This past weekend, I attended my first ever Warcry tournament (in nearby Montreal). It was an 8-player / 4-table private event hosted at a friend’s place. Every player was guaranteed 3 games versus different opponents each time, with the scenarios being a mix of Rumble Pack and core book.
I showed up not really knowing what to expect. It wasn’t intended to be an overly competitive competition (even if it was a tournament). We were allowed Divine Blessings and a couple of things were banned (such as Monsters and the Kharadron Overlords. Also, because a couple of the players were pretty new to the game, those of us who were regular players collectively decided not to bring incredibly sweaty warbands.
My original plan was to bring a Hedonites of Slaanesh Sybarites warband of mine who I love for their versatility and who I’ve felt were pretty strong at our regular game nights. However, I’ve always loved my Scions (who were the first warband I completed) and having recently picked up a Fomoroid Crusher, it felt a shame not to work him into my list.
I ended up going back to the drawing board (or in this case, the always great Warcrier.net) and went through 2-3 slightly different iterations before landing on the one I used.
To my somewhat surprise, my Scions of the Flames list (which I named the Azure Arsonist for my slightly blue colour scheme) tied for first place!
I won all 3 of my games, netting me 5 points per win – which tied the organizer’s score of 15 as well.
But the truly remarkable thing was that the tie breaker was set to “kill points tally” – that is, a total of the value of everything we killed over 3 games, and it was also, improbably, a tie at 1600 points. What those odds are is honestly beyond me.
In any event, I’ll be writing about the rest of the tournament in more detail later this week. But for today, I’ll just be focusing on the list and how the games went.
The Azure Arsonists – Scions of the Flame List
Below is are the roster I built with the details copied from Warcrier.net
---------- Scions of the Flame 955pts | 8 fighters | Valid ✓ - Blazing Lord (200pts, Hero) - Lord of Plagues (170pts, Hero) - Fomoroid Crusher (260pts, Ally) - Initiate with Morning Star (65pts) - Initiate with Morning Star (65pts) - Initiate with Morning Star (65pts) - Initiate with Morning Star (65pts) - Initiate with Morning Star (65pts) ----------
As the tournament allowed us to use Divine Blessings, I had 45 points left over which allowed me to do the following:
- 15 points – increase the hit points for my Blazing Lord to 24.
- 30 points – increase the attack characteristic of my Fomoroid Crusher from 3 to 4 attacks per activation.
The general sense of the list was build around a couple of core concepts:
- Recently, Off Meta Musings answered one of my tournament questions in a video about list-building and suggested building a warband to its strengths. In the case of the scions, the main strengths that jumped out were its leader’s combat versatility and the impressive ability to hunt for crits with the morning star initiates.
- I also knew from experience that the Scions, like most bespoke warbands, are hurting for tanks, which meant I needed to sub in some beefy allies.
- I also used to bring in 1-3 chaff with the flaming pots who could, for a double, have a very rickety range attack. However, after some sample games where they did nothing, I settled on the fact that a double – even for a single onslaught – was worth more to any of my big units anyways.
Leader – The Blazing Lord
Everyone who’s ever played this warband or gone up against them probably knows that this guy is a bit of a badass.
He’s got a great melee profile of 2″ range with 4 attacks – 5 strength and 2/6 damage. He loves his crits and has some decent ability options to either boost his crit damage or raise his strength (even if onslaught is often the best call). He’s also survivable, having 5 armour and 20 HP similar to a Stormcast model.
His only real downside as I’ve noticed from playing several games with him before is that he’s a big target – especially for “can-opener” style units that go and kill elites (like a Gut Lord, for instance). The number of times he’s been one shot by 20 damage is actually far more than made me comfortable, so giving him the +4 HP was intended to help guarantee he lived to fight another turn.
Blazing Lord in the Tournament
In the actual tournament, pretty much nothing went as expected for this piece.
In my 3 games, he was rarely targeted by opponents (and in the case of my first game, I had him whole heartedly flee from a deployment of 2 Vindictors and an Annihilator). So his bonus HP never really came into play.
He managed to fight a bunch of chaff in games 2 and 3, killing off Plaguebearers and then Saurus Warriors a plenty, but again much of his combat prowess never really got to shine.
The one strong matchup was when I went against a Vindictor with him and chose to use my Double to boost my strength to 7 for what should have been a goods swing, but I whiffed with only 1s and 2s.
Instead, where this guy shined the most was with his Ignited Fervour triple where I was able to boost the attack characteristic of allies within 3″ by 1.
In round 2 versus Nurgle Daemons, it was a blood tally mission where the winning of each round was whoever had the most kill points. So inevitably it became a big mud fight where I was seriously outnumbered (8 units to 13). However, I started mostly in the middle fighting opponents on two sides which allowed me to tighten up my formation and get a lot of bonus attack dice out of it (never mind that I had a low tripe 3 rounds in a row).
Four of my chaff were able to benefit from it and thanks to some lucky rolls, I was landing hits all over as the daemons slowly made their advance towards me.
Chaos Ally – Fomoroid Crusher
The Fomoroid is a scary piece and one of the most recent additions to my collection and warband. I was lucky to find a copy of the Hargax’s Pit-Beasts on liquidation sale a few months back and quickly built up the big boy to get him game ready.
Giving him that extra attack from a blessing was an easy call. For 30 points, the damage potential is pretty much better than any other option I had. The only question was how much crushing he would get to do.
In that regard, he’s funny piece. One where I’m convinced there is an invisible “luck stat” that does hilarious things.
In the past, I’ve had him go mano-a-mano with a Gut Lord and a Mega Boss and (using onslaught) wipe them off the board. But I’ve also whiffed a double attack activation on a Gnoblar before, so when luck swings, she swings.
Fomoroid Crusher in the Tournament
Out of my whole warband, I might have to give him the award for “most inconsequential piece.” He did some crushing, but boy was it not very much.
In ever game, he entered either on turn 2 or 3. In the first game, he started near a control point that was hugged by an Annihilator and spent the game locked up with the dude until finally crushing him on turn 4.
Then, during the battle with the Nurgle Daemons, my opponent sent chaff to tie him up while his team moved towards my main battlegroup. He spent the entire game getting unstuck from 50 point Plaguebearers before reaching the fight at end of turn 4.
In my final game, however, the true psychological terror he conveyed hit home, with my opponent going all out to try and destroy the beast. He focus fired on him with a Razordon and two handlers for 3 turns as I chased down his leader. Fomo got to crush the Saurus Knight Alpha but then was immediately and hilariously taken down by a melee attack from a Skink Handler.
Still, even if he destroyed less than his points in that game, he did buy me time for my other two groups to reach the rest of the objectives and fight off enough Seraphon to claim a victory.
Chaos Ally – Lord of Plagues
I love the Lord of Plagues – both for the model and how he plays in Warcry. At 170 points, he’s a whole bundle of tankiness and decent choppiness that you can’t always get in a single ally.
In my Warband, he stuck out a bit because his colour scheme didn’t match (normally I ally him into my Sybarites band that uses silver and purple as their primary colours). However, he’s so good at what he does that I knew I had to bring him in here.
Lord of Plagues in the Tournament
Surprisingly (or not) most of my opponents showed little interest in attacking him due to his near obscene hit points (32) and mean axe (3-5 3/5). The exception was this crazy situation where my Nurgle opponent was able to Rampage not once but twice over two turns with their Beast of Nurgle and were determined to take the Lord off the board.
However, in a cosmic turn of events, my opponent largely whiffed and my Lord of Plagues ended up slaying the Beast on his second activation through some lucky crits on my part.
Elsewhere, I definitely had luck on my side, as he either started on the board in first deployment and could make it to the fights in time, or spawned closely behind an enemy control point. In pretty much every game he was useful, getting into the thick of combat, and dealing more damage than my leader or my Fomoroid did over the course of the tournament.
Chaff – Initiates with Morning Star
I call these guys my chaff because, well, they are at 65 points each. But they were also the true MVPs of my warband.
For some reason, I rarely thought about them in the past, preferring more attacks or the flaming pot, but after a few nights on Tabletop Simulator, I realized their true potential and it came to fruition in this tournament – albeit, largely thanks to luck.
One disclaimer: we were allowed to use proxy pieces at the tournament, the conditions being 1) they had to use the same base size; 2) they could reasonably be used as a proxy (for instance, no snakes pretending to be people); and 3) they had to fit thematically with the rest of the warband.
In my case, I had to sub in 4 proxies for my initiates with morning star. I’ve spent close to a year trying to get more without having to resort to buying 4 more boxes, and haven’t had any luck on eBay or the local game stores. I ended up using the other initiate piece and a couple of Mordheim figures to fill in the blanks.
Initiates with Morning Star in the Tournament
In a twist that I wouldn’t have predicted, my chaff were the main slayers in my warband.
Their 3″ range and 4 damage on a crit was pretty much a perfect combo over the course of the day – made even stronger by the number of times I was able to fire off my Blazing Lord’s triple and buff all their attacks.
Over the course of 3 games, luck was on my side. In the vast majority of all my chaff attack activations, I rolled at least 1 crit – with a crit and a hit being very common.
In other words, almost every time one of these guys attacked, I dealt 4 or more damage. Including one time where I rolled a triple 6 and struck down a mostly healthy Vindictor.
Their range was pivotal too. In every game I was able to land some cheeky hits on opponents after a single move, which then required they commit a move to come and face me, or find something better to do (and still get harassed by this little guys).
At 10 health, they were also lucky enough to survive a lot of attack activations by opponents with a 2/4 damage profile, with 8 points taken in damage being very typical – and still enough for them to fight for another activation.
Overall, in every game, they killed more than they were taken down, and often finished off units way out of their league.
Key Takeaways for the Scions of the Flame at the Tournament
So, tor recap, this list got me tied for a victory in terms of games won and kill points.
I was surprised to have won all three games, in all honesty, much less having being able to kill that much stuff over the course of the day. Still, there are a few things that are worth bearing in mind:
- In my first game versus a 7-unit SCE Thunderstrike team, I was worried. I had lost to that same list in a similar matchup a month before in a friendly game. In this case, that it was a Rumble Pack mission that we played, my 8-unit list had a notable edge – I was able to steal in one more objective early on in a sort of Russian march that kept me ahead the rest of the game. In a sheer 1v1 mud fight, I would have lost
- In game 2, I also lucked out by being deployed closer to the middle and basically forced my opponent to slowly walk towards me as I harassed him with chaff. He was a newer player with a strong list, who made good calls (such as tying up the Fomoroid for 2 turns with chaff) but it was also clearly a luck was on my side matchup. He did tragically low damage on not 1 but 2 rampages, and I tore him to shreds with crits from my chaff. If he hadn’t had such bad Rampages, he would likely have won that game as he desperately needed only a few more blood points to take a VP away from me in any given round that I won.
- In game three, my opponent was also pretty new and the sight of the Fomoroid really spooked him. He made the call to try and destroy it – which he succeeded, but it cost him too much time while I was moving in on the objectives. And again, my chaff were trashing his pieces with their crits.
- I was also fortunate not to fight any of the teams at the tournament that had nets (Kruleboyz and Gitz were around too). Even if he wasn’t a very pivotal piece, a single netter could have incapacitated my Fomoroid in any game and he would have just become a big, blobby wall, instead of helping clear some chaff.
Overall, I’m more than happy with the way things turned out. I really love the Scions as well as the pieces I used for allies, so it was nice to see them play well.
Be sure to check back soon for a more thorough write-up of the tournament, its lists, and results.
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