Screaming Down to Waaagh Aries VI - Part 1

This Saturday is Waaagh Aeries VI in Bloomington, Illinois. The tournament has been called a primer for the Adepticon WFB Championship Tournament and though I am not attending that tournament, I didn’t want to miss a chance to drive down and hang with a great group of guys. When it came to designing a list, I really looked to squeeze what I could out of what I had already painted without pushing myself to paint whole new units just for the tournament. In the end, I painted one model specifically for the tournament, and included a few more that were painted for the Adepticon 1000 point tournament.



In the end the list I have is a one-trick pony that most people hopefully will not be expecting. Combining Leonardo with the Marksmen and a paymaster with Drillmaster means that I have a 16 crossbow shots per turn that are hitting on 3+ and can reroll any misses. If my mage with lore of metal can get off Blades, I will have a unit of 18 crossbow shots, hitting on 2+ with 16 of them rerolling if they miss on the 1.

The other part of this pony show is the use of Cunning to bait my opponent into splitting the battlefield. Most of the folks playing this weekend have at least heard of the Marksmen, so deploying them first should make most players position their units to go after them ASAP. Adding one or two more units to the bait will likely cause most of my opponents to set-up such that they are sending their big stuff (large units, monsters, etc…) in that direction. When it comes to these additional bait units, I am thinking maybe Vespero’s Vendetta and the Cursed Company as my choices since I will be able to move one of them as well and the other may end-up getting ignored because of the bait & switch.

The other tactic I am trying with this army is to control the flow of the magic phase thru the use of Leonardo and dual level 4 mages. Leonardo’s ability to remove d3 power dice from my opponent’s pool each turn can be a game changer. Added to this a mage who will usually add an additional dispel dice per turn means that most of my opponents’ magic phases will have a small impact. In comparison, when my one mage remains sane, my mage with Lore of Metal can spend a few more dice as his companion can generate some of his own for each spell. Side Note: I wish I had a monster painted that could be used with the Lore of Beast. I feel that would have been the better choice as the character buffing spells would impact a lot of my army, but I hate not being able to utilize the lore to its fullest.