My stormcast rant : the good, the bad and the ugly, where they are now, and what should be done

[Jaehaerys]

You can't talk about one faction without thinking of the big picture (the whole game) which includes many other factions. Many of your thoughts and suggestions will be purely based on your experiences playing against these other factions.

And also you reference other faction units in your first post as a comparison to Liberators. But hey if you don't want to have a reasonable discussion I will leave you to it.

Have fun

[DanielFM]

11 minutes ago, Jaehaerys said:

You can't talk about one faction without thinking of the big picture (the whole game) which includes many other factions. Many of your thoughts and suggestions will be purely based on your experiences playing against these other factions.

And also you reference other faction units in your first post as a comparison to Liberators. But hey if you don't want to have a reasonable discussion I will leave you to it.

Have fun

We are considering other factions. What we aren't doing is talking about how to fix the balance of other factions. Because this thread is about Stormcast Eternals.

Balance with the other factions is implicit in several posts, you can check.

Other factions need an overhaul, maybe more than SCE? It might be true. But they must ask for it on their own threads.

GW won't nerf the most powerful armies, because they are some of the most recently designed. Those show the direction that rules design is taking, and other older armies should be brought in line with that design, not left behind.

Plus, please don't use strawmans. Just because you think our discussion is unreasonable it doesn't mean it is. It's just your opinion.  Such moral superiority is more than a bit arrogant.

[XReN]

35 minutes ago, Jaehaerys said:

You can't talk about one faction without thinking of the big picture (the whole game) which includes many other factions. Many of your thoughts and suggestions will be purely based on your experiences playing against these other factions.

And also you reference other faction units in your first post as a comparison to Liberators. But hey if you don't want to have a reasonable discussion I will leave you to it.

Have fun

Your "reasonable discusstion" is a useless waste of time, and I mean MUCH MORE useless than our little wishlist party here.

[Kaleun]

frozenbeast is right.

Stormcast in general have the potential to deal with nearly any threat that can come to the table. The discussion of buffing individual Stormcast units ins nonsense in my opinion. The threat would take a far better direction if we would discuss HOW TO deal with the weaknesses and try to solve the mentioned problems with the given options.

Stormcast can ally with every order faction. That alone is extremly strong as you profit often from the shiny things the other order factions can field.

Stormcast have synergies, over the top battalions, super good mobility (teleporting), good buff heroes, ... The list is longer then any other faction can say about themselfes. Also the Stormcast can create rerollable 2+ saves!!! This is just ridiculous and simply not to beat without high rend values or mortal wounds. 

wishlisting will bring us nowhere.

For me Stormcast are in the top 3 of all the AoS competitive armies out there.

[Frozenbeast]

Seen I have been called a hater (yes I don't particularly like Sigmarines) just because I have expressed my opinion...

I sincerely apologize to all the armored hammer-swinging hearts writing in this post that got touched by my words. I though an external opinion might have helped in realize at least partially my point of view, that I thought I had the right to express. And I am sad Sigmar took my right of print and opinion, I thought (and I am still convinced) this forum was a bit better than all the ranty sad forum I left behind with the 8th edition.

That said....Hail Sigmar!

[AdamR]

I think the issue being espoused by some SCE players is not that you can't build a tournament winning list, but rather that to be competetive you are locked into mono build (well 2 or 3 builds really), and they'd prefer a battletome where everything was a little more even. Rather than "I want all the powaaaaaaaaa!"

I agree to a certain extent. I can't remember the last time I wrote a list without Staunch on my general. And ig he's a buff hero, he'll be getting a mirror shield too!

I disagree though that scions of the storm is "worthless" (one of my pet peeve hated words) and I'm on the fence about Stormhost abilities. Want to make your SCE Celestial Vindicators? Paint them turquoise and give the liberators swords. Job done.

I would like to see some of the unused battalions re pointed or altered to give some more variety.

[XReN]

38 minutes ago, Kaleun said:

frozenbeast is right.

Stormcast in general have the potential to deal with nearly any threat that can come to the table. The discussion of buffing individual Stormcast units ins nonsense in my opinion. The threat would take a far better direction if we would discuss HOW TO deal with the weaknesses and try to solve the mentioned problems with the given options.

Stormcast can ally with every order faction. That alone is extremly strong as you profit often from the shiny things the other order factions can field.

Stormcast have synergies, over the top battalions, super good mobility (teleporting), good buff heroes, ... The list is longer then any other faction can say about themselfes. Also the Stormcast can create rerollable 2+ saves!!! This is just ridiculous and simply not to beat without high rend values or mortal wounds. 

wishlisting will bring us nowhere.

For me Stormcast are in the top 3 of all the AoS competitive armies out there.

Yeah, good point about ridiculosness of giving us buffs, but some tweaking with points and battleline options needs to be done for these reasons:

First: it will give more options both for competetive and friendly games without making the faction as a whole ovepowered

Second: before GHB 2017 we had options to bring solutions to our problems to the table: like allies to get ward save and battalions to get artefacts, such as Banner to deal with battleshock and also having points to actual army, now we can't get almost anything but one battalion, some units and essential buffers that eat those artefacts to have some protection against ranged enemies 

Third: Vanguard Chamber, only use for them that I found is using 6 longstrikes with relictor for mobility to snipe enemy buffers, those units need to get lower point cost or they'll never see the table

 

Now about competetive. In my community meta is brutaly dominated by Tzeench, Bonesplitters, Seraphon and Order army of Dragonlords and their cavalry, and I'm from Saint Petersburg, we have the second biggest community in Russia. The highest place on tournament table I ever reached on solo tournament was 4th

On 01.03.2018 at 1:35 AM, ledha said:

 

The good : things that are fine:

- The army is still the most versatile in the game, with ton of available playstale and orientation

- The heroes are all useful, powerful and unique. The biggest strenght of the army

- Very good mortal wound output. Stormcast can face pretty much everything and even in a hard match-up, can try to take a draw or minor victory

- Prayers are extremely good

- Staunch Defenders

 

And a little smtg about our prayers, they are just OK, just look at Seraphon bubble reroll saves prayer and KBB ability to get reroll for their prayers from battalion. If anything needs to be done with them it is giving them SCE keyword mechanic so they won't be usable on allies

[mystycalchemy]

19 minutes ago, Kaleun said:

frozenbeast is right.

Stormcast in general have the potential to deal with nearly any threat that can come to the table. The discussion of buffing individual Stormcast units ins nonsense in my opinion. The threat would take a far better direction if we would discuss HOW TO deal with the weaknesses and try to solve the mentioned problems with the given options.

Stormcast can ally with every order faction. That alone is extremly strong as you profit often from the shiny things the other order factions can field.

Stormcast have synergies, over the top battalions, super good mobility (teleporting), good buff heroes, ... The list is longer then any other faction can say about themselfes. Also the Stormcast can create rerollable 2+ saves!!! This is just ridiculous and simply not to beat without high rend values or mortal wounds. 

wishlisting will bring us nowhere.

For me Stormcast are in the top 3 of all the AoS competitive armies out there.

The problem that this thread was meant to discuss though was ways to make the rougher parts of the SCE battletome match up with the later battletomes. As of right now, Stormcast (competetively) have 1 Command Trait 2-3 Artefacts and maybe 3 total good battalions. The rest are purely fluff or traps in comparison. 

This wasn't meant to be wishlisting, we just want our faction to feel more balanced. Not balanced in game terms (though of course we don't want something horribly over or under powered) but balanced in a mix of units. Paladins are one of the key hammer units in fluff, but are nigh useless in game unless you take some way to deep strike or use the unreliable Battle Trait. 

As for the "rerollable 2+" that we can get, by my count that can happen on 5(8) total units. Liberators, Dracothian Guard (technically 4 units, but i'm counting them as 1 since they share a profile effectively), Lord-Celestant on Stardrake or Dracoth and Gavriel Sureheart. And yeah, other units can get a 2+, but so can other armies with a combination of Mystic Shield, cover, and other bonuses. 

Stormcast are good, but for the posterboys of the game, we'd like the weaker (Vanguard) units to be a little more efficient in some way.

[DantePQ]

SCE consistently do well at tournaments so I don't get a problem with them. For example right now Sylaventh is in much worse shape but somehow SCE do really well in tourneys. 

Arguments about useless unit is flawed as every army has that and still SCE has huge amount of units and are getting new entries every few months. For example Sylaventh has narrow selection and still some units are useless (Treelord, Spite Revs, Branchwraight) 

[PJetski]

14 minutes ago, DantePQ said:

SCE consistently do well at tournaments so I don't get a problem with them. For example right now Sylaventh is in much worse shape but somehow SCE do really well in tourneys. 

Arguments about useless unit is flawed as every army has that and still SCE has huge amount of units and are getting new entries every few months. For example Sylaventh has narrow selection and still some units are useless (Treelord, Spite Revs, Branchwraight) 

Fixing the useless units in the Stormcast battletome does not stop them from fixing the useless units in every other army. I don't know why this attitude is so pervasive in the wargaming community.

I think Stormcast need changes and not necessarily buffs. In fact, I have openly suggested that Staunch Defender should be removed because it is too strong.

[DantePQ]

No they don't they are very strong army. Fact that they suffer against MW is funny as many armies suffer as well. 

It's better to fix for example DoT then waste resources on fixing armies that already have strong Battletomes like SCE when so many armies do not have full Battletomes. I hope we won't see another SCE Battletome before 2020-2021. 

[Kaleun]

17 minutes ago, PJetski said:

Fixing the useless units in the Stormcast battletome does not stop them from fixing the useless units in every other army. I don't know why this attitude is so pervasive in the wargaming community.

I think Stormcast need changes and not necessarily buffs. In fact, I have openly suggested that Staunch Defender should be removed because it is too strong.

I see. Staunch Defender could be replaced with rules of having a 6" bubble around your general with ignoring wounds and mortal wounds on 6es for example.

The definition of a "useless unit" is flawed per se, as you mean "not competitive enough". You can play every Stormcast unit and be good with it if you are a good player. If you are still loosing discuss that with your opponent. If you are winning more games then your opponent you should start to discuss also!

From my experience those "useless units" are much needed!! Why? Because it is all about having fun in this game and that means also to give your opponent a good game. Sometimes you have to defang your winning lists for that.

I think there is no ground for buffing Stormcast units even further. They are very good posterboys actually. Tournament results show that.

[XReN]

15 minutes ago, DantePQ said:

No they don't they are very strong army. Fact that they suffer against MW is funny as many armies suffer as well. 

It's better to fix for example DoT then waste resources on fixing armies that already have strong Battletomes like SCE when so many armies do not have full Battletomes. I hope we won't see another SCE Battletome before 2020-2021. 

As we seen with 40K GW resourses to make lots of rule changes fast, they are just not doing it in AoS for some reason and it is not the point why we can't suggest changes to SCE battletome. I like playing tourneys and I'm still trying different lists, but it will all come down to VV and SS, it's unavoidable and there is no fun in running same list over and over, so GW needs to work on constantly pulling up factions that need it and not onle bring new ones and it aplies to SCE as well as any other, maybe another year or so and we will struggle for new book really bad, simply becouse there will be nothing but narrative games left to play. 

Also few words about MW... It is true that everyone suffer from them, but SCE are really, really elite army and I've seen 5 1+ save Fulminators being destroyed in one turn, only reasonably "expandable" unit we have is Liberators, while most other armies have unit options that can be sacrificed to stop opponents assault

[WoollyMammoth]

@ledha
Stormcast are in a really good place right now. They are winning tournaments left and right, and it's not only because of Vanguard Wing. They have a lot of good battalions like Hammerstrike Force and Aetherstrike Force. They don't need battalions either, I was at a one day tournament last weekend and someone won with Stormcast, without any battalion (built around a stardrake). There is a local guy here who plays mostly Dracoths and wins most of the time. Andrew S. won LVO with stormcast (albeit VW) but he also won LVO the year before with Stormcast using an obscure realmgate battalion. I win with my stormcast all the time.

Stormcast are an incredibly elite army with few models, each having a lot of power. The low model(wound) count means mistakes are amplified and things go wrong quickly. But, they have the tools to do well against any army as long as things are going well. This makes Stormcast brilliantly interesting to play. Generally they have to deploy in protective formations and work together, just like the lore. After the new Battletome, it became difficult to make a bad stormcast list.

Vanguard Wing is mostly good because of the discount on liberators. Anything with a 2+ re-rolling save is incredibly difficult to take down. Even a Stardrake with only 16 wounds is very hard to take down. Now we are talking 60 wounds of this for 520 points? The Liberators should never have gotten a discount, adding 30 models like this doubles the models in most stormcast armies and makes it way too hard to eat through the list. Eventually people are going to figure this out and have 60 liberator lists, which will be basically unbeatable. Its not my job to balance but, something needs to be done here to fix liberators.

I do agree with a lot of your points. The Hunters, Palladors and Aquillor are just not good scrolls. I don't even think they can be fixed with a discount. If Hunters were 100 and Liberators were 120, that would go a long way toward seeing them more, but it would not make them any good. The problem is (same with a lot of problems with AoS) is a design conflict. 'Riding the winds' is an awesome movement tool that became completely useless with Scions of the Storm - Stormcast can teleport anywhere on the field, so moving really far is totally unnecessary. Also, an 80pt Relictor can move any unit in the game like this with Lightning Chariot. All of these scrolls are based around unneeded movement capability with lackluster attack profiles, and so are not good. They are beautiful models, and people try to enjoy them. They are not bad they are just not good, and SCE have all kinds of really good scrolls to pick from. The real solution is to re-write their scrolls entirely, which is just not going to happen. 

The cost of a unit of Gryph-hounds is obviously dumb, there should be a separate cheaper unit scroll for them.  Lowering the cost of a Stardrake is insane though 600 points is perfect for them right now.

You can't look at stormcast in a bubble, the inclusion of any ally in the biggest Grand Alliance is a big deal. There are hundreds of options available. You can ally some of the best units in the game.

The Prime is currently my favorite Stormcast model. I've had him come down and kill Skarbrand in one turn, kill an ironclad, etc. He is the epitome of elite models. 340 is a much better price point than he used to be. He cannot be a Nagash or Alarielle; he is one stormcast size guy but with epic power. He has been a total game-changer in most of my games, and I have never had issues with him earning his points back.

I hear what you are saying and I appreciate that Stormcast could be improved, but Stormcast are one of the most successful armies in AoS and so they need updates far less than almost any other army. Regardless I appreciate your concerns and hope a lot of them can be fixed with the GH3.

 

[mystycalchemy]

11 minutes ago, DantePQ said:

No they don't they are very strong army. Fact that they suffer against MW is funny as many armies suffer as well. 

It's better to fix for example DoT then waste resources on fixing armies that already have strong Battletomes like SCE when so many armies do not have full Battletomes. I hope we won't see another SCE Battletome before 2020-2021. 

Again, the main point of the thread isn't strictly "buff all stormcast! We're not good enough!" The main point is to make it so stormcast have more options, we just want a fun, fluffy and decently competetive army. Now of course, its certainly difficult to make that happen perfectly, but it's a hope. 

The one thing that everyone's agreed on so far is a nerf to staunch defender!

[generalchaos34]

18 minutes ago, mystycalchemy said:

Again, the main point of the thread isn't strictly "buff all stormcast! We're not good enough!" The main point is to make it so stormcast have more options, we just want a fun, fluffy and decently competetive army. Now of course, its certainly difficult to make that happen perfectly, but it's a hope. 

The one thing that everyone's agreed on so far is a nerf to staunch defender!

and skyport options, that too! EVERYONE NEEDS SKYPORT OPTIONS!

[mystycalchemy]

8 minutes ago, generalchaos34 said:

and skyport options, that too! EVERYONE NEEDS SKYPORT OPTIONS!

I mean hey, the Stormhost battalions are pretty worthless in matched to begin with, the Anvils of the Heldenhammer essentially requires both a Lords of the Storm and a Thunderhead Brotherhood to be any use. I'd love skyport Stormhosts, just so I could theorycraft my own or use Celestial Vindicators.

[DanielFM]

2 hours ago, Kaleun said:

frozenbeast is right.

Stormcast in general have the potential to deal with nearly any threat that can come to the table. The discussion of buffing individual Stormcast units ins nonsense in my opinion. The threat would take a far better direction if we would discuss HOW TO deal with the weaknesses and try to solve the mentioned problems with the given options.

Stormcast can ally with every order faction. That alone is extremly strong as you profit often from the shiny things the other order factions can field.

Stormcast have synergies, over the top battalions, super good mobility (teleporting), good buff heroes, ... The list is longer then any other faction can say about themselfes. Also the Stormcast can create rerollable 2+ saves!!! This is just ridiculous and simply not to beat without high rend values or mortal wounds. 

wishlisting will bring us nowhere.

For me Stormcast are in the top 3 of all the AoS competitive armies out there.

You don't get the point of this thread (or of most of the post in it, at least).

2 hours ago, AdamR said:

I think the issue being espoused by some SCE players is not that you can't build a tournament winning list, but rather that to be competetive you are locked into mono build (well 2 or 3 builds really), and they'd prefer a battletome where everything was a little more even. Rather than "I want all the powaaaaaaaaa!"

I agree to a certain extent. I can't remember the last time I wrote a list without Staunch on my general. And ig he's a buff hero, he'll be getting a mirror shield too!

I disagree though that scions of the storm is "worthless" (one of my pet peeve hated words) and I'm on the fence about Stormhost abilities. Want to make your SCE Celestial Vindicators? Paint them turquoise and give the liberators swords. Job done.

I would like to see some of the unused battalions re pointed or altered to give some more variety.

See? He gets the point.

Scions is not worthless, just incredibly unreliable. If you roll 3+ for every unit in the right turn it's great. If you fail each and every roll and the game ends with half your units dead (by not coming into the board) it's a pile of trash. You can't risk the latter on a tournament, that's way it's hardly ever used.

About your view on Stormhost, that's absolutely anticlimatic, lackluster and boring.

First, each Stormhost has strong traits making them different from others un battle. A simple paintjob and you adding prayers/grumpy voices/warchants/grim silence to the models will never replicate that satisfyingly. Maybe for you, but not for most people. Second, many armies are getting far more than "pick your paintjob" to reflect far less iconic subfactions, the infamous "skyport system". Why do we deserve any less? I want a relentless, heavy infantry based Knights Excelsior army, but without The Chain Unbroken they are wet cardboard tough and slow as heck. I can pay in excess of 200 points for that, though ?

1 hour ago, WoollyMammoth said:

 The problem is (same with a lot of problems with AoS) is a design conflict. 'Riding the winds' is an awesome movement tool that became completely useless with Scions of the Storm - Stormcast can teleport anywhere on the field, so moving really far is totally unnecessary. Also, an 80pt Relictor can move any unit in the game like this with Lightning Chariot. All of these scrolls are based around unneeded movement capability with lackluster attack profiles, and so are not good. 

Those options are reliable, while I won't touch Scions with a ten foot pole because you can't trust it to work when you need it.

I would gladly lose Scions for a more reliable, less situational Allegiance ability.

[Kaleun]

Having the Stormhosts teleport ability on a 3+ is totally fine and strong enough. Reliability must come with a greater cost.

During the last 40k edition all the reserves were coming on a 3+.

The skyport system is for the Kharadron Overlords. Painting your army in a subfactions colors is a good way to forge the narrative around your army instead of only playing the actuall-top lists that Stormcast can field.

[WoollyMammoth]

2 hours ago, DanielFM said:

Those options are reliable, while I won't touch Scions with a ten foot pole because you can't trust it to work when you need it.

I would gladly lose Scions for a more reliable, less situational Allegiance ability.

The issue is you think that you need it when you need it. But do you? I lost a tournament because some Liberators failed to come in for two turns, then late game came in way away from me on an objective and started scoring points I could not contest. The only problem with the ability is that you MUST attempt to come in every turn. If you could choose (like the Celestant prime) it would be much more powerful. I use Scions every game. Its especially good if you make Gavriel your general and just charge your entire army in. I wouldn't take Hunters and Palladors instead of much better units just because a 3+ isn't reliable enough for anything else in the army.

Palladors riding the winds is especially bad because you don't even have the option to charge. I love the models so much but they have been so insanely boring in every game I have played. Hunters can reliably teleport and charge but why would you want them to? They are not particularly scary. They would be a lot better if they were like Liberators with more offence, but they are liberators with less defense and less reliable offence for 40% more points. 

Aquilor is cool with his teleport, but he doesn't have anything great to teleport. If he could take, say any stormcast unit, he would be amazing. Taking some palladors is nice but its going to get extremely cramped at 6" table edge, so much so that nobody could or would take large units of palladors to exploit this teleport. 

Neave is an awesome model but I would never ever ride the winds with her. She has to forfeit her charge and that is just silly. I always use her with Scions - either she makes a long charge or I get a double turn and she is amazing. If not at least she soaked up some fire at 3+ save.  

With such a large army (which is like 3 armies in one now) you are just going to get some standouts, and some duds. I'd love them to fix the duds but it is nowhere near the top of my list of things I would like GW to do.

[DanielFM]

1 hour ago, Kaleun said:

Having the Stormhosts teleport ability on a 3+ is totally fine and strong enough. Reliability must come with a greater cost.

During the last 40k edition all the reserves were coming on a 3+.

The skyport system is for the Kharadron Overlords. Painting your army in a subfactions colors is a good way to forge the narrative around your army instead of only playing the actuall-top lists that Stormcast can field.

It's not, believe me. A single game in which I got 3 rolls out of 12 and lost the game due to it, and I will never take that risk again.

In 40k it was 3+, 2+, automatic, wasn't it?

Legions of Nagash get legions, Daughters of Khaine get temples. All functionaly similar to Skyports. And free. 

You know all too well from 40k a paintjob is not enough to represent the traits of an army. That's why you have rules for different SM chapters, different CSM legions, different Craftworlds, etc. What's absurd is having to pay points to see that diversity represented in the game. I guess you have your opinion on that and all this won't change it.

[DanielFM]

1 hour ago, WoollyMammoth said:

The issue is you think that you need it when you need it. But do you? I lost a tournament because some Liberators failed to come in for two turns, then late game came in way away from me on an objective and started scoring points I could not contest. The only problem with the ability is that you MUST attempt to come in every turn. If you could choose (like the Celestant prime) it would be much more powerful. I use Scions every game. Its especially good if you make Gavriel your general and just charge your entire army in. I wouldn't take Hunters and Palladors instead of much better units just because a 3+ isn't reliable enough for anything else in the army.

Aquilor is cool with his teleport, but he doesn't have anything great to teleport. If he could take, say any stormcast unit, he would be amazing. Taking some palladors is nice but its going to get extremely cramped at 6" table edge, so much so that nobody could or would take large units of palladors to exploit this teleport. 
 

If you play five round games they will show up, eventually (or maybe not, if you are really unlucky). But if you run out of time at round three, it's very likely many units won't show up. And that usually happens in our games.

You must get really good Scions rolls to talk about it as if it always works .

No great units to teleport with the Aquilor? I disagree. Vanguard Raptors can benefit from it greatly.

 

[WoollyMammoth]

9 minutes ago, DanielFM said:

If you play five round games they will show up, eventually (or maybe not, if you are really unlucky). But if you run out of time at round three, it's very likely many units won't show up. And that usually happens in our games.

You must get really good Scions rolls to talk about it as if it always works .

No great units to teleport with the Aquilor? I disagree. Vanguard Raptors can benefit from it greatly.

if you run out of time at round 3, you are either playing very casually (in which case there is no point in debating army viability) or you are not playing properly. You are not very familiar with your rules and/or you do not have proper systems in place to roll dice quickly. Slow-play is a big issue with AoS due to people not taking responsibility and learning how to play at an appropriate pace.

Personally I have never failed Scions more than once in a row. I find it very reliable, and as I described, failing it can be beneficial regardless.

Raptors could benefit from Aquilor I guess, if they are taking Hurricane bows, but those are pretty terrible so I've never seen them before. If you like that idea you can save the points and teleport in Judicators with crossbows instead.  Otherwise they have 30" range so why would they need to teleport?

[Kaleun]

21 minutes ago, DanielFM said:

It's not, believe me. A single game in which I got 3 rolls out of 12 and lost the game due to it, and I will never take that risk again.

In 40k it was 3+, 2+, automatic, wasn't it?

Legions of Nagash get legions, Daughters of Khaine get temples. All functionaly similar to Skyports. And free. 

You know all too well from 40k a paintjob is not enough to represent the traits of an army. That's why you have rules for different SM chapters, different CSM legions, different Craftworlds, etc. What's absurd is having to pay points to see that diversity represented in the game. I guess you have your opinion on that and all this won't change it.

Calculate it through and check if making 3 out of 12 rolls is statistical.

[chord]

Sigh why do stormcast haters have to hate. Many idea people purposed seemed fair and not overly powerful.