As the year starts to draw to a close, December brings with it a lull in competitive play, as the temperature and just general busy period where budgets are tight and time is tighter means there is just simply less interest in going away for the weekend to push war dollies together. That said, we still have two great events to cover this week, with a few tweaks and twists in places to what have previously been fairly rigid cookie cutter lists in their respective faction.

Quest of Champions Grand Finals 2023

32-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in England, GB on December 02 2023. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission - Power Flux

Andrew Hughes - Legion of Night: 

vs.

Mike Stewart - Fuethan:

Thoughts

Andrew has some fun herohammer synergies going on in an atypical Legion of Night list that can give it some tech into a lot of matchups. Vhordrai outside of Kastelai might seem a little odd, but an independent hammer that can give itself Strikes-first until his next hero phase is a useful tool in the activation wars. Outside of that, it's Mannfred and Summonables counter-charging and just generally making it a nuisance to score primary objectives or establish board control.

The problem is the matchup here, as the sheer raw output of 9sharks.list is going to be difficult for Andrew to deal with when Mike can simply point at one of those big three monsters each shooting phrase and exclaim "deleted" and watch it magically lift itself off the board. These lists can struggle a little bit on objective control early on, but they can afford to fall behind a smidge on score early on and make those points back up later on in the game when most of the opponent's army has been destroyed. Power flux and being a 1 drop means that Mike can deploy conservatively in his own deployment zone, tag his home objective, give the turn away to Mike and pick the home objectives as active and as long as those initial two shipwreck pieces are clogging up charge lanes it's a monumental uphill struggle for Andrew from there.

Result

Mike Stewart Victory - 28-15

Mike Stewart - Fuethan - 1st Place

Raf's Sharks. Credit: Raf Cordero

The List

See Showdown

Archetype

Street Sharks

Thoughts

It's an army that has absurd shooting output, can flip the tides to have strikes-first across the army in round two and have absurd melee output, great mobility, a decent matchup against shooting thanks to the army's battle traits... yeah it's pretty good.

The list can falter a little bit into raw attrition objective control lists like wound dense Nurgle or Vyrkos Soulblight, but the latter has fallen off a great deal in popularity in the UK due to points changes, and the former often goes a little lighter on Plaguebearers in order to cram in Glottkin and/or Maggoth Lords which at least give the Sharks something meaningful to shoot at.

The Battlescroll never should have given exploding 6s to the shooting in addition to the sizable points drops in the first place. The end result is a rather overbearing output army rather than the mobile scalpel army it's meant to be. Credit where credit is due though, it is not as simple to pilot as you might think due to its struggles with objective scoring - well done to Mike Stewart for lifting the trophy in a very competitive field.

The Best of the Rest

5 more players went 4-1 and were:

• Position - Player Name - Faction:
• 2nd - Peter Twigg - Heartwood: Belthanos has given rise to a new style of pro-active Sylvaneth army, with a total of 12 Kurnoth (6 Bows 6 Swords) that can do the unthinkable and run across the board rather than rely on trees ferrying them from place to place
• 3rd - Freddie Leggett - Goretide: Another strong result from Freddie, with a mortal-focused army that leverages 20 Wrathmongers to great effect
• 4th - Peter Dixon - Boulderhead: A blend of Stonehorns (2 riders one Frost lord) with some Gutbuster spice in the form of Gnoblars, an Ironblaster and some Ironguts
• 5th - Andrew Hughes - Legion of Night: See showdown
• 6th - Rob Bottomley - Fangs of Sotek: A Kroak+Slann summoning list that has the typical hero shell, with 2 units of Raptadons and a Bastiladon to give the list it's initial chunk of wounds to stand on circles

GT Bilbao II AoS

32-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Bilbo, Euskadi, ES on December 02 2023. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

The Showdown

Matchup & Mission

Jesus De La Peña Fernandez - Null Myriad: 

vs.

Jose A Fra - Astral Templars:

Thoughts

With the falloff in popularity that Immortis have experienced, a corresponding surge has occurred for the Morghast, who can't be replenished in the same way that Immortis can, but are very mobile and tanky for their cost, sporting a 5+ ward as long as they stay near a friendly hero, the ability to shut off command abilities if within 3" of them, and finally the strikes-first effect as long as they make a charge of 8 or more. These three things together make them a very useful tool for managing to get past the Draconic might that Jose is bringing to the table here.

Why? Well because Jose's army is very mobile as well for one, and being able to put 2-3 units worth of output into the Stormdrakes before they can react will be enough to if not completely wipe out the unit, certainly gut it. Karazai is a very mean tank to still have to deal with, but both him and the Stormdrakes are at the disadvantage if Jose castles up thanks to Diversionary Tactics, which deducts 3 from all enemy charges within 12" of the general... not a great thing to have to deal with when the Stormdrakes get considerably worse if they're unable to dictate the engagement and charge in consistently.

Result

Null Myriad Victory - 15-5

 Jesus De La Peña Fernandez - Null Myriad - 1st Place

Credit: Silks

The List

See Showdown

Archetype

Morghast plus some dudes to score battle tactics

Thoughts

The remainder of the list is mainly about maximising the value of those Morghast - the Kavalos can give them +1 attacks and help with the army's intense command point economy thanks to The Will of the Legions. The Ossifector's Cartouche helps the damage capabilities of the Morghast, and generally just acts as a safety bubble for spells thanks to Null Myriad, and Arkhan himself gives the army more of a toolbox element, including access to the very debilitating Drain Vitality, which debuffs a unit's to hit and save both, making them a sitting duck to get picked apart by the list's hammers.

The Best of the Rest

Five other players went 4-1 and were:

• Position - Player Name - Faction:
• 2nd - Javi Fernández - Fangs of Sotek: Slanns, Spells and Skinks
• 3rd - Jorge Castillo - Bloodlords: A blend of mortals and daemons, centered around two units of 20 Bloodletters, a Bloodmaster and an Unfettered Fury BT
• 4th - Adrian Pérez Canoura - King's Gitz: The Gitz list that Phil Marshall played to great effect at the World Championships returns here, with 30 Bounderz here to tank stuff and blow up more stuff
• 5th - Manuel Ruiz - Legion of Night: Lots of MSU Summonable units to clog up the board through Counter charges, and Mannfred as the army's lone hammer
• 6th - Jose A Fra - Astral Templars: See showdown

Wrap Up

What's on your hobby table this week? Got any projects you've started due to those tempting Xmas deal boxes, or the recent arrival of the Summer King and his followers? For my part, I've started on a FEC army in earnest, having quickly glued together a 2k army of Ghouls, Horrors and Dragons to go to work with using some Zenithal airbrushing plus Oil blending that uhhh, I'll admit I've taken from the wonderful tutorial from VinceVenturella Want to know why I'm suddenly invested in the courts of delusion? There's plenty of good reasons in our review to dig through.

Have any questions or feedback? Drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com.