Age of Sigmar May 2021Fat Ogre Games Tournament

TheJTJ May 25, 2021May 25, 2021 0 Comments

I had the opportunity to have the winner/winners of the May Atomic Hobby AOS Tournament discuss there thoughts tactics and gameplay from this last weeks local tournament. If you are interested in Tzeentch or Nighthaunt Tactics for Age of Sigmar this is the place to be. The tournament had 14 players many of whom are the top players in the city. Many of the lists are top tier and could be taken to a grand tournament.

Check out: Fat Ogre Games, Spring Texas. A great place to game on the North Side of Houston. And big thanks to Bryan L for running another great event.

Table of Contents

HHP link

This link is for the Harambe’s Heroes Podcast. They discuss the lists prior to the tournament:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtIAhI22E8Q

Tournament Results

These are the round breakdowns:

Pictures form the event:

Kyle Corcoran 1st Place

Kyle 1/2 of the infamous Corcornan Brother. Is a great competitor and always comes prepared with competitive lists. I have always appreciated his list building and hobby prowess. He brought a magic heavy Tzeentch list with lots and lots and lots of hidden wounds. Warscroll Builder only lists 64 wounds, in reality its closer to 250 not counting if he rolls any 1s for Pink Horrors battleshock.

List

Allegiance: Tzeentch –

Change Coven: Hosts Arcanum

Leaders

Kairos Fateweaver (400) – Lore of Change: Bolt of Tzeentch

Gaunt Summoner of Tzeentch (240) – Lore of Fate: Glimpse the Future

Gaunt Summoner on Disc of Tzeentch (260) – General – Command Trait: Spell Hunters – Artefact: The Fanged Circlet – Lore of Fate: Arcane Suggestion

The Blue Scribes (120) – Lore of Change: Unchecked Mutation Changecaster,

Herald of Tzeentch (110) – Lore of Change: Treason of Tzeentch

Battleline

10 x Pink Horrors of Tzeentch (220)

Endless Spells / Terrain / CPs

Geminids of Uhl-Gysh (60)

Umbral Spellportal (70)

Darkfire Daemonrift (80)

Total: 2000 / 2000 Extra Command Points: 0 Allies: 0 / 400 Wounds: 64

Comments

The List Overview

” So the list is pretty straightforward with very few tricks. It’s Host Arcanum for the auto unbind on rounds 1,3 and 5, plus the free 6 screamers summon for even more free pts and wounds and ones that can move 16 inches to make up for the lack of mobility in the list. 2 Gaunt Summoners for access to the mortal magic lore with 2 really good spells to either give me another destiny dice or debuff an enemy to help the horrors do anything more than just stand there. Blue scribes because of course. Their almost auto cast and can’t be unbound spell ability is incredibly strong with any spell I wanted to give them but when their innate spell lets my whole army reroll all of their casts it becomes even more so. A Changecaster for another spell and chances at even more if he casts on 9+ and to spread the Tzeentch locus. Kairos is there for the lord of change magic dice and his ability to cast any spell that a friendly wizard knows within 18, although I don’t think that ever came up this tournament. His special ability to change almost any one dice is the main “trick” of the list to stop deepstrike charges or a particularly important enemy cast because it makes the whole roll unable to be modified. Then 3 ten man pinks plus the 2 more five mans that the Gaunts summon for losing one spell cast that turn means I have 200 wounds of screen and objective control on my first turn. But the real main part of the list is the endless spells and in particular one of them. Geminids and spellportals are fairly self explanatory in a magic heavy list but the real villain here is the Darkfire Daemonrift. A slaves to darkness cast only spell (so only the Gaunts can try to cast it) that is setup within 9 and moves 12. And then it just deals a no roll required d3 mortal wounds plus another 1 mortal per wizard and other spell within 12 of where it landed to every enemy it flew over or landed within an inch of. With my list alone I have 8 potential wizards to be in range of it with the pinks being wizards while over 8 models and 2 other endless spells. And that’s not counting enemy wizards. Oh and then Kairos just has an ability to auto dispel it for free if it’s wholly in 18 of him, so it can a lot of the time never be used against you at all. I never got and probably never will get the perfect cast of it with upwards of plus 10 to that d3 but I did get plus 5, 6 and 8 and had that one spell deal upwards of 45 mortal wounds on one cast game 1 and it probably did the same over the course of the next two games. It’s another another KO warp lightning vortex situation where GW never thought of an interaction and of course “had no data” last year to fix it in an faq. All of the games were definitely winnable with the list even without the spell and putting those 80 points elsewhere but it definitely shouldn’t be what it is now in tzeentch.

Game 1

The first game I played against Trevor Weerts and his new Broken Realms Nighthaunt on border war in the realm of metal. And unfortunately there isn’t too much to say about the game because of how it ended. He went first and moved up onto the middle objectives with a unit of 5 hexes and 30 rasps on one side and 15 hexes, 10 blades, the coach and the heroes on the other side. I went and did my summoning and started to cast my spells. I cast the scribes spell to buff it all, cleared most of the rasps with my horde clearing spells, Kairos did 6 mortals to the coach, the geminids went out on the hexes and blades. All of the horrors buffed themselves and I threw the spell portals out in front of the larger enemy side in anticipation of the thermonuclear bomb I was about to drop through it. And then the one spell I failed to cast that turn of course happened to be the darkfire. On a rerollable 6 up to cast. But whatever more annoying to anything. I dispelled the geminids with Kairos’ ability instead and sent the horrors up to do negligible damage and take over the points while only actually wiping out the 30 rasps and the Cruciator. Trevor got the turn roll and killed a lot of horrors and retreat charged 10 blades onto Kairos and got within 1 or 2 wounds of killing him which was problematic. As was the -24 battleshock that one of my horror units had to take, but being horrors they survived that anyway. At this point it was a good close game with many ways it could end up going and either side in range of winning. Then I got all of my spells off again and one of them was the darkfire that dealt 45+ mortals to his army and all of his heroes and we called the game there. Certainly not how I want games to go, I enjoy close, well fought games the most like everyone else, and an unfortunate result of the unforeseen interaction with the army by GW but it is what it is. I’ve been on the other side of games like that before and it doesn’t feel great so maybe I’ll send a joint letter with Trevor to GW about the spell lol.

Game 2

Round 2 I was paired against Andrew Fornea. I’ve played Andrew and his Seraphon many, many times and his dreaded Kroaknado were more than a few of those. We played blades edge, again in the realm of shadows. He had 7 drops to my 8 and so with no real reason to let me go first he decided to himself.

Battleround 1

I auto unbound comets call, because Andrew only ever rolls the d6 enemies version, and several other spells including kroaks bale wind. So upside he wasn’t able to do much to me with magic, downside I got only 4 summoning points and he got more than enough to summon 10 skinks in front of the Bastiladon that I had assumed I would need to use several fate dice against to avoid instantly losing my Kairos but in the first turn he rolled poorly and only dealt 6 damage. In my first turn the unbind train kept rolling and I got very few spells off as well but one that I did manage was the geminids that were thrown directly at the Bastiladon and Kroak with his entourage. Nothing went through onto Kroak of course but the bastiladon took all 3 which allowed a couple more from the horrors shooting later.

Battleround 2

In the second round I ended up going second so I took away his middle objective underneath Kroak and we more or less repeated the magic pattern of the first 2 turns with the exception being no auto unbind for comets call which Andrew rolled on a 13 I believe (like I said, always a 10+). He rolled a 5 for the number of targets and just about half healthed my hero pool. Which was somewhat offset by his failed rerollable 9 inch charge from his teleported saurus, but re-offset by the 15 damage his bastiladon did to Kairos. In my second turn I did manage to throw the darkfire through the spell portals and nearly clear out the bastiladon, wipe the gaurd, and I think deal a couple damage to kroak but the astrolith banner survived and allowed Andrew to roll monster mortal ignore rolls to mitigate somewhat. Which forced me to use my few summoning points on the gamble of an unbuffable exalted flamer to kill the bastiladon, which he managed with exactly enough damage. I had also chosen the agenda where if a unit charges from 9 inches away it gets plus one attack on charge and spent some destiny dice to guarantee that for a still 10 man pinks unit to hopefully deal some damage to the 30 saurus on the right flank. Coupled with the minus one save spell that one of my Gaunts had put on the larger Saurus unit they did in fact manage a good amount of wounds between their shooting and melee but not enough to actually wipe anything. Which was not entirely their fault since the 30 dice that same gaunt summoner threw at them with his other spell only dealt 3 or 4 damage when looking for 5s and 6s on the dice. HOWEVER the mvp of the turn was the humble Changecaster who has a special ability to be able to gain another spell cast attempt if he rolls a 9 or more to cast and that can keep rolling if he rolls another 9+. He very nearly managed to run out of spells to be able to cast and went up to 5 total casts that turn before rolling an 8 for arcane bolt and even better managed to roll 8 6s on 12 dice for one spell vs the Saurus on the other side of the board, all but clearing that flank. A solid investment of 110 points I say. During this turn I also put a cp on the screamers for plus one to hit and plus one to rend and sent them Kroak hunting. They very nearly did it and brought him down to 2 wounds but he survived to cause problems later on. At this point I was pulling ahead on points due to a retreat onto his right objective and holding all 3 of mine.

Battleround 3

I ended up winning the turn roll and with my position (mostly) sustainable I opted to go second so that I would not only get to remove another objective, leaving only one on his side of the board, to get one of my secondaries of holding all objectives in the opponents territory, but also to choose an endless spell to move first. Which of course was the darkfire daemonrift sitting next to Kroak and several spells and wizards. The rift ate the astrolith banner alive and dealt I believe 7 wounds to Kroak who made incredible ignores and only took 1 wound. An outcome that would lead to every one of my heroes dying in that turn from Kroak’s spell casting and a teleported Carnosaur. But, as I imagine would be the case in most games between these two heavily hero phase armies, we were running out of time in the round. We talked it through and my only options at that point were to just sit on the 4 remaining objectives and while over 2 more battlerounds Andrew could potentially get through my probably 120+ wounds left I would most likely still be too far ahead in points and we were out of time. A very fun and close game between 2 casting powerhouses but more importantly 2 potent unbinders.

Game 3

In my first ever game at the top table I played against Keven Rand and his (potentially) last hurrah with good old Nagash and Arkhan. Keven is another that I have played several times before and beaten very few. We played shifting objectives in the realm of life (thank you no 2up save Nagash). This game technically made it through all 5 rounds but was still fairly fast considering and was a good close game all the way through.

Battleound 1

As per usual I was outdropped and made to go second. The trick of Keven’s list went off without a hitch because of his ability to deploy outside of my auto unbind range. Nagash put the spell protection of nagash onto himself, which lets you ignore wounds and mortals on a 5up but more importantly it allows the caster to teleport anywhere on the board outside of 9 from any enemies if any of those 5up ignores fail. Which Arkhan very kindly provided the opportunity for with a summoned suffocating gravetide that flew over Nagash. Luckily for me it did 3 mortals to him and none of them were negated. Unfortunately that still meant that there was a Nagash sitting behind one of my flanks. In hindsight I could have deployed better and spread out more but many things would have changed then most likely on both sides. Nagash came down within range of both of my gaunts but with my 3 lord of change unbinds I managed to mitigate alot of the machine gun arcane bolt damage. And again in hindsight I could and should have used Kairos’ dice change ability to change the last casting roll that killed the closest gaunt summoner. Instead I used it to save the other one from Nagash’s shoooting and hope that he failed his 5 inch charge or at least had to split his attacks into the Kairos enough that one of them survived. Which between that and locus actually saved both of them from dying when Nagash made his charge but I don’t know if it was really the right choice over stopping his charge with Kairos’ ability and hoping that Keven rolled low enough on the shootign damage that the gaunt survived. The idea was that maybe Kairos would deal some extra damage in melee even if the gaunt died, or the gaunt would deal d6 mortals with its knife ability if he put everything into Kairos and killed him instead. I ended up getting to hit him with both. Unfortunately, for the price of 2 destiny dice to get the opportunity to roll d6 mortals at Nagash, the gaunt only rolled a 1 and Kairos only dealt 1 or 2 damage himself. In my turn, despite him having put battleline on every objective on a battleplan that gives you extra points for battleline being on objectives and can quickly snowball out of your ability to come back, I believed that the Nagash in my flank was going to have to take about 3/4 of my army to deal with. I ended up throwing 2d6 mortals at him from Kairos and both of those were rolled 1’s and most of my other damage spells including the geminids and the daemonrift were unbound so I was dubious about my chances. The gaunt summoner that survived was the general and the one with the subfaction artifact to summon the 6 screamers which I thought would be a massive help. Between their movement for later they also deal d3 damage with their melee attacks vs monsters that I can add a rend to, and have a fly over 5up d3 mortal wounds vs wizards. I ended up retreating Kairos and the Gaunt from Nagash and sending the screamers over him and back outside of 3 but rolled no 5ups for the mortals (again not feeling great about my chances to kill the big man). I also pulled 2 full units of pinks back to shoot him but only one of them got their plus one to hit buff off. But between the 60+ shots from shooting, the screamers melee, one of the pink horrors melee, and some less than stellar save rolls by Keven, I managed to deal exactly enough damage to kill Nagash on my last attack roll. But I scored not one victory point and lost the turn roll.

Battleround 2

Keven, of course, decided to go first and his turn was pretty quick. Arkhan didn’t manage any spells past my unbinds but did manage to charge and kill Kairos despite my best efforts with destiny dice saves. And when he ended his turn he was now up 14-0 so I had some work to do and do fast. In my hero phase I managed to drop the daemonrift on Arkhan to finish him off after a few other spells weakened his unbind bonuses and dealt some minor damage to the rest of his army. I ended up taking over the main objective from his 5 man cavalry and the middle objective through sheer bodies.

Battleround 3-5

He again won the turn priority and due to the shifting objective he got another 2 points making the score 16-5 I believe. However, in my turn I was able to get onto every objective to start to even up the score and with the turn rolls that we played through that I ended up winning, we decided that there was no way for what he had left to make it through all of the horrors in time so I walked away with my first ever tournament win. And while there was certainly the crutch of the daemonrifts damage, the second 2 games were still very close fought and fun games of the most offensive magic you’ll probably see in Age of Sigmar. “

Pictures from the event