Morning Craicheads!  It’s been a while since we ran a Listbuilding Challenge: Indexhammer put a real squeeze on the noble art, as a lot of factions had an observably correct way to go about winning games¹.  I know a lot of people find daily tinkering with lists to be an important way to keep plugged in with AOS on a day to day basis, so it’s great to feel a bit of life coming back into it.

There’s a lot of heat and light around the all-new Gorechosen AOR from the Khorne book right now. The short version is that it’s an army of all Foot heroes:

• Extreme durability:
  • Army-wide 3+ saves
  • Army-wide 4++ wards (!)
  • When a lil dude does die: Roll a dice and on a 5+, no he does not (instead you Heal 1)
  • You can keep attempting those 5+s every time they die
• The output is there:
  • Army-wide Crit Mortal
  • One guy dishes out D3 extra attacks to friendly models board-wide (!)
  • He suffers D3 damage for doing that, but can ignore it with his 4++ ward
• Other key tech:
  • One guy counts as 22 OC (!) on objectives
  • One guy gives himself plus D3 of his mates Strike First

OK I guess that wasn’t all that short, but they’ve got a lot of tech, and all with very generous quality of life. Early testing on TTS and various batreps has shown this army to be as bent as copper piping, so we’re gonna try to beat it (or join it).

buT TheY’Re jUsT 6 wOuND hERoeS!

Well that’s the thing, isn’t it? They’re not really. They’re more like 12 wound heroes, given that army-wide 4++ ward. And you can get about 16 of them on the table, all with good armour saves. So while it’s unlikely that any one given model will hit a chain of 5+s and refuse to die, across a table full of the little bastards, you’ll definitely hit a few here and there. It works out to well over 200 wounds on a 3+ save and if you can’t see why that’s good, there are other sites that might be a little more your speed.

I will add one more layer that I haven’t really seen discussed, but experienced players will know exactly what I’m talking about: target dispersal. Having a huge number of individual threats makes it a nightmare for your opponents, as they’ll end up needing to split attacks and regularly waste output by over- or under-killing single models. Forcing split attacks is the hidden durability factor in lists like this, above and beyond raw wound count and armour stats.

I know a lot of TOs are banning Gorechosen until the book gets its FAQ, which as Cast pointed out, used to be pretty standard in AOS. I asked the question to TOs on our socials and the sample responses below are not from a bunch of serial moaners: these all experienced players, TOs and actual World Champions. So whether you agree or disagree, you’d be a fool² to hand-wave away their opinions:

So what are we gonna do about it?

You mean other than piss and moan on the internet? Well that’s where this Challenge comes in. Even though some events have put Gorechosen on ice for the time being, there are plenty of other people who’ll have to play against it this weekend.

What’s more, Gorechosen is actually a neat idea, just overtuned: it’s inherently cool to have a bunch of little heroes running around and taking care of business, it’s something that’s been underexplored in AOS generally and there are a couple of other sweet Herohammer ideas I’ve seen touted around too.

So your challenge is to come up with a list on one of these two themes:

• A list that has a good chance of tackling competitive Gorechosen
• A completely different MSU Herohammer list of your own (not Gorechosen)

I do understand how strong Gorechosen is right now, so it’s about giving yourself the best possible chance rather than expecting you to present something that will smack them down 100 times out of 100. There’s various ways to switch off Crit effects, wards and healing in this game right now, so show me what you’re cooking.

Patrons are welcome to check out this piece where I share my own initial thoughts on tackling Goreschosen, but now it’s over to you. We’ll publish the best and most interesting and we’ll do a small prize for the winner³.

We’ll set a one-week deadline for this one, so please get your entries in by Friday 15th August and we’ll publish a selection the week after. I’m not too stressed about beating the FAQ: I’m sure it’ll get looked at, but your tech should still work. For example if they move from a 4+ ward to a 5+ ward it’ll still be good to switch off wards – you get the idea.

Email them to PlasticCraicAOS@outlook.com, DM me on the socials or post them up in the Discord if you’re a member. And in the meantime: for anyone playing against this army, I really do wish you good luck.

Credit for cover image to GW

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1. Kick their teeth in with reinforced hammers, innit.  Step 1: Take the Flanks.  Step 2: Smash stuff that has worse stats than your stuff.  Step 3: Yawn. ↩︎
2. Or someone who is frantically painting up bulk Deathbringers as we speak. ↩︎
3. As well as the lifestyle of champagne and foot massages that inevitably follows having your lists showcased here on the blog. ↩︎