With Australia’s biggest AOS event looming, today we’ll celebrate all things green and aggressive by running through the greatest Grand Alliance’s strongest, coolest and most interesting lists. Although I won’t be there myself, the Plastic Craic team will be out in force: Zak will do a write-up on his Sylvaneth list, Pat will be there with his Soulblight and Joel has a title to defend.
Order is ever-popular with their electoral coalition of army loyalists, crypto-colonialists and filth-chasing dogs, but all in all there’s a pretty durn good spread of GAs at Cancon this year:
30 lists gives us plenty to work with and if you needed reminder, Destruction are the reigning Cancon champions:
So there’s bound to be a couple of bangers in here. I’ll pick out some strong lists that I can guarantee will go well, along with a couple of interesting meme lists that might secretly be quite good, and maybe one or two that are definitely not good but were written by my mates look like fun.
Ready? Let’s go.
The Guaranteed Bangers
Two of the top players in Australia, and both regular Desto players, are David Sulava and Mitch Bugg. Both will be repping Team Green at Cancon this year.
First thing to note in David’s list is that he’s using the Ironjawz Brawl battle formation – that’s the one where you get extra attacks any time you hit an unmodified 8+ on the charge roll. Kraggy will clearly help you hit that 8+ by adding an extra dice to the pool1, but so will the enhanced Get ‘Em Beat prayer.
Everything in this army hinges on getting your charges off, including the +1 damage on those Soggy Gruntas and that splash of Strike First from those Ragerz. So with the 3D6 charges of his own alongside a couple of sources of -1 dice to his opponent’s charge rolls, and an enhanced Redeploy from the Heroic Trait, David will be looking to dictate the terms of engagement: he will choose what fights where and when. A tough list to pilot well, so it’s a good job the bloke’s a fucking gun.
Mitch’s list name tells you that he knows all about David’s skills, but Mitch is a top player too, don’t worry about that:
I’m playing Ogors myself right now in the local Summer League2, so I’m super keen to see how this one goes. It even follows my own preferred Ogors format of multiple reinforced blocks of foot sloggers – I wrote something very similar myself last week but with that final 130 points going on a Soggy Scraplauncher instead of the chaff, but either works.
Mawpath Menaces (aka Burgerlust) is probably the most popular Battle Formation for the dadbods right now3:
Moonwalking into combat with a heavy unit of Ogors can really up-end the equation of how a whole game is shaping up, and coupled with the double pile-in from those Ironguts you can zip across the table in an enemy’s combat phase, and whack something that thought it was safely perched behind the front ranks. It’s not even rare for that to happen – you’ll make someone’s jaw (and favourite buff piece) hit the ground about once per game.
Mitch has got the modern classic combo of 1x Butcher, 1x Slaughtermaster, for the Run + Charge and 5+ ward stack and all the ward-stripping tools that Ogors love. The Soggy Blaster coupled with Mawpit mortals and maybe a cheeky Hailstorm prayer can sometimes provide a bit of unexpected sniping or at least bludgeon out an elite combat model or three before they get to swing. A list that might look like a blunt instrument on paper has a fair bit of tech in there, and Mitch certainly knows how to make it sing.
For a bit of context, David won Sydney GT recently with Mitch in hot pursuit, and hopefully they can repeat the trick now that they’ve both come home to Destruction. Good luck fellas.
The Toolkit Lists
I’m a big advocate for giving yourself access to damage outside of the combat phase with Destruction lists, providing a workaround for the Devs’ lazy adherence to everything hitting on 4s. With Ogors that’s usually some combination of charge mortals, ranged mortals (Mawpit + Prayer) and the Soggy Ironblaster.
And what do we look for in a Cancon list? Well the first thing you need to know is that it’s played in a tin shed at the height of the Australian summer, so you’re playing in a furnace – if you put prisoners in that shed for 8 hours as a punishment, you’d have Amnesty International on your case.
You also want some time to look at what else is going on at the Con (marvel at the Infiniti tables, pick up some bargains at the stalls) and get on the carpark beers4. Justin’s list ticks all of these boxes and more:
It’s elite, it can yeet and the Gorgers are neat. This list will give you fast, exciting games and that’s exactly what it’s aiming for.
Meanwhile in Jabek’s Kruleboyz we see the full armada of tools and tech:
The Mirebrute is still one of the coolest things going and with Egomaniak to palm off wounds, and +1 to hit on the Trogg weapons from that Mount Trait, he’s DTF.
A couple of slabs of reinforced Gutrippaz give the list some substance, the Sloggoth gives an injection of speed, and then you’ve got multiple teleports and layers of Activation Wars nonsense. Plus the dreaded Beast-skewer to blast everyone’s prized centrepiece painting project clean off the damned table.
Both lists have plenty of ways to compete against a range of opponents, and neither will simply lay down tools against Neg 1 to Hit. Good luck gentlemen, and give ’em hell.
A Man After My Own Heart
King Brodd’s Stomp lists kind of write themselves – you probably want four Megas, one of them has to be Brodd and there’s only a handful of options for the other three. So it’s no surprise that the one KBS list at the event is pretty similar to the one I’ve been running recently myself:
Steven has gone for a Kraken-eater as his 4th Mega (I went for a Warstomper) and one of his Battle Tactics cards is different (we both took Restless, but he took Intercept whereas I went with Wrathful). So we didn’t cook up exactly the same lists. But there is inevitably a big overlap, and if you want to see how I’ve been playing it (with some relative success), I’ve certainly been yapping on about KBS a lot recently:
Bacon Corner
Oops All Pigs is a popular way to run the Jawz these days, and Geelong’s finest seem to specialise in that.
First up here’s Coooooots, combining pigs with a cabbage and a very neat pictogram list name:
And going all-in on the Biggus Piggus angle is Fletch, one of the best opponents I faced in 2025:
Would this one have been better in main Ironjawz Allegiance rather than the AOR? I suspect it might, given that the enhanced charge mortals (which I consider the AOR’s main Battle Trait) only applies to Goregruntas and not the Big Pigs – since it’s an enhanced version of their warscroll ability. But it’ll look great on the table, and meme lists are gonna meme. Which brings us to…
The Meme List That Might Be Quite Good
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy famously posited that the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything is 42:
Ask the same question to Shaun, and he’ll tell you the answer is “More Gutrippaz”:
He’s squeezed a casual 80 into this list, along with a Murknob to keep ’em alive and a Sloggoth to keep ’em cranking. It’ll be draining to play, but there’s gonna be too much there for a lot of opposition to handle.
The Meme Lists That Probably Aren’t Very Good
And closing out the Destro review, first up, GI is rocking the list that I wish was a thing (but probably isn’t):
I had the pleasure of playing against an MSU Mancrusher list in late 3rd Ed, when the Warstomper could issue a command and the whole army responded. It was certainly an experience to sit back and become a spectator in your own movement phase, as every time you moved one unit they redeployed with five Babies.
As for how this 4th Ed version operates, the first thing you need to know about is that Battle Formation. And the reason you need to know about it is that you’ve never seen it, because nobody except Gary has ever had the minerals to run it:
So long story short, some of them will be hitting on 3s. What is cool about this style of list is that:
- Every cheap-ass Mancrusher counts as 10 models on objectives
- They all get the D3 charge mortals
Running around, dinking and dunking on objectives with OC10 is a pretty unique playstyle. These things drop like a sack of shit with that 5+ save but do you think a man who brings 9 drops, zero heroes that can take Enhancements and has 8 Auxiliaries gives a toss?
Most people are too chicken shit to bring an Auxiliary unit but old mate Gary has balls like King Kong. 8 Auxiliaries, let’s fucking goooooooo!
Last in this article – and going off past history, in the running to be last overall at the event5 – is my mate Binny. You can’t keep a good man down and Binek keeps on working on his Monster Truck lists, hoovering up the Best Opponent votes and making great stories.
You can see Binny’s famous 9x Thundertusk list here, but for Cancon this time he’s going hard on the Mournfang. And if you get drawn against him, I can guarantee you’ll have a game to remember.
So here’s wishing safe travels and Happy Hunting to all the Craic Heads and Destro players making the journey to Canberra this weekend. Hope you have a blast.
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- Yep, that still counts as unmodified. Modifiers are pluses and minuses, an extra dice is just part of the roll. ↩︎
- Following on from the Spring League, which you can read about here. Yes, we’ve moved from Spring into Summer on this side of the planet. ↩︎
- I’ve been really enjoying Greedy Eaters myself and found it quite effective, but Burgerlust is definitely the most popular competitive choice. ↩︎
- A modern Cancon tradition started by Measured Gaming. It’s become a whole thing. Comparable to a tailgate, for our American readers. ↩︎
- Eh Brisbane Lions have won too much, you can suffer like the rest of us. ↩︎
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