Like most other esteemed members of Goonhammer I experience time in a linear fashion, and so find myself on a kind of journey through life. A “road” if you will.
I’m Rich, sometimes known as Cronch, and you might have seen my name attached to various pieces of Age of Sigmar-related writing on Goonhammer. That’s going to be the focus of this hopefully regular road through series – I’ll be covering my regular games, events that I attend and sometimes host, and the hobby that I get through. I’ll also be touching on the occasional non-AoS bit of hobby, at least in part so that me getting distracted by something shiny doesn’t immediately kill this article series.
An Introduction
So here we are, at the beginning of it all! I’m excited to have a space to write more regularly, with space to be more open and go deeper than is possible in roundtables and reviews. What I’m really hoping to get across in these blogs is a bit more insight into my experiences as an improving, and by some metrics perhaps even good, Age of Sigmar player. I’m far from a pro, but over the past year I’ve been putting a lot of time into practicing and improving, trying to be deliberate with my choices and considerate with my play rather than just setting up an army and letting a game happen to me. Don’t get me wrong, that’s a perfectly cromulent way to play Warhammer, and you can have a lot of fun doing it – I did for years.
About a year ago though, I’d started to find that I was leaning on “I’m not very good at the game” as a bit of a crutch, along with “I’m just here to have a nice time and hope to get some painting/sports awards”. Let me tell you from bitter experience, resigning yourself to losing a majority of your games with the consolation that you might get a hobby trophy is not a reliable system, and it’s just as possible to end up in a foul mood when you don’t get a painting award as it is when you’re aiming for the podium and get the wooden spoon. Backing up that foul mood, you’ve possibly still lost 3 to 5 of your games along the way, so the sting of defeat assaults you on multiple fronts. It can be a toxic cycle, and it’s one I had to break.
I eventually realised that I was reaching my breaking point, and had to change what I was trying to get out of the game. I was taking sub-standard lists and playing sub-standard games of AoS in order to show off my nicely painted armies, and I definitely did get a good share of lovely awards and compliments, which I’m incredibly grateful for. But I was losing so many games – in as long as I can remember, my best record up through the end of 2024 was 3-2 with Ironjawz, which I had to fight tooth and nail for. It was not unusual for me to go 1-4 at events until fairly recently before that. I had a bit of a revelation that I could never control what somebody else was going to bring to an event, and so despite being a good painter there was always going to be a huge amount of luck in trying to attract painting votes. I couldn’t keep soaking up the losses and laughing it off in the meantime, and so I resolved that I had to get better at the game, even if painting would forever be my favourite part of the hobby.
This revelation gleefully demolishing my psyche like a charging eel on turn 3, I ended up taking some coaching with Darren of Onwards AoS. I don’t want to give away the learning for free so it’s hard to do it justice, but I really valued the experience and came away armed with a couple of key pieces of knowledge. Firstly, that it’s good to want to win – humans are hardwired to enjoy competition. Even if you self-describe as a narrative player, presumably you want your guys to win their battle and further your narrative. Secondly, it’s fine to lean into what is popular in the game to achieve your goals – for me, that was switching from the terminally-underpowered (at the time) Ironjawz list I’d been running, picking up a Karazai- and Longstrike-centred Stormcast Eternals list in its place. Alongside starting a new army, I actually had some of the army commission painted, a first ever for me. This was full commitment to the competitive bit, and having an army that was ready trumped having an army painted to my normal standard.
Although the specific coaching was good, most of all it was great to have Darren and the Onwards community to feed back to after games and events, discuss lists with, and get some positive reinforcement from. All of this coincided with Age of Sigmar really taking off at my local game store, as well as us inheriting some members from another recently-shuttered club in the area, and we’ve ended up with a great little AoS community that caters to a variety of skill levels. I feel like I’ve developed into a pretty good player, with some podium finishes at smaller events, a 4-1 at Big Bristol Brawl, and a 5-0 at Brotherhood this year (a team event, which skews that a bit, but still). I’m still learning all the time, and hopefully you’ll enjoy coming along for the ride with me.
Finally, I’d be remiss not to mention Three and Two: A Matched Play Age of Sigmar Podcast. For the past couple of years I’ve been doing this pod with fellow Goonhammerer chimp and our friend Laura, covering events and our thoughts on the game in general. We’ve even done an (incredibly cursed) tier list, the sure-fire indicator of a high quality piece of media. It’s available at all good podcast shops, or whatever.
Enough context – let’s dive into some games.
Club Game – Linked Ley Lines vs Martin
My first game for this fortnight was a Stormcast mirror match vs my local friend Martin. He’s been playing a lot of AoS recently, and really upped his game. For the new season I’ve been hoping to run Iridan the Witness in their Scourge of Ghyran form, backed up by big blocks of Ruination Chamber infantry and other multipurpose units like Vigilors. For this game though my Iridan had not arrived in the post, so I instead opted to do something quite silly that has been on my mind for a while and run a list with both Karazai and Krondys, with a Knight-Judicator, Vigilors, Liberators, Praetors, Reclusians and a Lord Terminos backing them up. Martin ran a more normal Sentinels of the Bleak Citadel list – big blocks of Prosecutors and Reclusians, the latter backed up by a Lord Terminos. Questor Soulsworn, Liberators, a Knight-Relictor, Lord-Veritant, the Celestant-Prime, and a block of 6 Longstrikes round out Martin’s list.
The mission was Linked Ley Lines, both of our first times playing this one. We deployed and I gave Martin the first turn, hoping to be able to close some distance and control engagements in return on my T1. Martin max scored objectives and I got 6 points in return, with neither of us picking up any of our tactics (Intercept & Recover and Master the Paths for me, Intercept and Restless Energy for Martin). Not much combat happened, other than Martin dropping some Prosecutors to start damaging Krondys. On my turn he got a clutch teleport with his priest to put his Liberators in front of them, meaning that Krondys couldn’t just chew them up – great play.
Martin won priority into turn 2 and took the turn, dropping the Celestant-Prime ready to put a dent into Krondys. Meanwhile in the middle his Reclusians and Questors were finishing off Karazai to score his Affray for Intercept. I launched my block of Reclusians and Lord-Terminos into the Liberators and Prosecutors, cleaning most of them up. Elsewhere I killed a foot hero to score both Master the Paths and Intercept’s Affray tactics and did well on objectives for a big 20 point turn.
I won priority in turn 3, but Martin used his reroll from the season rule and stole it from me! This was big, as I think a double would have let me run away with the game. As it was the Prime got into Krondys and killed him (another tactic for Martin), but not before the Lord-Terminos took a big chunk out of the Prime with his fights-first artifact. After this though it did really start to swing my way – the Prime went down, my other units cleared up the Reclusians and Questors in the middle of the board, and I just had full control for the rest of the game – it was a bloody affair with not much left on either side though.
Final Score: Rich 82 – 37 Martin (those scores can really run away!)
This was a fun game, and Martin was a great opponent – we’ve been friends for ages but this was actually the first time we’ve played AoS together I think, and it was a great laugh. Mirror matches also don’t feel as oppressive as they once did, with it seeming like there’s more list variety in a post-Scourge of Ghyran world.
Club Game – The Liferoots vs Stu
Another Monday, another club game! This time I faced off with Stu and his Soulblight Gravelords (sidenote, you may know Stu better as Trogg, proprietor of the excellent The Dankhold website, cataloguing events around the country). As with Martin, this was the first time we’ve actually managed to play a game in a year or so of sharing a club. Stu was running a Bacchanal of Blood list, with a Vampire Lord on Foot leading Cado Ezechiar (the old, un-retinued version), a Wight Lord on Steed, 10 Blood Knights, 20 Barrow Knights (10, 5, 5), 10 Dire Wolves, and 20 Zombies.
I’d managed to build up the missing pieces for the first list I’d settled on using Iridan. In the Sentinels of the Bleak Citadel I took Iridan the Witness (Scourge of Ghyran flavour), the Celestant-Prime, a Lord-Terminos, Knight-Relictor, the Stormcoven, 5 Vigilors, 6 Reclusians, 6 Prosecutors, and a Knight-Judicator. I put the Quicksilver Draught on the Terminos (of course), as well as Envoy of the Heavens seeing as I had the points for it and the potential of two units having a 5+ ward was attractive. I also had the points for the Stormreach Portal and Forbidden Power, so they came along for the ride too.
The Liferoots ends up being mostly an end-to-end game due to the deployment zones and paired objectives, but the small bands of neutral territory meant that Stu was able to pincer my deployment between two Cursed Sepulchres, putting me at risk of attack from all sides. Having won priority I did give Stu first turn, trusting that I’d deployed far back enough to make a turn 1 charge at least unappealing. This was the case, and he chose to play it safe and hold the middle of the board to score his Affray for Attuned to Ghyran. I did make one reasonably big mistake here, using Magical Intervention to cast the Soulscream Bridge as a screening piece in front of my main line. This is sometimes a great surprise tactic, but in hindsight Stu wasn’t really far enough forward to make the charges a big threat and if anything the bridge just offered him a shorter charge (which he thankfully didn’t take). Fortunately the Stormcoven managed to banish it in my Hero Phase, meaning I didn’t completely ruin my first lot of movement.
Luckily for me, Stu also made a mistake, leaving just 5 Barrow Knights and Cado to guard his objective. My block of Prosecutors dropped in his backfield, made an easy 3D6 charge in after doing some shooting, and with a touch of luck killed the knights and Cado to a wound, seizing the objective and scoring me my Restless Energy Affray. I’d have full objective control for the rest of the game. In the middle I managed to tie up the wolves and Blood Knights with warded-up Reclusians and the Celestant-Prime, taking away a lot of their charge utility by tying them up.
Stu won turn 2 priority and did some tactical retreating, and some summoning, but didn’t manage to pick up many more points. I managed to pick up the remaining Blood Knights, getting an Intercept target in the bag. I still held Stu’s objective, scoring me the Strike for Restless Energy as well as a bevy of VPs. The Celestant-Prime engaged the Wight Lord while the Terminos and Reclusians took on the Barrow Knights, leading to a fun moment of trying to work out the least problematic order of combats (with the Terminos and Wight Lord both being able to drag their adjacent units with them). Ultimately the Terminos and Reclusians went first, and took enough of a chunk out of the Knights to minimise their clap back. The Prime survived the Wight Lord’s strikes and promptly percussed him back to the grave with Ghal Maraz.
From here I won the double turn, and as we were even drops there was no reroll to be had for Stu. I lost out on the final Intercept target, but scored through everything else and tabled Stu on T4.
Final Score: Rich 71 – 24 Stu
This was another super fun game, thanks to Stu for being a great opponent! I’m really happy with how the list performed, I’m still worried that it’s a touch too hero-hammer to survive games where it has to brawl more but I’m going to stick with it for now. My main goal for now is to get better at using the Knight-Judicator, as I feel they’re easier to waste than a unit of Longstrikes. Still, this is the list I’ll be aiming to take to the Welsh Open in a couple of weeks.
Hobby Progress
Of course, the cruel skeins of fate conspire to ensure that the first hobby I have to show off in my Age of Sigmar blog series is, in fact, a pair of 40k models:
I painted the Crusade Ancient for the Goonhammer coverage of the new Black Templars releases, found here. The Plague Marine is a test model for a spray-can based army scheme which I’d like to make some progress on this year. I also painted some small scale Classic Fantasy Battle Orc Horde from Wargames Atlantic, for a review that may or may not be up on the site by the time this releases.
Back on the good stuff though, I did make some AoS progress. I got everything I need for my AoS list built and primed, and I airbrushed on the silver for the armour colour. I then made a bit more progress on Iridan the Witness, basing and drybrushing their mount.
My Stormcast scheme is pretty simple – it’s strong base coats, followed by washes and maybe one or two tactical highlights, but on top of quite high effort basing. I’m pleased with the overall effect, it’s a scheme designed to get the army out for gaming but it’s cohesive enough to look good on the table without taking too long. Here’s what it looks like finished:
My hobby for the next couple of weeks will be trying to get these guys, gals and non-binary pals ready for the Welsh Open. I’d like to spend a bit more time on Iridan’s Morr-gryph seeing as it’s kind of a centrepiece, so the next job is to layer some warm yellows onto the beak and legs to try and evoke a common UK blackbird.
I’ve just remembered I’ll need to paint the Forbidden Power spells too! Brilliant.
Next Time: Community Meetup & The Welsh Open
So there we are, part one of my hopefully regular series. I hope you’ve found it interesting, and I’d love to hear from you in the comments if you did (or didn’t, I guess). This weekend I’ve got a community meetup with some longstanding hobby pals, where I’ll be spending a lot of time painting Stormcast most likely. Hopefully I might find time for a game or two as well though. The weekend after that it’s the Welsh Open at Firestorm Games in Cardiff, the replacement for Chris Tomlin’s much-loved Blackout series of events. I’m really excited to get there and see what the Team Wales guys do with the event, I have faith that they’ll put on a really fun weekend. So next time, expect a Welsh Open event report and, hopefully, a lot of pictures of painted Stormcast! See you in 2 weeks.
Have any questions or feedback? Drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com. Want articles like this linked in your inbox every Monday morning? Sign up for our newsletter. And don’t forget that you can support us on Patreon for backer rewards like early video content, Administratum access, an ad-free experience on our website and more.
