So....What Do We Do Against Massed Skyfires?

[Forestreveries]

How does the Hurricanum buff the Kurnoth when it specifies Free People Keyword? Battalion?

It doesn't specify that at all. [emoji848]


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[Solaris]

3 hours ago, Forestreveries said:

It doesn't specify that at all.


Sent from the Hidden Enclaves via the Realmroots

He was looking at the old Compendium Warscroll.

[RoloMcFury]

Inevitably, we need to figure out which units are able to withstand the Skyfire barrage most effectively, while still threatening the opposing army. Here's a bit of mathhammer on the topic:

 

9 Sykfires (with Shaman buff) shooting at Fimir Warriors (out of cover): 4 mortal wounds, 2 regular wounds= 60 points worth of total damage (0 flee)

9 Sykfires (with Shaman buff) shooting at Fimir Warriors (in cover): 4 mortal wounds, 1.33 regular wounds= 53.33 points worth of total damage

 

9 Skyfires (with Shaman buff) shooting at a Frostlord Stonehorn: 3 mortal wounds, 1 regular wound= 141 points of damage

9 Skyfires (with Shaman buff) shooting at a Frostlord Stonehorn (with Talisman): 1.5 mortal wounds, 1 regular wound= 88 points of damage

9 Skyfires (with Shaman buff) shooting at a Frostlord Stonehorn (with Mystic Shield): 3 mortal wounds, .33 regular wounds= 117 points of damage

9 Skyfires (with Shaman buff) shooting at a Frostlord Stonehorn (with Talisman/Mystic Shield): 1.5 mortal wounds, .33 regular wounds= 64.87 points of damage

 

9 Skyfires (with Shaman buff) shooting at Moonclan Grots (with shields, >10): 6 mortal wounds, 2.66 regular wounds= 51.96 points of damage

If 20-man squad, 5.16 flee (25.8 points). If 40-man, 3.16 flee (15.8 points). If 60-man, 1.16 flee (5.8 points).

 

9 Skyfires (with Shaman buff) shooting at Gitmob Grots (with shields, >10): 6 mortal wounds, 3.35 regular wounds= 46.75 points of damage

If 20-man squad, 5.85 flee (another 29.25 points). If 40-man, 3.85 flee (19.25 points). If 60-man, 1.85 flee (9.25 points).

 

9 Skyfires (with Shaman buff) shooting at Gitmob Grots (no shields): 6 mortal wounds, 4 regular wounds= 50 points of damage

If 20-man squad, 6.5 flee (32.5 points). If 40-man, 4.5 flee (22.5 points). If 20-man, 2.5 flee (12.5 points). 

 

9 Skyfires (with Shaman buff) shooting at Orruk Arrowboys: 6 mortal wounds, 4 regular wounds= 50 points worth of damage

If 10-man squad, 1.5 flee (15 points). If 20-man, .5 flee (5 points). If 30-man+, 0 flee.

 

9 Skyfires (with Shaman buff) shooting at Orruk Arrowboys (Bonesplitterz Allegiance): 5 mortal wounds, 3.35 regular wounds= 41.75 points of damage

If 10-man squad, .67 flee (6.75 points).

 

Obviously, things get messy quick if the same large unit withstands multiple Skyfire barrages (assuming you haven't used inspiring presence on the squad in question). For example:

18 Skyfires (with Shaman buff) shooting at Moonclan Grots (with shields, >10): 12 mortal wounds, 5.32 regular wounds= 103.92 points worth of damage.

If 20-man squad, 14.82 flee (88.92 points). If 40-man squad, 12.82 flee (76.92 points). If 60-man squad, 10.82 flee (64.92 points).

Then again, in the above example, this means fully half of the opposing army is shooting at your squad. Even if a 20-man squad, losing about 200 points worth of stuff could be much worse.

 

The absolutely worst case scenario against common builds:

27 Skyfires (with Shaman buff) shooting at Orruk Arrowboys: 18 mortal wounds, 12 regular wounds= 150 points of damage.

If 40-man squad, 9.5 flee (95 points, for a grand total of 245 points of damage).

Not as bad as I'd imagined, but this is obviously one of your most important units, now below 20-strong.

All of these units are quite fast with the Destruction allegiance ability, threatening most of the board on turn 1 in the Stonehorn's case. The main issue others have brought up is screening: Skyfires will have Mauraders or Brimstone Horrors standing in front. Could it be possible to gun them down and assault the Skyfires in one fell swoop? Would be tough to make that charge range.

 

Finally, there is a potentially much more dangerous threat to the big units I listed above: the Gaunt Summoner (and his brutal profile spell). The spell has a 58.33% chance to go off successfully (assuming on top of a Balewind). As such, here's the expected impact on our units (assuming worst-case scenario, hitting the entire unit):

Infernal Flames cast upon 40-man Orruk Arrowboys: 20 mortal wounds x 58.33% chance= 11.66 MW (58 points of damage). Zero models flee.

Infernal Flames cast upon 60-man Moonclan Grots: 30 mortal wounds x 58.33% chance= 17.49 MW (104.94 points). Ten models flee, for 28 dead Grots.

 

However, if the Gaunt Summoner is really within the 36" range of your entire 40 or 60-man squad, something has gone horribly wrong and the Gaunt Summoner is left exposed.

 

[Gauche]

Awesome post, it really helps to have the math on hand. :]

 

Unfortunately it's not just about withstanding, nothing withstands 18-27 Skyfires over 5 Rounds. It's the issue that what Skyfires bring is what is really hard to deal with for any Allegiance. They are extremely difficult to pin down in melee, they're super fast with huge range and they will always have, minimum, 3x10 Marauders. This means you cannot get a charge until you eat through at least one of those units, which isn't too hard, but now you need a list which combines the shooting to remove one of those units and the melee to get a charge off on a unit that is likely 24"+ away. All of that probably has to happen Turn 1 as well, Turn 2 at the latest and you likely need the Initiative. Oof.

Our best unit for shooting Skyfires are Arrowboys, Skyfires hate no Rend or low Rend Wounds in high quantity. This makes something like a Thundertusk suck against them, 6 Mortal Wounds just isn't that good. Unfortunately Skyfires always, always, always win the shooting competition against Arrowboys because they have the threat range. There's literally nothing that can be done about that, they have a static 40" and we have 28+d6" with Kunnin' Rukk Move, 30+d6" if you take the Command Ability (which is super unlikely).

The only way things look good are if you can get them to deploy the Skyfires forward BEFORE you drop your Arrowboys and then you Turn 1 them. Even that is super iffy and if I played Skyfires I'd just deploy them outside of our maximum threat every game, it can't bite them much.

Double Kunnin' Rukk with Bonespiltterz Allegiance probably works since you can stack the +Bravery Artefact and you have a lot of targets to hit. Big Bosses, Nobs, and the Arrowboys themselves. Unfortunately that list loses hard to a lot of stuff so it's only viable, to me, as a dual list kind of thing.

Sidenote: I used to think AoS worked better with a Sideboard than a Dual Lists. I have now revised that opinion, Dual Lists counters these hyper specific strategies much better and weakens them in a tournament setting.

Overall I still don't think there's anything to be done, in Destruction, against 27 Skyfires. 18 we can do, they don't put out as much offense and it's a lot less to eat through. But the unit is completely oppressive and demands a specific strategy to beat them because what they bring is pretty unique, even compared to Kurnoth. Being able to regrow them, 60pt Battleline with numbers, and the spells they can bring to smooth out any rough edges are just too much. They're really the only thing I think is actually broken in the game.

[RoloMcFury]

Agreed on all counts. Full Bonesplitterz, Double Kunnin' Rukk definitely has the best game against it mathematically, but it's still gonna be a tough match. At least you can potentially make such a list one-drop to determine first turn. 

As you said, Skyfires are without a doubt the most broken thing in the game currently. Just gotta endure some terrible matches until the GH2 hopefully brings salvation.

[Chris Tomlin]

@RoloMcFury & @Gauche , I think you are both overlooking the fact the Skyfires are also amazing in combat! 

[Soup Dragon]

2 hours ago, Chris Tomlin said:

@RoloMcFury & @Gauche , I think you are both overlooking the fact the Skyfires are also amazing in combat! 

Yup, they seem to do about double the amount of damage in combat that they do in shooting. So the combo of move, shoot and charge (with guaranteed charge with destiny dice) is a thing of beauty to behold. Lost two Frostlords Bam! Bam! to that combo. 

[Soup Dragon]

So, to sum up this thread so far, the only real counter to massed Skyfires is to take a REAL one of these:

 

[Thanatos Ares]

Boba Fett

Keywords: Death, Hero, Bad Ass

Points: 100

Rules/Abilities: you don't wanna know


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[Gauche]

@Chris Tomlin I think amazing is a bit strong but they are better than they should be. I never said otherwise though, I don't think engaging them with anything short of something on a Frostlord level is going to get much done. You have to hit them with full shock and awe and then Battleshock the entire unit away to be sure. I'm discussing solutions around guns because you will never engage Skyfires unless the Chaos player wants you to or it is the mid-game/late-game. They get to pick all the battles. Also the competitive game revolves entirely around guns right now.

It's been good to talk this out but I really don't think there's much tech against Skyfires, period, except Aetherstrike, Mirror Shield spam, and Khemist Spam. They're that big of a meta bender, to me. Personally I'm really happy that the big events I plan on attending aren't until later this year and hopefully the new GHB is out.

[Jesper77]

11 hours ago, Chris Tomlin said:

@RoloMcFury & @Gauche , I think you are both overlooking the fact the Skyfires are also amazing in combat! 

Yes,  and even if youre kunnin em its still hard to get all those arrowboys, with the large footprint, in line when there also outrange you with a mile

[Sangfroid]

Firstly it's a tough army to face but that doesn't mean it's a done deal and while we may not have the specific tools to deal with them if you are drawn up against them then it's time to Orruk up and do your best, here's what you could do as an ironjawz player. 

1) split your army, your basically going to have to hope for a double turn to really deal with them but while you position yourself for this you need to widely spread so that it's more difficult for the enemy to focus their fire upon you. This allows you to also capitalise if the enemy gets some bad dice rolls as they will have to scramble to apply the pressure they need too. Also if your spread out might be harder for the enemy to chaff every angle and if they castle up you should be scoring early objective points 

2) sacrifice, 3 skyfires with a shaman will do 1-3 mortal wounds and has a 43% chance of getting D3 normal wounds on a 4+ save target. On 3+ target it's 33% (2+ save is 21%) so that's 9 skyfires to on average do 3xd3 mortal wounds and D3 wounds to a Mawcrusha (unbuffed) 

now if you add in a mystic shield and a talisman of protection you need 15 skyfires to do 5d3 mortal and 1D3 normal wounds. So keeping on averages that's 10 mortal (5 saved) and 2 wounds for a total of 7 wounds. (Okay I know it's a stretch but remember this is just average dice). So you can formulate a situation where you ravager a Mawcrusha, with a Talisman, mystic shield, Warchanter Frenzy right down the throats of the enemy (hoping to not get double turned by the enemy) worst case your 7" away so can shoot the screen and then charge it, if fortuna is on your side you may even clear the 10 mauraders and so can then charge again into the juicy skyfires behind. 

Now if things go against you and you don't get in the enemy is sitting looking at a Mawcrusha that they have to deal with and if they don't get lucky probably won't kill it or will use everything to kill it. You have your army in position relatively in tact and just need to win a priority roll......  

if you do get double turned then Mawcrusha is almost certainly dead, but hopefully at the cost of some or all of the enemies fire again and now you are poised to a potential double turn back or at worst a series of charges to start clearing up screens and doing damage. It's also 2 turns in and if they haven't been scoring your in a strong position. 

Agaisnt this army as ironjawz your really having to play the percentages, but it's not all doom and gloom a decent plan a little luck and you could find a victory in the bag, or an awesome tactical game that while you haven't won you have sure made the Sunday morning army player work a bit for it. Or at worst te dice go bad and your dead by turn 2-3 but at least you tried and and now can get away from the filth and go socialise with some nice peeps :-) 

[Soup Dragon]

4 minutes ago, Sangfroid said:

1) split your army, your basically going to have to hope for a double turn to really deal with them but while you position yourself for this you need to widely spread so that it's more difficult for the enemy to focus their fire upon you. This allows you to also capitalise if the enemy gets some bad dice rolls as they will have to scramble to apply the pressure they need too. Also if your spread out might be harder for the enemy to chaff every angle and if they castle up you should be scoring early objective points 

This is the tactic that turned my games vs Skryre from 20 minute losses to winning most games. Stonehorn and 10 Orruks in one corner, 2 Thundertusks and 20 Orruks in the other corner, and Rukk in middle. It worked because Skryre needed to bring up BOTH covens to guarantee they killed any one group, and I could position them far enough apart that they could only target one group each. Then, once they had destroyed one unit, they were  either stuck on one side of battlefield with low movement or in the centre about to get crushed with 2 wings of my army. 
Sadly, that isn't going to work nearly so well with Skyfires. The range on the shooting added to the 16" move means they are not going to get stranded on one side, though they are open to getting crushed if they attack the middle unit. However, it is a valid setup against Skyfires, and one that is definitely worth trying a few times against them. A combination of double turns at the right time and a small mistake by the Skyfire player and we are suddenly in with a shout. And lets face it, most Skyfire players are pretty Mediocre ability, and so are pretty likely to make mistakes, or choke under pressure .

[Gauche]

Yeah splitting works extremely poorly against a good Skyfire player, especially with a melee army. They get to shoot 50% of your army with 100% of theirs and fall back from what you have leftover. That's going to end in disaster.

I'm not saying Skyfires are unbeatable by Destruction, I think 27 Skyfires is a 90/10% matchup against Destruction in a competitive setting. I have a firm gameplan against 18 Skyfires with my existing list. Does it rely on winning Initiative? Yup, but hey it's better than nothing. Any strategy against them relies on winning Initiative unless you can tank all those shots which is very rare.

I need to continually remind myself that I am speaking in a single list setting as a 3-6 round tournament. That's how I build all my armies, that's how I play. So anything I say is probably from a competitive mind-set of someone who only cares about tournaments.