Bathurst GT is a two-dayer in Central NSW run by the Crutchhammer boys. For those unfamiliar or flat out indifferent to Australian motor racing, Bathurst is home to the biggest race on the V8 Supercar calendar, which is a sort of street race circuit for cars that look like American drive-round-in-circles NASCAR things as opposed to Formula One cars. Which is dramatically underselling the historical and cultural importance of the big race, but it’s not especially relevant to this article. To an Australian, Bathurst means Car Racing, like Indianapolis to Americans or some famous race to Europeans.¹ Tell people you are going to Bathurst they assume you are doing something Motor Sportish.

It’s about 9 hours from my hometown of Bendigo which is about as far as a sane person would be willing to drive for an AOS tournament. Big Dalton and I made the trip up for the inaugural event in 2022 and had a great time, so I was keen to go again. The central NSW gang have a thriving local scene and put on a good event, and when you aggravate as many people in your own local scene as I have, interstate travel gives you a good opportunity to spend time with people who aren’t well and truly sick of your bullshit.

The event was scheduled after the release of the new Khorne battletome and I agonized over which type of Khorne to take. My relationship with the new book is problematic to say the least. I really like it in spirit but the rules for spending Blood Tithe on abilities are complete and utter garbage.² Then the AOS community was swept up in a moral panic about the Gorechosen Army of Renown. This has to be the most ridiculously overblown bout of white-livered pearl clutching in the history of AOS when you think of all the awful unplayable NPEs the game has produced over the years³. We managed to deal with quadruple-pile-in fights first Terrorgheists, but a bunch of foot heroes have got Veteran TO’s swinging the Nerf Hammer like elderly dementia patients flailing at nursing home staff when medication time rolls around. I’m trying to cut back on the Boomerish bloviating about the weakness of younger generations but nobody who made it through AOS1 or the Activation Wars can seriously be worried about a bunch of foot heroes being unbeatable. As for ruining everyone’s “play experience” may I just point out that the Gorechosen became legal the same week as the Kharadron Overlords. I know what I’d rather play against.⁴ Seriously people ….

Anyways, a week or so before list submission I read the player pack for a change and new Khorne and KO were out, which left me with Soulblight.⁵ I hadn’t played them in 4th Ed; the index was fairly uninspired and I was unimpressed by the Battletome. Not enough going on and the endless spells and faction terrain seemed a bit meh. Still I quite liked the new Vhordrai model and if I ordered one up I could build a list around him, and it went a little something like this.

The List

Generic Gore Pilgrims 39: Letters I’ve Written, never meaning to send

Soulblight Gravelords
Bacchanal of Blood
General’s Handbook 2025-26
Drops: 3
Spell Lore – Lore of Undeath
Manifestation Lore – Manifestations of the Grave

Battle Tactic Cards: Restless Energy, Wrathful Cycles

General’s Regiment
Prince Vhordrai (490)
• General

Regiment 1
Vampire Lord on Nightmare Steed (190)
• Shard of Night
Barrow Knights (210)
Barrow Knights (210)
Blood Knights (440)
• Reinforced

Regiment 2
Vengorian Lord (220)
• Immortal Ego
Vargheists (240)
• Reinforced

Faction Terrain
Cursed Sepulchre
2000/2000 pts

Nothing groundbreaking but a fine example of what I like to call intuitive list building. You want to run Vhrodrai? Great, what does he do? He hits pretty hard, tanks a lot of damage and buffs regular-ass units of Vampires. A Vengorian Lord will make him tankier by throwing up an extra heal and reducing incoming rend, so that’s a no brainer. Realistically he isn’t going to get his buff for regular-ass Vampires off more than a few times a battle, so a reinforced unit of Blood Knights with some Vargheists as backup is all you need. If you are going to take 10 Blood Knights you may as well run a mounted Vampire Lord for the freaky countercharge ability and that’s 1580 points. I spent more time agonizing over the summonable crud to round out the list but settled on two units of Barrow Knights. Besides being excellent screens they gave the army an elite feel. Every unit could punch a hole in something if need be.

Restless Energy and Wrathful Cycles are quickly becoming my default battle tactics. I adhere to the theory that points on the scoreboard are better than theoretical late game points so I score early and avoid “Score less to make myself the underdog”-type of plans. Restless is a straight-up Win More battle tactic with an easy first stage, and Wrathful is an easy 5 points when you get given the first turn. The rest of the tactic tree doesn’t kick in until you become the underdog but having half your units in combat is an easy second stage when you are getting your ass kicked.

I had to order up a bunch of stuff and get it painted quickly but having the spur of an event is the best way to get armies on the table when you are easily distracted. Vhordrai was the only model I didn’t finish in time so I had to proxy in the regular VLoZD. I was travelling alone which meant taking the War Wagon. My car has an adventurous but fragile machine spirit, like a widow in her seventies recovering from a hip operation but determined to make the best of her remaining years. It would be interesting to see how the old girl would manage.

The trip to Bathurst was long, uneventful and not unpleasant in terms of scenery. Rolling hills, picturesque cows and all that crap. It was a long way to travel alone. As a small-minded, middle aged man one of the great pleasures of travel is disparaging the places you visit and pointing out how much better everything is at home, and I had hours of spleen to vent but nobody to share my valuable insights with. The absence of somebody being obliged to listen to my observations on interstate livestock, citizens, architecture, food, beverages and road habits gnawed at me like the pain of a phantom limb all weekend.

I arrived in Bathurst about 4 o’clock Friday afternoon. To an objective judge Bathurst is an entirely pleasant town of 50,000 or so people out in central NSW, noteworthy for its cleanliness, impressive civic architecture and range of Australian historical buildings.⁶ I’ll forgo the commentary on my accommodation but it should be pointed out the Bathurst is squarely in the middle of Reverse Angle Parking Country. A peculiar feature of central NSW, reverse angle parking means exactly what it says and in the main streets you are expected to pull up and park like this:

The locals swear by it and it’s a sensible way to make maximum use of available parking on the wide ass streets they have in these parts, but it’s alarming as fuck when the car you are following breaks and reverses backwards on a weird angle to claim a carpark behind it. It’s no problem if you’re a capable driver so I parked the War Wagon at my accommodation and walked all weekend instead.

Day One

I got off to an early start on Saturday. Painfully early. I’d been working nights for a couple of weeks prior to the event and my sleep patterns were ruined, thus I was wide awake at about 1am Saturday morning and spent most of the weekend sliding in and out of the sort of twitchy, eye-watering mental fog that shift workers spend a good chunk of their statistically shorter lifespans in.

Always good to catch up with this guy though

The venue was the Panthers Leagues Club, a sort of branch of the Penrith Panthers Rugby League Club. Australian Clubs or RSLs⁷ are sort of all-purpose gambling, drinking and entertainment facilities and NSW produces them in epic dimensions compared to the rest of the nation. The Bathurst Panthers club was no exception, built on a mighty scale for a fairly small town. We had the ballroom for the event and you could have doubled the number of tables with room to spare.

Space between tables, the true measure of a venue’s quality

I got there early and noodled around for a while saying my hello’s. The veteran players of NSW had all turned out for the event including a few of the boys from the Craichouse Patronage so I had no shortage of folks to shoot the shit with all weekend, but eventually we got down to Round One. As always the photos are lifted from the socials or taken by my own ever-shaky hand.

Round 1: Sav Baskakov (Kruleboyz), Creeping Corruption. Victory 61 – 52

Round one was always going to be a tough one for me. Kruleboyz, with their dirty tricks, mortal wound output, abundant anti-monster tech and comically inexpensive units were a very hard counter to my list. My hope was that Sav, who I had never heard of, was a complete spud or I would have to get very lucky. Turns out I got very lucky.

Sav had a very good mixed list: 2 x 20 Gutrippaz, 2 x 6 Boltboyz, 2 x Monsta Killaz, Breaka Boss and a Dog Boss. I don’t play against Kruleboyz that often but whenever I do they seem cheaper and better than the last time I played them. 80 points for the ward guy and 90 points for the crossbows is nutty. I’m reliably informed the army has all sorts of unseen limitations but none of them involve 110pt two-cast wizards with casting buffs that hand out save bonuses.

Anyways I gave Sav first turn and he handed Vhordrai 10 damage from a Killbow, so I went full send into one of his Gutrippaz blobs in the middle of the table. The Gutrippaz proved to be extremely resilient but I was able to flatten a unit of Boltboyz and we locked up across the center. In what would become a theme for the weekend my army was saved by the durability and quality of my units along with Vhordrai’s freaky Rampage that lets him pile in and fight without charging, splashing out a few mortals for your trouble.

Between the Coffin endless spell and the Vengorian Lord, Vhrodrai was healing up to 4d3 a turn and Sav probably did enough damage to kill him three times over before he finally died to a double six shot from the Beast Skewer Killbow.⁸ By that time I’d whittled down his army to the point where he didn’t have enough units to score and I eked out a narrow win. Turns out one of the hidden disadvantages of Kruleboyz is having a teleport that can’t get you onto objectives in the same turn you use it.

Sav was a terrific opponent. Bathurst was his first ever GT but he came at me like a veteran. We had a good chat after the game and he displayed the sort of unhealthy obsession with his own mistakes that is the hallmark of a particular brand of top quality player. Sav won his next 4 games leaving him with a 4-1 result in a tough field for his first ever event. Definitely one to keep an eye on.

We had a good lunch at the venue with the bulk of the player base occupying a few long tables in one corner of the cavernous dining hall, Viking longhouse style which was nice and social. I got the chicken parma which came served with a bonus argument with the waitstaff about not pronouncing it “Parmie” like a goddam savage. The meal was what I like to call “New South Wales good”. Average by Victorian standards, but you are always pleasantly surprised to find anything half decent north of the Murray.

Round 2: Fabio Jaconelli (Seraphon), Passing Seasons. Victory 65 – 30

My round 2 was another guy I hadn’t played before by the name of Fabio Jaconelli. He was a great opponent, relaxed and friendly and it’s fair to say he was one of the least Fabio-looking people on the face of the earth. I don’t mean he didn’t look like Fabio the famous male model.⁹ I mean he looked about as Italian as Ed Sheeran.

Fabio was running a super cool and quite powerful Seraphon cavalry list. A block of Aggradons, heaps of Raptadons and a regular ass Slann instead of that overexposed loser Kroak. It was in the Shadowstrike Star Host allowing the Skinks to move d6 inches in the shooting phase which, alongside a run and charge buff, made the whole thing frighteningly quick.

Passing Seasons is the corner to corner mission where you score points on different corners each turn. It’s a tricky bastard to play so I took the unusual step of coming up with a plan more complicated than push shit forward and hope for the best. The bulk of Fab’s output came off the charge so going on the offensive would see my units swamped after knocking over one or two of his hammers. I put my Barrow Knights out to the side objectives to score turn one and pushed nearly everything else into a rough line between terrain in the hopes of encouraging a full send that I could survive to grind his units down.

To my surprise it worked. I lost the Vengorian Lord turn one but only after his rend debuff proved instrumental in allowing Vhrodrai to survive the Aggradon charge. Vhrodrai dominated again, healing from 5 points to full in frighteningly quick time and the Blood Knights proved to be ridiculously tanky. The real star of this show were the Vargheists. At Fabio’s suggestion I put them into his back field and the Bat Gluttons¹⁰ roamed around racking up points and a kill count all game.

The final result was a bit of a massacre but that doesn’t reflect how close I came to getting broken in turn one. Passing Seasons really favors the player taking first turn. You can score max points with a minimal commitment of resources and force your opponent either to divide his forces and be destroyed piecemeal, or come at you full strength and fall behind on points. It’s definitely one to remember when you have the choice of who goes first.

Turn One: Max points, minimal commitment of units

Fabio went on for a solid 3-2 finish. A very respectable result in this sort of field. His games were blow-outs one way or the other so respect to him for running an aggressive list. The Seraphon will be forever tainted by the Mark of Kroak and all the Order Wanker nonsense that goes with it. Traditionally they haven’t had competitive options besides inflicting mortal wound drip misery on their opponents but if you are a lizard fancier, take a leaf out of Fabio’s book and run them like you have a pair. You might be surprised.

Round 3: Sean Tufnell (Gloomspite Gitz), Linked Ley Lines. Victory 70 – 25

It always happens. You are having a perfectly entertaining tournament against fun opponents running interesting lists and then you run into some ass clown playing the Gloomspite Gitz.

Seriously, the army has every conceivable unit you could want at high quality and a price point that seems to indicate that someone at Games Workshop still thinks Squigs are subject to battleshock, and their players still piss and moan like Boomers griping about the paperwork for their ten investment properties. And just like Boomers they kept getting given more stuff. Scourge of Ghyran threw up new Sporesplatta Fanatics: a 70pt unit with 10x Rend 1 Damage D3 attacks that puts out a powerful debuff and walks into combat, even after being rezzed, and Gitz players still manage to carry on like an oppressed minority.¹¹

Ranting aside, Big Sean is a Craichouse Patron and a decent guy despite his Gitz habit. Like far too many Craicheads, Sean is a flaming Destro-Sexual who insists on running Kragnos despite the fact that he is garbage. Seriously, the rest of AOS manages to operate with a 2D6 charge, it’s not that big a deal. The rest of his army was Squigs, things riding Squigs, things buffing Squigs, things herding Squigs and two units of the aforementioned Sporesplatta Fanatics. With so many grossly overtuned, undercosted units on offer I have no idea why you would blow off another 50 Squig Herd to run Kragnos, but Destro-Sexuals will not be told.

This was another game where attacking would see me destroyed piecemeal so I moved my Vamp monsters up behind a screen of Barrow Guard and threw my Blood Knights out on a flank. The intention was to lock Sean in the center and sweep the flank clean with my Blood Knights and Vargheists, and the plan worked more or less as intended.

Admittedly it worked because I rolled a freakish run of saves for Vhordrai who got chiselled down to 2 wounds again. Once again the real star of the show was the Vengorian Lord who bought so much to the table I would never consider running Vhordrai without his side piece.

10x 3+ saves for Vhordrai, no worries. The dice gods hate the Gitz as much as I do.

The game ended in a massacre with Kragnos being lanced into oblivion by the Blood Knights. The big lummox had been unable to get to the vital combats because of his absurd base size and was fittingly run down like a dog. The game was closer than the final scores indicated but this time there would be no expressions of respect for my opponent. Sean is a solid dude but to paraphrase the Iron Sheik:

“Fuck the Gloomspite Gitz”

Besides, Sean had beaten me at SGT the year before so fuck him as well. Late in the game the TO came over to let me know that the VLoZD I was using for Vhrodrai had a base one size too small. I should have noticed, but who looks at a Zombie Dragon and thinks its base is too small?

They were ok with it but I felt pretty bad about running a illegal Vhordrai. Not bad enough to forfeit my wins mind you. Then someone wandered by to let me know I’d been neglecting a to return a model per turn to my Barrow Knight units all day and this proof of my legitimate ignorance cheered me up a bit. Although if I won the whole thing this was going to go down in history as The Illegal Vhordrai Event.

The gang were having some kind of meal for the evening but I was knackered and wandered home to my lodgings stopping only for a Doner Kebab that was more of an Organ Donor Kebab. Who knew that any takeaway could be so unpalatable? Still, learning new things is one of the joys of travel.

Day Two

I fell into an exhausted slumber the night before and woke up at the almost reasonable hour of 5am giving me plenty of time to brood on the day’s match ups. I was on a 3-0 heading to the sharp end of a tournament which is always a good feeling but I couldn’t honestly say I’d played especially well the day before, relying on luck and a solid list to do the work for me. It wasn’t going to fly on the top tables Day 2 and I needed to get some focus.

I checked out early and went to McDonalds for breakfast on the grounds that their indifferent coffee is typically better than the NSW average. I bumped into the Craichead posse from Sydney and we had a happy breakfast discussing AOS, current events and reminding Big Sean just how badly I had beaten him the day before. Pairings came up while we were eating breakfast and I got to the venue well fed, caffeinated and in high spirits.

Round 4: Austin Cranfield (Cities of Sigmar), Bountiful Equinox. Victory 80 – 23

I hadn’t met my round 4 opponent and I wasn’t sure what to expect from a guy whose name sounded like a rejected suitor from an English period romance but Austin was a friendly guy and nothing at all like the tightly wound scion of landed gentry who is too stuffy to accept our heroine’s unconventional free spirit. Judging by his list he was something of an unconventional free spirit himself. Tahlia Vedra, 20 Dark Riders, a bunch of command groups and a Luminark? Not the prophet what’s-her-face and cannons you’d expect on the top tables but the sort of elegantly-crafted Johnny list we don’t see enough of.

Bountiful Equinox has a requirement to hold 3 of 5 spread out objectives to score max points which was a real advantage for me with a much faster army. Austin had little choice but to put his command groups on one objective and spread his cav to the other in the hopes of sweeping to the center. He gave me first turn and my plan was to put my monsters into his command groups and screen his cavalry out of the early battle, prevent him from scoring and destroy his army in parts.

The Boys, slowly sweeping all before them

That’s more or less how it happened except Cities of Sigmar command groups are incredibly resilient and they took forever to beat down. Austin blew off the objective game and came to me to wipe out some units and rack up a few Treasure of Ghyran battle tactics, which was the right play, but the right play only works when the dice don’t fuck you like you owe them money. He was smart enough not to take on a full-health Vhordrai but he needed to put down a Horsey Vampire Lord and a unit of Blood Knights to start his tactics train and what he didn’t whiff miserably, I made ridiculous saves for. The Vampire Lord saw off a charging Tahlia and Callis and Toll’s companions put more into the Blood Knights than ten Dark Riders did.

It was a tough matchup for Austin and I probably would have had the game anyway, but the dice moved it from a close match to a turn 3 tabling. I think I hit every single necessary dice roll in this one. Even the Hand of Nagash was teleporting around terrorizing units. Nonetheless I was outright amazed at how much of a beating the Cities of Sigmar could take. It was like playing a Nurgle army. Austin finished on a very solid 3-2 with an army that is more proof that this GHB is opening up a lot of options outside of 2-drop netlists. Hats off to him for thinking outside the box and doing well with it.

Round 5: Jacob Strachan (Nighthaunt), Life Cycle. Defeat 41 -50

Lunch was a nervous affair. I’ve been in a few top table showdowns over the years but there is always something about trying to push that 4-0 to the magical 5-0 that still puts butterflies in my stomach. Sitting around chatting with the boys, watching the other results roll in, reading your opponent’s list and trying to figure out what the fuck it all does. It’s part of the magic of tournaments that can’t be replicated anywhere else.

I knew I was in for a tough time when I drew Jacob and his Nighthaunt. Jacob is one of Australia’s top players with an A-tier competitive list. SOG Kurdoss, SOG Black Coach, jazzed up Lord Executioner, Myrmouns and Banshees. Some people would argue that Bladegheists are better but whatever, they were all Nighthaunt and they were all fucked. While I’m on the subject can I just remark on what a crapshoot Scourge of Ghyran was. They either show up in everything or you can’t remember what the model was.

Forgot to take pics Day 2 dammit. This is the morning session

I’d played Jacob a few times by now¹² and found him to be one of the more enjoyable opponents in the top tier. Competitive without the need to get Swedish about everything, and today’s game was another close one. I was given first turn and tried to take an early lead but couldn’t push a unit of poxy Pyregheists away thanks to a lucky run of invulnerable saves. I dropped some points and spent the rest of the game on the back foot.

Jacob came forward, locked my army in with the intention of breaking it into pieces but the boys held up surprisingly well yet again. Vhordrai dug in, healed up but I was unable to punch enough damage through their goddam invulnerable saves and the Coach in particular was able to heal up to full health on several occasions in a manner that would have delighted all those opponents who had suffered through my own healing Vhrodrai all weekend.

It was a tight game and we both managed to pull some impressive maneuvers out of our respective bags of tricks but I never really caught up after that initial first turn fiasco. I had some absurd outside chance to bring it home with a plan for a 15-point final turn (requiring a 6 on a run roll and Vhordrai putting down the Black Coach) but it was always a long shot and Jacob came away a well-deserved winner, leaving us both on 4-1 for the event.

The Wrap Up

Jasper Rowley won the thing with as the only 5-0 with his Skaven beating Christian Bugg’s Nighthaunt on the top tables. None other than the Coach himself, Anthony Magro, snuck into 3rd place with his Daughters of Khaine proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are due for a nerf. I was pretty content with fourth place.

They also raffled off a Gloomspite Gitz Wolfrider box to raise money for the Black Dog Institute. Ticket sales smashed expectations and the thing was won by your humble correspondent.

I had a lengthy internal debate about abandoning the box in the carpark or waiting until I was out of town before I threw it in the trash where the Gitz belong. In the end I kept it, it might be worth something to somebody some day and it is indisputable proof that I once did something for charity.

Other than that it was time to pack up, shake a whole bunch of hands and go back to boring ass regular life. Bathurst was a fantastic event. Players, venue, tables, organization all top class and I can’t recommend it highly enough. For all the doom and gloom talk about player population it’s worth remembering that the overall standard of events is damn high and we still have the best player base in wargaming, if the 40k stories that I continually hear are anything to go by.

I was very happy with my result particularly as I hadn’t played any games with the SBGL in 4th Ed. The army was way tougher than I thought and I was pleasantly surprised to discover the things I thought were garbage (endless spells and terrain) were actually damn useful. Score one for the gang at GW. With that oddly cheerful thought in mind there was nothing more to do but point the War Wagon towards the metaphorical sunset¹³ and start the long journey home. See you all at the next one.

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1. Le Mans, Monaco, Roland Garrick, one of those. ↩︎
2. It’s a long story but I’ll put something out once I’ve calmed down a bit. ↩︎
3. Pete A writes: For avoidance of doubt, this insane opinion is Pat’s alone and not shared by the rest of the PC writing team. The rest of us have written plenty about exactly how and why it was broken, and we fully appreciate that the 77% win rate would tend to support that thesis.
   Indeed, the main reason I added those purple Biography strips at the start of every article was to make it abundantly clear who was behind some of the wilder takes that we publish on here, as well as to showcase my passion for graphic design of course.
   Plus it lets us use our own headshots as a thirst trap. I’m a Bendigo 7 and a Sydney 10. I’ll hand you back to Pat now. ~Pete ↩︎
4. I do agree with tougher restrictions on proxying models for the list. No one wants to see 10 of the legit new mopey Deathbringer models in a list but painting a red stripe on 10 of your Chosen won’t cut it. Make some effort people. ↩︎
5. I had other armies but once a few of your factions have moved on from the index, it’s hard to go back. ↩︎
6. Australian Historic meaning 150 years old, not William the Conqueror took a dump here on the way to the Battle of Hastings. ↩︎
7. Returned Serviceman’s Leagues, sort of like the American VFW or the Canadian Legion but for some reason grown massive and influential with the proceeds of poker machine gambling (aka slots for non Australians, its a strange country sometimes). ↩︎
8. His only death for the weekend btw. ↩︎
9. Who appears to be receding from public knowledge, much to AOS Fabio’s relief. ↩︎
10. Output and price of a unit of Gluttons, mobility of Fell Bats. ↩︎
11. Gitz players will always point to their low win rate when you have these sort of discussions. Fellas if you can’t do better than 50% with Squig Herd in your tool kit, it’s a skill issue. ↩︎
12. And lost every damn time ↩︎
13. I was actually heading South East. ↩︎