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

[Kaleun]

2 minutes ago, chord said:

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

why do you think we hate the stormcast?? The topic is about discussing improvements of individual Stormcast units and battalion options.

[AdamR]

Do I count as a hater cause I don't want "skyport" rules and think scions is fine?

I mean it's not like Stormcast is my only army or anything... 

[XReN]

9 minutes ago, AdamR said:

Do I count as a hater cause I don't want "skyport" rules and think scions is fine?

I mean it's not like Stormcast is my only army or anything... 

Scions are not fine, I had a game when 10 man strong unit of judicators simply decided not to show up...

It is also limiting your options pretty much to shooting only, so imo having this without ANY reliability is just unfair

[MrCharisma]

As a Freeguild player I gotta say, you guys have it good. 

• Yes there is improvement that can be made
• Yes there are things that don't quiet make sense in your battletome
• Yes there are only a handful of good artefacts and formations

I'd kill for half of the options that you have in your toolkit. Intact, you've taken the utility knife approach to what used to be my army as The Empire. 

The good news is because you are the games poster child, you'll get another book soon. You've already had 3 so far while there is a long list of armies who don't have 1

Then two points I agree with in this thread are;

• Celestant Prime should be on the table more, gotta find a way to fix that
• Staunch Defender should be Liberator only 

 

 

 

[chord]

1 hour ago, MrCharisma said:

Then two points I agree with in this thread are;

• Celestant Prime should be on the table more, gotta find a way to fix that
• Staunch Defender should be Liberator only 

 

 

 

I agree with these points

[WoollyMammoth]

4 hours ago, XReN said:

Scions are not fine, I had a game when 10 man strong unit of judicators simply decided not to show up...

It is also limiting your options pretty much to shooting only, so imo having this without ANY reliability is just unfair

Okay, lets do the math on that. the chance to not roll a 3+ is 1/3, or 33%. So here are the chances to continually fail in each turn.

turn 1: 33%
turn 2: 10.8%
turn 3: 3.5%
turn 4: 1.1%
turn 5: .0039%

As long as you made it to turn 4, there is only 1.1% chance to not come in, or once in about 90.9 games. If you played a full game of AoS, there is a .0039% chance that they didn't come in at all which is once in about 25,641 games of AoS.

So lets say you are saying they didn't come in by turn 5. You statistically have to play 25,640 more games before you will ever see that happen again. It will only happen to you twice in 51,282 games, so you probably have a long way to go.

 

[Freejack02]

47 minutes ago, WoollyMammoth said:

Okay, lets do the math on that. the chance to not roll a 3+ is 1/3, or 33%. So here are the chances to continually fail in each turn.

turn 1: 33%
turn 2: 10.8%
turn 3: 3.5%
turn 4: 1.1%
turn 5: .0039%

As long as you made it to turn 4, there is only 1.1% chance to not come in, or once in about 90.9 games. If you played a full game of AoS, there is a .0039% chance that they didn't come in at all which is once in about 25,641 games of AoS.

So lets say you are saying they didn't come in by turn 5. You statistically have to play 25,640 more games before you will ever see that happen again. It will only happen to you twice in 51,282 games, so you probably have a long way to go.

 

You are ignoring the fact that the game is usually decided in the early turns - not having a large key unit for turns 1-3 is a BIG problem. If I have 10 Judicators tied up in the sky, that's 320 points doing absolutely nothing. No objectives, no damage, no soak, nothing. And that will happen 3.7% of the time, or once every ~27 games. Hell, even missing turns 1-2 can be devastating in the wrong matchup, and that will happen 11.1% of the time, or once every 9 games. And that's only for a single unit, deploying multiples up there just increases the odds of failure.  Whether it's just be 5 Liberators, or a Stardrake / Fulminators... it's tough to try and rely on an allegiance "benefit" that can completely backfire to your detriment.  

[DanielFM]

7 hours ago, WoollyMammoth said:

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?

I use Hurricane Raptors teleported by Aquilor. They aren't bad by any stretch. Crossbow judicators must use Scions, and you save nothing (they are the same points, right?).

[DanielFM]

5 hours ago, MrCharisma said:

As a Freeguild player I gotta say, you guys have it good. 

• Yes there is improvement that can be made
• Yes there are things that don't quiet make sense in your battletome
• Yes there are only a handful of good artefacts and formations

I'd kill for half of the options that you have in your toolkit. Intact, you've taken the utility knife approach to what used to be my army as The Empire. 

The good news is because you are the games poster child, you'll get another book soon. You've already had 3 so far while there is a long list of armies who don't have 1

Then two points I agree with in this thread are;

• Celestant Prime should be on the table more, gotta find a way to fix that
• Staunch Defender should be Liberator only 

 

 

 

You have a great Allegiance (I would trade yours for Scions any day of the week), a better Staunch Defender (are you really asking for GW to change our version? What about yours?) and have access to all the SCE as allies (isn't that the solution to everything according to some people, allies?).

In some aspects Freeguild have little to complain, even without a Battletome.

[WoollyMammoth]

3 hours ago, Freejack02 said:

You are ignoring the fact that the game is usually decided in the early turns - not having a large key unit for turns 1-3 is a BIG problem. If I have 10 Judicators tied up in the sky, that's 320 points doing absolutely nothing. No objectives, no damage, no soak, nothing. And that will happen 3.7% of the time, or once every ~27 games. Hell, even missing turns 1-2 can be devastating in the wrong matchup, and that will happen 11.1% of the time, or once every 9 games. And that's only for a single unit, deploying multiples up there just increases the odds of failure.  Whether it's just be 5 Liberators, or a Stardrake / Fulminators... it's tough to try and rely on an allegiance "benefit" that can completely backfire to your detriment.  

I'm not ignoring this, I simply don't agree. I can say that the game is sometimes determined in the early turns. I guess it depends on your perspective. A lot of players kind of run out of steam and declare the game over in turn one. I've had players decide to take the first turn, do their turn and then immediately declare they've lost the game before I've even done anything. I've had players so deflated by one good charge that they actively try to lose to get the game over with because they assume there is no way to win. Perhaps if you were to do a statistical analysis of all the AoS games being played, then you might be right, most games end early on with one player giving up. But that's not saying much, I was looking at a statistical analysis of a computer game once and it said about 80% of the players never got through the first level.

In my personal experience playing stormcast, games are rarely determined until at least the start of turn 4. Most competitive games that I have played, where both sides tend to know what they are doing, go right down to the wire. It's not over until the end of the 5th round. the last game I played, I was double turned and did almost nothing until the start of the 3rd round. Its a very useful tactic for some armies to bide their time and strike mid game instead of trying to go all out asap. But this is an advanced tactic that you are not often going to experience. 

In the last tournament, I lost only because his liberators were delayed until turn 3. If they had come in earlier I could have dealt with them and prevented them from scoring any points. So, the fact that he was having his 1/9 game where a unit is particularly delayed probably won him the tournament.

The key factor is that a unit waiting to be set up is one that cannot be targeted by your opponent in any way. If you can make your opponent go first, you could potentially have nothing on the table and buy yourself a whole turn, with your units coming down one by one through the turns, which can create incredible board control if the units you have on the table are doing well.

Also it depends on how you use the rule. I typically only set up hammers off the table, like Retributors or Fulminators. I would never set up judicators off the table because they are shooting a unit which need to make the most of every turn to earn their points. I can see the value in crossbow Judicators, but then you are balancing risk vs reward, which is really what AoS is all about. You have to experiment with your lists and tweak them to improve, obviously you are not into setting up Judicators off the table, so you can play them differently. This doesn't make Scions useless for all Stormcast players.

[shadowgra]

1 hour ago, DanielFM said:

You have a great Allegiance (I would trade yours for Scions any day of the week), a better Staunch Defender (are you really asking for GW to change our version? What about yours?) and have access to all the SCE as allies (isn't that the solution to everything according to some people, allies?).

In some aspects Freeguild have little to complain, even without a Battletome.

The last thing you said is kinda horrible. I waited for the Nurgle battletome for a year and a half and even if we did have options before they were restricted to a few competitive choices. Saying to somebody that he can't complain for no battletome (and love from GW) because it has something good to play with (allegiance in this case) while your army had 3 over the course of a couple of years is simply being rude.

This can apply to all those army that have not a battletome but aren't the utter piece of ****** out there. Do you want to say to all these players that they have little to complain?

And if you really want to swap allegiance swap also all the other units, traits, artefacts, prayers. Try a day as free people then i am pretty Sure you will complain less about stormcast.

Oh and by the way some of the changes that are being proposed are ok. Others are simply over the top (3+ save paladin?)

And while i do not like stormcast at all, i do think there are worse armies to play against.

[XReN]

12 minutes ago, shadowgra said:

The last thing you said is kinda horrible. I waited for the Nurgle battletome for a year and a half and even if we did have options before they were restricted to a few competitive choices. Saying to somebody that he can't complain for no battletome (and love from GW) because it has something good to play with (allegiance in this case) while your army had 3 over the course of a couple of years is simply being rude.

This can apply to all those army that have not a battletome but aren't the utter piece of ****** out there. Do you want to say to all these players that they have little to complain?

And if you really want to swap allegiance swap also all the other units, traits, artefacts, prayers. Try a day as free people then i am pretty Sure you will complain less about stormcast.

Oh and by the way some of the changes that are being proposed are ok. Others are simply over the top (3+ save paladin?)

And while i do not like stormcast at all, i do think there are worse armies to play against.

You have some good points and I think everyone have the right to complain about smtg, now to army swap, I've heard how strong SCE dozens of times and how easily they can be played, but statistic tells me something different, most of SCE lists are being destroyed by our top players, even the all-mighty VW, and people keep telling me that SCE are insanely powerfull, but when I suggest them to play SCE on a turney they respond with nothing bu silence.

When I just started AoS and had about 12 or 15 games I faced Free Peoples in friendly match and was tabled. It was before GHB 2017, so I can promise you, that if someone challenge me with an army swap, I'll gladly agree.

About paladins, 3+ base for them might be too greedy, but it is our iconic unit and it should stand out for their points

[Burf]

4 hours ago, WoollyMammoth said:

Okay, lets do the math on that. the chance to not roll a 3+ is 1/3, or 33%. So here are the chances to continually fail in each turn.

turn 1: 33%
turn 2: 10.8%
turn 3: 3.5%
turn 4: 1.1%
turn 5: .0039%

As long as you made it to turn 4, there is only 1.1% chance to not come in, or once in about 90.9 games. If you played a full game of AoS, there is a .0039% chance that they didn't come in at all which is once in about 25,641 games of AoS.

So lets say you are saying they didn't come in by turn 5. You statistically have to play 25,640 more games before you will ever see that happen again. It will only happen to you twice in 51,282 games, so you probably have a long way to go.

 

You've addressed an edge case that exacerbates the problem, not the problem. The problem is that Scions sucks even when it does work, the fact that it can fail is just the cherry on top.

There are 4 units and 2 heroes in the Stormcast army that even MIGHT consider TRYING to use their primary allegiance ability. How many units in DoK use Blood rites or Fanatical Faith? How many units in LoN use Deathless minions? How many units in Order benefit from rerolling battleshock? "Oh but you can deepstrike a pfffffffft." Do you know what the chances are of making a 9" charge with no rerolls or other buffs (because they're almost impossible to get in an SC army)? About 33%. 67% of every time you use scions of the storm on a melee unit, all you did was feed it to your opponent for free.

Scions of the storm, as it exists now, is worse than the Order allegiance ability for stormcasts SPECIFICALLY. It's about the same level as a mediocre artefact. The only reason it's not a bigger deal is the fact that staunch defender is incredible for stormcasts.

[AdamR]

3 hours ago, WoollyMammoth said:

I'm not ignoring this, I simply don't agree. I can say that the game is sometimes determined in the early turns. I guess it depends on your perspective. A lot of players kind of run out of steam and declare the game over in turn one. I've had players decide to take the first turn, do their turn and then immediately declare they've lost the game before I've even done anything. I've had players so deflated by one good charge that they actively try to lose to get the game over with because they assume there is no way to win. Perhaps if you were to do a statistical analysis of all the AoS games being played, then you might be right, most games end early on with one player giving up. But that's not saying much, I was looking at a statistical analysis of a computer game once and it said about 80% of the players never got through the first level.

In my personal experience playing stormcast, games are rarely determined until at least the start of turn 4. Most competitive games that I have played, where both sides tend to know what they are doing, go right down to the wire. It's not over until the end of the 5th round. the last game I played, I was double turned and did almost nothing until the start of the 3rd round. Its a very useful tactic for some armies to bide their time and strike mid game instead of trying to go all out asap. But this is an advanced tactic that you are not often going to experience. 

In the last tournament, I lost only because his liberators were delayed until turn 3. If they had come in earlier I could have dealt with them and prevented them from scoring any points. So, the fact that he was having his 1/9 game where a unit is particularly delayed probably won him the tournament.

The key factor is that a unit waiting to be set up is one that cannot be targeted by your opponent in any way. If you can make your opponent go first, you could potentially have nothing on the table and buy yourself a whole turn, with your units coming down one by one through the turns, which can create incredible board control if the units you have on the table are doing well.

Also it depends on how you use the rule. I typically only set up hammers off the table, like Retributors or Fulminators. I would never set up judicators off the table because they are shooting a unit which need to make the most of every turn to earn their points. I can see the value in crossbow Judicators, but then you are balancing risk vs reward, which is really what AoS is all about. You have to experiment with your lists and tweak them to improve, obviously you are not into setting up Judicators off the table, so you can play them differently. This doesn't make Scions useless for all Stormcast players.

Thanks for posting this, you saved me a job, and were probably more eloquent to boot!

Posters seem to be forgetting matched play is an objective game, that's why scions is useful, for dropping 5 liberators on a distant objective. In my Vanguard Wing list I always Scions 2 units - 3 prosecutors and 5 liberators. 

[Freejack02]

4 hours ago, Burf said:

Do you know what the chances are of making a 9" charge with no rerolls or other buffs (because they're almost impossible to get in an SC army)? About 33%. 67% of every time you use scions of the storm on a melee unit, all you did was feed it to your opponent for free.

It's actually a 27.7% chance to succeed, so even less than you stated. Nearly a 1 in 4 shot without buffs!

[Freejack02]

9 hours ago, WoollyMammoth said:

In my personal experience playing stormcast, games are rarely determined until at least the start of turn 4.

I'm just going to have to disagree with you here - and it's not just SCE exclusive. Every game will have a turns 1-2, not every one will have a 4-5. The early turns are universally more impactful. If you were given the choice between two army traits that read "You may reroll all failed hit and wound rolls on turns 1 and 2" or "You may reroll all failed hit and wound rolls on turns 4 and 5", which would you choose? I'm willing to bet 90% of the playerbase would select 1 and 2, because that's the more impactful choice. 

 

9 hours ago, WoollyMammoth said:

The key factor is that a unit waiting to be set up is one that cannot be targeted by your opponent in any way. If you can make your opponent go first, you could potentially have nothing on the table and buy yourself a whole turn

This is very true! It is a great thing to be able to deploy completely off the board while the opponent only buffs and moves on the first turn (better used against slow armies in my experience)

 

9 hours ago, WoollyMammoth said:

with your units coming down one by one through the turns, which can create incredible board control if the units you have on the table are doing well.

And this is exactly the problem - they can literally come down "one by one" through the turns. The entire gambit of passing first turn could be wasted because only low-impact units show up on your first and second turns. "I have my Castellant and Relictor ready to go, shame my Fulminators decided to dally... now what else can I try to make do with until they arrive?" You have no idea what's going to come down when you actually need them to, and not knowing is the core issue. Also, how likely are your "units on the table doing well" when you have nothing on the table to begin your own scenario? 

If I were to field a trim 6-unit list in this scenario, my first turn I could reliably count on 4 of those 6 dropping. I have no idea what's coming, but I can be confident about a couple of them not making the trip yet - 667 points on average. Ignoring the fact that I would pass my entire Hero phase for that turn, we get a lot of flexibility when we drop, can try to cover whatever objectives the opponent didn't rush to. Let's say we roll initiative for round 2 and win it - great! The coveted 1-2 double-turn! Well, it's extremely likely that another one of your units doesn't show up again - still not at full strength! At least we actually get a Hero phase, and can buff/pray this time. 

The largest "benefit" of a unit not coming in until mid-game is likely on Starstrike, where a low-impact group can deploy on turn 3-4 and capture an objective hopefully uncontested. There's a lot of factors coming into play here, but I think that 5 Libs or maybe 3 Prosecutors are the dream scenario... but the fact that it's just as likely to be 4 Fulminators or 30 Libs can't be ignored. 

9 hours ago, WoollyMammoth said:

Also it depends on how you use the rule. I typically only set up hammers off the table, like Retributors or Fulminators.

I'm genuinely surprised that you use Scions with Rets - how do you ensure they survive after the drop? It's only a 28% chance to make that charge (unless you're running Gavriel with a Lightning Chariot to the front lines or something), and if they fail it they quite often in my experience get shot into nothingness. I have a lot of trouble trusting Paladins if I don't have a good delivery system for them, which is really just Hammerstrike or Skyborne these days isn't it.

[Kaleun]

41 minutes ago, Freejack02 said:

It's actually a 27.7% chance to succeed, so even less than you stated. Nearly a 1 in 4 shot without buffs!

27,7 % is correct!

 

[WoollyMammoth]

9 hours ago, Burf said:

You've addressed an edge case that exacerbates the problem, not the problem. The problem is that Scions sucks even when it does work, the fact that it can fail is just the cherry on top.

There are 4 units and 2 heroes in the Stormcast army that even MIGHT consider TRYING to use their primary allegiance ability. How many units in DoK use Blood rites or Fanatical Faith? How many units in LoN use Deathless minions? How many units in Order benefit from rerolling battleshock? "Oh but you can deepstrike a pfffffffft." Do you know what the chances are of making a 9" charge with no rerolls or other buffs (because they're almost impossible to get in an SC army)? About 33%. 67% of every time you use scions of the storm on a melee unit, all you did was feed it to your opponent for free.

Scions of the storm, as it exists now, is worse than the Order allegiance ability for stormcasts SPECIFICALLY. It's about the same level as a mediocre artefact. The only reason it's not a bigger deal is the fact that staunch defender is incredible for stormcasts.

Technically every unit can use it but most wont use it, I see your point that its not as beneficial as an army-wide aura. As a death player - units are constantly out of range of a hero an therefore 'don't have an allegiance ability' all the time. I agree that there could be potentially more useful allegiance. Nighthaunt essentially get Scions and DM. I can see it happening where maybe stormcast get things added on. But you also make a good point that with SD, it kind of makes up for a lack of allegiance. It dosent stop there, the Celestant giving +1 to hit for everything for only 100pt, Relictors with two prayers for 80pt, Casteallant giving automatic MS. If they start to lack in one area they massively make up for it in others. I'm simply debating the idea that Scions is complete useless garbage, which is simply not true. There are many slow armies that would kill for an ability to ambush or move a unit a long distance on a 3+. I use Scions in every game - no way I'm moving my paladins up 4" per turn. 

There are more complicated decision making than feeding a unit to your opponent 67% of the time. If you know you are going to decide the turn, then you can use Scions. Several units come down. They might make the turn, might not. You can run up the general to activate Staunch Defender to protect in case they fail. Next comes the turn roll, and if you get a double, then everything is charging, and you can easily screen anything that may have failed the first Scions roll. If you know you are going to be forced to go first, you have to decide whether its worth the risk to try and ambush your opponent, or simply deploy everything normally instead. Scions became especially useful with Gavriel, you can teleport him with lightning chariot and then everyone has to make a 6" charge instead, which is over 50% chance. 

You also don't have to go 9" from an enemy, you can come down around a hero you think might get charged, or on an objective you want to protect. Failing can be very useful because later your opponent will forget and leave openings behind. Last time I played against Tzeentch, he moved forward too much, I came in with some Fulminators, made a long charge and killed a LoC in one combat. The potential that stormcast might come in is scary enough to completely throw off your opponents entire deployment. Deploy the first unit using Scions, and suddenly your opponent has to start blocking out his territory to protect. Your opponent is generally not going to be thinking "oh hes only got a 25% chance to get me" hes going to be thinking "if I leave him room and he makes a charge I'm totally done"

If you think its nothing but a way to maybe come down and leave yourself wide open to get killed, sure I understand how lame that sounds. But that's not what it is, its an infinite move for generally slow units to threaten the whole board all the time, while also making some units completely immune to damage until they appear on the table. 
 

4 hours ago, Freejack02 said:

I'm just going to have to disagree with you here - and it's not just SCE exclusive. Every game will have a turns 1-2, not every one will have a 4-5. The early turns are universally more impactful. If you were given the choice between two army traits that read "You may reroll all failed hit and wound rolls on turns 1 and 2" or "You may reroll all failed hit and wound rolls on turns 4 and 5", which would you choose? I'm willing to bet 90% of the playerbase would select 1 and 2, because that's the more impactful choice. 

Obviously most games have more going on in turn 1 than 4. I was just saying that my games generally last at least until turn 4, where having something ambush late could be beneficial. I use scions every game and have never had the case where a unit was delayed and that cost me the game.
 

4 hours ago, Freejack02 said:

And this is exactly the problem - they can literally come down "one by one" through the turns. The entire gambit of passing first turn could be wasted because only low-impact units show up on your first and second turns. "I have my Castellant and Relictor ready to go, shame my Fulminators decided to dally... now what else can I try to make do with until they arrive?" You have no idea what's going to come down when you actually need them to, and not knowing is the core issue. Also, how likely are your "units on the table doing well" when you have nothing on the table to begin your own scenario? 

If I were to field a trim 6-unit list in this scenario, my first turn I could reliably count on 4 of those 6 dropping. I have no idea what's coming, but I can be confident about a couple of them not making the trip yet - 667 points on average. Ignoring the fact that I would pass my entire Hero phase for that turn, we get a lot of flexibility when we drop, can try to cover whatever objectives the opponent didn't rush to. Let's say we roll initiative for round 2 and win it - great! The coveted 1-2 double-turn! Well, it's extremely likely that another one of your units doesn't show up again - still not at full strength! At least we actually get a Hero phase, and can buff/pray this time. 

The largest "benefit" of a unit not coming in until mid-game is likely on Starstrike, where a low-impact group can deploy on turn 3-4 and capture an objective hopefully uncontested. There's a lot of factors coming into play here, but I think that 5 Libs or maybe 3 Prosecutors are the dream scenario here... but the fact that it's just as likely to be 4 Fulminators or 30 Libs can't be ignored. 

Again, the game is more complex than this. If you say had two key units that you wanted to ambush, and then they fail and you get the double turn, you can simply make your opponent take the first turn in round 2, then he cant target these units, and in your turn you can try again, in which case you get to try for a double turn again.If games are decided in turn 1-2, by avoiding and retreating you should be able to delay the game to be decided in 2-3, or even 3-4. Its just about reacting to what is going on vs mindlessly barreling into your opponent asap. 

6 is a lot of units to have off the table, that is a big risk and I would not recommend that to someone unless they really know what they are doing and understand the risk. The guy who won the last tournament I played, only ambushed his two units of 5 liberators. I might ambush one unit of Fulminators or two units of Retributors. I like to ambush Neave. Even though its unlikely to succeed, sometimes its essential to try and ambush. It can be a big risk you take that, you could get lucky and win the game for it. When I build a list, I'm never relying on Scions exclusively, I'm only using it as one of the tools available. 

Its more than Starstrike. Scorched Earth would be the best because of so many spread of objectives. If you can scare your opponent off his objective, ambushing with Knife to the Heart could instantly win you the game. Similarly in Battle for the Pass. Total Conquest, there is not as much objectives or benefit for a single objective, but it can still be used to take an objective if your opponent was not defending it for some reason. Ambushing in duality could put your heroes on the objective turn one (if you don't have something that can reliably get there on his own, which is much better).  

[Freejack02]

11 minutes ago, WoollyMammoth said:

If games are decided in turn 1-2, by avoiding and retreating you should be able to delay the game to be decided in 2-3, or even 3-4.

If my models are off the table for turns 1-2, I can certainly avoid combat and retreat my units - but that doesn't mean game is delayed to be decided between 3-4. I don't get to decide the pace of the game just because some of my army is a no-show, I just pass the advantage to my opponent. It means that I've been forced to completely abandon the early game, while they likely capitalized on it. The only edge I have gained for lategame is flexible deployment for my missing units - which can be great, but depending on the scenario and objective lead, might not be enough of a consolation. It just brings me back to the unreliability of Scions being such an issue for me - if I spend points on a unit, I need it to be *somewhere* playable when I need it. The ability is supposed to be helpful - does any other force have one that can be overwhelmingly detrimental to the army? And I know you can just choose not to use it, but that's not really what we're discussing here. 

Sidenote: How would people feel about changing the activation from the Movement phase to the Hero phase? It wouldn't increase the odds any, but at least it would reward the risk a little more by allowing you to still fire off buffs and prayers for the ones that do make it - or the ability to adapt a little better if key units don't. Keeping the stipulation of "no movement in the move phase" of course. 

[WoollyMammoth]

@Freejack02
I like your point about the allegiance ability being negative. I can't think of anything else that could be negative, other than Nighthaunt, who have the same 3+. With Sylvaneth and Seraphon, the teleporting is guaranteed - with even a small chance of being even better. It could be improved to be guaranteed with a free move if you roll a 6. This would have to be restricted in some way though, maybe you can only pick up to two units to use it on.

[DanielFM]

5 hours ago, WoollyMammoth said:

@Freejack02
I like your point about the allegiance ability being negative. I can't think of anything else that could be negative, other than Nighthaunt, who have the same 3+. With Sylvaneth and Seraphon, the teleporting is guaranteed - with even a small chance of being even better. It could be improved to be guaranteed with a free move if you roll a 6. This would have to be restricted in some way though, maybe you can only pick up to two units to use it on.

Keep in mind Nighthaunt have a Command Trait that allow rerolls to the 3+ roll. Yeah, we wouldn't drop Staunch for that, but for them it's an attractive option that turns their teleport into a fairly reliable tool.

[Aelfric]

On 03/03/2018 at 9:35 AM, Burf said:

You've addressed an edge case that exacerbates the problem, not the problem. The problem is that Scions sucks even when it does work, the fact that it can fail is just the cherry on top.

There are 4 units and 2 heroes in the Stormcast army that even MIGHT consider TRYING to use their primary allegiance ability. How many units in DoK use Blood rites or Fanatical Faith? How many units in LoN use Deathless minions? How many units in Order benefit from rerolling battleshock? "Oh but you can deepstrike a pfffffffft." Do you know what the chances are of making a 9" charge with no rerolls or other buffs (because they're almost impossible to get in an SC army)? About 33%. 67% of every time you use scions of the storm on a melee unit, all you did was feed it to your opponent for free.

Scions of the storm, as it exists now, is worse than the Order allegiance ability for stormcasts SPECIFICALLY. It's about the same level as a mediocre artefact. The only reason it's not a bigger deal is the fact that staunch defender is incredible for stormcasts.

I'm not a Stormcast player, but how about this for an idea.  Give the Celestant Prime a lesser Lightning Strike ability to add or subtract 1 from the Scions die roll while he is in the Celestial Realm.  Not only would it make Scions more reliable, but give people a reason to take the Celestant Prime.  It would also add to tactical play on both sides (and fit the fluff ).

[Olincay]

Agree with many of the valid points everyone is making here, the army does have short commings and things that don't make alot of sense rule or fluff wise.  

But after saying that, havent stormcast been taking out top spot in alot of the big tournaments since..forever? Just recently they took out  Cancon *which i atteneded* LVO and the UK masters. *yes i know two of them were won by the unpopular vanguard wing* 

It just goes to show even with an older tome with the stated short commings that they still have what it takes to get top spot. The sheer options at your disposal and wide range of minis alone makes alot of factions cringe with envy.

 

[ledha]

20 hours ago, Aelfric said:

I'm not a Stormcast player, but how about this for an idea.  Give the Celestant Prime a lesser Lightning Strike ability to add or subtract 1 from the Scions die roll while he is in the Celestial Realm.  Not only would it make Scions more reliable, but give people a reason to take the Celestant Prime.  It would also add to tactical play on both sides (and fit the fluff ).

The idea of making him able to impact the game while in the sky is actually very cool. Cooler than taking a starseer. Even if in this state, giving a nearly 90% sure deepstrike to the whole army would be an horrible bullying 

 

[Okonomiyakimarine]

Stormcast Eternals are a faction with a lot of models, several battalion options that are playable and can expect frequent updates. from the point of view of players of other factions I can understand that people look at this thread as see it as wish listing by Stormcast-players. The perspective is: You do not even know how many more options your faction already has.

Yet from the perspective of a game system, but also economically for Games Workshop it makes sense to support the models thrown on the market (looking at you Vanguard Chamber) and make adjustments to see them being played more often. Heck, there are so many support hero models that are not included in the few competitive lists that exist and many people who understand themselves as competitive players just love the min/max and optimize the potential of their armies. So changes have to be made to navigate this popular and big faction towards even more options.

It just makes sense also from a business point of view to shake things up and to support the large number of Stormcast-Players. If there are 10 models for a faction, why should Games Workshop care to produce several more or less balanced competitive battalions? But if there is a faction as big as this, they just have to come up with ideas to allow more divers play styles beyond the few paths that are well thought out already also because there is a large player base. So, Games Workshop, give people a reason to expand and then use their collection of Vanguard-units, that would be a start!