Last-Minute Tournament Tweaks: Ethereals, Wyvern Math, and Pure Waaagh Energy
We’ve hit that very specific pre-tournament phase where list-building stops being a calm hobby exercise and starts becoming a mix of rules paranoia, calculator abuse, and saying “ok, that’s it, I’m submitting this” for the fifth time.
This week Stas was deep in that zone with his Warhammer: The Old World Orcs & Goblins list, trying to squeeze just a bit more safety and flexibility out of a Warboss on Wyvern before the deadline. You know the kind of discussion: one minute it’s about optimization, the next it’s about whether two Ethereal units mean instant death for the whole army.
Speeding up the game with simple markers
One of the nicest ideas to come out of the discussion wasn’t even a list tweak, but a tournament quality-of-life one. Stas was thinking about preparing tokens or markers with WS and T values to place next to enemy units.
Honestly, we really like this kind of thing. It’s a tiny bit of prep, but on the table it can save time, reduce repeated questions, and help move combat along faster. Especially in a tournament setting, anything that helps us roll dice quicker without losing clarity is a win.
The mysterious tournament status icon
Before we even got to the list itself, there was a brief moment of event-admin confusion. Stas noticed a status icon saying that the entry fee payment was still awaiting confirmation and wondered whether payment was supposed to happen only on site.
Fortunately, Michał had the same icon and wasn’t worried about it, so this was one of those classic pre-event panic moments that probably means nothing… but still makes us stare at the screen for a bit too long.
And of course, because it’s tournament week, the deadline drama also entered the chat. At first it looked like lists had to be sent by Thursday, then there was some confusion about whether it had originally been earlier, then the deadline extension came up again. In the end: list submitted, panic mostly contained.
The real problem: Ethereal
The big topic was Ethereal units.
Stas started reading up on them a bit more seriously and, as often happens, immediately got more worried instead of less worried. The event has a 0–2 limit on units with Ethereal, which sounds manageable on paper, but if your list has very limited access to magical attacks, even two such units can feel like a nightmare matchup.
That’s what kicked off the whole item reshuffle on the Warboss.
The original idea was a pretty chunky setup: Warboss on Wyvern with a great weapon and Trollhide Trousers, aiming for strong offense and solid durability. But then came the realization that magical attacks might be necessary, and the obvious cheap fix — Burning Blade for 5 points — wasn’t actually so simple, because it pushed the model over the 25% single unit limit.
That’s the kind of list-building problem we love and hate at the same time. The answer looks obvious until the points, restrictions, and equipment interactions all pile up at once.
Fear of the miscast table, as always
There was also a side discussion about dropping the Earthing Rod to free up the points. Rationally, the numbers were on Stas’s side — the dreaded Dimensional Cascade chance came out to just 1 in 216, around 0.4% — but that doesn’t stop the brain from remembering every magical disaster it has ever seen.
Michał’s response was extremely fair: he couldn’t really help with fear of miscasts, because Chaos Dwarfs simply don’t have that particular emotional burden in the same way.
But he did throw in a fun post-tournament idea: after the event, when we go back to our relaxed beer-and-pretzels games, we should try the Mountain Miniatures miscast table.
That honestly sounds like exactly the kind of thing we’d enjoy more after the tournament than before it.
Great weapon or magic weapon?
The heart of the list discussion was the Warboss loadout.
Stas went through a whole chain of options:
- Great Weapon + defensive kit
- Burning Blade for magical attacks against Ethereal
- Shield + Talisman of Protection for a safer save profile
- eventually Biting Blade as the compromise pick
The core tension was simple:
- Great Weapon is fantastic: +2 Strength, AP -2
- but Strike Last feels scary unless the Warboss is durable enough to survive before swinging
- and once you start adding magical weapon options, you lose some of the appeal of other weapon-based rules and combinations
At one point Stas was considering whether a shield with a great weapon was worth it if the shield would mostly only matter against shooting. Then came the realization that the Wyvern charge changes the initiative picture a bit, because the mount’s movement and charge threat make the whole package more dynamic than it first appears.
There was also a very relatable mini-rules spiral about whether magical attacks are ever worse than normal attacks, and whether Magic Resistance mattered there. Thankfully that one got resolved quickly: no hidden anti-magic-weapon trap, just the usual need to remember which special rule applies to what.
Looking at the numbers
Part of the discussion involved checking survivability presets and comparing different equipment setups.
This was one of the screenshots from that process:
And another one, when Stas was looking at the Great Weapon + Talisman of Protection version and realizing the save profile maybe wasn’t as bad as expected:
That’s also where the question popped up that every monster-rider player eventually asks: how much is T6 actually doing for me here?
The answer is usually “quite a lot,” but never quite enough to stop us from opening the list builder one more time.
Final decision: enough thinking, time to fight
After all the math, all the theory, and all the item juggling, Stas finally locked it in:
- Shield
- Biting Blade
- Talisman of Protection
Not because every doubt had been fully resolved, but because at some point the correct strategic decision is to stop tweaking and start preparing to play.
And really, the final mood was perfect. Less spreadsheet, more greenskin philosophy:
it’s time to start smashing
śśśś-waaagh
That feels like the right note to end on.
Meanwhile in the hobby trench
Naturally, list-building stress was accompanied by hobby stress.
When Michał asked how painting and kitbashing were going, Stas’s answer was brutally honest: zero and zero.
On the other side of the table, Michał had at least managed to finish an Iron Daemon — though only with one crew member — and was priming a bull, while also improvising with an old painted Castellan and trying to figure out whether his baggage train might just end up being a small volcano.
Which, to be fair, is an extremely Chaos Dwarf sentence.
We also had a brief detour into other systems, because no hobby chat stays in one lane forever. Wilini mentioned that he really likes the look of Age of Sigmar miniatures — Stormcast and skeletons in particular — even if the rules feel too simple for him compared to Warhammer 40k and Kill Team, where command points and similar mechanics give him a stronger sense of agency. Also: praise was given to Michał’s Lammasu wings and the stonework, which is always important morale support.
That classic pre-event energy
This whole exchange had exactly the kind of energy we know well from the days before an event:
- worrying about one specific matchup too much
- discovering that a 5-point item changes everything
- briefly panicking about admin icons
- pretending probability will calm us down
- not painting enough
- still being very excited to throw dice anyway
And honestly, that’s part of the fun.
Sometimes army-building isn’t about finding the perfect answer. It’s about getting to the point where the list is good enough, the plan is clear enough, and the Waaagh energy is high enough.
We’ll take that.