A church house, gin house
A school house, outhouse
On Highway Number Nineteen
The people keep the city clean

I can honestly say that Bush Bash last weekend was the best day’s Warhammer I’ve had in years. King Brodd’s Stomp felt great: your games are exciting and it’s got a lot of play. Earlier this week I rattled through the list and how it goes about business, with a profile for each Giant and some hobbying notes too:

3-0 with King Brodd’s Stomp: The List

Today I’ll run through each of my games with a short-format Batrep. I’ve tried to capture the flow of the game, where it was won and lost, and a couple of key moments from each. Then we’ll take a look some other cool stuff that was happening at the event, including the winning list.

Here’s my own list, as a quick reminder:

Ready? Let’s go.

Round 1: Luke Doman, Sons of Behemat (Noxious Nexus)

They say “never meet your heroes”, but Luke flatly ignored that advice by grudging me in Round 1. Luke’s an unstoppable sex machine with 4 kids and counting, so being at home a lot has given him ample time to work his ass off on this beautiful Greek Gods project, with each Mega Gargant representing a specific member of the pantheon (Zeus, Hades and Poseidon).

As you can see, Luke’s Kragnos was Hellboy-themed, complete with sawn-off horns:

Luke deservedly won Coolest Army at the event, and we have a profile of the army with a few more photos right here.

This was set up for a really interesting matchup: standard Sons allegiance has quite a bit of anti-Monster tech, including the ability to Suplex me off objectives. Add in the Beast-smasher Gargants and the Kingslaughter Cowl, and you had a whole stack of anti-Monster and anti-Hero tech playing into my entire army of Monster Heroes. Yay!

On the flipside, I had the toughest Mega (Brodd) whereas Luke had the softest one (Kragnos), and KBS packs a face-melting barrage of Mortals and stacked attacks. Should be a good un!

Both armies were two drops and I think we both wanted to react to how the other person developed their board position. Luke won the roll off and put me in to bat – I decided to split my Megas into two pairs, sending the Gatebreakers up north while Brodd and the Slim Jim headed across to the left:

My rough plan was that if Luke tried to stack up one side and dogpile that pair of Megas, I would definitely lose both, but hopefully take one opposing model down with me and rack up a VP lead while it’s happening. Then I’d still have two Megas going into three (which is not a lost cause) with a points lead to defend. Whenever I had the choice of where to direct my output I would chuck the kitchen sink at Kragnos, because he’s the easiest one to kill with the highest damage output, and accordingly I was piffing rocks in his direction at every opportunity.

Luke duly responded by overloading one side. He sent Kragnos and both Beast-smashers off towards Brodd and Slim Jim, and just the one Kraken-eater (Poseidon) to hold up my Gatebreakers:

So the first round was mostly jostling for position, and then suddenly it all kicked off. The Gatebreakers smacked the tar out of Poseidon, as I suffered the abject terror of facing down a Kragnos charge with my Monsters.

Luckily, having played my fair share of Kragnos, I knew exactly what counterplay was required: just mention The Number Seven, and you will duly summon it.

And here’s how it went down:

• Luke picks up two dice
• “Don’t roll a 7 mate”
• “Shut the fuck up and don’t jinx me”
• “Sorry mate, I just had a vision of you rolling a 5 and a 2”
• Luke rolls a 5 and a 2

See what I mean? Counterplay.

We had a proper tussle down that left hand side: I was using the Warstomper to soak up damage from Brodd and keep the Big Dog near full health, to keep belting out those Damage 5 attacks and denying Intercept and Recover. One really neat moment came when Luke Suplexed my Warstomper away from Brodd to remove the Ward, and Luke did eventually bring them both down, but not before they busted up one Beast-smasher and left Kraggy bleeding heavily.

I’d been pumping the Rampage mortals into Kraggalicious who staggered away from the fight with 4 Health remaining. Kaman-Hul spotted his opportunity and flung a rock with Covering Fire – it hits, it wounds, it cuts straight through the armour save. Luke rolls zero 5++ wards on four dice, and that is the end of the line for old Donkey Dick. TAKE IT OFF!

We’ve now ended up with both of my Gatebreakers into one Beast-smasher, and that wasn’t a fight that Luke could win. Kaman-Hul and Cousin Eddie duly made their way across to Luke’s home objective, chucking various rocks along the way, and down goes Luke’s last model. That’s GG – off to the bar.

Result: Major Win to King Brodd’s Stomp, 1-0

Round 2: Corey Beilharz, Tzeentch (Roiling Roots)

Where have you been, buddy? I used to see Corey B all the time, but we worked out that we haven’t rolled dice together in the 2020s (!). Long overdue.

Corey won the roll off, and put me in first. Corey had a couple of units of Jade Obelisks in his army: any time you see multiples of the same Warband in a list, alarm bells start to ring¹, and you know that they at least have a useful role to play.

So I was interested to see what Jade Obelisks could do: they are not broken in any way, just a major pest for their points cost with an Ethereal save. They’re a nice cheap unit you can dump on an objective early – you might even get lucky and tank a combat unit that you have no business tanking. That didn’t happen here though, and the constant pulse of mortals plus the small handful of multi-damage attacks that did go through were enough to see them off. They’re a handy little unit nonetheless.

Corey spread out fairly evenly while I split my army in a similar way to last time: sending the Super Smash Bros (two Gatebreakers) off to the right, while King Brodd and Slim Jim headed left. This mission wants you to capture objectives in pairs and I managed to achieve that early. Corey responded by effectively re-racking his army: sending just one unit of Jades to annoy the Gatebreakers, leaving 20 Acolytes on his home base, and repivoting all of his Tzaangor damage units over to the opposite flank, ready to dogpile King Brodd and Slim Jim.

Tzeentch is lacking damage spells but don’t feel too sad for them: they have a spell that gives them a full Mulligan on their Destiny Dice, but they get to keep the 6s. Corey cast this early and duly rerolled a bunch of 2s and 3s into a bunch of 5s and 6s, and then never had to fail an 11″ charge for the whole game. So that was nice for him.

The two of us settled into a pattern of talking shit, forgotten buffs, forgotten debuffs, take-backs, “I should haves” and “Do you mind if I justs”, but amidst the slack play from both sides Corey did shine through with some good technical placement of his models in combat to cause me maximum irritation.

Corey’s second unit of Jade Obelisks were fed into the blender while the Tzaangors got ready to counterpunch and the Skyfires floated around, pinging flaming-blue arrows into my lads. Tzaangors with the debuff spell on them (Neg 1 to hit and a 5+ Ward) are a pain in the ass, doubly so when they keep replacing models, so I made use of my rock-chucking Rampage to harrass Corey’s Wizards and shut down the Tzaangor Replacement Factory. Those Wizards had to be positioned somewhat out in the open to help the Tzaangors, and as such I could fling terrain right over the Tzaangors’ heads and into their bosses’ stupid bird-faces.

So I’m winning the lopsided fight on the right hand side pretty handsomely, and slowly losing the fight on the left, as the VPs rack up in my favour. There’s a handful of Acolytes bogging down Kaman-Hul at the top of the board, and on their turn they retreat from him onto the far edge of their home objective (with 2 of the 3 surviving), so that if Kaman-Hul wants to move across and help King Brodd he’ll have to forfeit the back objective entirely:

This is where it’s great to have that extra output outside of the combat phase, and why I really value Gatebreakers and King Brodd’s Stomp. Remembering that I do currently hold that top objective, and will only lose it if the Acolytes are still there at the end of my turn, Kaman-Hul and Cousin Eddie more over towards the scrum on the left to lend a hand, and to lock the fighting over there while I passively score the whole right hand side of the board. All I need to do is shoot those last couple of pricks off on my way past, and I’m golden.

I’ve got three attempts at the drive-by. Let’s not mess around, and just get it done and out of the way: All Out Attack on the first shooting attack, putting me on 2s and 2s. He hits, and now it’s the hardest roll in the game: 2+ to wound on 1 dice.

It misses.

OK, still two attempts left. The next Gatebreaker shoots, hitting on 3s this time, and hits again. A second crack at the hardest roll in the game, gimme that 2+.

It misses.

What is it with these Acolytes? They keep getting hit with massive boulders and it doesn’t hurt them. Perhaps there is a god, but it turns out he’s blue and covered in feathers.

Still one last chance with the KBS terrain-hucking Rampage, one dice looking for a 3+ to pop them. He hits the 3 and splatters the twats. Cop. That!

So the Gatebreakers were able to shore up that left hand side and keep the fighting over there. This game went all the way to the 5th round but by then I did have enough VPs to close it out. Cousin Eddie celebrated by doing the Hillbilly Smash into a unit of Tzaangors, and he punched through 17 mortals² in celebration of a win for the lads and great game against an old friend.

Result: Major Win to King Brodd’s Stomp, 2-0

Round 3: Daniel Trotter, FEC (The Liferoots)

I’ve had a few good games against Dan over the years and always managed to come out on top through various combinations of key rolls going my way, Dan receiving emergency phone calls mid-game and my beloved Big Waaagh having utterly bent rules. Could I extend the streak?

I was certainly happy when I saw that the mission (which I still hadn’t played before) had only two objectives. Sounds like a pretty good start for Megas, right?

Well I’d completely misunderstood the mission setup: specifically I hadn’t twigged that it’s long, not wide. So I couldn’t just plonk two Megas on each objective and relax, because we’d have to go through each other to get there.

And how did we go about it? Well it’s two combat armies in a narrow corridor with the objectives at either end of it, what do you think was going to happen?

Dan did a great job of summarising the core principles of his list: giving me the “Need to know” info, not swamping me in a torrent of minutiae. It helped a lot. The gist of it is that everything gets charge bonuses, and he was also packing a dizzying array of extra attacks on the Terrorgheist.

Dan started out scoring a little higher than me, because he had scrips and scraps of stuff to cap more terrain pieces. Otherwise we both shuffled around a bit. Dan sent his Morbhegs in early and my Rampages really came to the fore: I hucked some terrain at them, smashed some more terrain in the combat phase, stamped on them and Badda Bing, I’d killed a bunch of 4-wound models before we even started swinging arms.

It was a good illustration of how attack really is the best form of defence in King Brodd’s Stomp: you have a few ways to take a bite out of a hammer unit while it’s on the way in, and that can make all the difference between them one-shotting you, and them just doing a bit of damage then getting picked up on the clap-back. Which is what happened here.

For the third game in a row I had lost the roll off and been made to go first. For the third game in a row I won Prio and gave away the double early, to get it out of the way.

Dan sent that TG rocketing up my anus, and it was a fearsome sight indeed. He was getting extra Companion attacks from heroic traits, battle traits, battle formations, because he’s playing FEC, because it’s a Saturday, because Geelong beat Collingwood, once a game, once a phase, once in a lifetime opportunity. In the end the fucker picked up a full Kunnin Rukk’s worth of dice in his two massive hands, each of them multiple damage with Crit Mortal.

I reckon everyone wants a Monster like that in their favourite army. It doesn’t even have to be tough, just terrifying: the sort of thing you can build a list around, that can go off on its own and create stories for you.

Colby, after givin' me ball here, I do this...this, this, goal.  Easy.

Anyway. Crit Mortal is only as good as your dice, and Trotter’s….weren’t great. He rolled about as bad as a man could possibly roll and still put about 32 damage onto Kaman-Hul.

The combat was really kicking off all around the board as Dan kept leveraging his extra units to score terrain and outscore me by 2 VPs per round. I was quietly impressed by his Crypt Ghouls: 20 models for 160 points isn’t super-cheap, but they’re a cut above outright chaff. They had a pip of rend and one unit with little support put 15 damage into Slim Jim with one swing – I reckon you’d be pretty happy with them.

Heading into Round 4, Dan had established a moderate VP lead, and I won a Prio for the chance to double him back: taking it would give me the chance to pick up his last hammer (reinforced Crypt Horrors), but it would mean I couldn’t score any BTs that round while I already had a deficit to make up. Adding to the complexity was that the only Mega-Gargant who could reach the Horrors (Slim Jim) was also the only one who could reach Dan’s home objective. So if I did take the double, not only would I be giving up on Tactics, but I wouldn’t be taking his home objective either.

What really added to the complexity of this decision was that I was on my 3rd or 4th beer so I took ages to do the maths, and Dan’s patience while I did so was commendable. The beauty of playing Megas is that we had plenty of time left on the clock, and eventually I figured out that I could afford to spend one turn kicking the crap out of his army – crucially, lifting that last hammer unit of Crypt Horrors – and setting myself up for a 20-point turn in Round 5 while limiting what Dan could score in reply.

Where it really came together was that leaving Dan’s home objective until Round 5 (while I went off to fight Crypt Horrors instead) ended up working fine for me. Scoring it for one extra round was only worth 3 more VPs, but by capping it in Round 5 (when I could score BTs again) meant I could have a 20-point round, which had been hard to come by for both players. There’s generally not a lot you can do around capturing objectives when there’s only one other on the board, and your opponent’s entire army is camped on top of it.

So that’s what we did! Slim Jim strutted over to the Crypt Horrors and stoved their heads in, then in the next round Moonwalked back onto Dan’s home base for a Lay-down Misère. 20 points put the game out of reach and that’s another famous victory for me against Dan – add it to the list 😛

Result: Major Win to King Brodd’s Stomp, 3-0

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

Overnight I was sitting pretty, ready to take on Hakan and his OBR:

But I’ve been really struggling to enjoy Day 2 at events over the last year or so. I’ve been having a great time on Day 1 and the Saturday night, and then I wake up on Day 2 and would rather be anywhere else in the world, regardless of how my games have been going. After working all week I just struggle to spend the entire weekend playing Warhammer and then head straight back in to work on the Monday. I wanted to get outdoors on this beautiful Australia spring day, and I wasn’t OK with not seeing the family all weekend, so I bailed on the event.

I took the opportunity to wander around the gaming hall for a bit on the Sunday morning – catching up with Joel Graham, hearing Binny’s stories from his adventures with 9x Thundertusks – and then I went home to see the girls and take my little pal for a long walk.

I’m gonna have to figure something out like maybe taking the Monday off work next time, because 2-day events just aren’t working for me right now, but I can honestly say that the Saturday was one of the best days of Warhammer I’ve had in years. Every game was exciting and memorable and the Saturday night out with the Sunbury boys and the Crow-eaters was a classic.

Final Standings

So I won all my games and finished up 3-0 at the end of Day One, then pulled the pin. All of my opponents were experienced players with a bunch of 4-1s and 5-0s behind them, so I’m happy to take this as proof of concept for the list.

There were plenty of big names at the top of the final ladder for the event, with 3 of the 5 having representative honours for Team Australia:

The Winner: Mark Nodge

Another big W for Nodge, who kept alive SA’s proud tradition of travelling to other states and scooping their GTs. Bravo Nodge 👏

I’m sure we’re all equally pleased to see Kroak picking up another 5-0 too, the slimy bastard.

Coolest Army

I already mentioned that my first opponent, Luke Doman won this one with his heavily-stylised Greek Gods army. But if I’m ever going to get sick of looking at it, that hasn’t happened yet:

An amazing army to behold.

Best Opponent: Gene Mills

I tried to steal a photo from Gene’s Facebook, but every picture either has his kids in there, or is a posed glamour shot where he’s barely recognisable. Gene’s a hardcore Gloomspite fanatic from Geelong’s famous Lost Legion club, well-known around VIC for his renegade lists. He’s also a beautiful person and it’s no surprise to see him pick up this award.

Looks nothing like his Tinder pic, though.

Nicest Big Waaagh list

Not an official prize, but I just thought it was fun to see Big Waaagh back at the event. Daniel’s a top Orruks player and steered this list to a good 3-2 result:

I believe Daniel’s intention is to ditch the Ardboyz and go harder on the Brutes next time – looking forward to seeing what you cook up mate.

Coolest List: Stephen Binek

Another unofficial one, but shouldn’t this be a thing? Too subjective, I hear ya, but I challenge anyone to take a look at this list without breaking into a smile.

I caught up with Binny on Day 2 and he was well on his way to the wooden spoon at that point, with zero fucks given. He’d set himself the challenge of doing 30+ damage with Punches and Kicks attacks over the weekend, and already beaten that by the end of Day 1, and he was having an absolute blast.

Quote of the Weekend

Josh Clarke: “Come on Pat, just have some fun”.

Pat Nevan: “Nope, I don’t do fun”.

Final Thoughts

Well I’ll just leave you with this. I’ve been to 200+ player events, and I’ve been to events with eye-catching prizes, and they’re all great. But I wouldn’t swap any of them for an event where Joel McGrath and Adam Williamson are doing the Nutbush in a Bendigo pub at 1am.

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1. Hello Kruleboyz Monsta-killaz ↩︎
2. Two 6s, one 4 and one 1. Doink! ↩︎

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_Night_and_Sunday_Morning_(film)