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

[macrake]

If you want to have fun at the bottom tables with that one Gloomspite player or BoC guy, go ahead and spend 700 points on 4 ballista and an ordinator to do 10 dmg against a 4+.

 

[PJetski]

10 minutes ago, macrake said:

If you want to have fun at the bottom tables with that one Gloomspite player or BoC guy, go ahead and spend 700 points on 4 ballista and an ordinator to do 10 dmg against a 4+.

 

You sure do love moving those goalposts

[mystycalchemy]

Couldn't you take Averon Stormsire + Stormsire's Cursebreakers for cheaper empower? Its 230 for a Knight-Incantor and an empower battery. So, basically 105 points for Empower. Which seems like a decent deal if you want them just to empower Castigators or such. 

Is it gonna 5-0 tournaments? No, of course not. But not every list needs to be tournament ready, some of us just want to have a semi-good list that has a chance at our LGS vs whatever may show up. Y'all need to calm down with the "this is never gonna win a tournament"

[Champasaur]

Yeah I really, personally have a problem with the "If it's not the best, apparent thing in the roster, then it's trash tier mentality." Like we have had the book for 8 days now and people are already sighing away saying that if the roster can't consistently win tournaments then it's trash tier and you shouldn't buy/have any.

I get that tournament play is the priority for some people, but that frame of mind is just disheartening to some of us who are just in it for fun. It all could just be phrased better.

[Champasaur]

I dunno, maybe I just have the wrong frame of mind.

[Rachmani]

Furthermore it’s bad from a competitive standpoint anyway. 
Stagnation is the bane of every competitive mindset. You *have* to try out stuff if you want to get ahead of the meta.

Blatantly ruling out things after little to no playtime sounds mind boggling to me.

 

[Sleepa]

8 hours ago, PJetski said:

Episode 1 of my new podcast "The Stormkeep" (featuring @jhamslam ) is here

HD is still processing as I write this post

Gonna go play some games with the new book now

Listening to this while I cook dinner right now! 35 minutes in and loving the discussion so far. Thanks for doing this.

[ledha]

3 hours ago, macrake said:

Yeah good luck with that in a competitive setting. Spending 230 points on evos to empower 6 castigators or a single ballista? At current points, they are worthless if you actually want to compete in a tourney.

The evocators also fight -quite well even- and do things alongside using the spell. I'll never understand people who add the point cost of a support unit to another one, like the evocators will just stand there and do nothing else and that their only value is casting empower.

Do you also add 140 pts to every khorne unit because of their need of a bloodsecrator ?

[ledha]

3 hours ago, macrake said:

Yeah good luck with that in a competitive setting. Spending 230 points on evos to empower 6 castigators or a single ballista? At current points, they are worthless if you actually want to compete in a tourney.

The evocators also fight -quite well even- and do things alongside using the spell. I'll never understand people who add the point cost of a support unit to another one, like the evocators will just stand there and do nothing else and that their only value is casting empower.

Do you also add 140 pts to every khorne unit because of their need of a bloodsecrator ?

[CommissarRotke]

11 hours ago, jhamslam said:

its not just a scale problem their high contrast 'eavy metal paint style isnt suited to painting womens faces. Like check out the Sisters faces or the Drukhari faces, they look grotesque

1. my question now is: at what point should we take this as an unwillingness to learn to paint female faces? I feel like it's been far too many releases for both 40k and AOS that we've done the "oh they're just worse at female faces, wait until release) ...

2. glad to see you and PJ combining your powers to bring us the battletome review

------
I was also expecting our preorders this upcoming weekend, so the fact that it's 40k is extremely irksome...

[Dogmantra]

On the topic of shooting I did some simulations. Each test was run 100 000 times using the wonderful program McDie.

I compared a few different SCE shooting options to see which had the best damage output, and to be more fair than comparing unit for unit, I compared by getting the points to be roughly equal. I compared 3 Longstrikes, 2 Ballistae, 6 Castigators, and 5 Judicators with Bows. Each of these is somewhere between 200 and 280 points. which is close enough for me. The Ballistae are the most expensive here, but I was primarily trying to judge its worth and I did want to give it as fair a shake as possible, so rather than go over with e.g. another 100 pts of Castigators, I erred on the side of caution.

Here are my results, in reverse order because it only occurred to me to check the Ballista profiles against each other after testing a bunch of other stuff. The graphs you will see track the damage output of 100 000 tests against a 4+ save and a 1+ save (i.e. a 2+ save with a +1 bonus from somewhere). These were chosen to show the spread of the effect of Rend -- a 4+ means that the Long Range Ballista with -3 Rend is just enough to remove the save entirely while -2 rend weapons will still allow a save, and an effective 1+ is enough that -2 and -3 Rend still have value above -1. Basically, I wanted higher rend to always equal higher damage in these tests as I was primarily trying to be as kind as possible to the Ballista. This does mean that the Judicators with their -1 Rend do look a little worse on paper here because sometimes -1 Rend will be enough to remove a save entirely, and then you're paying points for -2 which isn't doing anything. But they're not the focus of these tests.

The graphs show the % of the time that each given damage value will be scored.

Ballista Comparison:

Spoiler

Here we can see that there is actually an interesting difference between the two profiles and it may be worth considering which to use each time. The Long Range shot has a higher mean damage, but you can see it is far swingier. The bottom graph shows the % of the time each mode deals more damage. As you can see, despite generally having a higher mean damage against strong saves, the rapid fire attack deals more damage than long range would more often even against the toughest targets. This was actually a surprise to me as I had done the mean damage in my head and dismissed the rapid fire mode as just worse, but I had underestimated the power of a good bell curve. Personally I would err on the side of always using it if possible because I don't think that hoping for lucky swings is a good gameplan.

Spoiler

If we then look at multiple shooting options compared, we can see that the Ballista just doesn't stack up that well against them. The long range shot still has a distressingly high chance of dealing 0 damage, especially against strong saves that the -3 rend feels like it should deal with. Longstrikes have the highest mean damage, but they are fairly swingy with quite a high standard deviation. For a more consistent output that is fairly comparable it seems like Judicators are a good choice against strong saves, and Castigators against weak saves. Worth noting that this test only looked at Castigators using the -2 rend profile, and they already compare somewhat favourably to the Judicators against weak saves.

Of course it is always worth remembering that damage output is not the whole picture. What is not represented here is that the Ballistae are a bit easier to buff (with a Lord Ordinator, although that is again another points investment - further testing could reveal if that is worth it), and that the Ballistae do not lose effectiveness as they take damage, whereas it takes only 2 damage to lower the effectiveness of any other shooting unit. Then there is the matter of range to consider. I don't think the extra 6" on the Ballista's longrange shot justifies the significantly lower output vs Longstrikes, but it's certainly a bigger deal compared to Judicators and Castigators which it outranges by much more.

Anyway, I thought this was quite interesting and I think I may go ahead and play a bit more with the maths. I'm interested to see how Castigators fare against Judicators in more situations now.

 

EDIT: okay, I did a bit more testing of Castigators vs Judicators, and comparisons between their profiles.
For Castigators, rerolls deal more damage to anything with worse than a 3+ save pre-rend, it's a tie for 3+, and anything better the extra rend deals more. As soon as you introduce a +1 to hit, the rend is almost always better.
For Judicators, the magic number is also a 3+ save pre-rend, with bows beating out crossbows for damage on anything with a 3+ or better pre-rend, while crossbows take over once you hit 4+ and worse. This isn't including either special weapon option.
And the comparisons across units basically hold. Essentially, the Crossbow Judicators are specialised for poor save enemies (4+ and worse), the Bow Judicators for strong save enemies (3+ and better), and Castigators straddle the line. They lag just a little within either specialisation when compared to Judicators, so you really are paying for the ability to switch to whichever suits your situation more. I think Judicators win out overall because of how popular save stacking is at the moment, as well as the range and the fact that Judicators are battleline so you can take a big block of 15 and shoot once in the hero phase with that unit, whereas if you want to shoot in the hero phase with your Castigators, you're shooting with a weedy little group of 6 at best, the equivalent of 5 Judicators.

Edited September 20, 2021 by Dogmantra

[Mark Williams]

5 hours ago, ledha said:

The evocators also fight -quite well even- and do things alongside using the spell. I'll never understand people who add the point cost of a support unit to another one, like the evocators will just stand there and do nothing else and that their only value is casting empower.

Do you also add 140 pts to every khorne unit because of their need of a bloodsecrator ?

Actually yeah, I do consider units and their supporting units, when used as part of a threat combo, to be a net sum of their points.

[JackStreicher]

GW really does not want to sell those dragons, right? 🤣

[Evantas]

8 hours ago, Champasaur said:

Yeah I really, personally have a problem with the "If it's not the best, apparent thing in the roster, then it's trash tier mentality." Like we have had the book for 8 days now and people are already sighing away saying that if the roster can't consistently win tournaments then it's trash tier and you shouldn't buy/have any.

I get that tournament play is the priority for some people, but that frame of mind is just disheartening to some of us who are just in it for fun. It all could just be phrased better.

While as a more competitively-oriented player I'm mildly disappointed, the Stormcast tome is not too bad. Its main problem is that the Stormcast units are a little conservatively priced.

Most warscrolls (Knight-Heraldor is a big exception, I wish they buffed the Evocators / Stardrakes more and just raised the price more) are fine, just that they need a points drop to make them viable competitively. (e.g. Knight-Venator / Lord-Exorcist? wtf is with the points hike?) 

This is a easy fix imo, after a few months. 

[Phasteon]

So I want to share my first experience with the new Tome vs. Bonereapers: 

His List:

Katakros

Zandtos

Soulmason

2x 20 Mortek

2x 5 Deathrider

Harvester

 

My List: 

Lord-Imperatant

(General: Master of Magic, Artefact: Arcane Tome (Thundershock? -1 wound spell)

Knight-Arcanum

Knight-Vexillor /w Apotheosis

Praetors

(Warlord)

 

10 Vindictors

3 Annihilators

5 Retributors

(Hunters)

5 Liberators

5 Liberators

10 Judicators

(Hunters)

Triumph (Inspired)

Enhancement (Holy Command)

- Thunderbolt Volley

- Unleash thy Hatred

 

Summary: 

I won by points in the Battleplan where you need to burn objectives in order to score (8 VP if you hold it for 5 turns) - forgot the name - boy was it a fun game! 

Bonereapers after FAQ are still very hard to take down and Katakros CP stealing ability hit me hard one time where I couldnt all out defense my mystic shield Vindictors which cost me about 4 models (+1A Mortek still hurt!) 

But all in all I just used them to block anyway and they did it like 2 battlerounds against ~40 morteks + Katakros. 

Judicators with Thunderbolt Volley are BRUTAL. Took care of the Harvester in one go and shot the other shots into some Mortek to thin their ranks. (In hindsight I could have picked on Katakros as he was at only 5 Wounds remaining at some point, but I didnt want to anger the old man. 

 

Also Retributors are huge now! Before I would hesitate to throw them into anything really, this game they made short work of Zandtos and crashed into 5 Deathriders later just to completely obliterate them in one go. Should have let them fight Morteks I guess, but the forced his hand to burn his backfield objective t2 and secured me 8 points on my flank, so it was worth! 

 

The star(s) of the list!

#1 Lord-„I can do everything“-Imperatant! 

SO happy with this guy! Being able to put out one of the most ridiculous debuff spells in AoS with a REROLL was huge! 

That + his guidance for the Annihilators t1 which assassinated his Soulmason AND his 2 free CP against a Katakros that robbed me 2 CP EVERY.SINGLE.TURN probably secured me victory big time. What a man! 

 

#2 Liberators!! 

Yupp, I‘m in love with my nostalgia boys. 

They held their own against Zandtos + Deathrider charge thanks to +2 Save (Shields + All out) AND put some hurt back thanks to better profiles and ley low the tyrant! Absolutely worth their 115 points and I will stick to those! 

honorable mention: 

- Judicators as explained before

- Knight-Vexillor (12“ reroll charges was REALLY handy AND he revived 3 Liberators which then killed the remaining 2 Deathriders and secured my backline) 

 

The only thing I‘d probably change is the Knight-Arcanum - there is really no reason not to just pick an Incantor or Lord-Relictor with translocation instead, but she unfortunately has to leave anyway when Bastian Cathalos finally arrives, so no worries in that regard. 

Other than that Stormcast are very resilient now, the Hammers of Sigmar 6+ ward did some work here and there and I should probably buy some Fulminators for the future as those guys look mean on paper. 

Also want to try the following wombo combo: 

4 Fulminators in a Vanguard (free 6“ run) with Steadfest March (run + charge) and then all out attacking into something big and scary t1/2

 

One general thing with the Tome that i felt: 

It has pretty much all the things it had before, just more limited in uses. 

e.g. Anvils double tap = thunderbolt volley

Hollowed Knights run + charge = steadfast march

Forgot the name but the +1A thingy = unleash hatred (Paladins only) 

 

As a Hammers of Sigmar player I pretty much got the best from everything. 

6+ ward where I needed it

double tapping Judicators

+1A Paladins for bursting stuff

 

And no wasted trait / artifact, which let me pick something actual useful for my second enhancement. 

Even without Gavriel* and Yndrasta which I used before instead of Retributors I never had so much fun playing SCE! 

 

*He was just good, because his CA was kinda cheesy, I‘m happy it is gone and he is no auto include anymore. Thats how internal balance should go. 

 

Anyway, hope my insight helps! 

Happy righteous thunderclapping to all of you ❤️

 

[Marcvs]

5 minutes ago, Phasteon said:

(Hunters)

5 Liberators

5 Liberators

10 Judicators

(Hunters)

 

Thanks for sharing! Just a heads up, cause it had 0 impact in your game: you can't take the hunters battalion more than once (it's noted in the GHB)

[Scurvydog]

So as it seems dragons might take forever to release and will take some time to paint up, I am thinking about alternative competitive builds, which should at least be faster to paint up (and some can be done now!). I love paladins so my thoughts on a competitive build so far looks something like this:

Yndrasta

Lord-Imperatant

Lord-Relictor (General with reroll prayer trait)

10 x Protectors

6 x Annihilators with Grandhammers

2 x Annihilators with shields

2 x Annihilators with shields

Total of 1970 points

Low on bodies and wounds, but strong saves. Not happy about taking mortal wound damage at all, but the idea is to alpha in a brutal way. Relictor teleports the 10 protectors, while the 6 annihilators drop down within 7". The other annihilators drop down on points/to deal MW and potentially tie up something. Yndrasta should ideally be in rez range of both big paladin units if possible, and can be an utility piece where needed.

Of course clever screening can cause major problems for this list, if they can't get in proper and get hit with any major MW output, then they go bye bye, but against anything else they will be tough cookies to shift and also hit like a ton of bricks. 10 protectors with 4 hammers and unleash thy hatred will melt just about anything that needs to be melted. Same goes for the Grandhammers with just an all out attack.

Unfortunately there is not enough points to do much with the 2x2 annihilators, as just 20 more points could have been 10 more protectors, so I went for the flexible choice instead.

Thoughts and ideas? Other takes on a Knights Excelsior list? 

 

[PrimeElectrid]

11 hours ago, PJetski said:

Lord-Relictor (translocation, general: reroll, Arcane Tome: Celestial Blades)

Lord-Ordinator

Knight-Incantor

2x5 Evocators (or 1x10 for stronger Translocation charges)

3x5 Libs

4x Ballista

1x6 Castigators

1975/2000

Any stormhost works

Archaon/gargants/morathi/gotrek/teclis are going to run over this list without breaking a sweat.

Edited September 20, 2021 by PrimeElectrid

[Marcvs]

4 minutes ago, PrimeElectrid said:

Archaon/gargants/morathi/gotrek/teclis are going to run over this list without breaking a sweat.

sure, the strongest lists out there will win against a list built under a lot of external constraints (available models notably). As long as this is clear from the start and you're not gunning for the podium, that seems alright?

[PrimeElectrid]

11 minutes ago, Marcvs said:

sure, the strongest lists out there will win against a list built under a lot of external constraints (available models notably). As long as this is clear from the start and you're not gunning for the podium, that seems alright?

Yeah but I am.

Sorry, don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but at this point I think my best choice is to drop out.

[Phasteon]

1 hour ago, Marcvs said:

Thanks for sharing! Just a heads up, cause it had 0 impact in your game: you can't take the hunters battalion more than once (it's noted in the GHB)

Interesting, I guess it‘ll just be the SCE onedrop for them then? 

[Souleater]

It sounds as if the Lord Impertinent* is the new Heraldor.

 

Not smashing faces himself but providing good (de)buffs to all and sundry while shouting ‘Have you seen my Forcelance?’

 

Kevin Sorbo would be so 🥲 

In my own lists I am still tempted to keep LA on Gryphcharger as my general. I like the healing spell and mobility- the latter has become even better now!

*Not a typo.

[lare2]

1 hour ago, Scurvydog said:

ndrasta

Lord-Imperatant

Lord-Relictor (General with reroll prayer trait)

10 x Protectors

6 x Annihilators with Grandhammers

2 x Annihilators with shields

2 x Annihilators with shields

Total of 1970 points

Love lists like this. I always seem to gravitate towards KE now. Protectors are just nuts at the minute. Been playing around trying to fit 15 in. I also normally try to slot in 6 Longstrike because of obvious reasons. 

As someone who moved over from Death to SCE just before the new edition, this kind of elite playstyle is exactly what I was hoping to see. Very happy with the new book  because of this. 

 

[Yondaime]

3 hours ago, JackStreicher said:

GW really does not want to sell those dragons, right? 🤣

yes

 

This is getting ridicolous, problem is, it will be a month since the preorder gets announced

Edited September 20, 2021 by Yondaime

[Marcvs]

1 hour ago, Yondaime said:

yes

 

This is getting ridicolous, problem is, it will be a month since the preorder gets announced

it is also interesting, as they normally try to avoid the situation of "rules without models" (since it encourages proxying and third parties miniatures, and it's not like "dragon riders" is a very innovative concept)