Newbie Escalation List Advice

Hi all. New here and starting an escalation league with my buddies. We’re new and playing Battle March from 500 pts up to 1,000pts and then normal ToW from there up to 1,500pts, increasing by 250pts each time.

It’s not a competitive league and the goal is to learn the game and keep it light and narratively fun (we’re writing army backstories / doing other narrative out of game things to go alongside).

With that in mind, I’m looking for some feedback on my intended list and its additions up to 1500pts. As above I’m not looking for uber meta combinations, but really for any advice on if I’ve got any gaping holes or things that are likely to lead to difficulty or confusion.

I’ve written out my thought process to try and help you understand where I’m coming from
So that if there is a better way to achieve something or if something I say I want wouldn’t work because of some rule I’ve missed, that would be helpful!

So to start at 500pts:

• Wargor [84 pts]
- General
- Hand weapon, Shield, Light Armour
- Rune of the Beast Ascendant

• Bray Shaman [110 pts]
- Level 2 Wizard (Deamonology & Beasts)
- Jagged Dagger

• Gor Herd [132 pts]
- 15 Gors with Paired Hand Weapons
- Champion, Standard Bearer & Musician
- Banner of the Bold

• Ungor Herd [55 pts]
- 10 Ungors with Shortbows
- Musician

• Razorgor [52 pts]

• Razorgor [52 pts]

This comes to 485pts. The Shaman will be attached to the Ungors so he can avoid being sniped, and use his jagged dagger on them.
The Wargor will be attached to the Gors for +1 leadership with ‘Rune of the Beast Ascendant’ and the ‘Banner of the Bold’ letting them reroll leadership tests (which I know they get on some Ld tests with ‘Chaos Undivided’, but believe this banner would let them include primal fury within as the Veteran rule becomes *all* Ld tests?)

At 750pts I’ll:

- Add a Preyton with Ambush special rule [170pts]
- Add a Herdstone [100pts]
- Remove a Gor [-7pts]

The Preyton will add the ability to ambush to threaten any backline skulkers (war machines lone characters or missile troops), as well as giving me a source of Terror and Fly so if my opponent has ambushing units I can instead keep they Preyton back to defend and react quickly. I know there are other options for the points, so happy to hear suggestions but I am unduly partial to the Preyton as a model/vibe… and the Herdstone will make both my magic better and help me take a more defensive posture if required.

At 1,000pts, I’ll:

- Add a second 15-Gor Herd with full command and Banner of Outrage [147pts]
- Add the missing Gor back to the first Gor Herd [+7pts]
- Upgrade the Bray Shaman to a Great Bray Shaman at Level 4 [+85pts], he becomes the general.

This will hopefully make my casting reliable enough to count on, give me a good range of spells, and mean I have two solid blocks of Gors who get to reroll their Primal Fury tests and likely will have +1 Ld from the Wargor if they stay reasonably close.

At 1,250 pts, I’ll

- Add a swarm of 6 Harpies [66pts]
- Add a Centigor Herd of 8 with full command, the soiled tapestry (hatred all), ambush, throwing axes, cavalry spears, and shields [195]

The goal here is to give more flexibility; if my opponent is bringing ambushers, the harpies can intercept and harry them. Otherwise they will be a utility unit. The Centigors will be shock cavalry to either ambush or add a more mobile threat being able to throw out s5 axes of charged or charge themselves depending on the situation.

At 1,500pts, …

I don’t really know, so advice would be appreciated! Perhaps something big/centrepiece-ish?

Thanks for reading all this if you got this far!

reddit.com
u/wardy116 — 3 days ago

Starting with out with ToW for battle march with Beastmen… Razorgor vs Chaos Spawn?

Hi all, as above I’m doing a list to start out and keen to understand why a Razorgor(s) is more popular than a Chaos Spawn(s), other than them being in different categories (core vs rare).

I know the Razorgor has swiftstride and the Spawn has the unreliability of random movement and attacks, but as I understand the benefit of taking a Razorgor is to charge block/redirect etc, and so i feel like the Chaos Span would do better here given its better staying power, allowing it to hold up enemy units more effectively while my Gors get into a good position…

I like the idea of the Chaos Spawn with Mark Of Khorne to give killing blow, and the ability to basically keep them a threat to a greater range of units

But I’ve not played a game and so advice or anything i may not have considered would be appreciated!

From another perspective, my aim is to get sone Raptoryx and paint them,up as essentially “angry geese” because my list will be somewhat themed around farm animals rising up to overthrow humans, so having geese around the farm seems thematic as either Chaos Spawn or Razorgors, but trying to figure of which to run them as and so what base size to use.

reddit.com
u/wardy116 — 4 days ago
▲ 411 r/killteam

Every time I refresh WarCom and it’s another Necromunda article I lose another wound…

u/wardy116 — 21 days ago
▲ 382 r/Tau40K+1 crossposts

XV26s ready to get sneaky…

This is my third iteration of this team and this scheme, as I’ve been using it as a bit of a way to track my progress and improve skills (kit-bashing, edge highlights, blending, lenses, varnishing etc).

There’s still more to learn but I’m really enjoying the process of continuous slight improvement and learning.

I particularly enjoyed kitbashing the pistol and holster on the Shas’vre, using the fire warriors spare pistol and Shadowsun’s holstered one, and a new rotary tool I got for my birthday.

Let me know what you think, comments and questions welcome!

u/wardy116 — 26 days ago

XV26 / XV25 Stealth Suit Progression from kitbashed compendium team in 2024 to D tier official team in 2026…

I’m a simple man, I like my stealth suits.

In 2024 I took a kitbashed XV25 compendium team to a Killteam event at WHW - it was terrible but fun. Since then a new edition eventually brought the new XV26’s, instead of putting them down after taking the newer version to the most recent Critical Strike VI, I decided to try and improve both my painting and my skill with them, and bring back a little kitbashing too!

(I still like to think that some of my kitbashed XV25’s lent some design ques to the team who worked on the XV26’s … they certainly stole the pose!)

u/wardy116 — 29 days ago

Lads, new Vegetainian lore just dropped…

It started with the suppression of the Garlic tribespeople, then came the civil war with Pommes Magnus, and ended with three words… “et tu, Broccoli?”

Who said ceresia gets all the Roman themes?

u/wardy116 — 1 month ago

40 Men, 34 Rifles, 18 SMGs, 2 Binoculars… 1 great event!

I spent the day at Warlord Games new store in Wigan (NW England), as they hosted “Operation Stress Test”, an event focused on stress testing the store for future events. It was a small 8 player event with a non-competitive 1,000 theme.

It was a great day where my historical and heavy-weapon lacking Finns actually did surprisingly well…

**The Event**

The event was really well run with 3 great fully “3D” terrain boards and one more WIP board, (but that’s only to be expected for a new store); they kept saying how they had more plans for board and so I absolutely cannot wait to see what else they do because the quality was already really high.

The event was also testing out a slightly amended mission pack produced by Kriss, the TO with the intent of reducing things like Officer/Armour kills leading to weird tie-breaking situations, among other things. I think for a “version 0.6” as Kriss put it, it was eminently playable.

We also got proper Wigan pies and proper Warlord prizes, including a raffle where tickets were issued on the basis of results (1 for a win or draw, 2 for a loss).

Not overshadowing all of that good stuff, but the aircon in the current UK heatwave really was the MVP - keeping both me and the snow adorning the bases of my Finns nice and cool!

**The List**

Give the lack of competitive intention I decided to give a list which had been in my mind for a while a go. The idea is a Winter War Finnish Sissi Platoon, with only the small arms and molotovs that would have been available to them at the time (with a little help for some of Marshal Mannerheim’s pre-plotted artillery…).

The list is in the pictures, but irl (credit to https://www.jaegerplatoon.net/MAIN.html) a Sissi Platoon would have consisted of:

• Officer (SMG/Pistol)
• Platoon Senior NCO
• 2 Assistants (runners)
• NCO + 9 men (SMG + 9 rifles)
• NCO + 9 men (SMG + 9 rifles)
• NCO + 9 men (SMG + 9 rifles)
• NCO + 3 men (Ski-Scout/Ahkio team)(rifles)

I split this into two rifle platoons, one representing a main force led by the Officer, and a second led by the Senior NCO, representing a flanking contingent (using the Kaukopartio rather than Sissi profile). I subbed in the Ahkio team as snipers because… well… Finns.

This alone wouldn’t be sufficient but with the addition of two forward observers to bring down the power of off-table artillery - I stood a chance.

Of course, when you’re limited to ~40 men and no heavy weapons… you do what the Finns do and pay for the infantry to have Molotov Cocktails (which while not invented by the Finns, get their name from the Finns during Winter War).

The list was very fun, albeit a little challenging to play, and actually went undefeated - with two draws and one win. The biggest surprise really was just how much it didn’t actually feel at that much of a disadvantage, and seemed to feel like a bit of a tough nut to crack for opponents with much more “balanced” lists!

Huge thanks to the team at Warlord Wigan, and to all the other attendees for making it a great day, and I think I’ll certainly be sending out my Skiing Finns again in future!

u/wardy116 — 2 months ago