Mark Williams

As always I just look at new tomes coming out and I think the Stormcast could really use some similar abilities. I sincerely don't think an army-wide 3+ save is out of the question at this point. Perhaps doing away with stuff like the Castellant or the aura command ability, and just giving the entire army a +1 save boost. I think that would go a long way towards making us viable against armies that can continuously bring models back onto the table.

Maybe they didn't want to create a whole new file just for one character, and they felt like that was the easiest spot to put him where it would make the most sense. Gotrek is technically an ex-Fyreslayer who is now a slayer, but slayers by the lore are basically outcast and on a death quest. They are only forgiven after death. So basically "living" Gotrek can never be a Fyreslayer. There isn't currently a faction that exists that Gotrek can belong to, so he's just an ally to all order.

Gotrek belongs to the Duardin faction. He has a special rule that allows you to ally him in any order army regardless of points allowed for allies.

@jhamslam Yes I agree with all of your points. The army just feels completely outdated at this point. I enjoy playing it, but when I'm looking across the table at new books, I just have to shake my head sometimes. SCE definitely need an overhaul, but I have no clue how or when that would happen. Especially since they just got a brand new tome, and it pretty much didn't address anything. Maybe we'll get some points adjustments in December.

They have a few minor uses: 1) End cap units to sacrifice against units that arrive on table edges. 2) cheap filler to get something more valuable in the sky instead of starting on the board. 3) In the battalion that combos off of a ballista (all dropping from the sky of course). I’d run 6 if using the battalion just to make sure it works, but it’s a decent combo and gives you cp, Artefact, and fewer drops. The battalion is in a weird place and I wouldn’t take it to a tournament but it could be very strong in small point games or doubles tournaments, etc. But, they are generally pretty useless, sadly. And yeah I probably wouldn’t fuss if you wanted to use them as judicators. Maybe modify the arrow heads if you want to be really wysiwig.

Battle report with Gotrek. Army List: Mission was Shifting Objectives against Slaanesh with 3 keepers (shilaxy?), 2x10 seekers, 10 seekers, the contorted epitomy, and geminids of ul-gish. He had a battlion that let him get an extra command point if he rolled a D6 and got lower than the number of heroes in the battalion. Round 1: Stormcast Eternals The objective went center. I was given first turn and split my army up into 2 forces, set up on either side of the board. I dropped my shooting on the center objective for 3 points, and shot 4 daemonettes. Left side: Center and right side: Round 1: Slaanesh He moved forward on all sides and assaulted all 3 points. In the center I counter-charged 2 o f the Daemon Princes with my Aetherwings, but I lost everything but 2 Hurricane Raptors and lost the objective. On the right side, I lost 5 liberators and my Lord Castellant, but I spent a command point to bring the liberators back on a 5+, which dropped them behind the right objective. Gotrek killed the seekers and the daemon prince was outside of 6" of the objective. He won center and left side for 4 points. Center: Right: Round 2: Stormcast The objective went to the right side. I won priority. Dropped evocators and gavriel in the center and charged into a keeper of secretts in the middle, and the keeper on the right with Gotrek, killing both. 4 points to Stormcast. Center: Round 2: Slaanesh He countered by summoning 2 new Keepers of Secrets. 2 Keepers wiped out the Evocators and the rest of the raptors in the center. On the left side I was down to 1 Sequitor and fighting a losing battle. On the right, he charged a unit of Liberators on the right objective, but whiffed his attacks twice and the Liberators lived and held the objective. Slaanesh won 2 points. Center: Left: Round 3 : Slaanesh The objective went to the right side again. He won priority and finished off the last sequitor with spells, then charged and surrounded my Lord Arcanum (General), taking it down to 1 wound. On the right side, the keeper finished off the liberators, but was outside of range of the objective. 2 points to Slaanesh. Round 3: Stormcast My lord Arcanum finall died to the seekers on the left. Gotrek charged the keeper of secrets on the right and killed it to maintain control of Objective 3. 3 points to stormcast. Round 4: Slaanesh He won priority again, and summoned 6 fiends of Saanesh, and charged Gotrek with them and his general Keeper of Secrets. Gotrek tanked both units attacking twice, going down to 1 wound left. He wiped out the Fiends and kept them off the objective. 2 points to Slaanesh. Right: Round 4: Stormcast Gotrek retreats from combat to stand on the right objective. 3 poionts to stormcast. At this point it was 13 points to 9, and we'd been playing for 5 hours. Called the game at 1am. We didn't roll for priority or objective for round 5, as we'd agreed to call the game during the massive assault on Gotrek in round 4 (basically if he lived, the Stormcast automatically won). If we'd have gone another round, I would've needed to win priority in order to either bring it to a tie or get a major victory. If I lost priority I would've needed insane luck to survive another round. As it stood I got lucky with the objective constantly shifting to the right side, and I got lucky making saves for Gotrek over and over. He was a beast in combat, killing everything he touched, when he finally got a turn to attack. Slaanesh player was very green and new to the army (only the 3rd game), but he could have won the game at almost any point if he'd just played a bit better. He just kept mindlessly charging everything into gotrek and getting more and more frustrated that he didn't die, but if he'd just left gotrek alone he could've easily won in the end by tabling the rest of my army and just camping objectives. Fun game. Bit of an outlier, but Gotrek was 4-5 times more effective than the Celestan Prime has ever been in pretty much the same identical list in past games. I think I have my next tournament army unless I can think of something more interesting to do with it. I've resigned myself to never winning a tournament with this army, but it's nice to smash to have at least one element in my army that doesn't fold immediately the following turn it engages an enemy.

I’ve been wondering about this myself. It seems to me that the order they channel doesn’t matter. It happens at the start of the combat phase so unless someone has abilities that happen outside of the combat phase, the order the ability goes off doesn’t matter.

Seems to me that they happen simultaneously. Resolving attacks doesn’t mean allocating wounds and removing models. That happens after attacks are resolved. Weird. Since the lightning blast causes more wounds I’d say it might happen before wound allocation...

The main thing that kept me from adding drakes to my army over the last couple Ye was the cost combined with people saying they don’t perform well. It’s on my list of models to paint and add to my force at some point. I’d personally aim for something like a les Martin type list.

That’s all well and good. My issue with you from the start is that regardless of your conviction, you are no more of an authority on how it should be played than any one else. Every time the topic comes up, you respond to people like it’s not even up for debate. You shouldn’t do that when there hasn’t been an official ruling and you’re basically just acting like you have the inside pulse on what GW intended. You don’t have that. All you have is a really strong opinion and a willingness to argue anyone into the ground who disagrees with you. At some point I will get exhausted going back and forth on this with you and give up. But that’s a really poor strategy for you to deal with people in your life...

I don’t think they worded it “wrong”. I think they didn’t consider the situation, and worded it to account for the shooting phase only. From the standpoint that it would only be used in one phase, I think they worded it perfectly right. As to the rest of your argument, you’re assuming that I agree with your point of view and that I’m just grasping at straws or something. I’m not doing that. The rule is worded too vaguely, period. It’s open ended as to what should happen.

But from a grammatical standpoint, both views can be equally right, which is my point. Whatever conclusion you come to is just an opinion based on what you feel the default state is. I’m not saying one is wrong and the other is right. I’m saying both look correct to me, depending on one’s point of view. When I’m faced with that level of doubt, I don’t go with the one that would give me a huge advantage just because I want it.

You’re saying the way it’s worded indicates they thought about hero phase activation, then worded it that way on purpose. My point of view is that the way it’s worded (using past tense) indicates they weren’t thinking about it at all. I don’t think the wording of the rule makes it clear what they wanted to happen. I think it was probably a total oversight on their part which led to vague wording.

I agree with what @Hodges has said, but at this point I have nothing new to add to the conversation. So with that said, I just finished this guy tonight. Here’s the list I plan to try out this weekend. I’ll try to take some pics and report back on how Gotrek does. Allegiance: Stormcast Eternals- Stormhost: Hammers of SigmarMortal Realm: AqshyGotrek Gurnisson (520)Knight-Incantor (140)- Spell: Azyrite HaloGavriel Sureheart (120)Lord-Castellant (120)- General- Trait: We Cannot Fail - Artefact: God-forged Blade 10 x Liberators (200)- Warhammer & Shield- 2x Grandhammers5 x Liberators (100)- Warhammer & Shield- 1x Grandhammers5 x Judicators (160)- Boltstorm Crossbows- 1x Thunderbolt Crossbows3 x Aetherwings (50)3 x Vanguard-Raptors with Hurricane Crossbows (140)10 x Evocators (440)- 10x Grandstaves- Lore of Invigoration: Celestial BladesTotal: 1990 / 2000Extra Command Points: 0Allies: 0 / 400Wounds: 106

It isn't a terrible metaphor. It would help if you argued your case without resorting to calling the other side terrible every time they give you an example. I'll state again that I see good arguments on both sides of the fence, and my opinion is that it isn't clear, and thus I will err on the benefit of my opponent rather than myself, when I play it. I would personally wait for an FAQ before playing it a different way. To me it boils down to default variable states, and whether or not there's a default state of no, or a default state of null (which resets each turn). The wording of the rule doesn't make it clear which way they want us to interpret it. I feel that reading anything more into GW's intention beyond that is just injecting bias into it. Having said that, I do think there's something interesting in the core rules in regards to setting up units, and how setup moves, while preventing units from moving in their movement phases, do not count as moving for the purposes of rules that are restricted base don movement. Case in point - I can teleport a unit of raptors, which counts as a setup move, and then shoot the full 30" in the shooting phase, but I cannot move them in the movement phase. I can't connect this rule back to using abilities in the hero phase, but I do feel that it might give some indication of leaning towards the raptors being able to shoot 30" in the hero phase. However, there's no direct ruling or FAQ relating to any situation like this. On the contrary, there are quite a few situations where units can fight or shoot in the hero phase, and the benefits of their special rules don't carry over into the hero phase. In honesty, I feel like GW has been subtly shutting down stuff like this over the past year, and trying to prevent too much "activity" happening in the hero phases, and that to me gives plenty of indication that they wouldn't want the raptors working like that either. As I said, I see good arguments on both sides. I don't think the wording of the rule is clear. I'm trying to be as impartial as I possibly can.

Yes as long as there are two models, they count as a wizard. (Pick which model is going to manipulate it .) I don’t think they can cast it though.