A more traditional Necron feel, this army brings as many guns as it can. You can fill out your core with Necron Warriors with a mix of weapons–Gauss Reapers on Necron Warriors are a great weapon, and this dynasty’s trait helps by enhancing its range by 25%. It’s a valid tactic just about anywhere, but Mephrit makes it especially dangerous: a character with the Veil of Darkness can jump itself and 20 Reaper Warriors into position and light up most targets, boosted by stratagems to increase wounds (via Disintegration Capacitors) and/or inflict mortal wounds (via Talent for Annihilation) if need be. The increased range means units that deny “deep strike” mechanics within 12″ won’t stop you. Another option is Tomb Blades, which offer tough mobile shooting and can also be great objective grabbers/harassers, especially since they don’t crumble to dust like Scarabs tend to. Contents: 1 Lord-Aquilor (Hero), 5 x Vanguard Hunters (Batteline if General is Lord-Aquilor), 3 x Vanguard Palladors, 3 x Glyph-Hounds Now you have probably heard that term “boys before toys” which means “get your base troops and HQ’s before you get all the big flashy stuff”. Well for Orks you’re gonna take that to heart. While orks are extremely versatile and can be played almost in any flavor, ork boyz are probably the most versatile and most useful unit in the Ork army. Not the highest placing Skaven list at the event, but a good example of the ‘classic’ competitive approach to Skaven – Thanquol, Stormfiends, Clanrats, buff pieces and flavour to taste. In reality, Thanquol’s spellcasting job is to get out endless spells. In particular, he’s an incredible user of the Lauchon the Soulseeker endless spell, as his base is comically tiny and fits within the Lauchon bubble, letting Thanquol move 18” via Lauchon and then move again in your own hero phase.

The Battlewagon. The big lumbering behemoth tank for the orks and also a very useful transport with its transport capacity of 20. It is pretty though and has a load of guns and weapons. While overall its shooting in Gunwagon configuration leaves a bit to be desired, Battlewagons work great as mobile open-topped firing platforms or as melee push threats in their Bonebreaka configuration. All three versions can be built from the same box. Bear in mind that the above ideas are just two of a multitude of choices you can make and if you have settled you want to use X unit because you think they’re awesome then by all means go your own way. Competitively at the moment you’ll often see Sautekh and Novokh on top, though just about every dynasty (and custom dynasty) has neat options that you can play to and give your opponent a tough challenge. You’ve got your hands on some core characters and troops, now where do you go? Necrons have a number of different angles to play and some of them are quite competitive. Let’s discuss a couple possible options among many that are available and how you might branch into them.You won’t see this as much as the Deceiver simply because dreaded skitterleap is so good, but if you’re running the right kind of army for it this will be the hardest hitting verminlord, and isn’t just a solo operator. Clawlord Contents: 1 Tech-priest Dominus (HQ), 10 Skitarii Vanguard/Rangers (Troops), 1 Onager Dunecrawler (Heavy Support) Shadow Magnet Trinket – Up front, it’s weird to me that the assassin subfaction gets no damage boost artefacts, but here we are. Three quite techy once-per-game options. For once-per-game, these are all OK. The Shadow Magnet Trinket gets activated at the start of any combat phase and gives the bearer the strike-first effect until your next hero phase. As we will see, Deceivers like going first quite a lot. Tech-priest Dominuses have fallen out of favor recently, which is a shame because Ad Mech still field Vanguard and Rangers on a regular basis to fill out Battalions and the Dunecrawler is a legitimately good unit that sees lots of competitive play. It’s still a great boxed set to start building off of, but some of the savings are mitigated by the fact that you probably won’t want a Tech-Priest Dominus in your army.

This is one of the original Start Collecting boxes and pre-dates the new Battletome. The new Battletome makes the Gore-Gruntas batteline in an Ironjawz army or a Big Waagh!, so you can now add in other Orruk units without losing the battleline status of this box, maybe combine it with the Savage Orruks one. A solid start for one of the sneaky best armies in AoS. This is a really versatile box as many of the units can be build in a different ways and can be slotted in to different Death lists depending on how they’re built. In a Flesh-Eater Courts army the big beast of the box (Terrorgheist/ZD) can be built as a standalone behemoth with a freestanding Ghoul King or as a mounted leader of either the FEC variety or as a Vampire Lord/the named Vampire Lord, Prince Vordrai. The Craftworlds box is extremely weird. It’s an incredible saving over buying the kits individually – if you want any two of them, you might as well buy this instead and get the others essentially free – but as a place to do what it says on the tin and start collecting Craftworld Eldar it’s woeful, since there’s no actual Troops in here. There’s only two elves, even, and one of them is piloting a War Walker. Still, most of the units are at least passable to good, and it’s quite a hefty chunk of points, too. Like the new Start Collecting: Chaos Space Marines box, it’s a bit hard to evaluate this one effectively because it’s currently the only place to get Suppressors, which are an insanely good unit for Iron Hands and, to a lesser extent, Imperial Fists armies. That said, everything in this box except the Lieutenant is a solid addition to a competitive Space Marines army, and even the Lieutenant is serviceable in a pinch. Even if you could get Suppressors somewhere else, this box would still be an incredibly good value based on what’s in it. Diabolical Schemer – When a model issues a command within 13” of your general then on a 5+ that command isn’t received, the command point is lost and you gain a command point. It’s a huge effect when it happens, but the model issuing the command having to be so close and the dice roll can make it difficult to use and then unlikely even when the situation occurs.

Da Clanz

Contents: 1 Watch Captain Artemis (HQ), 10 Deathwatch Veterans (Troops), 1 Venerable Dreadnought (Elites), 1 Deathwatch upgrade sprue That warscroll spell is pretty tasty though, if you can get it off. A CV8 spell with the traditional 13” range, Screech has the dreaded thirteenth spell which targets an enemy unit and rolls 13 dice, doing a mortal wound for each 4+. That’s a lot of mortal wounds but on top of that you can then summon a unit of Clanrats with one model for each wound caused by the spell. This is a little awkward as they have to be set up wholly within 13” of Skreech and more than 9” from enemy units, but is still a “free” unit.