Need help with basic Stormcast tactics

[Battlebeard]

I'm trying to get back into AoS with Stormcast after a break and I'm really struggling against my friend's Kruleboyz, which he assures me are one of the worst armies in the game.

Can anyone point me towards some basic tactical advice for Stormcast, please?

I've played a lot of 40k with various armies but I'm having trouble getting to grips with a mostly slow, mostly melee army - it feels like I either attack and die to mortal wounds, or stand back and die to mortal wounds after he walks towards me for a couple of turns.

[Mattrulesok]

What's your list? There's not one list or one way to play stormcast so developing tactics around what you're playing is key.

[Dogmantra]

Although Kruelboyz might not be the best performing army at the moment, they do have mortal wounds in spades. Stormcasts have pretty good saves across the board but you pay for it in high points costs. If those saves are bypassed, you're more sad than the average army. So it's not entirely the case that you're playing against a really weak army and losing, they do have some specific strengths against you.

Seeing a list of models you own would help.

In general, try to focus on playing the objectives. With SCE you have an amazing tool for this in Scions of the Storm. Off-board deployment is very powerful to threaten objectives and battle tactics, even if you just leave 5 Liberators in the sky.

[Battlebeard]

Thanks for the replies, here are the models I have available:

(and if someone could explain how to use spoiler tags I'd be grateful, I didn't want this wall of text!)

Vandus Hammerhand

Astreia Solbright

Aventis Firestrike

Yndrasta

Vorrus Starstrike

Dacian Anvil

Larissa Shadowstalker

Lord Arcanum

Lord-Arcanum on Gryph-charger

Lord Relictor

Lord Imperatant

Knight Relictor

2 Knight-Incantors

2 Knight-Arcanums

Knight Questor

Knight Vexillor with Banner of Apotheosis

Knight-Judicator

2 Stormdrake Guard (swords)

Stormstrike Chariot (spear)

Celestar Ballista

10 Liberators

24 Sequitors

15 Vindictors

5 Retributors

6 Evocators

3 Evocators on Dracolines

11 Castigators

3 Annihilators

3 Praetors

3 Prosecutors (hammers)

Steelheart's Champions

Endless Spells

I've tried a few different approaches:

Trying to take out one of the gunlines of Boltboyz by dropping in some sacrificial Prosecutors to eat the overwatch, sorry unleash hell, with some Annihilators to follow them in. Very dependent on making the charge rolls which I only seem to be able to do with one of the units - with the result that whichever unit makes the charge dies to unleash hell and the unit that doesn't make the charge dies to the Boltboyz in the following turn.

I've also tried to get at the Boltboyz with Dracolines but my friend screens them with Hobgrotz so I can rarely get near them without being shot to pieces.

In the last game I tried ignoring the Boltboyz and going after a couple of units that were masked from his shooting by terrain - a Mirebrute Troggoth and some Gutrippaz. I threw the Stormdrake Guard, Yndrasta and the Chariot at them - mostly to see what they could do, not having played many games, and in an effort to get him to react to me for a change. The Stormdrake Guard bounced off the Troggoth and died straight away, and while I did manage to eventually clear those units with Yndrasta and the Chariot, it was a hard slog and they were so badly hurt they were easily taken out when he brought his Snatchaboss into play.

I have thought about trying to avoid unleash hell by shooting his Boltboyz, but because he's invisible outside of 12" I'd have to deep strike my missile units very close - so even if they did eliminate one block of Boltboyz (he runs 2 x 6) they wouldn't survive the experience.

The other thought I had was to use magic - the Everblaze Comet, for example, because I don't need to target a specific unit, but he has the chap on the vulture who has multiple unbinds and kills your wizards when he does so. So that doesn't seem like it'll work.

The only way I can see things working is to take objectives via deep strike and try to hold them as he volleys mortal wounds at me - I usually play Hammers of Sigmar so at least I get a ward save - but that feels deeply unsatisfying, not even really like I'm fighting him, if that makes sense?

Perhaps I'm too used to 40k where the units holding objectives can generally return fire, even if the damage done is low, and need to adjust my mindset?

Edited August 26, 2022 by Battlebeard

[readercolin]

It is possible to tailor a stormcast list to beat kruelboyz, however, you have to be aware that kruelboyz were basically designed as a hard counter to stormcast.  Specifically, they do most of their damage via mortal wounds, which allows them to ignore stormcast's high armor saves, and stormcast are pointed with the expectation that their high armor saves are effective.  That being said, lets break down Kruelboyz really quick.

Kruelboyz armies consist of the following:

Gutrippaz - battleline chaff that is easy to ignore, or just hit before it can hit back
Hobgrots - (conditional battleline) chaff that they might use to throw in front of you, screen you and prevent charges
Boltboyz - the actually dangerous unit.  These guys are easy to buff to deal mortals on a 5+ instead of a 6+, and can reach out and touch you.  Additionally, they can be covered in mud to prevent you from shooting them from range.
Breka-Boss on Troggoth - a big smashy thing, hit it first and it folds
Snatchaboss on Sludgeraker Beast - this guy does good mortal wounds, and causes 6's to hit to deal an extra mortal wound in an aura around it, making it a high priority target to kill
Swampcalla Shaman - technically a spellcaster, but realistically you bring them for the mortals on a 5+ to hit instead of a 6+

Everything else doesn't do anything particularly worth noting.  As we can see, there are really only 3 things that are worth caring about in a Kruelboyz army.  The boltboyz, the snatchaboss, and the breka-boss, and as a support piece the shaman.  Everything else can be more or less ignored if possible, or taken down after the priority targets are dealt with.  So how do we do that?

Option 1 - shooting.  Vanguard Raptors with longstrike crossbows will outrange everything in the kruelboyz army, even if they are in big yellers, and if they try to move closer to you than the range on their boltboyz drops.  This means that you can have some longstrikes and just use them to pick off priority targets and prevent them from getting to you.  If you don't want to go vanguard raptors, you can also go judicators though now you would be in range of their shooting, or you can look at running stardrakes, knight-judicators, and celestar ballista's to hit them from range.  However, if your opponent chooses to get covered in mud, (which they can do on d3 units), then they won't be visible outside of 12", which can counter you if you go hard shooting.  You'll still be able to pick off support pieces, or clear screens, but you'll need something else to deal with the boltboyz.

Option 2 - Mortal Wound bombs.  The Knight-judicator, the knight-vexilor (with the meteoric standard), celestant prime, Annihilators (when they land via scions of the storm), and the everblaze comet all do mortal wounds to all targets in an area.  Most of these are once per game, but even a double-reinforced unit of boltboyz is only 18 wounds, and you can fairly easily dish out enough mortals in an area to battleshock them or at least drastically reduce their output due to killing a few and picking off the supporting shamans. 

Option 3 - alpha strike charge.  Use a Lord-Relictor (or knight-relictor) with translocation to teleport a melee unit up nice and close and charge them.  Drop annihilators from the sky to charge them.  Use prosecutors to charge on a 3d6 to prevent them from unleashing hell into higher priority targets.  But get up in his face and smash.

Note that all of these options can be used together with some sort of mix.  However, the best way to run stormcast is as a combined arms approach, and I would recommend getting about 1/4 of your army with good shooting, and another 1/4 of your army as a good melee hammer, with the rest of your army leaning one way or the other and some support pieces.

 

Edit:

From reviewing your models, you are missing a good shooting section.  Get some more shooting in your list that can take out priority targets, clear screens, etc.  Additionally, make sure that you play cagey - don't just throw your models down and attempt to charge - hold back, score your battle tactics, and whittle down your opponents force some before you commit.

Edited August 26, 2022 by readercolin

[Battlebeard]

Thanks for the comprehensive information!

One question on Option 1 - if my opponent is Grinnin' Blades, isn't his whole army invisible outside of 12"?

[Mattrulesok]

Ok so boltboyz are really the biggest threat in that army so the quicker you can get them out the better. Because he can't be shot outside of 12 you have to create your opening with movement.

 

Put units in reserve, it prevents your opponent from just moving his units freely. However don't rely on deep striking and charging, the best units to deepstrike tend to be shooting units to give them a better angle or range for shooting, or cheap units for choking the battlefield and taking objectives that it doesn't matter if they die.

Use ranges. His boltboyz his hard but the 3 shot mode has a max range of 17" (12 range +5 move) so keep your dragons/chariot/yndrasta 17.1 inches away so on your next turn they can move across the board and shoot/charge the unit

Use your cheap units to screen his monsters out. Redeemer's are suprisingly tanky and opponents that don't respect them can be punished.

Stormcast don't have as many rules, tricks or abilities as most other factions but we do have solid warscrolls with good damage so positioning is key.

 

Spoiler

Allegiance: Stormcast Eternals
- Stormhost: Hammers of Sigmar (Scions of the Storm)
- Grand Strategy:
- Triumphs:
Yndrasta, The Celestial Spear (320)*
Knight-Judicator with Gryph-Hounds (205)*
- General
- Command Trait: Master of Magic
- Artefact: Arcane Tome (Universal Artefact)
- Spell: Celestial Blades
5 x Vindictors (130)**
5 x Liberators (115)**
- Heavens-wrought Weapon and Shield
5 x Liberators (115)**
- Heavens-wrought Weapon and Shield
3 x Evocators on Celestial Dracolines (280)*
2 x Stormdrake Guard (340)*
- Drakerider's Warblade
1 x Stormstrike Chariot (165)*
6 x Castigators (210)*
- Reinforced x 1
3 x Prosecutors with Celestial Hammers (110)**
*Battle Regiment
**Redemption Brotherhood
Holy Command: Call for Aid

Total: 1990 / 2000
Reinforced Units: 1 / 4
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 107
Drops: 2
 

 

 

I've put a basic list in the spoilers for you. I'm not saying it's the best possible list with your models but it should be fun and let you compete with your friend.

 

Use the Castigators to screen out, drop them from the sky, is he lets you get within 12 of the boltboyz or shaman shoot them. If not use them to clear screens for charging units, chip his monsters.

Use your ranges to move the dragons into shooting range of the boltboyz, try to engineer a charge into the boltboyz with the chariot, it's super tanky and will kill a couple from the impact hits

Use the liberators and prosecutors to block your opponents charges and steal objectives

The knight judicator can be used as a bunker buster, drop his mortal wound bomb into your opponent s castle, it doesn't require line of site on the units it hits with gaze of Sigmar

Hammers of Sigmar so try to keep units in range of objectives for the ward save, it will go some way to softening mortal wound damage

 

 

 

 

[Battlebeard]

Thanks for all the info! I've got another game next week, I'll give that list a try!

EDIT: Sorry one more question, you mention that the Chariot is tanky but it only has 12 wounds, if my maths are right six properly buffed Boltboyz will do 11 mortal wounds on average via unleash hell, so my opponent only needs to roll slightly above average to kill it on the way in? Would it be best to suicide the Prosecutors to eat the overwatch if I have to use the Castigators to clear the screen?

Edited August 26, 2022 by Battlebeard
Extra questions

[Mattrulesok]

10 hours ago, Battlebeard said:

Thanks for all the info! I've got another game next week, I'll give that list a try!

EDIT: Sorry one more question, you mention that the Chariot is tanky but it only has 12 wounds, if my maths are right six properly buffed Boltboyz will do 11 mortal wounds on average via unleash hell, so my opponent only needs to roll slightly above average to kill it on the way in? Would it be best to suicide the Prosecutors to eat the overwatch if I have to use the Castigators to clear the screen?

Absolutely! If you can get the prosecutors there it's worth using them to eat the overwatch. 

It's worth noting though that you shouldn't eat shots from 6 bolt Boyz though. The prosecutors have a little shooting, the chariot does too, if the knight judicator works it can kill one and most importantly the mortal wounds from the chariots charge happen before the boltboyz shoot so that should also kill a couple. Again it might be worth using the dragons to snipe the boltboyz with shooting even if they engage a different unit in combat

[Battlebeard]

7 hours ago, Mattrulesok said:

Absolutely! If you can get the prosecutors there it's worth using them to eat the overwatch. 

It's worth noting though that you shouldn't eat shots from 6 bolt Boyz though. The prosecutors have a little shooting, the chariot does too, if the knight judicator works it can kill one and most importantly the mortal wounds from the chariots charge happen before the boltboyz shoot so that should also kill a couple. Again it might be worth using the dragons to snipe the boltboyz with shooting even if they engage a different unit in combat

I hadn't thought about the order in which the mortal wounds from the chariot and unleash hell operate - I only used the chariot for the first time in my last game. Thanks, that makes a lot more sense now.

Edited August 27, 2022 by Battlebeard

[Battlebeard]

I had another game on Wednesday and I just wanted to say your advice was really helpful - I still got tabled by the Kruleboyz but I did a LOT more damage to him this time, so that's good progress! 

In case anyone's interested we were playing Turf War, which was a bit unfortunate as I couldn't deep strike set anyone up in the Celestial Realm, which meant I couldn't put some of the advice into practice. We were also trying to play "properly" with the recommended amounts of terrain, and I've got to say 8 bits of terrain on a 60" x 44" board looks very sparse - we'd previously been playing with a lot more. It also gave him pretty open fire lanes.

The two drop army list allowed me to go first and I think I made the mistake of playing too aggressively - my opponent had one unit of six Boltboyz screened by Hobgrotz facing the Stormdrake Guard and Yndrasta, and I went for them. I seem to always fall into the trap of assuming the Stormcast have a higher damage output than they actually do - the Draconic Flamestreams from the Stormdrake Guard only killed a couple of the Boltboyz, so I had to charge them into the Hobgrot screen and have the dragons reach over them to get at the Boltboyz, while the riders fought the Hobgrotz. I had to rely on battleshock to kill the last Boltboy, and even after battleshock there were still a few Hobgrotz left. I should probably have thrown Yndrasta into them as well, but I got greedy as I rolled well on her charge and caught one of his Shamans - I thought she would easily kill him but it didn't happen.

I had a similar issue on the other flank, where he redeployed his Mirebrute Troggoth into no man's land near one of the objectives. I could still only get a couple of Castigators into range, but I got some hammers from the Prosecutors into him as well and chipped some wounds off. I threw the Prosecutors into his other unit of Boltboyz to eat the overwatch unleash hell (which they did, and died as you would expect) to clear the way for the Chariot to charge into the Mirebrute - unfortunately it couldn't kill it.

He then killed Yndrasta, the Stormdrake Guard and the Chariot in his turn (and then got the double turn), but I was on both objectives and managing to score secondaries battle tactics so it turned into a war of attrition. I was ahead on points in the first two rounds and he only levelled the score in the third... but after that I was tabled so he was well ahead at the end. Still, aside from Gobsprakk he was down to a few bits and pieces so at least he knew he'd been in a fight!

In retrospect I possibly should have deployed well back - well out of range - and waited out the army wide -1 to wound the Kruleboyz have for the first round - but in a game where I couldn't use reserves, if I ceded the objectives to my opponent at the start I'm not sure how I'd have dealt with him sticking a unit of six Boltboyz on each objective - I think I'd have been shot down as I walked into range. Any suggestions would be welcome!

I'm also not sure I used the Knight-Judicator properly - I fired off his mortal wound bomb immediately as I could hit seven units, but it only affected three and only did a couple of mortals to each unit. I only used his spell once because it was the only time he wasn't in denial range of Gobsprakk who would have murdered him with his 3D6 denial plus mortal wounds. I'll have to think about how to get more out of him.

Thanks again!