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

[ledha]

On 20/03/2018 at 2:20 PM, AdamR said:

You still have 4-5 different builds even if you want to play super competitively - I'd say that's pretty good!

*Vanguard wing

*Aetherstrike Force

*Skyborne Slayers

*Stardrake plus friends

*Hammerstrike Force

Vanguard wing took a severe nerf, but it's still the best thing the stormcast have, i agree with you

Aetherstrike Force was strong before, but Nurgle/new death/DOK are very good against it, and it's a very extreme list that can be ridiculously hard countered, and very weak on some scenario. Taking it in a solo tournament is making a coin toss. It would be a powerful option in team tournament if a mixed order gunline wasn't 10 time better.

I play Skyborne Slayers and it's strong but it has big weaknesses. Big lack of mobility after the teleportation, weak board coverage, and can't face in direct fight most of the new lists, and crumble against all the top meta, as well as the sylvaneths.

Stardrake and friends is cool, but face great difficulties against top tier list, or death in general. 

Hammerstrike... meh. That's a name is didn't heard since a loooooooooong time.  Way too much expensive now.

All those bataillon, except Vanguard Wing, are pretty much dead against the super top competitive list, and have a hard time against lot of other "not over the top but still competitive" list, including "weak" armies like slaneesh, nighthaunt, moonclan, FEC, skryre or mixed chaos.

On 19/03/2018 at 1:42 PM, DantePQ said:

Not really, it's more about another armies needing update much more then SCE and should get it before another SCE update. 

Cue my very intro :  " Notice that i KNOW that many armies (ironjaw, kharadron, flesh eater court) are in a worst state, but hey, i’m here too talk about Stormcast. Only stormcast, no allies, grand alliance or anything else. I don't want to see players of other armies coming to say " yeah, but nurgle/khorne/tzeentch/freeguild/moonaclan don't have X and need Y..." The stormcast problems are not invalidated by the fact that other armies have problem, in the same way that other armies problem are not invalidated by the fact that stormcast have some

It's not a crying post "boohoo, stormcast are too weak, please GW, buff them trough the roof  " but a post about how could we change the battletome to make it more interesting an not gravitating around 5% of its option "

The goal here is not to make the stormcast better (they are still a very good army with you can do good results in tournament) but more interesting and not only relying on a very few number of options.

[Freejack02]

46 minutes ago, rokapoke said:

Note that he said “diverse and versatile” rather than “best to smash face.” Matched Play isn’t exclusively for tournament gaming. 

Fair point!

[PJetski]

I would also argue that Seraphon are currently the strongest army, but that's a more contentious statement

[Kaleun]

@ledha

those were very competitive list Setups of Stormcast (dont Forget the LVO 2018 winning list with 30 libbies). Of course there are ways to beat the strong lists of Stormcast, but there is NO Point in seeing the weaknesses of (for example) the Skyborne slayers and saying "Hey GW our Slayers Battalions seems to have weaknesses, could we work something out?".

Stormcast should have the Stone, the paper and then also the scissors.
Dont take the Scissors they are my favourite! You really really cant have em. Not the Scissors. ;-)

 

[ledha]

23 minutes ago, Kaleun said:

@ledha

those were very competitive list Setups of Stormcast (dont Forget the LVO 2018 winning list with 30 libbies). Of course there are ways to beat the strong lists of Stormcast, but there is NO Point in seeing the weaknesses of (for example) the Skyborne slayers and saying "Hey GW our Slayers Battalions seems to have weaknesses, could we work something out?".

Stormcast should have the Stone, the paper and then also the scissors.
Dont take the Scissors they are my favourite! You really really cant have em. Not the Scissors. ;-)

 

Yeah, but this list was the "old" and overpowered vanguard wing that we were seeing everywhere (like, literraly everywhere). The post-nerf new version is considerably weaker, even if i'm glad this nonsense doesn't exist anymore. It was even worse than the old kuniin ruuk.

As for the slayer bataillion. Yes, of course everything should have strenght and weakness and i fine the bataillion very fine (i love to play it because), but the point of the top ultra competitive list (changehost, fyreslayer spam vulkite, etc) is that they don't have any (or very very few) weakness, which make them head and shoulders above the skyborne slayers, which make the list not "super competitive" as you said. At least, not at their levels.

 

[Kaleun]

thats not true. Like the stormcast you can make a Tzzentch list weaker not not top Tier. It is important for having fun together with your Opponent to be able to include weaker Units. It is also good to have weaker stormcast Units. How would it be possible for an lower Tier army to win against the high Tier Stormcast then?

Be Aware that AoS is a game that we are playing together with our opponents. Sometimes playing together means to leave your Skyborne Slayers at home.

[ledha]

8 hours ago, Kaleun said:

thats not true. Like the stormcast you can make a Tzzentch list weaker not not top Tier. It is important for having fun together with your Opponent to be able to include weaker Units. It is also good to have weaker stormcast Units. How would it be possible for an lower Tier army to win against the high Tier Stormcast then?

Be Aware that AoS is a game that we are playing together with our opponents. Sometimes playing together means to leave your Skyborne Slayers at home.

Well, stormcast is full of weaker unit (all the vanguard stuff, half of the dracoth, crossbow judicator, paladins outside skyborne and hammerstrike, liberators outside the vanguard wing, lord veritant and knight-questor....). Creating a weaker list for having fun and narrative game is not a problem at all for the stormcast. I always tailor my list to my opponent skill and list to have a balanced match.

I'm not a WAAC.  but i was  answering about ultra competitive list with AdamR. And in competitive tournament, you just bring the best thing you have (which for me was the skyborne slayer because i had too much self-esteem to play vanguard wing xD).

The rant was focused about how extremely limited the stormcast roster is when you want to build a serious army, mostly because of an atrocious internal balance and the fact that they pay a hefty price for this multiwound 4+ save. Something that was impressive back then, but not as much now (Ironjaw suffer the exact same problem) with mortal wound and high rend easily acessible.

 As for lower tier army : they should be buffed to the level of the top tier army (or the opposite, i'm not fan of power creep). But as for the wishlist/analyze/proposition for those armies, i prefer to let their actual player do it, and focus on stormcast on this thread.