It’s crazy to me now that until last year I had never entered an official Games Workshop event! Warhammer World is a little over an hour away, but I had only been a handful of times. Yes, we had an annual pilgrimage at Christmas to roll some dice and create some legends, but it had always been with the same group of people and the same lists.

Last year, myself and fellow Sprewer Jay decided to give the Throne of Skulls a try, and we had an awesome time – I had brought a pure Everchosen list, and even though I only won 2 games I had an amazing time! We followed this up later in the year with the Age of Sigmar doubles where me and Dave fought for the glory of Sprues and Brews, rolled some dice, met some great people and got absolutely battered by Rob Symes!

While I hadn’t placed very highly in either event, I had a brilliant time and really enjoyed myself, playing some brilliant games of Warhammer against some great opponents. I now had a taste for the casual tournament scene and couldn’t wait to get to the next one!

One of my Hobby Resolutions this year was to try and enter a GW tournament for each system, and so when I saw another Age of Sigmar Throne of Skulls was on the way I jumped at the chance to pick up a ticket! For those who dont know, the Throne of Skulls is a more casual event where the focus is on having fun games rather than a win at all costs mentality – A large chunk of the scoring comes from votes for favourite game and favourite army, meaning that you have just as much a chance to win it from having a pretty army and being a fun person to play against as you do for actually winning games of Warhammer!

With the event booked, the next question was which army to bring? That didn’t take very long to decide, mostly due to the Warhammer TV Twitch chat convincing me to do it! I had been lucky enough to receive Vorgaroth The Scarred from my wife for Christmas, and had managed to get it built and painted in about 2 weeks for a local 1 day event

Sadly, the Dragon didn’t do great, but she looked gorgeous and claimed skulls for Khorne – and let’s face it, what more do you need! While the Throne of Skulls is more casual than a GT I still wanted to have half a chance, so back to the drawing board I went and had a practice game against friend of the channel Craig Chesters! As you can see in our battle report, the dragon didnt last too long…

Third time lucky eh? I hit the books again and came up with something that might last longer than a single turn. The army is very much all eggs in one massive dragon shaped basket, and so needed some supporting buffs to make sure it at least made that first lethal charge and spilled as much blood for Khorne as possible!

The army list was:

Vorgaroth

Bloodsecrator

Slaughterpriest (Violent Urgency, Talisman of Blood, Killing Frenzy)

Bloodstoker

20 Bloodreavers

10 Bloodreavers

5 Flesh Hounds

Chaos Warshrine (Bronzed Flesh)

I felt this gave me bodies to grab objectives, a couple of unbinds plus a host of support heroes to buff the dragon to insane levels…  And with a couple of practice games against Dave’s filthy Stormcast list going well I decided that I had at least given the dragon a chance at surviving long enough to kill as much as possible!

Saturday 23rd March 2019

Pulling into the Warhammer World car park I was excited to roll some dice – going into the event I was hoping for 2 wins, but mostly wanted to play 5 different armies and just have some fun – my army came from the Duncan Rhodes school of warfare with the motto of “Charge Everything”

Checking in at Bugmans and chatting to a few of the guys I had met at the previous event there seemed to be some excitement to face Vorgorath, which was something that put a smile on my face! Polishing off a sausage and bacon bap, it was time to head through to the hall and see who my first game was against…

Game 1: Places of Arcane Power VS Anthony Poole and his Sylvaneth

What a gorgeous army to have to fight for game one! Anthony had done an amazing job on these with a “four seasons” vibe going on. Unfortunately for me it was always going to be a tough one to win against all those casters, and so I decided to do what Khorne would want and just kill as much as possible! And kill is what Vorgaroth did…

While I had a Major Loss, Vorgaroth had managed to kill Alarielle, Drycha, Durthu, 3 Kurnoth Hunters and a scattering of Dryads and Spites. I had such a great time with the dragon munching through everything even if it was a loss!

Game 2: Battle for the Pass VS Thom Leat and his Freeguild

What’s more glorious than a gorgeously painted Free Peoples army massed ready for battle? Thom had even named all his heroes!I’ve had a soft spot for the Empire since Warhammer, and was made up with the chance to play them! This battle was a little more in my favour due to the range and speed of the dragon and things looked dark for the valiant Free People when Scarloc landed on their objective…

While victory went to Khorne, moral victory went to Siegfried Stormblessed on his mighty griffon! Charging into the dragon on the final turn, the hero of Greyspire managed to lay the fell beast low, cleaving the foul creature’s head clean off! Sadly for the peoples of Greyspire the Khornate monster had killed 6 Demigryphs, a griffon and around 60 brave men…

Game 3: Starstrike VS Martin Scandling and his Legion of Blood

The next game was against another brilliantly painted army, Martin had done an amazing job on these with every model stunning on the tabletop! Martin also quickly sussed out that if all the support heroes die then the dragon can be taken down…

In a string of really bad luck however, Martin lost Neferata, his Dragon Lord on Zombie Dragon, Coven Throne and Black Coach to Vorgorath, and with them his staying power as a death army faded too – We had an exciting last couple of turns with the game being down to the fate of a few priority rolls, but ultimately Khorne claimed victory again destroying the remnants of the army!

And so day 1 ended with the buzz of adrenaline after taking many skulls for Khorne – a couple of us retreated to Bugmans to chat and ready ourselves for the final two battles…

Sunday 24th March 2019

After a good night’s sleep, Sunday arrived and with it the realisation that I might be able to achieve my goal of 3 wins! Wandering into Warhammer World I saw that I was on table 6, and my opponent was none other than Charles Nolan, who had commanded Skarbrand to remove Archaon’s head at last year’s Throne of Skulls – an epic rematch fated by Khorne, it was most certainly on !

Game 4: Relocation Orb VS Charles Nolan and his (Best army nominated!) Blades of Khorne

I had faced Charles before, and knew how deadly his army has – this was going to be a blood bath, arranging the ring in the centre of the board into a “Fighting pit” before the game we vowed to create a blood tithe worthy of Khorne…

By the end of the first battle round about 2000 points worth of models had been killed including Scarbrand, a Slaughterbrute, many many Bloodreavers and Vorgaroth himself! Blood Tithe points came thick and fast and both armies hacked at each other insatiable blood lust – but once the dust had settled Khorne had favoured Charles’ army, with mine sent back to the Realm of Chaos to lick it’s wounds for the final battle…

Game 5: Scorched Earth VS Andy Woods and his Maggotkin of Nurgle

And so into the final game there was a chuckle as no other than Andy Woods wandered up – Andy is part of the Purple Sparkly Unicorns and lives not far from me, we had been joking over lunch that with 2 wins each we might face each other in round 5, and looks like fate had smiled again!

For glory and bragging rights on the Unicorns Whatsapp group, the dragon did what she had managed to do all weekend, and charged with disregard into the Nurgle lines, annihilating 30 Plaguebearers with its initial combat! Andy, being an absolute legend had vowed to not take a double turn during the weekend, and that ultimatly lost him the game, but he still put up a great fight with Gutrot Spume and the Blight Kings (best band name ever…) putting some pressure on my rear objectives – With his lines decimated however, Andy fell to the wrath of Khorne putting me on 3 wins!!

I was made up, I had 3 wins and had fought 5 different armies all of which fantastic games of Warhammer.

Me and Andy had a wander around the exhibition halls to check out the new Sanguinius display alongside the old one (Sorry Jay)

I had a brilliant time, heading back down to the hall to watch the results I felt the weekend couldn’t get any better!

But then this happened…

Wow.

Just wow!

With 3 wins to my name I had somehow managed to get 4 favourite game votes and 4 favourite army votes and manage to claim 3rd place!

I want to give a big thank you to everyone who voted for me, and I hope you enjoyed those games as much as I did! Very much looking to playing each of you again in future, hopefully with another ridiculous list with a silly massive model!

Published by Matt Crowther

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