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AoS 2 - Stormcast Eternals Discussion


Chris Tomlin

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16 hours ago, Black Blade said:

can anyone either give me directly, or link to a breakdown of shockbolt bow/ ballista damage outputs?

ballista out of 18' (1a 3+to hit 3+ to wound)average damage without considering the save rolls and other debuffs:

without ordinator 2/3*3.5*2/3=14/9=1.55 with ordinator 5/6*3.5*2/3=35/18=1.94

within 18'(4a 5+to hit 3+to wound) average damage without considering the save rolls and other debuff:

without oridinator 4*1/3*3.5*2/3=28/9=3.11 with ordinator 4*1/2*3.5*2/3=14/3=4.67

 

Edited by HammerOfSigmar
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Has anyone tried Astral Templars?

Army-wide +1 to all hit rolls vs MONSTER is great in a metagame full of Seraphon, Phoenixes, Nagash, greater Daemons, Morathi, Magmadroths, Stardrakes. You can get Ballistas hitting on 3+ rerolling 1s vs MONSTERs (using Ordinator + Azyros). With 4 ballistas thats ~29 wounds at Rend-2 on average, which is just enough to kill a Stonehorn (3+ save) Nagash (3+ save, 6+ignore) and a GUO (4+ save, 5+ ignore) in a single round of shooting.

Add in some Castigators to easily fill out a Hailstorm Battery battalion, and then you can give a hero Sword of Judgment (d6 mw on hit6+ vs HERO & MONSTER) that always has +1 hit vs MONSTERS.

The command trait is also very interesting for speeding up some of our ultra slow melee units like Evocators and Sequitors. An extra 6" move at the start of the game can be the difference between a turn 1 charge or a turn 2 charge, or to deny space for enemy deep strikes.

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3 hours ago, PJetski said:

Has anyone tried Astral Templars?

Army-wide +1 to all hit rolls vs MONSTER is great in a metagame full of Seraphon, Phoenixes, Nagash, greater Daemons, Morathi, Magmadroths, Stardrakes. You can get Ballistas hitting on 3+ rerolling 1s vs MONSTERs (using Ordinator + Azyros). With 4 ballistas thats ~29 wounds at Rend-2 on average, which is just enough to kill a Stonehorn (3+ save) Nagash (3+ save, 6+ignore) and a GUO (4+ save, 5+ ignore) in a single round of shooting.

Add in some Castigators to easily fill out a Hailstorm Battery battalion, and then you can give a hero Sword of Judgment (d6 mw on hit6+ vs HERO & MONSTER) that always has +1 hit vs MONSTERS.

The command trait is also very interesting for speeding up some of our ultra slow melee units like Evocators and Sequitors. An extra 6" move at the start of the game can be the difference between a turn 1 charge or a turn 2 charge, or to deny space for enemy deep strikes.

Your calculation is mostly correct for the your first turn of the battle, but you miss the "look out sir" for nagash, so it is actually 4+ to hit and therefore on average, you cannot kill nagash (4*4*(1/2+1/6*1/2)*3.5*2/3*2/3*5/6=12), even with azyros' d3 mortal wound. The problem here from my perspective is that azyros will only live in the first turn you DS it near the enemy(10') because it will usually be overwhelmed in your rival's turn. Then whether you kill the monster's or not, you lose the reroll 1 for next turn. Hence, I won't bring it just for buffing the ballista and actually it just help you make 2 more wounds on nagash after considering the armor and ignoring wound stuff.

Ignore the lines above, I made a mistake about the look out sir rules. 

For the castigator and hailstorm battery, I don't think it is very worthy, since only one ballista can benefit from it and the chance of castigator inflict a wound on nagash is not really high after considering the look out sir, armor and wound ignoring stuff. But you need to spent 200 points for the battalion and castigator. What don't you just use this 200 points to bring a unit of evocator? They do much more both normal and mortal wounds, which few AOS unit having ability to ignore both.  

Edited by HammerOfSigmar
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2 hours ago, PJetski said:

Has anyone tried Astral Templars?

Army-wide +1 to all hit rolls vs MONSTER is great in a metagame full of Seraphon, Phoenixes, Nagash, greater Daemons, Morathi, Magmadroths, Stardrakes. You can get Ballistas hitting on 3+ rerolling 1s vs MONSTERs (using Ordinator + Azyros). With 4 ballistas thats ~29 wounds at Rend-2 on average, which is just enough to kill a Stonehorn (3+ save) Nagash (3+ save, 6+ignore) and a GUO (4+ save, 5+ ignore) in a single round of shooting.

Add in some Castigators to easily fill out a Hailstorm Battery battalion, and then you can give a hero Sword of Judgment (d6 mw on hit6+ vs HERO & MONSTER) that always has +1 hit vs MONSTERS.

The command trait is also very interesting for speeding up some of our ultra slow melee units like Evocators and Sequitors. An extra 6" move at the start of the game can be the difference between a turn 1 charge or a turn 2 charge, or to deny space for enemy deep strikes.

Yes, I tried it at a big tournament with a pure Vanguard list in August. It was a monster-heavy meta and the Stormhost didn't disappoint. I used to run Anvils but the +1 to hit against monsters is really nice and can turn even Hunters into a serious threat for monsters. I also find that, besides the artefact, it,s proably the only stormhost that offers mainly useful abilities.

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32 minutes ago, HammerOfSigmar said:

Your calculation is mostly correct for the your first turn of the battle, but you miss the "look out sir" for nagash, so it is actually 4+ to hit and therefore on average, you cannot kill nagash (4*4*(1/2+1/6*1/2)*3.5*2/3*2/3*5/6=12), even with azyros' d3 mortal wound. The problem here from my perspective is that azyros will only live in the first turn you DS it near the enemy(10') because it will usually be overwhelmed in your rival's turn. Then whether you kill the monster's or not, you lose the reroll 1 for next turn. Hence, I won't bring it just for buffing the ballista and actually it just help you make 2 more wounds on nagash after considering the armor and ignoring wound stuff. 

For the castigator and hailstorm battery, I don't think it is very worthy, since only one ballista can benefit from it and the chance of castigator inflict a wound on nagash is not really high after considering the look out sir, armor and wound ignoring stuff. But you need to spent 200 points for the battalion and castigator. What don't you just use this 200 points to bring a unit of evocator? They do much more both normal and mortal wounds, which few AOS unit having ability to ignore both.  

Nagash cannot benefit from 'look out sir' as he is a Monster. 

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56 minutes ago, HammerOfSigmar said:

Ignore the lines above, I made a mistake about the look out sir rules. 

For the castigator and hailstorm battery, I don't think it is very worthy, since only one ballista can benefit from it and the chance of castigator inflict a wound on nagash is not really high after considering the look out sir, armor and wound ignoring stuff. But you need to spent 200 points for the battalion and castigator. What don't you just use this 200 points to bring a unit of evocator? They do much more both normal and mortal wounds, which few AOS unit having ability to ignore both.  

Stormcast battalions have bad abilities, but they reduce your drops and add artifacts and bonus command points. This is generally more important with a Stormhost because the forced artifact precludes you from taking the powerful Realm artifacts or potent Stormcast artifacts (like the Staff of Focus).

+1 to hit against MONSTERS is really good with the Sword of Judgment artifact, and you need a battalion to get access to that.

As for the Hailstorm Battery battalion itself - while it's only 1 ballista rerolling hits, a ballista rerolling hits can be really useful when you don't have the +1 hit vs MONSTERS, like if you're facing a bunch of witch elves or tzaangor enlightened. 200 points to (usually) reroll hits with a ballista, 3 Castigators, an extra command point, reduced drops, and an artifact is arguably more valuable than adding 5 more Evocators (the list I'm tinkering with has 10 already)

Edited by PJetski
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31 minutes ago, PJetski said:

Stormcast battalions have bad abilities, but they reduce your drops and add artifacts and bonus command points. This is generally more important with a Stormhost because the forced artifact precludes you from taking the powerful Realm artifacts or potent Stormcast artifacts (like the Staff of Focus).

+1 to hit against MONSTERS is really good with the Sword of Judgment artifact, and you need a battalion to get access to that.

As for the Hailstorm Battery battalion itself - while it's only 1 ballista rerolling hits, a ballista rerolling hits can be really useful when you don't have the +1 hit vs MONSTERS, like if you're facing a bunch of witch elves or tzaangor enlightened. 200 points to (usually) reroll hits with a ballista, 3 Castigators, an extra command point, reduced drops, and an artifact is arguably more valuable than adding 5 more Evocators (the list I'm tinkering with has 10 already)

I partially agree with what you say, actually most of what you say, but that battalion does not guarantee you the rerolling. A unit of 3 castigator has only 3 attacks, for my point of value, it is hard to make sure that you actually inflicts a wound on any units. Actually I have a bad experience with the castigator, 3 of them shoot 5 turns(they live to the end) and no damage is dealt. 

Edited by HammerOfSigmar
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5 minutes ago, HammerOfSigmar said:

I partially agree with what you say, actually most of what you say, but that battalion does not guarantee you the rerolling. A unit of 3 castigator has only 3 hits, for my point of value, it is hard to make sure that you actually inflicts a wound on any units. Actually I have a bad experience with the castigator, 3 of them shoot 5 turns(they live to the end) and no damage is dealt. 

That's why I said "usually" rerolling hits. The Prime hits on 2+/3+ and the others hit on 3+/3+. With an Azyros to reroll hit1 and Rend-2 attacks it's very likely that they will do at least one point of damage.

You can make it a unit of 6 instead of 3 to make it more reliable (though I'm not claiming  that this is worthwhile).

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24 minutes ago, PJetski said:

That's why I said "usually" rerolling hits. The Prime hits on 2+/3+ and the others hit on 3+/3+. With an Azyros to reroll hit1 and Rend-2 attacks it's very likely that they will do at least one point of damage.

You can make it a unit of 6 instead of 3 to make it more reliable (though I'm not claiming  that this is worthwhile).

Could you share your experience of how you use Azyros? It seems to me that it can never live to a second turn once I drop it 10' within the enemy armies so I just usually drop it as close to the enemy as possible and then charge it towards the enemy and release the 8' bomb. 

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8 minutes ago, HammerOfSigmar said:

Could you share your experience of how you use Azyros? It seems to me that it can never live to a second turn once I drop it 10' within the enemy armies so I just usually drop it as close to the enemy as possible and then charge it towards the enemy and release the 8' bomb. 

Ideally you want to keep him alive for at least 2 turns. Dropping him into play is fine if you can move a unit up to block charges and give him Look Out Sir! or if you can deploy him >9" from an enemy but also behind a wall or something (sylvaneth woods are great for this).

You can also just deploy him normally and run forward because he has a 12" move - with Astral Templars this is even easier because he would get a 6" move at the start of the game. Moving 18 + run should be enough to get into whatever position you need.

Opponents usually don't try to kill the Azyros until after they have killed more critical support pieces like the Castellant, Incantor, and Arcanum.

Edited by PJetski
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1 hour ago, xking said:

I would like to ask the people of this tread, Why did you decide to play stormcast eternals? do you like anything about them? 

I play stormcast because  I like paladins and the aesthetic, I like that they represent Noblebright themes.

I started with the starter set for AOS and the khorne stuff never appealed to me.

I was eventually turned off of the Stormcast because I love magic in all its forms for Fantasy, but then when they made Stormcast Wizards I had to start up again... ?

Edited by The Call of the Hunt
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3 hours ago, xking said:

I would like to ask the people of this tread, Why did you decide to play stormcast eternals? do you like anything about them? 

I play stormcast because  I like paladins and the aesthetic, I like that they represent Noblebright themes.

I was having a hard time finding a faction that matched what I wanted to play, I kept buying and selling armies when they didn't match the fantasy I was looking for.  I had completely overlooked Stormcast because they are the poster boys of AOS, but the more I read about them the more I realized they were what I was looking for.  Giant hammers and lightning everywhere is just awesome.

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4 hours ago, xking said:

I would like to ask the people of this tread, Why did you decide to play stormcast eternals? do you like anything about them? 

February of 2016, a friend of mine convinced me to give AoS a look (we played WHFB back in the day). I instantly fell in love with the models of both Prosecutors and Gore Gruntas... decided to go with Stormcast over Ironjawz. Glad I did, but I just wish the Prosecutors were in a better place in terms of effectiveness - I still really like the sculpts!

Boy, I really miss picking up SCE for dirt cheap on Ebay because the game had such poor sales at launch - but I suppose I prefer it being successful.

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27 minutes ago, PJetski said:

Prosecutors should be 3 wounds each or cost 20 less points and be a battleline option

I'd really like another flying hero (I know, we already have 2) that would make them battleline as the general. I'd love for the hammer wielders to get a bump in combat stats too; the javelins are ok as is probably.

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12 hours ago, xking said:

I would like to ask the people of this tread, Why did you decide to play stormcast eternals? do you like anything about them? 

I play stormcast because  I like paladins and the aesthetic, I like that they represent Noblebright themes.

Roided up people in shiny armor?

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15 hours ago, xking said:

I would like to ask the people of this tread, Why did you decide to play stormcast eternals? do you like anything about them? 

I play stormcast because  I like paladins and the aesthetic, I like that they represent Noblebright themes.

I started when AOS 1 came out. I saw a picture of a Celestial Vindicator liberator (they had no background at the time) i one of the books and knew I had to do it. I've been frustrated at times by how they play but the imagery of these ighty turquoise paladins always brings me back. 

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