Bellfree

Start of the charge phase.

I refuse to use any of the realm rules on the grounds that they are so hilariously unfit for competitive play that even if they do see widespread use I'd frankly rather stop playing than deal with them. That said, it's possible selecting a realm and getting it's relic might end up being a thing so it ends up being your army comes from whatever realm where the relic is the most OP for your list. Shyish is going to be very popular for its ability to make large monster heroes ethereal. For DoK anything that increases speed, resilience, or damage output for units AROUND the hero will be the most useful. If there's a relic that gives a hero more additional resilience than the Amulet of Dark fire, that doesn't rely on armor save, that might also be a strong choice.

The rule gives explicit permission to violate the rule of one across multiple units but does not give permission to violate the rule of within one unit. At least that's my take.

Both Evocators are great, the only problem you're going to run into is the same problem paladins and Dracoths have always had which are: Paladins(and foot evocators) Drop, kill the ****** out of something...and then sort awkwardly shuffle toward something else with their very limited movement. Dracoths(and Dracoline Evos) suffer from having a really high amount of points tied to a very small amount of wounds, which means that incidental mortal wound damage(mortis engine explosion, endless spell hits, d3 damage to the nearest unit, 1 time use d3 mortal wounds, those kind of things) is REALLY punishing for them.

Basically the costs of taking the amazing command abilities and 'free' abilities for these factions is getting stuck with some really mediocre command traits and some truly awful relics. Some of the relics are so bad, there's a non-zero chance that you would gain more out of having one less rule to remember than you would with their bonuses. The big exception is Tempest Lords. Everything in there is pretty solid.

They can be taken in other stormhosts, look at Lady Atia's blog for confirmation. Second, most of the named heroes are really iffy anyway. Neave is solid but works just fine without the Hammers' tactics(and is still better than the generic Zephyros), Gavriel I guess is really strong after the rewrite and Vandus is actually a consideration now but Astreai and The mage guy aren't anything special compared to the generic guys. Basically, the special characters aren't good enough to be a 'swaying' factor unless you already really like the Hammers of Sigmar stormhost rules. Command point is 50pts, that means the battalion is 80. The artefact is largely cancelled out by the fact that you wouldn't take that combination of units with no bonuses and the number of drops is much less relevant than it used to be with all the things they've done to diminish the impact of the double turn and the fact that battalions are just much less prevalent in general than they used to be. The CP is also not as useful as it would be if you were just buying it because you have to put the cart before the horse i.e. you get this command point as part of the battalion and then have to figure out how you're going to use it, versus the other way of purchasing it for a specific use. The problem with their strategy is that the battalions AREN'T reasonably cheap. At 130pts, even with the CP and the relic, and the reduction in drops, they force you to take a combination of units you wouldn't normally while also forcing you to invest in characters that can utilize whatever extra relic you get in tandem with your now enormous investment into the battalion, and then you have to invest in supporting that character. Basically taking a battalion that doesn't offer any useful bonuses is just a cascade of sunk costs. In most cases it would make more sense to just take Cogs and a CP and a more reasonable unit setup. DoK have already largely abandoned their battalions for similar reasons, and I imagine it's going to be the same for most armies unless they have AoS 1 battalions that had very small points increases, or a significantly powerful AoS 2 battalion that didn't increase too to much(LoN's Legion of Sacrement battalion is an example of this.) All that said, the battalions aren't necessarily bad they're just sorta...nothing. There's nothing objectionable about them really, but it's hard not to find something that you'd rather have.

to be fair, that's operating under the assumption that the CA spam IS significantly outside the powercurve which we only have theory-hammer to go on at the moment. It's entirely possible that the majority of spammable CAs end up being powerful but not out of line and that only a small handful need to be reigned in, at which point I think we'll see fairly fast response. It's only a 'new rule of 1 for matched play' type scenario that I think GW sits on their hands.

You don't cast spells with Kroak anymore, not when you can cast BASTILADONS!

How'd you counter battleshock? Just normal inspiring or did you do something else? What did you back up the brick with(buffs etc) I'm working on theorycrafting some lists using sequitors as both MSU and blob squads and am interested in how people are using the large units.

So you pay 130pts to do d3 mortal wounds? They really don't want people using battalions anymore, huh?

I doubt the command ability spam is going to go away any time soon. GW has decided that there's no problem there and we're going to be looking at 6 months of CA spam armys taking multiple spots in the top 10 of large tournaments before GW is going to be willing to go 'oopsie daysie'.

You're losing out on 60pts taking 3 units of 20 instead of 2 30s and a 10, you're also basically throwing one of the units of 20 away since you don't have a hag queen for it. 15 Doomfires not really going to do much for you, people have had success with 5 and 10 but getting a possible extra turn out of their spell isn't worth the extra 160pts, especially considering that you're again running into the problem of having to use CAs for battleshock prevention(which you REALLY want to avoid whenever possible) Cauldron guard is 150pts and also requires 2 units of Lifetakers so it's 100% dead in the water competitively. Taking a bloodwrack shrine, a bloodwrack medusa, and Doomfires in the same list is going to end up being pretty redundant. You also 100% want to choose one of the Temple rules because they're FAR better than anything the generic abilities will give you. Using the core of what you have here I would go: Allegiance: Daughters Of Khaine - Temple: Hagg Nar Leaders Slaughter Queen on Cauldron Of Blood (330) - General - Trait: Devoted Desciples - Prayer: Catechism of Murder Bloodwrack Shrine (220) - Artefact: Shadow Stone - Lore of Shadows: Mindrazor Hag Queen (60) - Prayer: Blessing of Khaine Hag Queen (60) - Prayer: Crimson Rejuvenation Hag Queen (60) - Prayer: Sacrament of Blood Battleline 30 x Witch Aelves (270) - Pairs of Sacrificial Knives 30 x Witch Aelves (270) - Pairs of Sacrificial Knives 10 x Witch Aelves (100) - Pairs of Sacrificial Knives Units 5 x Doomfire Warlocks (160) - Lore of Shadows: Mindrazor 10 x Blood Sisters (280) 5 x Khinerai Heartrenders (80) Endless Spells Chronomantic Cogs (60) Total: 1950 / 2000 Extra Command Points: 1 Allies: 0 / 400 Wounds: 146 Admittedly I don't use doomfires much so there are probably more efficient builds using them, but this is certainly going to get you some decent bang for your buck.

If they didn't change the lightning eschelon, that battalion is actually pretty incredible at 130pts due to giving tempestors a basically permanent 2+ save. Haven't seen the new warscroll for it though.

Nvm other people spotted it too.

They're about the same as liberators tbh. They do next to nothing in melee, doing 3.5 wounds to a 4+ save the turn they shoot and 1.833 the turn they don't, which averages out to about the same as liberators at the cost of being a fair bit more fragile, they lose effectiveness faster than liberators do as almost half of the liberator unit's damage output is concentrated into the prime, they don't self buff against 5+ wound models (which puts them even further down compared to liberators damage output.) Basically, to get the most out of Vanguard Hunters I think you'll need to 100% be abusing their sneakiness to force your opponent to answer you on flanks. Vanguard Hunters are just resilient enough that your opponent will have to send more than their points value of units to clear them out most of the time. I would caution against using them to try and tie up anything scarier than a light cavalry unit. Even something like Reikenor the grimhailer or an opposing LCoD will trash them in a turn after battleshock. Like I said, they're useful now, but they still can't really fight anything.

That looks a lot more like 'typical GW oversight' than 'implicit permission' to me. Gonna need an FAQ.

I'd still pass on hunters, they're not the sick joke they used to be but between Judicators still being one of the most consistently useful units in the game and sequitors being surprisingly baller for 120pts they're still generally a flavor unit. A lot of new life overall for Vanguard chamber tbh. Between Chronomatic cogs and the reroll charges universal CA you're looking at a 5+ rerollable charge basically anywhere on the table for palladors(one of the few units to actually get cheaper in the new book). Haven't seen the hurricane crossbows warscroll yet but being cheaper and apparently more useful will hopefully let them see some play. Vanguard hunters are now more comparable to liberators than they were...unfortunately that means that they're still worse than judicators or sequitors. All of that being said, I'm still fairly certain that the actual power of the new book is going to be entirely determined by just how abusive Anvils of Heldenhammer and Celestial Vindicators command abilities are. If you can wrap up a large portion of your opponents army in sequitors, evocators, palladors, what have you and then give them +4 or +5 attacks with Vindicators, you could conceivably obliterate a huge chunk of your opponents forces, or completely eliminate beastclaw raider, Ironjaws, Deepkin, or other 'elite' armies outright. Similarly Anvils lists will be able to send just a stupid amount of firepower downfield with only a handful of armies having the resilience/speed necessary to survive long enough to counter attack. Now maybe GW have seen these issues in playtesting and have determined that the counter measures available to opposing forces (many of which I'm sure people who didn't get this far are 'yeah but'ing with at this very moment) combined with the investment necessary to take advantage of these incredibly powerful abilities means that they won't actually turn out to be all that big of a deal. Personally I doubt it and think that these CAs are going to define the army for a while but I we'll have to wait the requisite 3ish months for things to shake out to know for sure.

Should be a generic Knight Zephyros too, but it doesn't seem to be in any of the battletome reviews I've seen or model hints. Just a listing in the GHB.

That's a fair point, the changes to Scion make the breath much more viable.

The fulminators breath attack used to be at 6" roll a d3 and then on a 3+ do a mortal wound, but if you were inside 3" it did 2 mortal wounds. The other breath attack is just 4+ do d3 mortal wounds, which is far worse. The old breath did more damage at 6" on average and did almost triple inside 3", which is where you want your dracoths to be anyway.

Mindrazor is amazing. Most of the Death Debuffs are incredible. Blades of Putrefaction. Stormcaller is useful, but I think 'turning the tide' is a bit optimistic. It's more about building a small advantage over the course of the game and taking advantage of the extra bit of wiggle room. +1 to wound is definitely solid. Thundershock at 6" is going to be a hard sell on anything without a mount, though it could certainly be very strong on a Tauralon . Azyrite Halo I don't think makes the cut, it's mostly a gimmick spell for doing like a Staunch+Halo+Shield of Thorns "Come at me bro!" Stardrake. The spells are useful and that's all they really needed to be. In fact, with how little the army has in the way of 'to cast' buffs it's probably good that the spells aren't stronger because we're going to get unbound a lot. At the cost of feeding him a free 240pt model that was equipped with a relic, and was probably your general, if you're lucky and don't roll a really bad winds run. It's powerful but it seems like it'll be better against dedicated casters like Slann or Arkhan than it will be at trying to stop the super beatsticks like Nagash.

That's too late to help you against Nagash most of the time, still a VERY powerful ability however.

The changes to Dracoth breath is a MASSIVE nerf for Fulminators and Tempestors. The 12" breath was terrible compared to the 6"/3" one even AFTER accounting for the additional range.

Reroll 1s natively is actually MASSIVE on model that can reliably get a 2+ save and the command ability is extremely strong still. You're also doing a fair bit more damage with the Lord Celestant's better weapon and +attacks on the charge. You can certainly TRY to fish for 6s against monsters with the stormlance, but stardrakes really aren't great against monsters to begin with. The Arc Hammer's limited number of attacks means that even if the ability activated on 2s it would still end up being very close to the LCoSD in damage output. Plus the changes to combat mean that a Stardrake that puts itself into combat with something like a unit of witch aelves will kill them with their own attacks and likely not take any damage in return. There is something to be said about the Drakesworn's synergistic options though. The Skybolt bow gives a lot of power to Concussors without costing a command point and with things that buff the number of attacks+increasing to hits the Arc Hammer could become surprisingly devastating in the right list Basically, being 100pts cheaper than the LCoSD makes the Drakesworn Templar a reasonable option, better in some lists, worse in others; instead of the sad joke it was at 60pts cheaper.

Not really. The most any unit is taking from his spell is D3 damage and the types of units he's going to be able to get consistent damage off against aren't going to care about d3 mortal wounds and are likely going to be in fairly large units so it's unlikely he's hitting very many things at once. Putting him on a balewind is just chasing bad money with good. Even if you are just grabbing another caster for endless spells or spell lores, taking additional Incantors is always going to be superior to the Lord Exorcist UNLESS the lord exorcist gets either some special bonus from the battletome OR access to an extremely strong lore spell that the Incantor DOESN'T get. If neither of those conditions are met than the Incantor is simply the superior option.