AoS Cities of Sigmar Battletome 2023 Discussion

[Lord Krungharr]

Well, tomorrow my League game opponent is sick so I'll be staying home and practicing with my Cities army vs my League Ogors army.  I'll see how the S'tanks and Luminarks fare vs Beastclaw Raiders and report back.  That's a good test of their mettle/metal?

The S'tanks fought a good fight last October but lost eventually as KO are apparently capable of good melee with their chainsaw ballon boys.  Who knew?!  But I think that was too many S'tanks. 

This game will be the Living City w Commander (divine champ w Curse, Macroscope) and 3 S'tanks, Warforger, Mage on Luminark, allied Lord Ordinator, 2x10 Black Ark Corsairs, Command Corps, and a plain Luminark.  

They'll be fighting Boulderhead w a Frostlord on Stonehorn (priest CT w Heal, -1 to wound him Mount Trait, 2 Monster Rampages artefact), 2 Huskards on Stonehorns (metalcruncher/hailstorm prayer and charger/speedy prayer), 2 Thundertusk Riders, and 1x2 clubber Mournfangs....and they'll be getting their Inspired Triumph at 1950 points.

Should be an interesting game.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

This is apparently the LVO 2024 winning list of Jeremy Lefebvre, according to reddit:

 

What stands out to me:

• Misthavn cavalry list
• Two drop
• No Fusiliers (which I agree with after playing with them, they are a build around unit that is not splashable).
• Seven heroes for maximum ordies
• Zenestra + double Command Corps goodstuff
• All the witch hunters

Seems like the human cavalry list is pretty good! Misthavn seems like a strong contender for best city right now.

[Doko]

this mate must be a genious because that list is hard to play and with a huge pile of things to keep in the head each turn.

after see the final with city vs city and both lists with two comand corps i think is easy to guess that the comand corp gonna be nerfed,very posible add unique to it or go beyond and even nerf it to not work on same unit.

glad see 0 fusilers after hear rivers of cryers and haters everywhere

also if they nerf the humans just because they won one tournament after months since the release, i hope they also take note as both players had 0,0 elfs and dwarfs.

so if they nerf humans i hope they are logical and buff the underpower units as dwarfs and some elfs

Edited January 22 by Doko

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

2 minutes ago, Doko said:

this mate must be a genious because that list is hard to play and with a huge pile of things to keep in the head each turn.

after see the final with city vs city and both lists with two comand corps i think is easy to guess that the comand corp gonna be nerfed,very posible add unique to it or go beyond and even nerf it to not work on same unit.

glad see 0 fusilers after hear rivers of cryers and haters everywhere

I still think the Fusilier block is good. But it does lock you into running a Master of Ballistics Alchemite and a city with a casting bonus (probably Hallowheart). Otherwise, it is definitely too inconsistent and expensive for top level tournament play.

I think the Fusiliers might be a bit of a noob stomper, though. If you get extra shots through your opponent carelessly triggering counter-fire, then they absolutely wreck stuff. But you can't expect that at top tables.

Making the command corps unique would be my favourite way to nerf them. I feel like one unit of them is managable, it only gets excessive when you run multiple.

[Lord Krungharr]

The only thing that should be nerfed is

1) the SawBones should NOT be healing the same unit three times...GWs own Core Rules FAQ apparently permits that despite it making no linguistic sense. 

2) Command Corps should be 0-1 per army, plus 1 per Marshal of whatever sort

3) Warforger should not be having bubble effects, for both armor and MW thing should be pick a single unit.

Do all that without touching points and they'd be fine, and STILL worth taking.  

Have no idea what all those witch hunters do.  Gonna have to read up.  Great players can make a pile of random do great things.  But Misthaven is awesome just for all the extra speed, which helps to get objectives and tactics all over the place, and place things for better Orders mechanics (which can be quite tricky to get off in some instances).

Really hoping they don't make S'tanks crazy more expensive.  That guy lost.

Forgot to add that my Beastclaw Raiders tabled a similar Cities army at the last tournament I went to, though he had a giant blob of Cavaliers in Excelsis and didn't play them as well.  Would like to see the matchups these Cities champions had.  I think that could make a difference as well.

Edited January 22 by Lord Krungharr

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

If anyone has the other Cities list from the LVO finals, I'd love to see it, by the way. 

[Lord Krungharr]

That one guy Gavin Grimgar (I think that's his name?) had a Stank Commander and I think 4 Stanks, 2 Command Corps, Warforger, a couple Cavalier units, I think a Hurricanum Mage, and possibly Zenestra.  Saw it somewhere but not finding it, think it was Hallowheart though.  

[woolf]

1 hour ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

If anyone has the other Cities list from the LVO finals, I'd love to see it, by the way. 

I believe it was this:

```Allegiance: Cities of Sigmar
- City: Hallowheart
- Mortal Realm: Ghur
- Grand Strategy: Reclaim for Sigmar!
- Triumphs: Inspired

Leaders
Battlemage on Celestial Hurricanum (260)*
- Universal Spell Lore: Levitate
Battlemage (100)**
- Arcane Trinkey: Realmstone Orb
- Lore of the Collegiate Arcane: Wildform
Alchemite Warforger (110)**
- Lore of Primal Frost: Merciless Blizzard
Steam Tank Commander (270)*
- General
- Command Trait: Divine Champion
- Artefact: Mastro Vivetti's Magnificent Macroscope
- Universal Prayer Scripture: Heal

Battleline
Steam Tank (230)*
Steam Tank (230)*
Steam Tank (230)**
Steam Tank (230)**

Units
6 x Freeguild Command Corps (170)*
6 x Freeguild Command Corps (170)**

Core Battalions
*Battle Regiment
**Battle Regiment

Total: 2000 / 2000
Reinforced Units: 0 / 4
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 118
Drops: 2```

[loky100]

I agree with all this. Steam tanks are OP and I brought them to a tournament in Dec, they did fantastic. They have so many shots and the 2+ is so punishing. Wouldn't be surprise if they get their points increased. Good job on the two people who came 1st and 2nd in LVO.

[Satyrical Sophist]

6 hours ago, Lord Krungharr said:

 

Have no idea what all those witch hunters do.  Gonna have to read up.  Great players can make a pile of random do great things.  But Misthaven is awesome just for all the extra speed, which helps to get objectives and tactics all over the place, and place things for better Orders mechanics (which can be quite tricky to get off in some instances).

 

Hexbane's Hunters are really pretty dang efficient vs one target, where they get bonus damage on them.  If you cut the cost down the middle you end up with a 90 point unit with 10 wounds, a 5+ and a 5++ and a 90 point  5 wound hero with a 5+ and 5++ 

The Ven Densts are cheap heroes (who only take one leadership spot between them) who each can give an order and are solo operatives. Both of them do double damage to wizards and daemons. Without that buff Galen is a pretty reasonable fighter and is pretty tough 5 wounds 4+ save and 5+ ward.  Doralia is just as tough and 25% less good in combat, but her crossbow is a good profile normally and 2 damage 4 rend 2 shots vs wizards and daemons.

The list ran the full allotment of leaders, giving a total of 7 orders each turn, with a bonus one once per game from the griffon.

From what I've read about the list one thing he used the individual characters for was blocking lanes. It sounds like the tournament allowed player placed terrain, and a single hero on foot can block a 7 and a bit inch gap between two pieces of impassable terrain, needing to be charged to get past.

 

One thing to note is that LVO was playing the Sawbones ability as requiring different units to be targeted.

 

Errata: Change the Freeguild Command Corp Sawbones ability to be "you can pick up to 3 different friendly Cities of Sigmar Human units...". This prevents healing the same unit more than once per Sawbone per turn.

https://bestcoastpairings.com/event/87QQLXGK2M?active_tab=overview

 

So that fix was already in effect for the tournament.

[Lord Krungharr]

Yeah, I did notice that Sawbones ruling they did.  Definitely the way it should have been.  

Player placed terrain at a tournament is for me a super duper annoying thing.  People talk about slowing the game down, and to me that REALLY slows the game down.  But a single cheapo model to block movement is great use of them.  I like my little Knight Zephyros as an ally for that...he can teleport too.

Regarding the OPness of Steam Tanks, they die to MW well enough, and there's plenty of rend stacking around various armies these days to chew through their armor, plus they kinda stink in combat (though admittedly better than they used to be).  Surprised the Prismatic Palisade isn't in more armies these days frankly.  Also they only count as 2 models on objectives; and I've rolled 5-6 shots on their 3D6 supercharged rend zero Steam Gun plenty in the few games I used them so far, which is terrible.  230 points is fine.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

Fun to see Steam Tanks doing so well now, considering how much of a meme unit they were in 2nd edition. I find it interesting that a list with 5 Steam Tanks managed to do this well at LVO, considering Steam Tanks can't capture for beans. I guess objective play just doesn't matter that much at high levels? Makes sense, given that battle tactics and grand strats are nearly half the points and out-capping the opponent is only one point per round.

I am not super worried about Steam Tanks being nerfed, though. They don't do anything special, they are just really efficient packages of stats. So they will probably see their points raised at worst.

In my own experience with Steam Tanks, they are definitely not unkillable. They get exploded by mortal wounds or even high rend pretty easily. If the opponent has the ability to sprinkle some mortals around, that also makes their overpressure ability a lot more risky and hurts their damage output pretty significantly. I think the meta definitely contains enough tools to adapt to Steam Tank spam lists. Unlike the double command corps, which probably requires some kind of errata.

[ScionOfOssia]

4 hours ago, Lord Krungharr said:

Surprised the Prismatic Palisade isn't in more armies these days frankly. 

Don’t be- It gets unbound before it can actually do anything. 

[Lord Krungharr]

 

16 hours ago, ScionOfOssia said:

Don’t be- It gets unbound before it can actually do anything. 

Guess that makes sense, though vs KO it would be very good!  Wish my Ogors would have had that a few weekends ago.

[ScionOfOssia]

15 minutes ago, Lord Krungharr said:

 

Guess that makes sense, though vs KO it would be very good!  Wish my Ogors would have had that a few weekends ago.

If you’ve got the spare points and the KO are either common in your meta or a particularly bad matchup, I could see it being a good tech piece against them, but the current meta heavily favors unbinding to casting so I’d watch out for that. 

[Lord Krungharr]

I always forget about the Null artefacts, even when I take them.  Time for a reminder-sheet.

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

I had a very close and exciting game against Stormcast yesterday.

After LVO, I wanted to try bringing all my Steam Tanks in a 2000 point game. My list was: Steam Tank Commander, two tanks, Battlemage on Hurricanum, Battlemage, Alchemite, Zenestra, Command Corps, 20 Fusiliers, 10 Steelhelms. Hallowheart subfaction.

My opponent brought: Lord-Relictor, Lord-Imperatant, Knight-Incantor, 2x3 Annihilators with Hammers, 3 Annihilators with Shields, 2x6 Questor Soulsworn, 2x3 Longstrikes, 2x3 Aetherwings. Schon of the Storm, Knights Excelsior.

Deployment:

Most of my opponent's stuff is in the heavens.

I won the game in Round 5, something like 18 to 16 points.

---

Stormcast took priority and held it the whole game. I did my best not to present good deep strike opportunities during deployment, because my opponent was obviously geared toward the Annihilators alpha strike. It somewhat worked, but I lost my Steelhelms, Zenestra, Warforger, Battlemage and most of the Fusiliers quite early. Some of these, like the Battlemage, were deliberate sacrifices. It seemed to me like I had no real targets for Pall of Doom that game and used him to just block deepstrikes and draw Longstrike fire. By the way: The Command Corps can block Holy Commands, so don't be like me and just eat a round of double shooting for no reason.

For the first two turns, things looked pretty grim. Some of my Fusiliers and my Alchemite survived the alpha strike, but later died to Longstrikes or the Stormcast mortals on death. However, I at least managed to destroy all Annihilators and some other small units the round they came down. That's one of the good things about the Steam Tank army: Power projection is really good, so I could always attack priority targets when I needed. Orders were oncr again very impactful: The threat of Counter-Fire helped me direct the Longstrike attacks away from valuable targets (and gave me free shooting once or twice). This worked really well turn 1, where I deliberately left a Steam Tank not covered by counter fire, knowing that my Command Corps would be able to heal it on my turn. Effectively blocked a round of Longstrike shooting completely.

Counter-charge helped making combats more favourable to me and helped me chase down objective holding units. I had Divine Champion as my command trait this game. A Steam Tank with +1 to hit (Hurricanum), wound (prayer) and rend (counter-charge) is quite scary.

Around turn 3 I only had my Hurricanum, Tanks and Command Corps left. My opponent chose a battle tactics where he had to destroy my Hurricanum. I tried my best to prevent it, but it died to mortal wound kickback in the end.

My Command Corps ended up coming in super clutch in that combat, though, with the Whisperblade getting through 5 damage and killing two Annihilators by himself. What a cool guy.

That very much marked the turning point of the game, though, since without any Annihilators left and his Longtrikes damaged, my opponent just could not deal damage to my Tanks fast enough to outpace the healing the Command Corps was putting out. In the third round, my opponent scored no objectives (Limited Resources battle plan) and round 4 and 5 could not manage any of his battle tactics.

Meanwhile, I managed to get Mount the Charge with the Tank Commander and Raise the Banner with the Command Corps, while also hunting down his Lord-Relictor to secure my Grand Strategy (Banners Held High). Just goes to show that you don't win AoS games by killing alone, but by focusing on objectives and scoring. I needed some luck to do it, but I managed to just pull out the win through careful decision making in the end.

End of the game:

 

---

So, overall:

The Command Corps is really good, even if you bring just one. It was 100% instrumental in allowing me to win this game, by healing my Tanks, stopping commands and scoring me a battle tactic. Even the 1d3 reatreat movement bonus came in handy.

In regards to the list: I think you need to make a choice. Either run Fusilisers or run Tank spam. Fusiliers need screens and support so that they don't die to melee alpha strikes, but that costs points. I spent 400-something points this game on Steelhelms and Fusiliers that basically just died. Two extra Tanks would have been way more useful. Conversely, in my other games where I had two extra screening units of Steelhelms, the Fusiliers did a lot more work even after melee units charged my line. Fusiliers have the potential to be good, but they have a significant opportunity cost and definitely need to be built around.

On the topic of Tank spam, if you are not spamming the tanks, paying the extra 40 points for a Tank Commander feels like an extremely good investment. Self-issuing orders and commands and access to Heroic Recovery are super worth that price tag.

Overall, I think I will be sticking to my two Tank Commander list for the time being. Tank spam may be strong, but it's not very compatible with Fusiliers.

Pictured: Stormcast cowards hiding from the wrath of the true Sigmar-male Steam-Chad Commander.

 

[JackStreicher]

Thx for the nice batrep @Neil Arthur Hotep

I‘ve got one question concerning the Terrain: What’s the name of the floating island waterfall? (So I can scour ebay for it) 😃

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

3 hours ago, JackStreicher said:

Thx for the nice batrep @Neil Arthur Hotep

I‘ve got one question concerning the Terrain: What’s the name of the floating island waterfall? (So I can scour ebay for it) 😃

Thanks Jack!

That's the GW Cleansing Aqualith. You might even still be able to buy it through normal hobby stores.

Edited January 28 by Neil Arthur Hotep

[Lord Krungharr]

Really eager/anxious to see if the Battlescroll Update limits our City support choices, or how many Stanks will fit.  I'm primed and ready to paint but want to wait and see what really fits after that.  GW often kneejerks after big events like the LVO.  

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

1 minute ago, Lord Krungharr said:

Really eager/anxious to see if the Battlescroll Update limits our City support choices, or how many Stanks will fit.  I'm primed and ready to paint but want to wait and see what really fits after that.  GW often kneejerks after big events like the LVO.  

I think something 100% happens with the Command Corps. But to be honest, I support that. In my last game, they really felt like they had an outsized impact for their points. Which, by the way, I think is fine if they are limited to 1 per list.

Steam Tanks, I don't know... They have been doing well. They might be too cheap at the moment. I could see them go up 20 to 30 points and still being worth it. I think the bigger problem is that you are strongly incentivized to spam them, since the easiest way to build an army that has more than one Steam Tank but can still perform well is to fill your battleline requirement with them. Running 3 Steam Tanks in a combined arms list is actually pretty hard due to list building restrictions.

[JackStreicher]

On 1/22/2024 at 10:37 AM, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

No Fusiliers (which I agree with after playing with them, they are a build around unit that is not splashable

As I've said: The unit is vastly overrated ^^

The List you posted is interesting, yet that's not what I'd call an army at all, it's a ragtag gang of heroes and some redshirts. Idk, it's not what the game is about for me.

Yet congratz to the winner!

 

Edit: Oops I did some Post-Necromancy right there XD

Edited January 29 by JackStreicher

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

A little rules interaction I only just realized:

My last game against Stormcast made me look closely at the counter-fire order. Since Stormcast can shoot in the hero phase, I wanted to check if the order could trigger off of that.

Turns out it can! There is actually no timing restriction at all (unlike, for example, suppressing fire, which is only in your shooting phase). Which means you can trigger it off of any shooting attack.

In particular, you can also trigger counter fire off of Unleash Hell if you are in range. Which, if you are charging with a Steam Tank Commander, you might well be 

[Doko]

any tip against new son of behemat army? the king brod i mean.

they have ranged damage(and pretty big now). 

they have too much wounds.

their damage is pretty huge and with high rend,together to cancell inspiring presence usually is enougth to delete blocks of 20 elite units.

 

i have won some times with my usual hammerers+dark elfs list,but its too much reliant in get double turn or it is almost imposible.

also i tried the block of 30 fusilers buffed and kite them,but if they get double turn then is game over because they close the 27" gap in that double turn.

im not saying new brod army is broken(that i think is too much good) but i could use a help to deal with them with city

[Lord Krungharr]

For fighting the gargants, especially megagargants, I think speed and magic are your best assets.  Mystifying Miasma can subtract from their charge rolls, Pall of Doom (or Geminids) could shut down commands, and Pha's Protection could make one of your units ignore modifiers to their saves (of course best on a Steam Tank).  Purple Sun too can help by just lowering their saves, and if you can get the charge with a Cavalier Marshal plus Cavaliers (even better a countercharge!) with the Sun nearby, that would just go right through them.  

Also, not sure if you have them but some Dark Aelves with the Strike First Order and Tenebrael Shards would also cut one down pretty darn quickly.

Now all that is if you have to fight them.  If they're standing still on objectives just beckoning you to come at them, see what you can do by evading them and scoring battle tactics and any other objectives you could reach (Advance in Formation and/or Misthaven comes to mind, or Living City for outlflanking could help, or allied Tree Revenants/Knight Zephyros for teleporting).  You should be able to easily score Magical Dominance and Surround & Destroy, then Intimidate the Invaders, and then a sacrifical Led into the Maelstrom on them.  

Megagargants can only move 10" max.  Mancrushers it's 8" plus say an auto 6" run.  So if you put a screen unit in front of your important units, I think you'll be fine, just keep the front of the screen 3.1" in front and they won't be able to reach you.  And when you remove models from the screen unit, remove them out of coherency so they can't pile in around the edges.  Yeah you'll lose more in battleshock IF they survive, but probably they wouldn't live vs a megagargant anyways.

Brodd's Stomp does get that one fly-over monstrous action IF they charge, but give them no space to land, and scour some allies for debuff spells/abilities to maybe reduce their movement/charge distance, # of attacks, or hit rolls, etc.  Gotta be something good I can't think of for that in Order.  (I know Soulblight would whoop them good.)