AoS 2 - Skaventide Discussion

[Skreech Verminking]

2 hours ago, Obeisance said:

In all seriousness, do people consider Stormfiends competitive?

I get the impression you need to take 6 to get anything out of them.. and buff them.. or you could take a blob of Plague Monks?

Seems like a heavy investment to get anything out of them. I desperately want Stormfiends to be worthwhile, as I love the models.

 

I consider Stormfiends as a distraction unit, or better said a unit that surprisingly does better then most people think.

Their are so many people out there that believe Stormfiends, Stormvermins, and weapon teams like the warpfire thrower as useless, because they basically never played against itSince the last few tournaments, the slaven have been seen played with tons of plague monks or the non horde way of taking 60clanrats a ton of wizards with warpgale and the warplightning vortex endless spell.

bring something else and youll find most players unprepared.

 

Edited August 9, 2019 by Skreech Verminking

[undeadheadz]

i find moulders always good for catching people unprepared

Edited August 9, 2019 by Cullen rothery

[Skreech Verminking]

22 minutes ago, Cullen rothery said:

i find moulders always good for catching people unprepared

Well You havent met the people who fought my 320clanrats list 

but I fully agree with you.

Moulder has some strong units that get often underestimated.

I mean nobody would see giant rats as a thread till their units get gnawed to death by them, or the hellpit was laughed at last time by a friend of mine who played stormcast, till he noticed how much damage it can deal in one round.

Edited August 9, 2019 by Skreech Verminking

[undeadheadz]

Just now, Skreech Verminking said:

Well You havent met the people who fought my 320clanrats list 

XD wouldnt that just take up most the table?

[Skreech Verminking]

1 minute ago, Cullen rothery said:

XD wouldnt that just take up most the table?

Yeah and now you know why nobody bothered to deep-strike there stuff,

although the chance never was there at the beginning anyway

[undeadheadz]

33 minutes ago, Skreech Verminking said:

Yeah and now you know why nobody bothered to deep-strike there stuff,

although the chance never was there at the beginning anyway

painting all that up must have been pretty soul destroying, got to 100 clanrats and then swapped to moulder for 18 rat ogres  

[Skreech Verminking]

12 minutes ago, Cullen rothery said:

painting all that up must have been pretty soul destroying, got to 100 clanrats and then swapped to moulder for 18 rat ogres  

I painted around 200clanrats.

Never made it to 300+ Clanrats, although beeing the owner of arounf 500of them.

 

[undeadheadz]

1 minute ago, Skreech Verminking said:

I painted around 200clanrats.

Never made it to 300+ Clanrats, although beeing the owner of arounf 500of them.

 

is the one issue i have with skaven is the sheer amount of small throwaway models you need to paint up, but i suppose thats what you get when you pick a horde army

[Skreech Verminking]

13 minutes ago, Cullen rothery said:

is the one issue i have with skaven is the sheer amount of small throwaway models you need to paint up, but i suppose thats what you get when you pick a horde army

The mass never really bothered me.

I actually like it more then painting up the elite units, because of the mass the skaven can be brought nobody really will notice the missing highlights on your common troops,

and 120++painted models look so amazing on the table, especially when you basically paint your heroes at a level that significantly  better then that of your common troops.

[Gwendar]

8 hours ago, Obeisance said:

In all seriousness, do people consider Stormfiends competitive?

I get the impression you need to take 6 to get anything out of them.. and buff them.. or you could take a blob of Plague Monks?

Seems like a heavy investment to get anything out of them. I desperately want Stormfiends to be worthwhile, as I love the models.

Considering the recent topics (and some tournament lists doing well with 6-9 of them) I would say yes, they are competitive. I was always sold on 6-9 Jezzails and 20-30 Acolytes, but things have evolved a bit since we first got our book, which is when a lot of those Jezzail + Acolyte setups were running around and doing well and people looked quite poorly on Stormfiends.

You could just take a blob of Monks "instead", but you can also make a list like the one I did a couple pages back that has 40 Monks and 6 Stormfiends and still manages to bring 3 Wizards (Bell, Seer, AW), 80-100 Clanrats and the WLV with ~130 points leftover for whatever you want.

1 hour ago, Skreech Verminking said:

Well You havent met the people who fought my 320clanrats list 

Absolute madman. I'd concede unless I had more than a couple hours.

[Skreech Verminking]

2 minutes ago, Gwendar said:

Absolute madman. I'd concede unless I had more than a couple hours.

Well luckily the time I needed for the movement phase has decreased a lot lately thanks to all of those companies who make and sell movement-trays.

should I make it to the etc next year, you’ll probably recognize me, even without knowing my face.😂

[swarmofseals]

13 hours ago, Obeisance said:

In all seriousness, do people consider Stormfiends competitive?

I get the impression you need to take 6 to get anything out of them.. and buff them.. or you could take a blob of Plague Monks?

Seems like a heavy investment to get anything out of them. I desperately want Stormfiends to be worthwhile, as I love the models.

 

I think this is a very difficult question to answer. In a vacuum, Stormfiends are a weird unit. If you go for pure melee they don't really measure up. You'd definitely rather have Plague Monks and it's not even remotely close. If you take a shooting loadout, they are just a bit worse than Jezzails for general purpose and are worse than WLC at picking off characters. 

Despite being a little worse at shooting than these units, however, they are a LOT better at combat even with a shooting loadout and are much tougher. So essentially they are something of a hybrid unit, and hybrid units in general don't have a great competitive reputation right now.

That said, I think they have a real chance. They do require a significant investment -- I think you pretty much have to take a unit of 6 or 9. That's a lot of points, but it's not really insane compared to what people spend on Jezzails and/or WLC. 9-12 Jezzails and 1-2 WLC costs the same as 9 Stormfiends. 

If shooting is good in the meta, then I think Stormfiends have a chance to be good. They aren't as good at picking off heroes as Jezzails and WLC, but I think they are actually as good if not better at blowing away troops, and they are still very good at shooting off combat monsters. They are also extremely good in the ranged vs. ranged matchup because their defensive efficiency is soooooo much higher. In the Jezzail vs. Jezzail matchup, whoever shoots first is going to win hands down. Against Stormfiends, they can actually tank the damage on their melee guys and maybe ratling cannons, leaving the Windlaunchers free to shoot back, and while the Windlaunchers aren't great in terms of absolute damage efficiency, against something like a Jezzail squad or WLC pack it really doesn't matter because those units have so little defense. The same logic applies against nearly every "artillery" style unit in the game. 

Are they competitive? I'm not sure, but I think it's a lot closer than most people think as they have generally been written off. They definitely don't have the raw power of Plague Monk spam, but not everyone wants to play a list that is quite so monotonous.

I had my first game with my Stormfiend list today posted above, but for reference here it is again:

Spoiler

Warlock Bombardier - General: Deranged Inventor, Vigordust Injector, MMMWP!

Grey Seer: Warpgale

Verminlord Warpseer

3x40 Clanrats: sword and shield

9 Stormfiends: Shock Gauntlets, Windlaunchers, Ratling Cannons

Endless Spells: Soulscream Bridge

My opponent brought Beasts of Chaos (Gavespawn):

Spoiler

Tzaangor Shaman - General: Gryph Feather Charm, rend spell

Great Bray Shaman  - damage around terrain spell

Beastlord - Gavespawn artefact

20 Tzaangors

6 Tzaangor Enlightened on Discs

3 Enlightened on foot

30 Bestigors

3x10 Ungors

2x5 Centigors

Battalion: Phantasmagoria of Fate

Endless Spell: Wildfire Taurus

We rolled Starstrike for the battleplan.

I deployed one unit of Clanrats on each flank, spread pretty wide to block off board edges and everything else in the center. I messed up my deployment pretty badly though and couldn't fit the Clanrat screen in front of the Stormfiends while still leaving room for bridge, so I had to leave my Stormfiends exposed.

My opponent had the turn choice and elected to play first. I honestly have no idea if this was correct or not. I think it probably was, but if I had my screen in place it likely wouldn't have been.

He brought in his Beastlord, 3 Enlightened on foot and 10 Ungors on my right flank and moved up the center with his Tzaangors in front followed by his Bestigors. His Enlightened on Disc moved up on my center left. His Centigors camped my Gnawholes. He managed to hit his 9" charge with the Enlightened on foot and got into the side of my Clanrats and also hit the charge with his Enlightened on Disc, but had to pull out of range of the Shaman in order to get into my Stormfiends with most of his models. The combat on the right flank was largely inconsequential, with a few Clanrats dying and a few more fleeing. He managed to get 5 Enlightened into my Stormfiends and did enough damage to kill two and severely wound a third. My Stormfiends and center Clanrats struck back and killed 5 of the 6 Enlightened between attacks and battleshock thanks to the melee Stormfiends starting in the front. I was mortified to realize that I couldn't make my Stormfiends battleshock immune though because I had no command points due to not taking a turn yet. I rolled a 5, and thus lost two Stormfiends thanks to the Enlightened's ability.  That left me with one melee, three cannons and one mortar. 

In my turn I decided to use a regular cast from the Verminlord to try to bridge and failed. This would have allowed my Stormfiends to get out of combat and get all of their guns in range, but I thought I could likely kill the last Enlightened with other abilities and free up the Stormfiends to get most of their shots in to something else. In the end I resolved MMMWP (taking 2 mortals from the spark) but not much else. The Verminlord put three wounds on the Enlightened with tail lashes, but my Doomrocket failed to hit, and I had to resort to chucking the Warpseer's orb at the Enlightened to finish it off. Not what I wanted but it got the job done. That freed up my Stormfiends to blast the Tzaangors with two cannons and the mortar. My rolls were pretty fantastic, but my opponent also made an absurd number of 6+ saves -- in the end I killed 17 Tzaangors, with the rest fleeing from battleshock. I charged his Tzaangor Shaman with my center Clanrats and put a couple of wounds on him, and that finished up the turn. 

I won the roll off, chose to play first and we agreed that this was basically game. The objective had come down on the center right, which was good for my opponent but ultimately not that consequential as I was able to cast bridge, bring my Stormfiends forward and obliterate his Bestigors. I took 5 mortals from the vigordust and MMMWP, but that didn't matter at all as I was able to soak them on the melee rat. At that point he had only light troops left and not enough to contest my swarms of Clanrats.

______________________________________________

Overall, I think this was a very successful test run. It demonstrated well how the list can provide opportunities for your opponent to make mistakes. My plan all along was to win on objectives, which meant that I needed to kill his three threats before they could wipe out my Clanrats. My Stormfiends were tough enough to weather a fierce assault on turn 1 and kept most of their firepower intact despite taking heavy losses. In the end, that charge only allowed me to clear his threats off the table faster as my Stormfiends still hit hard enough in combat to take most of the Enlightened off the table, saving me the trouble of having to shoot them. This was a trade that I was happy to make. 

If I hadn't deployed badly, he might have let me take the first turn which would have allowed me to move into range and likely destroy one target with my shooting (likely the enlightened) before he wiped the Clanrats with his Tzaangors. If he double turns me, he then gets to pile his Tzaangors into the Stormfiends. They'll do an average of around 21 damage, so I'm probably losing my mortars and maybe taking a little extra damage on one of my melee guys. The return attacks will cause an average of 34.4 unsaved wounds to the Tzaangors, very likely wiping them out once battleshock is factored in. Then on my turn I likely finish off the Tzaangors with spells/doomrocket/verminlord tails and blow away the Bestigors. If he somehow manages to get all of the Tzaangors AND all of the Bestigors into my Stormfiends then it doesn't actually change the calculus as I can destroy whichever unit strikes second (both will do a similar amount of average damage to the Stormfiends, so it doesn't much matter what he strikes first with). Even if he hits me with the taurus and gets to swing with both of his units first, I'll still be able to keep the three melee guys alive on average and nearly wipe out one of the units. Then on my turn I likely get to strike first and cripple the other unit.

This example illustrates perfectly why Stormfiends can be so powerful. They may not have incredible points efficiency, but they have top-shelf activation efficiency. Any time you activate them, they are going to do a lot simply because the unit is so expensive that even moderate points efficiency leads to a high amount of damage. On top of that, they are very resilient. Their defensive efficiency isn't great but it isn't terrible either. Because they are a mixed roll unit though you get to remove the models that matter the least, thus ensuring that the opponent has to do a ton of harm before they become unthreatening. If you are in a ranged duel they have to chew through 26 4+ wounds of melee guys before they can touch your shooting, and another 18 4+ wounds before they can touch your long ranged shooting. If you are in a close ranged fight you can afford to take 23 wounds before losing much short ranged shooting effectiveness OR combat effectiveness. If you are in melee, you can take 42 wounds before your melee punch degrades much at all.

So the unit starts off as a general purpose unit that should be helpful in the vast majority of matchups, and if your opponent tries to focus it down you can selectively remove the least relevant components first.

 

 

[Obeisance]

Ah, interesting. So what you're saying that Stormfiends are a "jack of all trades" unit. Decent shooting, good in melee, reasonably tough. I kind of want an excuse to pick up another unit. I just finished converting up six Jezzails from plastic Clanrats, Skitarii rifles and IoB Packmasters.

That said, I'm at work on a Saturday thinking about seeing if I can scrounge a whole bunch of Pestilens stuff. I'm sure there's a lot of Furnaces, Monks and Catapults on the secondhand market.

There's so much in Skaven that I love. Theme, models. And so much available secondhand. When I started Skaven this year I literally had people giving me old IoB sets and the rest being picked up super cheap. I've still spent a reasonable amount of money.. but I'm okay with that. It's also weird that Skaven is considered a top tier army, but people don't mind playing against them because they're actually fun.

...

People have been talking about Skaven lists doing well? Where are people going for tournament results and resources? I'm curious what others are using.

[Gwendar]

8 minutes ago, Obeisance said:

"jack of all trades"

People have been talking about Skaven lists doing well? Where are people going for tournament results and resources? I'm curious what others are using.

Sort of the army in general, honestly; we do everything reasonably well, some things better than others.

Many people get resources from Best Coast Pairings app or from The Honest Wargamer (sometimes aosshorts, but they aren't exactly always up to date on everything going on to my knowledge). Also, I'm writing up a surprise batrep using 9 Stormfiends.. I'll make another post when it's up. Long story short, they did reasonably well.

[Gwendar]

Aaaand here it is. Enjoy and let me know your thoughts. TLDR; I like Stormfiends and I'm sorry I ever questioned them previously.

I'll probably stick to this list (or a variant) for awhile and practice with it a bit more. I would like to have another 20 Clanrats, so I'm thinking about what to drop or change around.. but not sure if I want to. Having the Warpseer around for these type of battleplans is quite valuable, but another 20 Clanrats would be valuable in every other one. Still, the Warpseer is a big distraction that most people can't resist shooting at which keeps heat off the Clanrats a lot of the time, so that's a bonus in and of itself.
 

[swarmofseals]

@Gwendar nice batrep, cool to see reports from similar 9 Stormfiend builds go up! I actually think that this might be a case where going for the full 9 is significantly better than 6. It makes your buffs more efficient, but perhaps more importantly it makes it significantly harder for your opponent to kill the specific fiends that matter most in the situation. Having that extra body or two just makes the task tremendously more daunting. 

[MisterJoshua]

@Gwendar Yes! This is exactly the report I was hoping so see! I’ll make sure to give it a read later

[Gwendar]

Thanks guys, I appreciate it.

And yeah, I really liked and see the potential in using 9 which is why I wanna mess with it a bit more. This was definitely a beneficial battleplan for me thanks to the AW and Warpseer being rather tanky. I even forgot those save re-rolls the first 2 times he was shot at but... haven't really played in a month since I don't count that Fyreslayers game that I ended T2 last time, so I was a bit off. Other than that, I think I pulled it out well enough considered the deployment and how I chose to move T1... may have been better to have put the Fiends more Central and keep 20-40 Clanrats on the AW but, meh, it worked out.

[Obeisance]

Warplightning Cannon. Worth it if you're not going to ever supercharge it?

There's a team tournament coming up and I'm thinking of trying to get painted. =D

[Coyote]

22 hours ago, Skreech Verminking said:

I painted around 200clanrats.

Never made it to 300+ Clanrats, although beeing the owner of arounf 500of them.

 

Could prime white and dip unpainted models in a brown stain from a hardware store.  Then just paint weapons and maybe armor same color, then eyes, and clothes in a third color- and tabletop ready!  Would take maybe a day at most.

[Gwendar]

1 hour ago, Obeisance said:

Warplightning Cannon. Worth it if you're not going to ever supercharge it?

There's a team tournament coming up and I'm thinking of trying to get painted. =D

I think they are still decent in that regard in lower point games, which, if you're doing doubles are you playing at 1k or 1500? Those seems to be the most common for that.

It won't average very much; the benefit of overcharging it is when you most definitely want to kill something (even if it's a 5\6 wound hero) or cripple something larger. But it can still contribute, especially if your teammates are running more CC heavy. I would prefer 6 Jezzails, but that would cost you the same as adding an Engineer in to boost the WLC, so yeah, refer to the first statement.

[Skreech Verminking]

1 hour ago, Coyote said:

Could prime white and dip unpainted models in a brown stain from a hardware store.  Then just paint weapons and maybe armor same color, then eyes, and clothes in a third color- and tabletop ready!  Would take maybe a day at most.

Well, if you asking me of painting 300++ models in one day, then good luck.

in any other way, I’ve been painitng my skaven models with basicaly the base colors and a shade, while priming them brown.

with this paint-scheme I am able to paint around 80 clanrats in 3-4hours.

[Obeisance]

I have a 14 step method which is a combination of Contrast/normal paints that is pretty fast. Excuse the capitals, it's just how I log things.

*paste*

Spray with WRAITHBONE

Paint steel with LEADBELCHER
Paint cloth with BLOOD ANGEL RED
Paint wood with WYLDWOOD
Paint flesh with DARKOATH FLESH
Paint metals BLACK TEMPLAR
Paint eyes with KHORNE RED
Paint teeth with WRAITHBONE
Paint teeth with SKELETON BONE
Extreme highlight fingers/snout with KISLEV FLESH
Extreme highlight steel with STORMHOST SILVER

Paint rocks with ZANDRI DUST
Wash base with 1:1 AGRAX EARTHSHADE and MIXING MEDIUM
Drybrush base with TERMINATUS STONE

Trim base with STEEL LEGION DRAB

...

Small rats:
Paint body with WYLDWOOD
Paint tail with DARKOATH FLESH

Bronze:
Paint brass with FULGARITE COPPER
Paint DARKOATH FLESH

Warpstone:
Paint with LAMENTER'S YELLOW
Paint with WARPLIGHTNING GREEN

 

Edited August 11, 2019 by Obeisance

[MisterJoshua]

22 hours ago, Gwendar said:

And yeah, I really liked and see the potential in using 9 which is why I wanna mess with it a bit more.

I’ve read through the batrep now. Nice one! Seeing your ‘final thoughts’ I was a little surprised how quickly your opinion has turned on Fiends vs Acolytes+Jezzails, but it’s good to see

You mention trying 6+Jezzails. I’ll only be running 6 Fiends (because that’s all I have) but plan to supplement them with a Doomwheel. The wheel has decent shooting, can benefit from the same spark as the fiends and use Deranged Inventor on turns the Fiends don’t need it. It’s also another but if added utility. I’ve not tried it yet, but look forward to doing so.

[MisterJoshua]

Double post

Edited August 11, 2019 by MisterJoshua