Welcome to Competitive Innovations, our weekly feature for a number of game lines across the tabletop wargame space. Each week our army list and tactics experts canvass the top tournaments for their game of specialty, looking at the week’s top match-ups and how they played out on the tabletop to let you know what’s hot, what’s not, and what might be coming next as the competitive meta evolves year-round.

I hope everyone had a happy and safe New Year's Eve. While most places have quieted down for tournaments in the week between Christmas and New Years we actually have a smaller (but still qualifying) event in Macao to look at. Since this is technically the first GT of sufficient size since the Winter Battlescroll, there's some interesting things to note about it and we'd be remiss if we didn't cover it.

Macao Sigmar Tournament

This 34-player, 5-round Grand Tournament was held in Macao on December 28 2024. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

The Showdown

Mission - Battle for the Pass

JC Fermin - Seraphon

vs.

Matt Nguyen - Beasts of Chaos

Thoughts

Seems the Beasts of Chaos stick to the old ways of Bestigor Spam. This is also the first time in a while we've seen dual Slann action return to the Mortal Realms since 4th edition made running both kind of redundant.

Battle for the Pass really favors armies able to spread out while defending their backline. This puts both armies in a pretty strong spot as Seraphon are excellent at holding down the fort and fending off attackers, while Beasts of Chaos push forward. With Devolve the Beasts of Chaos player will need to carefully pull apart the shell of guardians around the Slann to get to the creamy Nougat inside. Meanwhile the Seraphon player needs to be able to tank a lot of hits while doing damage, something they're quite apt at.

It's a hard fought battle, with a narrow victory to the Beasts of Chaos.

Result

Beasts of Chaos Victory - 38 - 36

Matt Nguyen - Beasts of Chaos - 1st Place

Herdstone - Credit: RichyP

The List

See Showdown

Archetype

Bestigors

Thoughts

Well this list keeps on trucking. There are notable changes to the list that impact just how brutal it is:

• Bestigors went up 10 points (for 10), as did the Great Bray-Shaman. Not a lot on its own but given the factions propensity for just spamming these units in particular, it adds up.
• Bestigors also took a real hit on the chin as they no longer get an extra attack when the enemy All Out Defenses, but Critical Hits hit on a 5+ instead. Not bad, but it's no 20 extra attacks.

Regardless, the dedicated faithful seem to want to keep proving this army still has fight in it. Some cheap Ungors and Gors round out the list from before to serve as chaff to blunt any incoming charges or accomplish battle tactics, but the rest is pure Bestigor and Great Bray-Shaman action. The Great Bray-Shaman can hand out Run and Charge while the Bestigors still do a fair amount of damage (and take a lot of wounds to bring down a unit, too).

The Best of the Rest

There were 6 more players on X-1 records. They were:

• 2nd - Connor Davidson - Ogor Mawtribes: Stonehorn Riders
• 3rd - Tu Hoang - Bonesplitterz: That is a lot of Boarboyz.
• 4th - JC Fermin - Seraphon: See Showdown.
• 5th - Brad Osguthorpe - Sylvaneth: Belthanos and Spirit of Durthu with a wide variety of units.
• 6th - Zhang Lau - Fyreslayers: Foot dwarves.
• 7th - Terry Fang - Ironjawz: Ever seen 5 Maw-Krushas in a list? You may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like.

Final Thoughts

As I said I know it's a smaller week but it was worth a quick glance before things really pop off in earnest next week. Everwinter GT in Boston Massachusetts is this weekend and yours truly will be there, so keep an eye out for me in the results. Until then, have a Happy New Year!

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