I had the pleasure of interviewing a good friend of mine, Gammie, as he heads into Australian Age of Sigmar Masters 2017. I'll post his list for context and then move straight into the interview. Enjoy :)
Maniak Weirdnob
Maniak Weirdnob
Savage Big Boss
Wurrgog Prophet
10 Savage Boarboy Maniaks
10 Savage Boarboy Maniaks
30 Savage Orruk Arrowboys
10 Savage Orruk Arrowboys
4 Savage Big Stabbas
Kunnin' Rukk
Gabe: Well, thanks for taking time out of your evening to chat, mate! So, I'll kick things off by asking what your position was in the final rankings? 19th?
Matt: So I finished in twentieth place. Another guy beat me just before rankings finished.
G: Pipped you to the post? Spewing. So what armies got you to masters. Was there a particular event or allegiance that really got you to where you are today?
M: I'd definitely say that Bonesplitters got me there. So, I registered four ranked events, umm, and of those four, three of them were Bonesplitters and one were with Wanderers, but Splitters were my highest placings. I got third in a tournament in Toowoomba a couple of months ago, and came in at number twelve at Briscon. I also took them to Redland City GT, so they definitely got me in there.
G: Righto.Was that the influence between taking Splitters over Wanderers to Masters?
M: Oh, definitely! I had a couple of practice games with the Wanderers with all of their Allegiance Abilities, and they just don't have the staying power against those higher-powered lists at the moment, as they are very nuke-heavy, and theres a lot of anti-"horde-meta" ways of mortal wounding, particularly with armies like Tzeentch. I've got no saves against mortal wounds with Wanderers, so they dissolve pretty quickly.
G: Was there a minute there, when they got the new Allegiance Abilities that you thought you might make the jump?
M: Definitely! Definitely! They actually were the only army that I've played consistently in the new General's Handbook. I've only played one game with Splitters since the handbook dropped. The Bonesplitters have changed a little bit with their points adjustments, so you can't fit as much as what you used to.
G: Is that mostly to do with Battalions?
M: Yep, so I used to run the Icebone Warclan with the Kunnin' Rukk, and I used to be able to fit everything quite comfortably into 2000 points, but now I can only really fit one or the other.
G: Ah ok, and Kunnin' Rukk is naturally the go-to out of the two of them.
M: Definitely. I actually think people are starting to gradually move away from Kunnin' Rukk these days. People know how to deal with it if the person isn't a very good general and can't hide their war boss well enough.
G: Fair point. Alright, well, do you want to quickly go through your artefacts and spells then?
M: So, I'll go through the Artefacts and then the spells, as it will make a heap of sense regarding the combos. What I run is the Dok Juice on the Savage Orruk Warboss. So what that is, is you roll a dice in the hero phase, and you can drink it. On a 1, you suffer a mortal wound, on a 2-5 you heal D3 wounds, and on a 6, you heal D6 wounds. And he can do that every hero phase.
G: And that's purely to keep him alive for the Rukk?
M: Yep, absolutely. Then, because I have a Battalion, my second artefact is the Mystic Waaagh Paint which goes on the Wurrgog Prophet, which basically means he can unbind two spells a turn.
G: And is the Wurrgog Prophet your general?
M: No, so the Warboss is the general so that I can run his ability to generate extra attacks.
G: Ah, gotcha. I thought you might have gone for the double pile in command ability.
M: Yeah, I've actually looked at running that in another list with the Icebone Warclan, because you can charge the Boarboys in the Hero phase, and also do the Wurrgog's pile in.
G: Ah, that's pretty cool!
M: It can take out some key sort of things, and get a few more pile ins. So, that's another list that I've been playing around with. So, with the spells that I'm running, both Maniak Weirdnobs actually have Hand of Gork on them, only because they've got their signature spells, which is re-roll ones, but it's handy being able to chop and change as I need them. Then I've got the Brutal Beast Spirit on the Wurrgog, which buffs really nicely with the Savage Boarboys!
G: Now, I'm assuming that the big Arrow Boy unit puts in most of the work, but do you put a fair bit of stock in the lifting power of the Maniaks?
M: Yeah, definitely. I actually think that the boars with the same buffs as the Arrowboys will do more damage than the Arrowboys will. They have four attacks with each model, so that's forty attacks from a unit of ten. You're hitting on 3's with the +1 to hit on them, re-rolling ones to hit as well, if you're in range of one of the Weirdnobs, and then generating extra attacks on 5's which is the riders as well as the boys. Plus they get the double pile in, so they can get up to 80 attacks in a turn, and then generate another 1/3 of their attacks from the triggers. Plus you can Hand of Gork them and fly over stuff, which makes them a bit more of a threat than Arrowboys. I think Arrowboys are a bit restrictive with how they play.
G: Hand of Gork would be your cheeky little movement trick in the bag for this army then?
M: Correct. Because it is a pretty slow moving army on the table. My fastest unit is the boars at 9", and while the army gets across the board, I'd rather have something that can fly up and do a bit of damage first as the horde moves up.
G: Sort of calling the shots on where and how you start interacting with your opponent's army, then.
M: Yep, and I definitely think that the boars create a nice screen for the arrow boys as well. A lot of people tend to avoid the boars.
G: And you've also got that little ten man unit of Arror Boys?
M: Yeah, so they fill the other requirement of the Kunnin' Rukk, but an extra ten Arrow Boys never hurt anyone. So, typically they will either sit on objectives, or act as a screen to protect a more valuable unit. But I like them because they can sit on an objective and still have an impact on the game. In another list I was toying with, I dropped the Big Stabbas and ran a unit of twenty Savages, but they just don't have the staying power and Bravery, and they just kind of disappear too quickly.
G: While we're on that, I did want to talk about the unit of four Big Stabbas. That is… some would say unconventional? Can you explain a bit of your thought process behind the inclusion of such a big unit of them?
M: Yeah, well, I've been listening to a fair few of the podcasts from England at the moment, and one of them was saying that Big Stabbas seem to be the hidden gem of the Bonesplitters at the moment, and I tend to agree with them. But a lot of people kind of ignore them, because they ask what they do, you tell them, and they just see them as a little damage output unit. I've been talking to Dave (Kerr) a bit, because he wants to start Bonesplitters, and we wrote up a list with eight.
G: A single unit of eight?
M: Yeah, a single unit. We looked into it, because he's got some spare Big Stabbas as well, but decided to go with the Maniaks in my Masters list, because it's the list I have been running, and I feel much more comfortable using them.
G: So the unit of Big Stabbas, are they pretty much just going to be running at the biggest thing they can find?
M: I'm looking at pointing them in the direction of things that won't die to Arrow Boys. The biggest issue with Bonesplitters is their lack of high rend and mortal wound output, unless you're running the Big Wurrgog Mask, but then you have a potential of wounding yourself and dying. So, for me, the Big Stabbas kind of provide that high rend source of damage. At Rend -2, they provide an answer to a lot of things. And Damage 3 per attack means that they're gonna be putting out some hurt. I've even thought about buffing the Big Stabbas instead of the Boarboys unit, and throwing them into something.
G: See, I was always under the impression that you kind of buy Big Stabbas because of the mortal wounds they kick out when they go down, but looking at them, the attack profile is actually pretty scary!
M: Yeah. When you're facing down against stuff like Stardrakes, which you're almost guaranteed to see at Masters, I think they're the threat to those kinds of terrifying models. Im not adverse to putting them behind a unit of Arrow Boys or boars, and sacrificing the screen unit to get the charge, because they do an extra D3 damage with each of their attacks against monsters. They're my answer to those super units. And you know, I think with the new GHB, you're going to see a lot more monsters on the table, because they're cheaper and you can ally them in much easier.
G: Yeah, thats one thing I've really enjoyed about the Allies system, is it brings in units that you'd otherwise never see! Like Giants; you never saw Giants, whereas now they're a plug & play unit!
M: Well, funny you should say that. I've got a list at the moment with a hundred and twenty Morboys in it, and a Giant allied in. And basically, their special rule is that when a Monster dies on the board, they all get +1 to hit,
G: Oh, so you sacrifice the Giant?
M: Yeah, so you just throw the giant in, and let him die! It's a bit of a funny list that functions differently, but it's a lot of fun.
G: Now, with allies, I know that you were play testing with a unit of six Gore-Gruntas for a variety of reasons, being less susceptible to Battleshock and such. Is there a reason that you decided against taking them?
M: I play tested them a little bit, and they're not as reliable as you would think a unit like that would be in regards to damage output. They're more of a defensive unit with a big footprint. Giving them a 3+ save with thirty wounds is nice, but they don't get the buffs from any of the spells. Bonesplitters do really well at just buffing other Splitters, so I actually found that ten boar boys was far more comfortable, because I know their limitations. I think I overestimated the staying power of Gore Gruntas a bit. They were still dying in droves, and I didn't really want to take a half cooked list to Masters. It's not really the environment to take an untempered list over a well oiled one.
G: Running a horde army, do you have concerns about the clock? Having played Bonesplitters enough, is it one of those things that you can compensate for now with good head knowledge and familiarity of the army?
M: Yeah, when GHB first came out, I started using Kunnin' Rukk and learning how to play it without "cheating", if that makes sense. A lot of times, you're rolling such a huge number of dice, that your opponent can lose track of what you're doing and what can be re-rolled and so on and so forth, so I've gotten into the habit of explaining every batch of dice as I roll it, so that there's no confusion and my opponent can't be mistaken into thinking that I'm bending any rules. So, I count out all my dice, roll them, re-rol the ones, pick out the misses… there's a system there, similar to your Nurgle Rat-Bros. It's about working through a set of steps. A lot of people complained about Kunnin' Rukk for a long time with two units of forty Arrow Boys, and it was slow and it was not fun to play against. Even now, you can still come up against double Kunnin' Rukk, but you're just not gonna have fun with that kind of list. I think the age of the Kunnin' Rukk is dying. I think people have realised that if they go balls to the wall into a unit of thirty Arrow Boys, they'll remove it. It doesn't have the staying power. A lot of people overestimate how good big units of Arrow Boys are in combat, which sometimes works to my favour, but I think that once people realise how quickly they crumble, it stops being as scary.
G: Do you think that there is an Achilles Heel match up for you? Any allegiance or list that you really think will be an up-hill battle?
M: Stormcast, definitely. I played against Tim (McDivett) at RCGT, and I kind of played the game in mind of "Let's fight for a draw" instead of going for a win, and I made a silly mistake which gave his Stardrake enough room to get into an objective. But yeah, Stormcast are definitely the ones that I'm most worried about. Tzeentch has a great amount of mortal wound output against large units, but I get a save against mortal wounds and I can make a big unit immune to Battleshock, but against a Mirror Shield Stardrake, my Arrow Boys are useless. Even if I buff them, they can hit on 6's without generating extra attacks, and then what often happens is that the Stardrake will heal more wounds than I inflict.
G: Looking at the GHB17 scenarios, do you feel that there is a best and worst scenario for your army?
M: I think the ones that sit really well for Bonesplitters is Duality of Death and Battle for the Pass, where you've got objectives in the middle of the table, whereas Knife to the Heart and Scorched Earth are probably a little bit trickier. I think in Scorched Earth, Splitters have to burn objectives as they go, because if they sit and try and hold, anything that hits them back is just going to kill them.
G: Going into Masters, you're obviously pretty stoked with having made it from outside the top sixteen ranked players in the country. Do you have any personal goals leading into the event? Where would you like to finish, a win-loss ratio, and so on?
M: With the five games, I would not mind having more wins than losses. I'd love to get three wins. I know that in Masters, thats probably not going to happen, because theres some really solid players bringing some really scary lists, but who knows. I don't want to finish last, but if it happens it happens. I'm currently in last place if you look at the ranks, so anything above 16th place would be great.
G: And if you had to predict a winner (and you can't pick yourself), who do you think is going to take out AOS Masters 2017?
M: I reckon Tim McDivett is in with a chance with it. He's got a really well-oiled Stormcast list that he's been playing for a long time, and he plays the game really well. It'd be really nice to see him win it. I think Luke Taylor is probably the overall favourite, but it's Masters. You're looking at the best players in the country, and at the end of the day, someone has to win and someone has to lose. I'm genuinely not even sure who could take it out. It's anyone's game. Everyone I've talked to is bringing rock-solid lists, and I think the victor will be whoever makes the least mistakes on the day and has a little bit of good luck from the dice!
G: Well, mate. That pretty much wraps it up! Thanks for taking time out of your evening to chat, and I wish you the best at Masters!
M: Thanks.
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