So far 2023 has been a weird year for me in Age of Sigmar. After spending 3+ years constently building out gloomspite gitz and orcs I basically have everything build that I want to run. I’ve figured out a list that is competitive enough in the current meta that has 400 points that I can drop in different looks to experiement with new units and combos. I don’t have any major events coming up until the end of July. Last year I devoted significant time into coming up with a number of different kruleboyz lists in an attempt to make them consistent and viable. I might as well have been ordering rockets and roadrunner traps from the acme corporation.

The State of Age of Sigmar

Once my first and true love had a proper 3.0 book released I was able to return to it and build some lists, look at my models, and really engage with the kind of trash army that is fun to play. While not an official reviewer everything in the book feels good and it was balanced against several of the more recent releases.

To be honest I don’t really like the latest GHB and feel like the mission structure feels really disconnected from how people want to play the game. Since I don’t have any big events coming up before the next GHB I really don’t have much investment in this season beyond “It’s what everyone is playing”. My standard practice when I’m not preparing for a tournament mission is to randomly roll two dice to decide the mission. It is very rare I look at the results and go “Oh good” when a new 2022-2023 – Season 2 pitched battle mission comes up. That isn’t a good reaction to selecting a mission.

The Vice was a great mission that created a negative play experience because of the representation and power of dragons post-prerelease nerf but pre-2nd post release nerf. Nidus Paths is a great mission. I think The Lurkers Below is a great mission and people are cowards for not using it more. Nidus Paths is a great example of a mission with a twist that plays mostly as you expect. I’m glad both of these are currently in the rotation. No matter how you feel about the GHB overall I don’t know how “Twists and Turns” got through a QA process.  The Age of Sigmar rules team have done a good job of clarifying rules and making adjustments in a timely manner but I think that terrain and missions need some significant attention in the next edition. Specifically, so many of the missions seem designed to create a net negative play experience for both players with an asymmetric impact to certain armies. “No teleport/No Summons” missions are frequently brought up by factions with teleport/placement mechanics and this leads to TOs not including them in events.

As we move towards getting a new GHB I’m sure I”m going to be eagar to understand how to craft an army and finally figure out what KO, Soulblight, Khorne, Slaanesh, OBR, and Seraphon are up to. For now, I don’t really know or care and that kinda feels like a shame.

Hobby Progress

I am grateful for a friend of mine, who is currently on a 100 day plus hobby streak and has nearly three seraphon boxes already painted, for inviting me to a facebook chat during the pandemic about playing Age of Sigmar. It was a valuable resource for learning about the game, asking hobby questions, and getting to know some people in the community.

For the past 18 months I don’t think that Age of Sigmar has been discussed as it has moved from Marvel Crisis Protocol to Necromolds to Star Wars Legion to 40K 10th edition to Infinity. It has never been about A Song of Fire and Ice minitures game despite me having a full army.

Like the chat, I’ve really lost my way on what my goals are. In 2020 I started playing Age of Sigmar and basically was a punching bag with my Gloomspite Gitz army that grew as I painted them. I was new to painting and to playing miniature games. In 2021 I looked at the new edition as a time to be more systematic in how I played, challenge myself to do better, and picked Kruleboyz as my main army. 2022 saw me go to my first travel events, meet a lot of great people, and find some great friendships.

I started 2023 with the desire to attend a lot of events locally and play as much sigmar as I could. I had, prior to LVO, convinced myself that I would be able to and want to play a game on Tabletop Simulator. I said I would finish my backlog before the end of the year.  Based on the trends and data I’ve observed one would be forgiven for thinking that was a lie.  As a reminder, my starting unfinished model count was 294 models as of January 1, 2023.  As of May 7, 2023 I have 290 uninished age of sigmar models.  I have completed a net 4 models. This is where the rationalization, special pleading, excuses, and explanations come in.

• I’m including 84 models that I intend to sell – in this is a random box of pink horrors that I found in my basement.
• The only models that I’ve purchased this year are two of the new gitz hero, some spiders, and the wolf-unit that I used store credit from an event to purchase. This is 15 total models INCLUDING counting big spiders as too because I can build the webspinner shamans separately.
• I’ve been moving models through the human centipede of progress – unbuilt (including held for sale) are down 9 models or 6%, unpainted have declined by 25 models or 21%, and WIP models are up by 34 models or 136%.
• I have completed 25 models.

I have constructed all of the big spiders and one of the scuttleboss spiders I got in the U.K.  The big spiders are great while the scuttleboss just sucks and looks like it will collapse into dust at any time.

I’m torn between doing a “good” job on my Gobbapalooza and just rushing to get them done.  The announcement of a FOMO box containing a Gobbapalooza among other models I want, my own desire to maybe, potentially, possibly, run a second unit.

It’s pretty neat to just throw some paint on models and watch them move from the “Ugly” to passable stage pretty quickly. One of the best things about painting for myself and not being worried about getting best painted awards is I can say when a model is “done”. However, even I have standards and the squig hoppers below are not painted to a “tabletop standard” as a friend of mine suggested they are. You need at least 1 thick coat of metallic paint and a single grass tuff to consider those models complete.

Finally, my son and I have been making great progress on his 11th edition space marines army.  At the rate we work I”m sure over the next six years we’ll fully assemble the two models we got in the UK in addition to the Indominus box that I’ve built 3 space marine models from.  At least it will make it easy for me to avoid getting a 10th edition box.

Next up, I’m looking at finishing my sylvaneth and my last Dankhold Troggoth. My rainbow Dankhold continues to get a lot of compliments and attention so I am encouraged to paint its partner to a higher standard. For the sylvaneth, I’m sure that I’m going to slapchop (or underpaint for those that have taste and style) them. I don’t have a strong desire to play them on the table, I don’t have a feel for what I want to do with them from a painting perspective that I can’t do with gitz, and I am too close to having a fully built army to just get ride of them at this point. The most likely scenario is that I sneak away from my family and just throw paint on them instead of going to work for a day or two.

Playing Games

In the preparation for the Cherokee FLG event I knew that I didn’t have time to paint a lot of models, play a lot of games, or learn what was in the gitz book. Flying from LVO with the COVID-19 virus coursing through my body I used a combination of leaks, reviews, and partial rules and  decided to pick a squigs/stabbas list in a 1 drop. I let my friends borrow my fully painted troggs and borrowed a unit of sneaky snufflers from a fellow gitz player. It was a net positive experienced and, for the first time ever, I played a skilled player with a meta list and won after making several mistakes.

2023 Cherokee FLG- Click to Expand

I hated the way the list played. I was constantly rolling dice and having to remember how many additional attacks I needed to make for very little effect. Rolling a lot of battleshock. Rolling a lot of rally rolls. Rolling a lot of “squigs returning to the squig herd” rolls. Rolling runs and charges. I ran out of time in two of my games, winning one and losing the other lost because my squigs didn’t run away, and wanted to make sure that my games received a natural conclusion. Troggs may not have the ceiling that a combined arms gitz list has but they are dead simple to pilot and after months of pushing dozens of models across the board the ideal of a few elite units is extremely appealing.

My first test of Troggs was again, with my son at Calvincon 2023, an event located in a house that served chicken and waffles, that really impressed how good troggs are for a midtable master like myself. Troggs are both hammer and anvil and don’t require a charge to be effective. After a few tweaks based on that experience I went the April 15th Georgia Warband event at Discover Games. Discover Games is one of my favorite stores to play at and home to some of the more competitive and aggressive players around. I really wish that it was closer to my house so I could see them more.

For the event I went full trogg and took two support pieces that received major changes, Sporesplatter Fanatics and Gobbapalooza. In the 3.0 book both these units went from being extremely underwhelming to having a significant role to play. Even with the points increase the Gobbapalooza is great value providing 2 casters with great warscroll spells and the ability to give an additional rend to a unit. Sporesplatter Fanatics give +1 attack to gloomspite gitz units wholly within nine, have a pregame move, and block line of sight for only 90 points. My final decision was to include the Scuttletide using the Loonskin command trait or make my Dankhold Troggboss a monster using Alpha Trogg. I hate not having a monster in a list in case I need to use a roar or smash a key terrain piece to rubble. In my casual games leading up to the event I also noticed that I rarely got into combat with my Dankhold Troggboss as it spent time directing the other troggs to hit things more goodbetter.

April Georgia Warband Event List- Click to Expand

It’s a pretty simple list that isn’t optimized to do anything other than fight in the combat phase and cast some spells. Ideally I’m able to cast mystic shield, the -1 to hit from the shroommancer, Hand of Gork for a teleport, Skragrots warscroll spell to do some damage, and make somebody fight last. The only hero phase buff I need to worry about is giving out the rend buff.

There are only three real tricks to running this list. First, the moonfaced mommet remains one of the best artifacts in the game. It provide -1 to save against a single unit within 12″ and you can choose it at the start of the combat phase. With an autorun that provides a threat range of 23″ that benefits all your units in combat. Second, Boggleye has a spell that prevents units from issuing or receiving commands until your next hero phase. The nice little trick with this is that you can teleport the entire gobblepalooza unit to make sure he’s in range of something nice. Finally, the sporesplatter fanatics add +1 attack to a unit wholly within 9″. This is less useful for faster units like squigs or larger blocks of moonclan but work perfectly well for Troggs. Since they can come back from the loonshrine they can serve as a screen, die in the first turn, and come back at the end of your turn in the middle of your army making every unit a little bit better.

Game 1 – The Jaws of Gallet vs. Flesh Eater Courts

Feast Day- Click to Expand

This matchup combines two of the things that I didn’t want to face. First, a very fast army that can do A LOT of burst damage. Second, a whole lot of bodies that can hold points if I miss a charge of if combat doesn’t go my way. One of the benefits of stabbas and squigs is that you can typically load enough of them on a point to take it.

Flesh Eater Courts (FEC) have the ability to multi-fight. Unlike the current style of fight twice that specifies that you get to fight last the second time you fight FEC allows one to fight IMMEDIATELY. My strategy was to huddle into a corner, pregame move my sporesplatter fanantics up, and hopefully be given first turn to put my buffs up. My opponent outdropped me and decided to take the turn and smashed into my sporesplatter fanatics and get into one of my Rockgut Trogg units. In addition they started bringing bodies on the other points. In my turn I was able to kill a Royal Zombie Dragon and Terrorgheist using my Dankhold Troggoths and a unit of rockguts. The ability to go to get the equivalent of rend -3 and two additional attacks on multi-damage units is extremely powerful. Under light of the bad moon, that came from Skraggy, the Loonshrine, and the moon itself, Troggs received an additional +1 to save. This proved to be decisive as I was able to fight the majority of the time under the moon.

However, because of the large number of bodies my opponent had on the table I was stil losing on primary points. For the rest of the game when I won priority I had to give it away so that I wouldn’t lose additional points. The ability to bring models back and hold points really negated my ability to use scuttletide to damage his heros or other models when they moved. Because of the speed of his army my support pieces were in danger in every combat and I needed to be able to clear out his chaff and summons so that I could start holding more points.

I was very lucky to get off a 10 inch charge with my Dankholds and greatly benefited from my opponent misplaying one of the objective removals. It was an extremely tight game that I think either of us could have won if a few rolls had gone differently. 21-20 in favor of the dumb guys.

Game 2 – The Prize of Gallet vs. Sons of Behemat

Breaker Tribe- Click to Expand

Scuttletide was my MVP in the game after a disappointing game 1. I felt pretty sure that I had enough rend to take down a mega a turn and my lack of monsters made me confident that I wouldn’t get too hung up on the incarnate. Objective control was going to be very binary – I win the objective if there isn’t a mega and lose if there is one. As a part-time Kruleboyz player also appreciated the regiment of renown being used. In my testing the 310 points was put to better use in a gitz list on basically anything.

During deployment I used my sporesplatter fanatics to block LOS from the regiment of renown. Outside of that it was a pretty simple job of measuring to make sure that everyone is under light of the moon from the Loonshrine or Skragrott.  If any of my units made contact with a mega I was confident I could destroy it in a turn or two of combat.  My biggest concern was having my army stuck in combat with the incarnate and not being able to get on points.

Forcing all of the units to be close to each other allowed me to protect Skragrott and my troggs and I used the pregame movement from the sporesplatters to move back. My opponent gave me first turn and activated the point on my right closest to two of his big guys. Because the range of scuttletide is “Visible Terrain” I was still able to get off the greatest spell ever created, Scuttletide, and harass and intimidate the Kruleboyz as my only offensive action in my turn. Having a sacrificial galatian champion with tunnelmaster was an important part of my list construction and I decided to place my champion as close to his models as to minimize the potential of a spiked charge allowing him to get into my castle. I didn’t advance from my deployment and only put up my buffs. To get into combat with my castle would require several long bomb charges and it was unlikely that he would be able to use the buddy system that Sons prefer. In my opponents turn he killed my hero pretty easily and decided to charge my scuttletide with the incarnate. I was a little surprised when he used the Incarnate’s special action to eat the endless spell. I’m pretty sure if he made the roll to keep it alive I would have been in a lot of trouble for three combats. Fortunately for me he failed the roll and it immediately de-leveled to level one.

Next turn I won the priority and gave the turn away to activate my back point so that he wouldn’t control more points. I held back on recasting the scuttletide until I got a in a combat with the incarnate and removed it from play since there wasn’t another monster or another endless spell to increase it’s level. The ability to get a single unit to -4 rend is extremely effective against armies with a base 4 save.

With a single non-kruleboy model left I would have been able to “Hold One, Hold Two, Hold More until the end of time. Even if he was able to place a mega on two points I could just teleport support heros around the board to contest points.If this was a full battle report I might talk about the next few rounds but it was mostly me killing high-point models because of combats that were forced into and poor rolls from my opponent.

I did get to use the “Kill a monster with trolls” battle tactic as part of my 25-14 win.

Game 3 – Vs Gloomspite Gitz on Position over Power

Kraggy, Skaggy, and the stinky trolls- Click to Expand

On this very same table I played opponent early in 2022 where he shot off my sludgeraker after repositioning his longstrikes with a 2+ rerollable prayer. Those were the days when men used reinforced units to herophase shoot and everyone else kinda took it. A few months later I played him with Kruleboyz and lost to his nurgle when he rallied 3 or 4 blightkings in a single turn. Looking at the lists and matchup I felt VERY confident that my troggs would beat his troggs.  Since my prior two games also featured big armies that could potentially do a lot of damage if they weren’t screened out I like that I outbodied and out GCed his list in the mirror.

A fun aspect was getting the logic of the bad moon in order.  Similar to my trogg vs squig mirror match at Cheerokee (see the lost post for more information) we both had Skraggy so at the start of every turn we got to roll off to see who would roll for the moon before rolling off to see who would choose who would go first. In true fungal fanclub fashion once per game we each, if we won the prior roll off for moon control, could choose to control the moon with our Skraggy. In addition, Skraggys light of the bad moon affects “friendly gloomspite gitz units” while the loonshrines light of the bad moon affects “gloomspite gitz units”. For those that wonder, the Malevolent Moon also provides light when it is controlled by a gloomspite gitz unit in the same army.

I put my force in a box near my moon and skraggy and put my sporesplatters on the line. My opponent, outdropping me, gave me first turn and I put up all of my buffs and took a single flank point with my spare fungal shaman. He advanced his army, made some charges with Kragnos and got stuck on my sporesplatters. His Kragnos did not perform in line with expectations and I was able to win the roll-off going into 2. Since I had most of my buffs up and was in the combat I wanted I gave away the turn and proceeded to lift his general and Kragnos without losing too much. During my turn I made some good rolls and teleported my reinforced dankholds on his back objective just to take the point from him. That was basically the game – a stunning 27-8 victory for the one and true Skraggy and a 3-0 finish that earned me third prize.

That ended my day and I took home a unit of wolf riders as my prize. I don’t have too many events coming up in May and June but will be spending my time working through my backlog and painting up spiders.  With all of the new books, and new GHB, and another popular game coming out I’m not sure what I’ll ultimately be running but it might have fewer wizards and less reliance on spells.

One of the great things about playing gitz now is that so many of the units have multiple uses and clear drawbacks to attack. The 2.0 book had a huge number of limits, dice rolls, and inconsistency because “gitz are lol random”.

Next Time

My first battle report in 2023 where I use one (1) of the $32,000 spiders. Until then, if you have any questions or feedback, drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com.