“All border towns bring out the worst in a country”

~ Ramon Vargas, Touch of Evil

Before he was Unicron, Orson Welles (L) and Charlton Heston

I had a vague memory of a quote about border towns from the 1958 Noir classic Touch of Evil (1958) that I knew would come in handy for this recap article of Border Wars at Albury/Wodonga, so I tracked it down and wound up watching the movie again instead of writing the article on time. Sorry Craichouse Patrons, but if you won’t take list building tips, take some advice on classic cinema. It’s a great movie, and casting Charlton Heston as a Mexican lawyer is probably my favorite example of Hollywood Whitewashing.¹

What does this have to do with Border Wars the event? Nothing really, but it’s a bit of a hassle coming up with introductions beyond the bog-standard ‘this is the list I took to the event’. Three Craichouse writers were present at the event: Joel McGrath, Thomas Oliver and myself (Pat Nevan), and I’m here to give you a bit of a list overview, game recaps and final thoughts on the new edition.

This could easily lead to the most overwritten 26-player regional Australian AOS event in the long and storied history of blog coverage. But in the hunt to deliver a great article, we might as well take a lesson from Old Hollywood when they cast John Wayne as Genghis Khan in The Conqueror (1956) and just throw a bunch of shit at the wall to see if anything sticks.

It didn’t

The Road to Border Wars

Border Wars is the annual gaming event held by the AOS community of the Albury/Wodonga region. For those few readers unfamiliar with the lexicography of Australian regional towns, the border between the States of New South Wales and Victoria is marked by the Murray River, the terminus of the Murray Darling River System.² As river systems go the Murray-Darling has something for everybody. The nation’s wankers are able to enjoy hiking the streams on the National Parks in the pristine highlands, while the nation’s yobbos are free to flog the guts out of their speedboats in the carp-infested lower stretches.

Population centers with a presence on both sides of the river are typically known by their hybrid name such as Echuca/Moama, while towns strong on one side of the border are always singular, such as the imaginatively-named border town of Bordertown. Albury is on the NSW or crass, hopelessly corrupt, matched-tracksuit-counts-as-formal-attire side, while Wodonga is on the Victorian or smug, hopelessly corrupt, Northface vest, French bulldog and a 2.5-million-dollar-inner-city-terrace-house-counts-as-Socialist side of the border.

Someone’s wishing his ancestors had said no to domestication

Economically Albury has always been a center for rural production. For a time in the 1970’s the Whitlam Government decided the area would be a base for Australian manufacturing and flooded the place with oceans of government subsidies, but it went about as well as these things always do and the principle non-agricultural industry of the region today is supplying amphetamines to long haul truck drivers on Australia’s eastern coast.

Albury/Wodonga is a quintessential border town. A nowhere stuck between two somewheres, that yearns to be something in its own right. Even in an age where people fly everywhere it is still a highway town. The biggest businesses are Motor Inns, and the busiest roads are the ones that lead away from the place.

Enough with the social commentary. Editor Pete has gotten fairly pissy about me including more AOS content in my articles and the Craichouse Patreons aren’t paying me out of a superstitious dread that they too will wind up as childless 50 year old’s with nothing but toy soldiers to live for.³ A/W has a thriving AOS scene, produces some amazing talent locally and draws the best competitors from NSW and Victoria. The redoubtable Matt Tyrell hosted the 2024 Australian AOS Masters there, which I was lucky enough to TO. The Measured Gaming crew were heading out in force, with my AOS life partner and fellow Craichouse writer Joel “The Captain” McGrath and Jason “Spanky” Spinks both making the trip. Let’s take a look at the list I took.

The List

Blades of Khorne – Patrick Nevan

Generic Gore Pilgrims 31: The Lovers, The Dreamers and Me

1980pts
Grand Alliance Chaos
Blades of Khorne
Bloodbound Warhorde

Prayer Lore – Blood Blesssings of Khorne
Manifestation Lore – Judgements of Khorne
Regiments
General’s Regiment
Mighty Lord of Khorne (160)
 • General
 • Firebrand
Bloodsecrator (160)
Exalted Deathbringer (130)
Exalted Deathbringer (130)
Exalted Deathbringer (130)
Regiment 1
Slaughterpriest (160)
 • Collar of Contempt
Skullreapers (220)
Regiment 2
Realmgore Ritualist (120)
Skullreapers (220)
Regiment 3
Bloodstoker (110)
Wrathmongers (150)
Regiment 4
Skullgrinder (150)
Wrathmongers (150)

Drops: 5

So first of a little bit of background here, as I honestly thought more people would be familiar with the classic Force/Org structure of the Khorne Bloodbound. When the early Battletomes came out they each had a page showing the unit composition of an army. A Bloodbound Warhorde was always centered around a Mighty Lord of Khorne and the 8 closest Lieutenants that comprised his Gorechosen. In 3rd Ed, all of the non-Mighty Lord Bloodbound heroes had the Gorechosen keyword, but you could never field all nine heroes. In 4th Ed they specifically structured the Mighty Lord’s battalion to allow you to take the Original Clown with the Flesh Hound and eight of his best pals in a 2000 point legal list without any auxillary units.

As a long-term lover of the Bloodbound I’d always dreamt of fielding a proper Gorechosen, and in 4th Ed I finally could. The issue was that taking 9 Foot Heroes in any army is not a solid strategy for winning actual games. My one solitary AOS4 practice game against Joel was a disaster and he begged me not to take the list to Border Wars.⁴ I’d spent the last competitive season alternating between narrative and competitive lists, which was fun, but missed out on qualification for Masters as a result, which was fucking embarrassing. We had resolved to take AOS4 seriously and unlike certain Editors of this blog, who shan’t remain nameless, Pete, I had a beautifully-painted horde of Gluttons perched at the top of the meta whose hour had come around at last. Or my Black Knight SBGL list, or I could slap chop a few Nighthaunt to accompany the 30 Hexwraiths I already had painted for a Mixed Death army a few years back, slap some paint on my Purple Sun and really whore after that meta.

But I took the Bloodbound list instead because:

• I’ve bitched about Verisimilitude for years, GW met me halfway and I thought I should put up or shut up.
• I thought there was some hidden tech and with a lucky run I could fluke a good result and add to my self-proclaimed legend.
• I crave the moral high ground of not being a meta-chasing flog.
• I’m worried the skill level of AOS has passed me by and I won’t win if I give it my all with a filth list.
• I’m a narrative dreamer and you always have one more in you.

Probably a bit of all of the above, with a side order of Fuck You I’ll Do What I Want. There is some tech in the list. The Exalted Deathbringers heal and get extra attacks if they participate in the destruction of units. The Mighty Lord makes a unit fight first. The Skullgrinder makes a unit fight last. I settled on a mix of Skullreapers and Wrathmongers because they are two of the best infantry units in the game. It’s just the rest of the Bloodbound that range from eh to trash. I figured it would well work once, struggle once or twice and get ground into blood-colored paste for the rest of the weekend.

Before the Event

Joel, Spanky and I left Albury reasonably early in the afternoon for the mind-numbing tedium of a drive through Eastern Australia. Unlike most Measured Gaming members and affiliates, Spanky doesn’t have vehemently-held opinions on every conceivable subject that he feels compelled to share with anyone in earshot, so I had to do most of the talking on the car trip. Luckily I have opinions to spare and my travelling companions were treated to a lively discussion of the merits of American-Style Trucks, Olympic Drug Use and Modern Psychiatric Medicine that made that three-and-a-half hour trip fly past in mere hours.

We stayed at our usual Caravan Park⁵ 5 minutes’ walk from the venue in the Albury suburb of Laverton. People from the rest of Albury talk a lot of shit about Laverton, which is a bit like Synchronized Swimming claiming that Ice Skating isn’t a real sport. Laverton is adjacent to everything, has a good pub, can be entered from the highway without having to see anything else of Albury and is home to Australia’s best Hungry Jacks.⁶ The cleanest, fastest service and best-tasting food in the Hungry Jacks Australia franchise is in Laverton. We ate there five times on the weekend. Even their breakfast pancakes, which aren’t technically food, taste good. It makes the Bendigo Hungry Jacks look like the rest of Albury.

We decided on a night in to unwind after a stressful week with a few quiet drinks, which we followed up with a whole bunch of noisy ones. Spanky being a non-drinker had to endure the Captain and I watching a game of rugby, the movie Promising Young Woman and about four hours of Olympic coverage. We went through the classic three stages of Olympic coverage watching the women’s something or other canoeing heats. (The one where they drop them in the obstacle course).

1: Denial: “How is this a fucking sport? It looks like a ride at Wet and Wild Adventure Park.”

2: Sudden Expertise: “Nah mate, she did alright on the barrel roll but she fucked the turn on the red thingy. That’ll cost her time, trust me, I know Canoeing.”

3. Mindless Drunken Parochialism: “Ha! I could have done a better barrel roll! Whiff! Whiff! Go back to France you loser, You Suck! When’s the next Fox triplet on?”

After we switched to scotch and dry. Apparently if you were ever stupid enough to take a picture with your empty cans, you are never too old to keep doing it

I think I went to bed about three or four o’clock and drifted off to the gentle sounds of the Captain snoring from the spot where he had fallen asleep in the comfortable embrace of the toilet walls. It was quite a night and quite a start to 4th Edition tournament life. The morning was a bit rough but we managed to carry our stuff for the brutal five minute walk to the event, offered up a few tremulous hello’s to the usual suspects and got down to business. As always I remembered to take some blurry-ass photos of some of my games, and completely forgot the others. You know the drill.

Round 1: Jaws of Gallet

Pat Nevan vs Matt Tyrell (Nighthaunt) – Loss 14- 44

For my first competitive game of AOS4 this wasn’t a great start. Matt is one of the Albury shot-callers, a very old hand on the Australian AOS scene and a solid guy along with it, and I’m always happy to play a game against him. In what would be a recurring theme for the weekend I had a tough time convincing him my list wasn’t harboring some secret A Grade filth. I don’t know who ruined the notion of a competitive player actually running a narrative list, but they did a pretty thorough job of it, cause not one fucking person believed I wasn’t trying to pull a fast one all weekend. Matt hadn’t played much AOS4 either and his list was a sub-optimal Nighthaunt list if you can imagine such a thing.⁷

The game itself was actually a lot of fun. I couldn’t tell you much about Jaws as a battleplan because I was boxed into my deployment zone and subjected to an old-fashioned doubling. Luckily a whole bunch of foot heroes proved to be a mathematical nightmare of dividing attacks and I was able to hit back. Badly. In what would prove to be the theme of the weekend my Skullreapers and Wrathmongers would perform, while the bulk of my Gorechosen would whiff completely or do about three damage each, except for one noble soul who would over perform. In this case it was the Realmgore Ritualist or Khorne Wizard chick who nearly did for Reikenor with two dagger attacks. It took three units of whiffing clowns to shave off his last wound. We called it top of turn 3 when I had about 3 models left, but I had managed to kill a fair chunk of Matt’s army. I honestly struggle to remember a crushing defeat I enjoyed more.

Round 2: The Vice

Pat Nevan vs Brad Klimpsch (FEC) – Win 24-22

After my Round One hammering it was off to the bottom tables for a game against the FEC. Brad is a great guy from Wagga Wagga⁸, a place more regional than some regions of regional Australia if you catch my drift. He doesn’t get an awful lot of 2k practice out in Wagga and it’s fair to say he isn’t the most competitive player around, but the FEC/Khorne match up is always a good one as nobody is wasting a lot of time shooting or castling up.

The game was pretty much how I remember The Vice playing out and we locked up across the center from Turn 2. I locked out Brad’s charge with Murderlust while he ruined my countercharge with Ushoran’s quite nasty Strike Last ability. I crippled Ushoran with a unit of Skullreapers that I managed to springboard pile-in off a Manifestation (a tactic that would prove useful over the weekend). One of my Exalted Deathbringers managed to shave off his single remaining wound, effectively Bogarting the most impressive kill of the battle like a true Khorne hero. We called it at the bottom of Turn 3 in time for lunch and another trip to Australia’s best Hungry Jacks.

Round 3: Scorched Earth

Pat Nevan vs Danny Neal (Stormcast) – Win 48-34

Danny is a native to the region who I’d played in a previous Border Wars although his AOS experience has improved since then. He was running a Sacrosanct Stormcast list which I really liked, and that is effectively the kiss of death. It was also my first exposure to the dreaded lore of Morbid Conjuration. I had been pretty unimpressed with Manifestations in AOS 4 thus far, but from here it was all downhill. The game itself was a close one: Danny took first turn and my two five man Skullreaper units astonished us both by murderizing 2 units of Sequitors and 6 Kittycators. It was in their 6-attack Bloodsecrator Banner turn, but damned if these things aren’t the killiest elite infantry in the game at the moment.

Nice deployment shot of the boys. Those distant, out-of-focus blurs are soon-to-be-dead Evocators on Dracolines. Amazing paintjob as well, dammit.

From then on the natural slowness and flailing incompetence of the Bloodbound took over and we had a good tussle trying to reach objectives while being hemmed in by Shackles. The game effectively swung on one failed save when my 2 remaining Skullreapers finished off the last from the returned unit of Kittycators, meaning I held an objective and denied a battle tactic for a 6-point swing. Danny’s foot Evocators and 10-man blob of Sequitors performed surprisingly well, so if you are sitting on a pile of soon-to-be-legended Stormcast, don’t neglect them. In the end Danny ran out of bodies but there were only a few dice rolls in what was an excellent game.

Round 4: Close to the Chest

Pat Nevan vs Jesse Perkins (Flesh Eater Courts) – Win 30-28

Another great game against another old hand of the Australian AOS scene. At this stage of the tournament I was having a bit of a Khorne dream run against all-melee armies that were keen on getting stuck in. Jesse was running Ushoran and 80 Ghouls in Lords of the Manor with the Lore of Whorebid Conjuration. In early 4th Ed this is less about filth mongering and more a common sense way of letting your opponent know you came to the tournament to win games. Other Manifestation Lores are for narrative hipsters, people with something to prove or those who never bought Malign Sorcery.

I wish I could say I came away with a narrow win here due to my superior gameplay but this one was all down to Jesse rolling some of the worst dice I have ever seen. I put a juiced-up unit of Skullreapers into Ushoran and Jesse managed to fail ten out of eleven 4+ saves, and eighteen out of twenty-four 5++ wards, putting him on the back foot. Jesse battled back to bring the game to a draw when we were mathing out the final round. Luckily for me, Joel McGrath happened to wander by and point out that I actually had an extra model on an objective to give me two points in the final round, so effectively my lawyer won me this one. Another great game leaving me on 3-1 and off to the top tables for Round 5 – after another trip to Hungry Jacks.

Different Ushoran, equally dead. Just a lot luckier

Round 5: Border War

Pat Nevan vs Thomas Oliver (Slaves to Darkness) – Loss 12-49

The final round of Border Wars was Border War and I got to play against the stripped-back, souped-up 6 STD Varanguard/Abraxia list of my fellow Craichouse writer Thomas Oliver, and this was unfortunately where my dreams were thoroughly crushed. Tom was a fine opponent and I got the massacre I had coming to me for the run of luck I had enjoyed at the event up to that point. I handled it with the light heart, good spirit, and willingness to take the good with the bad that has made me a beloved figure on the Australian tournament scene.

As for the game itself, the best way for the reader to understand the experience is to watch the Master/Student Rugby match from Monty Python’s criminally underrated Meaning of Life. I can’t say much about this game that would add further value I’m afraid.

Final Thoughts

Mitch Bugg won the event with his Ogor Mawtribes and was nice enough to suffer through an interview with Editor Pete. Well worth a read if you are in the Dadbod business. Zak Rockman finished 2nd with Nighthaunt while Joel Graham came 3rd with LRL. Basically the three armies standing clear of the pack at the start of 4th Ed. Results are up on Stats and Ladders.

Border Wars is a well-established event and they tend to avoid the sort of fuck ups that make for entertaining coverage. Venue, tables and terrain are all top notch, and Zak did an excellent job at his first time TOing. This is the third or fourth Border Wars for the Measured Crew; we’ll be back next time and you should be there as well. Try the Laverton Hungry Jacks, you will see the difference.

I was surprised at how much I enjoyed 4th Ed. It was always going to be better than 3rd in the sense that things can only improve when somebody stops kicking you in your junk, but I really enjoyed the new mechanics and the overall feedback around the event was positive. Except for Manifestations. Shitcanning playtesters and game designers is a subject for another day, but the gameplay around Manifestations and Whorebid Conjuration in particular is so bad that people have mentally written off this era of AOS4 as “Before they fix that shit”. I will be very interested to see what happens if they don’t.

As for my long-dreamt-of Gorechosen list? From a gameplay point of view it was every bit as terrible as I thought it would be, and a 3-2 result was a lot better than it deserved. Wrathmongers and Skullreapers were both awesome and effectively carried about 1000 points of worthless support heroes in every game. I learned a lot about new Khorne and AOS4, and I’ll be bringing out the Khorne Index review before my next event.⁹

Did Joel McGrath have to suffer my complaints on the car ride back from the event? Probably less than usual. Of all the stupid narrative lists I had ever run, this one had been the best. Not only was it my favorite models but I had gotten the right match ups with the right opponents to enjoy the weekend. Normally you run a goofy all-melee list and get shot off the board all weekend, or an anti-Wizard list without seeing a single Magic Dom army and you have a frustrating weekend. This time I had a blast running melee into melee and it really felt like I had given it a fair crack. Plus I got to spend the weekend with my boys, playing with my toys and if that’s not the thing so Amazing it Keeps Us Star-Gazing, it will do until something else comes along.

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1. And he absolutely nails the role. ↩︎
2. Sticking with a Hollywood theme, it’s also the source of enough fiendish, convoluted struggles over water rights to supply the plots of half a dozen Chinatown sequels. ↩︎
3. Not all of them. ↩︎
4. Something about not wanting to ride home in the car with me after I got flogged with another stupid narrative list, the crybaby. ↩︎
5. Holiday park for our non-Australian reader ↩︎
6. Hungy Jacks is what we call Burger King in Australia, except when we call it Burger King. It’s complicated. ↩︎
7. No Hexwraiths, Dreadblades or Whorebid Conjuration. ↩︎
8. Yes, we know our place names sound stupid. ↩︎
9. Mawtribes to the Games Arena Oct 24th ↩︎

Credit for the cover image to Games Workshop. In case you didn’t know, Gorechosen is an arena combat game released during the early days of 1st Edition, using Khorne Bloodbound minis as pit fighters. It’s designed by the great James Hewitt, and it’s awesome. We still crack it out now and again locally.

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