20 April 2024 - T3 Games Avatar

Burleigh Brawl

T3 Games events are a slug to get to (I shouldn't complain as I know some north side players have a longer drive than I do), but they are always enjoyable. I've now come to realise that the Gold Coast meta is way different to the Brisbane south side meta.

I decided to change up the Drothrek list to drop Gotrek, and include an Auric Runesmiter on Magmadroth, Knight-Incantor, Runic Fyrewall as well as the Emerald Lifeswarm. I also relaxed my Grand Strategy back to Masters of the Forge. The idea was to have 2 invocations out in case the Molten Infernoth decided to release itself in the fifth, and the Knight-Incantor was there just for Magical Dominance as well as the Emerald Lifeswarm, and maybe a sneaky Blizzard if I was lucky.

Round 1 No Reward Without Risk - Corey Bennett (Hedonites of Slaanesh) - 24-27 Loss
Round 2 The Icefields - Johan Grove (Gloomspite Gitz) - 16-26 Loss
Round 3 Power Flux - Ashley Chapman (Sons of Behemat) - 12-20 Loss

Surprisingly I managed to keep the score close against Hedonites of Slaanesh, even with all the Blissbarb Archers. Shalaxi held two Magmadroths at a distance behind the Fyrewall for too long. The Gloomspite Gitz battle ended pretty much how I expected it would. It was a bounder build, so I again had no answer to the mortals on charge not triggering my splash damage. Sons of Behemat threw me as it had Brodd in the list which I hadn't been against before, and Brodd was a priest... fun.

Overall, fun day. Even though it was a 0-3 loss, it was a good information dump for some factions I don't usually go against. As I mentioned, it was a surprise with the Hedonites result as I haven't gone up against many in the past year, but I knew what I was in for, so I guess I had a plan, and it worked to an extent. Ended up getting Grand Justice Gormayne as a lucky door prize, which has now enabled a joke idea that I had discussed only moments prior... painting an entire Flesh-eater Courts army in a weekend.

Painting Round-up 2024

84 models (319 wounds) - 1x Auric Runesmiter, 1x Knight-Incantor

11 April 2024 - Warhammer CommunityAvatar

#NewAOS Commands overhaul thoughts

Firstly I'm all for change, but some of these changes seem to have some very serious issues with them. I know, I know, they are drip feeding us information and there will be extra things that will even out the oversights, right... right?

So they weren't wrong when they said that they were going to make the games faster. They've stripped out some really fun interactions to speed the game up, and with some loopholes that I will discuss later, there are situations where one player will be able to absolutely destroy the other leading to a what? Faster game, because it'll be over in a few rounds.

Command Points, the treasured economy

Four points base per round is very limiting, but fair. The concern is the underdog mechanics. Most see the underdog mechanic as only the score based bonus where if you can game the system like we have been conditioned to do with Nexus Collapse. If you can secure yourself more CP and whittle down the opponents forces without gaining the lead, only to pounce from the 3rd and deliver a strike that they won't be able to recover from no matter how many CP they are given in later rounds.

On top of that is the bonus CP for having less Auxiliary units. Both of these combined a player could really manipulate the game to submarine each round while establishing themselves for a late counter. This scares me. In skilled hands, you will have players leaning into tactics that will be borderline toxic and I fear that we will see "that" type of player return.

Reacting to Reactions, the new Commands and changes to existing Commands

Rally - I don't mind this, but I think that it's a little convoluted, but who knows, when we get used to it, it'll be fine.

Redeploy - I hinted at this earlier. This is the one thing that I wish they hadn't changed. The mini-game of "not triggering a Redeploy" was a fun aspect of the Movement phase. Since you now have to wait until the end, gone is the ability to stop your opponent efficiently moving their units by redeploying a unit of your own into an area your opponent wants to go into. This one I don't agree with at all.

Covering Fire - Moving Unleash Hell to the Enemy Shooting Phase from the Enemy Charge Phase is weird. It isn't the end of the world, but if you have an opponent with no shooting, they are going to skip that phase all the time, and you'll be left asking to go back all the time.

Counter-Charge - I can think of so much chaos I can cause with this and Strike-First artefacts. It's not a bad command, but it'll lead to some insane instances of chaos and destruction. This is one of the Commands that I think will cause the first wave of adjustments.

Magical Intervention - This is another one I think will trigger some adjustments. First will be that endless spells and invocations won't be able to be used, and the other will be limiting bonuses and rerolls as some factions can just ignore the -1 to roll. Also, it should be -2 to roll for a spell, -1 to prayers... pesky wizards getting off easy.

Power Through - Don't have too many issues with this, except for say 5 wound models vs large blobs of single wound models, 4-5" movement won't be enough to make it through 3-4 ranks of say clanrats and have enough space on the other side to place a model. Single high movement units, this sounds fun, I just thing that it'll be 20-30% of units that can use this efficiently.

Painting Round-up 2024

82 models (297 wounds) - 1x Freeguild Steelhelm

7 April 2024 - PMTT Avatar

Contest of Fools

This Contest of Fools was a special one for me as I had picked Fyreslayers as my army after a close friend passed. He rocked a mohawk, so I decided that for the next year I would main Fyreslayers in his memory. I also ended up picking a fairly hard Grand Strategy to try and test myself. Although looking back, this was a big mistake, it was still fun to try, and I only failed my Grand Strategy in the last rounds.

My force comprised of a Runefather on Magmadroth, 3 Runesons on Magmadroths, Auric Runesmiter, Doomseeker, Gotrek and a Molten Infernoth. Overall, the list went well. Runefather did some work, and well Gotrek is Gotrek.

Round 1 Every Step is Forward - David Sulava (Gloomspite Gitz) - 11-25 Loss
Round 2 Fountains of Frost - Elisabeth Lockhart (Orruk Warclans) - 21-23 Loss
Round 3 Spring the Trap - Matt Gammie (Sylvaneth) - 23-22 Win
Round 4 Lines of Communication - James Webster (Ossiarch Bonereapers) - 19-20 Loss
Round 5 Geomantic Pulse - Andrew Price (Cities of Sigmar) - 22-21 Win

With 15 points post, and my points differential being 15, it seems like the outcome could have been better than 2-3, but those extra wins, would have put me into different matchups, so it's hard to say that I would have done better with a different Grand Strategy.

Painting Round-up 2024

81 models (296 wounds) - 1x Runefather on Magmadroth, 3x Runeson on Magmadroth, Auric Runesmiter, Doomseeker, Gotrek, Moltern Infernoth, 10x Auric Hearthguard

23 March 2024 - Mt Gravatt Warhammer Avatar

Dawnbringer - 1k

I let chaos chose my force. I randomized all the units under 300 points and what ever was on top that I had access I would have to build around. The results went Ardboy Big Boss, Skabbik Plagueseeker, Auric Runesmiter, Drycha Hamadreth and Thorns of the Briar Queen. Technically I didn't have an Ardboy Big Boss, but I could work around making an Ironjawz list with an Orruk Megaboss, so I went with that.

Results weren't that great, but I blame my lack of knowing the force for the performance. It wasn't until the last round when the buffing and order of operation was clicking.

Round 1 - Requested BYE
Round 2 - Sean (Stormcast Eternals) - 14-? Loss
Round 3 - Kieran (Stormcast Eternals) - 27-21 Win

Got to say that 3x Mighty Destroyers (Mega Bossy + Ear-splitting Bellow) and 3x Violent Fury (Da Choppa's trait) feels a little wrong. What was worse was sacrificing my Megaboss by allowing him to be killed by 6 Annihilators only to fight on death with All out Attack and Destroyers popped to trade with 20 damage to the unit. Decent trade, but would have liked him to stay around.

Painting Round-up 2024

65 models (195 wounds)

11 March 2024 - TNA x Mathhammer Presents Avatar

AOS World's Fundraiser Teams Event

Our team went into this to have fun and joke around. We consisted of Ironjawz Pig spam, Stonehorn spam, Stegadon spam, and then The Swarm.

Round 1 Fountains of Frost - Seth Schneider (Ogor Mawtribes) - 18-26 Loss
Round 2 Nexus Collapse - Chris Clarke (Ossiarch Bonereapers) - 17-25 Loss
Round 3 Limited Resources - Jack KingofCancon (Nighthaunt) - 7-19 Loss
Round 4 BYE - Lines Of Communication - Sam McGuiggan (Ogor Mawtribes) - 22-26 Loss
Round 5 Lines Of Communication - Dylan Pike (Ogor Mawtribes) - 13-26 Loss

I got to say one thing, we were stressing about our pairings. Every team was rocking the worst pairings for all of our lists, and it was hard for us to pick something we knew that we had a chance against. This isn't a complaint, more that we were rocking fun meme lists and going up against some solid lists that weren't taking the event as a joke.

Our fourth round ended up being a bye due to an overnight dropout, so we decided to practice for the next round. Three times I fought Ogor's and I think the last time was probably the hardest. Dylan saw through what I was attempting to do and pulled an incredible second round defense of his Frostlord rendering most of my force that rushed him ineffective and only doing 3 wounds to it.

Look 0-5 is bad, but we had a fun time. The games were memorable, I versed new people, and I won a meat tray... MEAT TRAY!

Painting Round-up 2024

65 models (195 wounds) - 1x Crypt Ghoul, 1x Gladewyrm

18 February 2024 - Irresistible Force Avatar

Battle of the Realms 1k

We've been helping out at Irresistible Force to grow their Age of Sigmar player base of recent with us now playing Monday and Friday nights. This was their official first store tournament to my knowledge. I decided to put together something random and I had always liked the look of the Askurgan Trueblades, so I build something around them. Radukar the Beast is a little broken at 1000 points, and Lady Annika was a random add, but it works.

Round 1 - Rory Leeson (Fyreslayers) - 22-18 Win
Round 2 - Requested BYE
Round 3 - Michael Mientjes (Seraphon) - 19-28 Loss

I had to request the bye in the second round due to family requirements, but in the end it was a fun day. I don't mind 1k events as they allow for some more creativity and experimentation.

Painting Round-up 2024

63 models (194 wounds) - Radukar the Beast, Lady Annika, 20x Deathrattle Skeletons, 16x Askurgan Trueblades, 1 Ungor

30 January 2024 - Cancon 2024 Avatar

Call to Glory

Early on I decided to debut The Swarm at Cancon for a laugh. On paper, they seem terrifying, but in reality they are hit-and-miss. The only saving grace with them is the amount of wounds they have does mean that they stay around longer than you would expect.

Round 1 Geomantic Pulse - Jarrad Coots (Beasts of Chaos) - 22-28 Loss
Round 2 Spring the Trap - Jacob Richards (Ogor Mawtribes) - 13-26 Loss
Round 3 Power Flux - Matthew Johnston (Gloomspite Gitz) - 9-24 Loss
Round 4 Every Step is Forward - Ben Collier (Sylvaneth) - 21-16 Win
Round 5 Nexus Collapse - Harry Moore (Sylvaneth) - 12-24 Loss

Overall I can't complain. I took a meme army to a big event, and had a bunch of fun. It did manage to get onto the shortlist for Coolest Army, which I didn't expect, although the amount of people stopping to check out twenty-four bugs flying across the board 4-6 inches above the table might have been a sign that something was going to happen.

Friendly Fyre

This was a late one for me as I was teamed up with Craig Anderson and his Kruleboyz. We spoke about it via messenger and the plan was to play on the fact that Waaagh! doesn't have the clause "from Starting Army" due to them being unable to summon, and guess who can summon battleline units? Blades of Khorne.

Round 1 Lines of Communication - James Anderson (Skaven) and Chris Crichton (Gloomspite Gitz) - 28-20 Win
Round 2 The Icefields - Shem O’Brien (Skaven) and Alistair Catterall (Stormcast Eternals) - 18-13 Win
Round 3 Towers in the Tundra - Ashley McEwan (Cities of Sigmar) and Matthew Campbell (Stormcast Eternals) - 10-18 Loss

It was a fun day with our tactic going surprisingly well. Blood Thirsters up front, shooty sneaky Kruleboyz in back, that was until the third round where we were pulled apart by some super chill fun guys rocking an army that I don't think we had had any experience against, Cities of Sigmar. Previously I think we lucked out with the Skaven forces as I knew them well enough to deconstruct what needed to go first.

Painting Round-up 2024

24 models (120 wounds) - 24 Spiterider Lancers

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