by the Plastic Craic Team
The last big sailing ship to leave the harbour, Sydney Slaughter will be the final AOS3 event for most concerned. Slaughter is one of Australia’s flagship events and with its trademark multiple awards for Best Opponent, plus the standalone Mortal Blade painting comp, it’s a true celebration of all aspects of the hobby.
Today we’ll be mixing up our usual format very slightly. We’ll still be hand-selecting two lists from each GA, but rather than strictly picking one power list that we think has a chance of performing strongly, and one cool list that we just really liked, we’ve let the writers off the leash a little this time. Some writers have chosen to stick to the drill but if there were two cool lists that really caught our eye in a given GA, and maybe showcased some interesting 3rd Ed tech while we’ve still got the chance, we just ran with both of those.
Special mention to our guy Tom Oliver – fresh from a podium at Masters – who will be representing at the event with his beloved Nurgle, which should hopefully go well:
Good luck Tom. You can check out the full set of lists in the pdf below – now let’s see what the rest of you flogs are running.
Destruction, by Peter Atkinson
Power Pick: Sean Tuffnell, Gloomspite Gits
“I pushed every button I can, I’ve tried to cook the sausages 1000 different ways and I couldn’t find 1001”. Damien Hardwick’s famous words upon leaving Richmond Football Club to die in a ditch echo throughout late-stage 3rd Edition, as most of the competitive Destro list writers seem to have run out of gas and are settling for repeatedly ramming Squigs down your throat. I can’t say I blame them – if you want a podium to round off the Edition it’s a solid bet, and it’s probably good to get some mileage out of Squigs now before their entire ecosystem is vitrified in 4th Edition.
We’ve got a few iterations of Shove Squigs Forward to choose from here: Smorgan is one of the few people with the sense to include the Swords endless spell (which is to his credit), but he’s wasting time with Ardboyz when he has a better anvil available in his own army. I’d take 60 Grots (in any config) ahead of 20 Ardboyz every day of the week and twice on Sundays, let alone with 20 points of change.
Gary Chen’s list is very similar to my ultimate pick – two big blocks of assorted Squigs plus generic Gloomspite goodstuff – but I like Sean’s Battalion loadout better, so he gets the nod. Sean’s version just has a very refined feel to it and I would say it’s pretty much the optimum Squig heavy build right now. Shoutout to the inclusion of those Sporesplatta Fanatics, very much an underused unit and they always feel like they’re worth their 90 points and then some. Yes they’re hyper fragile, but people rarely target them; and even if they do, Sean can recycle them as a unit of three through the Shrine regardless.
That Clammy Hand x King’s Gitz combo (for 2 rerollable summoning dice) near-guarantees you’ll resurrect those 3rd and 4th waves of raw aggression to blast across the battlefield, Skraggy packs a long-range missile spell and the blend of charge mortals and Battleshock mortals gives you more low-key hero sniping from combat units – the unsung hero of competitive Squig builds. Only one Boingrot needs to tap a hero for the whole unit to unleash their charge mortals in his direction, and while Squig Herd fleeing to Battleshock can’t snipe as easily as they used to (now that you have to pick the nearest unit), it’s still devastating when they’ve mulched whatever was in combat with them and the nearest unit is now the hero that was screened in behind.
Gloomspite have excellent battle tactics but their Grand Strat options are more limited, and Protect da Shrine can be switched off by fast Monsters smashing it to rubble if you’re not careful. For that reason I love to Ally a unit of Kruleboyz Monsta Killaz into my own Gloomspite lists when I’m using that Grand Strat:
I don’t know Sean personally so I’m flying blind here by backing him in, but this list just oozes class from top to bottom so I’m sure he’ll go well. Good luck mate.
Coolest List: Michael Sales, Kruleboyz
If you’re taking off the training wheels and kicking loose to see out the Edition, I’d say that signing off with a Kruleboyz Monster Mash list is a pretty fuggin sweet way to do it. Hilariously we’ve got a couple to choose from here, although needless to say neither of them use the supposed Monster Mash subfaction (Skuttlebugz) because it’s an unsalvageable sack of monkey shit, so shout out to whoever signed off on that crap going to print.
Anyway. John “Wild Thing” Daly came close with a pretty rambunctious list of his own, but Michael Sales edges him out for a few reasons:
- Michael went a bit harder at the theme, with an extra Monster (Vulcha) plus an extra Why The Hell Isn’t This Thing A Monster (Mirebrute).
- This guy’s name is very, very similar to one used by Doom & Darkness on his burner accounts on socials, so I’m clinging to that 1% chance that the great man is making a pro-wrestling style surprise return to the ring.
- John Daly’s list includes two generic Crocs – one fully loaded with Enhancements, the other running on its naked warscroll – and that’s a big no-no. The second one should be the named version every time because it’s equally as cool and on-theme (perhaps moreso), but strictly better and cheaper too. This is the sort of thing we could iron out in the Destruction chat in our Members’ discord, FWIW.
What the list is doing is pretty simple: Michael starts blasting away with his Dakka, buffing both reinforced units with the two Shammies and standing either side of the Croc (so both benefit from his bubble too). Then when you get in close, they double Unleash Hell (thanks to the Croc issuing the same CA to two different units) and the Monsters smack you upsides the head. Michael’s forgotten his Command Trait (oops) but assuming the TO’s were kind enough to remind him and not just let him suffer in his jocks, he’ll go with either Egomaniak (bodyguard the Croc) or Supa Sneaky (pregame redeploy). I prefer the latter, especially with this list: it gives you the chance to throw in Master-Blaster turn 1 if your opponent leaves a gap (I’d have given him Fast Un for this reason), which is a unit you can afford to trade with. Alternatively, it also gives you the chance to dump some chaff mid-board.
They’re the same picture
If we’re picking nits I also prefer the Mork’s Eye Pebble artefact here, to mess with shooting units once they do get within 12” range (which tends to happen very quickly in practice), but let’s give both Michael and John a break, and some credit – no nitpicking, just vibes. Running a Kruleboyz Monster Mash at a major GT makes you a giant walking among ants, and I hope you both smash it. Two very cool lists to lift the spirits and pulse some bright green energy right through the fading embers of 3rd Edition, and I wish you both the best of weekends.
Order, by Joel McGrath
The end of an edition and the end of an era. This lame duck period also mostly means the end of caring about the competitive scene. So before we get stuck into the Order lists, I thought it would be more interesting to highlight a couple of the cooler, more unique lists attending Sydney Slaughter, and there are quite a few of those to pick from here in Order.
Whether it be on an individual’s bucket list or the fact they’re embracing the lame duck period, or just simply “for the meme”, I’m here to acknowledge you guys and gals and give kudos where it’s due, and there seems to be plenty of you representing the Order Grand Alliance! To those going to this event to win, I wish you good luck, but ultimately myself and many others don’t give a shit about the result. I wish everyone a great weekend, regardless of your motives as Sydney Slaughter is notorious for being a wicked event.
Coolest List: Austin Cranfield – Cities of Sigmar
How much shit can you fit into one list you may ask? Well, Austin seems to have the answer for you: A fuckload. This list is awesome for a few reasons. It has every single matched play legal Witch Hunter unit, all of which potentially get extra damage in a confusing number of ways against your army. And so do their lackies, which are separate units with their own special rules.
The underlying theme of this list (and what strikes me as awesome) can easily be missed if you get distracted by “Oh look its all the Witch Hunters”. The mobility is what really makes this army amazing. Callis and Toll (plus their Companions) get to pop out of terrain, Tree Revenants teleport around the table and we’re also in Misthavn, which gives 3 of your units a d6” move in the hero phase (or 2d6” move if they’re mounted), which, surprise, there’s 2 units of Cavaliers and a Freeguild Marshall on donkey in the army too.
Outside of all that, he’s still packing more traditional competitive choices, such as Zenestra and the infamous Command Corps. It’s probably the only time you’ll see Pater Filius and the Brethren of the Bolt in a list for AOS 3. They’re OK, but worth mentioning to never trust a priest in a trench coat.
Lock up your wizards and hide your daemons, because Austin’s coming to town!
Another Coolest List: Tom Rands – Stormcast Eternals
Have you ever looked at a list and wondered “Whoa what the fuck, how is this legal?” I bet you did when you saw this one. THE diamond in the rough of AOS3 and a true hidden gem, Stormkeep lists for Stormcast Eternals always had the potential, but nobody has ever had the stones to play it apart from Tom and myself. It’s as if people totally forgot about the Coalition rule when it was neutered in the Chaos Gods’ armies, and blanked completely on Stormcast still having access to it in all its un-FAQ’d glory. It does make you wonder what could have been if we had another year in 3rd.
Tom admits this list is a bit of a meme, after all he says it in the name, “Memekeep”. But that just makes it all the more awesome. Hallowed Knights means you can safely assume my boy Gardus is here to give out that magical 5+ ward bubble to all his Stormbros.
“My boy” Gardus.
In this case, it’s 25 Liberators who can all fight on death and be a pain in the ass. Tom can recycle one of those units with Call for Aid for a total of 60 wounds on a 5+ ward. Not too shabby for Liberators, who as well as fighting on death (on a 4+) can count as 3 on objectives, and whenever you land a charge into them, on a 3+ you take d3 mortals.
You can position these units of Liberators so you’re getting multiple units dishing out mortals in your opponent’s charge phase. But that’s just the screens. Behind them are 3 Steamtanks and the modern classic Command Corps. Good old Coalition rules allowing over half of your army to not be from your faction! Obviously, they’re the damage in this army and he just needs 2 of those 4 units to be on the table at the end of the game for his Grand Strategy. I love the double Zephyros pick: they get to teleport around the table for easy battle tactics and objective scoring, which allows his Libs to remain bricks in his castle walls. A very well thought out list and one I couldn’t skip!
Good luck to Austin and Tom at Sydney Slaughter. Both lists are amazing and ones I’d like to give a whirl before 4th comes out. I’m tipping you both to go 3-2 or better and have 5 really fun games!
Death, by Sean Benson
Like the boys have said, we’re in the dying moments of this season of AoS and ready to head into a new edition so a lot of lists are “Things I want to do before I can’t”. It’s hard to say what are really the POWER picks anymore, because at this point things are either highly repped machines that people are comfortable with, or they are off-the-cuff challenges to enjoy before some aspect of the list heads off into the wild unknown.
With that said, I think there is definitely a lot of power across FEC, SBGL, OBR and Nighthaunt right now. We’ve seen the emergence of many new variations of FEC with the new book, SBGL is still strong in almost any configuration, OBR has seen a lot of points tinkering but mechanically remains very strong and Nighthaunt has seen renewed success with a few small rules improvements (2″ melee!). I will not be surprised to see at least one Death faction up on the podium, and with plenty of strong contenders I’ve aimed to factor in player prowess along with pure list brutality.
On that note, here are my two favourite lists, and I consider both of them to be COOL POWER lists:
Jasper Rowley – Ossiarch Bonereapers: Mortis Praetorians
This list has undergone targeted hate in the form of points increases, rules changes and meta shifts. But still it stands solidly, holding the front line on Nagash’s bastion of strength. Everything that was forcing OBR to stand in a power circle has been ripped apart, and now it’s all about business. Really the only things forced to work together in close proximity are a big block of Mortek and the Harvester, which is one hell of an anvil to dismantle.
In and around that Mortek chunk you get the joy of dealing with countercharging Archai and Deathriders, and cheeky lil Arkhan tossing spells around. This list still has legs and Jasper has the reps with OBR to make this go the distance.
Christian Bugg – Nighthaunt: Scarlet Doom
In juxtaposition to Jasper’s OBR, Christian’s list is the product of something that has been granted rules buffs and points decreases to lift it up into the meta. This might be a selfish choice, but if I was going to grab my beloved Nighthaunt right now and build a list, I think it would be within about 200 points of this exact build.
Maybe a few small changes but generally it’s got everything I want to be able to go the distance. Between cheeky units deployed reserve, teleporting from Awlrach & Coach, damage output capabilities from stacking debuffs and all the classic Nighthaunty tech (flying, retreat & charge, ethereal save), this list will be a blast to play. Nighthaunt live as a faction that have most of the tools to pull out a win vs pretty much anyone, but always comes down to how it is piloted. I will be excited to see how Christian does with it.
There’s a lot to love through the entire library of Death lists and these are only two of the many that I would love to play. Hopefully most of what is making the Death GA powerful and fun right now gets ported into 4th. It’s a beautiful sight to see so many diverse, intriguing, powerful and fun lists across the game. Hope Jasper and Christian come up well at Slaughter, I’ll certainly be keeping track. Also special shoutout to our own Tom Oliver, who hopefully will be bringing home some much-deserved silverware at the Mortal Blade painting competition and in the Sydney Slaughter tournament.
Chaos, by Tom Oliver
Welcome to our dive into the superior Grand Alliance’s contributions to Sydney Slaughter 2024. As an overall trend, the variance between lists is an ode to the great spot that AOS 3rd Edition is in as we are saying goodbye. Without further ado, let’s begin…
Power Pick: Liam Burnett-Blue
Where to begin with this list? Liam has brought an army that has been making the rounds for the last few months at local GTs and even Australian Masters 2024, going 4-1. This list is a bit of an enigma until you play it on the table. Pieces like Shalaxi and the Keeper of Secrets, which have been maligned since the release of the Hedonites book, take centre stage here. What Liam will try and gaslight anyone in earshot into believing is that this is the pinnacle of narrative wargaming. What I will have anyone believe who will listen is that this list is Aggressive Toolboxing 101. To break down what we are looking at clearly, I am going to give away a little bit of how the sausage is made.
Firstly, let’s look at Glutos: he’s a monster on the table and sorely underplayed for most of this edition. This guy is a bit of a lie on the surface – He’s an obese sex wizard in his shaggin’ wagon. Once we peel back a layer or two what we will find is an incredibly competent deathball mage who packs a Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon’s worth of survivability (before you add The Cloak of Mist and Shadows). Included in this package is an initial aura of -1 to hit that puts pressure on melee opponents to be able to break into the Slaanesh army (more on the other layers of this to come). His 5+ ward in combination with the ability to heal himself from The Hunger (a rule that for all intents and purposes is the same but not actually named The Hunger) means that he is an all-or-nothing model to fight against. You either kill him, or you don’t (which is true for any model, but the emphasis here is the humiliation his fetishised murder squad will enact upon you once your attempted assassination doesn’t go to plan).
Next up let’s take a gander at the two Greater Daemon models. Both of these models are deceptively tanky, competently hitty and annoying to engage. I could wax lyrical about the potential of these two models. And I will. Right out of the gate, both are rocking the Aegis granting a 5+ ward, which basically makes them Nurgle models and therefore superior than any other version of themselves they could be. But what this actually does is create a very resilient wound density in the army that is beginning the game with the aforementioned -1 to hit aura from Glutos. This then combines with a -1 to wound aura from Shalaxi Hellbane. This begins to a build a formation around these three models that I would like to affectionately call ‘Fort Kickass’. This then combines with extremely competent melee output from these models to become a fantastic deterrent and bully piece that should give any melee army reason to pause.
Let’s then flip our attention to the rest of the army, made up of a lot of soy boy beta cuck archers. What I really like about this component of the army is that it is yes, competent shooting, but also a mechanism for Liam to shift gears dependent on his matchup. He can use the archers to screen against his opponents if need be, or use the three bigs to protect this half of the army depending on what he’s up against to secure the most favourable nature of matchup.
Combine this with an auto-score grand strategy and accessible tactics, and we are looking at an army that will push aggression and pace to collapse armies while confidently scoring all game long. I am expecting Liam to go far in this event with this list.
The Rule of Cool: Katie Daly
This army is cool. There we go, all done, nothing more to say.
But if we did want to say more (and we do), what Katie is bringing here is a really cool take on the Glottkin archetype. This army has a core of big hitters in the Glottkin and Orghotts Daemonspew. Both of these heroes are great centrepieces that should scare the pants off anyone they go near (and if your faction doesn’t possess pants, then feel free to select any other appropriate clothing to be removed due to the induced fear – socks, hats, etc.). These punchy heroes are backed up by the curmudgeonly Horticulus Slimux and a Poxbringer (who I can attest to having an unreasonable kill tally).
Where Katie’s list gets really cool is the synergy she has built between Horticulus, the subfaction and the Beasts of Nurgle. This list is able to counter charge, retreat and charge, run and charge (before we even get to talking about regular charging). This in combination to a fairly MSU approach to list building creates a really versatile force that can play to disrupt the plans of any opponent.
What I really like is that this list brings the epitome of positional counterplay. When you look at it on the surface, there may not be the scariest output in the game, yet this list will deceptively inflict mortal wounds on the regular during all phases of the game and push opponents off scenario. When looking at the way this list interacts with scenario pressure, it truly embodies the immortal words of Jimmy “Buckets” Butler when he said “Don’t let us get one”. It will begin to grind and never stop grinding until the opponent is demoralised and as an avid fan of Nurgle – the enemy is also destroyed.
I see no evidence of factions being solved or a stagnant hierarchy in faction lists. With this much variance in the Chaos roster, the spice melange brought across the board is a fantastic testament to the internal balance across factions at the conclusion of 3rd.
Fun fact: Katie was also joint winner of Best Opponent at this event last year, so to anyone who does play against this Nurgle list, you should be in for great game.
So that’s a wrap! We hope that everyone involved in Slaughter has an absolute blast, and we can’t wait to see some showcase photos from The Mortal Blade. Good luck, enjoy your games, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, we haven’t seen the full rules yet, wait until we know the points and so forth.
Have a good weekend, nerds – see you on the other side.
Credit for cover image to GW
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I saw Sydney Slaughter, and at first thought that was an actress, a hot actress in action movies. But that was probably the Slaanesh picture talking to me.
I must say had I know about Stormcast having Cities units as coaltion allies a couple years ago with that Keep stuff, I would certainly done that! Had all the S’tanks that’s for sure, and Liberators are always so cheap to get 2nd hand. Oh well, can’t have it all. Glad ppl are getting some good fun in before the new edition when everything will be amazingly boring! Or at least ‘streamlined’. Just hope I can proxy my Chorf Bull-Centaurs from TOW as something interesting…or that we just get Forges of Hashut next year.
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