Hey guys, thank you! I've only played 3 games of AoS at all prior to this tournament, so bear with me on the details! (I have a lot of competitive 40k experience though)
The list was a 2-drop and I got to pick 1st turn priority all 3 games. I chose to go second in each game. The army was split into 2 battle regiments and I would deploy the VLoZD and the 2 units of dire wolves as a screen along with 2 units of zombies in gravesites for my first drop. Then the rest of the army on the second drop (BK's and Manny) with the grave guard in the grave site.
Game 1: Thunder Lizard Seraphon + Kroak - Loads of shooting and mortal wound output, bit of a worrying match up for the first game. Managed to sit myself onto the objectives and just grind him down on both primary + secondary points.
Game 2: Ogor Mawtribes - This one was tighter on Veins of Ghur as I couldn't just sit on the objectives early game, so I split my army into 2 halves and played defensively, killing anything that came too far forward. Once the objectives were down I put the zombies + grave guard down out of the gravesites onto them and held on to a lead into the end of the game.
Game 3: Beastclaw Raiders - 3 stonehorns - Easier game for me now that I'd had some practice into it! On my T1 I set up a big screen of dire wolves, and put my grave guard behind them between 2.1-2.5" from the front of the dire wolves. So that when he charged into my dire wolves, his 2" reach doesn't hit my grave guard, he pounds the dire wolves, and I pulled casualties to open a space for the grave guard who are within 3" to pile into a Stonehorn, and they picked one up. On my turn the grave guard picked up another one, with me re-establishing the screen with some zombies, and then on the turn after the grave guard picked up the next one! Grave guard MVP!
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My thoughts on the list are that I really liked the 2x20 zombies coming out of the gravesites, their damage is negligible, but 2-3 mortal wounds here and there is nice. The main thing is they just clog up the board, give me a squishy screen that I can easily pull in strategic ways to allow my harder hitting units to counter punch efficiently.
Mannfred was incredible, his +1/+1 command ability is a huge force multiplier and he's a great mobile screen. I made an error of leaving him in combat on game 2 against 4 iron guts, I ended up failing a silly number of saves and had him left on 1 wound, shouldn't have even risked it and just made his teleport move, but I'll know for the future!
The VLoZD was really nice and tanky, his damage output is swingy even in Mannfred's aura. Unholy impetus was useless, I just couldn't manipulate a situation to make it trigger.
Going forward I'd like to make a few changes to the list. I think I can squeeze in more damage output and utility by switching to Kastelai and running a Vengorian Lord instead of the VLoZD, rousing commander fits into the list a lot more elegantly than unholy impetus and the fragment of the keep for a -1 to wound aura is a really tasty relic. I also want to get Belladama in there for the exploding 6's to hit aura, which is another strong force multiplier for the entire army and can give me a bit more magical output.
I've attached my updated list - would love to hear all your thoughts on anything I've written above!
Vik