Starcast - The Thread

[XReN]

3 minutes ago, Scurvydog said:

I have been looking around but unable to find a 100% clear answer on the Stardrake bites, after running into some discussion about it.

It is not a melee weapon and does not work like one, the ability says for each bite you select a model within 3" and roll a dice, beating the wound characteristic removes the model. Now what I am wondering, by the sound of it you choose a model and roll and remove if succesful, then bite again as many times as able. Is that how it works, or do you have to allocate all the available bites, even though it is not regular attacks?

I believe that the right way to do it is by executing each bite one by one, so you can pick the same model multiple times of needed

[Turragor]

13 hours ago, XReN said:

I believe that the right way to do it is by executing each bite one by one, so you can pick the same model multiple times of needed

This is correct. The ability is just "pick a model, roll over wounds characteristic to eat".

The damage table says you can use that ability however many times.

[Turragor]

Got 1 day events booked in every month for spring 2020. Won't have anything new painted so it'll be Starcast for each series of 3 games.

Interested in following the emerging meta youtube series (based on AoS reminders stats) -

I think Tzeentch will knock our win rate down and, depending on their battalions, could be a problem for Starcast lists that don't get the first turn.

Kharadron are also an interesting prospect in that you rarely see them and most players therefore need more practise against them

[Turragor]

This is the list I'll take end of Jan:

Allegiance: Stormcast Eternals
Mortal Realm: Shyish
Celestant-Prime (340)
Lord-Celestant on Stardrake (500)
- General
- Celestine Hammer
- Trait: Staunch Defender
- Mount Trait: Storm-winged
Drakesworn Templar (420)
- Tempest Axe
- Artefact: Ethereal Amulet
Lord-Castellant (120)
Knight-Heraldor (100)
Lord-Exorcist (120)
5 x Liberators (100)
- Warhammer & Shield
- 1x Grandhammers
5 x Liberators (100)
- Warhammer & Shield
- 1x Grandhammers
5 x Liberators (100)
- Warhammer & Shield
- 1x Grandhammers
Everblaze Comet (100)

Total: 2000 / 2000
Extra Command Points: 0
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 86
 

Small (toot  toot) change with the extra points. Army style not changed. More MW output.

Artefact wise, I'd consider swapping to Ignax on the unkillable drake in prep for mw from Tzeentch - some hope.

Edited January 4, 2020 by Turragor

[AdamR]

Had two great games today using this list I flung together at 7.30 this morning. Didn't expect any wins but managed 2 majors!

Allegiance: Stormcast Eternals
Mortal Realm: Aqshy

Leaders
Lord-Celestant on Stardrake (500)
- General
- Celestine Hammer
- Trait: Staunch Defender
- Artefact: Ignax's Scales
- Mount Trait: Storm-winged
Lord-Castellant (120)
Lord-Relictor (100)
- Prayer: Divine Light
Knight-Incantor (140)
- Spell: Azyrite Halo

Battleline
30 x Liberators (520)
- Warhammer & Shield
- 6x Grandhammers
5 x Liberators (100)
- Warhammer & Shield
- 1x Grandblades
5 x Judicators (160)
- Skybolt Bows
- 1x Shockbolt Bows

Units
10 x Protectors (360)
- 4x Starsoul Maces

Total: 2000 / 2000
Extra Command Points: 0
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 142
 

First game was 3 places of arcane power in Ulgu Vs Hermdar Fyre Slayers.

He had 2*20 hearthguard, 1 *10 vulkites, runefather on magmadroth , 2 priests, banner, grimwrath, lords of the lodge and 2 magic invocations.

Deployed as a 3 sided liberator screen with dragon and protectors fighting over the top . Managed to kill off his support heroes over the first couple of turns with stardrake comet action and judicator sniping. Made the liberators more tanky with lantern/staunch/divine light and lightning storm on key opponent's given the chance. Advanced the whole phalanx onto the central objective on my turn one and let them try to shift me! Ended on 15-3 to me, although all my liberators did eventually die!

Game 2 was Take and Hold vs Archaon powered slaves to darkness in Shyish.

He was running Archaon, chaos lord (for fighty twice Archaon action), sorcerer lord, 40 marauders, 10 knights and 3 Varanguard.

I set up in the same way as game 1, surrounding my objective. He gave me turn 1 where I just buffed and dropped a comet on his sorcerer. His turn one he moved forward a little and buffed.

Dark prophecy meant that I was going first on turn 2, so I repeated the buffing and managed to kill the sorcerer with a comet. In his turn everything bar the Varanguard came running at my lines. Dark prophecy had given him a double turn. From that point out it was just a meat grinder, but my liberators were sufficiently buffed to survive it, although I did have to burn command points repeatedly on inspiring presence. By turn 4 I'd managed to clear enough of his army to do a retreat/run with the liberators heading towards the enemy objective. Turn 5 I charged Archaon with the stardrake and ran the libs to claim his objective. Major victory, plus, I managed to take down (the admittedly badly wounded) Archaon with my Drake! Boom!

TL:DR  - took an unoptomised army consisting of models I just like, had 2 great games, and got 2 wins. Bosh!

Edited January 6, 2020 by AdamR
Added pics

[Scurvydog]

I can see why inspiring presence would be needed on those Liberators,  but it makes sense to maximise the use of the Castellant.

Brave to charge in the drake on Archaon, I have quite the issue facing Beastclaw lists, as the drakes bite and tail are both useless against single models, so you have a 500 model where the mount attacks only equal the output of the average 100 pts hero with the claws only. 

[AdamR]

39 minutes ago, Scurvydog said:

Brave to charge in the drake on Archaon, I have quite the issue facing Beastclaw lists, as the drakes bite and tail are both useless against single models, so you have a 500 model where the mount attacks only equal the output of the average 100 pts hero with the claws only. 

Yeah, it was turn 5 and I'd already run the liberators on to the objective when I finally chucked the drake at him solo. I had divine light on, so wasn't too worried about slayer of kings, plus I think Archaon had already taken 13 wounds by this point.

Although the drake can manage 30 damage the turn it charges in cc, so long as the stars align!

[Maturin]

4 hours ago, Scurvydog said:

I can see why inspiring presence would be needed on those Liberators,  but it makes sense to maximise the use of the Castellant.

Brave to charge in the drake on Archaon, I have quite the issue facing Beastclaw lists, as the drakes bite and tail are both useless against single models, so you have a 500 model where the mount attacks only equal the output of the average 100 pts hero with the claws only. 

Don't forget the MW output with the tail and the Stormwinged mount trait

[Scurvydog]

21 minutes ago, Maturin said:

Don't forget the MW output with the tail and the Stormwinged mount trait

well the tail has to roll less than the number of models in the enemy unit, so impossible to hit with against 1 model such as a monster. The bite is also useless against anything with 6 or more wounds, so facing a beastrider list is no fun, with 6 wound mournfangs and monsters, the stardrake cant hit with the tail and is unable to bite anything. 

Stormwinged is rather hard to use on such a big model with "only" 12" move and without a heraldor nearby, which is another 100 pts investment, it is unable to disengage and charge as well.

I like the model so much, but jeez that tail and bite attack rules are just janky and really needs a redesign.

[Maturin]

1 minute ago, Scurvydog said:

Stormwinged is rather hard to use on such a big model with "only" 12" move and without a heraldor nearby, which is another 100 pts investment, it is unable to disengage and charge as well.

I might have understood it wrong, but I seem to recall reading here that stormwinged worked every phase. So move phase, charge phase, pile in your turn and enemy's turn. id correct, that's a lot of MW output

[Scurvydog]

Just now, Maturin said:

I might have understood it wrong, but I seem to recall reading here that stormwinged worked every phase. So move phase, charge phase, pile in your turn and enemy's turn. id correct, that's a lot of MW output

Well possibly if you can move across a model, which is not all that easy with such a huge base and relatively low movement (We are seeing many other big models move 15-18"). So in the move phase it needs to move across a model and still end up 3" away from the unit, it needs to be in a line too, you can't just say it makes a U-turn over it. 

On the charge it also needs to cross something, again that huge base needs to pass over something. I guess if you are going all RAW it could fx against another behemoth, clip the base edge with the 3" pile in, I'm not sure everyone would say that it was "moved across" though. I am sure trying to min max this will frustrate at least 1 player at the table, but if anyone got some more clear tips and rules etc for this, I would love to hear it.

[Requizen]

9 minutes ago, Scurvydog said:

Well possibly if you can move across a model, which is not all that easy with such a huge base and relatively low movement (We are seeing many other big models move 15-18"). So in the move phase it needs to move across a model and still end up 3" away from the unit, it needs to be in a line too, you can't just say it makes a U-turn over it. 

On the charge it also needs to cross something, again that huge base needs to pass over something. I guess if you are going all RAW it could fx against another behemoth, clip the base edge with the 3" pile in, I'm not sure everyone would say that it was "moved across" though. I am sure trying to min max this will frustrate at least 1 player at the table, but if anyone got some more clear tips and rules etc for this, I would love to hear it.

There's nothing saying it has to be in a line. If you're any closer than 9" (without Heraldor) you can move 8.99" over then, back 3.1", land, charge more than 3" back and over, and technically there's nothing preventing you from going back and forth over a model with your pile in as far as I know, as long as it finishes closer than it started.  Potentially 3d3MW from just moves. 

That said, I don't know if this type of list really as the muster to make it off middle tables. Chip MW damage used to be super good, but now people are building around massive MW damage and summoning. It sounds like it'll have pretty poor games against good horde armies, who don't care about taking a handful of MWs and will just outscore. 

[Turragor]

1 hour ago, Requizen said:

It sounds like it'll have pretty poor games against good horde armies, who don't care about taking a handful of MWs and will just outscore. 

The only horde armies I worry about are those with battleshock immunity beyond inspiring presence (OBR). The drakes take care of hordes. Summoning is more worrying but you have to flip your mindset a little there. The drakes have big bases and can block shenanigans.

In my local meta (sweden) the things that stop me going 5 wins and winning a tourney would be:

Slaanesh (think this remains the same after their "nerfs"),  OBR and FEC with multiple gheists and summoning (their support heroes regen).

Oh, that and I'm not a fantastic player hehe though I get better with this list every time.

There are a handful of really good SCE players here and at the last big tourney (think the main national event) we all went 3 for 2 when I took this list and they had a variation of Anvilstrike (and one v interesting desolator list). It's totally anecdotal to say this, but I had the harder matchups   - or at least it felt that way!

Depending on your definition of mid tables, I've already broken out a few times or I'll do so soon. The list isn't really the problem... or I mean, it IS because if I'd thrown this time into another list - say Slaanesh - I'd probably be doing much better.  I don't believe I could say the same for another SCE list. I'd be performing equally or worse.

 I like stardrakes /shrug

1 hour ago, Requizen said:

There's nothing saying it has to be in a line. If you're any closer than 9" (without Heraldor) you can move 8.99" over then, back 3.1", land, charge more than 3" back and over, and technically there's nothing preventing you from going back and forth over a model with your pile in as far as I know, as long as it finishes closer than it started.  Potentially 3d3MW from just moves. 

This is correct!  Until its FAQd like hydroxskin but I mean, if SC gets another nerf how will the boards cope ?

[Scurvydog]

2 hours ago, Turragor said:

This is correct!  Until its FAQd like hydroxskin but I mean, if SC gets another nerf how will the boards cope ?

Hmm so yea after reading up on the wording of the movement rules for all phases and the fly keyword, it does indeed seem there is nothing stopping a player from doing the things mentioned. A unit without fly can never be within 3" of an enemy unit during any part of the move (not just ending 3" away) but FLY ignores enemy models entirely outside of ending 3" away.

Charges moves only states you need to end within 0,5" and the pile in just says you need to end up at least as close to the nearest model as you began. So as I understand it, say you start within 8" of an enemy, you move 8.1 clipping the front of the base of a model of the enemy unit and then go straight back, putting the drake down 3" away. So you effectively only moved 5" forward, but had enough move for a "bombing run".

Then when charging, you roll a 5, but then you just move 3,5" forward and then 1" back and sit at 0,5". At pile in you again just move 1" forward and 1" back at the same spot, doing damage (on a 2+) for the third time.

Is this all correctly understood? In that case I might reconsider the worth of that trait, but at the same time, I think there will be some groaning about the "gamey" nature of doing these janky moves. Anyone experienced problems with this?

[SleeperAgent]

2 hours ago, Scurvydog said:

Hmm so yea after reading up on the wording of the movement rules for all phases and the fly keyword, it does indeed seem there is nothing stopping a player from doing the things mentioned. A unit without fly can never be within 3" of an enemy unit during any part of the move (not just ending 3" away) but FLY ignores enemy models entirely outside of ending 3" away.

Charges moves only states you need to end within 0,5" and the pile in just says you need to end up at least as close to the nearest model as you began. So as I understand it, say you start within 8" of an enemy, you move 8.1 clipping the front of the base of a model of the enemy unit and then go straight back, putting the drake down 3" away. So you effectively only moved 5" forward, but had enough move for a "bombing run".

Then when charging, you roll a 5, but then you just move 3,5" forward and then 1" back and sit at 0,5". At pile in you again just move 1" forward and 1" back at the same spot, doing damage (on a 2+) for the third time.

Is this all correctly understood? In that case I might reconsider the worth of that trait, but at the same time, I think there will be some groaning about the "gamey" nature of doing these janky moves. Anyone experienced problems with this?

Yes this is correct. Been doing it with Hexwraiths for a long time. You only have to move 1 millimeter over a base and can 100% fly over units.

[Turragor]

8 hours ago, Scurvydog said:

Hmm so yea after reading up on the wording of the movement rules for all phases and the fly keyword, it does indeed seem there is nothing stopping a player from doing the things mentioned. A unit without fly can never be within 3" of an enemy unit during any part of the move (not just ending 3" away) but FLY ignores enemy models entirely outside of ending 3" away.

Charges moves only states you need to end within 0,5" and the pile in just says you need to end up at least as close to the nearest model as you began. So as I understand it, say you start within 8" of an enemy, you move 8.1 clipping the front of the base of a model of the enemy unit and then go straight back, putting the drake down 3" away. So you effectively only moved 5" forward, but had enough move for a "bombing run".

Then when charging, you roll a 5, but then you just move 3,5" forward and then 1" back and sit at 0,5". At pile in you again just move 1" forward and 1" back at the same spot, doing damage (on a 2+) for the third time.

Is this all correctly understood? In that case I might reconsider the worth of that trait, but at the same time, I think there will be some groaning about the "gamey" nature of doing these janky moves. Anyone experienced problems with this?

That's it basically yep. Ive not had complaints when doing so at tournaments, I've had more problems explaining the unkillable drakes healing via warding lantern actually. 

Most players at tournaments have elements of their lists that are gamey tbh. 

[Maturin]

9 hours ago, Scurvydog said:

Is this all correctly understood? In that case I might reconsider the worth of that trait, but at the same time, I think there will be some groaning about the "gamey" nature of doing these janky moves. Anyone experienced problems with this?

Yup, I did. I was playing against my town's GW store manager and he told me something along the line of : I don't play that way, I don't like rule lawyering blabla, but have it your way." He just got a ton of MW from the drake's shooting + Celestant prime's scepter, then I added D3MW on his centerpiece at the charge phase. I explained to him the way it's worded, worked, played in tournaments. He replied that is good friend who plays tournament would never acknowledge that blabla.

So I just dropped the issue, didn't even bother to do it afterwards. The drake was unkillable by his blightkings anyway and I had just won the initiative for a double turn so. He was already considering conceding turn2. Since it wasn't a tournament, I thought that it was best for both of us to play the game until the end in a friendly manner.

I can't wait to use that trick in a tournament though

[Turragor]

14 minutes ago, Maturin said:

Yup, I did. I was playing against my town's GW store manager and he told me something along the line of : I don't play that way, I don't like rule lawyering blabla, but have it your way." He just got a ton of MW from the drake's shooting + Celestant prime's scepter, then I added D3MW on his centerpiece at the charge phase. I explained to him the way it's worded, worked, played in tournaments. He replied that is good friend who plays tournament would never acknowledge that blabla.

So I just dropped the issue, didn't even bother to do it afterwards. The drake was unkillable by his blightkings anyway and I had just won the initiative for a double turn so. He was already considering conceding turn2. Since it wasn't a tournament, I thought that it was best for both of us to play the game until the end in a friendly manner.

I can't wait to use that trick in a tournament though

Haha Yes I wouldn't take starcast to a friendly game unless I knew the opponent had a history of tough friendly game lists or we'd agreed to run tournament lists. 

It's similar to anvilstrike in that way. 

On a related note, GW store staff are often the most out of touch tournament scene wise. Our local store has almost 0 involvement in a very healthy competition scene for AoS. 

I hear its relatively common. They dont want to be involved or relied on by the power gamers. They are the crack dealers on the front line. Their job is to sell models to kids and their mums /grans. Getting the new blood in (but not getting them interested in tournaments). 

So I'm not surprised your gw worker didn't want to play raw and had his own friendly interpretation of the rule. 

Edited January 7, 2020 by Turragor

[Maturin]

4 minutes ago, Turragor said:

It's similar to anvilstrike in that way. 

He wouldn't have any problem with anvilstrike, since it's clearly worded. I already played anvilstrike in the shop with no problem. It's just that some people think the stormwing trait and MW in all phases is our way of bending rules to our benefit.

[Turragor]

7 minutes ago, Maturin said:

He wouldn't have any problem with anvilstrike, since it's clearly worded. I already played anvilstrike in the shop with no problem. It's just that some people think the stormwing trait and MW in all phases is our way of bending rules to our benefit.

Yeah then it's TO ruling (in a tourney) and an "ok we play it your way" in a friendly game as you did (y)

[Björn Broberg]

On 1/5/2020 at 11:38 PM, AdamR said:

 

Allegiance: Stormcast Eternals
Mortal Realm: Aqshy

Leaders
Lord-Relictor (100)
- Prayer: Divine Light
 

 

Hi ! 

Thanks for the great read! 

Would you keep the  divine light going forward ? I'm debating using it on my stardrake .

 

[AdamR]

1 hour ago, Björn Broberg said:

Hi ! 

Thanks for the great read! 

Would you keep the  divine light going forward ? I'm debating using it on my stardrake .

 

I'd definitely keep it just for all of the horror on a 6 abilities there are out there... (hearthguard, terrorgeists, vanguard raptors etc). 

I don't think I've ever used it the other way around for the rerolling 1's.

[Maturin]

1 minute ago, AdamR said:

I'd definitely keep it just for all of the horror on a 6 abilities there are out there... (hearthguard, terrorgeists, vanguard raptors etc). 

I don't think I've ever used it the other way around for the rerolling 1's.

I'd say depends on your enemy. If you're against blightkings, you have staunch+lantern, who cares if you don't have divine light on, they don't have rend, you have a 2+ reroll 1s and you heal back wounds lost on 5s and 6s. Same for skeletons and all units with no rend.

[Björn Broberg]

How about mortec guard? 

Edited January 7, 2020 by Björn Broberg

[Maturin]

3 minutes ago, Björn Broberg said:

How about mortec guard? 

Depends if they went with swords (-1 rend) or spears (no rend).
No rend weaponds wil never kill you, unless  they have 100 attacks . If your opponent uses swords then you can go with divine light for caution, or decide to go full ****** and let him have a lot of attacks. The more he attacks you, the more you fail, reroll and save, the more MW you do.