New Player help with list

[ProbablyBalthus19]

Hi all,

 I am a 40k player but love fantasy and have had the soul wars box set sitting around for ages. I decided to add to it after reading Soul wars because Balthazar gelt is who i used to run with waaaaay back in fantasy. I am firmly in the camp of play what you enjoy but after getting absolutely trashed by Slaves to Darkness in 4 games I am a bit disheartened. Below is my list. Any tips to play the list better would be appreciated.

 

Anvils of Heldenhammer

Lord Arcanum on Gryph Charger

Soulthief relic/Deathly Aura

Celestant Prime

Battleline:

10 Sequitors

5 Liberators

5 Liberators

Other:

6 Longstrike Raptors

1 Unit of Evocators

2 Celistar Ballista

Endless spell Balewind Vortex

 

I've only played 4 real games after learning the rules, not counting the games with my wife against nighthaunt while learning. But all 4 games I was generally done by turn 3. Demon princes casting a spell making the terrain blocking so I couldnt see anything, as well as chaos knights and the new lord having tons of different attacks.. I just felt very week. The prime died in 1 turn. I was told I just need to learn to use him better, but I don't feel like any of the list truly "Worked."

[readercolin]

So first things first, your list is only 1840 points.  If your opponent was playing at 2000 points, being 160 points down from the start is going to turn out poorly for you.  Second, your "hammers" are an understrength unit of raptors, and the rather squishy celestant prime.  A minimum strength unit of evocators just isn't competitive at 2000 points, and 2 ballista's without any ordinators are also going to be underwhelming.  Basically, the problem with your army is that you are dabbling in too many different things and not concentrating your power.

Want to run the longstrikes with anvils?  Bring 9.  Want to run Celestar Ballista's?  Run 4 and a Lord-Ordinator.  Want to run Evocators on foot?  Run at least 10, and bring along Gavriel for a gav-bomb, or bring a long a Knight-Heralder to give them their much needed mobility.  Want to run Evocators on Dracolines?  Run a squad of 6, and back it up wtih a Lord-Arcanum on Dracoline.  Want to run the Celestant Prime?  You need to have something there to clear a path for him so he can come down turn 2 and actually be able to get to a target to murder.

As it is, your army is fine for trying a few things and seeing what models that you like.  But from here you need to decide how you like playing and focus in on those models.  Build your list to maximize those models, and then make sure you get enough screen to hold your opponent back to deal with them.

Slaves to darkness isn't a super killy force (unless they are doing nurgle demon prince cheese, and even then you are doing more damage to yourself with that list then they are).  But they are a very tanky army, and you really want to throw stuff with a lot of rend at them.  Luckily, you have both raptors and ballista's that you can use to deal with them.

An example for how you can make your army more focused without changing too much would be to drop the evocators and 5 sequitors, and the balewind vortex in exchange for 2 more ballista's, and Ordinator, and 3 more longstrikes for your raptors.  This gives you some light screening and a lot of ranged power.  If you don't want to drop your current models, at least go ahead and grab something to fill in those missing 160 points.

[Evantas]

I'm fairly new and losing often as well.

I would suggest that you stick to smaller games at the moment so that you are playing a more optimised army.  1000 / 1250 pts. 

Nothing sticks out in your army as v bad, but the mix doesn't seem to work. You might want to drop the celestant prime atm tho. 

Edited January 8, 2020 by Evantas

[NauticalSoup]

readercolin's advice is prime here. Agree 100% with all those suggestions as someone who has been playing small games as stormcast - understrength SCE hammer units and shooter blobs are incredibly underwhelming and whatever your strategy you want to maximize your synergies and damage output.

I would definitely emphasize ditching the Balewind Vortex for a Lord Arcanum on Glyph-Charger since it immobilizes him which guts one of the main advantages of having a mounted general. Also Stormcast spells feel kinda weak, I never really have much desire to cast more than one (and would usually rather have the extra unbind from the Stormcast hoverdisk thing - Dias Arcanum I think?).

One thing worth noting is that the main advantage of the Lord Arcanum seems to be taking Sequitors as battleline, which is nice because at least in my group the consensus seems to be Liberators are one of the worst troops choices in the entire game. Too expensive to screen with, they hit like a wet noodle, their bases are too fat to utilize their max squad size well, and the vaunted 4+ with shield re-roll has been power-crept pretty badly since the early days of Sigmar making them rather squishy for their points. Most people on here seem to prefer Judicators or Sequitors if you want a unit that can at least do a little work and only take liberators as a necessary but unfortunate tax to save on points. In a friendly game just see if your opponent is okay proxying them as Sequitors to get a little performance boost from your battleline. Also if you have a Soul Wars, the Knight-Incantor is actually pretty rad due to the void scroll and having one of the better SCE spells on her warscroll.

My last thought is that having played a lot of small points games, I actually have the opposite feeling from Evantas - your understrength units and lack of support characters makes SCE even weaker than usual below 2000 points. As has been said a lot of your stuff shines in max-sized units and those units can be further amped by the appropriate support characters which means you could easily be investing so much you are left struggling just to fill out your 2 battleline units. 9 Longstrikes + 2x3 Aetherwings is already 610, and then you need your general for the CA. 6 Dracs + a Knight-Hereldor + the Lord Arcanum on Drac is already 810. The Lord Ordinator + Celestar Ballista blob doesn't even work at low points due to the artillery cap. I think if you want to have any chance at all against those better tomes and armies you want to be playing a full 2k game. Not that you'll be favoured - by all reports SCE is in bad shape right now, so you will rarely be at parity with your opponent.

Finally, in friendly games if you just can't compete with your opponent, it never hurts to ask if they'd consider letting you play with a handicap. A few extra points, a CP, an extra roll on the triumph table, hand-picking favourable missions etc. Better everyone has fun and a reasonable chance of winning than worrying too much about constructing proper tournament-legal matched play lists.

[#SteveJames]

Lot's of solid advice here already, don't get too disheartened a Despoilers Slaves list is a hard match to play. 

Main thing is take on board people's advice and try and play a variety of people and lists.