Mark Williams

Speaking as an opponent to Sylvaneth, one of the main reasons I lose to them in tournaments is that no one locally plays them, so I usually don't really know what they do or how they work. Their rules catch me off guard as my normal tactics don't work. There's a bunch of "Gotcha" moments where I wasn't aware of something and essentially walk into a trap of some kind. I've been trying to play a variety of armies lately in order to diffuse the number of times I get "caught out" by something like this, but it still happens as it's very difficult to play every combination of every army. I also find that Sylvaneth are pretty meta breaking in the sense that they can often dish out a lot of damage in a very short amount of time compared to some other armies that I'm used to. I've seen them tear through a fyreslayers army in a few turns, when normally that army would be pretty resilient against most other armies. I think it's just a classic case of, "meta breaking" army to a certain extint. I think DoK are a big impervious to these types of armies due to the fact that they dish out so much damage in short time frames. Basically these sorts of "glass cannon" armies are doing very well in the meta right now.

He’s bringing them onto a table edge via soulscryer. Local player in my area does almost exact same area except 2 units of morsar and volturnos. He spends first three turns getting cogs onto the board, then the unit hits turn 3 with +5 to charge, uses eel flight to hop past blocking units, daisy chain into the heart of your army then apply 12 eels worth of mortal wounds to the bed stuff in your army, then volturnos blows 3cps and they kill whatever is left. Eel squad size is irrelevant. It’s just a brute force game over move most of the time. The only counter is attempting to kill whatever is on the board by turn 2, and also spreading out so that you don’t lose too much when the wrecking ball hits. Highly mobile, alpha strike, horde armies, with extremely high damage output have the best chance to counter. Not many of those...

Yes it only counts for the turn you arrive. So basically would only matter if you also made it into combat, or your opponent triggered some reactive shooting attack (ie gryph hounds).

Quick question, does Snake Morathi count as a Behemoth in Pitched Battles? I know that normal Morathi doesn't, but it's kind of a grey area. It seems to me like maybe an oversight that she isn't one.

I see a lot of people using Cogs, they just set it to the movement buff then forget it. I have also seen people doing really well with the twin balls of energy that are linked. You can pass it over a lot of units and do a lot of mortal wounds if you use it in the right place. However, I've also seen that spell bounce back and wipe out the attacking army....

What, you can run and use them? That’s news to me. :O

Question regarding shooting and a few warscroll "abilities". You can only shoot at the units you are in combat with with "missile weapons". However, what about these ranged attacks that happen in the shooting phase? 1. Celestant-Prime's cometstrike scepter. (seems that you pick a point in 24", regardless of combat) 2. Lord Celestant on Dracoth - lightning breath. (same as prime above, except 12" range) 3. Lord Celestant - D6 attacks in the shooting phase. (same as prime, except 16" and you can pick any units at will)

I use ballistas and xbow judicators in a scions formation. The ballistas by themselves can be good, but their average is about the same or worse than the juds most of the time. Once in a blue moon, the ballista will score 3 hits, comvert to 10ish, and shred something. Most od the time, it does about 3 wounds, sometimes none. The juds actually consistently do better with their special weapon factored in. Plus they are a bit more hardy, and can hold objectives better. If I could afford them, I’d just take both, of course, and that would solve the debate. Lol.

My experience playing against them is that they do great when you are already winning. I wouldn't call them game changers, but they add insult to injury if the rest of your army already kind of won the game for you. They sort of follow up the back and wipe out the stragglers...

The twin hammer one occasionally does some good damage, I’ve found.

I used Neave as a staple in my list until the new battletome. She worked extremely well as a 2nd next to my general. Basically I’d use her as a retribution model against people who charged into my main hero. Now that she doesn’t generate extra attacks, she’s still ok but not nearly as good as she was.

The way that I have been playing it is that the battalion is deployed all at the same time, but units are placed one at a time, and follow the 1:1 scions pattern. As an example, if you had a battalion with 4 units, and you deploy first, you put out all 4 units at once - 2 on the table and 2 in scions. Then your opponent has a turn deploying.

Yes, it’s covered in the core rules under reserves. Scions units are considered arriving on the board via a reserve setup. They count as having moved only in that they cannot move in the movement phase, but it’s clearly a “set up” move and not an actual move. I waited for the FAQ to hit before I started using it that way, as I had doubts, but if anything the FAQs support it and add even more evidence that it’s exactly how it should work. I would say that it is “unfair or overpowered” except that it’s literally the only thing that gives me a flying duck of a chance against most of the armies I’ve been facing lately. I don’t know what else I’m meant to do with stormcast other than “play a better army”, if I can’t play this current strategy I’m doing. I sure as heck can’t win in assault with armies like DoK, Death, and Nurgle dominating the meta right now.

This is what I'm running right now, but I already have some changes in mind to tweak it and make it even stronger. Allegiance: Stormcast Eternals - Stormhost: Hammers of Sigmar Leaders Lord-Celestant On Dracoth (220) - General - Tempestos Hammer & Thundershield - Trait: We Cannot Fail - Artefact: God-forged Blade - Mount Trait: Keen-clawed Knight-Incantor (140) - Spell: Lighntning Blast Lord-Relictor (100) - Prayer: Divine Light Celestant-Prime (340) Battleline 5 x Liberators (100) - Warhammer & Shield - 1x Grandhammers 5 x Liberators (100) - Warhammer & Shield - 1x Grandhammers 5 x Judicators (160) - Boltstorm Crossbows - 1x Thunderbolt Crossbows 5 x Judicators (160) - Boltstorm Crossbows - 1x Thunderbolt Crossbows Units 5 x Evocators (200) - 5x Grandstaves - Lore of Invigoration: Speed of Lightning 3 x Vanguard-Raptors with Hurricane Crossbows (140) 3 x Vanguard-Raptors with Hurricane Crossbows (140) War Machines Celestar Ballista (100) Endless Spells Everblaze Comet (100) Total: 2000 / 2000 Extra Command Points: 0 Allies: 0 / 400 Wounds: 99

I rolled pretty average, so did he. I didn’t get a double turn. He got two more turns before I got to attack and finish nagash off. My point is that I didn’t even max out the potential of a shooting stormcast army. If I had a single buff or extra shooting unit, or pulled the prime out earlier, I would’ve overkilled him. I’m not sure you understand just how strong it is. It feels fairly broken. As for hitbacks, he underestimated the threat of them, and went for an objective instead of trying to kill them. So far at least, everyone I play underestimates them, and doesn’t consider them worth divesting resources at. I literally tabled or nearly tabled every single army that I faced this weekend. These were tough armies like Nurgle and death, every single opponent said it was the first time they had lost their units so quickly. It will be tougher to win once people start fearing and respecting it more, but right now everyone just barges into me thinking they will just bowl me over, and they get smacked hard for it.

Turn1, I dropped and killed the morghasts. Turn two, if had landed the celestant prime, I would have killed him in a single turn. The kicker is my army isn’t even as shooty as it could be. I’m actually taking a pretty “balanced” list. I shudder to think what you could do if you played around with it more and really maxed it out. In the last tournament, I took 2nd most kill points. It honestly feels a bit broken to me. Most everyone I played hated facing it.

I took nagash down to one wound in a single turn my last game. It’s definitely doable. Vangaurds - I meant 2x3.

On the topic of building a shooting sce army, that’s what I am doing, and it is very effective. this is my list lord celestant on dracoth, knight encantor, lord relictor, celestant prime 2x5 liberators, 5 evocators 2x5 judicators, 2x5 vanguards with crossbows, celestar ballista everblaze comet the judicators, raptors, and ballista drop from the sky and clear out pretty much anything you want, the ground units are defensive enough that you can’t just bulldoze into them. however, I think it’s possible to go completely shooting, the problem is you would be too vulnerable. However I think the everblaze comet, knight encantor, lord relictor, and evocators are fairly blah in the list and don’t seem to do much . You could swap them out for three more ballistas and a knight azyros if you want to just be a total ******, I’m fairly certain you could one turn nagash even with his morghasts near him.

He’s probably playing drachi gaineth. It looks like a clone of the army I’m building atm. It’s a 3-4 drop horde army.

I agree libs and rets were bad before the tome, and the new units are probably just “normal.” as for the cats, I do have a friend who is doing an army of them purely based on looks.

Question on celestar ballistas: Does it count as 3 models for holding objectives, or just 1? Do you measure to shoot from the ballista or any of the three models?

As much as I know a lot of people who want to do this, making the dracoth army cheaper, and removing the battle line requirements, is going to create a lot of clone armies, and that's something I don't personally want to play against. The cost of dracoths and the requirement to take something besides dracoths is the only thing barely keeping them in check. I'm sorry if my opinion is unpopular, but that's what i think. Other than that I pretty much agree with everything else you suggested. In general I do think there's a lot of weirdness and improperly costed units in the tome, and it's odd that they didn't address it while they were writing a new one. My guess is that they are trying to keep people from doing certain "broken" combos. Also, it's very obvious that they are trying to sell people the new units, and evocators are way undercosted for what they do. It's also why Sequitors are so curiously good for only 20 points more. As much as I hate to say it, bringing out a new book seems to have further pointed out how badly the book needs an rehaul... However don't get me wrong, I'm generally pretty happy with how much better my army plays now. The new book did a lot of things right.

The fact that it doesn't greatly diminishes Morathi as a general, and the blood stalkers as a unit. On top of this, it was for characters and models that as far as I can tell did not need a nerf and were not overused or overpowered. As I understand it, the logical reasoning has to do with the fact that this happens in the hero phase, and thus any other ability that would allow you to attack in the hero phase would have the same sort of restriction. My question is what are examples of similar command abilities in other armies, and are they held to the same restrictions? If so, then fine, if not then I think it's very unfair for daughters of khaine to be singled out like this.

I'll be blunt. RaW - the Blood Stalkers should get their ability. There's nothing in the Designer's Commentary describing how to handle abilities that go off in different phases, and even if there were, the wording of the Command Ability seems to account for that quite clearly. I don't know what they were referring to.

Nice conversion!