They’re stumpy! They’re plumpy! At dinnertime, they’re grumpy! I must admit I wasn’t sure how many responses I would get to this one, given that I spend most of my time on this blog shit canning the Order crowd and insulting their armies at every opportunity.

Well it looks like some of you are at least hate-reading the halo effect of the Darren Watson brand has won out because we got some great armies for this one. As always, the winner is welcome to set a future challenge of their own (if they so wish), and this time that’s legendary Megaboss Leo Rautonen.

List of the Month: Leo Rautonen

Leo is a high-profile competitor in AOS, winning multiple tournaments in the UK and more recently getting back into the US scene. Leo is perhaps best known for his 5-0s with Ironjawz including winning Bloodshed back in 2019, as well as securing 5-0s with Sylvaneth and Nagash.

Leo’s winning list was inspired by the notorious Skink blobs backed up with Curse and how NPE much fun they can be, with the little ginger warrior taken to try and make your opponent think twice about charging in.

Leo has set the whole thing out beautifully, so I’ll just chuck it straight at you:

Thank you Leo!

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Runner Up: Blazed Trail, Dom Stonebridge

Dom Stonebridge has been playing AOS for about 2 years now, getting into the hobby over lockdown by painting Fyreslayers. Dom is a member of the Nine Inch Fails (shout out to his fellow members Obaid, Calum, Dave, Hazel, Max, Nic, Carston and Tom  – the friendliest bunch you could ever meet), and he typically plays in one competitive tournament a month…you’ll usually find him at every Honest Wargamer event. The armies Dom plays other than Gnomads are Fyreslayers, Stormcast and above all Gitz, having secured a 4-1 and ranked first worldwide for the faction last season.

He’s named his Leaders! I love it when they name their Leaders.

Allegiance: Gnomad Feastmasters
– Trail: Blazed Trail
– Mortal Realm: Ghur
– Grand Strategy: Take What’s Theirs
– Triumphs: Indomitable

Leaders
Trail Master riding War-cockerel (200) – Bilbin the Trail Blazer
– General
– Command Trait: Dump Pluck
– Artefact: Ubietic Cowl
Yonella Lightfoot (290)*** – Fharin the Feeder
– Lore of the Terraforma: Leaves of Empathy
Hedge Hermit (120)*** – Loki the Lucky
– Lore of the Terraforma: Auspicious Tidings
Head Chef (100)*** – Jamie Gnoliver
– Universal Prayer: Curse

Battleline
15 x Gnomad Drovers with Swords (100)**
15 x Gnomad Drovers with Swords (100)**
5 x Gastronome Guard (140)*
5 x Gastronome Guard (140)*

Units
6 x Demigryph Knights (350)*
– Unique Enhancement: One of us

Behemoths
Gastronome War-caravan (220)
– Gnomad Tinkers: Muder Holes
Gastronome War-caravan (220)

Core Battalions
*Bounty Hunters
**Expert Conquerors
***Command Entourage – Magnificent 

Total: 1980 / 2000
Reinforced Units: 1 / 4
Allies: 350 / 400
Wounds: 143
Drops: 11

Dom put together a really sweet write-up for this one, so I’ll hand you over to him:

Blazed Trail is chosen to give excellent objective control, with both Caravans holding 15 Gnomads in Expert. This gives you a very small base to toe an objective and count as 47 for each, which can either be screened with the Guard or used as a screen themselves for counter charges. You can also unload from the Caravans after a move and screen 15 Gnomads with a caravan! This works great if terrain is set up forming bottlenecks.

The biggest key to the success of this list is the Yonella tech with Leaves of Empathy. Given she’s always consumed all “Last Meals Eaten”, getting this off with her gives a 12” bubble for your entire army to have the same. Staying in a castle around Yonella for turn one and going into a double (or being doubled) gives army wide 4+ wards and a 4+ spell ignore. Double this up with the caravans dishing out +1 save for cover it’s a really hard to shift army.

The one area I felt my list lacked was output when needed. For this reason, I put in a chef with Curse and a unit of six Demigryphs with the “One Of Us” enhancement. They will be consistently the target of the “Auspicious Tidings” spell and that, coupled with the Head Chef ability to always ensure they have the Dinner keyword, puts them on a 2+ 4+ with damage output for most of the game! The Guard also have good output, benefiting from double attacks with the Caravans making them in cover, and Curse also procs really nicely with the mortal wounds on wound rolls of six (coming from the “Those Lucky Scoundrels” trait).

Note that you can also afford to be really aggressive with the combat units here, to take advantage of the Command Ability to fight before the Battleround if you lose a roll off!

Overall, it’s a castle army which is hard to kill and can dominate the primary early whilst setting up for a counter charge. Outside of a double, there’s less durability but still enough ways to keep the key units alive through utilising garrisons, screens and cover.

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November Listbuilding Challenge: Battlescroll Glow Up

Fair to say responses to the Battlescroll were…mixed, but I legit loved it. The biggest thing I want to salute is the step change from 5 point increments to 20 points increments on the adjustments they made – for Gits and Kruleboyz, it’s mostly on units you take anyway, so it’s pretty meaningful.

It wasn’t all sunshine and lollipops: Bonesplitterz have been eviscerated, the absence of attention to DOK was as predictable as it was insulting and the adjustments to Seraphon were just piss weak. Ultimately they need more voices in that room advocating for Destruction and fewer for Order, but really there was way more good than bad in there.

So your challenge for November is to saddle up and ride the lightning:

• Your list must come from a faction that saw points drops in the Battlescroll
• These are…
  • Cities of Sigmar
  • Stormcast
  • Slaanesh
  • Skaven
  • FEC
  • Soulblight
  • Gloomspite Gitz
  • Kruleboyz
• I refuse to acknowledge that the points drops for Seraphon even happened
• As if you looked at Bastilodons, and looked at Carnosaurs, and decided that between them they needed nothing but points drops
• What the actual fuck?
• Anyway. Your list must be centred around, or at least benefit from. the units that got those points drops
• This could be as simple as reductions to Battleline bringing a list below 2000 points that would not have been legal otherwise

So get keen, get writing lists, get ready for Coach to read Mawtribes tomorrow morning and get following Leo and Dom on Twitter.

Have a good weekend nerds – see you on the other side.

https://ko-fi.com/plasticcraic

Credit for all photos to Hugh Wyeth