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.

This is an exciting week for Sigmar since this is our first week with all events using the new General’s Handbook! With the new way Battle Tactics work, which will likely change how list building is approached and the plethora of new options from Scourge of Ghyran (hopefully) giving a wealth of viable new choices it’s exciting to see how things are going to shift.

Southern Fried Sigmar GT

42-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Atlanta, GA, United States on June 21 2025. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

The Showdown

Kevin Lathers – Fyreslayers
Army List - Click to Expand

vs.

Walter Brock – Lumineth Realm-Lords
Army List - Click to Expand

Thoughts

This is aggressive dwarf dinos against a very defensive aelf force. The Magmadroth Dwarves move relatively fast and hit like a truck, notably from the new Scourge of Ghyran Runeson on Magmadroth which can hand out +1 damage to the Runefather once per game (each!).

The Lumineth are no slouches here though, able to soak up damage like it was nothing. Without a way to shut off Wards it’s going to be very hard to pick up the Stoneguard. The one positive here is the allied Callis and Toll regiment is great to have against Lumineth since most of the Heroes are Wizards. A lot of the strategy is going to come down to being able to snipe out the support heroes as much as possible to weaken the Lumineth overall.

The Fyreslayers are undeniably on the back foot here and they put up a pretty good fight but the Lumineth take the day.

Result

Lumineth Realm-Lords Victory – 51 – 43

Walter Brock – Lumineth Realm-Lords – 1st Place

The List

See Showdown

Archetype

Alareth Stoneguard with Support Heroes

Thoughts

Avalenor and the Stoneguard, naturally, create the foundation of this list. While defending objectives they receive a 5+ ward, while Avalenor gives them +1 attack. Worse still, if a unit in combat with Avalenor when he didn’t charge, he can reduce enemy rend by 1 making it even more difficult to pick them up. This makes the first 2 objectives of their battle tactics extremely easy, especially if there is an objective in the middle meaning they can score a very early lead.

The rest of the list serves to support this central pillar. The Cathallar both protects unit from having their control score reduced while also sapping the control score of the enemy. The Enlightener can cast its warscroll spell (which ignores modifiers to saves) on both units, alternativity Speed of Hysh and Overwhelming Heat from the core spell lore as needed. Ellania and Ellathor are excellent combat heroes, but their primary utility is casting Total Eclipse to all but shut down CP usage on nearby units. Finally, the list adds the new Scourge of Ghyran Light of Eltharion which can come back once per game, allowing the player to be a bit more daring with him when getting into combat.

The Best of the Rest

There were 6 more players on 4-1 or better records. They were:

• 2nd – Connor Tolbert – Soulblight Gravelords (4-0-1): An elite list led by Prince Vhordrai and a Vampire Lord on Steed with Barrow Guard, Barrow Knights and Blood Knights.
• 3rd – Kevin Lathers – Fyreslayers: See Showdown.
• 4th – Frederick Schmidt – Daughters of Khaine: Krethusa, Bloodwrack Shrine and Slaughter Queen with lots of Witch Aelves, Sisters of Slaughter and Khinerais.
• 5th – McKenzie Ewing – Soulblight Gravelords: A grab bag of units with zombies, Skeletons and Askurgan Trueblades led by Prince Vhordrai and Nefereta.
• 6th – Landon Doeckel – Sylvaneth: Big Stompy list of Alarielle, Belthanos, Drycha and Spirit of Durthu.
• 7th – Tommy Miklos – Ogor Mawtribes: Gnoblars and Gluttons.

Mountain West Classic Grand Tournament ’25 – Age of Sigmar

27-player, 5-round Grand Tournament in Provo, UT, United States on June 21 2025. All the lists for this event can be found in Best Coast Pairings.

The Showdown

Mission – Bountiful Equinox

Russ Tanner – Gloomspite Gitz
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vs.

Benjamin Osguthorpe – Slaves to Darkness
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Thoughts

This mission is really good for this Darkoath list. Where as Slaves to Darkness generally like missions with close together objectives because of their small unit count, a Darkoath Heavy list has a lot more leeway to move around. Especially because of the X shaped formation, which lets the darkoaths come in on the edge of the board practically next to a waiting objective.

Gitz, meanwhile, have a lot of auras and spells that want them to stay close together, so this is going to turn into a fight for the center. A major deciding factor is going to be whether the Theridons can pick up the Troggs, or vice-versa. It ends up going to the Slaves to Darkness by a pretty considerable margin.

Result

Slaves to Darkness Victory – 65 – 30

Benjamin Osguthorpe – Slaves to Darkness – 1st Place

The List

See Showdown

Archetype

Be’lakor and Darkoaths

Thoughts

A mostly pure Darkoath list, I never thought I’d see the day.

As the list name implies, the goal here is to send these guys to die, then they come back and do it again. With the Darkoath Horde subfaction, a hero can bring back a dead unit at half strength and this does include the Wilderfiend since it’s not a Hero. So simply send them on the objective to take it, die from the enemy charge, then bring them back to capture it again (and then probably die again, but that’s why you have redundancy).

I’m not going to tell you Marauders are good but they punch pretty well for their size, and with proper support they aren’t nothing either. This list does of course still need hammers to bring the game plan home, which comes in the form of the old standby Be’lakor. Chosen are a bit expensive for this list, but we can goto the next best thing: Theridons. 24 Rend 1 Damage 2 (Damage 3 once per game!) attacks? you can generally point that at the strongest thing in their army to try and pick it up fairly reliably.

The Best of the Rest

There were 5 more players on 4-1 records. They were:

• 2nd – Matt Nguyen – Ossiarch Bonereapers: Katakros, Vokmortian and Soulmason with Archai, Immortis Guard and Stalkers.
• 3rd – Cody Case – Nighthaunt: Scourge of Ghyran Kurdoss with Dual Black Coaches and Mymourn Banshees.
• 4th – Eugene Averin – Kruleboyz: A true pure Kruleboyz list with the new Skumdrekk and a Killa-boss on Vulcha with lots of Monsta-Killaz and Gutrippaz.
• 5th – Maldad Puto – Stormcast Eternals: Infantry list Carthalos, Questor (Both kinds), Longstrikes and lots of Vigilors.
• 6th – Russ Tanner – Gloomspite Gitz: See Showdown.

Wrap Up

Thanks again! We saw some really interesting lists this time and I expect they’re going to only get stranger as people experiment for a bit. We’ll be here for it!

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