AoS 2 - Stormcast Eternals Discussion

[chord]

1 hour ago, Nizrah said:

Its me or all all ours battalions seems pretty lame and useless?

Agreed just skimmed the book.

We got nerf'd hard.

Plus I feel like the last battletome was higher quality than this. lots more wasted page space in this one.

[Mark Williams]

48 minutes ago, chord said:

We got nerf'd hard.

I don’t think so. My army definitely got stronger. However some of the old power combos no longer work. I think they just hammered down the stuff that was making every army look the same.

 I agree the battalions seem overpriced and underwhelming however.

[Nizrah]

I think we receive buff in the terms on units/artifacts etc but battalions were nerfed hard into the ground

[Shinzra]

Being one of the first battletomes to be re done in the new edition, I would say it's not really a nerf, as every other battletome going forward will most likely have similar battalion  adjustments

Edited July 7, 2018 by Shinzra

[AwareTheLegend]

2 minutes ago, Shinzra said:

Being one of the first battletomes to be re done in the new edition, I would say it's not really a nerf, as every other battletome going forward will most likely have similar battalion  adjustments

Maggotkin and newer were all designed with 2.0 in mind.

[silentdeathz]

10 minutes ago, AwareTheLegend said:

Maggotkin and newer were all designed with 2.0 in mind.

To be fair he did say one of, not the first. 

That said, there aren't any 'wow' aspects to the new tome for sce, at least not for me. A little disappointing but not entirely unexpected. 

[DanielFM]

I got the softback, spanish-translated Battletome to save quite the hefty money, but that means it lacks quite a bit of fluff (unit background, I think).

Could someone tell me in a few words what's the background for Tauralons and Dracolines?

Edit: interesting contribution

Static Crossbow Judicators (with special bow Prime) do more damage (5,17 wounds) against 5+ saves than Hurricane Raptors (5 wounds). Ok, the difference is very small, but the humble (previously neglected) Crossbow Judicators are even better than our most most impressive horde killers.

Pros for CrossJudis

-Battleline

-More wounds.

Pros for Hurricanes

-Cheaper

-More range

- -1 to charge aura

-Can be relocated by Azyrite Hurricane

-Synergy with Aetherwings

Both sound nice, the choice is yours ?

Edited July 7, 2018 by DanielFM
More text

[Bradipo322]

1 hour ago, Nizrah said:

I think we receive buff in the terms on units/artifacts etc but battalions were nerfed hard into the ground

To be fair the artifacts haven't changed from the last battletome, we just got a some new ones (6 for lord-arcanum & knight-incantor).

[Greven]

What do people think of gryp-hounds? The always moving out of combat is mildly annoying to say the least!

[DanielFM]

55 minutes ago, Bradipo322 said:

To be fair the artifacts haven't changed from the last battletome, we just got a some new ones (6 for lord-arcanum & knight-incantor).

Treasured Standards got buffed, though.

51 minutes ago, Greven said:

What do people think of gryp-hounds? The always moving out of combat is mildly annoying to say the least!

Annoying for who? ? I think it's great to deliver damage to a unit with no retaliation. If they want to charge you again in their turn, be our guest! Waste your attention in them (and be forced to activate that combat early or suffer the same again).

More number crunching:

With no outside buffs (Evocators on Dracoline self-buffed), charging Fulminators and EvoDracolines do an equivalent damage (including Lightning Breath) for their points. Against 4+ save, you can expect 4 Fulminators to cause 20,4 wounds, while 3 EvoDracolines would do 13. 1,6 more damage for 1,59 more points.

Fulminators are way more resilient (even if they have less wounds per point) though, but they don't have the innate charge reroll nor the -1 bravery. In addition, EvoDracolines are more versatile as they can buff others instead of themselves. No easy pick!

On the lower end of the cavalry spectrum, Palladors fall behind in damage vs EvoDracolines but are more resilient due to more wounds per point. They appear to be more of a really mobile (with the help of Aquilor's CA) roadblock or tough objective grabber.

I see a relative balance between them, with different strengths for different playstyles and uses. I didn't include Tempestors because they are a bit more unorthodox (main damage source from shooting, debuff aura) but they should place fine amongst them in resilience and damage.

Edited July 7, 2018 by DanielFM

[Mr. Moodles]

So, outside of points why would anybody take Fulminators over Concussors now?

[Thalassic Monstrosity]

Hello everyone, I'm hoping to get some advice for an upcoming Path to Glory game. My opponent is going to be fielding Nighthaunt and I, Stormcast (specifically Sancrosact Stormcast). We're picking units to begin with and rolling for reinforcements.
I've been kicking around the following list:
Lord-Ordinator
Celestar Ballista
3 Sequitors
And either 3 Sequitors or 3 Castigators
I expect to get rolled over by Chainrasps with so few models. The Celestar and Castigators are there to try and thin the herd a little.
Alternatively I've been considering:
Lord-Exorcist
3 Evocators
2 units of 3 Sequitors.
What do you all think? I like the Lord-Exorcist quite a bit but the LOrdinator will be able to give me quite a boost if I can recruit some other Order warmachines.

[chord]

Why does the dracoth for the LCoD have its breath as an ability and the dracoth for the extremis chambers have it as a shooting attack.

Seems odd since they are both dracoths

[InvalidUsername]

3 hours ago, DanielFM said:

Treasured Standards got buffed, though.

Annoying for who? ? I think it's great to deliver damage to a unit with no retaliation. If they want to charge you again in their turn, be our guest! Waste your attention in them (and be forced to activate that combat early or suffer the same again).

More number crunching:

With no outside buffs (Evocators on Dracoline self-buffed), charging Fulminators and EvoDracolines do an equivalent damage (including Lightning Breath) for their points. Against 4+ save, you can expect 4 Fulminators to cause 20,4 wounds, while 3 EvoDracolines would do 13. 1,6 more damage for 1,59 more points.

Fulminators are way more resilient (even if they have less wounds per point) though, but they don't have the innate charge reroll nor the -1 bravery. In addition, EvoDracolines are more versatile as they can buff others instead of themselves. No easy pick!

On the lower end of the cavalry spectrum, Palladors fall behind in damage vs EvoDracolines but are more resilient due to more wounds per point. They appear to be more of a really mobile (with the help of Aquilor's CA) roadblock or tough objective grabber.

I see a relative balance between them, with different strengths for different playstyles and uses. I didn't include Tempestors because they are a bit more unorthodox (main damage source from shooting, debuff aura) but they should place fine amongst them in resilience and damage.

The part about Tempestors is actually wrong, their shooting does nothing and losing the good breath attack for the terrible one means that they actually just can't do any damage anymore. Combine that with their -1 to hit ability being made completely useless(only works on shooting units in a time where shootings been heavily nerfed AND only has a 12" range) and unless tempestors went down to about 140pts I can't see any situation where they hit the table.

Tempestors shooting(including mortal wounds) and their melee put together do 4.33 damage to a 4+ save before the dracoths.  The dracoths will add 3.777 damage. That means for the same cost of 5 retributors you get a unit that does 8 damage every other turn and has a completely useless debuff aura instead of the awesome targeted debuff they used to have.  That means they only do 4.3 damage to a 4+ save in melee.  They're really not very good anymore.

Edited July 8, 2018 by InvalidUsername

[InvalidUsername]

56 minutes ago, Mr. Moodles said:

So, outside of points why would anybody take Fulminators over Concussors now?

Calvary in general isn't great now(it really feels like the army was designed around deepstriking sequitors and the rest of it is mostly just there to fill pages) so it's not like it's going to be a huge big decision to make, but here's the math on it.

Shooting damage is 2 for both, melee damage is 3.77  against a 4+ save for the Dracoths and rider damage is  5ish for concussors and 5.333 on the charge for Fulminators and  1.78 for the rider. That means a Concussor unit is doing 8.8ish damage in melee and 2 in shooting and a Fulminator unit is doing 9ish damage on the charge and 7.113 damage not on the charge and 2 in shooting.  That equals out to about .034 damage per point for concussors(not including shooting) and .0375 damage per point on the charge and .03 damage per point(also not including shooting). Basically if you can get a charge off 2 out of the 3 turns Dracoths are usually alive for, Fulminators will be better thanks to their slightly higher damage output on the charge and their increased resilience. If not, Concussors will be better. 

 

[InvalidUsername]

6 hours ago, DanielFM said:

I got the softback, spanish-translated Battletome to save quite the hefty money, but that means it lacks quite a bit of fluff (unit background, I think).

Could someone tell me in a few words what's the background for Tauralons and Dracolines?

Edit: interesting contribution

Static Crossbow Judicators (with special bow Prime) do more damage (5,17 wounds) against 5+ saves than Hurricane Raptors (5 wounds). Ok, the difference is very small, but the humble (previously neglected) Crossbow Judicators are even better than our most most impressive horde killers.

Pros for CrossJudis

-Battleline

-More wounds.

Pros for Hurricanes

-Cheaper

-More range

- -1 to charge aura

-Can be relocated by Azyrite Hurricane

-Synergy with Aetherwings

Both sound nice, the choice is yours ?

Our 'most impressive horde killers' barely being able to kill 5 skeletons or Witch aelves per turn is a MASSIVE red flag to me.

[THUNDERHAMMER]

Am I crazy?

I remember seeing a painting tutorial video for the Stormcast endless spells, but now I cant find it! Pretty sure it was WarhammerTV with Peachy doing all 3  models. I remember seeing the hammers in the Vortex

speaking of The comet pulled some serious weight for me today  in my Third game ever getting me a win! :)

[DanielFM]

3 hours ago, InvalidUsername said:

The part about Tempestors is actually wrong, their shooting does nothing and losing the good breath attack for the terrible one means that they actually just can't do any damage anymore. Combine that with their -1 to hit ability being made completely useless(only works on shooting units in a time where shootings been heavily nerfed AND only has a 12" range) and unless tempestors went down to about 140pts I can't see any situation where they hit the table.

Tempestors shooting(including mortal wounds) and their melee put together do 4.33 damage to a 4+ save before the dracoths.  The dracoths will add 3.777 damage. That means for the same cost of 5 retributors you get a unit that does 8 damage every other turn and has a completely useless debuff aura instead of the awesome targeted debuff they used to have.  That means they only do 4.3 damage to a 4+ save in melee.  They're really not very good anymore.

Their Lightning Breath now have the same range of the crossbows, so they can be both used effectively in a turn in which you arrived from Scions. They will do significant damage even if they fail the charge. 

For you, a 12" aura is a bad range: good news, before it had the same range but could only affects 1 unit. A Scions Tempestors unit will affects at least 2 units on the drop (instead of one). Shooting maybe be worse against certain characters in some situations, outside of that it's still very powerful.

I think you post was really hyperbolic throwing "useless" instead of ""worse than what I want" everywhere. According to my numbers Palladors do 7,37 combined wounds, while Tempestors do 8. That means their damage is completely balances for their points, yet Tempestors are way tankier.

Internal balance is flawless this time. Maybe you wanted an OP army?

2 hours ago, InvalidUsername said:

Our 'most impressive horde killers' barely being able to kill 5 skeletons or Witch aelves per turn is a MASSIVE red flag to me.

They are 140 points, what did you really expect? They can be buffed to achieve better results, you also gotta take into account the battleshock casualties (not everyone is bravery 10).

If you wanted SCE to be a top tier army, I can feel your pain. For me, a middle tier SCE with lots of good tools is far preferable. No hate from other players, you can win tournaments anyway with an optimized list and a lot of skill (instead of gimmicks), etc.

Oh, and don't forget half the units must be on the board. Not having turtle-slow units there makes them more useful. So cavalry can still contribute in a meta of Scions-dropping big infantry blobs.

[DanielFM]

Btw I think I discovered a stealth buff to Blessed Weapons.

Wasn't it "for any six you get an extra attack" (even argued as a single attack for the whole unit based on RAW)?

Now it's "for each 6 you get an extra hit"(not quoted vermatin). That's straight up better, skipping the roll to hit! Not only that, but now by RAW the old dream of double Starfated Arrows is legal. You get a 6 for a SFA (maybe forced by the Luckstone), the attack inflicts two hits with the same profile. Big investment? Yeah. Huge monster-smashing ICBM? Heck yeah.

It's a shame it's 4+ to cast, though. I spent a tournament without rolling it once ?

Edited July 8, 2018 by DanielFM

[Namelessone81]

I am confused  

can evocators cast spell like any wizard can (mystic shield etc) 

or they can only cast empower ? 

Mans if they can only cast empower why in the azyr app and their warscroll it has the rules of casting mystic shield and I can choose from the lore of the storm spells ? 

[mystycalchemy]

2 minutes ago, Namelessone81 said:

I am confused  

can evocators cast spell like any wizard can (mystic shield etc) 

or they can only cast empower ? 

Mans if they can only cast empower why in the azyr app and their warscroll it has the rules of casting mystic shield and I can choose from the lore of the storm spells ? 

Well I can confirm 100% that Evocators only have access to Empower (their spell). No Arcane Bolt, no Mystic Shield. However, in the new battletome we got 2 Spell Lores. The Lore of the Storm, which Evocators cannot take, and the Lore of Invigoration, which mentions nothing about Evocators not being able to take it, so they should be able to take any one of the 3 Invigoration spells. 

My question is: the Evocator warscroll says that Evocators cannot attempt to cast any spells besides empower. Does that include Lore of Invigoration and Endless Spells? Then why list that Evocators can't take from Lore of the Storm, but specifically not mention that on Lore of Invigoration?

[DanielFM]

4 minutes ago, mystycalchemy said:

 

My question is: the Evocator warscroll says that Evocators cannot attempt to cast any spells besides empower. Does that include Lore of Invigoration and Endless Spells? Then why list that Evocators can't take from Lore of the Storm, but specifically not mention that on Lore of Invigoration?

This needs to be FAQed, soon.

[InvalidUsername]

2 hours ago, DanielFM said:

Their Lightning Breath now have the same range of the crossbows, so they can be both used effectively in a turn in which you arrived from Scions. They will do significant damage even if they fail the charge. 

For you, a 12" aura is a bad range: good news, before it had the same range but could only affects 1 unit. A Scions Tempestors unit will affects at least 2 units on the drop (instead of one). Shooting maybe be worse against certain characters in some situations, outside of that it's still very powerful.

I think you post was really hyperbolic throwing "useless" instead of ""worse than what I want" everywhere. According to my numbers Palladors do 7,37 combined wounds, while Tempestors do 8. That means their damage is completely balances for their points, yet Tempestors are way tankier.

Internal balance is flawless this time. Maybe you wanted an OP army?

They are 140 points, what did you really expect? They can be buffed to achieve better results, you also gotta take into account the battleshock casualties (not everyone is bravery 10).

If you wanted SCE to be a top tier army, I can feel your pain. For me, a middle tier SCE with lots of good tools is far preferable. No hate from other players, you can win tournaments anyway with an optimized list and a lot of skill (instead of gimmicks), etc.

Oh, and don't forget half the units must be on the board. Not having turtle-slow units there makes them more useful. So cavalry can still contribute in a meta of Scions-dropping big infantry blobs.

You wouldn't bring in Tempestors with Scions, that's the whole point of 10" move, being able to use them as one of your 'on table' deployments. If you were going to teleport them in, there are far better units for that, also they do more 'maybe a liberator if you're lucky' damage in shooting.

The 12" range isn't good because it's against SHOOTING unit only. The targeted abiltiy was the same range but affected melee too. If you're within 12" of a shooting unit, you're most likely in position to eliminate it from the game, or tie it up. If the tempestors had enough damage output to reliably kill the unit, it might make them decent for hunting down skyfires and the like, but they don't, so they aren't. Being able to pick your opponents scariest unit and seriously hamper it's effectiveness was very powerful. Maybe useless was too strong, but making  your opponents shooting units move slightly to the left before they shoot isn't as good, or as tactically interesting as the previous ability.  You're also not accounting for the fact that during your opponents turn the palladors do quite significantly more damage than tempestors.  'Completely balanced for their points' is only relative to the value of other cavalry units,  I don't think any of the cavalry are where they should be for what they can do.

Internal balance seems to be A. only really something that affects cavalry units, and B. being based around somewhere below where these units were before. Considering that even Fulminators, which were the best of the bunch, were beginning to struggle mightily towards the end of AoS1 and are now more vulnerable than ever due to magic becoming more prevalent, that's probably not very good. They also  appear noticeably weaker than other available strategies, most specifically CA spam lists.  And finally, I said Tempestors are weak and the cavalry don't seem to be benefiting much from the new book, and that I'm not impressed by our anti horde options, not that the army as a whole wouldn't be competitive. 

With how expensive these units are and the fact that staunch defender is going to be much harder to take advantage of, Dracoths and Dracolines are likely going to simply be too many points in too fragile of a container. Their incredible resilience against convential damage is nice, but your opponents only have to invest 5 mortal wounds in killing 100+pts of your army. Palladors dodge this somewhat due to their speed and their cheaper wound/point ratio but it's still a pretty massive issue for units that just don't have the DPS necessary to win engagements decisively.  If you could grind it out over 2-3 turns they'd be fine, but you can't really afford such an expensive unit sitting still that long with all the Endless Spells flying around.

The issue with the Crossbow Judicators and Vanguard Hurricanes being used for anti-horde is that their range is incredibly short and that they're designed to shave off a few models at a time, which isn't something that can really be done against the hordes that actually see table time. The most common hordes in the game are: Blood Letters, Sisters of Slaughter, Witch Aelves, Plaguebearers, Horrors, Skeletons, Chainwrasp hordes(soon), Grots, Longgunners, and Sequitors(soon). Bloodletters, SoS, WA, and Sequitors can close down 18" in a single turn, one way or another, at which point neither Stormcast unit will survive even a single combat phase(bonus points for DoK units access to a -1 to hit in shooting ability). Horrors can outshoot you simply because of the difference in resilience and Longguners are both better shooting units AND have a longer range. Skeletons and Chainwrasp hordes will out regenerate the damage you deal and plaguebearers take very little damage from shooting AND can out regenerate the damage you deal with a couple of lucky morale rolls. Grots are just so numerous and cheap that they'd probably just let you keep plinking away. And yes, you could invest more and more resources into buffs and morale bombs, and reroll auras and CAs, but you can do that with every unit, only investing in buffing sequitors or Evocators, or even Celestar ballista doesn't leave you in a position where your opponent could lock you up for an entire game with basically any unit with a 3+ rerolling 1 save or better.  Oh, also the extremely low wound count of the units means that any return ranged damage would wipe them out quite quickly. 

TL: DR DOWN HERE:

The army will most likely be fine, you're not suddenly post GHB 2017 beastclaw raiders, but if you want to take Stormcasts to major events and have a good chance at winning you have to be harsh. You also have to be getting every last drop of efficiency out of the army you can. Since I play basically 0 'for fun' games, that's how I look at units.  Calling something 'useless' isn't a personal attack, it's the quickest way to express 'This unit/ability is not efficient enough at it's intended role to be expected to fulfill said role against the most powerful competition it is likely to face.' Some stuff just isn't good enough, the world sucks like that.

Edited July 8, 2018 by InvalidUsername

[DanielFM]

32 minutes ago, InvalidUsername said:

You wouldn't bring in Tempestors with Scions, that's the whole point of 10" move, being able to use them as one of your 'on table' deployments. If you were going to teleport them in, there are far better units for that, also they do more 'maybe a liberator if you're lucky' damage in shooting.

The 12" range isn't good because it's against SHOOTING unit only. The targeted abiltiy was the same range but affected melee too. If you're within 12" of a shooting unit, you're most likely in position to eliminate it from the game, or tie it up. If the tempestors had enough damage output to reliably kill the unit, it might make them decent for hunting down skyfires and the like, but they don't, so they aren't. Being able to pick your opponents scariest unit and seriously hamper it's effectiveness was very powerful. Maybe useless was too strong, but making  your opponents shooting units move slightly to the left before they shoot isn't as good, or as tactically interesting as the previous ability.  You're also not accounting for the fact that during your opponents turn the palladors do quite significantly more damage than tempestors.  'Completely balanced for their points' is only relative to the value of other cavalry units,  I don't think any of the cavalry are where they should be for what they can do.

Internal balance seems to be A. only really something that affects cavalry units, and B. being based around somewhere below where these units were before. Considering that even Fulminators, which were the best of the bunch, were beginning to struggle mightily towards the end of AoS1 and are now more vulnerable than ever due to magic becoming more prevalent, that's probably not very good. They also  appear noticeably weaker than other available strategies, most specifically CA spam lists.  And finally, I said Tempestors are weak and the cavalry don't seem to be benefiting much from the new book, and that I'm not impressed by our anti horde options, not that the army as a whole wouldn't be competitive. 

With how expensive these units are and the fact that staunch defender is going to be much harder to take advantage of, Dracoths and Dracolines are likely going to simply be too many points in too fragile of a container. Their incredible resilience against convential damage is nice, but your opponents only have to invest 5 mortal wounds in killing 100+pts of your army. Palladors dodge this somewhat due to their speed and their cheaper wound/point ratio but it's still a pretty massive issue for units that just don't have the DPS necessary to win engagements decisively.  If you could grind it out over 2-3 turns they'd be fine, but you can't really afford such an expensive unit sitting still that long with all the Endless Spells flying around.

The issue with the Crossbow Judicators and Vanguard Hurricanes being used for anti-horde is that their range is incredibly short and that they're designed to shave off a few models at a time, which isn't something that can really be done against the hordes that actually see table time. The most common hordes in the game are: Blood Letters, Sisters of Slaughter, Witch Aelves, Plaguebearers, Horrors, Skeletons, Chainwrasp hordes(soon), Grots, Longgunners, and Sequitors(soon). Bloodletters, SoS, WA, and Sequitors can close down 18" in a single turn, one way or another, at which point neither Stormcast unit will survive even a single combat phase(bonus points for DoK units access to a -1 to hit in shooting ability). Horrors can outshoot you simply because of the difference in resilience and Longguners are both better shooting units AND have a longer range. Skeletons and Chainwrasp hordes will out regenerate the damage you deal and plaguebearers take very little damage from shooting AND can out regenerate the damage you deal with a couple of lucky morale rolls. Grots are just so numerous and cheap that they'd probably just let you keep plinking away. And yes, you could invest more and more resources into buffs and morale bombs, and reroll auras and CAs, but you can do that with every unit, only investing in buffing sequitors or Evocators, or even Celestar ballista doesn't leave you in a position where your opponent could lock you up for an entire game with basically any unit with a 3+ rerolling 1 save or better.  Oh, also the extremely low wound count of the units means that any return ranged damage would wipe them out quite quickly. 

TL: DR DOWN HERE:

The army will most likely be fine, you're not suddenly post GHB 2017 beastclaw raiders, but if you want to take Stormcasts to major events and have a good chance at winning you have to be harsh. You also have to be getting every last drop of efficiency out of the army you can. Since I play basically 0 'for fun' games, that's how I look at units.  Calling something 'useless' isn't a personal attack, it's the quickest way to express 'This unit/ability is not efficient enough at it's intended role to be expected to fulfill said role against the most powerful competition it is likely to face.' Some stuff just isn't good enough, the world sucks like that.

It looks like I read you well, you are a WAAC player. Most of the points you made are right and well thought. However, there is always a place for suboptimal (but not atrocious) units to be worked into novel, think-outside-of-the-box that can maybe not win a tournament but perform way better than in paper.

I managed to make AoS 1 Palladors my mvps by sending them through the Azyrite Hurricane pre-buffed with Warding Lantern and accompanied by a Staunch Aquilor. Back then they were considered "useless".

Oh, don't forget the Drakesworn bow giving +1 to hit to all the Tempestors shooting + close combat. If you are gonna field him, you can think of that buff as almost free

[ledha]

59 minutes ago, DanielFM said:

It looks like I read you well, you are a WAAC player. Most of the points you made are right and well thought. However, there is always a place for suboptimal (but not atrocious) units to be worked into novel, think-outside-of-the-box that can maybe not win a tournament but perform way better than in paper.

I managed to make AoS 1 Palladors my mvps by sending them through the Azyrite Hurricane pre-buffed with Warding Lantern and accompanied by a Staunch Aquilor. Back then they were considered "useless".

Oh, don't forget the Drakesworn bow giving +1 to hit to all the Tempestors shooting + close combat. If you are gonna field him, you can think of that buff as almost free

a WAAC player is most likely a guy that just want to win, even if he has to resort on cheating or bending rules, while taking netlist and acting like a ******.

Our friend seems to be a competitive player, but not a WAAC at all