a fantastic little twist that this list did well, but when you note that Jeremy is the one piloting it things start to make sense as he's a well respected player within the US competitive community. As for the list itself, Purple Sun is a nice little wrinkle that helps improve *his entire army's* shooting phase thanks to the armour debuff, which can represent a significant damage increase when you consider most stuff in the list is rend 1 at best.
Beyond that, this list can take advantage of the favourable FAQ ruling (units can move after disembarking if the ship they were in hadn't moved) to allow the 30 arkanauts to much more effectively impact the game once they get out of their vessel.
Credit: Dan Richardson
Why It's Interesting
Hey look! No Morathi! That's pretty cool. This is a list that wants to get the Blood Rite bonuses going early with no less than 3 ways to bump up the battle round for a unit for said purpose. This means Blood Sisters hitting and wounding on 2s. This means the unit they're fighting is very dead.
Heart renders fill out the list to give it a real nice skirmishing/mobile screen element that can help dictate engagements effectively. It's a cleverly put together list that shows the book is pretty dang deep.
Four other players went 4-1:
What a refreshing set of results! A few genuine surprises and a lot of shake ups at the top were almost assured considering how much has changed, but it remains to be seen whether this is a flash in the pan or a sign of things to come. See you next week!
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