Mark Williams

Move them back to 100 pts. Increase their base hit to 3+ . Give them +1 save if 10 or more models.

Some of you are overestimating liberators. The game has changed quite a bit in the last few years, and high armour saves aren’t as strong as they used to be. The same units that people have to take in order to deal with other armies will also deal with the libs too. Don’t get me wrong though, it’s better than nothing.

Yes everything released after AoS 2.0 has female versions, so basically anything from the sacrosanct chamber. I expect it will be more common going forward.

I don’t think the morathi book is going to significantly change a bunch of books. Maybe I’m wrong, but if the anvil “battalion” is anything to go off of, it’s just going to be a bunch of fun and flavourful little narrative additions. I’m hoping I’m wrong, but I just don’t want to get my hopes up. I figure we’ll get a new book next year and if anything this is just to tide us over until AoS 3 hits.

Oh interesting! Yes the armies that can teleport and bounce around the board are a huge problem for us.

Lately I've been playing around with the idea of putting 2 blocks of 15 evocators in the sky with Gavriel. Almost every list I face in tournaments is designed around killing at least 10 evocators in 1-2 rounds of counter assault or shooting, but almost no one I face seems equipped to deal with 30 of them in their face. I don't know if I feel like painting that many models, but I actually think it might be more effective than people think, and it would certain "anti-meta" a few armies out there that would underestimate how much damage it would take to reduce that many evocators down to erase their combat strength. It would also completely break most of the best "anvil" units out there, which would destroy the game plan of a lot of armies... I dunno... it's just something I've been rolling around in my head for a while now. When the book first came out I saw some people playing around with gav bombs, but I didn't see a lot of people really mature it and take it to the extreme ends of the spectrum. It might not work, but I see a lot of people in tournaments lately who set up their army to absorb the shock of 30 wounds hitting their front line, but they don't seem to plan to deal with anything more than that. It would be a rock paper scissors kind of army, but it would bowl over some people who just completely underestimate it.

I see.... I'd have to read their rule, but I don't think we'd end up playing it that way.

Ah, see we play it just the opposite, and if the IDK have any allies in their list, we can target them as we please.

In my area at least, the reasoning is that scions is an allegiance ability, and allies are completely exempted from any allegiance rules by default. If I tried to do that in my area it would be over ruled by a TO. If I have some time later I’ll try to make a stronger case for it, but that’s the core of the issue as far as I know.

Just a heads up, you can’t use allies to increase drops in the sky. Hopefully he didn’t make that mistake as it would cheapen the victory a bit. Having played lists similar to this for the better part of two years, you need a cavilclade of luck to win a tournament with Gav bomb lists. It’s possible, just really difficult if the matchups are bad. I do want to drill into that pairing link and see what happened with the matchups. Edit: Yes low scoring tournament. No one got 5/0, and a lot of players canceled each other out. Interesting...

One of the guys in my local hobby group did some test games with a battalion list that capped out sentinels, just to see what would happen. We had a series of games where the longest part of the game was just putting the models on the table. The games themselves were about 30 minutes long and mostly involved opponents removing models from the table while the lumineth player stood still and just rolled dice. It might not be unbeatable, but the play experience so far with that type of list is very un-interactive for the opponent. We agreed that there may be a handful of missions in tournament packs that would be difficult for that type of army to deal with (anything that needed heroes to capture and remain on objectives might be problematic for the lumineth player unless you throw in several heroes just to safe-guard losing them all to a similar type of army). That part will be a balancing act, but at least on the surface it's a "pack up early and have a few beers" type of army experience, at the extreme end of the spectrum.

Anvils shootcast is pretty much the answer to everything, even giants. And yes Ballista are far too swingy. You might be able to take 1 giant out with a bit of luck with 4 plus an Ordinator dropping from the sky, but that's 580 points just for a small chance at killing one model, and hoping you don't miss and get immediately smacked down in the next round. Still might be our best play if combined with evocators as you say, but yes it's a pretty rough situation. Almost all stormcast tactics involve gambling that you'll kill whatever you expose yourself to in more or less a single turn. Otherwise once you start taking casualties it's pretty much all over. Yes the garghants are an interesting addition to the game. Hopefully I'll get to pay against them soon and get some experience in.

Low model count is the problem.

The meta is shifting towards shooting armies.

My interpretation is that you first must put an equivalent number of units on the table for every unit in the sky. If you’re going to put a battalion in the sky that consists of say 4 units, you must first put 4 units on the table, then your 5th deployment is the entire battalion in the sky.

I'm sure that if you tracked his damage across multiple games and compared that to many of the other 5- wound heroes in the Stormcast book, he'd actually be pretty high up there in terms of total damage done per game. He's a decent hero, but he just doesn't give any buffs, command abilities, or cast spells. He's in the unfortunate position that he's just a default "dude" sitting there doing his own thing, while most of the other stormcast heroes have some additional utility that they bring on top of their basic warscroll. If the books were changed in such a way that he did something else in addition to what he already does, I'm sure he'd be a very common hero. Unfortunately he's competing for a spot in a book that has a lot of other "must haves".

I attached a picture of it.

You can, but he dies really easily and the range is very limiting. I’ve messed around with it quite a bit over the past year trying to find an effective combo and it’s really hard. He needs to be paired with a fast unit like more dracoths or cats or a unit near a knight heraldor.

It's a solid 3/5 win rate list, that occasionally can get 4/5 if you play it well. I don't think 5 wins is completely out of the question, but it's a seriously uphill battle against some armies. The basic setup is: 5 Liberators on left side of board 5 Judicators in the sky 5 Liberators on the right side of the board 3 Longstrike Raptors in the sky Lord Castellant and Gryph Hound with one of the units of Liberators (at this point I'm looking at the opponents army and trying to decide where they are going to place the bulk of their army. I want the Knight encator to be well away from any units that can counter spells) 10 Evocators in the sky Gavriel in the sky Knight-Incator outside of counter-spell range but inside 36" of a good spot to place the commet, and preferably next to the unit of Liberators that isn't next to the Lord Castellant. 3 Aetherwings (usually in the sky, but I can put them on the board to zone out a certain part of it or to just provide some "look out sir" to Gotrek or the Knight-Incantor. Gotrek , generally deployed as far forward and center as possible. In a tournament setting, opponents give me the first turn 90% of the time. I cast the comet and wait to see what kind of damage it does. If I peg a 5-wound hero with a few mortal wounds, I drop the Longstrike Raptors with their birds within 30" of that hero, and then shoot it and hope to remove it from the board first turn. The judicators are dropped on a flank, near a weak unit . They usually can hold their own against any similar point costed troop unit. Gotrek just runs forward as fast as he can. Honestly, I usually bring out the evocators first turn and give them +6 to charge, and hope for the best. Sometimes if I see the opponent having a very critical win condition, I will hold them back, but the point of the evocators coming out early is to serve as a distraction from the rest of my army. People tend to ignore everything else as soon as they come out, including gotrek, which gives gotrek another turn to run forward and get into their lines. If gotrek makes it into enemy lines, most of the time they have lost the game, so the pressure of two big threats bearing down on people is generally enough to win the game. I wish I could say it's more deep than that. I try to play for the long game when I can, but this list works best when you play aggressively and get in people's faces as early as possible. Early board control is a big deal, and I try to capitalize on people giving me first turn by hitting them so hard that it will put them on the back foot for the rest of the game. I have some ideas to improve the army, but I'll just have to play around with it. Replacing Gotrek with Lord Kroak or the Light of Eltharion is a possibility, and using the extra points for something else.

I was the 4th place and I’ve played the 3rd place player quite a few times now. He’s currently running the 1 drop vanguard anvils army. He definitely has a chance to win every tournament he goes to, but he gets tough matchups every now and then. In the latest tournament, he lost to the same list I did - a teleporting 1-drop KO list with an insane amount of shooting.

I dropped the gravetide to keep people from using triumphs against me. The knight incantor pulls her weight every game. longstrikes are most often used for character sniping.

One of the FAQs explains this situation. If you have a wsrscroll ability and a prayer or something that triggers an extra attack on a 6, both abilities trigger and you get 2 extra attacks on a 6.

I actually have a list I mess around with at friendly games , I’ll post it a little later.

We were picking and announcing them after set up but before deciding who goes first. I’m not sure that’s the exact time but it’s what we were doing.

Just finished a 2 day tournament with my gav bomb list. Placed 4th out of 19 players. Missed 3rd by a single auxiliary objective. Best I’ve ever done at an event so I’m stoked. Attached photos of the event. The Tzeench army in the photos won best painted. List: Games summary: Game 1 vs Nighthaunt, Starstrike Grudge match against a close friend. Gotrek got a lucky long bomb charge and cleared out a board quarter. Not much to say except Nighthaunt was rolling very badly and failed to do damage on a lot of important charges. Major win, 2 Auxiliaries. Game 2 vs Kharadron Overlords, Focal Points This was the person who won the tournament. I got tabled at the top of turn 3. They just teleported around the board systematically wiping out every unit. Nothing I could do to stop it. If I knew a bit more about their army ahead of time I could have at least made it harder for them, but it was a pretty bad game. Major loss, 0 auxiliaries. Game 3 vs Gloomspite Gitz, Total Conquest They were running a Trogherd battalion with lots of trolls. Player was very green (pun intended :P), so they sort of spread their army a bit too thinly and weren’t in range to effectively counter assault me. The Evocators kind of ran straight through them. Major win, 2 auxiliaries. Game 4 vs Disciples of Tzeench, The Blades edge. I was very afraid of this battle as this person has done very well in tournaments in the area. They were running a Changehost battalion with 9 flamers. I played very aggressively, and pressed my entire army forward, while they turtled against a bord edge. I ended up scoring a ton of points early on, and then the objectives started disappearing, so that by turn 4 there weren’t enough objectives left for them to catch back up. I actually tabled them on turn 4 which surprised me. Gotrek got into their lines and just had a field day with everything. Major win, 2 auxiliaries. Game 5 vs Sylvaneth, Forcing the Hand. Haven’t played Sylvaneth since the new time dropped so I wasn’t sure what to expect. They had Allarielle and 3 tree lords plus a battalion. Very slow game and we were probably going to run out of time, but by turn 4 I was so far ahead on points that I almost doubled my opponent, and we called it early. I almost got tabled, but Gotrek just ran through the center if the board destroying everything he touched. I could see where if I didn’t have him, this would have been a tough if not impossible matchup. Major win, 0 auxiliaries. .......... Thoughts. My army is as good as it will ever get at this point. I don’t see any changes that I could make, and I need Gotrek to compete with a Hammers of Sigmar Stormcast list. So I think 4/1 is probably the best I could ever hope for. I was talking with some other players about how tough the meta has gotten compared to two years ago. There are tons of armies in the tournaments now that utterly crush their opponents if they get a double turn because they deal so much damage now. My army is no different. It’s a bad idea to ever give me second turn now. It feels like with power creep in full effect that the double turn mechanic is creating way too many feel bad moments. I spoke to a lot of players throughout the tournament who all said something similar. I suspect with the way the game is going, the double turn is on borrowed time and is going to need an overhaul soon or it’s going to start driving people away. My stormcast models feel too brittle now. I ended every game with only a few models remaining. The main reason I won was because I’ve learned to focus the objectives and suck up the losses as long as I can score another point. My evocators died instantly every game but one the moment they hit the table. 30 wounds with a 4+ save is a total joke to people now. They feel like the epitome of the phrase “glass cannon.” No one fears them any more, and except for Shootcast or Starstrike lists I don’t see a path forward for competitive Stormcast lists anymore. Trying to win in melee feels like a fool’s errand. The army has too few bodies and dies too easily. If this is the new meta going forward, I have no clue what a new book could do to give the army some new legs. Gotrek feels like a crutch, and it makes me sad. I would have lost against two of the armies I faced if I didn’t have him, and there’s nothing in my battletome that can replace him that will do anything remotely similar. He’s literally the only thing that scares people, and the only thing that survives a round of return attacks. He’s a constant reminder to me that the game is starting to feel a bit “stupid” from where it was 3 years ago when I started. Without his ability to kill things he touches, my armies damage output would be cut by 1/3. He does _that_ much work in games. I frankly don’t see a reason that I wouldn’t include him in any alliance tournament list at this point if I were aiming to place, and that makes me feel very conflicted about the state of the game. Still, had a great time, and got a lot of good experience! Thanks for reading.