Stormcast Eternals 3.0 - There is no "a" in Vindictors

[NauticalSoup]

27 minutes ago, CommissarRotke said:

It manages to be a formidable book for competitive lists, but we should agree that the overall quality of a lot of our stuff in the book (warscrolls, items, traits, points, Stormhosts...) is lacking outside of those minmax/WAAC lists. 

I think the fact that we have seen zero of the Sacrosanct chamber in tournament lists, minus the Tauralon, is pretty damning.

This is a better way of putting it. Less salty.

[xking]

On 3/1/2022 at 11:34 AM, PJetski said:

Remember when people thought the Stormcast 3.0 book was bad 

The book has very bad internal balance. It has a few really good/good units and a lot of very bad units. Have you seen the Knight-Venator or Knight-Azyros be used outside of 1st edition? or a Lord-Veritant show up on the board? Why are Prosecutors still useless? even the Lord-Celestants don't even show up.(Maybe the stardrake sometimes) 

 

 

Edited March 3, 2022 by xking

[PJetski]

4 hours ago, xking said:

The book has very bad internal balance. 

Which book doesn't?

Also Prosecutors are far from useless

[Beliman]

I get the point, there are armies that can use more than one build to have a nice and fun game (Soulblight, Cities of Sigmar and maybe NewNurgle). But take in mind that 90% of the competitive lists have the same 2+ wombo-combo units:

• WLV+ironclad
• x3 (or more) KoS Slaaneshy lists
• Longstrikes-Anvils
• Sentinels/Teclis-bomb
• Double-tap medusa/Morathi
• Tzeen-chaon
• HGB spam
• etc...

And I still think that SCE have good units that don't feel bad to be played outside of drakes (Judicators, Anihilators/Paladins, Incantor, etc...).

[JackStreicher]

8 hours ago, CommissarRotke said:

It manages to be a formidable book for competitive lists, but we should agree that the overall quality of a lot of our stuff in the book (warscrolls, items, traits, points, Stormhosts...) is lacking outside of those minmax/WAAC lists. 

I think the fact that we have seen zero of the Sacrosanct chamber in tournament lists, minus the Tauralon, is pretty damning.

What do you mean!? It’s a healthy book that needs no adjustments if you see 8 out of 93 Warscrolls being played.

don‘t be ridiculous and expect a book that has mostly playable warscrolls. 🤣
 

Next you start claiming that customers should expect quality rules from a 35-42€ Book that is supposed to be good from a professional standpoint. 
Such logic might work for any other product, but not for this game, na-ah! People are happy if 3 warscrolls are superb and they will fight you if you are not pleased, because other books have it worse! 😛

 

Srsly. Guys get your mind out of the GW jungle. The book is a ripoff: The rules quality is bad, it was invalidated before one could buy it and it costs as much as a week‘s worth of grocery. If this was any other product, like an Apple Watch, the Apple headquarters would‘ve been set aflame. Stop defending it. 
 

If a company uses the high price strategy they have to deliver. This encompasses the CONTENT and the visuals. This book has only the visuals, the content is a reason for a refund. Every time this disconnect from reality is defended you actively support bad quality, and that’s what companies will gladly deliver, for a premium of course.

Edited March 3, 2022 by JackStreicher

[lare2]

13 hours ago, CommissarRotke said:

I think the fact that we have seen zero of the Sacrosanct chamber in tournament lists, minus the Tauralon, is pretty damning.

And disappointing. I got into SCE just before 3rd dropped and snapped up a lot of Sacrosanct stuff as I think they look mint. 

[NauticalSoup]

8 hours ago, Beliman said:

I get the point, there are armies that can use more than one build to have a nice and fun game (Soulblight, Cities of Sigmar and maybe NewNurgle). But take in mind that 90% of the competitive lists have the same 2+ wombo-combo units:

• WLV+ironclad
• x3 (or more) KoS Slaaneshy lists
• Longstrikes-Anvils
• Sentinels/Teclis-bomb
• Double-tap medusa/Morathi
• Tzeen-chaon
• HGB spam
• etc...

And I still think that SCE have good units that don't feel bad to be played outside of drakes (Judicators, Anihilators/Paladins, Incantor, etc...).

I don't know if all of these are fair comparisons. There's definitely a ton more diversity in Lumineth than that, a lot of the top lists for a long time used neither Teclis nor Sentinels. That book has serious problems of its own but I'm not sure it has the same level of internal balance issues. Narrow 1.0 style armies like Fyreslayers I wouldn't even mention, their army literally has 3 warscrolls that aren't characters or ports from boxes games- if they have a similar build diversity to our 100 warscrolls it's not really a good look for SCE 3.0.

Some of them are for sure a locked-in thing where the book basically produces cookie-cutter builds but that's still not good and the fact other army lists succumb to it doesn't really give SCE a pass imo. I play more 40k than I do Sigmar, and while that game also has serious problems, build diversity isn't one of them. Even within narrow archetypes you can see significant amounts of variation. Eradicators or Attack Bikes? Bladeguards or Terminators? One psyker, multiple, or none for Abhor? Even within the confines of armies of renown (like warscroll battalions with lots of restrictions) you see a lot more variety. Something about the way Sigmar is structured combined with the way they write battletomes seems to depress any desire to branch off the best builds and I find it pretty frustrating

[CommissarRotke]

2 hours ago, lare2 said:

And disappointing. I got into SCE just before 3rd dropped and snapped up a lot of Sacrosanct stuff as I think they look mint. 

They do look awesome! And sadly I've been considering selling my share because I don't enjoy painting Sacrosanct as much as other chambers  Maybe they're decent picks in Warcry?

[PJetski]

The book is not objectively bad. We have more viable units than some factions have warscrolls. At least 6 (arguably 7) of our 8 subfactions are viable picks.

It sucks that we have bad Enhancements and a lot of our warscrolls aren't good enough to see play in tournaments, but many of them can be easily fixed with some point adjustments and/or battleline tags. For example, Evocators would be viable at 200pt and Dracolines would be viable at ~240, especially if they were Battleline (in Celestial Warbringers?). Sequitors would be viable at 130. Many of our heroes are massively overcosted and would see play with a 20-30pt drop.

The game is too fast and lethal for Stormkeep allegiance to be viable (and Gargants are a hard counter) but that could change in GHB 2022 when we switch realms and with more armies being released that focus on infantry (Idoneth, Fyreslayers, Nighthaunt, DOK).

My biggest concern is that it won't survive the inevitable battletome power creep, or that the universal enhancements will be gutted.

Edited March 3, 2022 by PJetski

[lare2]

11 minutes ago, CommissarRotke said:

They do look awesome! And sadly I've been considering selling my share because I don't enjoy painting Sacrosanct as much as other chambers  Maybe they're decent picks in Warcry?

I'm in the process of painting up 10 sequitors for 2x5 battleline. Takes me ages to paint so when they're done I'll be taking them to tournies, win or lose! You're right though, all the paraphernalia does make them a lot harder to paint than the other stuff. 

Edited March 3, 2022 by lare2

[NauticalSoup]

1 minute ago, PJetski said:

We have more viable units than some factions have warscrolls.

While true that's not even noteworthy when we have the most bloated troop list in the entire game. You could prune 50 warscrolls and it wouldn't affect our competitive performance at all - that's pretty bananas. That's like, the entire GA Destruction lol

I mean proportional to the number of units we probably have what, 10% viability rate on warscrolls, maybe 15% if we're generous? I don't know, it seems like we should be able to expect more. My evaluation criteria may be poisoned by my expectations from 40k though so who knows.

You're right that points changes would fix the strictest reading of the internal balance issue, but it would just be trading one monster for another or in an ideal future giving you a sea of fundamentally identical options with different outerwear. The underlying issue is that nothing makes any of these units different from one another in how they play on the table- they mostly just do more or less damage.

[JackStreicher]

1 hour ago, PJetski said:

The book is not objectively bad. We have more viable units than some factions have warscrolls. At least 6 (arguably 7) of our 8 subfactions are viable picks.

We have more unviable troops than 3 armies combined.

The standard „other X is worse so ne happy for ours“ is really no argument unless the very bottom is what you are aiming for. 
Battletomes should strife to make every single Warscroll good in it’s own right (SBGL managed this as well).

[Rachmani]

Strong and well written is not the same, one can be either without the other. Truly great products are both, though.

[PJetski]

2 hours ago, JackStreicher said:

We have more unviable troops than 3 armies combined.

The standard „other X is worse so ne happy for ours“ is really no argument unless the very bottom is what you are aiming for. 
Battletomes should strife to make every single Warscroll good in it’s own right (SBGL managed this as well).

My point wasn't that we should ignore the bad units, just that we have a lot of viable units and can make a ton of different competitive tournament lists.

If your criteria of success is "every warscroll has to be tournament viable" then every battletome is a failure. It's an impossible standard.

If it's "my favourite units are bad" well I agree that sucks but it doesn't inherently make the battletome bad - there is a lot of good stuff in there

[JackStreicher]

41 minutes ago, PJetski said:

My point wasn't that we should ignore the bad units, just that we have a lot of viable units and can make a ton of different competitive tournament lists.

If your criteria of success is "every warscroll has to be tournament viable" then every battletome is a failure. It's an impossible standard.

If it's "my favourite units are bad" well I agree that sucks but it doesn't inherently make the battletome bad - there is a lot of good stuff in there

I am not talking about competetive.

It‘s not impossible at all to make all warscrolls decent (the new 40K datasheets are one example, SBGL almost another etc.). Even thinking that it is impossible shows how deeply the bad rules quality of GW is embedded in your thinking. They simply do a bad job very often.

My point is that most warscrolls should be viable/decent. Comp. never matters in this regard, they‘ll manage just fine no matter the odds.

To me a good Battletome has mostly viable scrolls, interesting unit interactions and fluffy/feel good allegiance abilities and cool, distinguishing subfactions.
Stormcast have (relatively speaking) unviable Warscrolls, almost no interactions due to a lack of abilities backed into Warscrolls. And their Allegiance Ability is teleporting onto the board accompanied by questionable subfaction abilities (bravery games, really?) while being too slow on foot to get anywhere.

-> It‘s bland. Carried by raptor and dragon spam and the rare appearance of a Gardus abuse in a Stormkeep.

—> Bad Book (imo)

Edited March 3, 2022 by JackStreicher

[PJetski]

8 minutes ago, JackStreicher said:

I am not talking about competetive.

It‘s not impossible at all to make all warscrolls decent (the new 40K datasheets are one example, SBGL almost another etc.). Even thinking that it is impossible shows how deeply the bad rules quality of GW is embedded in your thinking. They simply do a bad job very often.

My point is that most warscrolls should be viable/decent. Comp. never matters in this regard, they‘ll manage just fine no matter the odds.

To me a good Battletome has mostly viable scrolls, interesting unit interactions and fluffy/feel good allegiance abilities and cool, distinguishing subfactions.
Stormcast have (relatively speaking) unviable Warscrolls, almost no interactions due to a lack of abilities backed into Warscrolls. And their Allegiance Ability is teleporting onto the board accompanied by questionable subfaction abilities (bravery games, really?) while being too slow on foot to get anywhere.

-> It‘s bland. Carried by raptor and dragon spam and the rare appearance of a Gardus abuse in a Stormkeep.

—> Bad Book (imo)

I think it's an impossible standard because GW has shown us over the past 30 years that they are unwilling or unable to write a book where every unit is viable. It would be possible if an entirely different writing team was in charge of the rules and the FAQ - I am not going to waste any time thinking that GW will correct course now.

I can't argue why your standards are the way they are, but I think you are setting an impossible standard that will always lead to disappointment. If you hold that standard then every battletome is bad, and then you have to contend with the fact that you are spending your time and money on a hobby/game where every single product they release is inadequate. Personally I wouldn't be able to enjoy this hobby if I viewed things this way.

I agree that the allegiance abilities are not very exciting. In addition to "power creep" I'm also concerned about "interesting ability creep"; newer battletomes will almost certainly get much more engaging and interesting abilities than what we are seeing right now. However, potential future updates to the game don't make the battletome bad right now.

There's a lot more to the book than just stormdrakes and raptors. Those units have huge threat ranges so they are easy to use, but they have low maximum damage - great against 18 wound MONSTER units, but not as good against 60 wounds of infantry. The metagame is already adapting. 

The Stormcast battletome as a whole has the tools to be adaptable to just about any kind of metagame... it all depends on the points. For example, Dracolines are not objectively bad; they are high volume attackers with a 12" move, natively re-roll charges, have no opportunity cost on losing shooting if they run & charge with Steadfast march, and can blast some mortal wounds after attacking, which is great for situations where you need to focus fire or split attacks across different units. However, they are inefficient compared to Dracoths because they are not Battleline, their Rend-1 attacks aren't very good against a high save meta, cohesion really messes up reinforcing them, and the 4+ Save feels like a liability. Would you play them if they cost 170 points like Gore-Gruntas?

A Lord-Exorcist might not be viable right now, but his ability to stop revives on units within 9" is insanely strong against Fyreslayers and Soulblight. With a significant point drop and the right metagame (Nighthaunt?) he will see play.

Right now elite Scions lists are really good because we still see a lot of big MONSTERS which are low effective wounds per point. These kinds of elite Scions lists don't have the body count to contest objectives and rely on wiping out the enemy to take their space. If we start seeing big blocks of Vulkite Berzerkers (30 Vulkites are really hard to kill) and Zombie hordes then things like Evocators and Stormkeep will become more enticing. If we see more MSU armies like Beasts of Chaos then Envoy of the Heavens becomes stronger.

I don't think having a few bad units makes the whole book bad. It could have more interesting interactions but it's functional, competitive, and has the flexibility to be adaptable. 

[Kelsicle]

2 hours ago, PJetski said:

I think it's an impossible standard because GW has shown us over the past 30 years that they are unwilling or unable to write a book where every unit is viable. It would be possible if an entirely different writing team was in charge of the rules and the FAQ - I am not going to waste any time thinking that GW will correct course now.

I can't argue why your standards are the way they are, but I think you are setting an impossible standard that will always lead to disappointment. If you hold that standard then every battletome is bad, and then you have to contend with the fact that you are spending your time and money on a hobby/game where every single product they release is inadequate. Personally I wouldn't be able to enjoy this hobby if I viewed things this way.

I agree that the allegiance abilities are not very exciting. In addition to "power creep" I'm also concerned about "interesting ability creep"; newer battletomes will almost certainly get much more engaging and interesting abilities than what we are seeing right now. However, potential future updates to the game don't make the battletome bad right now.

There's a lot more to the book than just stormdrakes and raptors. Those units have huge threat ranges so they are easy to use, but they have low maximum damage - great against 18 wound MONSTER units, but not as good against 60 wounds of infantry. The metagame is already adapting. 

The Stormcast battletome as a whole has the tools to be adaptable to just about any kind of metagame... it all depends on the points. For example, Dracolines are not objectively bad; they are high volume attackers with a 12" move, natively re-roll charges, have no opportunity cost on losing shooting if they run & charge with Steadfast march, and can blast some mortal wounds after attacking, which is great for situations where you need to focus fire or split attacks across different units. However, they are inefficient compared to Dracoths because they are not Battleline, their Rend-1 attacks aren't very good against a high save meta, cohesion really messes up reinforcing them, and the 4+ Save feels like a liability. Would you play them if they cost 170 points like Gore-Gruntas?

A Lord-Exorcist might not be viable right now, but his ability to stop revives on units within 9" is insanely strong against Fyreslayers and Soulblight. With a significant point drop and the right metagame (Nighthaunt?) he will see play.

Right now elite Scions lists are really good because we still see a lot of big MONSTERS which are low effective wounds per point. These kinds of elite Scions lists don't have the body count to contest objectives and rely on wiping out the enemy to take their space. If we start seeing big blocks of Vulkite Berzerkers (30 Vulkites are really hard to kill) and Zombie hordes then things like Evocators and Stormkeep will become more enticing. If we see more MSU armies like Beasts of Chaos then Envoy of the Heavens becomes stronger.

I don't think having a few bad units makes the whole book bad. It could have more interesting interactions but it's functional, competitive, and has the flexibility to be adaptable. 

Some really good points here, particularly about "interesting ability creep", I think this is something that SCE suffered from greatly in 2.0.

I tend to agree that overall a lot of the "unplayable" warscrolls are only a points change away from becoming viable, and with new GHB meta on the horizon I think we will see a complete over hall in the kind of SCE lists we see popping up.

[JackStreicher]

6 hours ago, Kelsicle said:

I tend to agree that overall a lot of the "unplayable" warscrolls are only a points change away from becoming viable, and with new GHB meta on the horizon I think we will see a complete over hall in the kind of SCE lists we see popping up

Let’s hope so!

[CommissarRotke]

has anyone seen Vindictor conversions for different weapons? I'm leaning towards buying the Thunderstrike Warcry box, and I'm considering if I could/should give the 5 in that box swords to count-as Liberators.

[NauticalSoup]

I can look at my NOS Vindictors tonight to see but I did a lot of weapon conversions to sequitors and it was pretty smooth. Stormcast weapons mostly seem to have the same type of material on th grips and hafts making subs seamless.

Sacrosanct units especially sequitors and evocators came with a lot of extra weapons that would be good for swaps. 

Edit: didn't mean to include a quote 

Edited March 4, 2022 by NauticalSoup

[CommissarRotke]

42 minutes ago, NauticalSoup said:

I can look at my NOS Vindictors tonight to see but I did a lot of weapon conversions to sequitors and it was pretty smooth. Stormcast weapons mostly seem to have the same type of material on th grips and hafts making subs seamless.

Sacrosanct units especially sequitors and evocators came with a lot of extra weapons that would be good for swaps. 

Guessing you replied to the wrong post? Thank you though, I don't have any extra bits as I only bought Dominion and Soul Wars for troop choices, and I haven't pulled the trigger on this box yet.

[NauticalSoup]

Oh I must have had the text highlighted from when I was reading it. I didn't mean to quote at all! Probably hit multiquote on reflex 

Edited March 4, 2022 by NauticalSoup

[NauticalSoup]

33 minutes ago, CommissarRotke said:

Guessing you replied to the wrong post? Thank you though, I don't have any extra bits as I only bought Dominion and Soul Wars for troop choices, and I haven't pulled the trigger on this box yet.

You might be able to find someone in your area who was collecting sacrosanct or strike chamber before who would part with the bits. The multipart kits for a lot of stormcast infantry come with a ton of extra weapons so anyone who kept their bits should have enough to equipped 10 guys. 

[Dogmantra]

Honestly with the way the blades are on the vindictor spears, you could probably hack together some servicable swords by just trimming down the handles from polearms to hilts. Wouldn't be an amazing solution, and the arms might need reposing a bit but it would be a budget solution.

[CommissarRotke]

1 hour ago, Dogmantra said:

Honestly with the way the blades are on the vindictor spears, you could probably hack together some servicable swords by just trimming down the handles from polearms to hilts. Wouldn't be an amazing solution, and the arms might need reposing a bit but it would be a budget solution.

I was wondering that as well; the spears might work as weird short swords, and a few of the poses could easily look normal with a sword too