Mark Williams

It seems to me that removing rerolls was an attempt to speed the game up, and also perhaps reduce some of the “guaranteed to not fail” situations that had become quite common. There were a number of situations where I would go to attack something with a 500 pt assault unit and they would be on a 2+ rr1, and basically take zero damage. Nothing should be so “tanky” that it’s virtually invulnerable. I hope that sort of thing continues to disappear. Having the majority of an elite army like Stormcast on a 3+ however seems fine to me. We’re almost always outnumbered, and don’t really have a way to replenish our numbers like a lot of other armies do.

July but yes I think so too. We’ll get tome, cards, dice, maybe terrain, a few kits, and staggered releases of more kits for the next month or two.

It sounds like you’re in denial that SCE are getting a new book in July. :D

Lumineth have some really good options, as well as seraphon.

I wonder if the next tome is going to force you to pick a subfaction in a way that you won’t even have a choice about playing one of the stormhosts. Currently you don’t have to pick one, and so it would be both lore and rules matching. You could also come up with a lore for your army that a “crusade” if various SCE are all working together, and have been fighting so long that they have learned to fight according to a single host. I seem to recall a rule that I read about 40K once that said if you were playing -as an example- green space marines with dark angels markings and dark angels characters, etc- but using blood angels rules for them, it was effectively the same as proxies, and thus not allowed at tournaments. So you might have more of an issue if your army was painting specifically to look like a specific , well-known host, but used different host rules… but you’re doing the complete opposite of that so… Anyway as others have said I have a difficult time seeing anyone having an issue with it, and I personally wouldn’t care as long as you told me before the game.

Yeah all my friends are saying Gavriel is no more, but he’s still great. Investing in a vexillor is not a crushing requirement.

40K has a lot of space marine units in boxes of 3 now so I don’t think it will be a problem. But it does feel like less value as the price will probably still be the same as other unit boxes…

Sorry that took me a while. The section that they were referencing is in the core rules on the page titled "Warscroll Battalions". It would be either on page 13 or page 15 depending on which version of the rules you're looking at. The words specifically say: "The organisation section of a battalion lists the titles or keywords for the units it can or must include. If an entry i sthe title of a unit, any unit with that title can be used (you can ignore sub-headers under the title unless they are included in the entry for the unit)." The reasoning given for allowing a Lord Celestant on Dracoth is that in the Battltome, the "on Dracoth" part is a sub-header rather than a title. The counter argument to this is the part of the text that says "unless they are included in the entry for the unit". The entry being the entry in the back of the book where you see the points costs for the units. Depending on how you look at it, it could be legal or illegal. Summary: Pro Argument: I can do because this is clearly a subtitle. Con Argument; Yes, but it's a subtitle that's included in the entry for the unit. Basically, it boilds down to your interpretation of what the "entry" they are referring to is. If it's the entry in the warscroll, it's a sub-header that doesn't matter. If it's the entry on the pitched battle profile list, it's a sub-header that does matter. Due to the lack of a proper FAQ one way or another, TOs can allow it....

Hmmm… I found it just a couple weeks ago. I’ll look again in a bit.

As far as I am aware, he out dropped at least 4 opponents if not all 5. He was able to take a lord celestant on dracoth because of the ghb 2020 faq which says that “on dracoth” is a subtitle instead of a title. The TO agreed with the ruling. I agree it’s a bit shady and probably not intended, but the rules now allow it if you’re RAW-oriented. I did mention it to him after our game as I know that prior to the FAQ it was illegal to do that due to the fact that the battalion uses a title instead of a keyword. As I said above - old battalion that probably should’ve been taken out of matched play and have no idea why gw carried it forward after the battletome came out. Grand alliance stuff was removed from every other battletome except SCE… Also, after watching my game and some of his others, the lcod did a tremendous amount of work, and made a massive difference in his performance. So the foot version would have definitely hamstrung him in a few games. As I said, I don’t think it will make it into the new book in a couple of months so it’s really a non issue. I’m inclined to think he just got super lucky via a “surprise factor”. Not many people play Stormcast in out area, and for almost everyone it was the first time they saw anything like that. Element of surprise counts for a lot.

I expect their rules will probably just get a little more interesting rather than getting new units.

I played against this person in the 3rd round and lost by a very wide margin. The following is my takeaway from playing against it. 1) This person had a very low amount of drops, and could force me to take the first turn. I was forced into a choice of trying to create some sort of castle or grabbing the objectives early and then dealing with the fallout of having my army spread out around the board. At the time, I felt it was better to get a foothold into the board space, and to get some points. My plan was to wait to see where he dropped and try to respond to that as best I could. However, being put into a position where you are always going to get hit by a double turn first, puts you on the back foot before the game begins. I was always going to take some very heavy losses before I got a chance to try to punch back. 2) Unfamiliarity with the list. I've never played against a Skyborne Slayers list before. I knew in theory what it did, and I had familiarity with the individual units, but until I saw it behaving on the board, I didn't have a full understanding of how much freedom the army had to move into the board, and how easily it would be able to successfully choose targets and make charges. He was able to knock out about 50% of my army in a single turn when he dropped, due to being able to perfectly match fights and guarantee charges against them. 3) The battalion breaks several rules of the game, and is startlingly good value compared to a lot of other battalions in the game. Rules it breaks are (1) breaks the 9" deep strike rule, (2) breaks the stormcast equal units on the board rule (3) breaks the battleshock rules (immunity). Compared to most other battalions in the game, it confers a lot of abilities for very few points, and even if the battlion just gave one of the above advantages, it would still be a pretty good bargain. Getting three extremely strong advantages for a single battalion in addition to all of the other advantages, goes a long way to making up for the fact that you're restricted to what units can be included in it. 4) The army puts out a lot of mortal wounds at range. This caught me off guard, mostly because I haven't played against dracoths in a pretty long time. In hindsight, I underestimated how big of a threat these were, and I didn't put enough emphasis on killing them early. If I had it to do over again, I would have focused on the dracoths first and gotten rid of them as soon as possible in order to limit the amount of ranged damage that I was taking. This goes hand in #2 above, which is that I (and I suspect many others at the tournament) had never faced a list like this and basically got blindsided by it. Rather than play a true game against each other, what I ended up playing instead was a learning/teaching game. 5) Dumb mistakes. Because I got caught off guard by all of the above, I ended up losing my wits during the game, and I made several dumb mistakes. I prioritized the wrong targets. Forgot my plan. Did things out of order and didn't retreat out of combats that I couldn't win. I basically just lost my composure and became my own enemy during the fight. This didn't do me any favors. I can't speak for the other players at the tournament, but I feel that most of the other players lost for much the same reasons that I did. Also, this person went up against a very tough Fyreslayers opponent in the 4th round that they probably should have lost to, but instead won because (from what I could see) the Fyreslayers basically just deployed really badly and allowed him to deep strike right on top of the objective. It should have been a difficult if almost impossible fight to win, and they were literally one of, if not the first people to win that round and only played for about 20-30 minutes. However, I beat the same opponent in the 2nd round, for almost the exact same reasons, so... what can you say? Hope that provides a bit of clarity. Personally I have a newfound respect for the list, my only issues with Skyborne Slayers as a potential army going forward is that I don't believe it will exist in AoS 3.0 and the new SCE book. I feel that this battalion is some sort of weird anomaly that GW forgot about, and is seen so infrequently that they just haven't bothered to deal with it. But what do I know, maybe they will carry it forward.

Concerning some of the chatter over the last few days. The new aesthetic and unit types were not what I was expecting, but I'm all in regardless of what they do. I agree that choosing to play Stormcast is a bit of a curse of having to re-invent your army every few years, much more so than many other armies out there. However, I'm not unhappy with this situation as I like painting and buying models. Looking back at Soul Wars, I never truly adapted my army and play style to the new units (Sacrosacnt chamber), and it's one thing that I'm looking to correct as a high priority with the new release this year. I want to go more heavily into the new units and embrace them completely rather than just painting a handful but not really digging myself in. Concerning Castigators, I've started to like them a bit more than I used to. I've been playing around with units of 6 or 9 in a Stormtower Garrison as a second unit of Justicar to fill out the Battalion, and I'm finding that the new Stormkeep rules are pretty fun to play with. I'm excited to see what comes next.

Can't the mortis engine be made as a Coven Throne or a Bloodseeker Palanquin? And the Hexwraiths can be made as Black Knights instead of Hexwraiths. In such a case, that box makes a decent start collecting box for a Soulblight army. Yes, it wouldn't cover everything, but they are all units that are useful in those armies.

That would be super sweet.

Yes, I've played against a snake shooting list a few times now. They feel a bit like playing against Anvils of Heldenhammer (shootcast) list with Longstrike Raptors, except they have generally better range, better resilience, and the rest of their army is stronger in combat. It's top tier material.

Yes I’ve ended up with a small army of almost every box army just because at some point the models are there and essentially “free”. however with Stormcast, in our local area, although almost everyone has a Stormcast army or at least the models, almost no one is playing them. I do think that’s a problem and indicative of the wider market. Yes, Stormcast are technically “popular” from the standpoint that a lot of people own some models, but if popularity is measured by the number of people actively playing and sticking with them, I think they are basically the last kid picked on the playground. Imo...

Unless you're like me and forget that Shock and Awe exists in like 80% of your games.

lol sad but probably not far off

That's my main army. It's not better than Anvils' abilities, but it's good and better than nothing. My main leader is usually either a lord Castellant behind a blob of 10 liberators, or a lord arcanum behind a blob of 10 sequitors. Either way, it just gives them a little bit more resiliance. Sometimes people underestimate them slightly, so every little bit helps. Otherwise though, I don't really lean on it to win games. It would be nice on a star drake though I admit.

I'd go for some Dracothian guard and a Lord Castellant next if you want to play your star drake.

A cleansing Phalanx build won a tournament when the book first came out, but I haven't seen anyone use one in ages. I've been building towards one for a year or two, but I've been a bit burned out on hobby this year and all of my models are just sitting in boxes at the moment. Sequitors and Evocators are a bit of a pain to paint. If I recall, the list that won a couple of years ago had a knight heraldor in it so that the sequitors/evocators didn't get bogged down into combats that they didn't want to be in. They used a hammers of sigmar army with Gavriel Sureheart in it. The trick was to get an early first turn and use the bodies to gain board control and drop large blocks of sequitors into the center of the board. I'm not sure how effective it would be these days because the meta has shifted so much, especially some of the armies these days that can pretty much delete large blocks of sequitors before they have a chance to empower their shields and weapons.

I don’t think it’s vindictive. I think when the last book came out, the new units were interesting to use and decently middle of the road compared to what was out at the time. I think in the years in between, we saw incredible army creep happen, where every new book changed the meta and pushed them further down. The army plays and feels old now. Other armies run circles around them. They need a massive update and rework. Who knows if we’ll get it. I do feel a bit sad playing my sce these days and yes I am ready for an infusion of new rules to get me excited to play them again.

Vandus’ ca only works on hammers of sigmar doesn’t it?

Azyros has more utility. Venator lives longer and is more fun to play with imo.