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.