by Peter Atkinson

First we had Samuel Pepys and Doctor Johnson. The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole was a publishing sensation in the 80s, and soon after we learned you don’t even have to be good to be successful in this genre; Bridget Jones was abysmal but it still made a lot of people very rich. So I didn’t exactly set the world alight at Lost Legion last weekend (spoiler alert: I crashed out at 2-2¹), but in that spirit, welcome to the Diary of a Mid-table Plodder.

The idea of learning from your mistakes is hardly something new, but what I’m offering you is even better: learning from some other chump’s fuck-ups. I did a few things well last weekend, a lot of things poorly and I’m here to face the music.

My goals for the event were:

1. Grab a 4-1 without lowering myself to using Rockguts
2. Continue to improve at AOS4
3. Enjoy some exciting games with big, memorable moments

Before we go too much further, while I crapped out on my own first goal, let’s hear it for Plastic Craic core team members Pat Nevan and Zak Rockman, who both strutted onto the Podium at this event.  Pat was rocking his trademark Khorne, with Skullreaper blenders and Skullcrusher tarpits, while Zak took his “But can you table me twice?” Sylvaneth monster mash all the way to Table 1, Round 5 (where he came up just short against the 80 Bestigors netlist):

So another great weekend for the Plastic Craic writing team as a whole, but a bang-average one for me personally. I’ll keep things zipping along today with a series of brief sketches on how each game flowed, with a couple of specific moments and learning points at the end.

Ready?  Let’s go.

Day 0

The List: Taste the Rainbow

Squig Herd are a great unit: hit hard, cheap as chips, always trade up.  They’re natively pretty slow, so we’ve got a couple of ways to help them hit the gas: the Rabble-Rowza can make a Beast or a Monster unit run and charge, and all my combat units are one or the other.  Squigs are Beasts, Kraggy is a Monster and the latter of course gives them 3D6” charge to really fang it.

Converted Rabble Rowza, salvaged from the ruins of various Underworlds kits. My Gits are unsquattable.

Hang on, where’s the Rockguts?

What you should be doing of course is running a couple of Squig Herd with 2x 6 Rockguts.  You don’t need me to Gitsplain how important Rockguts are to every list, and yes it was a conscious choice to swerve them.  I’m fully aware that their absence makes the army significantly worse, but I’ve just got no interest in playing them. Where’s the decisions? Where’s the peril? Where’s the fun?

Most of my units are on 6+ saves so the Shootas provide somewhat of an anvil unit with a bit of meaningful chip damage.  I rate them highly and I’d be happy putting one unit in any Gits list².  Meanwhile the Rabble Rowza is a Battle Tactics engine, for things like Take Their Land or even fighting enemy Faction Terrain for Do Not Waiver.

Gobbapalooza are great value at 150 points: there’s a sweet double-debuff combo you can pull, with Mesmerise switching off CAs plus Sneaky Distraction to crank out -1 to hit.  It’s usually very achievable to get enemy combat units wholly within 12” when you consider that the Gobbapalooza are 5 bases strung out wide.  They’re usually chosen to be the Bodyguard for Kragnos too (-1 attacks) so all in all they’re a right pain in the arse, especially early game when their big ward is online.  15 wounds with a good ward is an absolute bullet-sponge, and they don’t even fill up a Regiment leader spot.  Running 2 or 3 units is not a gimmick.

And that’s about it.  Good, honest Warhammer, with fast and hard-hitting units that have abysmal armour saves and die in droves.  You could easily tweak it to be podium-worthy by slamming a bunch of Rockguts in there, but it’s still pretty good as-is.

A bunch of us piled down to the Airbnb on the Friday night: Me, Pat Nevan, Joel McGrath and Rocky.  The boys had Gladiator lined up ready to stream because I’ve still never seen it³, but we got distracted by sinking piss and talking shit all night.  Clear highlight was meeting the great Nic Wright (Russell Crowe on the socials) who came round to hang out – an absolute diamond of a person.

Day 1: What goes up must come down

Round 1: Eddie Sartori, SCE (Major Win)

Eddie is a mate of mine and a regular opponent, who was running Longstrikes with Annihilators.  He’s beaten me before in local games and went 2-3 at his first GT a few weeks ago, so he’s on the ascendant, but nothing went right for him at all here in this game.

Eddie went first and his Longstrikes poured their shots into the Gobbapalooza for little reward.  Kragnos and the Squigs went fuggin’ turbo and by Round 3, Eddie was left staring slack-jawed at the tattered ruins of an army; it was one of those where I could even split attacks (always a mug’s game) and still kill both targeted units.  It was just my time.

Round 2: Hakan Sjolin, Seraphon (Major Loss)

Is it just me, or are Kroxigor a massively underrated unit?  I’ve been pushing my anti-Rockgut agenda for a while now but I really don’t think these guys are too far behind.  6 health each, summon them back on a 4+ (I’ve still never seen a Seraphon player fail a roll) and they get back two of the big weapons in a 3-man unit⁴.  They even have access to a 5+ Ward.  Overall Rockies are tougher, Kroxies hit harder, and I really think there’s not much in it considering all the heat and light around Rockguts.

Anyway.  I knew I couldn’t sit back and play passively, because Order has way better BTs than Destro and Seraphon have some of the best Prospector units going.  So if we both do nothing, Hakan outscores me.  I therefore went down the combat path, pushed my chips in and clenched. 

It was close for most of the game as we headed towards a clutch Prio for Round 4, with Kraggy and the last unit of Kroxies tied up in combat together.  If I won, I’d swing first and lift his last big threat; if Hakan won, the Kroxies would swing first and pick up Kragnos.  I won the Prio and the exact opposite happened. 

Kragnos on 2s and 2s unleashed an unprecedented avalanche of 1s, failing to kill a single model. The useless cunt duly got lifted on the clapback.  A disastrous combat phase on my own turn, and after that it really wasn’t close any more.  Eh I’d had some good dice up until that point, and I could just as easily have lost that Prio, so what goes around comes around. 

I’ve locked horns with Hakan quite a lot recently and he’s a highly accomplished player.  The transformation of Seraphon from an NPE turd factory into a solid all-rounder that’s just good is one of AOS4’s early triumphs, and this list is really refined – Hakan has played the shit out of his army and he knows it from top to bottom, so it’s no surprise he went on to record an excellent 4-1.  I’ll get the bastard next time for sure, but in the meantime I did already write up a specific learning point form this game over here.

Round 3: Davor Sulava, SCE (Major Loss)

I went down to Karazai and the Longstrikes here.  Davor’s army was sensational and deservedly won Best Painted at the event; his brother David is one of Australia’s top players and a hardcore Ironjawz loyalist, repping Da Boyz on top tables through thick and thin. David was playing Gumby (bye buster) at Lost Legion and he brought a really interesting IJ list which you can read about here, but he didn’t have a game in this round so we all got to hang out a bit during this one.

I did have the drop on Davor so I did the standard thing of putting him in to bat first, mainly because the Longstrikes would definitely pick up Kragnos across a double and I didn’t much fancy that. Roughly speaking I was happy leaving Karazai to munch on disposables, while I set about taking down the Stormdrakes and Longstrikes asap. Then once I had whittled down those threats, I could circle back round and square up to Big Red with Kragnos and some Squig hammers. I’d be pretty confident in that scenario.

The flow of the game was that Davor sent his Stormdrake aggressively down my right flank, with the Longstrikes perched way back from the Stormdrake on that same side of the board, while Karazai went all the way over to my left flank to fight Moonclan Shootas.  Davor’s Dragons picked up a unit of Squigs and in reply I sent in Kragnos plus some more Squigs to deal with them, and duly lifted his reinforced unit. 

I was fortunate enough to get the double, so Kragnos trotted up to tackle the Longstrikes (with a Snarlfang bullet sponge ahead to soak up Covering Fire). Sadly for me the Longstrikes hit a 6” Redeploy and as a result, Kragnos didn’t get a long enough charge to reach them.  That left Special K wasting his time fighting some foot troops in the centre, whom the Squigs could have handled perfectly well without his help.

That meant I’d burnt my double without lifting the Longstrikes, and I was in all sorts of trouble.  From this point I was left scrambling to stay in the game with all the grace and composure of a spider trying to climb out of a bathtub. The Longies duly spiked their shooting and left Kraggy on death’s door, and when Davor immediately doubled me back that was GG.  A pretty bleak game from my end but still, a few hours in the company of the Sulava boys is always a pleasure.  10/10 would get tabled by Karazai and Longstrikes again.

Davor did well to stretch the board and I probably should never have sent Kragnos down towards those Stormdrakes – the buffed Squigs could have largely handled that fight on their own, while Kragnos could have spent that turn making early headway towards the Longstrikes as I played explicitly for the double. But I was stressed about Covering Fire (Kragnos doesn’t even get an armour save vs Longtrikes) and he couldn’t just start sprinting off towards them without an escort, so whaddya do?

I still don’t know whether the percentage play was to let Davor shoot into Kragnos twice with Covering Fire (and hope he didn’t spike that shooting), or to move up somewhat cautiously (and hope he didn’t spike the Redeploy). Either pathway had its risks; I went for the latter and it didn’t work out. I’m still not sure whether I’d do it differently next time, and admittedly this makes for an unsatisfactory conclusion – so can I maybe interest you in an extended whinge about Covering Fire⁵, instead?

Satdee Night

Saturday nights in Geelong mean one thing: BBQ at Clarkey’s place 💪  Clarkey can cater for a big crowd and everyone’s invited.  We headed there straight from the tourney without bothering to go back to the Airbnb.  The Beks were out in force and the convo ranged from Azeri cuisine to the AOS landscape in Melbourne to whether or not you can spot a country person in the city⁶. 

Shoutout to Anthony “Death” Rowe who turned up later than everyone else, necked 10 beers in 90 minutes then got an Uber to the city to kick on…and turned up the next morning looking fresh as a daisy.  Champion DNA.

Day 2: Brief but Pleasurable

Round 4: Kyle Ward, FEC (Major Win)

Kyle is an absolute sweetheart but his army was up against it here.  Remember how Kraggy failed that 3D6 charge into the Longstrikes earlier?  What goes around comes around and I don’t think I rolled lower than 14” on a charge in this whole game. 

My army went rampaging forward and never stopped to gather breath. Playing into FEC felt like playing against a Destruction army, in all the worst ways: their key combat units were hitting on 4s, their armour saves ranged from mediocre to awful and the main way they were actually good was unintentional bullshit that needs fixing⁷.

I was a bit nervous in the middle of the game as Kyle started bringing back units I’d destroyed, but ultimately Crypt Horrors are just one notch below those top reinforced hammer units that are starring in most armies right now.  They’re still good, but they just that have a little bit worse armour save and are that little bit more vulnerable to debuffs.

Anyway.  I’d love to tell you all about my boundless genius here but the truth is we basically pushed our models together and mine had better rules. 

Kyle is a chad and my own pick for Best Opponent. I had to drop after this one at a somewhat lacklustre 2-2 for the weekend, but a personal highlight was Kragnos smacking the living shit out of Ushoran, so it did all end on a high note.

A Couple of Key Moments

Let’s conclude with a couple of things we can take away from the games.

Free Movement is Free

See how those deep-striking Annihilators are in combat range of the Loonshrine? They are guaranteed 2D6″ movement from there.

You can look it up if you really want to but the point is that they still get to attempt a charge (even though they’re in combat range of the Shrine), and you can still use that same Loonshrine as the “end point” to finish within 0.5″. So even if they don’t stick the long charge into the Squigboss, they will still get enough movement to get onto that objective.

Sneaky Movement is Sneaky

Remember that FEC game? This was where the sneaky movement from the wolf pack came in clutch.

This is how it played out:

(1) Those Crypt Horrors charged off the objective to engage my army in the middle of the board, which meant that (2) my Snarlfang could use their Enemy Movement Phase thing to step in behind them and steal the objective:

It’s what they’re designed to do of course, but it was nice to have it actually play out that way on the table. A couple of other really good applications for this ability:

• Bait out a Battle Tactic like Slay the Entourage. Then combine Can’t Catch Us with Redeploy for a 2D6″ Moonwalk away from danger. That also happened on the table this weekend: people see a soft target with 2 wounds on a 5+ save, and they see easy VPs. 2D6 later and they’re smiling through the tears.
• On Limited Resources, you’ve got a little bit of extra agency over when you start tapping objectives. The countback in this mission is only to your own previous turn, so doing this won’t affect you scoring it twice.

The Denouement

If I was being charitable to myself, my two defeats came against consensus filth like Callis & Toll and Longstrikes & Karazai, whereas my own list was playing with a self-imposed No Rockguts handicap.  It’s not like the armies I was losing to were leaving out their own best units, but this list was still good enough to do well, and I was hoping for better than a Desmond 2-2.  I bounced before I even saw my Round 5 matchup but regardless, scuffling around at 3-2 or thereabouts is hardly the goal.

Eh, we live to fight another day.

So what’s next?

Thanks to Coooooooooots and the boys for putting on a great show – see you again next year, fellas.

As for me? I’ll be cycling back to the Bonesplitterz next, before jumping on Gitmob later in the new year. I’ve been bouncing around an interesting list direction for Bonesplitterz in the PC Discord which I’m keen to put on the table, and I’d love to post up one last big result with my favourite army.

Have a good weekend, nerds – I’ll see you on the other side.

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1. Had to bail. Issues at home, nothing cataclysmic but thanks for checking in. ↩︎
2. I reckon I’ve even talked Ben Liekefett into giving them a try. ↩︎
3. I think I’m gonna make that my brand.  I’m “That Guy Who’s Never Seen Gladiator” from now on. ↩︎
4. That’s just fucking dumb. It’s a new unit, but it gets to cherry pick the best weapons from the original reinforced unit? I know that’s the rule, but it’s a shit rule. ↩︎
5. 2 CPs. C’mon man. ↩︎
6. Yeah you can.  Same works the other way around: they can pick out us V Line wankers, but we can always spot a Melbourne wanker in town. ↩︎
7. All I would say to GW is that when you do fix that replacing Infantry vs Serfs thing, please give FEC some candy back elsewhere in the army. Don’t “Do a Gluttons” to them. ↩︎