New to stormcast help

[jkav86]

Hi! I'm a long time beasts of chaos army and was looking to start something totally new this year and figured I couldn't go to far wrong with stormcast, and with that Christmas box bought I think I'm ready to go. So far I have the following in mind, but I need to jig it to be legal battle line wise. Anyway, here is what I'm thinking so far.

Allegiance: Stormcast Eternals

Leaders
Lord-Arcanum on Celestial Dracoline (220)
Knight-Incantor (140)

Battleline

Units
5 x Evocators (220)
5 x Evocators (220)
10 x Sequitors (260)
- Stormsmite Mauls and Soulshields
10 x Sequitors (260)
- Stormsmite Mauls and Soulshields
3 x Evocators on Dracolines (260)
3 x Evocators on Dracolines (260)

Battalions
Cleansing Phalanx (120)

Total: 1960 / 2000
Extra Command Points: 1
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 112

On top of this I have the contents of the soul war starter set and ten more liberators and a Lord Castelent. Any help is welcome, especially on storm hosts that would work best with what I've got! Thanks guys  

[JackStreicher]

if your lord arcanum is the general all your sequitors are battleline too, so you should have no issue there  (split one 10 sequitor squad into 2x 5 sequis)

You are currently fielding an ultra-elite force and any casualty will hurt you a lot. So you might want to consider to switch mounted evocators or melee evocators for liberators. A Ballista would also suit you very well

 

cheers

[NauticalSoup]

A good Sacrosanct list. I second the notion that you should split up the Sequitors to meet your minimum battleline requirements, but disagree strongly that you should add Liberators in place of Evocators. Liberators (at least from everything I've seen) are tax units that will never make back their points and just serve as expensive screening chaff. Might consolidate your Evocators together for the highest possible impact and to make buffs on them more efficient as well.

If you add missile guys keep in mind they work best in big blobs with lots of support (3-4 Ballistas + Lord Ordinator or 9+ Longstrikes with Aetherwings & Anvilhammer CA).

Otherwise I'm not entirely sure if there's much benefit to choosing a Stormhost for a list like this. If you don't take one you can pick Staunch Defender which helps the Sequitors survive a charge, and you can dodge taking a tax artifact. I'm also not sure if the Cleansing Phalanx is actually worth the investment with only one unit of 10 Sequitors... hmmm...

[jkav86]

Thanks guys!

Regarding splitting one unit into two Sequitors, it is kind of embarrassing I didn't click it before. As for making a ten man evocators unit I will try that for sure once I get some games in(And all the models built too). The mortal wound output for a ten man squad is pretty awesome and something my beastmen did not do well at all.

For Staunch defender I'd have to have my general with the Sequitors and Evocators, not the dracolion cavalry, wouldn't that were he would rather be?

Finally, if I dump the formation, that leaves me with 160 points.  Just by models I have, I could dump a ballista in there, or six castigators or... something else?

Edited January 20, 2020 by jkav86

[NauticalSoup]

The issue you'll have is that your only screens are the Sequitors, so they probably can't afford to be too far away from your dracolines. Unless you were planning to teleport them? Not saying staunch defender is your best/only option though, just Stormhosts usually seem pretty meh.

I probably would never take single shooters, they're just so medicore. I played a few games with one Celestar and it was pathetic without the +1 from the Lord Ordinator. Castigators also seem pretty bad math-wise. So maybe Phalanx it is. Unless you have some skinks lying around...!

[Alladinthepaladin]

I am by no means a SCE expert (or an AoS one either) but when planning my (super uncompetitive and pure fluff) SCE army I have been leaning toward tempest lords. The innate benefits, abilities and artefact are fairly universally useful regardless of build (especially now that we have those additional command abilities to boost hits or saves).

Staunch defender is great however, so you can’t overlook that loss. But for a non-LCoSD General, most of the other relics are fairly meh in my opinion. 5+ command point regain is swingy, but quite useful. The CA is pretty good too, and if you get those dracolines in combat with a charge (and have a pile of CPs due to the nature of tempest lords) you can get +1 A from Pack Alpha, and reroll both hits and wounds of 1 with the GH command ability and the Tempest Lords one... it’s expensive CP wise, but a unit of six cats with all those buffs can probably do some good work (and statistically should get at least one CP back from your artefact)

**I forgot about the Empower spell, which fully trumps the Tempest Lords CA in an Evocator-heavy build. However, if the cast gets denied by your opponent it’s still nice knowing you have a means to boost your To Wound rolls...

RE: your list, you can do a lot of fun things with it. With 10 Evos and 6 Cats in two big blobs you have two of our best melee units. Assuming we remove the batallion you are at 160 pts. Here are my suggestions:

1. Add a Knight Heraldor and a CP for 150 pts: are heraldor will really help keep the dracolines scary, and in a pinch can help move your evocator blob also. Plus, if you face armies hugging terrain free MWs is nice.

2. Remove 5 Sequitors - now you have 290 pts. I would still suggest Heraldor here. This leaves you with 190 pts, which you can either use for another support HQ (Castellant, Relictor both have utility here), the Comet for your Incantor, some Aetherwing chaff, and in most options, another CP.

Edited January 21, 2020 by Alladinthepaladin
Added list suggestions

[readercolin]

I've been playing with a somewhat similar list for a while, and to a reasonable amount of success.  For reference, here is my list:

Lord-Arcanum on Celestial Dracoline
Knight-Incantor
Knight-Heraldor
3x 5 Sequitors
6 Evocators on Celestial Dracoline

Then, I run one of these two:

Knight-Vexilor
9 Vanguard Raptors with Longstrike Crossbows

Lord-Ordinator
4 Celestar Ballista's
Command Point

If I run the ballista's, then I will generally run with either Astral Templars (+1 to hit monsters) or celestial vindicators (command point for an extra attack on the kitties).  If I run the Longstrikes, then I am running Anvils of Heldenhammer (Command point shoot/pile in and attack in hero phase).

So, lets break down how and why this list works, and what I would recommend with your models.

First off, the sequitors.  From a year and a half playing with them, you are either going to run them in a block of 20 to maximize their killing power, or you want to run them as a block of 5.  A block of 5 sequitors is enough that they can deal with other MSU units, take down foot hero's, etc, and are a big enough threat that your opponent might just throw a large unit at them to clear them out.  But that remains the same whether there are 5 or 10 of them.  It is only once you get to 15-20 (and with the points discount, taking 15 is kinda questionable) that they can become a threat on their own.  However, why run sequitors as a threat when you can have evocators?  Hence my running them in blocks of 5.

Next up, the evocators on dracolines.  Some people may talk about putting them in the sky to ambush, but I'm going to say that that is a waste.  With a 12" move and re-rolling their charge rolls, they can get in on most targets on the ground without too much issue.  The only reason to put them into the sky is to prevent them from being shot up if you are opposing a shooting heavy army.  Next, lets look at why I run them in a block of 6, rather than 2 blocks of 3.  First off, with pride leader, you can give them +1 to hit, meaning they are all hitting on a 2+.  If you are running celestial vindicators, then they get to re-roll 1's on the charge, meaning that as long as you can stay close to your arcanum, you are missing 1/36 attacks.  Next, celestial blades can give them +1 to wound, which means they are wounding on a 2+.  However, you can only cast celestial blades once, so it is better to buff a big unit than buff a small one.  Lastly, we want to look at efficiency in combat.  If I take 1 unit in and charge, then I get to activate that unit and obliterate whatever they hit before the opponent gets to go.  If I take 2 units, then I activate one, and then they can respond and damage my other unit before they get to go, drastically diminishing the damage that I can do.  Also, if you are wondering what that block of 6 can do fully buffed, with the pride leader bonus, charging, empower, celestial blades, and celestial vindicators command ability they can deal ~87 damage on average to a save of -, or 52 damage to a 4+ save, and then still throw an average of 6 mortal wounds at another unit afterwards.  Without any buffs, but still getting a charge off, they can still dish out 42 damage to a save of -, and 26 damage to a 4+ save, with of course another 6 mortal wounds added in afterwards.  Here we can see that getting the buffs off is great, but the number of available buffs basically means we have some redundancy when doing so.

This brings us back to the knight-heraldor.  This guy is key to making the kitties as deadly as possible.  As long as he can stay near them, he can let them retreat and charge again, and he can let them run and charge, giving them a huge threat range without forcing them to stay in the sky.

Finally, in my list I have the choice of longstrikes or ballista's.  Realistically, I play with whichever I feel like that day, and they both do the same job - they provide a ranged threat that can dish out a ton of damage, and give my army another angle of attack.  This way I'm not 100% all in on just the kitties to do the job.  The lord-ordinator is pretty obvious about what it does for me.  But the vexilor may not make sense - basically, I play him with the banner that gives a once-per-game teleport, so that I can re-position the longstrikes if needed if my opponent starts threatening them.

------------------------------------------------------

Now, lets talk a little bit more about your list.  You can have a very similar setup to my army, but you would be using a second block of evocators on foot as your secondary hammer rather than a shooting force.  Going back to what I said about the evokitties, you are going to want to group those evocators into single units, to maximize their hitting power without getting struck back.  Additionally, I would recommend either cutting back on your sequitors and dropping the cleansing phalanx (it only reduces your drops and allows you to better empower buff sequitors, which isn't worth it with 5 man squads), or putting all the sequitors into 1 block, getting another 10 for 2 5 man squads and running the phalanx with a big block of sequitors that can be re-rolling hits, wounds, and saves.  If you go that way, I recommend getting Gavriel so you can drop them from the sky and get them on target right away. For example, here would be a list:

Hammers of Sigmar
Lord-Arcanum on Celestial Dracoline
Knight-Heraldor
Gavriel Sureheart
20 Sequitors
2x 5 Sequitors
5 Evocators
6 Evocators on Celestial Dracoline
Clensing Phalanx

This gives you 2 units of 5 sequitors for screening, a hammer in the sky of 20 sequitors, gavriel, and 5 evocators on foot to come down and empower the sequitors on later turns, and then a hammer on the ground with 6 evokitties backed up by the lord-arcanum and heraldor.  New purchases needed - Gavriel, Knight-Heraldor, and a box of 10 sequitors.

Another option would be to make the evocators as scary as possible.  Here is a list:

Hammers of Sigmar
Lord-Arcanum on Celestial Dracoline
Knight-Heraldor or Everblaze Comet
Knight-Incantor
Gavriel Sureheart
3x 5 Sequitors
10 Evocators
6 Evocators on Celestial Dracoline
Command Point

This list instead uses gavriel to put 10 evocators on foot into the target.  Then you have the kitties on the ground again as a secondary hammer, and either the heraldor to back the kitties up, or the everblaze comet to dish out some mortal wounds from the start.

Lastly, you could look at running a ranged threat with either longstrikes or ballista's, similar to my list above.  I think any of these 3 lists will help you to maximize the power of your list.

[rockmanko]

shooting is really important and a strong point at SCE

[jkav86]

So, a huge thanks guys, this was a more indepth response then I expected

@Alladinthepaladin That storm host does sound like a good idea, with the new command abilities having the command points could be really useful. Losing the formation seems like it may be the way to go, and adding in a Knight Heraldor could be something. Looking at its abilities it gets to do what my beastmen shaman does, just without having to cast it!

@readercolin Its a really helpful reply there. The shooting army you use seems pretty cool, and I may try go that way later, but for now I'll keep on track with this lot! Again, I think you're right about the formation, it doesnt fit what I have to be worth the points. Also, making the kittens into one unit seems like a better idea, more buffable, I just always worry with large base models that I wont be getting enough models in range to fight.

I guess now its just a matter of getting things built and on the table to give some of these things an old realy life try!