Mark Williams

My local player zapped me twice with it and I Seen this happen in my area. Local IDK player smashed everyone for a couple months then the games evened out a bit, and they settled into a mid-spot in our local tourneys.

You guys have very clearly and accurately stated the weaknesses of vandus and/or dracoths, but I don’t see how the proposed list fixes those issues. Vandus at least has a decent command ability and damage output, and good movement. If your opponent can “easily” take him out, there’s nothing about the suggested list that fixes that problem or gives you a better chance against it. Retributors are sitting ducks and the only actual dangerous thing in the list. By removing vandus you’re reducing the number of units your opponent needs to eliminate in order to steam roll you unopposed. I understand what you guys are saying, I just don’t agree that there’s a reliable fix for it by removing him and taking more easily-killed normal guys. I think you’re implying that having more bodies on the table will somehow win by stalling or outmanoeuvring an opponent, but if you’re opponent can “easily” kill vandus, removing the only other thing from your army that can potentially deal with that seems like a bad plan to me. I would urge you to try both lists at the very least. I’m willing to say I’m wrong, but I’m just telling you what I think based on playing with a similar list for quite a while.

My personal experience is that you just have to kill them. Between Vandus and the retributors, you should have the damage output, but if they get the drop on you, you won't be able to. Just remember to keep the liberators out front, and force them to charge/engage them first. Try to set up a counter charge so that you can get a clean charge off. That will help a lot.

I'm sorry, I don't know why I keep missing this. I guess it's because it used to work differently. You will however need to be Hammers of Sigmar, I believe, which will dictate the command ability and relic (weapon) that the Relictor has to take.

He has a command ability that gives everyone within 12” +1 attack. Keep him near the retributors and use it to buff them.

You have 3 battle line and only need 2.

Looks good try that out see how it does. Use the hammers of Sigmar stormhost, make vandus your general, give the god forged blade to the lord relictor. Play around with taking the castellated instead of the relictor. Just try both and see which you like. Your can swap out a unit of sequitors for liberators to spend some of the leftover points, and they are a really good unit. They have a bigger punch than the liberators. scions is an allegiance ability of sce. For every unit placed on the board during setup, you can place a unit in the heavens, awaiting the time to appear in a lightning storm. You’ll have to play around with which ones you want to start on the board and which ones in the sky.

Lord relictor- translocation and divine light are more useful imo. lord celestant dracoth- storm caller is much more useful in small games A piece of advice based on personal experience: in small point games, find the extra points for vandus hammerhand instead of the normal lord celestant. He’s a miniature wrecking ball in smaller games, and his command ability is far more useful on the retributors. Break up the liberators into 2 squads. I ran a list almost identical to this in my early days. Scions the celestant, judicators, and a unit of liberators. Start the retributors on the board with the relictor and lord castellant behind them and buffing them. Put the libs in front of them. This sets up a nice hard hitting counter charge, and 3+ saves makes sure they last long enough to do some decent damage. Good luck!

So I've been batting this list around for a while now. Allegiance: Stormcast Eternals- Stormhost: Astral TemplarsMortal Realm: GhurLeadersLord-Ordinator (140)- General- Trait: Dauntless Hunters - Artefact: Godbeast Plate Celestant-Prime (340)Battleline5 x Judicators (160)- Boltstorm Crossbows- 1x Thunderbolt Crossbows5 x Judicators (160)- Boltstorm Crossbows- 1x Thunderbolt Crossbows5 x Liberators (100)- Warhammer & Shield- 1x GrandhammersUnits3 x Vanguard-Raptors with Hurricane Crossbows (140)3 x Vanguard-Raptors with Hurricane Crossbows (140)3 x Aetherwings (50)3 x Aetherwings (50)3 x Aetherwings (50)3 x Aetherwings (50)3 x Aetherwings (50)3 x Aetherwings (50)3 x Aetherwings (50)3 x Aetherwings (50)War MachinesCelestar Ballista (100)Celestar Ballista (100)Celestar Ballista (100)Celestar Ballista (100)Total: 1980 / 2000Extra Command Points: 0Allies: 0 / 400Wounds: 131 The basic idea is that 8 units of Aetherwings and 1 unit of Liberators start on the board, and everything else starts in Scions. Turn 1, you drop and basically just shred everything you can. Everything in the army gets +1 to hit against monsters. The Aetherwings are used to zone out your deployment zone and to fly around the board grabbing objectives and basically being a nuisance. You also fly them near where you're going to drop the raptors and they serve as anti-assault units as well. I did a few mock-up dice rolls against a "monster" with 4 ballistas rapid firing and hitting on 3+, and score somewhere between 30 and 50 hits just with the ballistas and not even shooting the other stuff. You definitely be able to clear out an area of the board enough to avoid getting counter-assaulted, and from there you basically just create a giant "no go" zone where you can't be approached by pretty much anything. Thoughts? Honestly this feels almost broken to me, and I feel like there might even be room for improvement...

I love the model, but in all honesty I'm not sure it's worth it. In casual games where your opponent maybe isn't prepared for it, or they haven't seen it before, it's amazing. But as games go up in competitiveness, the spell goes down in performance. It basically has an inverse effectiveness. The "top tier" armies all have multiple dispells and bonuses to casting, so it's almost impossible to get off sometimes.... I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with it, and I'm a bit torn on what to think of it. It's fun to use, however.

There is no game where he isn’t a game changer. I’m honestly not sure how I could win without him. The crossbows do a lot of damage, but nothing in my list actually captures objectives except the prime. The rest of the stuff is defensive in nature. His biggest weakness is having to wait until turn 3, which is the same point a lot of armies get to their best as well. I generally bring him out turn 2, as that’s when I make most of my “big pushes”. Generally speaking if I wait till turn 3, it’s because I’m losing and just trying to score some type of moral victory by killing something big. But even in that situation, at least I’ve got something fun to do rather than twiddling my thumbs. I don’t really think the prime is overcosted as some people say, but I do think Stormcast in general have some glaring weaknesses that are basically exemplified in him. A single, high cost, elite model that dies quickly if anything looks at it. Basically sums up the entire army... For such a low model count army, I think they should be more resilient. I’d like to see something like a bonus to save as the game drags on. Turn 3, +1 save. Something like that to combat the recent influx of armies that hit their stride on turn 3.

Day 2 of tournament. Two major losses. Game 4: Death - Arkhan the black, zombie dragon, 40 skeletons, 4 morghasts. Mission was Star Strike or Strike from the heavens something. lost all my ground units turn 2. Dropped everything from scions and killed the morghasts. Double turned and finished the zombie dragon. Lost the game by 2 vps. Very disappointing loss and I made a bad mistake turn three that cost me the game. Game 5: Seraphon. Toad on vortex, cogs, 3 engine of the gods, and a starstrike battalion. Mission was total conquest. Lost by 2 vps. He took first turn and summoned 40 skinks to flood his deployment zone, then teleported skinks around to capture objectives. Turn 3 summonned a dinosaur. I killed almost nothing non-summoned. Spent the entire game wading through mobs of skinks and being outnumbered on the objectives. Felt like I could do nothing to stop the flood of stuff hitting the board. Couldn’t get close to his base. Just bogged the board down in bodies. Meh. Finished 12/20, 2 wins, 3 losses. About the same as previous tournament. Feels like about as good as SCE will do in my area. Competition is curiously strong with very competitive armies. SCE feels T1 to me. Have to play a perfect game and get lucky too. I enjoy the challenge and had fun, it’s just a bit disheartening not having anywhere to improve my list at this poin. I can always play better. My feeling is sce needs something to offset their low model count in games. Maybe some allies of some type would fix the issue. Maybe a block of deepkin thralls or something.

Ethereal?

Mission 1 was Focal Points, 2 was Better Part of Valor, and 3 was Shifting Objectives. Each mission used realm rules with fixed features. Shyish, Winds of Death (6+ , D3 mortal to selected target) Beasts, (6+ after combat phase, do combat again) Life (no one except fliers can run) The last one was unusually punishing.

I got a few pictures of the event area and some of the other armies, but not my own games. I get so wrapped up playing them that I don't think about it until it's too late. I'll try to remember to take some tomorrow. My army list was posted a few pages back. It's a crossbow-themed list with a Celestant Prime.

Day 1 of a 2-day tournament. 1. vs gavriel stormcast, 10 evos and a ballista battalion (castigators + lord ord. Spread my army out to mitigate gav bomb as best I could, tabled them turn 4. 2. vs ironjaws w maw krusha and 9 boars, 1 drop battalion. Tabled them turn 4. Would’ve gone either way at the priority roll for turn 3. Got lucky. 3. vs DoK. Hag nar, medusa on shrine, Morathi, 30 witches, 2x10 snakes. Major loss, 1450vp vs 1200 so I killed more but lost the mission big time (not even close). Fairly certain I would lose against the DoK list 75% of games or more. Not a good matchup and a losing battle for me. They feel like they are on another level. Will report back tomorrow with results.

Re: Vandus. I’ve been messing around with Vandus in casual games lately and he can be pretty vicious honestly. You have to pick good targets but I’ve had a few games where he’s been a bit of a wrecking ball.

I feel like you’re putting words in my mouth and inventing an argument you disagree with so that you can project it onto me and then say how wrong I am. I’m not even sure how to respond to this because I feel like I’m being made to defend an argument that I never even feel I made in the first place. My experience playing against Gav lists are thus... The first time you play it, you underestimate how far back they can charge and how much reach the 3” lightning blast can have with even 1 model extended past or around the screen. You lose your countercharge unit “accidentally” and a wing of your army folds on itself. It becomes difficult to recover at this point and you often lose at this point as they’ve taken out the unit you needed to counter them that you were trying to protect. You feel a bit like a sucker, so the next time you overcompensate by spreading your units back further. At that point you’re locked in your deployment zone and it’s difficult to move forward or out of it without exposing your units. The game then turns into attrition where your two shooting units are whittling away at each other, and they are freely moving around the board capturing objectives. The longer their unit stays in scions, the more CPs they get so if there’s even a gap in your line at some point they’ll just shoot through it with a 16-17” charge. It’s not that it can’t be countered, it’s just that it’s more complicated than just simply countering it. There’s multiple layers of strategy wrapped up in playing with or against the list, and you can build an army around it that can deliver other threats that compliment and enhance it. Beyond, that I don’t even know what we’re talking about anymore, or what point I’m supposed to be defending.

My bad, I misunderstood what you were saying. I thought you were talking about the 6+ damage save from Hammers.

I was just about to make this point, but you made it for me. I feel like people are thinking that the opponent has nothing else and it's all about countering Gav. Gav is a threat, that forces you to play a certain way. From there, you can build your army around countering what your opponent will have to do to counter you. In this way, battles become a bit more predictable and you don't have to prepare for as many different scnenarios. If your opponent messes up their deployment, you can just go for the easy kill. And if they play smart, then you can enter into a deeper game. Either way, I don't think you can assume that if you stop it with a screen, you'll easily win.

Gavriel doesn't have to be your general. I thought this was required too. You can get the best of both worlds.

I know it can be countered, but we just came out of a separate thread discussing where gav lists factored into the very high tournament performance that sce have shown lately. It’s a very strong ability, which yes can be countered easily by some armies, but others have an incredibly difficult time with. I stand by my statement that in a random game setting you’re going to face many opponents who plan on only having a minimal screen, and the gav list will move on past it and use it to leapfrog past to the unit behind. Maybe some people think it’s easy to block, and that’s fine. I don’t know what army you use. I see it used in my local area and if it’s not properly blocked, it’s basically a turn 1 game winning strat. Yes, it can be beaten, but I wasn’t trying to say it can’t. I’m only saying it’s pretty darn strong and easy to pull off, and puts opponents on the defensive early on. I tried running lib heavy armies for about half a year because I had nothing else. Their main issue is lack of damage. They slow-kill everything they get into combat with, if they don’t die first. Their only purpose is to screen the good units or capture and hold objectives late game because the enemy can’t divert resources towards them.

You’re trying to separate this out into a hypothetical closed bottle situation. A screen of 30 disposable models? With what army are you doing this with? Are you going to spend 3 turns hiding behind your screen while the sce player shoots your screen down and then charges past them anyway once they are no longer 30? This isn’t a discussion about whether or not a strategy is invincible and whether or not it can be countered if you know it’s coming and have hours to prepare a defense with a custom tailored army. In a random game setting, I explained how the Gav bomb works and how it wins games. To say it’s no big deal and easily countered is disengenuois. You have to deploy your army like a complicated jigsaw puzzle to keep from getting gutted first turn, and as the game wears on and you’re trying to capture objectives and weather return fire from various other sources, something is going to open up or get exposed. I feel like people saying it’s no big deal maybe haven’t played against a competent opponent using it yet.

You just have to get within 3 inches of whatever is behind them. You scions askew of the unit you want to charge and wrap around the side, the ones on the side just go straight past them as far as they can get. This will usually end up with a few models closer to the unit behind them than the unit you charged. Then use 3” pilein to close the gap even more (obeying rules ofc). Majority of your attacks kill the screen, lightning charge deals 10-ish mortal wounds to the unit behind it. The unit behind the screen has to sit almost 9” back to guard against +6”. Burn 3cp and your basically running out of table space at that point to space your units apart. Yeah, you can roll bad, but on average you get 13+ inches which is more than enough to wrap around the back of stuff.

I wasn’t talking about that guy, just the ability to stack cps in general. It only really takes 2 CPs to charge past most screens. 6 is wasteful imo, and those points could be used for something else.