An unusual week with two events to cover, one a rather large affair in Adepticon and the other a smaller English shark tank, full of top players vying for a golden ticket to the Warhammer AOS World Championships... let's dig in.

Adepticon AoS Champs 2023

204-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Schaumburg, IL United States on March 23 2023. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings. I want to note here that after the 5 round tournament there was a top 8 elimination bracket, but due to a combination of factors 4 of the 5 undefeated players dropped from the tournament. As a result, the top 8 don't reflect the top performing lists from the first two days - I'm not going to do a showdown for this event and simply present the five 5-0 players and their lists.

Kaleb Walters - Guild of Summoners - 1st Place

Credit: Liebot - https://instagram.com/liebot_pics

The List

Archetype

Chicken Factory

Thoughts

This archetype wants to feed you the Incarnate to hold you back for as long as possible while it casts as many spells as possible, hoping to summon multiple Lord of Changes quickly and take apart your list with long range high mortal wound spells, as well as hinder your ability to play the objectives due to random Chaos Spawn tying you into meaningless combats.

Rob Mulshine - Big WAAAGH! - 2nd Place

Credit: Mike 'Ellarr' Chadderton

The List

Archetype

Big Waaagh good stuff

Thoughts

In a strategy that is reminiscent of old style Orcs and Goblins lists from fantasy, this list brings across a full 400 points of Gits as allies in Skragrott and 24 Squig Herd. Why? Well even without the entire spell lore or any allegiance abilities, Skraggy is still an absolutely insane steal for his warscroll spell and free command issuing alone, and the Squigs are one of the most efficient units in the game for their cost; provided you have the Indomitable triumph up to keep them around past a round of combat.

The rest of the list is largely BW mainstays, with Ardboy screens, a mix of Ironjawz threats and a full compliment of six heroes. Gobsprakk is very good value in Big Waaagh as he synergises well with the +1 to cast bonus he can access in this faction, and his toolbox nature can help out in a surprising number of situations.

Duncan Bilz - Lumineth Realm-Lords - 3rd Place

Archmage Teclis and Celennar, Spirit of Hysh. Credit: Rich Nutter

The List

Archetype

Helon castle

Thoughts

It's the standard core of Teclis, Cathallar and 40 Sentinels, with the differences typically being in what to spend the last few hundred points on. In this case, a Loreseeker provides a caster who can throw out Runes of Petrification at short range and generally be a nuisance early game.

Tony Carley - Ogor Mawtribes - 4th Place

Kragnos, End of Empires by FreshPrinceofBielTan

The List

Archetype

Charge Mortals

Thoughts

Kragnos synergises very well in Ogor Mawtribes due to his 3d6 charge aura basically adding both more consistency to the Ogors offensive, as well as lifting the mortal wound chip damage they produce from their Trampling Charge ability. There's not much to be said for this list - it's three Stonehorns supporting Kragnos and just generally being very difficult to kill.

Joey Triezenberg - Sylvaneth - 5th Place

Sylvaneth Spirit of Durthu. Credit: Mike Bettle-Shaffer

The List

Archetype

Sylvaneth Herohammer

Thoughts

Perhaps one of the more surprising list I've seen in recent weeks - it dumps pretty much all it's points into it's heroes and ignores some of the frequent inclusions in tree lists like Kurnoth Hunters and bug cavalry. Instead, it wants to punch you in the face with a very deadly Spirit of Durthu, hopefully with a 5+ ward supported by the Lady of Vines. Oh yeah and Alarielle! She's a complete nuisance to deal with due to her ability to come back to life with a little bit of luck. Many armies right now are built to alpha you turn one and don't necessarily scale that well over the course of a full five rounds if they're not able to completely compromise you turn one - Alarielle works very well into that gameplan.

Justice Series Grand Tournament

38-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Liverpool, United Kingdom on March 23 2023. All the lists for this event can be found in Stats and Ladders.

Showdown

Matchup & Mission - The Nidus Paths

Baz Norman Jr - Gloomspite Gitz:

vs

Tom Mawsdley - Kharadron Overlords

Result

Kharadron Overlords Victory - 19-18

Thoughts

A cut throat matchup between two highly damaging lists - don't let the score deceive you, as this game was called quickly due to how little pieces were left very quickly. Baz's plan is to try and kill the Ironclad while surrounding it in order to kill the Thunderers inside due to being unable to place them. Tom's plan is to kill Skragrott and the Squigboss to severely compromise the effectiveness of the Squigs, while ALSO needing to kill Kragnos very quickly.

Tom sacrificed his Frigate and some Endrinriggers in order to take out the Squigboss and Skragrott, and managed to compromise Baz's ability to play the game early on with a concerted alpha strike blowing all of his once per game abilities in one devastating opening salvo.

Tom Mawsdley - Kharadron Overlords - 1st Place

The List

See showdown

Archetype

One drop Alpha Strike

Thoughts

I'm lucky enough to go to club nights with Tom and managed to pick his brain a bit with this list - he designed it to be a one drop alpha strike list first and foremost, which means it makes some concessions in listbuilding in order to ensure he can fit into one Battle Regiment. In this case, it means the inclusion of Brokk - a 220 point hero who doesn't exactly synergise well with the rest of his list, but provides some reasonable firepower for his cost.

So what's the list doing? Well the Admiral picks what unit it wants to die and if needed to shuts off it's ward with the Celestium Burst-grenade. The Thunderers jump out of the Ironclad and receive +2 rend from the Admiral and Khemist's abilities, and proceed to blow it and anything nearby the fuck up in combination with both ship's firepower as well as every other gun in this army.

Tom himself admits it's not fully optimised and will be playing around with some tweaks in place of Brokk, but the core of this list represents a new and interesting challenge for listbuilders going forward as I expect this list will be copied!

Wrap Up

Kharadron have arrived and are capable of tremendous amounts of ranged output, and it'll be interesting to see if their success is sustained. Why? Well with the absolutely blistering pace of 3rd edition book releases right now we're about to see two new books in Slaanesh and Khorne hit the scene, so what works one week may be a huge liability the next.

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