Heresy & Heroes

I heard a funny story from a friend of mine the other day. He’s a Tyranid player but is accepting of his lot in the game at the moment. Ask any Nids player and they’ll tell you that, on the tabletop, the faction sucks. I personally can’t speak to that, having not played against a Tyranid army since I think 6th edition, but I can believe it. I never hear anyone talking about how hot Tyranids are in the meta, so I’m happy to go along with their lack of winning options. But my friend told me a tale of the one list that has performed well in the last few years, making it to the heady heights of 3rd (please be aware that there’s some grape-vining going on here so I may not get details like that exactly right, and there might be some scuttlebutt in here but if it’s not exactly true, it’s a pleasant and believable fiction so we can ride with it) in a tournament. This list was, apparently, completely randomly generated. And I can believe that.

Around the time of 5th or 6th, I remember hearing tales of an Eldar list that won a tournament. Now, this isn’t the eldar of today, which consistently performs well in games, but the Eldar pre-serpent-shield when they, well, they sucked. They were at that point the worst army in the game pretty much, so how did they win in an era governed by Draigo-wings, Screamer-stars, the Old School Lash of Slaanesh and whatever vileness the Necrons had going on? Well, they won because no one imagined a good player would bring this list. Everyone was set up to deal with those top tier tricks and combos, but they didn’t have an answer for a load of Fire Dragons melting everything, or Dire Avengers shredding their stuff. 

The point of recanting this tale is that it’s another example of an army doing well because in any system where there is “a meta” it is not unusual for said meta to become blind to anything outside of itself. Armies are selected to deal with the big problems that everyone’s going to bring, so when someone brings something unusual, the unusual list can take advantage of the fact that no-one was expecting to ever see that on the table. Ok, so 95% of the time, the most meta-centric lists will win, but, personally, I’d live for the one time in 20 that I brought something no-one was expecting and got a good result with it. Now that’s a thrill.

So, where are we going with this? Well, this idea has been swirling around in my head for a little while now and so I got a bunch of the new Battletomes and Codexes, and my big set of strangely shaped dice, and I set out to create six completely random army lists. And when I say completely random, I mean completely random. I won’t go into every dice roll, but if there was a choice to be made, I made that choice with dice alone. 

In today’s post, we’re going to be looking just at Age Of Sigmar armies, and in the next one, we’ll look at 40k Armies. I’ll walk you through a bit of the dice rolling here and there, and I’ll give you my opinions as to their tactical play (like I’m someone you should take seriously on that front). I want to see if my dice can create an army capable of upsetting the meta in any way. Let’s start with:

Stormcast Eternals:

List Name: Draco-Blobs

Leader: Lord Celestant on Dracoth

Leader: Lord Celestant on Dracoth

Leader: Lord Commander Bastian Carthalos

Battleline: 5x Judicators with Skybolt Bows

Battleline: 5x Sequitors

Battleline: 5x Liberators

5x Vanguard Hunters

2x Dracothian Guard Desolators

3x Vanguard Paladors

3x Annihilators 

Points: 1950

The Army: So, this one was a bit strange. For a start, I didn’t roll for anything big – something I was slightly concerned about for future armies but it turned out I needn’t have been. We got a few Dracoths though, which are pretty handy, and the weirdest thing was I rolled the first two Lord Celestants as my first two picks. I then realised, as I was doing matched play, I’d need at least three Battleline units so I rolled for them and got an interesting mix. Then I asked myself “should I add another leader?” and the dice said yes, so Carthalos got added to the mix after another roll. I also rolled for a unit of Aetherwings, but when I added things up, they took the total over 2000 points, and as they were the last thing rolled for, they had to go, so we’re coming in exactly 50 points light here.

There is a little synergy here. With any Stormcast army, the troops choices can be hard to shift from objectives but obviously, you lose the numbers game typically if things get contested. There’s a nice speedy contingent with the Dracoths and Paladors, and a little fire-support too. I think ol’ Bastian and the Annihilators will look very scary and can slowly trudge to do whatever they want. 

Personally, I think this would just look like a bit of a fish out of water list and I doubt anyone but the most mastermindedly (not a word) of  generals could get much out of this one. Nope, I don’t think this is really it. It will have the all the strengths of the faction, but no-one’s mind is goign to be blown (in a good way) by this list.

Soulblight Gravelords:

List Name: A Little Doing A Lot

Leader/Behemoth: Nagash, Supreme Lord of the Undead

Leader: Kritza, The Rat Prince

Leader/Behemoth: Prince Vhordrai

Battleline: 10x Deathrattle Skeletons 

Battleline: 10x Deathrattle Skeletons 

Battleline: 10x Deathrattle Skeletons 

5x Blood Knights

Points: 1955

The Army: Oh boy. When the first thing you roll for is Nagash, you know there aren’t going to be many more rolls. When Vhordrai comes out two rolls later, you start worrying if you’re going to get a legal army into 2000 points. In fact, originally, I rolled for a couple of 30 man units of Skeletons and that killed the list, so after consulting the dice, they were reduced to 10 man units and thank Nagash that a unit of Blood Knights came out to fill the last points out quite nicely. And with 45 points left over, you should have enough to add in an Endless Spell for Nagash to play around with too.

I don’t think many people would expect to see this. You’ve got a couple of big beasts in there (two of the biggest in the game really) and they can do a lot of damage, but the Skeletons are likely to get blown to pieces, and I don’t really know what the Rat Prince is doing int there to be honest, but I don’t think all is lost. Vhordrai and the Blood Knights can do some serious damage when paired together – not much is going to be able to handle that charge. And Nagash is, well, Nagash – a terrifying thing to play against on any occasion. But you’re asking Nagash and the chargers to do all of the heavy lifting here and that could prove too much. If those skeleton blobs could have been a little bigger, or if we could have squeezed one other threat into this army, but alas, the dice said no. 

Not a lost cause by any means, and you will have some sort of element of surprise, but I remain skeptical.

Orruk Warclans

List Name: A Great Green Tide

Leader: Orruk Warchanter

Leader/Behemoth: Killaboss on Corpse-rippa Vulcha

Leader/Behemoth: Gobsprakk, The Mouth of Mork

Leader/Behemoth: Swampboss Skumdrekk

Battleline: 5x Orruk Ardboyz

Battleline: 5x Orruk Ardboyz

Battleline: 10x Gutrippaz

Battleline: 10x Gutrippaz

Artillery: Beast-skewer Killbow

10x Hobgrot Slittaz

3x Goregruntas

Ironskull’s Boyz

Marshcrawla Sloggoth

Points: 1995

The Army: Ok, this is more like it. You’ve got a very solid core with plenty of bodies, some fast movers and big monsters, some buffers, and even a bit of artillery support. I rolled for a Big Waaagh, and then I rolled to include Ironjawz and Kruleboyz but none of the Bonesplittaz, so I was worried this would look like the “Fist Mouth” list I did for the Lazy Painter’s guide a little while back. Happily though, it’s nice and different – and actually quite well balanced. 

You’re going to have a good advantage on objective holding thanks to your numbers, and the Sloggoth and Warchanter can help out the footslogging units. Meanwhile, as your Killbow chips away at anything you want it to, the three behemoths and the Goregruntas can charge head-first into the enemy. I’m not sure if this list is breaking any new ground, but I think the dice have been rather kind to us with this one. 

I’ve got to give it a high score really. I could see this winning, though movement trays are probably a must just to ensure you don’t get timed out. You’ve got a lot of model moving to do, but I can’t see any real downsides to this list! 

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So, what have we learned with this experiment thus far? Well, it’s a bit of a mixed bag really. I don’t think the Stormcast list will rock anyone’s world but I don’t think anyone would be expecting it. The Soulblight List looks like it’ll be fun but a few bad rolls and you’re going to be in a lot of trouble. The Orruks list though looks decent enough, and there’s some good synergy in there. So I’d say we have a 1.5 out of 3 successes really, and all of that is entirely down to the dice. I haven’t added in any faction rules, warlord traits or relics here, but if you spot something in that vein that could work with any of these, pop it into the comments.

In our next post, we’ll give the 40k side of things a go and determine whether or not, once and for all, if random armies can be trusted. Onwards!