The 2026 edition of the Golden Troll Warcry Tournament wrapped up in Montreal one weekend in April.
This was the third year the tournament’s been running (and my third appearance, too).
So I’ve been a little slower than expected getting this follow-up up and post-mortem (indeed mortem… more on that later), but better late than never.
I’ve got some pictures, tallies from the tournament and a couple observations about warbands, tactics, and plays – some of them pretty surprising!
P.S. in case you’re looking for the 2026 Golden Troll Tournament Warband Rosters, I posted those earlier.
Tournament Tallies
Let’s start at the top with a big picture of how things went down.
As I mentioned previously, there were 8 participants in the tourney with 2 organizers acting as referees to help keep things moving.
Each player played 3 games, and everyone played the same objectives at the same time, only on different boards.
The points scoring for Tournament Points was as follows:
- Major Victory – 20
- Minor Victory – 15
- Tie – 10
- Minor Loss – 5
- Major Loss – 0
The winner of the tourney went to the player with the top Tournament points (The Seraphon player with his honest-to-go terrifying list). In the event of a tie, it would have went to VP and then KP (as it did in previous years).
You can see how things went in the chart below:
My performance this year pretty much mirrored how things went at the Golden Troll last year (where I also fielded Hedonites of Slaanesh).
Unlike the first year where I won all 3 games straight with a Scions of the Flame list, last year I did 1W-1T-1L and the same for this year.
The main difference was this year I started with a tie and then got my win and was confident until the third round when I saw the map and my opponent… it was one of the most lopsided losses I’ve ever experienced to be honest (and again, more on that later).
As you can see, the tournament winner went 2W-1T (I was the tie with them) for a total of 50 points. Second and third place were close behind with 2 wins and a loss each (one with a minor loss).
My experience (and an ass-beating I was given)
Having kept track of how things went the past 3 years, my performance definitely has been dipping! From 1st, to 3rd, to 5th. If we keep things on track, I’ll expect a 7th place next year…
Things started pretty strong for me. In my matchup against Seraphon, I knew they would be tough, and having made a couple of risky early moves, I started out in the lead and was on track to win.
However, at the midway point of game 1, my luck went out of the window and I was cursed by the dice gods.
That’s not to say my opponents didn’t play well (they did), but even what should have been easy picks for me went nowhere.
To put things into perspective, my Fomoroid Crusher turned out to be the most useless unit in my warband all day.
Over three games, where he was in combat almost the entire time, I want to say I landed fewer than 10 hits with him (roughly a 25% hit rate) and not 1 crit the entire day out of like 30+ dice rolls. He removed fewer units than my chaff.
Some of his epic fails:
- In game 1, he failed to kill an 8HP unit in 8 dice.
- In game 2, he got critted to death by 4 chaff while only removing 1 unit.
- In game 3, he failed to kill a 6HP dog on 2 attacks. Twice.
Yeah, it sucked. And this was a 270ish point unit doing less than my 60 point chaff.
Not to say my chaff went realistically better either. The number of times opponents had 1 HP and I would whiff on a full onslaught was enough to still give me nightmares.
Anyways, so what could have statistically been a win for me, became a barely managed to scrape together tie in game 1.
Game 2 went better, apart from Fomo getting chaff killed to death in literally 1 turn.
And then there was game 3.
At the start of the day, I called out that my most feared matchup would have been to go against Wildercorps Hunters on the map with no cover.
So that’s exactly who the luck of the draw paired me with for game 3.
To make matters worse, my opponent knew what he was doing with his boys by game 3.
The short of it was, I was given a major ass-whooping, where only Fomo survived because I literally made him flee on the final turn from a pack of dogs he had so far failed to hit the entire game.
That was also the game where Vexmore pumped up to 3 attacks missed everything twice, when he really needed to land a single hit.
All in all, it was brutal and I now know what rock bottom feels like.
I like to say I didn’t go there to win, but just have fun – but I did try to win. I’m not disappointed by how things turned out, even if I am still reeling a month later from my epic my third game loss was.
That said – Wildercorps Hunters when played well are a savage tournament list.
Observations
1. The first question I was left wondering was “Are big units with few attacks really more effective in combat than smaller units with more?”
Until now, I would have said “yes, always.” My usual luck with dice has rewarded heavy hitters, and the terror they bring on the field usually helps keep opponents at bay psychologically.
However, after two tourneys where my big guys do basically nothing, I am seriously reconsidering stocking up on terror pieces and going for something else next time.
On paper, Fomo and Vexmore should have been a tag team from hell. But combined, they did virtually nothing and got chopped to pieces by small crit hunter chaff
Warbands like the Wildercorps Hunters completed chewed me to pieces with many small bites.
On the flip side, the team that won did win because they had some chonky boys (Seraphon) that really no one could effectively fight. So maybe take this with a grain of salt and it was just my bad luck.
2. If big units do serve any specific purpose consistently well, it’s definitely hogging objectives.
In my first game against Seraphon, his three beasts not only clobbered my guys by the mid-way point of the match, but were actually able to crowd out some objectives.
In one point, there was a tree and some half walls, and due do the base size, he was able to prevent one of my guys from getting onto a point I would have needed tow in.
This happened to me the year before in my draw as well, where an Ironjawz Mega was able to double-park and take two points, which denied me the one point I needed.
3. Don’t sleep on the tactical disengages from Wildercorps Hunters.
In my match against them, my opponent had the dice he needed and was pretty much always able to either react or use a double to get away when he needed to.
It didn’t help that I was missing a lot, but those tactical fall backs opened my guys up to getting shredded by all his little volleys and his big, mean Arbalester.
4. Adding 1 strength from a divine blessing to an Arbalester is a must.
Seriously. That guy up at 5 strength just picked targets and killed them (including one shotting numerous heroes over the course of the day.
If you run him, it’s probably the best 15 points you will ever spend.
5. More bodies isn’t always worth it.
After running against a 14 man team last year against my 8 and being super outclassed, I tried to prioritize body count this time around.
Going up to 9, however, meant I had fewer blessings and no mid-range dudes (3 beefcakes and 6 chaff).
It didn’t work out for me, and even some of the other long list warbands didn’t round out the top.
The one that did (Seraphon) actually only had 7 units and was able to dominate because each unit played a specific role (either crush + point control, or run and annoy).
Which leads me to…
6. Better lists are the ones where each unit serves a specific purpose rather than fill up space.
This is easier said than done when factions have useful chaff that are specialists in something (such as crit hunting, speed, etc.) and some heavies that can are affordable and multi-purpose.
In my case, Hedonites of Slaanesh probably wasn’t the best for this kind of list. Sure, the little goobers I ran (Homonculus) were cheap and fast, but they are technically overpriced because they have an ability that only benefits archers which I did not run.
Compared to the front line infantry of Nurgle Daemons, or the crit-hunters of Scions of the Flame, or even the speedy bastards of Seraphon, they were mostly just chaff for the sake of being chaff.
Photos
