Category: Article

Changes I would like to see in 3rd edition

February 10th, 2025
Profile rebalance

Surprisingly obvious decision GW made with the release of last edition of Age of Sigmar was redesigning base profiles of different races, so the lore and “feel” of minis is more reflected in the rules. We could use the same and it would be a great opportunity to also start using the full stats range. Currently we have profiles with Strength value of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 10. Similar story with Toughness, but instead of 10 we have 7. While doing a rebalance there is no reason to avoid profiles with 9 Strength or 8 Toughness (on monsters for example).

Increasing the value of strength and toughness

The strange thing in current ruleset is that if a brand new fighter gets added it does not matter if he would have Strength 8, 9 or 10 as mechanically they function in the same way: you hit everything on 3+. I believe there is space for additional rule (that might also help fix elven profiles a bit): in case the Strength of an attack is twice higher than the Toughness of your target you crit on 5+. This rule would open a lot of room for designing profiles as currently the only recipes for high damage (rules wise, so we ignore the “rolling more sixes” idea) is critfishing where you pair a lot of attacks with high crit damage, which is inconsistent and spiky as one option and high Strength with high damage attacks, which is way more consistent, but less spiky as the other option (and some profiles do both which is a bit like a third option, but also costs a lot). The rule I proposed would serve as a bridge between this two approaches and open up options with damage more predictable and consistent than critfishing, but still quite spiky. Having more consistent 5+ crit for high strength attacks will not only increase the value of abilities that increase/decrease Strength or Toughness (most of them are basicaly unplayable now) but also improve the value of abilities that increase/decrease your crit damage (which never see play) and improve single dice “cannon like” ranged attacks.

Identity of some factions could be build around this new damage strategy and it actually fits perfectly with both the lore and expected behavior of elves or “elf like characters” (like for example Slanesh). Let me close this point with an example – lets say you want an expensive hero that should be able to oneshot a chaff unit, lets say DPA4 = 10 (on average deals 10 damage to T4). Currently in the game it basically mean that you get a fighter with a “classic” profile like 3A 5+S 4/8, 4A 5+S 3/6 (5A 5+S 2/6 or 5A 4S 3/6 also work, but this profiles basically doesn’t exist now, at least without using abilities). With 5+ crit you can add more profiles with the same average damage to the list. For starters the 2 attack profiles can suddenly work now: 2A S8+ 5/10 (ways of getting bonus attacks for such profiles should be restricted of course). With 3 attacks we can add 3A S8+ 3/7, which looks like healthier “version” of mentioned 3A 4/8 profile as it deals less damage to durable opponents, is less consistent at oneshoting chaff and has some counterplay (buffing Toughness to escape 5+ crit range). There are some alternatives for 4 and 5 attacks, but lets jump over them to a very “elvish” profile of 6A S8+ 1/4. It deals similar average damage to previously listed profiles, but significantly drops against high Toughness. It has some spike potential and in my opinion fits perfectly to something like elvish hero. The more I thought about this concept the craziest design opportunities I found. This simple mechanic lets you build fighters that grow in power against stronger enemies, for example S8 4/2 profile deals more damage against Toughness 5-7 than it does against 1-4. Similarly you can use low Toughness of elf like profiles that would make using 5+ crit against them less potent with reactions. For example a faction with T4 chaff (lets assume minion runemark) and T5 bigger guys could have this reaction:

Ilusive weakness – A fighter can make this reaction when they are targeted by a melee attack action but before the hit rolls are made. Roll D3 and substract the result of the roll from this fighter Toughness value (to a minimum of 1). For each critical hit from that attack action substract the result of that roll from damage allocated to this fighter. If this fighter has no Minion Runemark add 1 to the roll.

Other reaction idea would be for mostly T3 faction to decrease Toughness by 1 and ignore crits after the first one, or to also decrease Toughness and return damage for each crit received. I feel the 5+ crit would help separate the identity of elf like profiles, as some could focus on Strength buffs, other on crit damage buffs or more traditional stuff. Crit related reactions and battle traits would help elf factions to feel even more unique. I think you can guess that I’m really excited about this idea and I’m already a bit sad that most likely nothing like that will actually happen.

I’m not that hot on “symmetrical” rule for Toughness, but adding -1 crit damage for attacks with Strength twice lower than the Toughness is also worth consideration, but this paragraph is already quite long, so lets move on.

Battle traits, faction bloat and controversial ideas

I don’t understand why we have much more factions than AoS. I believe that a lot of factions should be grouped into a single category and to not lose their identity I see a place for “subfactions” that could have unique rules consisting of a mix of abilities, reactions and battle trait like rules. It could be a great balancing tool that would still let us have interesting and powerful abilities/battle traits, but prevent us from mixing them together. This would open a lot of listbuilding options and I also see it as a way to limit the power of allies. After merging Nurgle mortals, deamons and Rotmire Creed into single faction we need a rule that will stop everyone from only useing the strongest chaff from one of the “subfactions” in each of them. To accomplish that every profile should receive a small text at the bottom with information of the home subfaction and “rarity” of the unit (lets use core, special and rare from old wfb days). It could work like this:

Rarity Max number of models in main subfaction Max number of models outside main subfaction
Core unlimited (or maybe 6) 3
Special 3 1
Rare 1 0

As you can see this system would limit not only how you can build within a faction depending on subfaction you chose, but also limit the ally mechanic as “rare” fighters wouldn’t be able to be allied. This system grants many tools for dealing with fighters and abilities that breake the meta, as you can trim the power of strongest fighters in few ways, for example by making tham rare or by moving their stongest ability to weaker subfaction. You could put the current Skaven battletrait to one subfaction (it would fit nicely in Verminus subfaction) and put the “whip” double – Crack the whip in another subfaction (Moulder subfaction) if you would want to weaken Skaven. Of course most of the rules (abilities, reactions and “battle trait like” rules) should not be locked in subfaction, but I think together with listbuilding restrictions having around 3 unique rules (for example 3 abilities or 2 abilities and special “battle trait like rule” or something similar) would be perfect to differentiate subfactions and give them unique identity.

Divine Blessings

In my opinion divine blessings (in theory!) are a great addiction to the game , but as a rule were misplaced and in my opinion similar system should be merged with injuries in narrative part of the game. Adding blessings to matched play increased the difference between stronger and weaker factions, as force multiplayer works better on already strong and cost efficient base. Blessings on titans made midrange units even more unusable and severely decreased the strength of warbands based around durable chaff. In next edition I hope to see blessings implemented in core rules (and I really hope GW learned from the monstrosity of attack blessed Gutlord/FOMO), but ONLY in narrative, where the option to get weaker blessings instead of renown (and stronger blessings for the cost of more levels of renown) would be great.

Minor rules adjustments

Outside of the changes I already mentioned (that would completely change the game despite not changing the rules match, well maybe except listbuilding part) I would love the rest of the ruleset to stay mostly the same. I see only 3 areas where I would like some rules adjustments:
- Standardizing ranged attacks (either have all of them have minimal range or remove minima range completly)
- Changing the major/minor victory to points margin instead of kill points in matched play
- Falling rules cleanup/jumping cleanup (currently the rule for falling doesn’t apply if you jump). I would also want to increase the falling damage from 1: deal 3 wounds 2/3: deal 1 wound and go to this 1: deal falling height in inches number of wounds 2/3: deal half of falling height in inches (rounded down) number of wounds. This would mean that for 2″ platforms you get slightly less damage, for usual 3″ ones it stays the same, but with higher ones (like the bell tower for example) it grows significantly. I would also want a new universal ability that would let you transfer falling damage to enemy fighter when falling within 1″ (and maybe roll 2 dice instead of one – or substract 1 from the roll). Of course if Corvus Cabal would survive to next edition I would see half of their abilities (and battle traits) to be connected with this new falling rules. I think this small change would lead to slightly more cinematic battles and could sort players on those that look for opportunities to jump on opponents from up high and those who are afraid of heights.
Bespoke design philosophy change

I would love new bespoke factions to stop following the current limit where they all must fit an AoS faction. My favorite bespoke is definitely Iron Golem, because they include members of four different races (I assume Drillmaster to be an elf due to 5″ move). Sadly GW never repeated this idea with any other bespoke team, which is very surprising for me, as Iron Golem are one of the most popular warbands and were basically a face of a game early on. I know Warcry products must also work in AoS, but I don’t see why they wouldn’t make them a “golden” unit (I try to avoid mtg references, but it fits too well here) that could be used in different factions (most likely in the whole grand alliance to maximize sales, there is also a precedence for that – Kragnos). From esthetic point of view the fact that we have only 5 profiles (3 Iron Golem, Lorai from Black Talons and Valius from Saviours of Cinderfall) that wandered outside their main faction is the biggest missed opportunity in the game, especially as some factions are often portraited as mercenaries.

Expansions

Expansions like Catacombs make the game fresh and let us explore some new design territories within the game we already love and I believe that the 3 year edition cycle is long enough to fit a small expansion a year and 2 years after new edition drops. It doesn’t even require GW to produce any new plastic as such expansions could for example include rules for Endless Spells or “smaller” named characters – like for example Skragrott or some named vampires (and hopefully a new battlepack). You could use this 2 expansion formula and not have to repeat them for the next (forth) edition by including endless spells and named character rules in next edition core book and have realm-specific terrain rules, matched play artifacts or monsters redesign as a topic of next 2 expansions (or a next version of Catacombs as it would be almost a decade old at this point).

As always thanks for sticking to the end and I hope it was a fun read. As you can probably see I try to improve the publishing frequency and my goal is to finish 2 articles per month. If you enjoy my content please consider supporting the blog on Patreon, where I added a 1$ tier. Biggest tournament in Poland is getting closer and closer (2-3 months away, no date released yet), so I hope to get back to a “how to overprepare for a tournament” series soon. I’m slowly brewing a unique take on narrative event pack in the background, where every player plays different set of missions based on the chosen path and matched opponents. You can expect this strange approach to a battlepack in the near future.
Overthinking Warcry 2nd birthday

January 15th, 2025
Anniversary is a good moment to look back at past year, analyze it a bit and compare with the previous one.

Blog numbers and behind the scenes

2024 was a very difficult year for me personally. My first child was born, I had a car accident (thankfully no one was badly hurt) and some back problems together with some serious health issues within my closest family, which heavily impacted the time I could spent on my hobbies. This resulted in almost complete abandonment of both “netlists” and “beginners corner”. As I only published 12 articles (one per month average was a minimum target I set for myself), so it was twice less than in 2023 and no netlists after 25 last year. Hopefully despite writing way less and views dropping every month I managed to reach similar number of views and visitors as last year.

In 2024 there were 31 386 views (1k more than 2023) from 10 978 visitors (400 more than 2023) which I consider a success, considering how much less I posted this past year. I expect my publishing frequency to increase quite soon and as I’m currently working on few other articles and I’m quite optimistic about near future. Ok, back to the topic – Five most popular articles this year were (view count include only 2024 as 2nd and 3rd place had over twice more views in 2023, which makes them my most popular articles overall):
1. Most underrated fighters 1 153 views
2. Best abilities in Warcry 1010 views
3. Universal Abilities and Reactions Guide 803 views
4. Activation War: Tempo, activation advantage and sequencing 758 views
5. Three ideas for third edition 733 views
Tournaments

For the reasons mentioned above I only managed to play 2 events this year. In April I traveled to Warsaw for Warkraj2024 (Wartally link with more details), where I managed to finish 6th out of 35 players with 3-1 score. I lost to the same player I lost in previous year and it was a great lesson (I was outplayed in an interesting way and also “outplayed myself” a bit). I finished Warkraj2023 with 2-2, in 2024 ended up with 3-1, so it looks like I’m going to win next year 😉

What made this event even better was the fact that TO decided to use part of the battlepack I designed in 2023 (Mark of Chaos if you want to see the whole battlepack) and as it was the 3rd biggest Warcry matched play event ever it felt great.

Next event I was able to attend (Pumpkin Smashers on Wartally) used the battlepack I designed in 2024 (link to One Sheet Pack), so I felt like I had some “insider information” and decided to tryhard a bit less preparation wise. I decided to bring a bit more friendly list, with no fun-smashers like Gutlord or Vex (I took a Squid, which was super fun). I also new how the event will end up for me because some plotlines are too strong not to happen – I flexed my prophetic skills and called what will happen 2 weeks before the event and I was right about everything. I predicted I will go 2-1 losing in final with a player I already lost 4 finals against and as he was going to bring 5 man Skaven list it had to be a kill mission (all missions were randomized so it was 33%). I also correctly guessed that the randomly drawn variant of objective mission (where my dispossessed were the strongest due to Over my Dead Body double) will nullify the strongest aspect of my list – we played a mission where number of remaining wounds was used for controlling objectives and TO ruled that OMDB doesn’t work. Very fun event and I was especially happy that people loved my battlepack.

So my competitive year ended with 5-2, but I managed to keep my strange record of only losing to 4 players during events. In November a narrative league that I joined started, but I wasn’t able to play a single game in the first 2 months, so I hope to play all remaining games in January (I expect to only win 1 or 2 games, as I took one box Teratic Cohorts – IMO the worst one box bespoke warband in the entire game), I will most likely write something about that experience later in January.

My hobby time and Iron Golems curse

The number of factions I played increased slightly this year. In January when my wife was in hospital, as she was about to give birth I did most of my Ogors and started converting Iron Golems, but didn’t get very far as 2 of my discs slipped at the same time. I painted some dwarven ladies later that year that I used for proxying both VFS and CoS: Dispossessed (due to magnetizing bases). I also painted Kroxigors and finally played Seraphon. Due to how easy it is to speedpaint skeletons (and love for the sculpts) I managed to paint and play some Teratic Cohorts. Near the end of the year a new TO emerged and decided to do a bespoke only tournament, so I finally moved back to working on my Iron Golems and my back died again, preventing me from continuing the work and stopping me from playing in the event (thankfully only one disc slipped this time). In total I managed to paint and play 5 new factions this year with my Iron Golems still waiting to be finished or played. At least the conversions are done and I have one model finished. I swapped all the heads and few weapons (and one tail) so currently my Iron Golems have 1 Ogor, 2 Stormcasts, 2 Elves, 1 Dispossessed, 1 Human and 1 Skaven. I only mention this to point out that in my opinion “bespoke” teams should either join existing factions or include members of different races (like Iron Golems or Black Talons) and I’m naively hoping GW will go this way for third edition.

My battlepacks

My work in this area was definitely the most successfull. In first part of 2024 my first battlepack (Mark of Chaos) was popular in some areas and was used during bigger events like Warkraj2024 I mentioned before. When I published next version of it – One sheet Pack in September, it was popular too. Most events (that used it) took only some parts of it, but there were three events in Poland that used the whole pack. Only in last 2 months of the year it was used during events in Norway, Denmark and 2 cities in Poland. On top of battlepacks I publish here I was also heavily involved in writing Norcry battlepacks, which were quite popular too (especially “Strike or Defend” that migrated from Norway to Denmark and TTS league). I was very happy that a great majority of feedback I received was positive and it was nice to see noticeable variety of archetypes in top spots of Mark of Chaos events.

Plans for 2025

I see now that due to raising number of events and higher frequency of rules changes by GW I can’t keep up and maintain the “Netlists” part of the blog, so it will switch to a smaller selections of lists I play, recommend or find interesting. Maybe I will be able to move to a new structure before new edition drops, but its unlikely. With tools like Wartally its easy to scout top lists, so there is also way less need for this part of the blog. Beginners corner will also have to wait for new edition, as the game might change a lot. In near future I plan to publish texts about my thoughts on narrative, listbuilding with 3 Underworlds boxes and my wishlist for 3rd edition. Later on “how to overprepare for a tournament” series will return for Warkraj2025. I might also write an article on tiebreakers or listbuilding the most tempo list before next edition (that will most likely drop in 2025).

Thanks for sticking to the end. As always I hope I helped or inspired someone, even though its unlikely in a post like this. 2024 was a very difficult year and I hope 2025 will be better for all of us. If you find my articles valuable please consider supporting the channel on Patreon (noone did it in 2024, so its a cheap way to start 2025 as a hero and be the first in the world at something).
The best worst warband

January 2nd, 2025
During listbuilding for the last tournament I played (small 7 players local event) I had an idea that I sadly wasn’t able to prepare in time for the event. That concept was – make the biggest listbuilding mistakes and still try to end up with a good list. Let’s make the task even more interesting and add “collecting mistakes” to listbuilding errors.

“Don’t build a list around quad” is a first mistake we will make. The second big mistake we will do will be to not “Have enough fighters in a warband” and as the event I wanted to play this list had randomized missions with potential for up to 6 objectives in one round and up to 6 treasures in another round the numbers were a big deal. My personal listbuilding goal is to “Have access to strong S6 attacks” as T5 chaff and big guys with T6 are quite common in the higher part of the standings, so we will create a list with no S6 attacks. In addition to the mistakes above I think it would fit the theme to avoid the warbands that have positive competitive winrate (I will use stats from theSaltySea Winter meta review, as always I highly recommend Dan’s content)

To make life more difficult and really on theme here is to also add “collecting mistakes” to the requirements for the list. As collecting mistake I simply mean “a bad investment” or focusing on a box that is very difficult to get. As many other people in the community I believe that the factions that were removed from AoS will also disappear from the next edition of Warcry that we will most likely get next year, so the list of factions to chose from is very limited. Lastly lets use the bladeborn fighters from Warhammer Underworlds boxes that you can no longer buy (if possible).

The main idea

If we are to build around quad we need to find a great one, that will swing the game in our favor. Thankfully the faction limitations won’t stop us from using the one that would be my first choice here – Bone Krusha.

[Quad] Bone Krusha: Pick a visible enemy fighter within 12″ of this figther and roll a number of dice equal to the value of this ability. For each 2+, allocate 3 damage points to that fighter. If the enemy fighter is within 3″ of this fighter, allocate 5 damage points to that fighter for each 2+ instead.

From average damage point of view we are looking at Gutlord attack action (against T5 or less) with ability value of 3 or Chimera attack action with ability value of 6. Obviously the key fighter in our warband will be Hedkrakka, Gob of Gork, as only he can use Bone Krusha.

Counting on quads is a bad idea, but if we are doing it Bonesplitterz are the best place for it thanks to their Battle trait – Primal Beliefs, which makes them the faction with the highest probability of getting a quad.

Primal Beliefs: When a player whose warband has this battle trait makes an initiative roll, before initiative is determined, they can re-roll each result of 1.

The math behind it is quite complex (and I skipped some unlikely possibilities, like rerolling 5+ ones into a high triple/quad so actual result should be slightly higher), that’s why I will only present the results. With every other faction you have a 5,35% for a triple of sixes (or any other triple), but Bonesplitterz ability to reroll ones is increasing this chance to over 8,2% (over 50% higher chance, I was not expecting this). After adding a chance for a “natural” quad we got a chance for a quad of sixes grow from 6,22% (for other factions) to over 9,73% (more than 50% increase again). Long story short – under the assumption that Bone Krusha quad has a gamechanging potential with ability value of 4+ then every initiative phase you have 29,2% chance of rolling it, which is a reasonable chance (without the battle trait its 18,68%).

We are ignoring Hedkrakka critboosting triple as its not that good in my opinion, but the other triple he has access to that is worth mentioning (in addition to a great Waaagh!, that thanks to the battle trait will work even better than in Ironjawz), as it allows our crazy shaman to play both offence and defense:

[Triple] Beast-mask Dance: Until the end of the battle round, subtract 1 from the Attacks characteristic (to a minimum of 1) of attack actions made by enemy fighters while they are within 6″ of this fighter.

Our key fighter is unavailable in basically any store (at least in my part of the world – second hand is where you should look for him), so he fits our requirements perfectly. Bonespliterz also have negative win rate and meet all the other requirements, now lets continue building the rest of the list.

The rest of the list

We won’t use enough fighters and as I mentioned there is a chance for up to 6 treasures and objectives, so what number is between “unplayable” and “reasonable” here? I think we should go with 7 (I know that for some people 7 is a perfectly normal and viable warband size, but we are expecting a bit of a horde meta for the reasons I just mentioned), as I can’t imagine playing a 6 objective mission with a 6 body warband without any titans or a monster.

There is a limited number of ways we can get to 7 with this faction and I think we should also include at least one additional hero to guarantee that we can use Waaagh! first turn (and thanks to battle trait we have a very big chance of actually getting it with a high ability value)

After examining our options I think we definitely want to use few of the Big Stabbas, due to a decent number of wounds combined with nice damage and ability to use Charge! (with 6″ threat range, a bonus move on a double and T3 big guys this warband will probably feel a bit like playing Gorger Mawpack)

[Double] Charge!: A fighter can only use this ability if there is a visible enemy fighter within 6″ of them. This fighter makes a bonus move action and must finish closer to the closest visible enemy fighter than they were at the start of that move action.

With quite expensive chaff (80 points or more) we are a bit forced to go with this list:

Savage Orruk Morboy Boss (175pts, Hero)
Hedkrakka, Gob of Gork (170pts, Hero)
Savage Big Stabbas (165pts)
Savage Big Stabbas (165pts)
Savage Big Stabbas (165pts)
Savage Orruk with Chompa and Bone Shield (80pts)
Savage Orruk with Savage Stikka and Bone Shield (80pts)

One Savage Orruk has a spear to not prevent Hedkrakka from shoooting and the other one has Chompa so he is more efficient while tanking for Big Stabbas (with T3 and 2″ reach they won’t feel bad attacking over their smaller friend shoulder). Two Stikkas are also an option.

Our second hero isn’t that impressive, but with access to Charge! and Waaagh! he will do work

With 5 fighters with 3/6 damage profile this warband will do significant damage to opponents with lower Toughness (due to less impressive Strength). The biggest advantage of this list is a sick tempo it generates thanks to 2″ range on Big Stabbas and Charge! on all the big guys and ability to win some games due to relatively high chance for a big impact quad. Cutting activations from this list by focusing unactivated chaff will most likely ends badly due to Orruk reaction – Get Stuck In, that will bring reinforcements

Get Stuck In: A fighter can make this reaction after an enemy fighter finishes a move action visible to this fighter and within 3″ of this fighter. Pick another friendly fighter within 3″ of this fighter. That fighter makes a bonus move action. After that move action that fighter must be within 1″ of the enemy fighter that made the move action.

Having a threat that can get to you and attack from 10″ away in every deployment group (and not end up engaged) seems like a great plan so the split to deployment groups I would go for looks like that:
- Hedkrakka, chaff with spear and Big Stabba
- Second hero and Big Stabba
- Chaff and Big Stabba
Because of the strange set of requirements this isn’t the S tier warband, but I believe that this list is actually quite scary. Additional benefit is the simplicity as this list only has access to 6 abilities, from which you will use only 4, but this 4 are great – mobility double, mobility triple, -1 attack bubble on triple and nuke on quad. I think it might be the best out of my worst ideas, so I consider this list as a success.

As always thanks for reading, I hope you had fun and in case I inspired you please remember that Bonespliterz aren’t the best “investment” at the moment. As 2024 is now over I plan to publish a short summary of the past year very soon (currently I try to figure out how much personal stuff to put there). Hope 2025 is better than 2024 for all you guys (and gals), bye
Hidden Gem in Chaos

November 26th, 2024

Last FAQ gave Chaos a great fighter that has something this grand alliance lacked – powerful “action cheating” triple. If you wanted the “engulfing flames like” triple that could be allied in, or to make Calthia blush with the amount of bonus attacks you get from a triple – all you have to do is add Warqueen Tanari to your list.

The profile itself is not why we want her. Using her has some cost – you need to invest a double into her in a first round. In a treasure mission it might be difficult as first round doubles usually are spent on mobility, but in objective and kill missions (where she shines the most) its a bit less of a problem. If you don’t know why she needs a double this early then take a look at the ability below:

Your plan is to use this double and move you warqueen towards a group of enemy chaff. If you can soften them with shooting then its even better. The main part of a plan is trying to land a kill with her in the 2nd round, but regardless of success you want to engage as many smaller fighters as possible and use Warqueen Fury (which doesn’t require high ability value like most other good triples!).

At this point there is a high chance that your Tanari is already favoured (hopefully before using her first triple) and next rounds you can reposition your AOE triple and continue getting loads of bonus attack actions. With the meta slowly moving back towards hordes, Tanari will only get stronger.

This is a very dice hungry strategy, so not every list will be equally effective with it, but if the meta shifts heavily towards hordes then I can see the world where blessed Vexmor (that is very inconsistant at killing chaff) is simply replaced by Tanari in some lists as she cost only 5 points more and Vex often also wanted a double first round to get where she needed to be.

The best place for Tanari is most likely a team with some ability to soften the fighter that you want to kill with her to get a “promotion”, that also lacks strong ways to use the dice and have other strategies to handle less numerous opponents. She can also help mitigate the weak matchup against hordes for some factions.

If you can use divine blessings then adding +1 Strength will make fulfilling her oath way easier and large amount of counter reactions that you will certainly encounter will hurt a bit less.

As I’m experimenting with shorter content lets quickly move to an example list with our new Darkoath hero featuring underutilized faction – Nurgle Mortals:

Tanari Nurgle 1000pts | 8 fighters

Raptoryx (85pts, Thrall)

Warqueen Tanari (185pts, Hero) +1S (20pts)

Lord of Plagues (170pts, Hero)

Putrid Blightking with Blighted Weapon (110pts)

Putrid Blightking with Blighted Weapon (110pts)

Putrid Blightking with Blighted Weapon (110pts)

Putrid Blightking with Blighted Weapon (110pts)

Ghulgoch the Butcher (100pts)

Around 200 health might be a solution to a ranged critfishing spam that gets more and more popular, but with quite short arms this list might have problems chasing faster opponents, so don’t expect a 4-0. On the other hand in objective focused setting it will be a strong list and I hope the Ghulgoch discount will finally lead to more players giving Nurgle mortals a chance, as this faction certainly deserves it.

As always thanks for reading, I hope you found any combination of knowledge/inspiration/fun and if you did please consider supporting the blog on Patreon.
Ylthari in Stormcast

October 11th, 2024
Before last FAQ the “go to” bladeborn team to get numbers for cheap in Order were Starblood Stalkers (or Hexbane’s Hunters, but the doggos having only T3 and 6 wounds disqualified them for many players, so lets forget about them for a moment) and the fact that fighters from this team provided speed, ranged damage and numbers for cheap meant that it was a perfect addition to most Stormcast factions. Now there is a new team that can threaten Stalkers place as default allies for shining knights of Sigmar and its Ylthari’s Guardians that just got 85 points cheaper. Before we dive deeper into all 7 Stormcast factions (we are slowly getting into 40k territory with significant portion of factions being Sigmarines) lets see what Ylthari’s Guardians have to offer

Ylthari’s Guardians

The leader of the faction is a sidegrade of Kixi-Taka in my opinion. It is slower, but has 2 more wounds and is 5 points cheaper. On paper Kixi-Taka triple seems more useful but personally I almost never use it and if there is one stat that Stormcasts don’t need more of, its Toughness. Ylthari ability is a quad, so we will not have much opportunities to use it, but in certain matchups (mostly against hordes) I can see using it instead of Rampage. Reaction wise just as with abilities it looks like the skink is defensive and Ylthari is offensive with “reversed counter” reaction (1 dmg for hits and 2 dmg for crits). Overall its a very cheap fighter with quite classic wizard profile.

Next fighter is the only one that didn’t have its cost adjusted. With 4 attacks, 2/4 damage and 12 wounds he isn’t the best fighter at its cost, but should have no problem murdering Kixi-Taka skink friends. For me this fighter is the least impressive one from the team (but when doing the math looks surprisingly efficient), in some lists I will take it over the next fighter in this warband just because of the 2 extra wounds.

Gallanghann is a perfect chaff to hide behind the Stormcast eternal back (and attack from there thanks to 2″ reach). Its quite rare to use onslaught on your chaff, but there is no other chaff unit that will gain more from it. It doesn’t have the most consistent damage output, but for a fighter that costs 80 points its acceptable.

At the end lets look at the star of the team, the most efficient archer in Order – Ahnslaine, Revenant Archer. It has lower speed and crit than Otapatl, but higher Toughness and attack range, yet the biggest advantage she has over the lovely chameleon is that she’s 15 points cheaper.

Overall Ylthari’s team is slower and has one ranged unit less than Kixi-Taka’s crew, but is a bit more durable and deals a little more damage and (what is the biggest advantage in some factions) costs 10 points less for a set of four fighters.

Lets start with a faction where Stalkers will definitely get replaced by Ylthari’s Guardians – Blacktalons

Blacktalons

Most players asked for a minimal size of a team that they are comfortable playing will answer with 7 or 8 and Blacktalons have the problem of having only 5 fighter in the box. Previously they could run 4 fighters from Starblood Stalkers instead of Shakana and Lorai/Hendrick to get to 7 fighters, but after last FAQ its no longer possible (without using other allies). Because of that the 10 points cheaper Ylthari’s Guardians will fill the gap and for many players the default build of Blacktalons will change to this:

Ylthari’s Blacktalons

Neave Blacktalon (285pts, Hero)
Ylthari (125pts, Hero)
Rostus Oxenhammer (200pts)
Hendrick, The Silver Wolf (155pts)
Skhathael (85pts)
Gallanghann of the Glade (80pts)
Ahnslaine, Revenant Archer (65pts)

Ruination Chamber

The newest addition to Stormcast factions not only have great looking models, but also tempts players with a powerful profile of Reclusians and great tricks like “counterspell reaction” or a teleport on double. With a faction being this new there are no proven lists yet, but I believe the one below has a potential to became popular. I think the main concern when listbuilding in this faction is to balance as high as possible number of fighters with the number of threats while at the same time minimizing the number of gryph-crows and trying to also include some of the tricks that the faction offers. As Ylthari’s Guardians are currently the cheapest source of extra bodies they are a natural fit. I’m quite proud of how much I managed to fit in this list. The only place where I would hesitate to run it is a battlepack with very low amount of treasure missions (like Ferocious Gnarlwood II), because Prosecutor Prime mobility and teleport might be less useful there and some different selection of fighters would certainly work better there, but outside of this specific scenario I think this list is great.

Guardians of Ruination

Prosecutor-Prime (205pts, Hero)
Ylthari (125pts, Hero)
Battle Priest (65pts, Hero)
Reclusian (160pts)
Reclusian (160pts)
Reclusian (160pts)
Ahnslaine, Revenant Archer (65pts)
Gryph-Crow (60pts)

Vanguard Auxiliary Chamber

I believe this is the worst faction I will cover today (probably the worst faction in the whole Grand Alliance). FAQ certainly helped Vanguard players a bit by making Farstriders a lot cheaper (135 points discount on 3 fighters!), but sadly if the best fighters from a faction are a part of bladeborn team then the best way to use them is outside of their main faction (LRL for example). Tragedy of this chapter is that the better the list you want to build the less Vanguard units you will use and because of that I will show you 2 lists, one with only Farstriders and as techically this list could be played as another faction I will also show another one that will legally work only as Vanguard list.

Definitely not Sylvaneth or Thunderstrike

Liberator-Prime With Dual Sigmarite Weapons (205pts, Hero +Strength blessing)
Sanson Farstrider (170pts, Hero)
Ylthari (125pts, Hero)
Elias Swiftblade (135pts)
Almeric Eagle-eye (135pts)
Skhathael (85pts)
Gallanghann of the Glade (80pts)
Ahnslaine, Revenant Archer (65pts)

As I mentioned – Farstriders are the best part of this faction so they are here and the rest is Ylthari’s crew for numbers and Liberator Prime as the list was lacking a “can opener” for very durable fighters. For only a double Liberator attack profile can change to 6A 6S 4/4.

Ok the list above is cheating, let’s make the real Vanguard list that will be more fun (single ranged attack with 4/10 damage is fun right?) lets add Fight for Profit to the list to make it potentially “twice more fun”:

Rolling six is fun

Sanson Farstrider (170pts, Hero)
Ylthari (125pts, Hero)
Company Captain (90pts, Hero)
Vanguard-Raptor with Longstrike Crossbow (195pts)
Elias Swiftblade (135pts)
Almeric Eagle-eye (135pts)
Gallanghann of the Glade (80pts)
Ahnslaine, Revenant Archer (65pts)

Thunderstrike Chamber

From the least competitive Stormcast faction lets jump to the most competitive one. In some factions I follow certain requirements that make the listbuilding process work almost automatically and having the constrait of having to use Ylthari’s Guardians makes the process even more structured. Let’s see what are the goals I like to meet when listbuilding in this faction:
- at least one annihilator to have access to their quad
- if there are 3+ bigger fighters Calthia is in the team
- (new rule) New Lay Low the Tyrants is too juicy to pass, so I need at least one Liberator (preferably with crit blessing)
- 8 fighters if possible
There is very limited amount of ways to construct the list with this requirements, this is one example:

Calthia in the woods

Calthia Xandire (210pts, Hero)
Ylthari (125pts, Hero)
Annihilator with Grandhammer (155pts)
Liberator With Dual Sigmarite Weapons (140pts)
Annihilator with Meteoric Hammer (140pts)
Skhathael (85pts)
Gallanghann of the Glade (80pts)
Ahnslaine, Revenant Archer (65pts)

If you use blessings and have some spare points then its very tempting to crit bless the liberator and make him 5A 5S 5/5 for a double, which just looks right.

Sacrosanct Chamber

Last FAQ made Averon Stormsire drop from 235 to 215 points, which means that Sacrosanct has a way scarier version of Knight-Arcanum with Storm of Eldritch Lightning – burst that on single target is stronger than Engulfing Flames of Dark Artifice (Horns of Hashut flamehurler triple). The faction is known for “Thundercats”, so instead of trying to get to 8 fighters we will use one and try to fit everything in 7 body list (which we will achieve thanks to Battle Priest extremally low cost). There is an option to improve Rastus to 170 points Sequitor, but it would require demoting the Thundercat to 10 points weaker one and losing Strength 6 in the warband so I decided not to do it, but I’m not sure if its the right decision here. Here is the list:

Thundercat Guardians

Averon Stormsire (215pts, Hero)
Ylthari (125pts, Hero)
Battle Priest (65pts, Hero)
Evocator on Celestial Dracoline with Tempest Blade and Stormstave (285pts)
Rastus the Charmed (160pts)
Skhathael (85pts)
Ahnslaine, Revenant Archer (65pts)

Warrior Chamber

Sadly new version of Lay Low the Tyrants didn’t reach this chamber. Before paladin cost increased I would definitely try to include 3 or 4 of them, but now lets stay with 3 big threats including 2 paladins and support them with Coordinated Strike. Protector fans can replace Calthia and Gallanghann for 2 Protectors which is quite a reasonable change. I won’t go into much details here as the faction will most likely not make the next edition.

Coordinated Paladins

Calthia Xandire (210pts, Hero)
Retributor-Prime (190pts, Hero)
Ylthari (125pts, Hero)
Paladin with Starsoul Mace (165pts)
Paladin with Starsoul Mace (165pts)
Gallanghann of the Glade (80pts)
Ahnslaine, Revenant Archer (65pts)

Questor Soulsworn

Last Stormcast faction I cover today that similarly to Black Talons has a serious numbers issues. We will fix this exactly as we did in Neave’s team and outside of our happy tree friends we will also hire a Battle Priest. Questor profile selection is quite easy in my opinion as I only like the big hammer and the shooty version. If you expect to fight elites take more hammers (as in example below) and against hordes you can consider slightly different approach. If you have single box then 2-2 split is something you can build and it is a nice option too.

Trees on a quest

Errant-Questor with Grandhammer (165pts, Hero)
Errant-Questor with Grandhammer (165pts, Hero)
Errant-Questor with Grandhammer (165pts, Hero)
Soulsworn Knight-Relictor (165pts, Hero)
Ylthari (125pts, Hero)
Battle Priest (65pts, Hero)
Skhathael (85pts)
Ahnslaine, Revenant Archer (65pts)

Closing thoughts

I think Ylthari’s Guardians are a great way of adding numbers to your team. I’m convinced that they will start appearing in tournament lists and I think I will take them to events too (Ruination list seems especially strong and I’m sure that with some practice it has what it takes to win an event). Due to the number of factions covered I tried really hard not make it too long and I hope you enjoyed this article just as much as I enjoyed listbuilding for it.

If you find value in texts like this, please consider supporting the blog on Patreon and as always – thanks for sticking to the end.
2-Box lists for every Grand Alliance

October 1st, 2024

If you haven’t yet notice – there is a new FAQ (and much more) that was just released on redesigned Warhammer Community site (link). This update “unlocked” a lot of listbuilding options (that were very inefficient before), especially for players with older Warhammer Underworlds warbands in their collections (sadly there are some factions where bladeborn fighters are better than standard fighters). I will not go into a topic of availability of mentioned boxes as availability of every single Underworlds team is a location related topic (in my area its not that difficult to get older UW warbands and lately there is an avalanche of people selling them as new logo of Underworlds reminded people of warband rotation or something like that). I tried to also build the lists in a way that make them work in narrative whenever possible (ideally using archetype rule) and skipped both battle traits and blessings as not everyone is using them. Let’s go straight into lists:

DEATH – OBR (Necropolis Stalkers + Kainan’s Reapers)

In my opinion the biggest problem in this faction is lack of good leaders (for more context – I’m not a fan of “OBR Brewgit” and I also prefer Stalkers over Morghasts) and the new FAQ gives us 25 points discount for great looking model of Mir Kainan, who maybe isn’t the most efficient killer in the world, but is certainly way more interesting fighter than the cheapest and most popular alternative for a faction leader – Mortek Hekatos. Keep in mind that the pictures still have old point values, so he actually costs 205 points now.

Other fighters from his warband are now also cheaper thanks to the FAQ, which is a great news – especially for Nohem, one of the only small shooters available in DEATH (10 points cost reduction to 70)

Our roster of chaff will be finished with 2 (out of 3 in the box) variants of Mortek Guards available in Kainan’s Reapers. They cost 65 points, so only 5 more than regular Mortek, have 2 wounds more and have slightly worse attack profile.

This are all fighters we will use from Mir Kainan warband, at least for now – at the end I will also include list variant using all of them.

Let’s now take a look at the second box we will use. Our starting roster has some interesting chaff units but really lacks both speed and punch. Both of this (together with very efficient usage of abilities) we will get from Necropolis Stalkers. They might seem only 2”/1” faster than other units but access to “charge” double makes them very fast. To round up our list nicely we will use 2 “regular” stalkers and 1 with great falchions (you can build only one stalker with falchions from their box).

I really like how simple yet strong their plan for using abilities is – you want doubles and triples can get upgraded into rampage (they are quite good rampagers, which is as good as it gets as this grand alliance lacks great rampagers). Then you invest all of your doubles/quads into your stalkers and you either use charge from “Hunt and Kill” ability to get bonus moves towards enemies (11” threat range is great) or if already in combat, you use Nadirite Weapon increasing the damage of your hits and crits by 1 (Spirit Blades going to 3/6 are very deadly with 10 attacks from 2 attack actions). The final list looks like this:

Kainan’s Stalkers

1000 points (1060 pre FAQ), 7 fighters

– Mir Kainan 205pts (Hero, -25 points)

– Necropolis Stalker with Spirit Blades 200pts

– Necropolis Stalker with Spirit Blades 200pts

– Necropolis Stalker with Dread Falchions 195pts

– Nohem 70pts (-10 points)

– Karu 65pts (-15 points)

– Senha 65pts (-10 points)

I promised a variant using all the models from Mir Kainan box – but in order for it to work you need to use your Hakor as the regular great weapon Mortek Guard (your opponent might not like it as using bladeborn fighters with their bladeborn profiles and also as proxies for “regular” fighters within the same warband is very confusing) and replace one of the 200 points stalkers with him and Binar Khenta (that is now 5 points cheaper).

CHAOS – BOCH (Grashrak’s Despoilers + Bullgors)

Before starting I must mention that there is significant risk that this faction won’t make it to next edition, so it might have less than a year of life left, as we expect 3^rd edition in 2025. This list will be quite similar to previous one as bladeborn team will grant us a leader and chaff and we will take our big guys from second box. The only hero we will use will be the Grashrak Fellhoof, who is now 20 points cheaper (185).

Even after the cost reduction he is still a GBS with +5 wounds and +1 dmg in melee for 40 more points, so not that great, but at least you also have a quad unique to him that might win you some games as it prevents enemy fighter from activating that round. I also must mention that the main reason for including Grashrak is Devolve – great pull ability that is one of the best tools for disarming your opponent plans.

Lets now look for the chaff options that come with Grashrak. We have 2 pairs of exactly the same profiles (I will only show one profile from each pair because of that). First pair (Ushkor and Gnarl) have their cost increased to 85 points and give us a ranged option.

The second pair of twins (Korsh and Murghoth) were not modified by the FAQ and are still a great alternative for Gor with Pair of Gor Blades as they offer +1 crit and +1 range for 5 more points.

Before we decide on the configuration of chaff we want lets look for the different profiles available for bullgors. In my opinion the option with the most damage is the most interesting, so for the main version of the list we will use 3 great axes.

Points don’t want to cooperate much here and the list we end up with is:

Grashrak Bullgors

985 points (1000 pre FAQ), 7 fighters

– Grashrak Fellhoof 185pts (Hero, -20 points)

– Bullgor with Bullgor Great Axe 195pts

– Bullgor with Bullgor Great Axe 195pts

– Bullgor with Bullgor Great Axe 195pts

– Ushkor 80pts (+5 points)

– Korsh ‘the Sneak’ 65pts

– Murghoth Half-Horn 65pts

Outside of a space for a small blessing (assuming you use this optional rule) there isn’t much we got from the FAQ here, but I wanted to show this list since quite some time and I decided to bend the rules a bit here. If we want to fit 2 archers there is an option for that, but we must degrade our great axe bullgor to two axes.

This way we can replace one 195 bullgor with this cheaper one and for saved points (together with our 15 points from “blessing budget”) improve one of our melee chaff twins into a ranged one. The last variant will copy what we did in grand alliance death – instead of degrading one of the bullgors we remove it completely to fit all the fighters from Grashrak’s Despoilers, which is possible thanks to the 10 points cost reduction for Draknar from last FAQ. The list includes both pairs of our chaff twins, Draknar, Grashrak and 2 great axe bullgors.

Destruction – Bonesplitterz (Hedkrakka’s Madmob + Savage Orruks)

This time even though once again we have a bladeborn team lead by a hero with “magic missile attack” with few smaller guys and an archer among them we will twist it and go slightly less elite route. Just as with Beasts of Chaos there is a big risk that this faction won’t appear in next edition, so please keep this in mind. To be honest Savage Orruks box alone is enough to build quite a lot of different warbands, but it would be a sin not to fit there Hedkrakka – interesting Shaman that just went down 55 points and now costs 170!

If you don’t know why he is my 1st choice for leading this facton check out his abilities. His unique triple is a fun ability that is great for casual games, but in my opinion isn’t strong enough for competitive games, but his quad is one of the strongest abilities in the game

The reason I’m not a fan of his triple is that he also has access to faction triples, that I like more than “An Eye For Weakness”:

Counting on quads is a bad idea, but having a way to swing the game in your favor when you will eventually get one is very important. With ability to boost your team mobility, offence and defense using different triples Headkrakka is a useful mobile toolbox that will help troubleshoot problematic situations in game. Sadly most of other fighters from his box are not efficient enough to justify taking them and definitely not over the profiles that we have access to from the second box.

Lets move to a sea of options available for us in savage orruks box. We will definitely want to build few chaff units and few damage dealers that we have access to. Unlike with previous lists lets start with beatsticks and then we will see how much points we have left for chaff.

First fighter we add isn’t necessary the biggest damage dealer, but have a nice range and a double boosting Toughness around him. We definitely want that in a T3 warband.

Continuing with higher range fighters, the weapon so big it takes two orruks to carry – Big Stabba. We can build 2 of them and this is what we will do and include in the list as our main damage source.

Last fighter I list here before moving to our chaff choice will not make our list, but will be an alternative leader option (he costs 5 points more than headkrakka, but we will leave 5 points unused to have this option available)

In the end we have to make decision about the chaff profile we want to include. As this list is quite low on damage, I think picking the most offensive one (and slightly more expensive) is the best choice, so we will wrap our list up with 3 Morboyz.

For the last 95 points (we keep 5 points unused) we have a choice between one more Morboy or Toofdagga, who just got 10 points cheaper

Just to have more options to play with +3 crit triple from our leader, lets take his bladeborn friend. The final list looks like this:

Naked Orcs led by a Lunatic

995 points (1060 pre FAQ), 8 fighters

– Hedkrakka, Gob of Gork 170pts (Hero, -55 points)

– Savage Big Stabbas165pts

– Savage Big Stabbas 165pts

– Savage Orruk Morboy Bone Totem Bearer 115pts

– Toofdagga 95pts (-10 points)

– Savage Orruk Morboy 95pts

– Savage Orruk Morboy 95pts

– Savage Orruk Morboy 95pts

I already mentioned a variant with alternative leader. By also exchanging Toofdagga for 4^th Morboy the list suddenly require only single box, which makes it extremally budget friendly.

Order – Sylvaneth (Skaeth’s Wild Hunt + Kurnoth Hunters)

With Order I was trying to find home for Farstriders, but with the 2 box limitation I wasn’t able to create anything satisfying. Last month I wrote about listbuilding Seraphon around Starblood Stalkers so this time lets focus on Skaeth’s Wild Hunt, which for a long time was a 2nd most popular source of cheap chaff after the skinks crew (I know that Ylthari is a new hotness in order, but it will be a main focus of next article). You can probably already guess that the list will look similar to previous ones – few chaff units (with a bowmen) supported by 3 big guys. Having a threat in every deployment group is a proven formula so there is no need to change something that works well. Lets take a look at our UW fighters and this time there are no variants as we can fit all of them (also unlike before the pictures show correct point values, as at this point Warcrier.net managed to already update):

Skaeth is not the most impressive fighter, but is fast and durable enough to threaten objectives that are just at your opponent doorstep. Range of his attacks mean that he can avoid getting engaged and also deal damage at the same time. 20 points discount will definitely make him see more play now.

Karthean is definitely the most popular of Skaeth friends mostly thanks to Might of Kurnoth triple and the fact that it just got 5 points more expensive will not change it. Great fighter especially when close to few Kurnoth Hunters.

Next fighter simply has nice attack profile for a chaff and 4 attacks dealing 4 damage on crits is something that will make life of your opponents threats way less convinient. It will see a bit less play after it got 5 points more expensive.

Althaen is a fighter that I hate playing against and in my opinion is the most efficient one in this group. I don’t understand why it got 5 points cheaper and for me he was definitely an “autoinclude” fighter (now Ahslaine from another bladeborn team is better, but Althaen is still great).

In the end the lion, that just had its price reduced by 5 points. Having 2 fighters with 8″ move is great and Lighaen is a great target for wait action as even with single move it should reach the place where you need it.

With the “smalls” of the team out of the way lets move to “talls”. The points left are just enough to play 2 Kurnoth Hunters with scythe and one with a sword.

Scythes work great in this team not because they have the highest damage output from the options we have available (more on that in a second), but because attacking opponents from 2″ away make it possible for both Althaen and Skaeth to also attack the same target from range.

Sword has a reputation of having lower damage, but actually both weapons deal almost the same amount of damage against basically every Toughness as you can see below:

Because of only T4 on Kurnoths and the synergy with other ranged fighters we took as many Scythes as possible. I also think having single Kurnoth build with sword is very useful as I think the hero version with sword is a great option to have and Sylvaneth is a faction where you really need to cut corners to fit everything you want in the list because of quite expensive chaff and lack of hyper-efficient units that top meta factions have access to.

The final list looks like that:

Kurnoth Wild Hunt

1000 points (1020 pre FAQ), 8 fighters

– Skaeth the Huntsman 160pts (Hero, -20 points)

– Kurnoth Hunter with Kurnoth Scythe 185pts

– Kurnoth Hunter with Kurnoth Scythe 185pts

– Kurnoth Hunter with Kurnoth Greatsword 170pts

– Karthaen 85pts (+5 points)

– Althaen 75pts (-5 points)

– Sheoch 75pts (+5 points)

– Lighaen 65pts (-5 points)

I wasn’t sure if I should include both Bonesplitterz and Beasts of Chaos as they might be discontinued next year, but I wanted to write about them since a long time and I figured that with every month their inclusion in any article would have less and less sense and there won’t be a better opportunity than this one.

As always thanks for reading and if you enjoy my articles please consider supporting the blog on Patreon. Next article will be dedicated to new must have UW warband in Order – Ylthari’s Guardians and should appear on the blog quite soon. Expect also some lighter, narrative related content as our local playing group will be starting Ravaged Coast campaign soon.
One Sheet Battlepack

September 19th, 2024

Link to One-Sheet-Battlepack.

Hi, I apparently can’t stop myself from designing battlepacks and as the previous one received very positive feedback from the community (I believe that it also impacted community in significant way as part of it was played on 3rd biggest Warcry event and many others including Norcry or TTS league and one of the maps was even “reprinted” by GW in their battlepack) its time for a new one.

I learned a lot from people reactions to Mark of Chaos battlepack (Link to last year pack if you are interested) and I think the biggest lesson was that my priorities were wrong. My first priority was to balance the competitive metagame and make it ideal for tournaments. Now I know that if the first priority isn’t fun then the final product may end up good, but won’t probably end up great. Speaking about priorities and lessons learned – watching players mess up rules often, forgetting about twists and not referencing the text ever I end up with the second priority for this pack – it must be simple and easy to reference (no-one is experimenting with battleplan formatting – lets change that). I decided to make sure the whole pack can fit on single sheet of paper and to (mostly) have battleplans with only 2 things going on (when there is primary scoring, secondary scoring, catchup mechanic and some additional rule then maybe the mission is better balanced and more replayable but certainly the complexity starts to hurt fun, especially when you want to use it outside of events).

I mentioned events and my main goal (that I failed miserably) for previous pack was to create a plug and play system for tournaments that could standardize them a bit. Due to refusal to randomize battleplans by TO’s it was mostly used as a collection of battleplans, which isn’t bad but I was (naively) aiming for “more”. Now I still want to propose the pack for matched play events, but I’m way more realistic and simply want it to be treated as replacement for creating battleplans from cards (it has the replayability factor of cards but also is a more balanced set that still allows some preparation) or simply as a battleplan generating tool that people can pick up when they don’t know which mission to play.

Maps

Last year I started to experiment with symmetry designing maps that keep the “point symmetry” against the battlefield center, but have objectives or treasures that are not symmetric against “fold lines” giving them asymmetric feel and both maps following that rule return in this pack (and are the only returning ones). The rest of the maps except for one also keep this rule which adds a bit of uniqueness and character to the pack (it least in my mind).

First two maps are the only “reprints” I already mentioned from last year:

Next two maps are continuation of my experiments with objective/treasure positions:

There is single map with more “classical” approach to symmetry, but with this many objectives/treasures there is way less freedom:

And finally the “big” experiment (not that big really, its a very minor change, but it introduces new approach – maybe its not new and I simply missed it in previous maps, if it is the case – please let me know) – changing the standard point symmetry for deployment groups and moving to “fold line symmetry” only. I still think that streching the Dagger deployment line to the whole battlefield edge looks better, but this version differentiates shield and Hammer a little bit more, which I believe is a good thing.

In the end I want to share a little advice with my fellow “overprep psychos”. Analyzing and planning gets way easier when you treat objectives as circles (also some of my maps make way more sense when watched this way), example below:

Victory Conditions

Lets start with short introduction on how to use the pack and what I tried to achieve here. To make it more readable I formatted battleplan descriptions into sections to let people read as little as possible, as from my experience some people have extremally strong allergic reaction to reading and re-reading stuff is often impossible to them. That’s why I highlighted which part of the text is connected with game setup (accidently reading that during the game may exceed daily limit of letters they can handle) and which one is connected with scoring (variants may modify it), which is also quite simple. The square boxes next to a game variants are designed to put a dice there that will help track which turn you currently play, but also which mission variant you play. For absolute beginners/playing with kids you can ignore the variants and play a very basic missions, but in other cases I would suggest to use the variants as they add a lot to a game. Clarity and simplicity very important for me so if something isn’t clear please let me know

Objective missions

First variant is merging the scaling scoring with objective removal from Core Book’s Hidden Vault. As remembering the extra rules is sometimes difficult I suggest to use the removed objectives as a reminder of the bonus points that round (1 removed objective = 1 additional VP per objective, 2 removed objectives = 2 additional VP).

Second variant makes high health fighters more valuable in objective missions. Point algorithm (and blessing cost scaling) makes fighters with high Toughness way more attractive than fighters with a lot of Wounds (when comparing fighters durability) and this variant is sending a bit of love towards the fighters that might be played less often. The more different profiles see play the better in my opinion. I didn’t try to influence the meta much this pack (in comparison with previous pack), but this is a place I tried to intentionally help less popular class of fighters (and poor Nurgle mortals). I know that elite warbands is were it matters the most, but I think it changes the usual power perception on objective missions in a good way (Gorger Mawpath must feel nice here).

Last variant is the idea I’m most proud of as I wanted to merge two great concepts – home objectives you want to fight over (defending objectives is rarely additionally rewarded) and changing where the key areas of the map are over the game (which rewards mobility) and I believe I managed to do that in quite an elegant way. I like that failing to execute “the objective conquest” gives points to the opponent so the “points swing” is actually more influential than a single 1 VP. I also like that it might not be the best idea to get all objectives you can in first round, as then you might lack good conquest targets. Adding opportunity cost to otherwise obvious choices is something I find very interesting and is the direction I would like the game design to go. EDIT: It was pointed out that the wording isn’t clear here – you pick your conquest target for one turn, so every turn you only have one that you picked that turn. I updated the text in PDF, but the picture above keeps original wording.

Treasure missions

The first mission is here to address the problem of “Great, I lost initiative and now I MUST go into Gutlord’s/[put your worst Nightmare here] attack range to try to steal his treasure”. I know that Sylvaneth and Nighthaunt won’t like it as it shuts downs the teleport option, but you can’t make everyone happy. At least they will suffer for the greater good. As I mentioned – it makes some obvious decisions (who I want to grab treasure with) less obvious, which is good in my book.

Next mission is simply the treasure staple and you can’t miss it in a pack like that. (I don’t love the “can’t drop treasure” rule, but to not create confusion I decided to include it)

Finally the last one is there to make games even more bloody than the first one. First version had half wounds instead of the quarter, but I think that was too much. Enjoy very bloody treasure games, I hope the selected variants will make 3 treasure mission way less of a problem than they usually are.

Kill missions

I believe that the maps I created for the pack, especially the number of potential objectives is making hordes quite favorable and to balance that I decided that every kill in a “kill mission” should be rewarded with VP to make hordes more vulnerable here. The main objective was also to make it “resurrection-proof” so scoring can’t be cheated by death factions. Another important note here that the hordes viewed as most powerful are mostly very slow and my maps do not feature any “my side your side” kind of deployment so every deployment group is in some sort of a danger and the slow hordes will have difficult time running away from opposing threats. I also believe that best missions help you create the story around the game, so I wanted to have certain fighters to be more valuable from both offensive and defensive point of view.

First variant is there to change the usual dynamic of choosing the biggest fighters as Champions and makes it more of a hunt mission. What I like the most about it is that it promotes the midrange warbands that usually aren’t that strong. Listbuilding around wincons where opponent makes decision for you warband is one of my favorite aspects of listbuilding so prep lovers will have a lot to overthink in this one.

Second variant is a modification of one of the twists from previous pack. I really liked how different the game is when you can teleport between opposite corners (it can also give you headache if you focus on that too much) and the tokens you place as the reminders are quite important in my opinion as the worst moments people had when playing this twist were situations when players forgot about the teleport and instead of running away from danger stepped right into it. Give it a shot, players that were skeptical about it often changed their minds.

Last variant (just like the first one) makes midrange warbands quite good. The usual Smalls and Talls list will both have an advantage of big threat for scoring and disadvantage of chaff that will be a very valuable target for the opponent. As I mentioned there is a lot of flanking by r2 deployment groups so slow hordes might be a bit difficult to pilot here, but that is feature and not a bug.

Originally I intended for this text to be way shorter, so I will wrap it up quickly. If you like preselecting your missions or just hate random elements in battlepacks then feel free to preselect your missions, but I would recommend giving the random pairs a chance. For a series of 3 games you can limit the impact of randomness by “rerolling” the type of mission you already played. Yo can do similar thing with deployment maps to make sure that every deployment group starts round 2 once. Once again the link to One-Sheet-Battlepack.

I hope you will have fun playing the pack and that this single sheet of paper will join the rest of your usual Warcry equipment. As always thanks for sticking to the end and if you like my content consider joining my Patreon.
One Box Collection Extension: Ogor Mawtribes

August 17th, 2024
There are two very popular ways to improve a warband in Grand Alliance: Destruction and its either through gobbapalooza ally providing a great chaff with incredible abilities or an ogor ally that will guarantee that the biggest threat on the board will be in your team. Investing in one of this one-box options not only improves your other destruction factions through ally mechanic, but also allows you to build entire warband that is both playable (its actually really strong and gives real chance of winning competitive event unlike 95% of other one box warbands) and also gives you a lot of different options how to construct your warband using a single box. This option is a box of Ironguts.

Why not Gluttons?

Certain content creators promoted idea to get Gluttons if you want to buy a box of Ogors with the argument that it provides more Gnoblars (btw don’t believe the number of miniatures on the box) and more Ogors, but with 4 Ogors and 7 Gnoblars from Ironguts box you have everything you need (you will almost never need more than 7 gnoblars or more than 4 ogors in a list, so this argument doesn’t make much sense for me). The advantage of Ironguts box is that you get a set of heads and weapons that allows you to build Ironguts/Gutlords which Gluttons miss (you also get the bits for Gluttons/Crusher in Ironguts box).

Time to get crafty

To get the maximum value from this box I strongly recommend doing two things:
- Convert a “lookout gnoblar” from one of the banners to Bushwakka, by simply gluing the extra bear trap (it isn’t the one from Crushers hand) from the box bits on his back (extra points if you add a greenstuff straps like my wife later did on our gnoblar, she is way better with sculpting than me)
- Magnetize weapons (the whole arms – its quite easy and the surface where you can do it is huge, even if you mess up something there still will be a lot of place to try again. They are great for learning magnetizing) so every model can be made into both Glutton/Crusher or Irongut/Gutlord
- Spread “champion bits” across models (put Gutlord head on one ogor and Gutlord weapon on another), this way it will be easier to use them as both hero and non-hero options
As I already mentioned Bushwakka, lets quickly check out his stats and his great once per game double ability (he is a must have and will be in every list):

Chaff options

Lets start with a simple observation – thanks to a +4 wounds blessing we have access to two interesting chaff profiles (outside of Bushwakka, arguably the strongest chaff unit in the game) and in the next part of the article we will be using both of them a lot.

To structure the lists, lets split them into groups based on the number of big guys in the list and lets jump straight into it

2 Ogor lists

Let’s start with a list that I created with Ferocious Gnarlwood II battlepack in mind. In this environment vulnerable chaff works against you (that is the reason for +4 wounds madness) and ability to quickly kill heroes is rewarded and nothing says “hero hunting” like two blessed Gutlords

Blessings Overdose:

Gutlord (290pts, Hero) +1 Attack
Gutlord (290pts, Hero) +1 Attack
Gnoblar (45pts) +4 wounds
Gnoblar (45pts) +4 wounds
Gnoblar (45pts) +4 wounds
Gnoblar (45pts) +4 wounds
Gnoblar (45pts) +4 wounds
Bushwakka (40pts) +4 wounds

Lets move to another list (that I would start with, but I didn’t want to contradict myself with first list, as I just said you almost never need 8 gnoblars :p), but this list requires you to have an extra model from outside of the box (or you can use the wild dice blessing, but an extra gnoblar model or gnoblar proxy works better here):

Most elite of hordes:

Gutlord (290pts, Hero) +1 Attack
Gutlord (290pts, Hero) +1 Attack
Gnoblar (45pts)
Gnoblar (45pts)
Gnoblar (45pts)
Gnoblar (45pts)
Gnoblar (45pts)
Gnoblar (45pts)
Gnoblar (45pts) / Wild Dice blessing
Bushwakka (40pts)

The idea behind this list is very simple – let’s try to kill enemy chaff hunters with your Gutlords and disengage gnoblars from any combat they end up in. It also is quite reasonable to assume that with 2 Gutlords (especially doing “2 for 1” with Might makes Right – more on that later) you will clear enemy chaff faster than your opponent clears yours, so depending on the enemy you have different strategies you can execute and with 10 bodies you can force enemy big guys to move before your Gutlords which may open them for a “countercharge” later that turn.

3 Ogor lists

Now for the most “traditional” lists, where you can have a big threat in every deployment group. The first list is very universal as you will have tremendous threat in every deployment group and in case you use “flex blessings” (you can change blessings before every game instead of having them set in stone during listbuilding) you can move between 2 variants below:

3 Crushers variant A:

Crusher (255pts, Hero) +1 Strength
Crusher (255pts, Hero) +1 Strength
Crusher (255pts, Hero) +1 Strength
Gnoblar (45pts)
Gnoblar (45pts)
Gnoblar (45pts)
Bushwakka (40pts)

If you don’t need S6 or survavibility of your gnoblars is more important you can swap to the next variant (or anything in between):

3 Crushers variant B:

Crusher (255pts, Hero)
Crusher (255pts, Hero)
Crusher (255pts, Hero)
Gnoblar (45pts) +4 wounds
Gnoblar (45pts) +4 wounds
Gnoblar (45pts) +4 wounds
Bushwakka (40pts) +4 wounds

The next list is very specialized and will only work in a very specific setting that is either mostly fun oriented or extremally horde skewed (like Test of Champions). It is also a tribute to 3H1C crew (you guys are great, check out their content) and the best implementation of 3 heroes 1 chaff list in the whole game. Bonus points for only using units that are “the best in class”.

3H1C:

Gutlord (290pts, Hero) +1 Attack
Gutlord (290pts, Hero) +1 Attack
Gutlord (290pts, Hero) +1 Attack
Bushwakka (40pts)

For now the lists were very symmetric with no mixing of different ogor types and if you like to analyze a pack and adjust your list accordingly (as you should), then this might be just the list for you:

Ogor buffet:

Gutlord (290pts, Hero) +1 Attack
Crusher (255pts, Hero)
Ogor Glutton with Clubs (200pts)
Gnoblar (45pts)
Gnoblar (45pts)
Gnoblar (45pts)
Gnoblar (45pts)
Bushwakka (40pts)

4 Ogor lists

Tremendous cost of your big guys leaves you with very limited options when it comes to 4 threat lists (you also have limited access to your bread and butter ability of “Might Makes Right” – more on that in next paragraph). It might be impossible to construct a good 4 ogor, one-box list other than the one below:

4 Threats:

Crusher (255pts, Hero)
Ogor Glutton with Clubs (200pts)
Ogor Glutton with Clubs (200pts)
Ogor Glutton with Clubs (200pts)
Gnoblar (45pts)
Gnoblar (45pts)
Bushwakka (40pts)

How to play those lists?

The gameplan is very easy – Ogors are very double-centric warband and in most cases you will only use 4 abilities:
- On the Mawpath
- Might Makes Right
- Rampage (universal quad)
- Lay Mantrap (Bushwakka double)
The plan for initiative is to get some doubles and in case you end up with a triple change it to a quad (I call this kind of lists – “even warbands” as you only want doubles and quads). Early in the game you use On the Mawpath to move your big guys into position and later on you try to get bonus attack actions thanks to killing chaff and using Might Makes Right (position to abuse that). MMM plan will sometimes fail due to Dice Gods being dicks, but for this kind of situations you have A) more Ogors to use MMM or B) Bushwakka double, that works great as a plan B after your Ogors fail to execute the main plan. I don’t think I have to add how devastating your Rapmages will be.

Closing thoughts

That’s all I have for you today, I hope you will consider expanding your collection with this great faction. If you like my content please consider supporting the blog on Patreon (it will certainly help to publish articles like that more often) and don’t worry – no content will ever be hidden behind paywall. If you want to influence the topics I cover in future, then there is a poll on Patreon open for everyone. As always, thanks for sticking to the end and I hope I helped you or at least you had fun reading it 🙂

Friends and Sponsors of the blog:

If you want your name to be listed here, please consider supporting the blog on Patreon
Listbuilding session: Seraphon

July 18th, 2024
The Update of Seraphon in the latest FAQ got a lot of people (including me) excited, so join me on the small faction exploration that will focus mostly on the newest models and profiles. I will start with a small note that basically every list I describe here will use blessings, so if you look for a list that isn’t using them – sorry, for me and my style of listbuilding this faction doesn’t exist without blessings. But lets start the list exploration and what would be the better start than – how to cheaply and easily start with the faction

Seraphon list for a new player

like in every other faction, the bread and butter of the list is chaff. Big fighters are great and often decide games, but for the list to function certain number of fighters must be met or the list will not work at all. I would say that for Seraphon players (especially the new ones) the topic of chaff is both the blessing and a curse. Its a curse, because the faction lacks solid and spammable choice to base the list on, fortunately Starblood Stalkers exist and provide access to 3 exceptional and “relatively” cheap fighters in form of Otapatl, Tok and Xepic.

Expect to see most of this guys in every list in this article. 80 points for 2 of them is quite a lot for a chaff, but very strong shooting attack (in relation to cost) and exceptional mobility allows them to not only get where they need to be, but also have enough speed to find the safest possible spot in such area to later on shoot everything in sight. Your skinks will eventually crit and for me playing around that damage is part of the fun as you can adjust your plans based on this crits. if one of your skinks will get lucky and roll 2 crits then often you will change your plans to quickly finish off an enemy that you did not expect was killable this round.

We have some base for a warband now, lets look into the more exciting fighters and the FAQ increased the roster of potential options with beautiful new models that also happen to have great rules (assuming you use blessings, btw its a good idea to magnetize heads. Its hard, I know) – Kroxigors. Two of the options we got is a Kroxigor with +1 attack blessing and a Warspawned version that doesn’t have to be blessed to be effective.

Outside of profiles they also differ with unique abilities:

As you can see blessed Kroxigor with Brutal Blows have insane damage potential (with double of fives/sixes: 81% for 16+ damage and 61% for 20+ damage. Knowing this damage thresholds makes critfishing with your skins way more exciting). Kroxigor Warspawned ability might be easier to use (as against Brutal Blows enemy can just spread out) and have additional effect – your opponent might not want to target your skinks with shooting attacks. As the list had to be beginner friendly lets not look for a leader too far and stay within 2 boxes with a Kixi-Taka.

With the assumptions that I just presented the list basically writes itself and this is the result:

2-Box Seraphon list:

Kixi-Taka, The Diviner (135pts, Hero)
Kroxigor Warspawned (205pts)
Kroxigor Warspawned (205pts)
Kroxigor (200pts) +1A blessing
Otapatl (80pts)
Tok (80pts)
Xepic (65pts)

7 Bodies isn’t particularly impressive, but with 3 big fighters, some shooting and very mobile chaff this list is quite versatile.

Next steps

Let’s look at how we can improve the list. One of the aspects of the list that we can try to amplify is the fact that despite the “fists” of this warband delivering quite a punch, they are located on a very short arms. It would be nice to improve the threat range. Additionally with only single Kroxigor opponent has to spread out only within 6″ of him, which isn’t as difficult as we would like, so increasing the number of Kroxigors is something we want to do. As far as Warspawned kind of our big guys is concerned – his ability require putting skinks dangerously close to the opponent, which with only 7 bodies is a risky plan. Lastly – it would be nice to increase the “chaff trimming” capability and if possible do it from the distance as we want to protect our not so impressive numbers. Hopefully all of this changes can be done in quite a simple (and in my opinion quite elegant) way – by adding single Soulsworn Knight-Relictor:

Seraphon (2 boxes) + single ally:

Soulsworn Knight-Relictor (165pts, Hero)
Kixi-Taka, The Diviner (135pts, Hero) +1 Strength
Kroxigor (200pts) +1 Attack blessing
Kroxigor (200pts) +1 Attack blessing
Otapatl (80pts)
Tok (80pts)
Xepic (65pts)

This list tries to abuse one of the common problems with battlepacks in order to eat a cake and have it too. Usually one of deployment groups is way less impactful than others (for some reason its usually Shield), so by sacrificing the strength of the weakest group (one less Kroxigor) we try to amplify all of the things that the list already does well:
- Shooting gets improved, as there are now two S4 “magic missiles” instead of single S3 one
- playing around Kroxigor Brutal Blows ability gets really difficult because of doubling the number of Kroxigors and increased mobility thanks to Questor double
- No need to put skinks in danger for the purpose of Warspawned ability
- By outsourcing movement to Questor double Kroxigors can now perform more attack actions
There is an alternative way of expanding the “base list”, that increase the body count, but also require 2 allies and its a variant that basically replace a Questor and blessing from Kixi-Taka with a pair of Company Captains.

Seraphon (2 boxes) + two allies:

Kixi-Taka, The Diviner (135pts, Hero)
Company Captain (90pts, Hero)
Company Captain (90pts, Hero)
Kroxigor (200pts) +1 Attack blessing
Kroxigor (200pts) +1 Attack blessing
Otapatl (80pts)
Tok (80pts)
Xepic (65pts)

Lets expand the pool of fighters we chose from as there are more great fighters than Kroxigors and Kixi-Taka’s crew. First of such fighters is definitely Slann. For the next list (just as for the previous one) I must credit Magnus (this is how he is known on Discord).

Frog, Krox and Coordinated Strike:

Slann Starmaster (265pts, Hero)
Calthia Xandire (210pts, Hero)
Battle Priest (65pts, Hero)
Kroxigor (200pts) +1 Attack blessing
Otapatl (80pts)
Tok (80pts)
Xepic (65pts)

The list has access to the best triples in Order. Coordinated Strike is a classic and having both: powerful melee option in blessed Kroxigor and a heavy artillery frog will certainly bring a lot of pain to the opponent.

Second triple is a teleport available to Slann. It can be used to reposition treasure bearers or crucial fighters in “hunt missions” away from danger or to make sure that enemy bodyblocking won’t stop your Kroxigor from reaching the key target. It has a cool name too.

Finally, the third triple is a faction staple – Tearing Bite. High triple can lead to absurdly high damage. Who need crits when your Kroxigor can do 10 DMG with normal hits (most likly on 3+ because of his high Strength).

Because I mentioned Tearing Bite – prepare for a bonus round of MathHammer (all calculations are done for the target with Toughness 5 or less). The “lesson” for today is that the number to remember when using Kroxigors is 16 (or 2 crits, as its easier to remember that way). If you need to deal above 16 damage then Tearing Bite with Ability Value 6 (or to a lesser degree 5 and 4) is better than Brutal Blows with the same ability value. Its a comparison of double and triple, but it shows how powerful the Kroxigor double truly is (and that in some cases using your triple of sixes as a double might be a better idea).

Other Fighter that definitely requires a closer look is a Saurus Scar-Veteran on Aggradon. Its a powerful model with incredibly high cost. In my opinion this fighter works best in other factions as his high cost require access to cheap chaff, that Seraphon lacks, but lets try to figure out how the Seraphon list including the newest big guy in Order lineup may look like:

Scar-Vet:

Saurus Scar-Veteran on Aggradon (295pts, Hero) +1 Strength blessing
Soulsworn Knight-Relictor (165pts, Hero)
Battle Priest (65pts, Hero)
Kroxigor (200pts) +1 Attack blessing
Otapatl (80pts)
Tok (80pts)
Xepic (65pts)

As always, thanks for sticking to the end and I hope this article expanded your knowledge, inspired you or was at least fun to read. I hope to keep releasing new stuff on the blog more often in the second part of the year and you can expect next update quite soon (it will be about Ogors or a new battlepack, depending which one I will finish first). Bye
Overthinking Vexmor

July 5th, 2024
When Vexmor was released I quickly declared that this fighter will soon replace Fomoroid Crusher as the “default” chaos ally and that Vex will be way stronger and more popular than beloved FOMO. The opinion that Vexmor is close to Annihilator Prime – strong, but far from broken quickly gained a lot of popularity, especially after being repeated by most of content creators, but I still think that Vex will soon become one of the most feared (and hated) models in the game. In my mind balance-wise Vex is closer to Chimera than to Annihilator Prime and I will try to explain why I think so in this short article.

My main point is that 180 points (This article will ONLY speak about Vex with +1 attack blessing, which is already included in the picture above) is extremely cheap for what Vexmor offers and what it offers is extremally powerful – almost every fighter that will finish movement within threat range (8” with double) of yet inactivated Vex (and with her being cheaper than all other titans this isn’t unreasonable assumption) will get killed next round if Vex wins Initiative. It might seem like a bold statement, but here me out. Finishing within Vex threat range will mean that she can move and swing once (most likely without onslaught due to her reliance on +3” move double), which will result in 5+ damage in 88,9% of situations. Next round she will add to it 2 attack actions empowered by Onslaught (not rolling Straight is also a reasonable assumption) and this attack actions have 93,6% of doing 15+ damage (remember about highly probable 5+ damage from previous round), 81,24% of doing 20+ damage and “only” 61% for doing 25+ damage. In my book access to this level of damage for 180 points on a highly durable fighter that doesn’t require other fighters for mobility and damage boost is a steal. Vex has a deserved reputation of being inconsistent and when using single attack action its certainly true, that’s why its not the best tool for clearing chaff (especially with 12/15 wounds, as she has only 19,4% for a kill without Onslaught and 49% with Onslaught). Because of this clear weakness Vexmor will not reach the “new Chimera” status, but I still believe that at 180 points a fighter is allowed to have weaknesses and still be great.

Listbuilding around Vexmor is a bit tricky as she is very dice hungry and I agree that having Vex as a “plan B” or the second great thing the list does is the best use the deamon, but I also can see a place for Vex, as the main threat in a list in a horde warband. I believe community haven’t cracked the code on optimal Vex list yet, but I believe that the event happening this weekend in Norway (Summercry – you can check it out on Wartally.com) might provide a solution for “how to listbuild around Vex question”. The list that inspired this article was created by a creative player that is also a TO – Krister (this is how he is known on a Warcry discord). Before diving into his list I want to give some more credit to the guy as I believe he was also the first to finish very high in standings with Gorewarden in the list (3-0 in 2024-Q2 Norcry).

Krister list:

Varanguard with Daemonforged Blade +1 dmg blessing
Vexmor +1 attack blessing
Great Bray-Shaman (145pts, Hero)
6x Gor with Pair of Gor Blades

In this list Krister found a solution to all 3 problems that Vexmor has: slow movement, bad matchup against “dwarf like” chaff and inconsistence with single attack action. With Varanguard and this many Gors the speed of the list is quite impressive and almost nothing can compete in killing dwarves with the damage blessed Varanguard. The third hero in the list is the special ingredient that was missing in the Vex soup – Pull ability of the Great-Bray Shaman makes Vex way more dangerous as thanks to it Vex will have to use less move actions and will do double attack activation more often. It will also make it easier not to overextend with the deamon as despite its tankiness it isn’t unkillable. Finally access o pull makes nets less effective, as you can still pull enemies towards a netted fighter.

I believe that the core of the list (Varanguard, Vex and PULL ability) will have a big influence on the tournament meta and “pull-Vex” will be something that has to be considered during tournament preparation. I really like that you can basically run this list in 2 factions, as you can swap all Gors to Marauders and still have a great list (that is even a little stronger, assuming your meta isn’t dominated by Grave Guards, Ardboyz and Longbeards).

S2D variant

Varanguard with Daemonforged Blade +1 dmg blessing
Vexmor +1 attack blessing
Great Bray-Shaman (145pts, Hero)
6x Chaos Marauder with Barbarian Flail

Both Gors (-1/-0 when attacked) and Marauders (heal 3 wounds when attacked) have great defensive reactions, but I prefer the S2D one as it is stronger in chaff vs chaff scenario and with Vex in the list you want to have titan v titan and chaff v chaff fights all over the battlefield. The biggest advantage of Marauders over Gors is that in missions when numbers matter (and not only there) they can hide behind their bigger T6 friends and still attack over their shoulder due to 3” range, so at the same time you never have to engage enemy fighters with your chaff, but you can also use your big guys to tank for them without sacrificing their attacks. Lets consider what further changes we can make to the list.

As we are already in S2D we now can consider replacing GBS for another fighter with Pull ability and for extra 10 points we can replace Shaman + Marouder to Ephi + Starefish and split the “magic missile” ranged attack (that now has S4) and the pull ability to separate fighters. The problem is getting this extra 10 points and I see two ways of getting it. First and probably worse way is to decrease the “bodycount” and for example replace 2 marauders with a 110 points Chaos Warrior, to have a T6 tank in every deployment group. The other way would be to remove the blessing from Varanguard, if we do this there are 20 points waiting to be reinvested and we can try to make our PULL source more durable (+4 wounds on Starefish), improve the magic missle of Ephi to S5 which will increase the list damage against T4 or add +1 Strength to Varanguard to have better damage against T5.

The most obvious place where people will want to put Vexmor is Horns of Hashut and the change to “pre FAQ standard” is replacing a FOMO to blessed Vexmor and the final result might look like:

Horns

Ruinator Alpha with Heavy Flail
Vexmor +1 attack blessing
2x Demolisher with Flamehurler
4x Shatterer
165 points package

I’m not sure which version is the best, as this depends on the battleplans, but in the 165 points package you can put
- GBS and 20 points of blessings
- 2 additional Shatterers and wild dice blessing
- Remove one Shatterer and add Ephi + Starefish
- Shatterer and +4 wounds on everything but leader
- Skabbik
- Vashtiss and wild dice blessing
- Anything else, as I’m sure I missed great options
At the end lets try to quickly figure out how the “Vex horde” variant could look like and to make a nice structural comeback to the first list from article lets base it on BoC again.

Vex Horde

Vexmor +1 attack blessing
Great Bray-Shaman (145pts, Hero)
11x Gor with Pair of Gor Blades

It certainly will be strong in some environments, but I think we can all agree that it will not be the most fun list to play (from both sides of the table).

Good luck to Krister on Summercry tomorrow (my money is on you, but my heart is with Magnus ;). As always I hope you found something helpful in my text or at least enjoyed the read. I will try to put articles here more often now and the next one will most likely be about Seraphon or tournament formats (depending on which one I will finish first – you can let me know which one interest you more in a comment here or on Discord/Reddit/Facebook). Thanks for sticking to the end, BYE.