Stepped into the hall
~ Robert Earl Keen, Feelin’ Good Again
And saw all my friends were there
A neon sign was flashing “Welcome come on in”
It feels so good feelin’ good again
Well that didn’t take long. In a few short weeks, the Gloomspite community accumulated a whole bunch of competitive players excited to give them a crack after the latest update, all of whom have quietly shelved the army again to play something that has much better rules.
The life cycle of a competitive player coming to Gits typically runs something like this*:
- Build a list with a whole bunch of screens and Rockguts
- Inwardly lament how limiting it is to pay 140 points for Grots, and mentally compare them to Clanrats at 100 points
- Put them on the table in a practice game and get your Rockguts into combat
- Pick up a tiny, tiny handful of dice and whiff hard
- Back to the drawing board: write a list to include some buffing units that give the Rockguts extra attacks
- Realise those buffing units do not in fact give them extra attacks at all, because keywords
- Put the Gits back on the shelf, and bring out the rats / lizards / whatever else
Well, who cares? That book has always been a bit crap, but for anyone with the cojones to play Gits it’s still the most exciting they’ve been in a long while. I’ve been belting out list after list after list after list, and even if they’re not top tier they are at least exciting to play again.
And if you’re interested in seeing what kinds of lists I’m messing around with for Gits, there’s a couple of examples over here. But for now it’s over to you, and your own New Shiny lists. As a reminder of the premise behind the challenge, it’s centred around factions that were on the Struggle Bus under the last GH:
I challenged you to come up with a list showcasing those armies and the shot in the army they’ve had, and here are a couple of my favourites. I didn’t get anything that made the cut for Order and Destruction this time around, but there are two crackers from Death and Chaos that won joint List of the Month honours.
Ready? Let’s go.
List of the Month (Death): Ossiarch Bonereapers by Michael Thomson
Army Faction: Ossiarch Bonereapers
– Army Subfaction: Null Myriad
– Grand Strategy: Unrelenting Efficiency
– Triumphs: Bloodthirsty
LEADER
Mortisan Boneshaper (115)
– Spells: Empower Nadirite Weapons
Liege-Kavalos (170)***
– General
– Command Traits: Unsettling and Sinister
– Artefacts: Baleful Blade
BATTLELINE
30 Mortek Guard (420)**
– Nadirite Blade and Shield
20 x Mortek Guard (280)**
– Nadirite Blade and Shield
10 Mortek Guard (140)**
– Nadirite Blade and Shield
BEHEMOTH
Gothizzar Harvester (215)***
– Soulcrusher Bludgeons
Gothizzar Harvester (215)***
– Soulcleaver Sickles
ENDLESS SPELL
Bone-tithe Shrieker (50)
TERRAIN
Bone-tithe Nexus (0)
OTHER
Morghast Archai (185)*
– Spirit Halberd
Morghast Archai (185)*
– Spirit Halberd
CORE BATTALIONS:
*Bounty Hunters
**Expert Conquerors
***Linebreaker
TOTAL POINTS: (1975/2000)
Rocky knows Death: he’s gone 6-0 and 5-1 at the last two Cancons, both with Death armies. And he’s got an awesome army here to prove that there’s unlife beyond those new, shiny Nighthaunt right now.
How it works
This army leans heavily on the White Dwarf update that OBR enjoyed, to keep them alive and participating properly in 3rd Edition. Crucially you can slam Shieldwall on every unit of Mortek Guard for full save rerolls, and since they already ignore Battleshock army wide – and have a couple of Harvesters around – you will be able to reduce, re-use and recycle your troops all day long. Oh and they’re in Expert Conquerors, so that’s a lazy 180 models on Objectives with the Mortek alone.
Where’s Purple Sun, I hear you ask? Well, why join them if you can beat them?
Rocky will be slamming a gigantic phallus down on the table that fucks with his opponent’s casting, and Null Myraid gives him an army wide 5+ spell ignore in this Endless Spell meta. But it doesn’t stop there: the Necromantic Mastery Heroic Action means that he gets to play with his toys while you don’t get to play with yours – in a delicious plot twist, even the Knight Incantor can go fuck himself.
If you’re looking at this list and still wondering why Rocky hasn’t taken a Purple Sun of his own, I suggest you look up the Bone-Tithe Shrieker because that thing is amazing. It has three separate effects, any one of which would make it worth taking; Rally creep is most definitely a thing, so switching that off in particular is yet another strong anti-meta play that Rocky has worked into his list.
Rounding off the package we have those Morghast Archai showcasing the Bounty Hunters Battalion. This puts them on a spicy rend -2 damage 4 against the right targets, with a 9″ (or 12″) Flying move to dictate the terms of engagement. Add in an extra attack from the Liege Kavalos and you have the perfect tool to just swoop in and massacre your opponent’s scoring units.
This army really leans into what the current meta is asking of you and tackles it head on. With a bit of practice I think it has all the tools to be a seriously competitive list, and for that reason I hope I never see it across the table from me. Well done mate.
List of the Month (Chaos): Hedonites of Slaanesh, by Spooky Luke
Luke isn’t afraid of a challenge, but where he’s been banging his head against a wall with Slaanesh is that they’re just not fun. They should be a brittle but lightning-fast combat army – think Ironjawz – with an ass-kicking centrepiece of doom. Instead they’re still locked into their summoning lane, hamstrung by the GH17 bandaid rules that GW can’t seem to move on from and which makes them too difficult to point fairly. And their combat centrepiece hits like a rubber chicken – but that’s where Luke has gone to town.
– Army Faction: Hedonites of Slaanesh
– Army Type: Invaders
– Subfaction: The Lurid Haze
LEADERS
Soulfeaster Keepers of Secrets (385)**
– General
– Command Traits: Feverish Anticipation
– Artefacts of Power: Oil of Exultation
– Spells: Progeny of Damnation
– Bonding: Krondspine Incarnate of Ghur
Sigvald (205)**
– General
Synessa (260)**
– Spells: Pavane of Slaanesh
Bladebringer, Herald on Exalted Chariot (265)**
– Spells: Levitate
– Artefacts of Power: Whip of Subversion
BATTLELINE
Blissbarb Archers (140)*
Blissbarb Archers (140)*
Blissbarb Archers (140)*
BEHEMOTH
Krondspine Incarnate of Ghur (400)
ENDLESS SPELLS & INVOCATIONS
1 x Lauchon the Soulseeker (30)
CORE BATTALIONS
*Expert Conquerors
**Command Entourage: Magnificeny
TOTAL POINTS: 1965/2000
First rule of making Slaanesh cool: you need a Keeper. And what’s cooler than a normal Keeper? A Keeper that can Fly over 30″ thanks to its smaller-than-normal base, Levitate and the Boatman. What Loophole Luke has figured out is that the Forgeworld Keeper comes on an oval base that sneaks within Lauchon range – fun detected!
Krondspine brings the rend that the rest of Slaanesh cry out for, as well as the No Retreat Rule that combines nicely with three Daemon Heroes doing their best to prevent Pile ins with their Locus of Diversion.
Meanwhile Sigvald is forever present, coming in from the board edge with Lurid Haze and hacking away like the champion he is (how in Sigmar’s name did he ever drop in points?).
To give us the image of being part of the current ruleset we have three units of Archers scoring big on objectives. And while they’re outcapping their opponents (without forcing melee), they’re also running and shooting behind the Hero package to spray out 63 shots and chip away at the rough edges. And depending on the table set up, you might even pull them off** with Lurid Haze (instead of Siggy) to really focus fire a key target.
The chariot is always happy to tag multiple units: Luke has already had a glorious moment against Joel McGrath where he smashed into the pack and used a Stormcast Hero’s own weapon to dish out 4 mortal wounds to his mates. Cop that! Ultimately, what could be more Slaanesh than ramming a huge shaft of spikey resin right up there where your opponent least expects it? Glorious.
Further Reading
The Watson Twins (Darren and Nathan) have been shaking things up with their MSU Big Stabbas lists in Bonesplitterz, which is awesome to see from a Destro viewpoint, so go check out their work. And that, my friends, leads me onto the challenge for August:
MS-Who? MS-You!
The challenge for this month is to come up with a list that spams the shit out of a single, minimum-sized unit. It’s recently proven to be pretty fruitful for Bonesplitterz as mentioned above, and it can really open up a new dimension for a book.
So the criteria are as follows:
- The army can be from any faction in the whole, entire game
- It must spam 5 or more units from a single Warscroll
- At least 3 of those 5 instances of the unit must be minimum-sized
Beyond that, go nuts! It might just be a really efficient Warscroll that lends itself to playing a certain way, it might work in well with a given subfaction or it might be something with an unique angle like Joel’s Gorgers list. I’m keen to see what ideas you have that can open up a new list direction for your favourite army, so hit me up in the comments below, on the Facebook page or in Twitter DMs.
Show me what you’ve got!
Now the bad news is that I’m really struggling for time currently, so things might go a bit quiet on here until we circle back in a month’s time with your lists. In the meantime I hope that August treats you all well, and I’ll see you on the other side.
Cover image by Spooky Luke
*Off the top of my head, I can probably name at least four separate people who will be reading this and thinking that I was targeting them personally. And that’s exactly what makes it a trend.
**As the Daemonette said to the Warpriest
Plastic Craic 
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