Mark Williams

No need to hold a line if the enemy is dead. (Joke)

I'll be curious to know your experiences. It's a little different than my standard list. I started out with a larger block at my home base, but I've been taking smaller units lately. I find that 15 is the magic number, but my current list I've trimmed down to just 10 so that I could get more threats on the table. I've also trimmed down from 10 evos to 5, so that I could fit my celestant prime into the list, but that'st just kind of a personal preference. As for the Vanguard Raptors, the best tactic I've found with them so far is to put them 18" back, just at the edge of their threat range, and then form a wall of birds directly in front of them. My best record so far is stalling a strong unit from attacking a flank up to 3 turns. However, this relied somewhat on my opponent not understanding what controlled the birds, nor understanding just how weak they are. I'm finding the raptors don't deal as much damage as I'd like, and that it's actually quite expensive for what is essentially a delay tactic - if you think about it objectively, it's 470 points for what is effectively a harrassment and stall unit. They will not "clear out screens" the way that you are thinking, as effectively as you want them to, but they will do great at holding a flank from getting over-run for a few turns. I just worry that for 470 points you could just put another 20 sequitors on the board, and that's something you'll have to think about as you go, as that would arguably be more effective, and also be 4 fewer drops too... You also need to be mindful of the number of heroes in your list, and how you will get them onto objectives for missions like Three Places of Power. You could end up in a mission in a tournment where you just can't get your heros to the objectives quickly enough, or they get picked off quickly. This is another reason that I have the Celestant Prime in my list. I'm hoping that the GHB19 book might reduce the price of some of these units a little bit, as that would strengthen the army quite a bit. Edit: Another thing to be mindful of is how succeptible this strategy is to endless spells that do D3 damage to each unit. A bad spell phase can wipe out the entire pack of small units, and some of the better tournament armies always have access to such a spell.

@Requizen I’ve been playing lists like this for over a year. It has good offense and answers for a lot of opponents. But it gets stuffed by eels and FEC and most DoK. Very solid tier 2 list that can get 2-3 wins out of 5 depending on how well you play and what your matchups are.

My experience fighting them too. There's not a lot of weaknesses there, just strength after strength in every phase.

I've run several different variations over the past year and a half. The lists that I've had the best results with have been hybrid lists, which had a balance of shooting and assault. The list I took most recently was an experiment, where I went completely shooting, with almost no assault or ground force. That list didn't do well because I was unable to generate enough damage and push people away quickly enough. That list would have worked if the games lasted longer, and missions weren't as favorable towards aggressive armies. A defensive, shooting army doesn't get ahead on points early enough in the game, and it's difficult to come back from that quickly enough. But I think if games lasted longer or win conditions were different, an army like that might do well. I was doing very well in terms of kill points in all of my missions with a shooting list, but I was losing the missions anyway due to losing initiative in moving forward and capturing objectives. If more missions were KP based, a shooting army I think would do very well in the meta. This is my current "balance" list that I've been taking to friendly matchups, and it's been doing very well against a wide variety of opponents. It doesn't have much of an answer against some of the best armies out there, however. I don't know what to do about that except to just take a different list/stormhost. I think, at this point, if I were to try to move into a more competitive list, I would need to have a Lord Arcanum general, and start replacing many elements of the list with large amounts of sequitors. At some point, the celestant prime would need to go as well. He is a good unit and does well, but he is fragile and fails to earn his points back in too many games. The above list, however, is very fun for me to play. I get a lot of enjoyment out of it, and it has a lot of bells and whistles. In terms of enjoyment, I wouldn't change a thing. I just wish many of the units were cheaper, so that I could get more bodies on the table while playing the same type of game. If the GHB19 reduces the cost on some of the units I'm using, then I might stick with the theme and just attack some of the weaknesses in it, mainly bodies.

I suppose I wasn't clear enough. Against 4 of the people I played against, it would've auto won. Those games, instead, were struggles just to fiend off opponents. If I take a different, better list, I would win more games, and I would have, of course, played different opponents, and had different results and different problems. This doesn't invalidate or disprove what I said.

Based on my recent experiences a very heavy seq/evo gav list would have at least ensured I spent my time fighting at the top tables, instead of the middle and lower ones. The games I lost would have been much easier if not auto wins, so I’m thinking of building the same sort of list that you’re describing.

What does their army look like. Context is important.

I think if retributors had a 3 up save this would really have some chops. Out dropping an opponent definitely has some value as well.

Good advice. I don’t think you’ve particularly contradicted anything I said above. My conclusion was that I need to go back to the drawing board and redo my army if I want better results. That’s essentially what you said. I agree that I can improve my experience and knowledge as a player. I don’t agree that I am bad at gaming by any stretch of that definition. I’ve beaten almost all of the people who’ve won tournaments in my area in the past 2 years at some point. To the point that I have a reputation of pulling out surprise wins against people who completely underestimate me and don’t take me seriously. In the distant past, I won two 40k tournaments, which wasn’t easy. I do however think I have a penchant for building quirky lists out of some inner desire to be different or win with an underdog list or units, and I think that’s blowing up in my face a bit. I probably made some quite terrible units do amazingly well for what they were capable of, but a dud is still a dud at the end of the day... You do bring up a valid question as to whether or not I want to stick with stormcast, or just play an easier army or at least one that matches my play style better. That’s something worth thinking about more seriously going forward. I’m definitely unhappy with the state of my current army, and something will need to change as I feel at this point I’m just spinning in circles. Edit: I also think I’m not that far off the mark with my assessment of stormcast. If the theory that the army is good, and I’m what’s bad, were true. There would be more evidence pointing to that. Other SCE players would be placing better, and I, placing mediocre, would be an exception. The fact that I even seriously entertain that theory by doubting my conclusions should be evidence enough that my thought processes and logic aren’t just simply clouded by ignorance and naivety.

Summary of thoughts on the Notorious GT in New Zealand this past weekend. I won't repost pictures of the battles, as I've already done that, but I would like to give some thoughts on my list and on Stormcast's placing in the tournament as a whole, and the meta as I've seen it. This is the army that I took (picture, and list). I'm sorry for the format of this post in advance, but I just have a string of random thoughts and points that I wanted to make, so here goes. I got a "best of 7" award for painted army, which I was quite happy with. But on a personal level I felt there were a few armies that were much better painted than mine. I talked to one of them after the tournament, and apparently he got disqualified because a unit hadn't been finished painting (ie it was base color only). So I guess I got picked due to the fact that my entire army was painted. In any case, I am happy about it. There were 50 players in the tournament, but on the day, two people did not show. This is the final rankings after the tournament: https://tabletop.to/notorious-gt/ladder I placed 40th with 2 wins and 3 losses. I'm so much lower than the other people because one of the wins was only a minor victory, and I did not do well scoring my secondary objectives (only 2 out of 5 were achieved). On the subject of the secondary objectives, we were using "Hidden Agendas": https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/AoS2_GHB19_Hidden_Agendas_Download-1-1.pdf My only gripe about these is that they seem much easier to get if you are winning. There aren't many good choices in the objective list for armies that are losing. One of the best one for an army that expects to lose is the Secret Objective, which has one of your heroes being removed from battle. It's easy to get (for me), but all of my heroes are extremely important, as they are support heroes, and removing one from the game in the middle of play, when the outcome is unknown, is very difficult to do (and that's the only one I can guarantee to get while playing a losing game). I just find them a bit frustrating. For the armies that I played against, here are my thoughts on them: 1. Skaven I can't believe how big this army is. It feels like their units cost practically nothing, and there are threats everywhere on the table. I felt like he had three times the army that I did. I can't believe how they seem to be able to do everything with almost no sacrifice to other areas. They have good combat, good shooting, and a good magic phase. They were strong in every area of the game, and that blew me away. Every phase for my opponent was very busy, with lots of damage happening. There was a vermin lord on the table with a big green ball in its hand, and it made everything on the table (within range) immune to battleshock. In addition to this, it was impossible for me to kill it, so for all intents and purposes his army was completely immune to battle shock and had 2-3 times more bodies than me. This game felt unwinnable to me. I could have played better, and made better choices, but in the end it felt like it wouldn't have mattered what I did. 2 and 5. Sylvaneth Two different sorts of armies, but similar experiences. It takes too long for Sylvaneth to play and do their "thing". The first player took 85% of our time limit up moving his army around while I sat and waited for him to put trees down and then teleport and summon dryads all around. Navigating around and dealing with the trees is not a fun experience for me, and I feel that it creates a frustrating experience for the opponent to have to suffer through. while I do feel this is a strong army, I feel that it's rules don't flow well with the game, and it feels like it was made for a different game or system. I really don't like playing against Sylvaneth and having to wait around while they lay down trees and do teleporty stuff, and I hope that this goes away or at least gets smoother in the next book. 3. Ironjawz A very fun game, and our armies were very equal. But it seems to me that their book is outdated and their army is very expensive for what they do. They need more bodies and stuff needs more synergy. Feels like playing an older edition of the game when I play them, as the game pace is slower and has fewer moments of intense movement and damage. 4. Nurgle This game was practically unwinnable for me, and my opponent knew it. I think he was visibly bored playing me, which made me a bit sad. I actually put up a really good fight, and if I'd won priority on turn 3, I might could have squeezed some water out of a rock and pulled a victory, or at least gotten a tie. But it's a terrible strategy to hope for miracles and perfect rolls to save you. All my opponent needed was a single double turn to irrevocably get ahead, so I basically immediately lost the objective and the game without doing much of anything. My Celestant Prime never even hit the table. Oh well. ...................... Thoughts on my army: When I was deciding on a list before the tournament. I built a very heavy shooting list because I thought that big monster lists were going to be dominating the tournament a little bit, and I wanted a way to deal with them. While that was true, I was unable to win the middle of the pack missions, and thus I never faced any of the big monster lists that were fighting with each other at the top tables. Instead, I got stuck fighting against balanced horde type armies, which I was completely unequipped to deal with. I automatically lost most of my games without really giving my opponents a challenge. This was very frustrating for me as I feel like I played good games and did some cool things with my army, but this was largely unseen by my opponents, who were unfamiliar with stormcast and basically just saw a very mediocre army on the table with a very low model count. I'm convinced at this point that shooting (at least my brand of it) is a lost cause in today's meta. A little bit of support shooting is fine, but completely investing in it is a waste. The primary reason for this is that it doesn't do enough damage, and the stormcast shooting units are all too small and too bad in combat to hold objectives. You basically jut get blown over by a stiff breeze, and you can't afford enough points to bring a threatening shooting line and also have a wall of defenders to block the enemy while you are shooting at them. Almost every game i played was just a round of good shooting followed by a tide of bodies crashing into me and then a quick game loss afterwards. My shooting units do not move forward and assault locations, so I cannot capture objectives on the turn that I land and "attack", which puts me behind on points scoring, which causes a chain reaction where I have to basically quickly table my opponents - somehow - and then capture all the objectives and try to come back from a losing position - somehow. I basically start every game out losing, and have to try to turn water into wine at some point with amazing play and luck. My army, at least, is very low tier, and cannot put up a real fight against the better built armies. I don't necessarily think this is a reflection of stormcast armies as a whole - just my army in particular is essentially a failed experiment. The only unit in my army that was capturing objectives was the Celestant Prime. He was by far the MVP of the tournament. But the prime model in general is very expensive and spends too much time off the board doing nothing. He's very easy to kill as well, and in two games, he was killed instantly in a single turn, just after he appeared on the board. This guy is way too fragile for costing so many points and spending so much time off the table. My biggest wish is that he gained 2 wounds in addition to 2 attacks, for every turn he stayed off the table. Just a little bit of extra resilience would mean the enemy can't just hit you with a 200 point unit ad remove you from the table. He feels like he was balanced for a game that no longer exists to me. .................... Thoughts on the tournament and the meta. Holy heck, the meta is competitive. Over half of the armies there were armies that I would have had trouble beating even on the best day, and many matchups would have been automatic losses for me. Looking at the final scoreboard, FeC, Deepkin, Death, and Skaven are all fighting with each other for the top spots. All of the stormcast lists did poorly, and while I admit that none of us had a "great" (or maybe even good) list, it's obvious to me that SCE don't do well with many of their lists. All of the stormcast present had different types of lists, but every one of them struggled and couldn't hang with the top armies. As for me, if I want to keep playing Stormcast at a competitive level, I'm a point where I have to look at literally rebuilding my army from the ground up, and a lot of what I own is probably unusuable for that future army. It's very frustrating to have 3-4k of painted models in army, and almost 80% of it is rubbish that just doesn't seem to be working. I've walked away from this tournament slightly more demoralized than usual, and it's going to take me a while to try to come up with my next army list and figure out where to go from here. I admit that it would be a whole lot simpler to just play another army that does naturally well and has fewer trap unit choices to bog me down. Interestingly there was a Fyreslayer list that did quite well, and I thought that was cool.

Game 5. Border war vs Sylvaneth. Major Loss. 15 to 23. Most enjoyable match of the tournament. Great sportsmanship from the opponent.

Game 4 NZ GT. Knife to the Heart vs Nurgle. Put up a surprisingly good fight. If I had won priority on turn 3 there was a chance to pull it out. But lack of bodies to hold the objective got me in the end.

I’ll do a proper writeup after the tournament. As usual it’s looking like I’ll finish mid pack.

Game 3. Scorched Earth vs Ironjawz. Minor victory for me. Lot of mistakes on both sides. And weird bad luck. Didnt take many pictures because I was getting tired.

Game 2 of NZ GT. Three Places of Power vs Sylvaneth. Very close game. My opponent underestimated the reach of the prime and I killed Alarielle through a screen. After that it was a downhill game for Sylvaneth. Major Victory for me.

Game 1 of NZ GT. Star strike. Vs Skaven. Not much to say. I killed a vermin lord with my Celestant Prime. Major loss, no points scored vs maximum for the opponent. Pictures attached.

I think that it would be... amusing... to have an army that starts with birds on the boards, and raptors int he sky, such that at the start of the game the only thing on the board is a bunch of birds.

Similarly, I generally do not like using allies. I realise we just had a conversation about restricting one’s self. But I prefer to try to create a winning army with the tools from just the SCE box. I agree that skinks fill a void in our book however.

Can you please describe the lists you think are in the top 5? I’ve not really heard of much else placing highly in tournaments this past year. It’s always some anvil list or some sort of sequitor/evo spam combo. And no one seems to be talking about other combos on this forum. There’s basically three units in the book that make up the backbone of all the competitive sce armies. They only fit together in so many different ways. At this point I just want to seek clarity rather than agreement. When you make a post telling anyone that sce are fine, you’re automatically assuming they have the same values as you, then completely disregarding their point of view if you find they don’t. I agree that it makes it nearly impossible to have a discussion with each other if your point of view is disregard anyone who sees the game a bit differently than you. Also, you’re putting words into my mouth with the whole demonizing thing. I never said your way of playing the game is bad. I said you aren’t understanding where other people are coming from when they come here asking for help, which I think is/was true. In any case, I’d seriously like to hear what you consider the top 5 SCE armies. I think that would be really helpful.

Yes, i had a few chats with some friends in my hobby group, and they mostly think that the stormhosts are just like "lores" so I guess I'm just weird. Yes I have a Salamanders Space Marine army and think of it the same way. The thought of playing them as a different chapter is completely unthinkable to me... I am curious what the new GHB will have in store as well. The pessimistic part of me feels we will be ignored again... but who knows.

I do not think it is normal to think of the stormhost rules as easily interchangeable as something like spell lores, as I feel that picking your stormhost is often one of the first steps to choosing an army theme and paint scheme. I do not think that I am alone in this thought process, and I think that a lot of people who come here seeking advice (or just complaining) are in a similar situation, where they have been struggling with their games, but do not think of changing stormhost rules as an option. It's clear to me that you do not think this way and think it should be obvious to just use whichever rules give you the best advantage. To be clear, I do not feel this is obvious, and I think for some people it will be a challenge to give up their stormhost or to be told that if they want to do better they will have to give up completely on the lore/narrative of their army in pursuit of that. I want to re-iterate that one of the main disagreements I think I have with you is in the number of actual viable competitive lists SCE have access to. You seem to feel there are many. I tend to think there are really only 2 or 3, with perhaps 5-6 more that are almost as good, but haven't actually proven themselves on the national tournament seen. I'm convinced an Anvilstrike list is probably at the top of this heap, with a seq/evo/gav combo being very close behind it. After that I feel there is a "gap" to the next strongest list, which is probably the unkillable star drake type lists, and then just below that I feel there are several hybrid or smaller lists that are doing well, but in some ways are essentially derivative of the above three lists. For example I might tend to think of an anvil-dracovator bomb type lists as juts simply a derivative of anvilstrike, for the simple reason that the core power of these two lists involves using (or abusing) a stormhost ability to have a single powerful unit doubletap it's power in a hero phase. I'd also think of most seq/evo lists that don't involve gavriel as just sort of a derivative list that has similar features but is sort of just a less powerful version of that. I think this is tripping up our conversations because it seems to me that you consider "derivative" lists to be unique and seperate and somehow just as competitive, while I tend to think that if the list isn't really doing anything significantly different, or it's just relying on the same gimmic, then it's basically just a watered down version of the "best" version of that list. I think this is significant for the primary reason that it gives us a much more realistic view of how our book is fairing compared to other factions/books. From my perspective, stormcast on the whole are doing quite poorly, and their book is less than average, except for a handful of notable exceptions that are sort of exploiting some weird gimmick, almost to the point of abuse. I think this also explains our poor performance in the national average rankings, as occasionally we see one of these power armies in the top performers, but SCE as a whole is basically down at the bottom everywhere else.

I would say taking the very best a faction has to offer and only arguing from that standpoint is also in bad faith as well. There needs to be some concession that not everyone will just play the best stormhost there is based on whatever army they are taking, purely for the benefit of their special rules. Not everyone wants to be "forced" into playing Anvils.

One thing to note however, is that Evocators and Longstrike raptors by themselves aren't necessarily what make Anvilstrike or Gav bomb powerful. Rather, it's the stormhost and special character rules. Both of those stormhosts aren't inclusive, so you have to take one or the other, and anyone playing a different stormhost doesn't have access to this. I think if you look outside of the stormhost, a pack of Raptors is scary, but can't dish out enough damage to overcome most other armies that are rushing towards you. They only barely win being able to shoot twice, so I'm not even sure how much of a "thing" it would be without Anvils propping them up. Same with Evocators (in an Anvils list) or assaulting in a Hammers list with Gav. Those units by themselves aren't much better or different than other equivalent units in other army lists. The question I have, then, is HOW COMMON are the really powerful lists in other armies as opposed to Stormcast, and how reliant are they on sub-faction rules as opposed to army wide rules. As my army has been painted in the Hammers of Sigmar colors, even before the AOS 2 book came out, that is the host that I play exclusively. I don't have access to Anvilstrike, and even if I took that unit of longstrike raptors and built an army around it, it wouldn't work the same for me. My "best" list I can take right now is essentially revolving around sequitor spamming the board, and backing that up with a Gav bomb and some long range shooting. It's an okay list that seems to get hard countered by any army that's better at assault than me, which is just about everybody. The biggest issue I've had by far in tournaments however, is objective and board control. By the end of most games, even if I've been winning, I'm basically running on fumes. My army is depleted, almost no unit is at full strength. My opponents by comparison can summon in reserves late game and bring themselves almost completely back up to full strength. I'm basically just bleeding dry by the end of matches, and the only thing that works is if I manage to win so completely that I more or less table my opponent. It's a really TOUGH match when your win condition is wiping your opponent off the board or losing because you don't have enough bodies to hold objectives. I've faced a lot of opponents in tournaments that I just simply automatically lose against because I don't have the pure damage output and bodies to lock down objectives. I can't tell you how many times I lost a game because someone just walked a small unit of useless chaff around my 2-3 models and grabbed the objectives with me standing on top of it.

It's worth noting that a lot of people here were talking about generic stormcast and the frustrations of playing that in today's environment, and you're speaking from the perspective of a very specific list, and arguably the best list that SCE is capable of playing at the moment. It's all well and good and I concede that's one of the strongest lists SCE can take right now, but try to keep that in mind when you reply to people. Not every comment can or should be rebutted with, "Just play anvilstrike like me, and then you'll have no problems." As an aside, I really feel that Avilstrike, and Gav bombs to a lesser degree, have really masked the problems we have and makes it difficult to have good conversations about where SCE really are in the game right now. When your perspective wildly varies between "unwinnable games" and "piece of cake", it's really hard for people to relate to each other. And outsiders who might've only faced the best lists view any negativity as just unwarranted and selfish. Having said that.... I also agree that if someone's chief complaint is that other armies are "point and click" and ours are not, it's probably time to go to Anvilstrike or another similar list. It's potentially our only army that can even be mildly considered point and click. So if that's what you want to go for, I guess it might be time to start buying some vanguard raptors.