So editor Pete and I went to the annual Sovereign Smash GT in Ballarat and, spoiler alert, I won the thing. Under ordinary circumstances I wouldn’t be in any hurry to let people know I’d been to Ballarat¹ but there’s no denying the relentless demands of content creation and a stunted ego that craves validation through achievements in Tabletop Wargaming. I reluctantly decided to put the metaphorical pen to paper and recap my part of the event.

The event was run on Stats and Ladders so lists, rounds and results are available here. Between my stuff and Pete’s, this may well be the most blogged-about 20 man event in AOS history.

For those unfamiliar with the small details of regional towns founded during the 1850’s gold rush in the Australian state (then Colony) of Victoria, Ballarat has something of an ongoing rivalry with my home town of Bendigo. For Ballaratians it is a struggle for prestige between “Two houses, both alike in dignity”. For Bendigonians, Ballarat is a miserable cold cunt of a place that manages to be both pretentious and backward, populated by the hipster dregs migrating from Melbourne and toothless locals who, if their squalid unions had ever been legally recognized, would not have to change their last names on a marriage license.

Attendees enjoying the 2022 Sovereign Smash Event

Still the Ballarat guys show up to our events and I have too inherently noble a character to let my entirely-justified personal prejudices interfere with supporting the hobby scene. When Sovereign Smash 2023 was announced I grudgingly bought a ticket and girded my loins for the trip.²

Being in a bit of an AOS slump I dithered a bit with my army. Picking an army for Ballarat is a bit like making a speech at a tedious work function. You still want to appear professional but it’s not worth the time and effort of rolling out the A material. Luckily Maggoth Lords came back into stock in Australia after only 2 years of being unavailable and I was finally able to get my hands on a Morbidex to complete the set. I threw together a vaguely sensible monster mash to run all three of ’em at once.

Allegiance: Maggotkin of Nurgle
– Subfaction: Befouling Host
– Grand Strategy: Corrupt Arcane Nexus
– Triumphs:
Great Unclean One (430)**
– General
– Bile Blade & Doomsday Bell
– Artefact: The Witherstave
– Lore of Virulence: Fleshy Abundance
Bloab Rotspawned (310)
– Lore of Malignance: Plague Squall
– Lore of Malignance: Rancid Visitations
Orghotts Daemonspew (320)
Morbidex Twiceborn (290)*
Gutrot Spume (160)**
Rotbringer Sorcerer (120)**
– Lore of Primal Frost: Merciless Blizzard
– Lore of Malignance: Gift of Disease
10 x Plaguebearers (120)*
10 x Plaguebearers (120)*
1 x Beasts of Nurgle (100)**
Suffocating Gravetide (30)
*Battle Regiment
**Warlord
Spell

Total: 2000 / 2000
Reinforced Units: 0 / 4
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 119
Drops: 7

The idea was to use the latest points drops to get the big boys on the table with a bit of utility in the build. I painted a GUO for summoning when I started Nurgle but never ran one in a tourney list so I wheeled out the Big Chungus for this event. They have a reputation for whiffing and underperforming so Ballarat was the ideal time to get it out of my system. A Befouling Host with a GUO general for the summoning, Rotbringer Sorceror for the GHB Andtorian stuff and Gutrot for monster mobility. Just push things forward relying on the toughness of my monsters, allegiance abilities and a little help from Papa. Anyways it was better than Ballarat deserved.

Day One

2023 Sovereign Smash attendees grimly enduring the Saturday Night Dinner

Round One vs Jeremy Page Soulblight Gravelords, The Frigid Zephyr: Won 16 – 11

The Frigid Zephyr is that goofy ass battleplan that limits visibility that everyone assumed would never make it into a tournament pack. Well assumptions and a trip to Ballarat will make an ass of you everytime. Josh is a young enthusiastic guy on the Victorian scene who has switched from Sylvaneth to SBGL. He was running a Dire Wolves-based Vyrkos army that wasn’t too bad, but was ultimately hampered by its inability to do damage.

The limited range thing probably went my way as I missed out on a bunch of necro debuff spells. He danced around me on objectives but I was ultimately able to get my big boys into enough action to get the win. In what would be a recurring theme for the weekend my Maggoth Lords were just too strong, even for Blizzards. The Big Chungus should have had a field day here being in action from turn one but managed to demonstrate why his kind have such a poor reputation.

Round Two vs Peter Atkinson, Bonesplitterz, The Icefields: Won 24-12

The Icefields is that goofy ass battleplan were you take mortal wounds for running and charging that everyone assumed would never make it into a tournament pack, so it was no surprise to be playing it at Ballarat. I drew the Craichouse’s editor-in-chief Peter Atkinson with his Bonesplitterz for this one and it was unfortunately a bit of a non-event. As much shit as I put on Pete he was actually putting his miserable amount of money (Bonesplitterz) where his eternally-yapping mouth is and I couldn’t help but admire him for it. It’s no small thing for a guy who can’t make that many events a year to roll out a love project.  

Short story even shorter I gave him the first turn, we locked up in my turn I shreddded his front line and won the double and we shook hands and mathed it out to avoid a bunch of pointless dice rolling. A bit of a shame but it did leave us with more free time to enjoy Ballarat. The surprise of the round was that The Icefields was a much better battleplan than we all thought it would be. 

Round 3 vs Justin Clark, Slaves to Darkness, Lines of Communication: Won 28-13

I was a bit worried heading into this one. Justin is an up-and-comer in AOS from the Melbourne scene with a lot of 40k experience and his Varanguard-heavy Knights of the Empty Throne had more than enough punch to take most of my army of in a turn. I got my ass kicked by Varanguard at Masters earlier this year and I’m a bit puzzled that we don’t see more of them. Luckily the TOs had run out of truly goofy battleplans and we were playing Lines of Communication, which is an honest scrap in the middle with some command point fuckery. 

Justin gave me first turn and I deep struck Morb in on a flank and waddled the rest of my army into position. Morb and Gutrot were subsequently destroyed by nine Varanguard leaving them out of position so I gave 2^nd turn priority away. The game effectively hinged on my turn 2 where I was able to reroll a big enough charge on a unit of Plague Bearers to drag the 6 man Varanguard into combat and lock them in place with a summoned Sloppity doing the no pile ins trick. An oldy but it still works like a charm against melee opponents who can’t take out the Sloppity from range. 

A double into turn 3 allowed Bloab, the Big Chungus and an extremely underpointed Suffocating Gravetide to get on with the grunt work of dismantling the army while Orghotts got to work on the Varanguard. Winning priority turn 4 snuffed out any hope of a comeback leaving me on 3-0 for the day. Who knew that controlling priority and getting the exact rolls you need when you need them was such a winning strategy?

Saturday Night

Regional Victorian events tend to be pretty good social occasions on the Saturday Night, on the grounds that you have travelled too far to head home and what the fuck else are you going to do in Ballarat? The player group were invited to a nearby Bar/Restuarant which we were assured had proper beer, good food and a decent atmosphere. After dropping off my stuff at our accommodation Joel, Tristan and I headed out. 

The bar was, like so many other places on this wretched earth, a craft beer venue. The normal procedure in these places is to take the bar staff aside and ask “Which of this shit tastes like actual beer?” and they point you in the direction of something that doesn’t taste like somebody pissed in a fruit punch bowl. Unfortunately Ballarat had not adopted this humane practice, so after staring at a row of taps that looked like a set of Yu-Gi-Oh cards for an uncomfortably long time, Joel and I settled on some sort of Brown Ale. 

I choose you Pikachu! Seriously how did this gentrifiers’ swill become normal?

Still nearly all the players on the day put in an appearance and we had a pretty good meal and a raucous discussion of all things Age of Sigmar. Doc McLean, the AOS star of Ballarat put in an appearance having missed the tourney owing to some feeble excuse about a 4 week old baby. The Captain turned up after four or five pints and we wound up staying out till about eleven with the Ballarat boys discussing important issues such as the differing responsibilities of GPs and specialist doctors, male circumcisions, morning-after-drinking bowel movements and the ongoing mystery of why there aren’t more women in the hobby. We kicked on until the staff’s we-want-to-go-home chair stacking and hovering became too obvious to ignore. 

Everyone else headed home leaving myself and a strangely subdued Captain wandering the icy streets of Ballarat in search of another pub. Amazingly we found a good one. Ballarat has one of the few survivors of the small Irish bar craze that swept the nation from the late 90’s and we kicked on with a bunch of age-appropriate locals getting blitzed on actual beer and listening to classic pub rock from an excellent cover band until closing. I can’t honestly think of a single snarky thing to say about Generic Irish Pub, whatever it was called, it was a great night.  

Murphy O’Flannerys, Dolly O’Sheas, Poverty O‘Tooles, it had one of those names

Day Two

I awoke before my alarm, aided by the bass heavy roar of Joel’s snoring and we got the rare privilege of using the sort of shared bathrooms that were once common in hotels all over the world.³ Joel and Tristan had both finished yesterday on 2-1 so there was everything to play for. I wasn’t too hungover and there was a bakery from a chain that originated outside Ballarat near the venue, so I was able to get a decent cup of coffee and that all-important egg and bacon toastie. Before you could say “How much did I spend last night?” it was time for the next round. 

Round 4 vs Zak Rockman, Big Waagh, Nexus Collapse: Won 22 -11

I was a bit worried coming into this game as my record against Big Waaagh is pretty ordinary and Zak’s MSU pig spam had more than enough juice to blow me off the table. Luckily the battleplan was Nexus Collapse, the anti-castling plan where the player losing on points can burn the objectives out from under his opponent. Zak would presumably be using the dynamic Big Waaagh strat of castling up for three turns to get all the buffs so he would probably trail me on points and I couldn’t burn out his objectives. That was fine by me, as I was going straight across the table to kick the crap out of him before he got his buffs up. 

My Maggoth Lords getting to work on the Big Waaagh castle

Which was basically how the game went down, with Zak taking priority and 2 points for turn one. Unfortunately for him it was that magical 1 in 5 games when the Nurgle wheel delivers exactly what you need it to. I tore into his castle walls with my Maggoth Lords during no-pile-ins turn 2, and by the time he killed a few of them the Big Chungus was across the board and into the action like a Blob Monster with something to prove. He wiped out 6 Bolt Boyz with his shooting and started handing out Witherstave disease points on a 2 up like they were candy. Just one of the games were everything came up Papa Nurgle. 

The Waaagh hit back pretty hard leaving me with a Bloab on one wound and a GUO on two but with a bunch of summoning points in the tank it was all over for Zak. Just to add insult to injury he rolled for blowing up the last two objectives which do d3 mortals on a 4 plus. Killed Bloab and rolled 2 wounds on the Big Chungus who managed a double 6 for his wards. It was that kind of day. 

Round 5 vs Tristan Smith, Ironkawz, Power Flux: Won 24 -13

I drew my clubmate Tristan’s Ironjawz for round 5 so I had the rare treat of playing against 3 varieties of Orruk at the one event. Tristan is a veteran player running a Gordrakk / Krusha / Brutes combo with more than enough juice to lift my Maggoth Lords so it was going to be a tough one. Power Flux is another good battleplan with a strong incentive to take second turn and a good risk/reward system for having wizards. With one Andtorian Locus in each army I figured we would be activating our home objectives and having an old fashioned smash fest. 

Tristan gave me first turn and I dropped Orghotts and Morb on a flank. He split his Mawkrushas up leaving the general on defence while Gordrakk and 6 pigs went in to destroy my army. Decision fatigue was a factor in the early rounds with Tristan whiffing his first battle tactic and me straight up forgetting to declare a second or summon a Sloppity in turn 2. Bloab and Orghotts went down fairly easy with some crappy Ward saves but managed to settle the Mega Boss on Maw Krusha. It came down to a duel between the Big Chungus and Gordrakk on my home objective and putting flaming weapons on his Nurgling Host actually paid off, handing out the 8 damage that finished the big bastard off.  

Tristan was still in with a chance but I shut him out of the game with the tactically brilliant move of winning third turn priority. Morb got into his backfield units and a summoned Sloppity which helped the Chungus dismantle the last six-man pig unit, so we mathed it out from turn 4. Papa’s boys had carried the day. 

Glorious Victory

I took a bit of time for some honest reflection on the event. I’ve had a few wins in AOS over the years and it’s a good idea to carry out a realistic assessment of your results before getting carried away with your own bullshit. Generally speaking unless you are a great player (I’m not) or running an absolute S tier list (I wasn’t) you are going to need a bit of luck to get your over the line. The right matchups in the right battleplans with the clutch priority rolls in the important games going your way, and I got all of that in an event I was under-prepared for, so shout out to the dice gods for this one. 

With that out of the road it was time to get carried away with my own bullshit so I spent the rest of day casually enquiring about other people’s results so I could humble brag about my own  “How did you go?” “Oh good result” “Me?” “Yeah got the win.” “Yeah 5-0, had a lot of luck, happy to come away with the win” etc etc. Giving out gratuitous list building advice, making ‘”jokes” about needing to charge appearance fees for these sort of podunk nowhere events in the future and generally strutting about like the only rooster in the chook shed. 

The event wrapped up reasonably early with generous prize support, a bunch of trophies, speeches, fond goodbyes and the sad realization that playtime was over and we all had to go back to our adult lives. I pointed the War Wagon towards home and put Ballarat in my rearview mirror. Despite the destination it was an excellent event and with my highly-developed sense of gracious sportsmanship I would be back next year to defend my title. Hope to see you all there. 

1. Visiting Ballarat isn’t as shameful as playing Seraphon, its more like having a necessary but off-putting medical procedure. You got a genital wart removed, good for you but why tell anybody about it? ↩︎
2. I missed the 2022 event due to a happy flare up of my bad back but I heard good things. ↩︎
3. Fun fact, in post-WW2 Canberra our then Prime Minister Ben Chiffley declined the official residence and stayed at the Kurrajong Hotel in Canberra for his four years in office. With no ensuite bathrooms other guests were free to chat with him during his morning shit and shave. ↩︎

Check back next week for the post-mortem on Pete’s pathetic capitulation efforts at the event.

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