“…some capers you have to have to pull, whether you want to or not.”

Dr Tod, Thirty Minutes Over Broadway, Wild Cards 1

by Patrick Nevan

I’ve been in a bit of an AOS slump lately. This GHB isn’t exactly kicking goals, the new narrative arc is a bit underwhelming and there’s nothing in the pipeline that is turning my crank handle. On top of that my local gaming buddies have all insisted on having family lives and I’ve been oddly busy at work, so I’m getting as many casual games as GW has well-designed and popular website remodels.¹ I’m not about to make one of those model burning Death Metal Youtube videos, but it’s all a bit meh at the moment.

For me the hardest part of a slump is list building. Like most comp players my hobby life is structured around getting a list to the next event, Writing it, buying it, painting it, testing it and taking it to the next tournament. When my hobby mojo is working I’ll be yammering away about my next list on the way home from the last event and trying to decide between three or four different things I want to try next time.

“I’ve got to check in with my Allies for screening options, I mean there’s always Untamed Beasts as a fall back, but I’ve got a good feeling about Ungors – I might need to convert ….”

The dreaded slump turns the whole process into a grind. Getting an army on the table becomes less about inspiration and more like cycling through options trying to find something to watch on your half a dozen streaming services. “Ogors, seen ’em, not in the mood for a comedy. Nurgle, they’re good but I just saw ’em. Khone, lol they went to shit when they moved from Netflix to Disney+, Stormcast are just one of those channels I haven’t bothered cancelling. SBGL maybe, lets see what they’ve got. I mean I love zombies but they’ve been done to death.”

At my last event I ran Nurgle Tripple Maggoth Lord, the TV equivalent of saying fuck it and watching Season 1 of True Detective again. My next event is the Lost Legion GT at Geelong November 18th so I was sort of thinking SBGL. I’d run Zombies before to a respectable 4-1 but found the full spam impossible to play in a timely fashion in close games. Like a lot of Vyrkos players after the last round of points changes I was thinking less Zombies more Grave Guard but it felt a bit net-listy and safe. TV wise it’s the next season of Reacher.² You know it will be good, but do you need to watch it now?

After all I was coming off a tournament win and I do like to incorporate into my gaming the Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back rule of making a Safe Picture followed by an Art picture . A net list wasn’t going to cut it. I was looking at some of the little-used SBGL units when I hit upon the idea of throwing all the Vyrkos ladies, Belladama, Annika and Ivya in a list. Call it “All the Single Ladies.” Buy and paint a few new models and I was good to go with a pretty solid Vyrkos list, with enough superficial points of difference to earn me some sweet sweet arthouse list building credibility.

Then a thought struck like the piercing Terrorgheist shriek of a tweenage Spice Girls fan from way back in the 90’s. Why not bring all the unique female SBGL heroes? It’s literally all the single ladies in one list. Lauka Vai and Neferata would bring the headcount up to five. The sacred number of the most powerful force in the universe.

Girlpower! If you weren’t there you can’t ever know

I tried to dismiss the idea. It was kind of funny for about five seconds but a Vyrkos list with 700 points of non-Vyrkos wouldn’t work. It wouldn’t be terrible – no army that scores battle tactics as easy as the SBGL can be terrible – but it wouldn’t work. I took an awful beating the last time I tried to be super clever at a tournament in Geelong and my ego probably couldn’t stand another 2-3 result.

Like a man whose thumb was hovering over the play button for the live action version of Cowboy Bebop³ I tried to talk myself out of it. The dream of beating the system with some off-meta gibberish had failed me so many times. I had nothing to prove when it came to writing lists or taking risks. But the list was stuck inside my head like the incessant chorus of the titular song. When I named the idea it took root and to deny it a chance to flourish would be to strike at the very core of my own beliefs and risk the eternal ire of the dice gods.

So the girls are freshly painted, glammed up and off to Geelong for the weekend. I’m not super optimistic but you should always look for a positive. Sports votes make up a big percentage of next year’s Cancon pack and I can use this opportunity to practice whoring for popularity points improve my standard of sportsmanship while trying to kick back and enjoy the last GT of the year. Plus I can write the whole thing up as an article to satisfy the incessant demands for content from the Craichouse Patreons.

Who else would read an entire article by some idiot rambling on about writing sub-par army lists?

The List

Generic Gore Pilgrims 28: All the Single Ladies

Allegiance: Soulblight Gravelords
– Subfaction: Vyrkos
– Grand Strategy: Empire of Corpses
– Triumphs:

Leaders
Lauka Vai, Mother of Nightmares (300)**
– Lore of the Vampires: Vile Transference
Neferata, Mortarch of Blood (410)*
– Lore of the Deathmages: Waste Away
Belladamma Volga (220)**
– Lore of the Vampires: Spirit Gale

– Artefact: Standard of the Ulfenwatch
Lady Annika, the Thirsting Blade (110)**
Ivya Volga, the Outcast (135)*
Necromancer (100)*
– General
– Command Trait: Spoor Trackers
– Artefact: Ulfenkarnian Phylactery
– Lore of Primal Frost: Merciless Blizzard

Battleline
20 x Deadwalker Zombies (150)*
20 x Deadwalker Zombies (150)*
10 x Dire Wolves (150)*

Units
3 x Fell Bats (90)*
3 x Fell Bats (90)*
1 x Corpse Cart (90)**

Core Battalions
*Battle Regiment
**Warlord

Additional Enhancements
Artefact

Total: 1995 / 2000
Reinforced Units: 0 / 4
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 135
Drops: 5

So there isn’t too much going on the final product. There is enough to form the core of an army with the Vyrkos basics: Belladama, Command Point banner, 5 up ward, movement command trait. A throwaway schmuck to cast Blizzard and do Andtorian locust stuff. A couple of units of Fell Bats for battle tactics and dying early enough to practically guarantee the Grand Strat. This list scores battle tactics easily, even by the relaxed standards of SBGL and it will still have scoring options even when it has been virtually tabled.

The bad news is there are too many points being diverted from the core business of a Vyrkos list to gimmicky nonsense. Belladama is an auto-include, Ivya and Annika give you interesting options and can use Vyrkos abilities but Neferata and Lauka are just too much. Don’t get me wrong they are good units and viable outside their own sub-factions, but 710 points of monster that needs a lot of luck to do 15 points of damage in an activation is a lot to take out of an army.

I’m not talking up my difficulties either: the SBGL are strong as hell and I’m expecting to win a couple, but any non-optimized list is only going to get you so far in the snakepit Geelong meta. My girls will struggle against high tier crap like the sort of mediocre pig spam Big Waaagh castles⁴ that are such a dull feature of the Victorian meta.

So in the anticipation of a few bad losses I’ve decided to shift the goalposts and come up with a new yardstick for success. All The Single Ladies is essentially a team up list, like a heist movie or some superhero bullshit. The strong guy has to lift something, the smart guy makes a plan, the smooth talker cons his way into somewhere, the pilot flies something.

Nostalgia value aside TV from this era really sucked, sorry Fellas.⁵

Everyone gets to grab that little bit of screentime and do the thing that makes their poorly realized character so damn special and hopefully utter a catch phrase. With that in mind I decided to have a look at the special skills of the ladies and assign them an arbitrary Spotlight and Super-Spotlight moment. If they could each get their time in the sun I could call the weekend a success regardless of the final result.

Neferata: Mortarch of Blood

Sorting out Neffie’s role here was a bit tough. In her own list she is a centerpiece leader with a variety of options. As an ally she falls into more of a mobile tanky monster role with her 3+ save, ethereal spell and natural neg one to hit. The output to shred enemy Hammer units just isn’t their though. Her Dagger of Jet gives her a 5 plus insta kill against heroes so she always has a chance against the big stuff.

Spotlight: Tank a decent hammer unit

Super Spotlight: Put something important down with the Dagger of Jet

Lauka Vai: Mother of Nightmares

Another interesting one with abilities that are still useful outside her home faction. Reasonably tough, 2 monstrous actions, the six inch pile in spell, neg 1 rend bubble. Not great output but very reliable, Lauka Vai will spend a lot of time teaming up with Neferata. Beyond that her strength is mobility, being able to deliver precision damage off a small base. I’ll be looking for her to use monstrous actions at crucial moments.

Spotlight: Kill a support Hero

Super Spotlight: Smash an important bit of terrain

Belladama Volga: First of the Vyrkos

With two excellent signature spells, a 3 up bodyguard save and natural casting buffs, the Grand Dame of the Vyrkos is the gold standard of support generals and an absolute lynchpin of Vyrkos lists. Lycancurse is an insanely good spell for making nuisance Dire Wolves and with 3 Warmasters casting excellent signature spells, the opposition might not be able to save enough Primal dice to stop it. What she really has to do is not die, but lets give her some spotlight time anyway.

Spotlight: Use Lycancurse to make a unit of Dire Wolves

Super Spotlight: Not Die – take 24 points of damage between herself and her bodyguard in a turn

Ivya Volga: The Outcast

The monster hunter extraordinaire, she counts as ten models on objectives and reduces monsters to one attack per profile if she gets with 3 inches. No monsters around? She is actually a decent support hero for using the Vyrkos stuff, returning models and issuing command to goober summonable units. Plus she looks great doing it.

Spotlight: Nerf a Monster

Super Spotlight: Kill a Monster

Lady Annika: The Thirsting Blade

Last and probably least in all fairness. This thirsty girl is an off-table deployer who can only pop up in enemy territory. With a natural 4 up ward she is hard to kill and with the potential to summon in Vyrkos wolves if she lives long enough, she can go from annoying to really annoying very quickly. The Blade Probiscan puts a permanent armour debuff on a hero which is nice.

Spotlight: Be really irritating floating around in the backfield

Super Spotlight: Wound something important with the Blade Probiscan

So there it is folks. All the Single Ladies. Way too many words to justify a throwaway gag. Will it win many games? Will the ladies get their time in the spotlight? Will I revert to type and end up sulking in the carpark after I lose a couple of games? Should I have just taken the net-listy versilon?⁶ Assuming you give a damn you can find out next week right here on Plastic Craic.

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1. Zero if you haven’t been following hobby lately. ↩︎
2. Good show but not one you’d watch one episode a week, kind of like Bosch. ↩︎
3. Which actually grew on me over the season, I was sorry to see it go. ↩︎
4. Big Waaagh doesn’t seem to be as popular overseas for some reason but I end up looking at their stupid melee castles once or twice a tournament and I’m over it. ↩︎
5. Except for the one where we learned BA was nicknamed Scooter as a child ↩︎
6. No, Yes, Probably and We’ll See is my guess ↩︎

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