Tournament Builds and How to Counter Them

[Mirage8112]

1 hour ago, WoollyMammoth said:

Its a very long stretch to assume that using the battalion to do a special move in the movement phase does not count as a move in the movement phase. Its not a big deal - its not like the Libs are likely to fail a 3" charge ... but they have to stay out of 3" or enemy models.

FAQ Has already clarified that "set-up's" are not "moves" and are not subject to the 3" restriction in regard to enemy models. Special rules that allow you to "set-up" a unit on the battlefield will have their own set of requirements and restrictions. (i.e. usually 9" from enemy models, but I've seen 6" and 5" as well)

[Space Lizard]

3 hours ago, Mirage8112 said:

FAQ Has already clarified that "set-up's" are not "moves" and are not subject to the 3" restriction in regard to enemy models. Special rules that allow you to "set-up" a unit on the battlefield will have their own set of requirements and restrictions. (i.e. usually 9" from enemy models, but I've seen 6" and 5" as well)

A good unit to note is Seraphon Chameleon Skinks. They can be set up anywhere on the table including in melee base to base contact with you during the movement phase. They have a 3+ save in cover and decent shooting. 2 shots a piece, 6s cause 2 damage instead of 1 (3 against daemons).  If there is a balewind with a gaunt summoner on it they can pop up onto the balewind in base to base with him and nuke him easily.

[Adasi]

preparing for the Sheffield Slaughter and found this topic extremely helpful to get a grasp of the current meta!

 

Thanks

[Sheriff]

15 hours ago, Mirage8112 said:

FAQ Has already clarified that "set-up's" are not "moves" and are not subject to the 3" restriction in regard to enemy models. Special rules that allow you to "set-up" a unit on the battlefield will have their own set of requirements and restrictions. (i.e. usually 9" from enemy models, but I've seen 6" and 5" as well)

Grot Fanatics can do this too, I've had to show this rule before. 

[Requizen]

19 hours ago, PJetski said:

Stormcast Aetherstrike Force:

 

Shhh, you're not supposed to reveal our secrets on this one

[Twitch of Izalith]

Just now, Requizen said:

Shhh, you're not supposed to reveal our secrets on this one

I think its great to see someone talking about a Stormcast build that isnt vanguard wing!

My own stormcast list is just bits of everything - I mostly use it for playing against new players or for narrative games but if I was going to tune it into something more competitive I think I'd like to try the Aetherstrike force. I haven' t had a shooty fantasy army since wood elves!

[BURF1]

2 hours ago, Twitch of Izalith said:

I think its great to see someone talking about a Stormcast build that isnt vanguard wing!

My own stormcast list is just bits of everything - I mostly use it for playing against new players or for narrative games but if I was going to tune it into something more competitive I think I'd like to try the Aetherstrike force. I haven' t had a shooty fantasy army since wood elves!

It's weird that the vanguard wing got so popular considering that the GHB changes actually made the basline list 20pts more expensive or the Stardrake version only 20pts less expensive.

[Richelieu]

13 minutes ago, BURF1 said:

It's weird that the vanguard wing got so popular considering that the GHB changes actually made the basline list 20pts more expensive or the Stardrake version only 20pts less expensive.

Max Liberator unit size in GHB1 was only 20.

[Requizen]

43 minutes ago, BURF1 said:

It's weird that the vanguard wing got so popular considering that the GHB changes actually made the basline list 20pts more expensive or the Stardrake version only 20pts less expensive.

All it takes is one person doing well with an army. Coming from 40k, I've seen armies go from being called garbage to "imbalanced" because one person took first at a GT with them. 

[someone2040]

6 hours ago, Richelieu said:

Max Liberator unit size in GHB1 was only 20.

I think another important factor is that for most of GHB1 Stormcast Eternals didn't have allegiance abilities.

So there was no bless weapons, no lightning chariots, no mirror shields and importantly no staunch defenders. 

Stormcast certainly gained a lot of options in 2017 at the expense of Hammerstrike going away (Probably could argue Vanguard Wing and Aetherstrike are not as interesting to play against).

[Adasi]

yeah i'm rocking Aetherstrije at the slaughter so will let everyone know how it goes. Only played 2 practice games with it as i'm painting it like mad...but won both games. one againstan Oder/Free Peoples Gunline, one against Steve Wren's Tzeentch Monster Mash

[Adasi]

yeah i'm rocking Aetherstrije at the slaughter so will let everyone know how it goes. Only played 2 practice games with it as i'm painting it like mad...but won both games. one againstan Oder/Free Peoples Gunline, one against Steve Wren's Tzeentch Monster Mash

[Dave Fraser]

I think you need to revisit the Max Murderhost one.

What it does:

By the herophase of their T1 the murderhost will have moved 4d6 forwards with all 8 units.  Movement phase the BL are a further 5". So on average results that is 19" advance followed by 2d6 charge should see them able to charge you in your deployment zone T1.  What makes this list work is not just a powerful alphastrike but the fact they can flood the board and hold objectives at the same time.  

With a murderhost you typically see a relatively small number of additional points spent outside the murderhost.  The most commonly seen unit is the bloodsecrator banner to make all of these units immune to battleshock, plus bonus attacks.  Further to that maybe one additional character to try and compete in the two hero scoring scenarios.

Another advantage of the lists will be the frequently seen fleshhound units with their inbuilt dispelling ability and the reroll charges on the fleshhounds allowing them to reliably get into combat and tie up units to restrict your movement to counter the bloodletters.

How to counter it:

If you can survive the alphastrike then you need to kill the bloodsecrator to stand any chance of killing the 120 bloodletters.  This should be the priority over the Murderhost hero if you intend to try and kill their army.  Bloodletters themselves die relatively easily and being able to double through on your damage by taking more off through battleshock makes a huge difference.

The most important thing to remember in this matchup is what wins the game, it's not killing your opponent, it's scoring more scenario points.  As long as you don't lose significant elements of your army T1 (meaning you need to apply the correct bubblewrapping discussed in the original post) you should be able to put a major dent in the murderhost with your return damage output but you need to ensure you don't let their army put the scenario points up too far before you can cut through their army.

 

[MrCharisma]

20 hours ago, Dave Fraser said:

How to counter it:

If you can survive the alphastrike then you need to kill the bloodsecrator to stand any chance of killing the 120 bloodletters.  This should be the priority over the Murderhost hero if you intend to try and kill their army.  Bloodletters themselves die relatively easily and being able to double through on your damage by taking more off through battleshock makes a huge difference.

The most important thing to remember in this matchup is what wins the game, it's not killing your opponent, it's scoring more scenario points.  As long as you don't lose significant elements of your army T1 (meaning you need to apply the correct bubblewrapping discussed in the original post) you should be able to put a major dent in the murderhost with your return damage output but you need to ensure you don't let their army put the scenario points up too far before you can cut through their army.

 

Dropping the Bloodletting to 19 models (11 wounds suffered,) will significantly reduce their power. 

 

Great write up by the way 

[JamesT]

On 1/20/2018 at 12:42 AM, MrCharisma said:

Dropping the Bloodletting to 19 models (11 wounds suffered,) will significantly reduce their power. 

 

Great write up by the way 

Well, better than bubble-wrapping would be setting up farther away than you may normally. Against Murderhost you almost certainly don't want to set up on the line, unless you have a like a 10man unit of brimstones that you want to use to pull in some units for your shorter-range attacks to go for. But besides that, you probably want to have them far back enough to where average rolls would not be enough. 

[MrCharisma]

7 hours ago, JamesT said:

Well, better than bubble-wrapping would be setting up farther away than you may normally. Against Murderhost you almost certainly don't want to set up on the line, unless you have a like a 10man unit of brimstones that you want to use to pull in some units for your shorter-range attacks to go for. But besides that, you probably want to have them far back enough to where average rolls would not be enough. 

Agreed! Against the old Destruction and fast moving formations like Murderhost, i’ll deploy around the 6-8” line. 

My Free People abilities trigger on the charge so sometimes i’m not too worried about them (and would happily accept a free round of shooting). 

[Yeled]

On 1/14/2018 at 7:52 PM, JamesT said:

New Nurgle:

This is a broad topic, as there are a breadth of things that people all over are trying to understand in the two weeks before LVO. However, I'll use this section to list out some things to watch out. 

Great Unclean One: Can take a command trait that lets it roll a die for each wound it's suffered. On a 4+ it regains the wound! This happens in EACH battleshock phase, and it heals d3 wounds in each of it's hero phases, can use a spell to heal another d3, and can set the wheel of contagion to heal another d3. If you want to kill it, you literally MUST kill it in one turn. 

Thanks for posting this great thread. I'm not a competitive player, but it's great to see what all the top players are running and how people handle it. I see people talk about these all the time but I've never seen the abilities described in one place so succinctly. It also gives some food for thought in terms of lists I want to make sure we avoid in our much more casual group.

Regarding the GUO above, I don't think some of that is correct. Just to clarify some important points: 

• The first part about the command trait is actually an artifact called the Endless Gift. It is available only to daemon Nurgle heroes. It allows you to roll a die at the start of battleshock phase for each wound allocated to the model during the same turn. On a 4+ the wound is healed. It's very powerful, but it doesn't heal wounds suffered before the current turn.
• I don't know how people will rule it (and I'll go ask on the Maggotkin thread), but I am not sure the GUO can heal itself with its spell. Using the spell, you pick a point up to 14" away from the GUO and draw a line from the nearest part of the model to that point. Any unit the line passes over suffers d3 mortal wounds unless it's a Nurgle unit, in which case it heals d3 wounds. What I question is, since you start at the edge of the model, the line doesn't actually ever cross over the GUO. Therefore it shouldn't be subject to the spell. I could be wrong, but that's the way I read it anyway.

Your point still stands about it being hard to kill, since it also has 16 wounds and a 5++ save and there are other ways to make it resilient, but I don't think it's as impossible as having to kill it in a single turn. 

[Keith]

Thanks for this topic .

Having only played about 10 games I'm heading to a tourney and I really have no idea what all the armies do .

 

[mumperpa]

1. Buy the models which look the coolest to you.

2. Paint them beautifully, and enjoy it.

3. Come up with an awesome narrative for your army.

4. When you lose, have a feeling of success knowing that you played with an army that was fun to create, and as a result had a good time anyway.

Try hard list countered! (Note: I have nothing against tournament players, just not my cup of tea )

[svnvaldez]

32 minutes ago, mumperpa said:

1. Buy the models which look the coolest to you.

2. Paint them beautifully, and enjoy it.

3. Come up with an awesome narrative for your army.

4. When you lose, have a feeling of success knowing that you played with an army that was fun to create, and as a result had a good time anyway.

Try hard list countered! (Note: I have nothing against tournament players, just not my cup of tea )

1. Buy the models which will help you win games.

2. Paint them however you like, and enjoy it.

3. Read the awesome narrative in your battletome.

4. When you lose, understand what you could do better next time, and even in defeat have a good time anyway.

I am a matched play player (Note: I have nothing against open and narrative players, just not my cup of tea )

[Hammer of War]

I've been playing several games (about 5 or 6 now) against Nurgle Maggotkin with SCE (I also play Sylvaneth and I don't think it would be much different) and I think I've lost all of them. I can say is that I'm a fairly competitive player and have been feeling completely overwhelmed with this army. I can even start well, but it outlasts almost everything I do and there are some things in it that just come too easy for the Nurgle player. 

Basically it's a list consisting of a GUO, Festus, Rotigus, 30 plaguebearers, 2x5 blightkings, 6 plaguedrones and 2x10 plaguemonks. The army  has a very significant ammount of static buffs to multiply attacks and movement, a good coverage of a 5++ extra save and can heal itself fairly easily (namely the characters, but also other units due to the BK's ability, spells, battleshocks rolls of 1 and the army table from the allegiance). The special terrain feature provides a reliable "lift mechanism" across the board for extremely resilient (and previously slow) units. 30 plaguebearers running 4 (Move)+3 (Static GUO bonus)+D6+2 (Nurgle table) and then charging because of the tree? Errr....

The way I see it, this list can become even more maximized by using more plaguebearers and drones and less BK's and plaguemonks, so that's the way it's going to go for tournaments, probably.

If it maximizes on plaguebearers, it solidifies three main features that make it extremely hard to counter and a strong candidate for constant presence at the top 3 for any tournament worldwide (along with DoT):

1) The leaders providing spells/buffing sources are virtually impossible to kill - save for very specific situations - if he plays them reasonably well, and have access to several powerful spells (dishing out average of 10-12 mortal wounds per turn in this phase only + debuffing enemy units with relative ease);

2) The army's base units have a high body count, are very difficult to harm, relatively cheap and have become extremely fast (drones, plaguebearers);

3) Almost everything in the army (literally everything if it goes down the plaguebearer path) has a 5+ "ward save" or can heal back wounds.

By looking at the battletome, and at the way the army plays, it sounds written by the same guy that wrote DoT. I can easily see it nerfed when the next GH comes out (and the models have sold well). As to what to do about it? Ignore the GUO and Rotigus, bring some good spell unbinders, focus everything you can on the plaguebearers and spread your units so that - at least - the 2nd and 3rd tree are hard to place and he doesn't Red Bull all over the place.

[Adasi]

Thanks for the Nurgle write up - gotta say i'm concerned with Nurgle as they seem to have strengthened their strengths (durability) which i'm cool with but also given them easy access to removing perceived weaknesses (movement).

 

Having said that, their innate 5++ does seem like it will force the meta to react and it will be interesting to see how this changes the Mortal Wounds spam that some can rely on.

I fully expect to get battered by Nurgle at the Slaughter! but i'll enjoy learning anyway!

[JamesT]

Whew, just got back from the Las Vegas Open and can say that I am absolutely, completely, exhausted. A ton of man, but man am I tired!

 

The Vanguard Wing and Hammerstrike Force will need updated sections here over the next few days because of the FAQ. While I don't think it completely removed the Vanguard Wing from competitive play, it definitely limited it to the point where I don't think it will win nearly as much. 

Being able to shut down their teleport with a single line of models across your army is huge. No more congo-lining their 30man unit through your units to snipe heroes and such! Aetherstrike Force is untouched and I think deserving of a hard second-look as a viable SCE build. 

 

The changeling nerf will change how some people play Changehost. 

 

Congrats to @svnvaldez for going 5-2 with Kunnin' Rukk and earning 3rd in the ITC! 

[JamesT]

Updated with movement additions to most battalions and included more info on Nurgle and Lord Ordinator/artillery, both of which I think we'll be seeing ALOT more of in competitive games. Best of luck!

[PJetski]

I think that the Lord Ordinator list is not a serious contender. It's just another GA:Order shooting list - we've seen stronger versions of the same thing when Hurricanums and Kurnoth spam were all the rage. The entire list revolves around him and he's way too easy to kill since he can't take a Mirrorshield because you don't have Stormcast Allegiance. 

It is strictly worse at shooting and far easier to disrupt than a Thunderquake or an Aetherstrike and has none of the movement tricks and utility that those lists can bring to the table.

I would love it if somebody could prove me wrong...