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Venator is a weird one. For his points if he even half pays off he’s absolutely worth it, but his purpose-hero/monster slaying-is far too important to trust to two dice rolls. So he always ends up seeming like overkill or a complete waste. Azyros is unlikely to appear clutch in the way Venator can but if you can keep him safe his buffs are huge as it’s all hits, not just missile, that re-roll on a 1. Against Chaos he’s also capable of dropping quite a big damage bomb. I usually find he’s a good contestant for an artefact as well so you can either keep him tanky and annoying in a major area of the battlefield, or flutter around and chase low wound casters and such. Bit of a gimmick but if you give him the sword of forgetfulness and cause a wound against a spellcaster you can make them forget a spell. Quite effective against necromancers and Branch wytches etc who are just there for low cost spells. So uh no contest for me. Azyros does what he does reliably and he does it well. Venator either a massive success or failure but if you’re banking on him being the answer to heroes or monsters your list has gone wrong somewhere. And if you’re not, why bother.

Apologies if this is all a bit remedial for you but better to over explain than make assumptions: List building is a bit of a trickle down thing. At top level it comes from competitive players who look at a major rules change or army release and try and build an army that they think is unbeatable or as close to it as possible. They pore over rules and mechanics minutiae to find the best and most unlikely combinations that make the most out of their army and prevent the other army from doing the same. This is how the meta is formed, meta just meaning basically the most popular interpretation of how the game should be played if you want to win. At the top level list building is what separates the best players because all of them excel at the basics so are looking for an edge to keep the opponent from playing the game. The lower down the chain you go, the less skilled the opponents, meaning that it is easier to beat even good copycat lists with even sub-par lists if you are good at the basics. At present the meta favours horde armies who can be taken in enormous numbers and either put out huge amounts of damage due to buffs, provide a defensive challenge too severe for pretty much anything to overcome, or both. Most of these armies also have a way of supplementing lost numbers due to summoning rules. Because most of the current scenarios favour holding objectives, these are incredibly powerful advantages. So people who are building their current SC lists are usually doing so with this problem in mind. Onto Stormcast: their units can beat most things toe to toe and tend to be good at whatever it is they specialise in-shooty things shoot pretty well, combat units are good in combat etc. They have excellent and easy means of synergising with buffs via heroes and various other traits which mean that if you can deliver them to the right place they tend to more than our punch their weight, and can either defend hard with not many troops or make big holes with them if you set them up right. The issue is that because they’re expensive they're nearly always going toe to several toes and get overwhelmed. Once on the board they’re also pretty slow so can get outmanoeuvred easily/are quite hard to play reactively with, meaning once deployed and units are in from reserve, you’re pretty much committed and good players will try and exploit this. And unlike many armies they have no way of bringing points of units onto the board they haven’t paid for, meaning they tend to be bad at attritional games. Most of the lists that are made in the current meta are simply focussed on working around these issues, as well as those the current meta poses, and maximising their strengths. The anvils list on killing stuff before it overwhelms your lines, then finishing it off in favourable and more manageable combat; The Gav Bomb list on creating one massive early fight in your favour and a hole in the enemy army which allows you to dictate the rest of the battle; The Stardrake list on using the SD to absorb and blunt the sort of blobs that overwhelm and trouble individual SC units while the rest of your more compact army is free to concentrate its force where it can make a difference rather than get sucked into a mulch of spears. If money or troop availability is no object then obviously you can just try and form a list like one of the above, but for most people they do have limitations on what’s available to them. In which case it’s still the same process of working with your strengths and weaknesses but just decreasing the scale. If you have lots of missile units then you need to factor in keeping them safe in your list. If you have a lot of Units strong on the charge you need to think about how you ensure your list helps you to do the charging and keeps them from being charged. If you have a lot of defensive units it’s the opposite issue, you need to think about how to make the most of defensive advantages while still having the means to take objectives offensively. And so on. One of the biggest strengths SC have though is unit variety. So never be afraid to try stuff. It’s fun discovering what does and dosent work and in what situation etc. Because of their inherently good unit profiles it’s rare that you’ll be absolutist destroyed with SC. They always make a good account of themselves, you just need to work out how to use their various aspects together to make the most of them.

Never before did so many fight for so few rumours

The level of emotion or passion on here about something that may or may not be true puts Schrodinger to shame

Shame. I’d love to do a proper Vampire Aristocracy list but looks like it’s still not financially viable

How are people building Blood Knights these days, Is there a recommended hack or model substitute?

Kill Team got hardly any new models. Much of it's appeal was that you could basically buy an existing set and have your gang or whatever. There was the Rogue Trader set later and a few heroes but that was it.

I’m surprised it wasn’t FAQ’d as they’re moving away from modifiers for special abilities. Not that I’m complaining as I’ve done this with Ordinator with Hammers (Of Judgement) a few times. Scioned him and ballista behind a unit where the enemy is screening a buffing hero like a necromancer or Tormentor, Celestant and co charge the unit and Ordinator charges the “safe” screened hero. Used Celestant ability on the hero, +5’s on 6 dice usually comes good. Never once considered that you could do the CA multiple times though, that’s clever! Also works as a good monster hunter even without the Celestant ability. Drop ballista in with its high rend shots then go in after the monster with LO and you’ll usually hurt it pretty bad even on 6’s.

Not tried it yet but there was a guy a few pages back asking about how he could make a Fulminators list and I suggested that a LC equipped with the above might be the best way to utilise a Dracoth at present. I intend to try it some point certainly!

I’ll say whatever I like thanks 👍🏻 The Gryph Hound impeding a way larger units than itself is an established thing that I happen to find quite cheesey. What you explain as happening is that the massive unit still detours round the single individual, it’s movement is affected by it nonetheless. If you read that in a piece of lore, that a unit of skeletons formed a conga line to skirt past a gryph hound rather than just simply trample over it as though it wasn’t there, you’d find it plausible? But note I’m not demanding it be removed from the game or that other people agree with me. I’m just stating what I think and why. Never once have I told someone to change their behaviour over the discussion like you just have.

In that case why all the realism elsewhere? Why doesen't everything fly, why can't people run forever, why can't I pile in 17" away, why aren't weapons made of cheese, why can't a skeleton eat a Mangler Squig ? Fun game this. It's a simulation and 90% of it's rules follow that basis. It's quite easy to imagine a unit of archers having a component firing in from the back ranks while the front engage the charge. The Mawkrusha can fly so he basically can go where he wants. A stardrake can eat a Kurnoth hunter by biting off it's head, I don't think it literally means it's gobbles it up like Pinnochio with the Whale, it's clearly intended to imply that the Stardrake, having huge powerful jaws, can end the life of something with ease, ditto the Dracoth rule. It's very easy to imagine a unit engaging with a boat skimming over the battlefield with it's crew hanging off the gunwwhales etc. Not only is it easy to imagine these things, it's a huge part of the fun and the spectacle of it all, it's an important bridge between the rules and the narrative of what's going on. Your turn, how does a gryphhound impede 80 skeletons?

I understand how it works, as I stated above. But the idea of one dude/less than gigantic creature somehow stopping a regiment without the aid of magical assistance is ludicrous. I'm supposed to believe that 50+ of something are honestly going to prevaricate over how to get past one guy rather than just running him over? True on the battlefield a massive regiment is unwieldy etc but that's because it has to co-ordinate movement on a colossal scale, and even then that only goes so far because that's based off historical example, there's no lore based reason why non-humans with supernatural capacity for war or magically animated beings who can't think, get confused, have no freedom of will etc should find maneuvering difficult . But all that aside, there's nothing remotely complicated about a horde walking in a straight line over or past one man/woman/dog/bird etc. And there's literally no way you can explain how a Gryph Hound halts 80 skeletons or 80 anything unless they all chase it like they're in Scooby do, and why would they do that. The press of big units is recognised in how their attacks, to hit/wound etc is modelled, so the idea that they somehow lose that momentum and power when faced with literally one of a human-sized something just because they're walking feels pretty dumb. I disagree that it stops horde armies from taking big units as well, because the armies that have horde options don't need their hordes to move, they can sit on objectives, take up a massive footprint to mess up alpha striking, while still having access to units that allow them to take objectives or tabletop you regardless.

I did the Block a unit thing with it once but never again. The idea that a single dog bird can block advancing mass of 80 skeletons etc is clearly an unintended accident of the rules. Dont get me wrong it’s in the rules and everything and anything goes in tournaments but in the context of friendly matched play it’s utter cheese.

If there’s not any shooting units to benefit from its cry/no risk of reserves then usually put him to whichever objective I worry about being most closely contested to provide the extra body

You’re right there! Sorry for misinformation. I’ve never actually had to try and dispel 3 things with Incantor alone due to having 3 other Wizards on the table usually so it’s never come up

The “oh noes new Battletome” is always a bit weird. While I agree it’s a highly inefficient and clunky rules delivery system, £25 investment every year in this hobby is pretty much nothing.

I am very confident there will be at least one new Stormcast addition.

New Stormcast Chamber pretty much nailed on with “Let the Storm Vaults open” heh heh heh

Yeah I think Gorechosen Mk 2

That’s true, although SD on Sequitors with their re-roll of everything save and SD on other stuff without that is less of a big deal. Although as I’ve said elsewhere I like Incantor on Dais for 2 dispells, 3 with Scroll for one turn, and being able to fly in for kamikaze flask attacks. So I suppose if you don’t need another general specifically and you take an Incantor then adding a portable SD to the Incantors arsenal is hardly a bad thing!

Yeah we discussed this shortly after. As @Ozzy0sb pointed out being able to fly around a general 12” with SD for only 40 points is probably the reason. Exorcist is only other guy. But obviously that’s pretty unlikely to occur!

He was running LA on Dracoline with the pack leader trait and CA so he would have been able to gurantee it pretty much. Edit: I stand corrected! Wonder if he dropped them in. But then the Heraldor wouldn’t be able to use his stuff. Mysterious.

I had a look the other day and Unbeknownst to me the highest ranking SC list at Cancon ran a list almost the exact same as the 6 Dracoline one I’ve been playing. Except he went Anvils so presumably did a double pile-in with the cats, yeesh. Even bigger splat on impact. Think he also took two ballista where I take 2 Liberators which is interesting.

I think it’s more the one-note aspect to be honest, the overkill of it all. Gav and 10 Evocators to Deep Strike, plus 10 separate Evocators to either start or deploy elsewhere, that’s still incredibly powerful and also far less eggs in basket. If you strike with 20 Evocators you basically win or lose in one go, as you say, ala Vanguard wing. It’s a DDOS attack with dice. It’s dumb. However I think with unbreakable Gloomspite stabbas and their massive footprint to add to the horde meta it’s going to be harder and harder to pull off anyway.

Completley one dimensional and very predictable. And a good opponent will just screen and make it impossible for you to get your death blob within 9” of anything worth killing. Then without a Heraldor to boost your combat movement you can look forward to enjoying walking half an army’s worth of points around doing nothing for most of the game. Dont get me wrong if you get that unit to where it needs to be the turn it drops there’s few Elite striking options better than it in the game. But you’re spending a lot of points on a gamble badically. Oh and if Total Commitment cones up you’ll be amazed at how embarrassing it feels.