If the title seemed familiar then you might remember 2 older articles about tournament (over)preparation I wrote in the beginning of the year. In January I wrote How to overprepare for tournament, which was the first article published on this blog. It was followed by How to overprepare for … slightly modified Rumble Pack tournament (32 places), which was a third article here. This one will be 22nd article not counting netlists and I think its proper to end this year just as I started it (I expect more articles this year, but most probably it will be my last tournament in 2023), at least when it comes to tournament related articles on my blog. Let’s not get too sentimental and move straight to the topic.
The tournament
The first Sunday of December our local TO is organizing 3 round tournament that is planned for around 12 seats (it can be a bit more or a bit less). As you can see it won’t be the biggest or most impressive event, but for me it will be special as we will use the battlepack I created – Mark of Chaos.
Restrictions
As this article is basically my attempt of finding the list that suits the expected tournament meta and works best in the chosen battlepack I will start with the factors that limit my creativity.
Firstly as I don’t own any “serious” chaos faction (outside of my wife’s limited collection of Skaven), so I won’t consider any chaos faction.
Secondly as my order collection is quite limited I will only consider Stormcast subfactions out of this grand alliance (I didn’t manage to paint CoS Dispossessed on time).
As for my favorite grand alliances – Death and Destruction, with some proxies I can basically field almost any roster here, so expect most of my exploration to happen within this grand alliances.
Lastly divine blessings are not allowed, so hopefully I might dive a little less deep than I would have to otherwise.
Battlepack
The most important factor in list building are always the missions the list will play as basically battleplans create the challenges that you will try to overcome better than your opponent. One of my main goals when creating the battlepack (HERE is an article about battlepack creation if you are interested, the most unique element about the pack that needs to be mentioned here is that there is separation between deployment maps and victory conditions, so every victory condition can be played on every map) was making list optimization as tough as possible. Today after playtesting the pack for a while and receiving some feedback I see areas where I didn’t do the best job and this is the time to test if all the potential holes in my balancing attempts are real. Let’s start with Deployment Maps.
My main attempt with maps was to have balanced deployment groups and not have the “obvious places” where you put your single best killer, treasure grabber or other specialized unit or combo element. With deployment maps being randomly drawed separately from Victory Conditions (and number of potential treasures) I made sure that as far as hunting treasures goes, its quite difficult to efficiently split your forces with single fighter dedicated to treasure hunting, so my conclusion here is – every deployment group needs fighters that are fast enough (potentially with abilities) to steal some treasures if opponent would drop the ball. Sadly on the balance of deployment groups front it is I who dropped the ball and Shield is usually starting more distant from the center of the battlefield than other groups, so the key fighters and more numbers will end up in other deployment groups.
My other observation that came from analyzing deployment maps is that on the maps where numbers advantage is the most important – the ones with the most (potential) objectives it is Hammer that always starts in the best area to reach multiple objectives, so definitely the most numbers will go there. As some of the objectives are quite distant from Hammer the movement buffing ability should also end up in that deployment group.
Lastly I have to move to the future a bit and mention one of Victory Conditions that must be also considered in the context of deployment maps. In Victory Condition “Proving Grounds” to score any points in 1st round the fighter must deal damage with attack action and the long distances between opposing players deployment areas require considering fighters that can possibly help secure early Victory Points. This kind of power projection require very fast fighters, shooting or some impressive movement abilities. Let’s consider next key element of battlepack – Victory Conditions.
Victory Conditions
Before I start diving into victory conditions there is one very important observation I need to share. I think it might be the single most important factor in deciding which warband to choose and it’s a relation between number of rounds and expected number of people. As we expect over 8 players (2^number of rounds) it means that there might be 2 players with 3-0 score. This is a very important detail as it means that simply winning all games might not be enough to finish first and the target in game will be to not only win, but to aim at major victory. This situation leads to a requirement for a list to be able to get ahead as soon as possible as later on there might not be enough time to gain enough lead. I will return to that point with few of the victory conditions, but let’s quickly go through them.
Last Stand is a quite standard objective mission with a secondary scoring for killing on objective. To win a major victory on a map with 5 objectives would require 6 VP advantage which is a lot, especially as extending forces to reach more objectives might result in kill points for the enemy instead. I do believe that it is a well balanced mission where every archetype have a clear way to win the game and depending on the number of objectives (3-5) the value of kill points is changing. Despite the fact that I believe it to be a quite balanced mission I feel that hordes have an advantage here as heavily wounded chaff units can be “evacuated” and still bring some value from areas that are over 3” away from objectives and also the pressure to be proactive is on the less numerous warband.
Growing Power is a second objective mission. This one doesn’t have a secondary scoring, but the value of controlling objectives is raising over time. I do believe that getting Major Victory in this mission is the easiest out of all others as simply “winning” round four can almost grant enough victory points to turn a very close game into a major victory. They key here is to be able to gain or protect numbers advantage to control more objectives last round.
Godbeast Fangs (one of many forms of Amberbone – Realmstone from Ghur) is a reskin of famous Loot and Pillage. You need to loot objectives for treasure, that you later cannot drop as an action (at least not with the fighter that looted it). To gain major victory you need more than 1 treasure advantage and it looks like very difficult task, at least against experienced opponent. Aiming at major victory require winning fights over multiple treasures, which require a lot of damage from the list and big distance to treasures in some maps require mobility to engage treasure bearers preventing them from hiding with treasure behind enemy lines.
Amberbone Rush is quite unique treasure mission where holding treasures is scored every round. It makes reaching distant treasures even more important. Additionally killing treasure bearers is also worth points so it might be a good idea to not pick up treasure with your chaff if it can be instantly cleared and lose the treasure leading to a “free” VP for the opponent. Major victory require keeping treasure advantage for most of the game with some “killpoints” on top.
So far the missions doesn’t require any unusual list adjustments. Some speed, numbers advantage and a lot of damage is something that is needed in every situation. Last two missions however are a bit more “demanding”. With Proving Grounds we want to start scoring in first round and with quite significant distance between battlegroups in most of deployment maps the list must be able to contest winning round 1 as otherwise a shooty/fast opponent can get the lead that will require serious offering to dice gods to get even a minor victory. As I mostly play slow and non-shooting warbands this is the big challenge. Single point of damage in first round can be the difference between a draw and a win or a major and minor victory. This mission also require having more threats and heavily promote both nets and brewgits.
Final Act similarly to previous mission benefits from more “decentralized damage budget”, as with planty of fighters that can deal damage there isn’t much lost when one of them switches to full defense mode and you can’t lose a ton of points when your biggest threat overextends and dies. Trying to avoid easy 2+ points targets is very important listbuilding consideration.
Listbuilding
Summarizing everything that was mentioned above – the list is required to have numbers, a lot of damage potential and have ability to start damaging opponents in first round on every deployment map. I expect a diverse meta with both elite lists (including 5 body monster list and some Stormcasts) and hordes (I expect 13 body skeleton spam from one of the players) with a bit more hordes. After thinking on that a lot and some playtesting I discarded Order warbands as Stormcasts lack both numbers and speed necessary to fight for major victories. With 4 rounds they would definitely be in the picture, but as I mentioned – I’m trying to avoid 2nd place with 3-0 record (I finished 2nd in 2 out of 3 last tournaments and don’t want to it to became a tradition. I hope it won’t look like arrogance and more like declaring a clear goal). It leaves me with my favorites: Death and Destruction.
Destruction
As killing is quite important in this battlepack the obvious solution would be to use the best killers in the game – Ogre heroes. With how Proving Grounds work Brewgit is a must have addition. For chaff selection Gitz are simply bad and Gnoblars die too easily. From remaining choices Ardboyz look best and have You messin’ in faction that could help deal with opponent numbers advantage. Most of the Ironjawz listbuilding was covered in separate article – Lisbuilding session: Ironjawz. The list that I was considering and playtesting for the tournament:
Brute Boss
Crusher
Brute with Gore Choppa
4x Ardboy
Brewgit
I decided on the variant with Crusher instead of Gutlord as I expect his job to be mostly trying to clear 2 chaff per turn and Crusher is better at it than Gutlord.
Death
I believe the choice I have here is between OBR and SBGL. For battlepack closer to Rumble Pack and way more horde oriented meta the choice is very difficult, but due to some elite lists I expect and the shape of the kill missions I don’t think OBR are on the same level as the less sandy skeletons.
With a lot of victory points coming from killing I think Grave Guards spam will work better than Skeleton spam. I refuse to play undead hordes without at least one Dire Wolf so he is definitely in. As far as heroes are concerned there are 3 ways: as cheap as possible (Wight King/King Morlak/Sepulchar Warden), “Mid range”(Vampire Lord/Prince Duvalle/Deintalos) and 260/270 points highly mobile ones (all 3 heroes at this cost are fine IMO, but the most expensive is my favorite). I really believe that with extreme cost effectiveness of Grave Guards spending more than absolutely necessary on Heroes is often a bad idea and last tournament I played SBGL I had a lot of problems with high Toughness opponents, so Deintalos will be my choice. This leader also helps with the big problem of SBGL (it’s only a big flaw when compering this faction to the higher tiers of competition) – lack of gamechanging quads (no good rampagers) with access to Vanhel’s Dance Macabre. After diving a bit into distances to objectives I decided that my Grave Guards will need “Waaagh-like” movement buff to properly dominate on 5 objective/treasure maps, so Crypt Ghast joined the team. As far as adjusting SBGL list with few last points there is infinite number of ways and I decided that simply squeezing 2 skeleton warriors with spear there so I have more bodies, fighters that can use wait action with almost no drop in warband performance and finally – add some 2″ range so I can use it to better influence situation on objectives from outside of area where killing them would grant my opponent some VP in Last Stand. I was very happy with the list, except for Crypt Ghast being big vulnerability in Final Act, but I’m sure he is well worth it. The final list that emerged from my playtesting (I gave Crimson Court a chance, but they didn’t perform as well as I expected and I ended up prioritizing Shambling Horde over their great double):
Deintalos
Crypt Ghast
Dire Wolf
8x Grave Guard with Great Wight Blade
2x Skeleton Warrior with Spear
Ultimately the decision on which list I will play was way easier than I expected. I saw a lot of netters during pre-tournament playtesting in our community and I think one big threat list like the destruction one is basically begging to get netted. I also encountered more hordes than I expected (our local community was very elite heavy earlier this year).
Deployment Groups
I really don’t like the way most of the lists are presented by content creators (exactly like I presented it above), as usually less experienced players even knowing the full list have problems splitting it into deployment groups, so let’s quickly fix my mistake. To split force into Dagger, Hammer and Shield we need to go back to deployment maps. I already mentioned that Shield is in worse position than other deployment groups so it definitely will receive less power than other two groups. I mentioned earlier that having some mobility in every deployment group is a great idea, so our mobility sources of Deintalos (he opens Shambling Horde around him), Dire Wolf (that can move up to 24″ per turn for a cost of double) and Crypt Ghast with his movement buffing triple will all go to separate deployment groups.
With 13 bodies I must have one group with 5 fighters and 2 groups with 4. Looking at deployment maps I think the most numbers are needed in 2 last ones and in both Hammer is in position to reach the biggest numbers of them and it also requires movement buff to do so. When thinking this way the list basically writes itself – the Hammer will be a 5 body unit with Crypt Ghast. As I mentioned way earlier I think Shield should be the weakest group, so naturally Dire Wolf and 3 other fighters will be there. This leaves us with Deintalos and 3 other fighters in Dagger. The description above is a very simplified version of what actually happened (I was checking every configuration for the purpose of looting treasures in first round and possibility to score points in first round in Proving Grounds). The last thing is deciding where to put Skeleton Warriors. I wanted to put them in the most numerous group and in the least important group and in the end the list looks like this:
Dagger:
Deintalos
3x Grave Guard with Great Wight Blade
Shield:
Dire Wolf
2x Grave Guard with Great Wight Blade
Skeleton Warrior with Spear
Hammer:
Crypt Ghast
3x Grave Guard with Great Wight Blade
Skeleton Warrior with Spear
If you are reading this within first few hours of publication then probably I’m still playing the tournament this text is about, I hope people will like the battlepack and the tournament will be a success. Of course preparation is only one of the factors required for winning tournament, but I like to start tournament games with a feeling that my list has an advantage when it comes to victory conditions, it releases a lot of pressure and makes planning your rounds way easier. I hope dice gods will look elsewhere as I don’t like when critical fights are decided by a streak of critical hits (it sucks for both players).
Last moment edit: Sadly life get in a way for some players and few guys didn’t make it and we ended up with smaller number of players than the expected 12. If you are interesting in final results then I will put some tournament summary on #tournament-talk channel on Discord. As always thanks for sticking to the end and I hope you had a good time reading this.
Overthinking Warcry 