the elite shooters

[Ciotola]

Hello. I would like to start a small army (500-1000 pt) that heavily exploits the ranged attack. I state that I do not like horde armies, (no 30-40 skink blobs), I love elite armies, which can impose themselves in the shooting phase and have a fair diversity of models, I had considered the knockouts but I have serious difficulties in mounting painting the ships, I was considering stormcast with maybe some ally. or if there can be a ranged faction of CoS that makes elitism its center. let me know with ideas and advice, if possible I would like to avoid shooting with more than twenty models.

to start I would like to test a 500-point list, to be expanded later. so that I can have fun painting and editing in a reasonable time and testing and familiarizing myself with aos.

[Kadeton]

You could consider a Living City army perhaps? Use Stormcast and Kurnoth Hunters with bows as your elite archers, protect them with City troops and buff them with a Hurricanum.

[Charleston]

• Kharadron Overlords: High Mobility, a load of different ranged profiles. Allows you to move across the whole board and picking your fights
• SCE: Elite Paladins can be played as snipers. Anvilguard Tournament Meta was a thing for a while and I think you can get some inspiration from thoose lists
• CoS: Cities have a load of shooting Profiles, althrough they rather do not fulfill the elite requirement you desire. Still, when mixing some SCE and focusing on tanks or other big guns instead of 20-30 handgunners itmay be a thing for you. Check them out as the versatility of the list makes it an everything-is-possible-faction!
• Mawtribes: Althrough not 100% shooty (as you will still do a big chunk of damage in meele) an Undergut list could be what you are looking for.
• Skaven Skryre: Honestly, Skryre is part fun and part madness. Warpcannons, big nasty spliced up weapon rat ogors and doomwheels are elite, fun and deadly (althrough you never know who will suffer more, you or your opponent)

[Kaleb Daark]

Legion of Azgorh Fireglaives, magman cannons, rockets, and ..

Oh wait... I forgot... they got squatted..
I'll get me coat.

Edited May 13, 2021 by Kaleb Daark

[Popisdead]

Sisters of the Watch.

Every couple of  units you take in Living city makes 2 of them three times better.

[Maddpainting]

18 hours ago, Charleston said:

• Kharadron Overlords: High Mobility, a load of different ranged profiles. Allows you to move across the whole board and picking your fights
• SCE: Elite Paladins can be played as snipers. Anvilguard Tournament Meta was a thing for a while and I think you can get some inspiration from thoose lists
• CoS: Cities have a load of shooting Profiles, althrough they rather do not fulfill the elite requirement you desire. Still, when mixing some SCE and focusing on tanks or other big guns instead of 20-30 handgunners itmay be a thing for you. Check them out as the versatility of the list makes it an everything-is-possible-faction!
• Mawtribes: Althrough not 100% shooty (as you will still do a big chunk of damage in meele) an Undergut list could be what you are looking for.
• Skaven Skryre: Honestly, Skryre is part fun and part madness. Warpcannons, big nasty spliced up weapon rat ogors and doomwheels are elite, fun and deadly (althrough you never know who will suffer more, you or your opponent)

This, but also Tzeentch in a couple ways, Skyfires double shooting with +1's to hit or Flamers.

[Chumphammer]

On 5/12/2021 at 6:03 PM, Ciotola said:

I would like to start a small army (500-1000 pt) that heavily exploits the ranged attack

How to lose friends and alienate yourself

[UnholyRevenant]

Please dont make a shooting spam army. AoS is not 40k and many players like AoS as an escape from the gun line wars of that game. Also while all shooting can be potent, there are enough scary melee armies in AoS to give you serious trouble if they get to your lines. 

[stratigo]

15 minutes ago, UnholyRevenant said:

Please dont make a shooting spam army. AoS is not 40k and many players like AoS as an escape from the gun line wars of that game. Also while all shooting can be potent, there are enough scary melee armies in AoS to give you serious trouble if they get to your lines. 

Funny, 40k is dominated by melee right now

[Enoby]

Blissbarb seekers are also a potential candidate - you can also take the on foot versions as battleline

[zilberfrid]

It's obvious: Greywater with a mixed force of Steam Tanks, Cogsmiths, Lord Ordinators, Celestial Hurricanums, Luminarchs and Gyrocopters.

But I do want to chime in that words like 'exploits' point towards you wanting an army that just isn't fun to face. Don't do that.

If you're going for cheese just at the turn of a new edition, high risk of being disappointed.

[Ciotola]

1 hour ago, UnholyRevenant said:

Please dont make a shooting spam army. AoS is not 40k and many players like AoS as an escape from the gun line wars of that game. Also while all shooting can be potent, there are enough scary melee armies in AoS to give you serious trouble if they get to your lines. 

so should i lose myself instead to do my opponent a favor and not play a shot build?

from what I have seen until recently the top lists were: ko heavy shoot / charger, seraphon FOS spam / lizard shot - tzeentch duplication shoot, obr horde, lumishot, SCraptors, Big green.

almost all of them can boast an interesting ranged phase. they probably monopolize the meta for the ability to excel at every stage (true seraphon XD) so I don't see the problem of wanting to play a ranged list that is consistent with what you see in the meta covid.

anyway i think i will evaluate lizard with bastiladon, skinks and knights, or wait for the new tome sce to see if they give interesting buffs to the chamber vanguard

[Marcvs]

I am puzzled by all the people trying to preemptively shame someone for picking a list (s)he likes. If you are frustrated with the state of the game / the prevalence of shooting / the existence of strong lists (all legitimate opinions) maybe take this out on the multibilion company responsible for the whole thing? This is especially remarkable since the OP: a) seems like a new player; b) hasn't picked a netlist or similar, c) seems interesterested in lists which go from decent (bastiladons) to meh (CoS + SCE); d) possibly plays in a local meta with experienced players / hard lists or whatever (I have no idea, but neither do you)

2 hours ago, UnholyRevenant said:

Please dont make a shooting spam army. AoS is not 40k and many players like AoS as an escape from the gun line wars of that game. Also while all shooting can be potent, there are enough scary melee armies in AoS to give you serious trouble if they get to your lines. 

Maybe the OP likes to play a gunline in AoS. Is his/her enjoyment of the game less worthy of respect than the one from those people supposedly escaping 40k? (where melee, as it was poitned out, is presently quite dominant). Also: if, as you say, there's enough melee armies to smash your shooting list, where's the problem?

 

1 hour ago, zilberfrid said:

It's obvious: Greywater with a mixed force of Steam Tanks, Cogsmiths, Lord Ordinators, Celestial Hurricanums, Luminarchs and Gyrocopters.

But I do want to chime in that words like 'exploits' point towards you wanting an army that just isn't fun to face. Don't do that.

If you're going for cheese just at the turn of a new edition, high risk of being disappointed.

Considering that many of us (me included) are not native speakers, the choice of wording should not be taken as such a strong indication of intent. Also, it's not clear where the OP has given the impression of going for "cheese" and even then, since you don't know their gaming environment, I would suggest that a better reaction could be: that's a strong competitive list, be aware that your opponent might be looking for a more "casual" game so you should discuss beforehand and be ready to change your list in order for both of you to have an enjoyable game. As an aside: if the OP goes for the list you are suggesting (a mid-tier list at best) your next two sentences do not really apply.

[zilberfrid]

@Marcvs you are right. I overreacted. And at @Ciotola, Cities is probably not the place for elite shooting. Since you don't like painting Kharadron, that's all the armies I have some knowledge of done.

[Ciotola]

6 minutes ago, zilberfrid said:

@ Marcvs hai ragione. Ho reagito in modo esagerato. E a@Ciotola, Cities probabilmente non è il posto giusto per le riprese d'élite. Dato che non ti piace dipingere Kharadron, sono tutti gli eserciti di cui sono a conoscenza.

i love ko, it was up to me i would only play thunderers in barak nar. I tried to paint and subassemble some gunhaulers and I don't find myself painting them, it's uncomfortable and frustrating for my experience. and ko how do you play it without the ships? to this I add the experience of a guy in our local store: he arrived and came home with ironclads and 2 gunhaulers with broken pedestals. apparently he was against very angry orcs ....

thanks everyone for the comments, i think i will want to try something that will revolve around cos / stormcast or seraphon, cos i might find it very nice if it doesn't use ships like i have seen in some tempest eye lists.

for now our club has non-tournament players who sometimes line up well-structured lists as if they were playing in a tournament, other times we do more relaxed things like PoG, but in this period thanks to nurgle it is difficult to see each other and I have recently started .

and yes, english is not my first language so there will be grammatical errors.

[zilberfrid]

One option might be Thunderers in Tempest's Eye.

With a Hurricanum (though that is much more of a challenge to paint than a ship) a Hawk Eyed General and a Knight Azyros pointing the way, they would deal more damage than in Kharadron. This would even make the special weapons interesting.

I don't know if you can make that competetive, but it is an option.

Irondrakes can easily be competetive, and have some of the design elements of Kharadron.

[azdimy]

Consider Lumineth Realmlords. It is a strong option for an elite army with mostly ranged attacks if you want to build it that way: sentinels, ballista, kangaroo riders and the wind fox characters. You can shoot all day and don t even need line of sight with the sentinels!

[Hannibal]

First of all, IMO you can also go magic / shooting heavy instead of pure shooting. Magic is also kind of a "ranged" attack. It would offer more diverse builds.

 

That beeing said, a lot of armies can be played shooty heavy, even with highly priced models.

The problem might be to find an army that offers good shooting units as battleline. THe already mentioned Lumineth for example need to field a melee battleline unit to allow the use of a shooting battline unit.

I do not know every single faction out there, but here are some ideas:

 

Skaven can be played pure shooting with shooty battleline. The might be the most elite if you head towards Stormfiends which will become battleline in a Skryre army. Good artillerie and lots of different shooty units. They can dish out brutal ranged damage (even with magic) but there are times when the dice betray you and you will kill more models of your own than of your opponent.

Stormcast Eternals also offer shooty battleline unit and they field one of the most destructive shooting units in the game (Raptors) which have some movement shenanigans with their birds.

Fyreslayers can be build all shooty, though that is not their preferred playstyle. Auric Hearthguard become battleline with the use of a Runemaster. Not much diversity in models though.

Tzeentch Daemons in their subfaction Eternal Conflaguration can be an all shooty force. Low model count, easy to paint yet nice looking models. Lots of different shooting units: Flamers, Exalted Flamers, Exalted Flamers on Chariots, Horrors. Also offer shooty "chaff" to secure your gunline from incoming charges. High mobility and god magic. Tzeentch Arcanites can also be played shooty heavy.

Slaanesh now also offer a shooty battleline which you will find in a lot of lists. Though not much besides it. You can get a mounted shooty unit too but I think that´s all.

Tempest´s Eye (Cites of Sigmar) offer some interesting shooting options. They can field imperial Pistoliers as battleline which offer a shooting attack but are also good in melee. Good synergy for shooting units and the possibility to include Stormcast and Kharadron units for a really large collectiong of shooting units. Living City combines shooting and ambush in a similar way to Beasts of Chaos, though with more potent shooting options.

Ossiarch Bonereapers offer one of the best artillery pieces in the game. Though you need melee battleline. Highly elitish.

Beasts of Chaos can also be played shooty heavy with Ungor Raiders and Tzaangor Skyfires. Ambush also is a cool rule which enhances you overall high mobility. No shooty battleline though.

 

And don´t forget that you can also just play Grand Alliance Order and use everything you like modelswise. If I remember correctly Order is the only GRand Alliance that offers shooty battleline besides the Grots with bows (but they really don´t shoot that well).

 

I guess it all comes down to model preferences. Go and get what you like the most.

 

 

Edited May 14, 2021 by Hannibal

[Zeblasky]

14 hours ago, Marcvs said:

seems interesterested in lists which go from decent (bastiladons) to meh (CoS + SCE)

My 40 deepstriking Sisters of the Watch would like a word with your army about CoS and CoS shooting specifically being meh (as long as that army is not Idoneth though). I would also formally invite any Disposessed players with 30 overbuffed and bridged Irondrakes to this discussion as well.

[zilberfrid]

3 hours ago, Zeblasky said:

My 40 deepstriking Sisters of the Watch would like a word with your army about CoS and CoS shooting specifically being meh (as long as that army is not Idoneth though). I would also formally invite any Disposessed players with 30 overbuffed and bridged Irondrakes to this discussion as well.

There was a desire to stay at about 20 models and no Kharadron, which makes Cities almost impossible.

I do agree about them working.

I also want to reiterate that going for the most powerful option today says nothing about the future, especially with an edition change.

Edited May 15, 2021 by zilberfrid

[Marcvs]

4 hours ago, Zeblasky said:

My 40 deepstriking Sisters of the Watch would like a word with your army about CoS and CoS shooting specifically being meh (as long as that army is not Idoneth though). I would also formally invite any Disposessed players with 30 overbuffed and bridged Irondrakes to this discussion as well.

Not arguing about their power in isolation. However, in tournament stats it has been a while that such a shooting cities list posts any impressive results

Edited May 15, 2021 by Marcvs

[Skreech Verminking]

22 hours ago, stratigo said:

Funny, 40k is dominated by melee right now

The roles have changed, welcome to the gunline game named aos😂