Mark Williams

I got an impression that they are like one step down from Khorne, and that they basically worship slaughter to the point that they kill for fun, and when it's not other people, they kill themselves. The notion that they are any sort of nice is just a front they put up. It's quite literally an "enemy of my enemy is my friend" type of situation.

This is the Gavriel list that I've been running with for the past 6 months or so. I do intend to add a lord arcanum and sequitors at some point, one day, but this list has been doing fine, so I'm not in a hurry to change it. I've gone 3/5 at tournaments with variations of this list more or less for over a year now. I feel that I could do better with better play but certain armies are just extremely difficult to get past, and there's not much I can do about those unfortunately. Allegiance: Stormcast Eternals- Stormhost: Hammers of SigmarMortal Realm: AqshyLeadersLord-Castellant (120)- General- Trait: We Cannot Fail- Artefact: God-forged BladeGavriel Sureheart (120)Knight-Incantor (140)- Spell: Azyrite HaloCelestant-Prime (340)Battleline5 x Liberators (100)- Warhammer & Shield- 1x Grandhammers10 x Liberators (200)- Warhammer & Shield- 2x Grandhammers5 x Judicators (160)- Boltstorm Crossbows- 1x Thunderbolt CrossbowsUnits3 x Aetherwings (50)3 x Vanguard-Raptors with Hurricane Crossbows (140)10 x Evocators (440)- 10x Grandstaves- Lore of Invigoration: Celestial BladesEndless Spells / TerrainCelestian Vortex (40)Everblaze Comet (100)Total: 2000 / 2000Extra Command Points: 1Allies: 0 / 400Wounds: 106

It's a finess list. With that many raptors and birds, the enemy is going to be forced to try to come to him or over time, the raptors are going to decimate them. Won't work against every army, but it might upset a few games.

Knight Questor is pretty much for the RPs... Castigators are pretty bad, and so are gryph hound units (free ones are fine).

I love my stormcast to bits. I'm at around 3500 points worth and climbing. Just because I can't beat everyone with them doesn't mean i don't like them. Both of our cavalry options are pretty good. Both Dracolines and Dracoths are strong and have their place. I'm speaking purely from a tournament-competitive standpoint when I say I feel they are a 3/5 army. In my local hobby group and in the store, I seem to almost always do pretty good, and I'm sure there's quite a few people who don't like playing me and think that they are overpowered or something. Different people will have different expleriences. I'm more or less playing a Gav bomb army these days. Despite the fact that people have learned how to counter it, it's still the strongest trick I've got, and it still works against people who don't know how to block it, or don't have the tools to do so. The 2nd to last tournament I went to, I tried a non-Gav-bomb list and I ended up spending he entire tournament at the bottom tables, unable to beat opponents that I previously had no trouble with. As for 10 liberators, you basically have to put a lord castellant with them. This guy is unfortunately a bit of a must-take in most good lists. Not much you can do to avoid it. I think the army is intended to have its heroes buffing and making their troops stronger.

I don’t think this forum is united on the opinion, but personally I feel the longstrike list is probably the most competitive and removes the most luck factor from the equation. After that there’s probably 4-5 semi competitive builds that can go 3/5 , occasionally 4/5, if you are really lucky or an amazing player (usually both). SCE on the average imo is a 3/5 army. That’s pretty much my win rate with them, if I play my best and don’t make any mistakes and I know my opponents army well.

It depends on the wording of the ability.

I think it depends on how many casters you have. The problem I’ve had is taking endless spells and only having one caster. You spend the first half of the game trying to get your endless spells out and by late game it just doesn’t really matter anymore. Either the unit died or they are never going to get attacked anyway. I think once I get some more casters it will be more valuable.

I do like the lore of the stormcast, but I think almost every AoS army has cool lore, so I feel like that's a cop-out. I like armies that deep strike. It's a key part of my army's tactics, and I try to use it as much as I can. So in a nutshell it's that - dropping from the heavens and getting in people's faces quickly is a lot of fun to me.

People ask me this at tournaments some times, but I don't have a profound answer to the question. I picked stormcast and the hammers of sigmar color scheme because it was economical for me. At the time I got into Age of Sigmar, I didn't have a job, and I was trying to figure a way to start the hobby for as cheap as I possibly could. The starter set had a lot of models for a relatively good price, and I was able to get a starter paint set with all of the colors needed to paint Hammers of Sigmar colors for a lot less than buying the paints individually, and it came with a brush and a set of clippers too. I painted almost the entire box of starter models with just one set of starter paints. Two years down the road, and I'm up to about 3500 points of stormcast and constantly climbing. I've started 3 other armies, but none of them are to a point where I can play a full game with them yet. I have a lot of issues with the army. I think the army is deceptively complex, and I do not actually think it's a good army for new people to play. I spent a year losing with the army constantly before I started to get a few wins under my belt. My win record is quite low with it, and when I do win, I generally feel like it was pretty nail-biting and I couldn't make any mistakes, and I had to think several turns ahead in the game. My army at least, is extremely unforgiving, and I can be doing quite well, but then lose in a heartbeat with just a few bad combats on the board. I think the army has some serious flaws, and I'd hoped the new books would address some of it, but they really don't seem to have done that. My army is a good solid 3/5 win tournament army, and I have no room left to optimize it. It's playing about as well as it can at this point. I have a few ideas to try to make it do better, but it's all just sorta give and take at this point. I suspect I could do better with an Anvils army, but I'm a stickler for paint schemes and sticking with chambers over just using certain rules just because they are better. I really like the rule that brings a unit of redeemers back, and I'd like to work towards a list that might take advantage of or even abuse that in the future. I think this might end up taking the form of "sequitor spam" in the near future. I was thinking about using a cleansing phalanx, but meh.... like I said, it's all just give and take at this point. I'm sort of holding out hope that we get a new book soon and maybe the'll rebalance some things and make the book more cohesive, but bottom line is I don't expect to win any tournaments any time soon with my army. I can put up a good mid-table competition though, and that's fine.

Who are you asking?

I'm kind of curious how this army would do. I realize it has a few crippling lose conditions, but I can't help but think that with morathi's ability to make the stalker's shoot in the hero phase, it might be able to do some pretty crippling damage to enemies that don't expect it. The khailbron temple would add some protection from shooting and make it tougher to snipe out Morathi early in the game. Deployment would be key, but the range on the ability is pretty far, and you could keep morathi pretty far out of harms way with careful deployment. The witches would just be shields around the front lines to ward off any initial assaults. Edit: I know the blood stalkers don't get mortal wounds in the hero phase, but I'm thinking in the grand scheme that wouldn't matter. Also, the withering spell would be the goal to debuff whatever unit you want to shoot at, making the shots wound on 2s instead of 3s. Allegiance: Daughters of Khaine- Temple: KhailebronMortal Realm: UlguMorathi High Oracle of Khaine (480)- General- Lore of Shadows: The Withering10 x Witch Aelves (120)- Pairs of Sacrificial Knives10 x Witch Aelves (120)- Pairs of Sacrificial Knives10 x Witch Aelves (120)- Pairs of Sacrificial Knives20 x Blood Stalkers (560)20 x Blood Stalkers (560)Balewind Vortex (40)Total: 2000 / 2000Extra Command Points: 0Allies: 0 / 400Wounds: 116

See attached picture.

That would be cool.

I feel that I haven't made a good case for the Prime if you walk away from the discussion just simply saying he isn't worth it. My point of view is that he's worth it, except when fighting better armies, but that the book simply offers nothing significantly better. The Prime does something unique that isn't intrinsically covered by anything else in the book, and against 60% of the armies out there, he's outstanding. The problem is that making that call that he's not worth it, comes with an unspoken implication that you're going to replace his points with something much better. The problem therein lies that there's not much else in the SCE book to choose from that is actually better. There's basically just different shades of grey to take in his place. I'm happy with the prime and what he does, and I'll continue to consider him a must-take in my army. This doesn't mean I don't think he should be better. This doesn't mean I don't understand his flaws or why people don't like him. My problem is that I can't get anything else that does exactly what he does, but more efficiently. I agree that it's sad and not fair, but that won't stop me from taking him anyway.

In terms of damage done and points countered, he almost never pays for himself. 7/10 games he's basically a points sink, and I couldn't tell you how many times he'****** the board, charged in, and then whiffed everything and died instantly. However... the prime has a few things going for him. 1. Some people have never seen him, and they have no idea how dangerous he is. Some people completely expose a unit that they thing is untouchable or unkillable to the rest of my army, and the prime basically "takes them to school" for it. Against newer players, it's not uncommon for the prime to just sort run around the back of the board slaying back-line units because people had no idea that he could do that. 2. Some people WAY overprotect themselves from him. They are scared of him, and they end up either playing far too conservatively, or they invest far too many resources into trying to kill him. He ends up being some kind of psychological tool against these sorts of people. 3. If someone is running small 100 point buffing heroes, I just drop him in my own lines and start dropping comets each turn. I will combine this with the everblaze comet for a 1-2 punch that will often 1-shot a hero if not multiple heroes. Every now and then someone accidentally clumps up all their heroes into a small pile, and I've ended up comboing him off the comet to kill 3-4 heros in a single turn. It doesn't happen often and you need good judement about it, but when it does, it completely guts the enemy. In general, I basically use the prime to assassinate targets that I otherwise would have a lot of difficult dealing with. He's a very expensive assassin character, but he also seems to affect people pyschologically too. In today's meta, he's nowhere near as good as he used to be. Ever since armies that can play around with activations came about, I'm finding him less and less resilient and useful. But having said that, there's still a significant number of armies that basically have no answer for him in tournaments, enough so that I feel forced to take him, even if he might not work well against some opponents. I've taken the stance that you simply can't win them all, but you can try to win more than half, and the prime is an important tool towards achieving that goal. If I didn't have him, I'm not really sure what I'd replace him with, as I need something like that in my army that's capable of extending my reach around the board and providing some sort of pressure on people to not just abandon their objectives.

Azyrite Halo is cool but it’s super niche and rarely comes into play. I think I chose poorly there. Lightning blast is probably a better choice. Same with terrifying aspect on the evocators. I should have gone with the spell that can reroll charges. Otherwise I’m really happy with how the list is playing and I wouldn’t change anything. I feel it’s playing about as good as it can. If I play smart and make good choices, I generally feel like most games I at least had a fair chance of winning. That’s fine. I like the idea of using the spear guys to hunt monsters, just because, personally. But I suppose retributors would probably be the most well rounded.

Went to New Zealand Call to Arms tournament in Wellington this weekend. Review follows... This is the army that I went with: Game 1: vs Hedonites of Slaanesh, Star Strike I set up two small pockets of units in the far corners of the board, with the intention of waiting for the stars to fall before striking. He gave me first turn with the intention of trying to double turn him. I tried to cast a spell, failed, then ended my turn. He moved forward a little bit then ended his turn. We rolled for turn 2. I won and gave it to him so that I wouldn't get double turned later in the battle. The star fell on top of his army on the left side of the board. I dropped 10 liberators, 10 evocators, gavriel, and a lord castellant in front of 30 daemonettes and a keeper of secrets, and charged in. The Keeper of secrets killed all the evocators except 2 before they got to attack. We ran out of time on turn 3 and didn't finish the game (opponent was very slow player), but I was on the way to getting tabled. I brought my celestant prime out on turn 3 and assaulted the lyricist in the back, whiffed all my attacks with him and then died in the following counter assault before getting to attack again. We sort of "speed played/talked" through turn 4 just to get a feel for how things would go, but skipped a bunch of stuff and really didn't play it out properly. I scored 120 KPs (the liberators on the left killed some small hero) and lost my hidden objective which was to kill the opponent's most expensive model. Game 2: vs Gloomspite Gitz Squiggalance, Duality of Death The battle was on the 2nd to last table. Very cool army though - a squigg-based gitz army. I lost deployment, but he gave me first turn. There was an objective inside one of the buildings on my left side, so I ran straight for it and tagged the objective first turn. I buffed the unit with my castellant. On turn 1 I got assaulted with the monster squigg and lost almost half the unit of liberators in a single assault. I spent a command point to keep them from fleeing the table. I removed casualties from outside the building until the unit was finally on a 2+ RR save. After that, 4 liberators tanked the objective for the remaining 4 turns and bounced back and for between taking 1 damage and then healing it (in a later combat) via the castellant buff. My ranged units slowly whittled down everything on that side of the board, until there was no more melee. I brought my Celestant prime out in turn 3 to try to kill the monster squigg. He whiffed all his attacks and then died in the return combat... But the liberators lived until the end of the game and I got max points for that objective. On the other side of the board, he surrounded the objective and castled up. I Gav-bombed the Evocators into it and managed to kill the Battleline unit that was holding the objective, after 2 turns of combat. Gavriel died to the monster squigg on the right side on the charge in. I ended up with 4 evocators remaining by the end of the game, but they managed to kill everything on that side of the board in the end. After he lost the objective, I won the game due to victory points. We played the game out and I managed to table him (2000 kill points), but I lost my hidden objective, which was to recapture an objective. Game 3: vs Order Draconis, Shifting Objectives Very cool looking army to face. My pictures aren't great for this. I split my army into 2 forces, a small group on the left and a large group on the right. On the left side, he had a very strong line up. He took first turn and moved forward a little bit, preparing to crush that side of the board. At the top of turn 1, I dropped Gavriel and the evocators on the left side and charged in with everything. I got very lucky on the lightning zaps and basically 1 shotted the black dragon on that side. After that, his left right flank crumbled and I just swept towards the middle... On the right side of the board, I brought my Celestant Prime out and attacked a black dragon. He whiffed all his attacks and then died to the return assault. (I swear, I am not making this up.) However, my right flank held firm and he couldn't budge me off of the objective there, due to stacking armor buffs. The evocators continued to sweep across the board, and I eventually caught up to the dragon and killed it to win the game and table. (2000 points). I finally got my secondary objective, which was to make a charge greater than 9". Game 4: vs Stormcast, Knife to the Heart Very short game, but nice and good-hearted opponent. He took first turn, but didn't drop things from the sky. I castled up on my objective and buffed everything up. I then dropped my shooting and started whittling away at his objective holders. He countered with a dragon. Turn 2, I gav bombed and rushed his objective and pushed through. Turn 3 ticked over and the game ended because I held both objectives. Extremely low scoring game - I had 260 KP from this - but I did get my hidden objective which was to capture 2 objectives. Game 5: vs Fyreslayers, Focal Points Ug... what a game. I knew this was a tough matchup, so I was not so much trying to win as just harrass him and give him a hard time. I set up strong on one of the objectives. On the other side, I set up weak, and dropped the Celestant Prime down on turn 1 in order to use him as artillary for the rest of the game. He did great and killed all but 1 of the foot heroes in this role. He tunneled a unit of Hearthguard berserkers in front of me, but failed his charge. In the back, I dropped gavriel and the shooters into his back line, shot a hero off the board and charged into his magmadroth. I killed the Magmadroth but lost the evocators and Gavriel on the counter. The hearthguard finally got over to my side of the board and he eventually captured 4 objectives. I felt I gave him a good game in the end, as he only had 1 hero left with 1 wound. I lost the game 17 points to 35, but did a good job with KP 540 (I think), considering. **** I found out after this game that my opponent screwed his rules up completely almost everywhere. 1. He was using his command ability to let his magmadroth attack first in combat (this only applies to infantry units). 2. He was giving his Runesmiter a 4+ damage save (this only applies to the hearthguard and not the hero). 3. He was activating fight first with his hearthguard even though they were not wholly within 12" of his hero. 4. He gave all of his vulkites a 6+ damage save (the rule for the hearthguard, but spread across the entire army), as well as his general and his priest for some reason.... 5. He gave his magmic invocation +1 to mortal wound and said that it was because he was targetting a hero (this is false, it only works if targeting horde units). 6. He was piling in 6" with his hearthguard instead of 3". I wasn't familiar with Fyreslayers, so I didn't know what the heck was going on. So every time he did something, I just thought, "******, that seems way too good...." but I couldn't say anything because I didn't know if it was true or not. However, if we'd have played a fair game, I would have completely collapsed his back field and wiped all his heroes out by turn 3, and possibly could have won. So I'm really bummed out about this last game. I did speak to the TO and apparently other players in the tournament had similar issues. In any case, I took home my usual 3/5 wins with Stormcast, which is par for the course for me. Placed 15/32 in the tournament, and had the best showing of the Stormcast players there. Great weekend and supercharged my energy to keep playing AoS. Thanks for reading.

@Nizrah I find ballistas to be rather swingy in damage, and I also find it difficult to capture objectives if I lean too heavily into shooting. It would be good to have a fast moving unit instead, such as cats or dracoths, so that you can try to have something moving and pushing forward onto objectives.

This is my opinion as well. Good solid 3/5 tier army, with occasional edge cases.

Would it really though? Most armies always out drop SCE armies, and exposing a unit, even a good one to getting attacked by everything in your opponent's list is risky enough that it wouldn't be an automatic win. And keep in mind you have stuff like Morathi in the game who can go sit on an objective and tank it for 3+ turns. Also, it's not the end of the world if we have an actually strong combination that makes opponents actually have to work for a win.

I think a good way to make liberators (and sequitors) more relevant is to give them a rule similar to space marines allegiance, which allows them to hold an objective even if they are outnumbered. That one simple change to "redeemer" units would give stormcast a little bit more chops in games, and people couldn't just throw a useless chaff unit like skinks at them and capture objectives. They would have to actually commit some resources to a unit in order to kick them off an objective.

@PJetski Have you seen this Khurnoth hunter shooting stuff yet? I just saw them last night and their damage output is pretty insane, and they can teleport around the board with a 30" reach.... they have an artefact that allows them to reroll hits, and grove ability to re-roll 1s to wound. Seems like basically a better version of Anvilstrike honestly......

May I ask what kind of list you are using?

The tauralon model is probably worse.