AoS 2 - Clan Skyre Discussion

[Skreech Verminking]

31 minutes ago, Noit said:

About the warpfire thrower team is it still useful now?(competitively)

Don’t know, it looks good on paper, if you can throw out the damage before you die.

but hey I’ll be using two of them tomorrow so, if you guys are interested in how good they were I’ll happily report my battle in her😁. 

Edited February 15, 2019 by Skreech Verminking

[GeneralZero]

What's about the canon?

-mehh

- good

- OP

1 or 2 or 3?  I like the mini, and there there are so few canons in AoS, I can't imagine not taking at least one. Your thoughts?

[Gwendar]

10 minutes ago, GeneralZero said:

What's about the canon?

-mehh

- good

- OP

1 or 2 or 3?  I like the mini, and there there are so few canons in AoS, I can't imagine not taking at least one. Your thoughts?

I've always been a big advocate for the WLC and that hasn't changed much, although I am now looking into potentially replacing 2 of them with Jezzails or 1 + 6 Jezzails but.. I'll need to test all of this.

Anyway, I would say they definitely got better, and the old engine-coven ability is somewhat baked in now with the overcharge mechanic. I always argued you really needed to bring 2 of them for the most effectiveness, but I think even just using 1 now is fine if you plan to overcharge. The change to arkhspark-coven is a good one in my opinion when you consider the changes to the WLC itself, but I don't think anything makes the WLC OP exactly.

Of course, the moment you roll a 1 on a normal shot and do 6 MW's I'm sure your opponent will tell you how BS\OP it is like they do with mine. I took a Maw-Krusha off the board T2 with 2 of them so they weren't happy to say the least.

Edited February 15, 2019 by Gwendar

[WoollyMammoth]

I used an Arch-Warlock and 3 Stormfiends in my battle report. The Arch warlock is great as a 2 spell caster with casting re-rolls thanks to sparks. Hes pricey now which is appropriate as his has has 3+ save and 6 wounds. His spell is good but I'm worried its too random - you could try to boost it at great risk only to do a couple wounds to one unit. I like the kamikaze nature of it though - like you might be losing then all the sudden blast the table with like 12 mortal wounds. The Stormfiends I loved as a Warpfire-Ratling-Doomflayer. The ratling can be amazing on its own boosted by sparks, and i think you just need the utility of warpfire just in case you have to deal with hordes.

 

 

 

 

[NemoVonUtopia]

5 hours ago, GeneralZero said:

What's about the canon?

-mehh

- good

- OP

1 or 2 or 3?  I like the mini, and there there are so few canons in AoS, I can't imagine not taking at least one. Your thoughts?

I think it's quite good. It's fairly reliable since it auto hits and does mortal wounds though it is reliant on rolling good on the power roll. It's good for killing or keeping small support heros away. 

I think the new rules make it even better at taking out heros. Also since poison wind mortars are gone i think they are the second longest ranged unit after jezzails.

[Kirjava13]

Greeting-salutations, fellow Warlocks. Skurrilious Maus has returned with news of his glorious victory over the lightning-things! 

A thing on a drake-thing... ok, I'll stop that now, it's too much work. My buddy had a Stardrake, a Lord Castellant, a Heraldor, the hero with wings and a lantern, two units of three Raptors, three units of five Liberators, five Retribitors and a bunch of birds. Against this, I took the second list from my above post. We played Focal Points in Ulgu.

I got first turn. Unfortunately, my big gambit- to get the warp lightning endless spell off with Skurrilious Maus (the Arch-Warlock) on a Balewind Vortex and combo it into the Soulsnare Shackles- failed, but hold onto your butts, because Shirk Maus, my Warlock Engineer, overcharged the Warp Lightning Cannon and it blasted the Stardrake to kingdom come for twelve mortal wounds! 

It also exploded. Which, you know, accidents happen, it was probably sabotaged, shoddy craftsmanship, etc. 

The Acolytes killed a Griffhound. This was the sum total of their achievements over the game. 

The Doomwheel barreled forwards, lightning blasting, and crashed into the Stardrake, but a plot by Skurrilious' underlings was clearly responsible for it only doing two wounds. The damned Stardrake survived with two wounds left! Also infuriatingly, having used Bridge of Shadows to get some Stormfiends to within 9" of Liberators, I realised I had forgotten to actually move them, and so they did nothing.

The Stardrake retreated as the Stormcast opened up their can of bull$hi7. Man, it turns out I only had half an idea of how many mortal wounds Stormcast can pump out just because they want to. It feels extra bad now that we have to roll for ours. 

He got a double turn. The Raptors shot the unfortunate Shirk to pieces (he feigned death and ran home later). All but one of the Stormfiends died. The Doomwheel was smashed apart. The Stardrake ate the Jezzails.

It was at this point that Skurrilious, in a rather unprecedented display of bravery/foolishness, went a bit berserk. He blasted the Stardrake to death with warp and shadow magic, while Thanquol, a little more competent than the Arch-Warlock, hurled the warpstorm at the mass of Liberators and Retribitors bearing down on him. The resultant hail of lightning bolts wiped out almost all the Stormcast. Leaving one Liberator alive, the dynamic duo used Bridge of Shadows and a Gnawhole to teleport across the table and murder the Lord Castellant, before repeating the trick again and murdering all the remaining Aetherwings. Unfortunately, Thanquol succumbed to the Lord Relictor. Skurrilious blasted him off the table in revenge, and decided that he had demonstrated enough of his power, and that it was time for him to be returning to base.

Ok, so I lost and I lost heavily. I gave up on winning after he got the first double turn- I just didn't have enough bodies after all the mortal wounds he put onto my Stormfiends. By the end of the game, I only had my Arch Warlock to his two units of Raptors and the Knight Heraldor. A little more luck and some clearer thinking could have kept me in it though. 

The Stormfiends were pretty useless. The Doomflayer gauntlets are good, but only having one of them in a unit is naff. Warpfire is really only good against hordes, though Thanquol having four flamers helps. The Jezzails did sod all, same with the Acolytes. The Acolytes could have been killers, but I had no way to buff them after my Engineer died and no big unit targets. The Jezzails got one shot off and whiffed before the Stardrake came looking for lunch.

The big winner is Thanquol and magic. The big guy's an absolute beast, but against Stormcast he was of limited use. Not very killy in melee, not the optimal target for his warpfire throwers. His casting bonus, his passive healing and Scurry Away are all big bonuses. 

Against these Stormcast, with no wizards, my chances of being unbound were zero, so I wasn't punished for overpowering. I really would be against another army. Even one wizard could have seriously frustrated me. The warp lightning endless spell is DEVASTATING, and I am frustrated I didn't manage to get the shackles off as well. That would have been lethal. 

I made plenty of mistakes. Forgot to trigger stuff, forgot to do extra damage, forgot to cast a couple of spells, forgot to move stuff. My deployment was probably bad, ditto my positioning. I'm not actually that good at the game! 

Next week... revenge!

Edited February 15, 2019 by Kirjava13

[Overread]

7 minutes ago, Kirjava13 said:

The Acolytes killed a Griffhound. This was the sum total of their achievements over the game. 

The poor hound!

But at the same time your Acolytes dealt a heavy blow killing one in the first place = deadly things they are! Feared by even the great lord Khorne himself!

 

Overall sounds like the battle went well. Double turns are still a thing I wish GW would get rid of from AoS because they really compound the whole alternate turns problem by giving one player two whole rounds of beat-down. Often I feel that they turn a few early mistakes into a total rout quite easily. Also sounds like it could have been a much closer game if you'd used the stormfiends more effectively and also sounds like a few other mistakes happened. 

All in all though sounds great and nice that you got to use quite a fun list and it was still doing decently well even as it was being torn apart by terrible betrayals and spies from other clans! 

[Gwendar]

@Kirjava13 Excited to hear about your revenge, but a shame to hear about the Acolytes. I think you would've got quite a lot more out of them had your engineer been alive, as you said. I'll probably give 10 of them a shot behind some Clanrats and see what happens. I'm honestly not surprised about the Stormfiends... I think they'll go back in the display case for awhile, especially since I have them with Warpfire-Grinder-Shock Gauntlets. But hey, it could've just been some of the mistakes you were talking about.

Hearing that about the Vortex is nice, but I continually just feel like it isn't that strong in terms of damage since it will only do 1d3 or 1d6 MW's to a unit. I guess if you throw it on top of a cluster of heroes it would be better. I'm curious to combine it along with Vermintide + Shackles to really ensure that anything trying to travel through them suffers for it.

Oh, and what do you think about going 2 Warpfire and 2 Braziers for Thanquol? 2 Warpfire against a horde of 20-40 is still pretty insanely devastating.


EDIT: @Overread I genuinely hope the same when it comes to the double turn.  When I see arguments on the subject, it usually seems split 50\50 and the people that are for it talk about how tactical it is and that you have to plan to get, or get-got-by the double turn. From my experience, there are just some things you can't really plan for.. it really needs to go away. 40k does well enough without it and Sieze the Initiative is a good enough alternative.

Edited February 15, 2019 by Gwendar

[Zinnar]

The more I'm thinking about it, the more I'm coming around to the idea of "Mixed Skryre". I just don't like having to buy and paint more filler units.

I'm really interested in Stormvermin, but I don't want to take a huge block of them, and am not sure whether a unit of 10 Stormvermin is better filler than a unit of 10 Acolytes (which I already have).

The Stormvermin are obviously more survivable, but a unit of 10 will only get the bonus for a short time. Still, they are 5+ and not 6+. Moreover 10 Stormvermin (I think?) put out more wounds than a unit of Acolytes before you consider buffs for either units.

I guess my real questions are here:

How do we feel (like I asked earlier) about minimum size units of Clanrats and Stormvermin, and how do we feel about those in comparison to Acolytes for a list that is heavily Clan Skryre?

What I'm wondering is something like...

2x20 or 3x20 Clanrats as battleline instead of some combination of Stormfiends and Acolytes

Or something like, 40 Clanrats, 2x10 Stormvermin instead of Stormfiends and Acolytes

Basically, if I'm taking small units primarily to screen Cannons, Stormfiends, and Weapons Teams, and don't want to drop 40-strong blobs of clanrats, how do we rate 20 Clanrats vs 10 Stormvermin vs 10 Acolytes?

[Kirjava13]

 

19 minutes ago, Zinnar said:

The more I'm thinking about it, the more I'm coming around to the idea of "Mixed Skryre". I just don't like having to buy and paint more filler units.

I'm really interested in Stormvermin, but I don't want to take a huge block of them, and am not sure whether a unit of 10 Stormvermin is better filler than a unit of 10 Acolytes (which I already have).

The Stormvermin are obviously more survivable, but a unit of 10 will only get the bonus for a short time. Still, they are 5+ and not 6+. Moreover 10 Stormvermin (I think?) put out more wounds than a unit of Acolytes before you consider buffs for either units.

I guess my real questions are here:

How do we feel (like I asked earlier) about minimum size units of Clanrats and Stormvermin, and how do we feel about those in comparison to Acolytes for a list that is heavily Clan Skryre?

What I'm wondering is something like...

2x20 or 3x20 Clanrats as battleline instead of some combination of Stormfiends and Acolytes

Or something like, 40 Clanrats, 2x10 Stormvermin instead of Stormfiends and Acolytes

Basically, if I'm taking small units primarily to screen Cannons, Stormfiends, and Weapons Teams, and don't want to drop 40-strong blobs of clanrats, how do we rate 20 Clanrats vs 10 Stormvermin vs 10 Acolytes?

If all you want is a screen, then 3x20 Clanrats gets you twice as many bodies as 3x10 Acolytes for the same price, so it's an obvious win (my only objection is that I don't want to have to buy and paint another box if I don't want to and didn't need to before, but eh).

[NemoVonUtopia]

47 minutes ago, Zinnar said:

The more I'm thinking about it, the more I'm coming around to the idea of "Mixed Skryre". I just don't like having to buy and paint more filler units.

I'm really interested in Stormvermin, but I don't want to take a huge block of them, and am not sure whether a unit of 10 Stormvermin is better filler than a unit of 10 Acolytes (which I already have).

The Stormvermin are obviously more survivable, but a unit of 10 will only get the bonus for a short time. Still, they are 5+ and not 6+. Moreover 10 Stormvermin (I think?) put out more wounds than a unit of Acolytes before you consider buffs for either units.

I guess my real questions are here:

How do we feel (like I asked earlier) about minimum size units of Clanrats and Stormvermin, and how do we feel about those in comparison to Acolytes for a list that is heavily Clan Skryre?

What I'm wondering is something like...

2x20 or 3x20 Clanrats as battleline instead of some combination of Stormfiends and Acolytes

Or something like, 40 Clanrats, 2x10 Stormvermin instead of Stormfiends and Acolytes

Basically, if I'm taking small units primarily to screen Cannons, Stormfiends, and Weapons Teams, and don't want to drop 40-strong blobs of clanrats, how do we rate 20 Clanrats vs 10 Stormvermin vs 10 Acolytes?

For screens I think 20 clanrats are the clear winner, they cover more area, have more wounds, and are not that different from 10 stormvermin.

My initial impressions is that stormvermin will be best in large groups to take advantage of 2" range and the buffs.

Since the saves depend on unit size will we have to roll each save separately for a 10 man unit of stormvermin until one is failed?

[Kirjava13]

3 hours ago, Gwendar said:

@Kirjava13 Excited to hear about your revenge, but a shame to hear about the Acolytes. I think you would've got quite a lot more out of them had your engineer been alive, as you said. I'll probably give 10 of them a shot behind some Clanrats and see what happens. I'm honestly not surprised about the Stormfiends... I think they'll go back in the display case for awhile, especially since I have them with Warpfire-Grinder-Shock Gauntlets. But hey, it could've just been some of the mistakes you were talking about.

Hearing that about the Vortex is nice, but I continually just feel like it isn't that strong in terms of damage since it will only do 1d3 or 1d6 MW's to a unit. I guess if you throw it on top of a cluster of heroes it would be better. I'm curious to combine it along with Vermintide + Shackles to really ensure that anything trying to travel through them suffers for it.

Oh, and what do you think about going 2 Warpfire and 2 Braziers for Thanquol? 2 Warpfire against a horde of 20-40 is still pretty insanely devastating.

EDIT: @Overread I genuinely hope the same when it comes to the double turn.  When I see arguments on the subject, it usually seems split 50\50 and the people that are for it talk about how tactical it is and that you have to plan to get, or get-got-by the double turn. From my experience, there are just some things you can't really plan for.. it really needs to go away. 40k does well enough without it and Sieze the Initiative is a good enough alternative.

The Acolytes were never going to be that effective I think. I only have 15. They die like flies if the enemy looks in their direction, and without a hero to give them Inspiring Presence they'll be about as brave as, well, skaven. Stormcast are an odd quandary for them: poison wind globes themselves are great anti-Stormcast tools, they have good rend and potential high damage, but the lightning-things are not often going to be in units large enough to buff their hit rolls, so the Acolytes are relying on something else to get a buff (see below).

I was lucky with the Warp Lightning Vortex- I caught two units of Liberators, the Retributors and the Knight-Vexillor (?) in its arcs, and Stormcast are so slow that they couldn't get out quickly. Between this and the Arch-Warlock's Warp Lightning Storm, everything apart from three Liberators went down. It will work best against a blob or a fortified position.

Stormfiends... oh Stormfiends. Ho hum. The Ratling Gun (buffed by a warpstone spark) plinked some wounds off some Liberators, and that one unit managed to cut down the rest of the Liberators and a unit of birds in short order, but I lost one from stupidity (I idiotically put my wounds on the middle one, so when he died in Stormcast turn 1, I had to remove a second from breaking unit coherency). The final guy tried to mince the Heraldor (by the Horned One I hate that guy) but  more of those damned birds got in the way! He ended up getting some more Longstrike bolts to the face, if I remember correctly. The other unit... they were going to charge more Liberators but, as detailed above, I forgot to move them so they failed their charge. They then spent a turn or two fighting Retributors, who are just endless nonsense. Short story shorter: they died, after killing one, maaaaybe two enemies. 

OH SOD IT- I've just remembered that Doomflayers reroll hits get +1 to hit on the charge. That would have been super helpful. Or it might have been. We may never know.

More-more Acolyte theory-ideas.
Where can they get hit and wound buffs from?

• More-More-More Warp Power, a spell that one wizard can have (I gave it to Skurrilious, and then promptly set him up on the other side of the battlefield, next to the Jezzails, who couldn't use it without losing between a third and 100% of their unit!) and casts on a 7. 
• The Deranged Inventor command trait (I had Thanquol as my general so I didn't get a command trait);
• The Gascloud Chokelung Enginecoven (uff. Warpcog Convocation is cool but sooooo expensive). 

3 hours ago, Overread said:

Overall sounds like the battle went well. Double turns are still a thing I wish GW would get rid of from AoS because they really compound the whole alternate turns problem by giving one player two whole rounds of beat-down. Often I feel that they turn a few early mistakes into a total rout quite easily. Also sounds like it could have been a much closer game if you'd used the stormfiends more effectively and also sounds like a few other mistakes happened. 

All in all though sounds great and nice that you got to use quite a fun list and it was still doing decently well even as it was being torn apart by terrible betrayals and spies from other clans! 

It was a good game once I got over the hump of his first (double) turn. After I had reconciled myself to the fact that Stormcast are just stupid and decided to just try and murder as much as possible, I had much more fun. It helped that my spells did what I wanted them to- without the Warp Lightning Vortex (and apart from the opening shot from the Warp Lightning Cannon, which was the funniest and best thing) it would have been a pretty bad-feel game, with me largely unable to do much. Wiping out that powerful blob of Stormcast and the Stardrake all at the same time was the morale boost I needed to keep playing, even if I knew I had no chance of winning on objectives. And the double turn is just the worst. It's so dull waiting for your opponent to do everything twice and wondering if you'll even have an army left by the end of it.

Traitors will be root-hunted out, backstabbers will be punish-flayed, Shirk will be whipped for allowing himself to be shot with crossbows and next time, Skurrilious will win-triumph!

Edited February 15, 2019 by Kirjava13

[Kirjava13]

And I was inspired by the game to finally make progress on my Doomwheel, which has been floundering for about a year, as well as a bit more progress on the Arch-Warlock. Almost all his base colours blocked in now.

 

[5kaven5lave]

Thanks for the updates and batrep @Kirjava13

I’m going up against Stormcast today as well with my magic, fiends and cannon list which I posted a few pages back. Actually I’ll just post it again:

Grey Seer as General -Master of Magic- *Suspicious Stone* .Warpgale. 

Arch Warlock .More-More-More Warp Power!.

Warlock Bombardier .Chain Lightning.

3x3 Stormfiends

3 WLC

Doomwheel

Balewind for Seer to cast Warp Lightning Vortex at 32”.

 

Basically gonna present a WLC gunline and slow enemies to a crawl while doing MW shenanigans. I’ll let you all know how I get on. 

[Kirjava13]

Fortune-luck go with you @5kaven5lave, may the Horned Rat bless your dice!

 

[Skorp]

Sorry if this is the wrong place to post this, didnt want to start a new thread. What are people's thoughts on allying a screaming bell? I'm new to Skaven with the carrion empire box.

I'm thinking of something like this for 2000 points Skryre allegience. 

 

Grey Seer on Screaming Bell (Ally)

2x Warlock Bombardiers

 

15x Skryre Acolytes (Would convert plague monks)

3x Stormfiends

3x Stormfiends

 

2x Doomwheel

2x Warplightning Cannon

1x Plagueclaw (Ally)

 

Might have a bit leftover for an endless spell. 

Thoughts?

(2x Carrion Empire,1x Pestilens Start Collecting.)

 

Edited February 18, 2019 by Skorp

[Kirjava13]

Unfortunately this won't work- the Screaming Bell would be fine as your general, but the Plagueclaw is not an option if you want to have Skryre allegiance (and hence the Acolytes and Stormfiends as battleline).

[angrycontra]

Also 15 acolytes is not enough to move screaming bell. Once your opponent farts in their general direction, they lose 6+ models and your bell is stuck in place for the rest of the game.

[Zinnar]

Huh. Hadn't thought about that though. If you turn the plagueclaw into a warp lightning cannon (they're the same kit), 2x Carrion Empire half + 1 SC! Pestilens is not a bad way to make a Skryre force if you don't mind converting plague monks....

 

Wouldn't even be the worst list: technically I think Stormfiends can even push the Bell...

 

Edit: Well, at least having the Stormfiends near would help ensure you keep the "10 models" rule to allow the bell to move.

Edited February 18, 2019 by Zinnar

[Zinnar]

@Skorp the more I think about it, the more I kind of love your list idea.

Screaming Bell

20 Acolytes, 2x3 Fiends

2x WLC

2x Doomwheels

2x Engineers is right at 1840 points, and with Gnawholes out on the board I'd think about taking Chronomantic Cogs and Warp Lightning Vortex. 

Acolytes push the Bell into the fray, Doomwheels clean off objectives, Engineers can each buff a cannon to overcharge it, Stormfiends do their thing.

Use the bell as a distraction piece while everything else does work.

Might tuck this away for when I finish painting my force and itch to convert a Screaming Bell

[Num]

I think the acolytes would be better in 30 and with someone to babysit them with more more more warp power. But an arch warlock plus 10 acolytes would cost 240 points extra... Perhaps instead of a doomwheel and an engineer? You could fit a soulsnare shackle in too, to go along the vortex.

[5kaven5lave]

Just building my third set of Stormfiends. I already have 2 units with Grinderfists, should I put the Ratling Cannons on my third unit as it’s unlikely I’ll deepstrike all 3?

[EMMachine]

56 minutes ago, 5kaven5lave said:

Just building my third set of Stormfiends. I already have 2 units with Grinderfists, should I put the Ratling Cannons on my third unit as it’s unlikely I’ll deepstrike all 3?

Do you have the new battletome? Monounits aren't possible anymore.

[5kaven5lave]

23 minutes ago, EMMachine said:

Do you have the new battletome? Monounits aren't possible anymore.

Thanks for the response, maybe my question wasn’t clear, I now have 2 units that include a Grinderfist and I was wondering whether to build a Ratling Cannon instead on the 3rd unit. 

[NemoVonUtopia]

1 minute ago, 5kaven5lave said:

Thanks for the response, maybe my question wasn’t clear, I now have 2 units that include a Grinderfist and I was wondering whether to build a Ratling Cannon instead on the 3rd unit. 

I would think that it depends on how much melee you need. I have 2 units with grinder fists and warpfire that get close and one unit with rattling and windlauncher that hangs back and can protect objectives or my back line while still contributing. If you take the warpfire thrower instead of the windlauncher on the 3rd unit I would build another grinderfist for the extra wound and better melee.