Welcome to Competitive Innovations, our weekly feature for a number of game lines across the tabletop wargame space. Each week our army list and tactics experts canvass the top tournaments for their game of specialty, looking at the week’s top match-ups and how they played out on the tabletop to let you know what’s hot, what’s not, and what might be coming next as the competitive meta evolves year-round.

Richmond Reroll AoS GT II

27-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Richmond, BC, Canada on March 01 2025. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

The Showdown

Matchup

Matthias Krushel – Daughters of Khaine
Army List - Click to Expand

vs.

Matt Beasley – Disciples of Tzeentch
Army List - Click to Expand

Thoughts

Both of these lists hit pretty close to what you’d expect to see from either army. Matthias’ High Gladiatrix I assume takes the Field Sergeant Honour Guard rule to make any/all of those Blood Sisters move even faster, boosting them to 10″ but rend buff only works on Shadowstalkers so she’s not doing much else; rend buffs aren’t somehing that’s particularly needed in this matchup anyway. The Shadowtalker unit is a nice cheap teleporter that can bounce around the table as needed for objectives and be a general pain in the ass.

Matt’s Tzeentch list skips an often-popular Kairos in favour of the Changeline, more Pink Horrors, and two large blocks of blues/brims. The goal of this type of tzeentch list is to be annoying and kill things through mortal damage spells and burning chip damage. Well placed/moved flamers can do an excellent amount of damage as well while the Lord of Change makes everything around it just that much harder to hit.

Result

Disciples of Tzeentch Victory – 40 – 30

Matt Beasley – Disciples of Tzeentch – 1st Place

The List

See Showdown

Archetype

Horrorfying recurssion and tarpits.

Thoughts

Having played somewhat similar Tzeentch lists myself all of those Pink/Blue/Brimstone horrors are a lot scarier than they may immediately seem. Matt’s chosen the good spell lore, as expected, and can dish out mortal damage from wizards, slap -1’s to wound and chip damage across the army with relative ease from Burning, and cause some issues with the Changeling. It’s very interesting to me that he made The Changeling his Warlord instead of the Lord of Change, foregoing what would/could be a relatively easy Bodyguard with some form of horrors for even more debuffs for anything that wandered a bit too close. One of the best tools the army has is the humble chaos spawn, being able to summon it in via dealing the right amount of damage in the opponent’s turn can scupper any plans of Blood Sisters or similar melee units actually getting to charge into your important stuff. And you can just keep summoning it time and time again, it’s great!

With the right placement, screening, and a bit of luck (not rolling 1’s) in spellcasting this is a great army played well.

The Best of the Rest

There were 4 more players on 4-1 records. They were:

• 2nd – Cem Ozbay – Slaves to Darkness: Standard Abraxia+6 Varanguard with an interesting 40 Chaos Warriors, Sorcerer Lord, and a points-filling chariot.
• 3rd – Dale Johnson – Daughters of Khaine: A very cool Cronseer list with multiple shrines, lots of Sisters of Slaughter, and the expected Doomfire Warlocks.
• 4th – Matthias Krushel – Daughters of Khaine: See showdown.
  
• 5th – Michael Hammond – Blades of Khorne: Skarbrand, two units of reinforced Blood Warriors, and a unit of reinforced Skullreapers.

Age of Sigmar Grand Tournament @XPG

A 5 round 26 player event in Mississauga Ontario, March 1-2, without a single 5-0 record.

The Showdown

Matchup – Battle for the Pass

Mitch Khwaja – Slaves to Darkness
Army List - Click to Expand

vs.

Vincent Chan – Ironjawz
Army List - Click to Expand

Thoughts

Nice to see Ironjawz hitting a top table. Vincent’s list involves lots of Ardboyz, as you could expect, with a couple of Maw-gruntas, a nice block of reinforced Brutes, and a Warchanter for buffs. On the other side of the table Mitch fields a Slaves to Darkness army that mixes the normal, very good, units of Varanguard and Chosen with Dread Banner alongside the Maggotkin Regiment of Renown; these lists trend on taking more-Varanguard, Knights, Chosen, or Warriors so it’s a fun option to see being used.

Battle for the Pass is a solid battleplan for Mitch having the speed and hitting power of Varanguard while being able to wander up to the mid-point objectives with hard-to-kill Maggotkin units and a big block of Chosen. Vincent would have needed to remove as much of the Chaos army as possible, as early as possible, to get those points off him, which is much easier said than done when your army is typically Rend-1 and lacks in mortal damage output.

Result

Slaves to Darkness Victory – 39  -15

Mitch Khwaja – Slaves to Darkness – 1st Place

The List

See Showdown

Thoughts

Mitch fielded the two units you can easily expect to see in any Slaves to Darkness list: reinforced Varanguard and Chosen. As mentioned above the interesting part of the list is a Regiment of Renown, something that Chaos doesn’t necessarily see a lot of. I’ll forgive you for having to look this one up, becuase I had to, since I’ve never seen anyone field this in any of my games. For a cool 540 points you get a Harbinger of Decay, 5 Putrid Blightkings, and 2 Pusgoyle Blightlords. Every unit in the regiment has Heal (1) every hero phase and the Harbinger creates a -1 to hit bubble for units in this regiment while they stay wholly within 9″ of him; an easy aura to keep and Nurgle units are already hard to kill. Get them into combat alongside the Chosen with Dread Banner and that can create some very frustrating anvils to shift off of points. Mitch’s one loss was to the Stormcast army list below that placed 2nd, all of that speed likely cuasing issues for him, especially on Limited Resources.

It’s nice to see some variation in a chaos list, even if it does still keep the same core as any other.

The Best of the Rest

There were 4 more players that finished with a result of 4-1:

• 2nd – Michael Sabetti – Stormcast Eternals – Krondys, 12 Vanguard Palladors, reinforced Vigilors and Castigators. Simple, effective. Lack of Longstrikes or Praetors is nice to see for a change.
• 3rd – Vincent Chan – Orruk Warclans – See Showdown
• 4th – Brandon Dreamer – Orruk Warclans –  Alright this one is cool: Kragnos, 5 Maw Gruntas of varying types, and a Weirdnob Shaman.
• 5th – Yury NoDawmage – Hedonites of Slaanesh – Shalaxi and a Keeper of Secrets, then a mix of two units of Blissbarb Archers, Slickblades, Seekers, and Daemonettes.

Wrap Up

A light week on AoS events. Love to see a little variation in some of these lists, keep it up folks. Try those different Regiments of Renown! Or don’t. I just report on this now and would like some interesting stuff to write about, thanks.

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