(Note: this is slightly edited version of the report I’ve posted to Blades of Khorne channel on AoSCoach Discord)

Pre-tournament stuff:

Tournament was taking place on July 15-16 in Wembley, London, UK.

This was a bit of a trek (well, a long tube ride to be correct, actual trek would take more than 3 hours!) for me to get to from central London, and I was wondering if this could have contributed to lower than I expected attendance of just 12 players (but all great players there!). Venue was a school gym hall and there was a parallel 40k tournament played in the same venue which unsuprisingly attracted more players than AoS (I think maybe 40 or 50?). It was great to have a different food van nearby on every day, and the ad-hoc setup beer was good when working.

My army

It’s only been 4 weeks (measuring from my first game ever) into my Age of Sigmar journey, and so I was rushing with painting and - in particular - magnetising my 2nd Thirster all 3 nights before the tournament. I made it on time, and I will hopefully have a chance to tweak the details later. I’ve simply played with the models I have, but I also have exactly the models I wanted to play with :D

Allegiance: Khorne
Slaughterhost: The Bloodlords
Grand Strategy: Slaughter of Sorcery
Triumphs: Bloodthirsty

Leaders
Bloodthirster of Unfettered Fury (330)*
  Artefact: A'rgath the King of Blades
Bloodmaster, Herald of Khorne (110)*
  Prayer: Bronzed Flesh
Bloodmaster, Herald of Khorne (110)*
  Prayer: Blood Sacrifice
Skulltaker (120)
Herald of Khorne on Blood Throne (160)
  Prayer: Killer Instinct
  Nullstone Adornments: Hand-carved Nullstone Icon
Wrath of Khorne Bloodthirster (300)
  General
  Command Trait: Firebrand
  Artefact: Halo of Blood
  Prayer: Bloodbind

Battleline
20 x Bloodletters (360)**
  Reinforced x 1
10 x Bloodletters (180)
5 x Flesh Hounds (100)*
5 x Flesh Hounds (100)

Endless Spells & Invocations
  Hexgorger Skulls (50)
  Wrath-Axe (70)

Terrain
  Skull Altar (0)

Core Battalions
  Warlord
  Battle Regiment
  Vanguard

Additional Enhancements
  Artefact

Total: 1990/ 2000
Reinforced Units: 1 / 4
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 141
Drops: 8

Day 1:

Game 1

(Loss vs Daniil’s Cities of Sigmar: Hallowheart + Bundo the good giant list)

My main hammer (20 Bloodletters) was placed too much to the side and drawn into the corner of the map, failing to clear some units made it stuck there and didn’t reach HQ on time. I failed to chant skulls and Daniil got +5 / +6 to cast through Hallowheart in first 2 rounds so unbinds didn’t help. I’ve made some risky, greedy and unnecessarily aggresive play and as a result my 2 Thirsters and the Throne died early and we ended up at 10:13.

I’ve approached this game far too ignorant as I thought this is a good matchup for me. This was my first competitive tournament game ever, against a great player, and I’ve realised I have loads to learn.

Game 2

(Win vs Obaid’s Nagash, VloZD and zombies/skellies)

I was lucky to bloodbind VLoZD through the screen, focused fire and eventually nearly kill it, while on round 2 Nagash rolled 8 with Skulls nearby, followed by miscast in next spell in round 2. My army eventually reaching and killing Nagash and finishing VLoZD made it a good 17:15 win for me.

Game 3

(Loss vs Toby’s Gitz Squig List)

Absolute disaster on my side,:

  • I forgot about no flying on map and imprisoned my thirsters behind screens and terrain
  • deployed too forward with not enough space behind screens so Squigs killed some of my heroes in 1st turn and
  • in some brain-fart moment despite having priority and a chance to correct previous two mistakes, I made Toby go first

As a result, got pretty much all pinned or blocked by two super-buffed blobs of Squigs, that I couldn’t outdamage (especially with their fight on death), and by the time Thirsters were able to do anything the game was lost 2:18

Day 2:

Game 4

(Loss to Josh’s Kharadron Overlords)

Keen on scoring more points, my greedy play hit me again, as I failed to screen well and was instead going for Surround and Destroy battle tactic with dogs. Josh got the double and cleared more than 50% of my army. From there, I managed to kill one boast and contents but it was still a game over with their firepower and not much left in my army to attack or even survive the attack of another boat. Lost 5:15 on points.

Game 5

(Win vs William’s Skaven)

In my last game, I was facing an off-meta but lovely list based on Verminking, Deceiver and gutter runners. I exposed Herald on Throne a bit too much during deployment, but that turned out in my favor as a bait for their tactic and allowed me to kill their main threats early on. On the other flank, Skaven’s ‘triangle of bloodtithe’ provided me with enough board domination to call the game after just 2 rounds, winning 23:11.

Conclusions

Tournament players are really good and will punish any mistakes like the ones I made in lost games immediately. I’ve previously played in more casual setting, and the book / list is forgiving enough that I actually wasn’t paying that much attention to importance of things like screening in most games. Winning most of my casual games made me overconfident. I now need to learn to deploy and screen correctly, but also play objectives better and retreat when needed (I don’t think I’ve done that even once in 5 games :/ - at least I made Khorne proud here 😉 ). On the upside, I think the list is great, double First Strike on thirsters worked well when needed, Skulltaker IMHO is really great value for points, and the rest of units do their job. I’m not 100% sold on Herald and Bloodmasters but that’s probably because I didn’t keep them as far back as I should and let them die too early, but they might still stay if I play bloodlords. Also: I need to learn to play much faster, I dwell too long on the decisions and sometimes overthink it, instead of doing the simple things that work. Still, 2-3 at my first ever tournament, which such a lineup of players is probably nothing to be ashamed of.

Massive thank you to all opponents for being patient with me and to organisers for getting us together to play too. It was great to have a chance to play in a group of best London players, and massive learning excercise for me.

Congrats to Mo on 5-0 win, I actually played Mo on the week before tournament and was hoping to face his army again. But it wasn’t to be, maybe next time.

Thoughs about my list

I’m thinking about replacing flesh hounds with bloodreavers as they do benefit from Herald being a totem (if they manage to hit anyone ever?), 20 less points will also give me Triumph more often. To compensate for loss of dogs, maybe replace one Bloodmaster with Slaughterpriest for unbind. I’m not sold on using Battle Regiment at all, and I wish I played double Warlord like I did in most of my games. 25% of players have more drops I think, but it might be better for my learning at this stage to always give priority and learn to set up for both, while adding another battaliion might give me something else. I’m also thinking about prayers here a bit, I need to decide if to maybe make Fury Thirster a general with bloodbind as he’s a bit more resistant on his own with -1 to Hit (although he was usually first target when possible this might make it worse).