Bellfree

Gonna be while before I can get any pics, but I have about 12k in stormcasts and a little over 5k in DoK.

Legions of Nagash.

The Astral Templars list loses to any of the meta lists that don't run big monsters or can nullify their to hit bonuses(you'll be hitting on 6s targeting a Khailebron Slaughter Cauldron, even with the Ordinator. Or spending 540 points to do 5 wounds to it.). Celestar Ballista barely do anything to DoK, and with how prevelant they are, that's a big problem. And Evocators on foot might as well not have a movement characteristic for how slow they are in the current meta. Using the extra 6" move on them is a 'double turn or lose RIGHT NOW' move. Putting either half of the list in the air, leaves the other half easy pickings. Even with several hundred points of screens. You'll win 4 out of 5 games and get blasted out first turn in 1. The Anvils list you talked down just fine yourself. It's countered by an entire popular faction, a stock standard strategy for half the armies with wizards in the game, and any other shooting list. The best you can hope for is to blow 1200 points desperately trying to keep one unit alive for the three turns it'll take it to do anything of note. You'll win 4 out of 5 games and get blasted out first turn in 1. The biggest thing to note here, is that these lists are all skew lists focused on exploiting less than 10% of the battletome in a bid to win specific matchups, at the cost of getting destroyed in certain matchups. All of our competitive list builds are just modern day Skryre Fyre simply because of how lopsided the battletome is.

Gatekeeper lists are called that just as often because they're stupid one-trick bullgak that obliterates those who haven't seen it before, but is basically worthless once you figure out the trick.

The imperial fist box is fine, it's the OTHER one that doesn't make any gorram sense. The ultramarines box has a way worse selection of models, including several that OVERLAP between the two boxes so no one in their right mind would ever buy both. They're completely pointless to release together.

Completely random faction to faction. The DoK box can vary by 200+ points just based on how you build the units. The seraphon box even more so.

DoK don't have a start collecting. The blood coven box was 100$ and is out of print. Total retail is 275$ so assuming the standard 170$ for the box it's about a 40% discount.

The Azyros is NOT considered "universally more useful" than the ordinator. There are situations where, and reason why, an Ordinator would be more valuable. The biggest one being that the ordinator will probably survive multiple turns whereas the Azyros probably won't considering the giant sparkly target that 10" range reroll aura puts over his head. If you're using multiple ballista and 1 unit or less of Judicators than the Ordinator getting 3-4 turns to buff will get you more than the azyros's 1. Oh, and you don't want either character in melee ever if you can avoid it so getting there more easily isn't much of a positive. That said, I probably wouldn't take either unless I was running a full 4 ballista list(ordinator obvs) or an 'OTK' deepstrike list (Azyros).

The problem with building a list like this is the actually fairly high opportunity cost involved in bringing Gavriel at all. He's 100pts of useless once the +charge range is no longer valuable and he forces you to take hammers of sigmar as your stormhost which means he also costs you a relic(the HoS relic is so terrible it doesn't even count) and forces you to forgo a great command trait like staunch for an extremely mediocre one. A list like the one you've built here could quite possibly be better off taking a better stormhost(or just the generic relics+CT) and taking just the reroll charges chance. Also, using the ballista to clear would be incredibly risky because you'd have to drop the ballista within 18 first and basically watch them die(you're not clearing anything with the 36" fire mode, even with the ordinator) and you'd be looking at the +charge range from Gav being canceled out by the distance lost by clearing their frontline. The reason people commit to Gavriel when they take Gavriel is because of how little actual synergy he has with other strats. In this list, if you don't drop any of the ballista+evos what's left honestly isn't worth killing for your opponent so they'll just camp on objectives and force you into a bad deployment. If you drop the ballista first, you have to put yourself within striking distance to have any real chance at doing damage, which means you risk losing nearly a quarter of your list outright. If you drop the evos first they'll have to grind through any screens your opponent has and survive a counter before the supporting fire can come in to bail them out(unless you get a super lucky double turn), if you drop both the evos and the ballista at the same time, killing their chaff will just result in longer charges. If you full commit to the single turn hammer blow and drop the Ballista within 18 of their heavy hitters or buff characters and cut the head off of the hydra quickly, that could work but you're really trusting the heart of the cards there. By taking the Ballista you're essentially leaving the Evos out on an island praying that you can kill so much stuff in a single turn that your opponent doesn't notice that you have ZERO buffs for them. Even just unbinding them could see them permanently trapped against a wall of plaguebearers or skeletons if your dice are bad enough. In a weird way, by splitting your focus you're putting EVEN MORE pressure on your Evos to do tons of damage.

There's not really any point in taking a unit of 10 judicators. It's inferior in just about every gameplay sense to two units of 5 ESPECIALLY in a hammers list(more vulnerable to morale, more vulnerable to being tied up in melee, less manuevreable, less flexible, can only cap one objective at a time, only 1 chance at the hammers summon instead of 2, only 1 prime, only counts as 1 for the ground vs sky deployment thing, more vulnerable to debuffs, only counts as 1 battleline unit, etc)

Why hammers with no Gavriel? Their stormhost bonuses are pretty trash even compared to just generic Staunch defender+good relic(a 1/3 chance to get one of two units back if you're exceptionally lucky is pretty poor, the 6+ FNP isn't even as good as staunch with that many reroll saves, the +1 bravery is irrelevant and the relic is dog-excrement) let alone the better stormhosts. You're also paying some REALLY heavy taxes to get +1 to cast on stormcast's actually fairly mediocre spells(essentially 270 points between the battalion cost and the lord exorcist.)

Hag queen>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>CP, at least 1 is mandatory in basically every DoK build. I also wouldn't run the Slaughter cauldron when it's not the general, the Hag cauldron is far more useful if you're not getting the CA.

At the old price it was the only thing that made Lifetakers scary. 50pts extra for no appreciable benefit to the list dumpstered it pretty good.

At the cost of burning 100pts for a character that is utterly worthless outside of the drops and a really, really subpar Stormhost. Gavriel may be more reliable than cogs/etc but in taking him you're committing to winning with the drop on the simple basis that you've invested 100pts, your heavy hitter unit(s), your stormhost, a CP, and your relic slot in guaranteeing one drop. You're also almost always forced to drop everything at once(if you don't bubblewrap Gavriel, he dies 100%. If you do bubble wrap Gavriel, no way are you going to get more units wholly within 12 AND in a decent position to charge.) and in the same general area. You're pigeonholing yourself into not only an INCREDIBLY predictable strategy but in a very one note build that people and armies will eventually figure out how to deal with the same way they figured out hammerstrike. What using Cogs or w/e instead does is it trades a bit of reliability for flexibility and it also means that the army can be stronger outside of the one note 'BLAM FROM THE SKY, HOPE I WIN THIS TURN' strategy that gavriel lists tend to devolve into. Not being trapped using a largely useless stormhost(the one unit of sequitors that comes back every 3rd game on turn 4 or 5 isn't anything to write home about and the rest of the abilities are almost completely irrelevant even compared to the generic non-stormhosts ones.) is a massive benefit. Yes, gavriel is far and away the most reliable way to get Sacrosanct units into combat turn 1, but let's not pretend that there aren't some pretty severe opportunity cost associated with packing a weak model into a weak stormhost for the sake of telegraphing exactly what your gameplan is to every person who gives your list even a casual once-over.

I'd be happy if they just reverted the Dracoth nerfs. Especially for the poor poor tempestors.

Two extra wounds is massively inferior to 6" extra range. It's not even close. The number of melee attacks these units make is totally irrelevant. They do so little in CQC that it's not even worth taking it into account. Both units do roughly 2.2 wounds per turn to a 4+ save in shooting. Against night haunt, chaos daemons, and seraphon obviously castigators are better but you can't count on running into any of those. Battleline makes judicators by far the superior choice in any situation where you're not already taking 3 battleline, at which point they're just probably the better choice. 18" range has always been an issue if you play a competent opponent with a decent army. 24" means it takes 2 turns to close down on you, 18" means it takes one. You COULD screen them, but Stormcast armies don't really have the bodies to spare and considering how little damage either unit actually does, it's pretty wasteful to screen either. In fact, in my experience you're just as likely to use judicators as a deepstrike screen as the other way around. Most games judicators serve as backline objective grabbers that offer consistent moderate ranged support. Castigators short range makes them subpar at this task. Taking a huge unit of castigators doesn't really make sense, they'll likely only get one round of shooting off as they're simply too juicy of a target. Taking a single 3 man unit of Castigators is decent but probably not as valuable as the command point you could get instead. Castigators are also directly competing with the Celestar ballista which not only out ranges them, but also out damages them AND has more effective wounds against shooting attacks while in cover. The crew of engineers even means they both have 3 bodies to cap objectives. I can still see taking Judicators due to them being battleline, but castigators are pretty clearly outclassed by the Celestar.

The way they handled to old stuff was really up and down tbh. Stardrake got a bit weaker but that was balanced out by (stupidly OP) realm relics. Celestant prime got a lot better, palladors are now at the price they should have started at(though probably still about 20pts too expensive) Nothing will save Vanguard Hunters but being general stormcast battleline. Longstrikes got a side-grade, Hurricane crossbows went sort of diagonal? They're cheaper but their anti-charge rule doesn't stack and is a bit harder to use, but affects multiple units. Gryph hounds and Aetherwings don't matter. Lord Celestant got worse for the same points. Castellant is EVEN MORE baller than he was, relictor got a deserved nerf. Veritant is still trash. Knight heraldor got a side grade. Vexillor got better but they still don't really know what to do with him. Azyros got a significant buff, Venator got slightly worse due to AoS 2 rules, not anything wrong with the model itself. Judicators are still solid, Liberators are totally overshadowed by sequitors, paladins got somewhat worse for the same points while ALSO being overshadowed by evocators. Neave got nerfed for no real reason, but not a whole lot. Prosecutors are largely the same. Dracoths actually got hosed, but not in a way that effects their standard battlefield role much. Desolators got nerfed even though no one has ever even BUILT one. Concussors got about half of the point drop they needed, fulminators got a bit worse due to the new breath attack(though being 2+ reroll against shooting is still powerful) and Tempestors got ANNHILATED. They got a worse breath attack AND their 'to hit' penalty ability got made laughably terrible, all for the same points cost. TL:DR every old unit either got powercreeped on, nerfed, or is named Stardrake, Lord Castellant, Knight Azyros, Lord Meatloaf or Judicators.

Drop the comet, it's really not doing anything for you and you're not really gonna have spells to waste casting it.

Castigators are sub-par in general, you can make , palladors are better than they were but still only 'good'.

Bravery is going to be a ****** against anything that can counter punch the original hit, but otherwise this is right around what I thought the most competitive Stormcasts lists would be.

It's okay, but honestly not that big of a deal. Anything with any kind of speed is going to close you down pretty quick and between the buff heroes and the unit you're looking at almost half of your army invested in one unit, not to mention all of your command points. The unit will do about 20 wounds per turn(slightly more with the azyros reroll) across both shots to a 4+ save. I think with all the knighthaunts and TPs bouncing around it'll be very risky.

If you use random realmscape features, they're all terrible. If you pick the realmscape and deliberately avoid things like "All shooting units are useless" and "Tried to play a cavalry/footslog list? Concede right now" and "Stupid random ****** falls out of the sky and just so happens to kill the guy you have standing on an objective so you lose!" and "I rolled a 6 during my double-turn's combat phase so pack up, you lose.", or even better don't use the realmscape features because they're really stupid, or even betterer don't use the realm rules at all because they're totally asinine, then that's pretty fair.

It was very clearly spelled out in the old FAQ that these abilities do not go off in other phases, however when GW moved the FAQ over into the 'designer commentary' they didn't address this particular issue(as far as I could find). RAW states they can, FAQ precedent states they can't. Typical GW incompetence says the world may never know for sure.

Keep in mind that the this ends up being such a small difference overall that there is a strong argument to be had that the wildly different monetary costs of the two setup be the determining factor.

Tempestors aren't really shooty...or cheap though. At 220pts I can't see them being more useful than concussors on a per point basis. I've used them for a long time(back when they had their nifty -1 to hit thing and a useful breath attack) and after a while it becomes a celebratory moment when the crossbows actually manage to land a wound. Concussors do 1 less wound on average(total across the unit) in shooting and do 4ish more wounds per turn in melee while also having decent mortal wound output.