June 25, 2025

List Building is FUN Again! New Lists for Every Order Army

It’s been a while since the pre-game part of AoS has been enjoyable. Last season, tactics were so open and freely available that list building became exclusively an exercise in building the most violent lists possible. Linear, sledgehammer-type lists were strictly better because just straight up killing your opponent was more efficient than basically any other strategy around playing for tactics or primary–your opponent can’t score points if everyone is dead.

This new GHB is different. In limited play experience so far the battleplans, tactics cards choices, and how tactics cards are scored have done a great job to crack open list building for the following reasons:

Battleplans
- Outside of a few of the traditional Hold 1, Hold 2, Hold More scoring models, most battleplans have variable and sometimes outright wild scoring methods that require more flexibility and efficient trading pieces in order to out score your opponent. A lot of the emphasis is that holding 1 objective is worth—usually—half the primary points each turn, meaning that most people will be scoring every turn up to half the possible points off of primary. Without efficient trading pieces, you’ll be going on all in on the objectives each turn, which makes your list inflexible, which in turn impacts your ability to score your tactics. Speaking of:
Tactics Cards
- Skill expression is now an integral part of list building, because it can be very easy to set yourself up for failure right from the beginning by picking the wrong cards for your list. For instance, imagine you decide to take Scouting Force and only have three eligible units to score your tactics cards. What do you plan to do if one of those units dies before your able to score the first step of the tactics cards? Do you have a way to bring back a Scout unit if it dies?
- Another example: does your tactic card require you to have your units wholly within 9” of a table corner? Do you have the speed to achieve that, or access to any kind of teleports? If not, do you have a game plan for getting there?
Scoring Tactics Cards
- On top of needing to pick good tactics cards, you also need to carefully pay attention to when and HOW those cards are scored. Example: Scouting Force’s first step requires you to have three units wholly outside friendly territory to score. Step two then requires you to control a combination of three or more terrain pieces and/or objectives within your opponent’s territory. The last requires you to control a terrain piece wholly within your opponent’s territory more than 6” away from friendly territory.
- Can you reliably get your troops to do all three of these things? (As a reminder for part two, units can contest/control a piece of terrain AND an objective at the same time). If you’re infantry focused, can you get your troops deep enough into their backlines fast enough?

All of these are questions that need some kind of answer from the list you play—and I’ve been having a blast trying to answer these questions! So, I went ahead and tried to make a list for each faction that both tries to answer these questions and showcases the new Scourge of Ghyran rules, starting with Order armies here and expanding to the rest of the Grand Alliances later to avoid having one novella length article.

Note: The goal in this article is not to write a 5-0 list for every army. I believe that every list here does have some play, but there are likely more competitive ways you could go in some cases. We are all in brave new world territory here, so let’s get weird with the lists, and don’t be afraid to try new things – having fun might even put you in a better mindset to learn.

So, lets jump in!

Cities of Sigmar

What Does the List Do?

This is one of those fabled “Combined Arms” lists that people talk about a lot, but that rarely worked out in practice this past season, because deathstars were all (and might still be) all the rage. This is a Human-centric Cities list to take advantage of the absolute pile of shenanigans you can get up to:

The Veteran Cannoneers Battle Formation means that anyone standing out in the open, is a Monster, or has Fly is eating 6 shots each shooting phase with built-in rerolls. As we covered in this article, shooting isn’t as dead people think, and three Cannons are now at a bargain bin price of 300.
The new Freeguild Cavaliers lost an attack, but gained +1 to hit. They also lost impact mortals—which isn’t a small loss—but now they have a much, much more interesting ability in any charge phase: if they are in combat and did not charge, you can pick them and up to one Cavalier Marshal or Marshal on Griffon within combat range to count as having charged on a 4+. If that Cavaliers unit has fewer models than the total number of models within the enemy unit’s combat range, you add 1 to the roll.
- Beyond just counting as have charged for the +1 damage, this also means that on your opponent’s turn you have your Cav Marshal pop their Run Down the Foe ability to hand out Strike-First to themselves and a Cavaliers unit within their combat range.
  - You could hide a Cav Marshal 3.1” away from the front of your line of Cavaliers, have them count as charged, pop the Strike First, and then pile-in to attack.
- Because that unit counts as having charged, that nearby Cav Marshal can then hand out Strike Them Down to give a unit +1 attacks.
The new Cosmopolitan Leader Heroic Trait hands out +1 to wound on a 3+ to up to three Human units wholly within 12” of the bearer. Getting Cavaliers to 3+ to wound means even on off turns they hit fairly hard, turning them into grinders that your opponent is crashing against.
- Also, with the changes to All-Out Attack, +1 to wound is the new +1 to hit, in my opinion.
The Sacred Brazier artefact on a Marshal on Foot means as long as you keep your hero wholly within combat range of those Freeguild Command Corps, you get D3 Command Corps models back each turn that have a 5+ ward. Trust me, the first time you do this it feels like cheating.
And then there’s Zenestra—hoo boy.
- She’s the fabled Priest (2)—non-interactive Prayers are some of the most powerful abilities in the game. Each hero phase you pick a Wizard, Priest or Manifestation within 18” of Zenestra, roll a dice, and on a 3+:
  - Banish the Manifestation, or; Inflict mortal damage equal to the roll to the Wizard/Priest.
- The REAL sauce with Zenestra is the absolute bullshit you can do with her warscroll Prayer:
  - The first two parts of the Prayer are neat and randomly useful, but the last part—Salvation—lets you pick up to three Cities of Sigmar units ANYWHERE ON THE BATTLEFIELD and teleport them from wherever they are—even if in combat—and set them up wholly within 12” of Zenestra, with the only restriction being they can’t be set up in combat.
  - Is your opponent using the Attuned to Ghyran tactics card, and on the second step requiring them to retreat two units and charge with two units? Well, the units they have that are in combat with your Cavaliers just watched those Cavaliers teleport out of combat. Congrats, you just denied your opponent five points! This is just a small taster—the implications for this ability are endless.