Warhammer World AoS matched play event report
This blog will cover how I got on at the recent AoS matched play event at Warhammer World. It was my first tournament with Slaves to Darkness, after playing probably 5-10 practice games with them; and also my first event of the GHB 22/23 season 2.
My list
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| My Slaves to Darkness army (including several units that didn't make it into the list for this event). |
The general idea of the list is that the Chosen are the main hammer unit, and the Slaanesh mark gives them boosts to run and charge, and the ability to run and charge in the same turn for a command point. The warshrine can give them a 3d6 charge if it gets a prayer off successfully, giving them the potential to get into combat turn 1.
The Lord on Karkadrak and the Chaos Knight provide other fast moving threats, while the Chaos Warriors are very tanky and can be used to hold key objectives, or as a very reliable screen with potential to do a fair amount of damage back (especially if helped by Curse from the Chaos Warshrine). The Furies are there to screen and grab objectives, and the small heroes are there to do Galletian Champion things (and cast spells).
I decided against taking a battle regiment in favour of the Galletian Veterans battalion to let the Chaos Warriors fight in two ranks, and a Warlord for an extra artefact and command point. I’m still undecided as to whether that was a good choice or not, I don’t think I’m very good at deciding whether to take first turn so maybe I’m better off without it.
I went into the event thinking that the chaos warriors were probably the weak point of the list and I should potentially drop them to a unit of ten to free up points for five more knights (once I’ve painted five more knights). We’ll return to this thought at the end of the blog.
Event format
The event was a standard five games over two days format, we found out the scenarios a few days in advance but I didn’t make any changes to my list on the basis of that. I think there were three I’d played previously and two that I hadn’t.
Aims going in
As this was a new army for me I had fairly low expectations, I wanted to go at least 2-3. I also thought that it was possible I might get in the mix for a best army nomination, though as it turned out the hobby standard of the event was extremely high so I gave up any realistic hope of that after seeing the competition.
Game 1: Prize of Gallet vs Ironjawz (Jack)
Prize of Gallet was the standout scenario from the last GHB that’s returned in this one, so I’d played it several times. The gist is that there are five objectives, but they start inactive and the person who goes second in each battleround gets to choose one to activate.
My opponent was running Ironjawz with a mawkrusha, megaboss on foot, two warchanters, ten brutes, two units of five arrdboyz, and two units of six goregruntas. He gave me the first turn, which I was expecting given the scenario, and turned on the objective on the left flank (where I had my knights, and he had his brutes, some arrdboyz, and his foot megaboss).
I was too far away to be able to be aggressive turn 1, so I grabbed an easy Cunning Manoevre battle tactic with my tunnel master hero, and didn’t do much else except move the furies up into the middle of the board to turn off the potential for hero phase moves from the mawkrusha and one unit of goregruntas (Ironjawz have a command ability that lets them move in the hero phase, but only if they are more than 12 inches away, otherwise they can only try to charge. At least I think that’s how it works!)
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| My Furies are not at all alarmed at how much I am hanging them out to dry here |
He gave me the turn going into the second battleround, and I made the decision not to try to score the objectives (which would have left me quite exposed) but to focus on wiping out his brutes, which I did by bringing the Chosen over onto the left flank. He then went for Eye for an Eye as his battle tactic, but failed it as his Aardboyz didn’t do enough damage against my Furies. So we went into round 3 with him one point ahead, and most of the main threat pieces still alive.
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| This is the board state at the end of my turn 2. The brutes on the far left are dead. |
I won priority on round 3 and took it, and used the turn to wipe out his remaining stuff on the left flank with the Chosen, including killing the foot megaboss who was his general. I also moved the chaos warriors up into the middle on the right. My opponent then had a pretty disastrous third turn, he charged the Chosen with a unit of Goregruntas but the Chosen were able to wipe out the pigs, while his mawkrusha and other pigs charged my chaos warriors, but didn’t do much damage. The Chaos Warriors are -1 to wound and reduce the rend of units targeting them, so they can be very hard to kill.
The rest of the game was continuing to work through the big fight on the right flank, while grabbing objectives with the rest of my army. It worked out as a narrow three point win for me.
This ended up being my favourite game of the event, it was quite tactical and cagey (more so than I had expected against Ironjawz), and my opponent was a really nice guy who was very much on the same page as me in terms of how we wanted to play the game. I was surprised at how resilient the chaos warriors proved, but my MVP unit were probably the furies who did a fantastic job of screening and being annoying. In hindsight I think my opponent should probably have been more aggressive with his key pieces earlier, but then that would have potentially set up countercharge opportunities for the Chosen so there would certainly have been risks to it. I was very happy to go into the afternoon with a win under my belt.
Game 2: Only the Worthy vs Stormcast (Mark)
This was a nice mixed Stormcast list with 2 Stormdrake Guard, 4 Fulminators, some Vindictors, some Retributors, two units of Annihilators (one with hammers, one with shields), a Knight Incantor, Knight Azyros, and Lord Imperatant.
He gave me first turn and I moved up, I could potentially have gone for a long bomb charge with the Chosen but it would have left them alone and very exposed, so I decided against it. On his turn he killed my knights with the Fulminators and a unit of Annihilators, the dragons charged my block of chaos warriors and largely bounced off.
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| My chaos warriors did a good job of holding off and slowly killing these Stormdrake Guard |
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| My army moving forward for battle, before it all went wrong |
This was probably the game where I most rued the lack of a battle regiment, being able to have made him go first would have helped a lot as I could probably then have done some damage on turn 1, and I wouldn;t have had the risk of being doubled into turn 2. I also really felt the lack of high rend in my army, almost everything is rend 1, and against 3+ saves that doesn’t go very far once you throw all out defence and/or mystic shield into the mix.
Game 3: Ours for the Taking vs Slaves to Darkness (Rob)
For game 3 I was up against a Slaves to Darkness mirror, it was a Ravagers list with 20 chaos warriors, two units of five knights, twenty marauders, a bunch of cultists and Underworlds warbands, Lord on Karkadrak, and the Darkoath Chieftain and Darkoath Warqueen.
Ours for the Taking has three objectives: you get a home objective in your territory on the right, your opponent’s home objective to try to capture on the left, and then a centre objective which is worth extra points if you hold it with a Gallketian Champion. It also has a weird deployment zone where on the flanks you can start only 11 inches apart.
I deployed aggressively with my Chosen as close as possible to his home objective, and left my Warriors to guard my own home objective, opposite his knights and Karkadrak. That didn’t leave much for me in the centre, but I was hoping the Chosen could wrap up on the left and then swing across.
My opponent took the first turn, going for board control, and played very aggressively, charging his knights and Karkadrak into my Chaos Warriors, and charging the Chosen with his marauders. I was pretty happy with this, and did much more damage to him than he did to me - the marauders were wiped out, and the knights largely bounced off the chaos warriors. On my turn I cleared out almost everything on the left except for one small hero, and the chaos warriors were slowly making inroads into his knights.
Round two was largely a continuation of the same, the Chaos Warriors finished off one of his units of knights. I charged my Chosen into his unit of Chaos Warriors in the centre, which turned out to be a mistake as they struggled to land much damage but took some in return. I was able to take a small lead on points, though he was getting a bonus point from holding the centre with a Galletian Champion which kept him in it.
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| I eventually lost this big fight in the middle, but was able to outscore him on the flank objectives |
For round three, my Chosen continued the big scrap in the middle with his chaos warriors (which continued to not go very well), while in the other big fight over on the right, I took out his Karkadrak leaving just one unit of knights to fight through. He brought back ten marauders near his home objective which was only being held by my badly hurt Lord on Karkadrak, which was a worry for me. I won priority into four and took it to make sure I could keep his home objective, and the Karkadrak took out all the marauders. In the centre I retreated the Chosen out of combat hoping to get off a lucky rally, but only one came back. He then made what I think was probably a mistake by charging back into the Chosen in the centre with everything he could including his small heroes, which let me kill them and reduced his scoring potential. We ran out of time at this point as the big tar pit fights had slowed things down a lot, but we talked through turn 5 and agreed that it would come out as a win for me, 28-20.
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| My chaos warriors killed two units of chaos knights and a lord on karkadrak over the course of the game to defend my home objective |
I’ve noticed writing this that I’ve not mentioned the Warshrine at all so far: during the whole of day one it didn’t have much luck with prayers. But its 6+ ward bubble was handy, and it did a bit of work in combat in the centre in the last game, so it wasn’t a complete failure.
Going into day 2 I was 2-1, which was the best I could have realistically hoped for, and I felt set me up with a good chance of going 3-2 for the event.
Game 4: Position Over Power vs Kharadron Overlords (William)
Positions Over Power has two flank objectives that disappear after round 3, and then one objective in the middle of each player’s territory. It’s not a bad scenario for KO because they have the mobility to get to the flank objectives easily.
My opponent was running Barak Zilfin with an Ironclad, a frigate, two units of ten thunderers, two units of arkanauts, an admiral, a navigator, an endrinmaster, and two khemists.
I had choice of first turn for once and chose to take it, my logic was that if I didn’t it would give him a chance to put a boat on each flank objective and I wouldn’t be able to threaten them. But in hindsight I think that was a mistake, I should have let him go first and then deployed the Chosen so that they would be able to threaten one of the flanks and take out whatever he put there. Conventional wisdom vs KO is to make them go first to avoid the possibility of getting doubled, and I should have followed that.
I ran the Furies and my tunnelmaster Chaos Sorcerer Lord onto one flank objective and my knights onto the other, and threw the Chosen forward. I tried to get a long bomb charge off with them, but despite having a 3D6 charge they rolled something like a 7 and couldn’t get far enough.
On my opponent’s first turn he killed the furies and Chaos Sorcerer Lord to take one of the flank objectives, and did some damage to the Chosen with the rest of his shooting.
By the end of my turn 2 I’d pretty much killed all his Arkanauts, and all the rest of the duardin were flying around in the two boats. At this point the challenge was whether I could survive long enough to outscore him, and whether I could get all my battle tactics. I didn’t think that the Chosen would have had much chance of taking out the Ironclad, since he was whittling down their numbers very quickly, and a charge would have meant moving off the objective which I didn’t want to do. I would have happily charged the frigate had an opportunity arisen, but he sensibly kept it far enough away that I couldn't do so without abandoning the objective.
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| My chaos knights needed two turns to wipe out this unit of valiant arkanauts |
The Chosen got shot at repeatedly and eventually succumbed to this gunline
I definitely made mistakes in this game: I don’t think I should have taken first turn, and I should have tried harder to leave an easy battle tactic available for the last turn. There was also a potentially significant rules mistake in that neither of us realised that the KO Admiral ability to give bonus rend for a turn couldn’t be given to the Ironclad, but I don’t remember the specifics of what happened that turn enough to know if that would have changed anything. I did have some luck on my slide too, particularly a turn when I managed to rally back something like 5 out of 9 dead Chosen, which kept them around for a turn longer than they probably should have survived.
Game 5: Jaws of Gallet vs Slaves to Darkness (Liam)
My second Slaves to Darkness mirror match of the weekend, against another Hosts of the Everchosen army. We both had the same core of a unit of ten Chosen and a unit of ten Chaos Warriors, but he had a lot more chaff than I did including three units of Furies and some Untamed Beasts, and a cockatrice, which I was pretty scared of as it can debuff a unit to only hit on 6s in a combat phase. He also had a Gaunt Summoner, which did a lot of work nullifying my magic - I got very few spells off in the game.
This was my first time playing Jaws of Gallet and I liked it a lot, it’s sort of the opposite of Prize of Gallet in that you start with five objectives and then remove one per turn from the second round onwards.
Having experienced how much my Chosen had struggled against Chaos Warriors earlier, my game plan was to try to bog his Chosen down with my Chaos Warriors, and avoid mine having to fight his. So I set the Chaos Warriors up on my left flank facing off against his Chosen. I messed up deploying my Chosen though and they ended up in the centre of my L shaped deployment, meaning they were quite far out of the action initially.
He outdropped me and went first, moving up onto objectives. I’m not sure that was necessarily the right choice, as it gave me an early opportunity to clear out some chaff, which I did, taking out some Raptoryxes with my chaos warriors on the left, and Untamed Beasts with my Karkadrak on the right. At the end of my turn 1 I was holding four out of five objectives, which set me up well for round 2.
I won priority into round 2 and took the double turn, and he chose to remove the only objective he was holding. I think the intention was to free up his Chaos Warriors to move forwards, but we agreed after the game that it had been a mistake on his part, as it gave me the upper hand with objective scoring for the rest of the game. I charged my Knights into his Gaunt Summoner, but he had the Fuelled by Ghurish Rage enhancement and came back to life, which was very annoying as I didn’t get near him again for the test of the game. I tried to charge my Chosen into his but they failed another 3D6 charge, leaving them sitting around not doing much. On his turn, his Chosen got into combat with my chaos warriors on the top left objective.
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| I didn't take any photos of this game because we were tight on time and I was very tired. Imagine lots of chaos warriors being very tanky and you'll have a good idea of how it went down |
It came out as a narrow win for me due to getting slowly ahead on objective scoring. I can;t say I find the mirror match a hugely fun one as it tends to end up with long and grindy fights, but I was very pleased to get another win and finish 3&2. Overall I came 22nd out of 74.
Takeaways
Generally I was pretty happy with how I did, I felt like I played pretty well, had a good grasp on my rules, and didn’t make too many mistakes.
In terms of the list:
I didn’t really manage to make use of the Chosen’s speed which was a little disappointing, but that was at least partly due to the match ups I had, so I’m not writing off the Chosen/warshrine combo just yet.
The Chaos Warriors were my MVP unit, they did huge amounts of work in every game. However, they are quite a defensive unit, and judging by Slaves to Darkness lists I’ve seen do well, there’s a case for dropping them and going very heavily aggressive and fast with a unit of ten knights and some Varanguard. That’s a very different army to mine though, so I’ll stick with something closer to what I already have for a bit I think.
The lack of rend 2 really hurts against armies with good saves. The obvious change to make there would be to add some Varanguard, or possibly a larger unit of knights (who can be rend 2 on the charge), but I really wasn’t convinced by how the knights did. Alternatively I can simply roll a 6 for the Chosen on their start of game Eye of the Gods roll, which didn;t happen at all over this event.
In terms of more minor changes, I’d swap round the artifacts a bit so that Conqueror’s Crown is on the non-tunnelmaster Chaos Sorcerer Lord (who is more likely to survive for longer), and I’d take the Chaos Sorcerer Lords as mark of Nurgle or Slaanesh rather than Tzeentch. I had vague thoughts of using the Tzeentch spell to teleport one to the other for battle tactic scoring purposes, but the timing just doesn’t work out to make it useful.
I probably will experiment with taking a battle regiment and seeing how being lower drops works out for me.
My army was 1985 points and I got a triumph in four out of five games, it was definitely worth the trade-off of taking the Exalted Hero instead of a Chaos Lord which would have put me at bang on 2000 points.
More generally:
I think I’d under-estimated the Slaves to Darkness battle tactics before, while there’s nothing that’s guaranteed to be super easy there are quite a few that are very achievable in the right situations. But I need to get better at planning out in advance what I might do when.
I enjoyed all of the scenarios we played, which was a relief as that was one of the parts of the GHB I was least convinced by.
My most commonly forgotten rule was the GHB command ability, which is potentially pretty useful for both Chosen and Chaos Warriors, but I need to remember to do at the start of the combat phase rather than only remembering when I come to fight with the unit in question.
I bought a bunch of new tokens and measuring rulers before the event and was very glad I had done: the rulers in particular were great for making me confident I was being precise with movement. Movement trays for the Chaos Warriors are next on the list of accessories to pick up, I need to do everything I can to make the game flow quickly as big grindy fights are pretty likely with my army.
Overall I had a very fun time, and would definitely go another AoS matched play event at Warhammer World. I enjoyed all the games, and my opponents were lovely. I’m pleased to have gone 3-2 with a new army, and definitely feel like I learned a lot about how to use them.
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