SHO 2018 Report

As per usual it seems, I get distracted, busy or unmotivated and suddenly my plans of posting regularly just don't happen. Nonetheless, as the title suggests I'm going to do my best to give an overview of my games across Southern Hemisphere Open. I'll do another post about Skulls 2018 and then give my thoughts on the Tallyband. On to SHO!

SHO 2018
Game 1 vs Yordan
As mentioned previously, SHO 2018 was a one day tournament put on by Objective Secured on 24 September 2018.

My first game was against a well-known player in the local scene called Yordan. Yordan has a reputation as being one of the more competitive players in our scene and, while being a bit nervous going into the game, I was looking forward to it. Unfortunately I can't remember for the life of me what the scenario was, but he was playing a Gore Pilgrims list. He also had the bloodthirster that can do AoE mortal wounds.

This game ended up being close in objectives but ultimately I lost out. The game progressed much as I thought it would - I grabbed the objectives early, and it was then up to Yordan to shift me. To begin with it looked like he might not be able to do it, but towards the end of the game my units were overwhelmed and he was able to catch up.

There were a few things I learnt in this game. To begin with, I forgot that I could cast Glorious Afflictions to halve movement. Given how tight the score was at the end, holding a unit off for a turn could have made the difference.

I otherwise generally learnt about how pile-ins could be used in interesting ways and to watch out for flying units charging into places I didn't expect them to be. His bloodthirster got into my backfield without me expecting it, and if he had some better dice it could have done a world more damage. While I was eventually able to take it out, I was lucky with the limited damage it did. While it was an intense first game, it was highly educational.

Game 2 v Kieren
My second game was against a guy called Kieran who was also new to the scene. He was running a Seraphon list with the follow (probably not everything):

Kroak

Slann

3 units of Skinks (10's I think)

A unit of Ripperdactyls

2 x Bastilidons

1 x Engine of the Gods

1 x Balewind

I have never played against Seraphon, but I listen to podcasts, and knew that Kroak and Bastilidons are bad news for daemons, and I was running a complete daemon army. I knew that I was going to be up against it, but I was up for the challenge; I don't really get into bemoaning how poor of a match-up a game might be, or whether something is fair or not. I enjoy the challenge because I want to get better, and the way to get better is to get smashed up and learn from the mistakes I make.

We were playing Total Conquest, which is the scenario with the weird blocky deployment. There are four objectives, and claiming an objective that belongs to your opponent is worth more than holding your own.

This game ended up coming right down to the wire, but I got pipped at the end and went down. My lack of knowledge of Seraphon definitely worked against me in this game, particularly in relation to how Seraphon can teleport, and how skinks can retreat. Early on in the game, we were fighting over the two objectives near the thin deployment zones on the board. He went after mine with ripperdactyls and skinks, and I sent a large block of plaguebearers after his. One of the big issues for me in this game was how to deal with the bastilidons, and the crazy summoning that Seraphon can do. Early on, I decided that my best option to try and deal with the bastilidons was to send my Great Unclean One after them. I decided this on the basis that he was not going to be effective at holding objectives, and if he managed to get into them then the witherstave would give him some limited protection. I'm not sure if this was the right idea or not; their ability to teleport made it very difficult to truly protect against them, and I couldn't zone out the board in a meaningful way because I needed bodies on objectives to contest against the skinks.

The two big learning points in this one were to be more careful with my position to block out summoning or teleporting. In turn 4 I left a gap for Kroak to teleport outside of 6 of my back objective and he wiped out the plaguebearer unit holding that objective. If I had been a bit more careful I could have mitigated it to a degree and may have got up in the end.

The other big one was in relation to a Beast of Nurgle I summoned. I forgot that it could retreat and charge for two turns in a row. This could have done 2D3 mortal wounds to the skinks I was fighting, and had the potential to allow me to steal the objective back. At the end of the game though, we had both had a fun game that came down to the wire. I'm looking forward to playing Seraphon again to see if I learnt anything from this experience.

Game 3 vs Matthew
My final game for SHO was against a Legions of Nagash player by the name of Matthew. Neither of us had won a game at the stage so I think we were both up for a nice easy game to see out the weekend. We ended up getting Shifting Objectives as the scenario, and I was the only person to outdrop his 2 drop Legion list all day. From memory, Matthew had:

Arkhan

Lord of Bones

2 Morghasts Harbingers

30 Grave Guard

30 Skeletons

10 Skeletons

There was probably some other stuff as well.

This game was the only game where my list worked exactly as I intended it to; I think this was for two reasons. Firstly I had a better idea of what I was doing with the list by this time, and secondly I was up against another army that was more suited to grinding.

In my first turn I ran my guys onto the objectives and basically set myself up to take charges. Matthew obliged and the centre of the board turned turned into a melee. We didn't finish the game, but the main points were discovering how much damage Black Guard can do (quite a bit), and seeing how slow Black Guard could move after learning how much damage they did (2" as it turns out). Shackles were both annoying and very useful in this game; something I hadn't considered is how annoying it could be to move around the endless spells.


At the end of the day I had won 1 game, lost 2, and had played against three people I had never played against. I was feeling a bit down on the list at this point in time; the lack of damage in the list was frustrating, but I also think I didn't get the most out of my Plague Drones - a lot of the time they seemed to be buzzing around somewhere that didn't matter rather than getting stuck in. I was pretty exhausted by the end of the day, but I ended up being voted the second favourite person to play against which was awesome.

In considering whether SHO was a run well, I don't think I really have the experience to say whether it was good or bad. In the end only 10 people ended up attending which was a shame, and there was some discussion about how to get more people to come out to events. I think our local scene is building at the moment, and I hope it continues to do so, but we seem to be split into a number of smaller communities. I'm hoping that somehow we can connect these scenes are start to build to local tournament scene.

That's it from me for the moment folks, but I (hopefully) will be back soon with another post.

SHO 2018 & Skulls 2018

Southern Hemisphere Open has been and gone, and while I didn't place particularly well, it was an enjoyable event to participate in! It was run smoothly by Mike and Emma over at Objective Secured at Perth's Ascot Racecourse. I've never been to Ascot, so it was a good excuse to check it out; mind you I went to the wrong venue on the way and each of my games ran the full round length so I didn't have a great amount of time to explore, but the view overlooking the racecourse while we played was pretty great. I'll go through each of my games in a future post, but I thought I ought to set out why I took certain options in my list. I have another tournament this coming weekend, Skulls at Outpost 6030, that I'm going to take the same list to so I'll give a review of it after that.

My List

As mentioned in my previous post, my list is as follows:

Allegiance: Nurgle
Realm: Shyish

LEADERS

Great Unclean One
  - General
  - Plague Flail & Doomsday Bell
  - Command Trait: Pestilent Breath
  - Artefact: The Witherstave
  - Lore of Virulence: Glorious Afflictions

Poxbringer
  - Artefact: Wraithbow
  - Lore of Virulence: Favoured Poxes

Poxbringer
  - Lore of Virulence: Favoured Poxes

UNITS

Plaguebearers (30)

Plaguebearers (20)

Plaguebearers (10)

Plague Drones (3)

Plague Drones (3)

BATTALIONS

Tallyband of Nurgle

ENDLESS SPELLS

Chronomantic Cogs

Geminids of Uhl-gysh

Soulsnare Shackles

List Choices

In building the list (the theory of which I discussed here) there were a few places in the list where I could play around. The core of the list (to meet the tallyband battalion) had to be a Great Unclean One, a Poxbringer, 3 units of Plaguebearers (for battleline) and a unit of Plague Drones. From there, my choices were primarily:

1. What load out did I was on the Great Unclean One?
2. What did I want my second artefact to be?
3. Did I want my Plague Drones in a unit of 1 or 2?

There is also room in the list to drop a poxbringer, the cogs and the shackles to bump the unit of 10 plaguebearers to 30, which I think I like the idea of, but I don't own enough plaguebearers to make it an option.

Great Unclean Load-out
This was probably the most straight-forward choice. I knew I wanted the Doomsday Bell for the 3" movement buff, so that was automatically in. Choosing between the flail and the bileblade was more difficult, and I'm not entirely sold on the choice, but I decided I wanted the GUO to have the ability to do some damage in combat. The trade off of his Massive Bileblade (3 attacks / -2 Rend / 3 damage) for the Bell (4 attacks / -1 Rend / 1 damage) is already a fairly significant hit to his damage, and I didn't want him to be a complete potato in combat so I kept the flail. An interesting side note is that the bell doesn't get any worse the more injured the GUO is, whereas the Massive Bileblade drops attacks, so the difference didn't end up being as extreme as I feared.

The Witherstave is an amazing item, and has such a large area of effect that it fits really well into my overall gameplan, so that was an easy choice.

Pestilent Breath for the command trait is primarily to give me flexibility. At it's heart it is a horde killer; 1/3 of a unit taking mortal wounds is excellent. That being said, it is highly situational and is short ranged. I'm not sure whether the ability to manipulate the dial with Grandfather's Blessing is a better choice - it's something I'll keep an eye on and will mix it up at some point.

Second Artefact
I had a really good time going through the Malign Sorcery book and thinking about what artefacts were open to me and what I wanted. After a fair bit of consideration I came down to deciding between the Tome of a Thousand Poxes from the Maggotkin book and the Wraithbow from the Realm of Shyish.

The tome gives spells cast from the Lore of Nurgle +1 to cast. The uses for this in my army are limited but significant. There are only two spells that would be affected; Foul Regenesis and Favoured Poxes. Foul Regenesis is important because it allows wheel manipulation, and Favoured Poxes is an incredibly potent debuff; -1 to hit, wound and save. Both spells are cast on a 7+, which means they had a 20/36 chance of being cast (or 55% chance). By taking the Tome, this increases to a 26/36 chance, or a 72% chance, as well as providing some assistance against dispels.

The Wraithbow is an artefact that is used in the shooting phase. You pick an enemy unit within 18", roll 6 dice, and they take a mortal wound for each 6 rolled. What attracted me to this item was that:

1. It has a good range;
2. It can be used after running; and
3. It isn't affected by negatives to hit.

One of my concerns is my ability to pick off characters. I have a few ways in which to deal D3 mortal wounds (spells primarily) but it isn't significant. This bow is quite variable, but the ability to ping a wound off here an there was very tempting. I also thought the item seemed fun, so I am going to give the bow a run for a while to see how it goes.

Plague Drones in a unit of 3 or 6?
The decision here was whether the have one unit that would benefit from the GUO command ability, or whether it was better to have two separate units acting independently. I'm not sure which way I prefer as yet, but I'm going to try having two units; I think it will give me more options and more roadblocks if necessary.


It will be interesting to compare how this list performs in an event that uses full realm rules (Skulls 2018) vs one that didn't (SHO). My initial thoughts are that I have a good number of casters to take advantage of the realm spells, but I have too many endless spells which are points that could be spent elsewhere. I'm looking forward to forming testing some hypotheses, forming some opinions, and seeing how they compare with internet wisdom.

Southern Hemisphere Open 2018

Today's post is about an event coming up in Perth this weekend called Southern Hemisphere Open (or 'SHO'). SHO is a put on by Mike and Emma from Objective Secured and it hosts a number of games and systems of the course of a three day weekend here in Western Australia.

The event that I am most excited about is called 'Battleshock' and is a competitive AoS event being run on 24 September 2018. As I am just getting back into the AoS scene, I've been trying to get a sense for how large the community is, what attendance at events is like, and the kinds of armies that are likely to be played. While I enjoy the hobby side of Age of Sigmar, I'm a competitive player at heart; the idea of executing a cunning plan on the battlefield is what got me into tabletop war-gaming and trying to anticipate what my opponents will do is what keeps me engaged; that's not to say I'm any good at it yet but it's a goal.

However, while I am competitive at heart, I don't have the ability to buy and paint an army that I think might be optimal. I also am a big proponent of doing my own testing and forming my own opinions rather than accepting the wisdom of the internet. Bearing this in mind, I decided that the best thing I could do for this event would be to assess what models I have, and to then make the strongest list I thought I could from those models.

When I was playing during 8th Edition, I primarily played a Chaos Daemon army; I had a mixture of the four chaos gods represented, but my main interest was in Nurgle. After looking at what I had, my choices were to field either a mixed chaos Daemon army, or to run a daemon based Maggotkin of Nurgle army - I decided to play the Maggotkin.

List Building for SHO

SHO is a three game tournament, 2000 points each game, using 3 of the 18 scenarios that will be randomly determined before each game. The randomness of the scenario's made it a little difficult to anticipate what elements would be absolutely required in my list; some scenarios require heroes, some require wizards or heroes with artefacts of power, and some have up to 6 objectives that can be controlled at once. Nonetheless, there are some common themes throughout:

1. Whoever finishes setting up first has the choice of first turn;

2. Aside from a couple of scenarios, you control an objective by having more models within 6" of the objective; and

3. Whoever has the most victory points (obtained by holding objectives) wins. Ties on victory points are determined by who has killed more of the enemy.

Characteristics of a Nurgle Daemon army

From my reading, my analysis of my units, and from my experience playing with Nurgle daemons, I have found that they are very resilient, they can be fast (with the assistance of a Great Unclean One) but they have poor to mediocre damage output.

Between the way in which objective scoring works, and the way that Nurgle daemon's play, I have formed a couple of hypotheses:

#1. A Nurgle daemon army cannot fight opponents off of an objective. If there is a single model on the objective then they can swarm it to take it through weight of numbers but if there is a horde there they do not have the damage required to fight an opponent off an objective.

#2. A Nurgle daemon army cannot afford to be pinned in its deployment by an opponent; it doesn't have the damage to break out. This typically happens against an alpha strike army, or something that has fast elements.

#3. Resilience only matters if you are preventing your opponent from getting something they want. This could be holding up a combat unit from attacking what it really wants to attack or it might be preventing opponents from getting onto an objective.

Forming a game plan

Given that the game is an objective based one, my top priority had to be that I would score victory points; if I don't score I don't win. When I then considered my hypotheses on Nurgle daemons, particularly #1, my only option was to get on the objectives before my opponent; this had the additional benefit of hitting the brief for hypothesis #3. Hopefully, I can then hold the objectives for long enough to get a lead that my opponent can't catch up to.

So how to achieve this? There were a couple of considerations:

1. I needed first turn; if my opponent goes first and beats me there, then I'm not meeting my game plan; and

2. I needed the speed to get within range of the objectives in one turn.

Tallyband of Nurgle

The first issue was how to get first turn. Thankfully, this had a relatively simple solution; the Tallyband of Nurgle. If I could fit my whole army into one battalion, I would then be able to drop it all at once. The only lists that could outdrop me would be single battalion lists, and that would be on a dice roll. The Tallyband is also a defensive battalion, which supports my game plan, and it utilises the models that I own, perfect!

Need for Speed

The second issue of speed is also one that was relatively easy to find a solution for.

In most scenarios, the objectives are either within each player's territory, or they are on the border of the two territories. The objectives are set up symmetrically, and for the most part if you control one more objective than your opponent, then you will win. Armies set up either 9" or 12" away from their opponents deployment, which means that for objectives in the centre, I would need to be able to move either 4" or 7" to get within 6" of the objective; ideally I would go further so that I can take up board space around the objective and prevent my opponent from claiming it.

Plaguebearers, my primary objective holders, have a move of 4" and a minimum run distance of 1". This means that I could guarantee claiming objective on some maps, but not all, and ideally I want to have models directly on top of the objective.

I have three options to increase their move:

1. A doomsday bell on the Great Unclean One: +3" for units within 7";
2. +2" on the Cycle of Corruption (a Nurgle Allegiance ability); and
3. The endless spell, Chronomantic Cogs; +2" to move and charge for ALL units.

The bell on the Great Unclean One is a guaranteed option, and I definitely wanted to take a Great Unclean One so that was an easy choice; Plaguebearers are now moving a minimum of 8". The Cycle and the Cogs are a bit trickier, as enabling both is reliant on spells that cast on a 7. Nurgle has spellcasters, but is limited in its options to improve their spell casting. Ultimately I have built both options into my list by way of redundancy, I will always be able to get within range of an objective, but I may not be able to sufficiently inhibit my opponent's ability to contest the objective.

Cogs is also a double edged sword, as it allows my opponents to reach me more easily, which is a problem as outlined below.

Risks of weaknesses of the game plan

While getting on the objectives early enables me to leverage my units resilience, it does open up some significant disadvantages:

1. Firstly, and most significantly, it opens me up to counter-attack. My units are going to be half the board closer to the enemy, and combat armies that have deployed on the line are going to be able to hit my plaguebearer units. While my unit's natural resilience will help, if I don't support them in some other way then my opponents will have multiple turns to deplete them before I can get a big enough lead.

2. I give up control of the game. This way of playing is essentially a challenge to my opponent along the lines of 'do you think you're hard enough?' It's a race; can they kill my units before I get too far ahead.

3. In games where objectives become worth more the later the game goes on, I'm going to have to hold the objectives for an even longer period of time in order to retain the lead by the end of the game.

4. If I don't get my early game right, I have limited ways to catch up. I need to identify the biggest dangers to my army and neuter them as best I can, either through good deployment or good use of my units. Funnily enough, I'm excited about this weakness; this is a direct example of where my ability as a general will impact the result in my game.

5. If I don't win the major victory I'm very unlikely to win the minor on victory points; my army doesn't kill things especially well so I expect I will always be lower than my opponent on victory points.


My List for SHO

Bearing in mind the above, the list I decided to run was:

Allegiance: Nurgle
Realm: Shysh

LEADERS

Great Unclean One
  - General
  - Plague Flail & Doomsday Bell
  - Command Trait: Pestilent Breath
  - Artefact: The Witherstave
  - Lore of Virulence: Glorious Afflictions

Poxbringer
  - Artefact: Wraithbow
  - Lore of Virulence: Favoured Poxes

Poxbringer
  - Lore of Virulence: Favoured Poxes

UNITS

Plaguebearers (30)

Plaguebearers (20)

Plaguebearers (10)

Plague Drones (3)

Plague Drones (3)

BATTALIONS

Tallyband of Nurgle

ENDLESS SPELLS

Chronomantic Cogs

Geminids of Uhl-gysh

Soulsnare Shackles


I'll do another post prior to SHO regarding why I have made certain choices in the list and where I think there is room to make changes, but overall I am excited to take this list and to see whether my game plan comes off in the way that I have imagined it.

An (in)glorious return!

Well here we are, three and a half years later, and I'm returning to my blog as an outlet for my own creative tendencies. A lot has happened in this time, I'm a lawyer now, engaged to my girlfriend (it took me nine years to ask), have a mortgage, am no longer playing WoW (a lack of time being the primary culprit - I miss my WoW friends) and I am taking my first steps into Age of Sigmar 2.

One of the primary motivations for returning to write a blog is to get my own thoughts out of my head and into something slightly (hopefully!) more legible. This is primarily in relation to Age of Sigmar at the moment but other topics may pop up every now and then.

However, in order to truly fit in with the internet community, the most important change in my life is that I now have two beautiful cats, Harvey and Leo - they can be terrors at times but they are best of friends and provide a great deal of entertainment. Here's a picture and who knows what my next post may be about!