Mark Williams
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Posts posted by Mark Williams
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2 hours ago, Sagittarii Orientalis said:
That is actually quite ludicrous. So some players become angry because they actually have to play wisely in order to win against stormcast, instead of just steamrolling them?
It’s easy to forget about the units in the sky, so even if you’ve seen it, sometimes you just slip up and get slammed for it. It creates a “feels bad” moment. If you know about it and are waiting for it, sometimes you don’t get to do whatever “thing” your army does so you feel like it’s a boring game. Also it auto wins against a lot of armies, so some people just don’t get to play a more casual list that they may want to play. On the flip side, it auto loses against some other armies, so some other opponents feel its just a shallow, boring trick. So it’s either a stressful and mentally exhausting game for people to have to play against, or it’s just a dull easily countered tactic that no on finds interesting. There’s a time and a place for that sort of game. The casual hobby group is not always that place.
The most common feedback I get from players is that from their side of the table, it looks almost like cheating. It’s too easy to use, and you don’t have to put much thought into it. And there isn’t much for them to interact with during the process. At its most simplistic level, Gavriel lets you delete a unit off the table “for free”, and the only interaction the opponent has with it is getting to try to limit the available options of units to be deleted. A lot of people seem to find that extremely annoying to play against.
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removed double post.
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3 hours ago, readercolin said:
Gavriel dropping a block of evocators or sequitors on something tends to obliterate that something. However, then you are stuck with a unit of evocators/sequitors in your opponents backfield, either far away from other units, or just sitting there as a tempting snack. Additionally, the most command points you are going to be able to have turn 1 is 3 (that is if you take a battalion + buy command point + turn 1 command point). When your opponent doesn't know how to screen against the deepstrike charge, this will win you a lot of games (and generate a lot of salt). Once they figure out how to zone you out though, you are going to start doing much more poorly. Additionally, many people complain that this leads to games being too samey, with them always doing the exact same thing every game.
As someone who plays Gavriel often, I can confirm the above statements. Although it’s one of the strongest plays we have, over time even my opponents who have learned to counter it eventually grow to hate playing it. The consensus in my own hobby group is that it creates “unfun” games due to the fact that your opponent has to play a defensive game and often gets punished for small mistakes. This eventually generates anger...
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Regardless of how many attacks he gets, he still dies every time someone gives him a dirty look. But I admit it would be hilarious for him to come out and wipe out a 40 man unit of something in one attack sequence.
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I imagine it's not just the first turn that'll catch people out though. Having 2 different ranges in every hero phase for the entire game might mean you can't "drill" into the same target twice due to it being slightly out of range, even in subsequent phases. If I were playing that army, it would be interesting to take some notes on how games changed afterwards (although I don't think I'd have been playing it that way to begin with, but that's a separate issue). Anyway, my point is just simply that it's not just the first turn that is affected.
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1 hour ago, crkhobbit said:
Of course I'm serious.
They're expensive. And doing half damage makes them doubly so. Even in Anvils, they haven't really been cutting it in the meta lately. And I've certainly never seen them in a competitive list that wasn't Anvils.
Speaking as someone who doesn't play Anvils and have never had the option to compare them to, I've had good results with a single unit specifically on the board to take out someone's 100 pt heroes and to apply pressure early on in the game. People generally either underestimate them, or commit too many resources towards getting rid of them. I don't use them all the time, and I wouldn't put the sort of points an anvilstrike list does into them, but I like them enough that they see maybe 30-40% of my hobby group games.
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13 minutes ago, crkhobbit said:
I don't think Longstrikes are worth their points without the ability to shoot twice.
Unsure if this is serious or sarcasm....
I think it's more a tactical flexibility thing. Yes there may be other things that are more efficient, but the longstrikes are a "scalpel" rather than a sword. The way I see it is that they allow you "dig out" heroes that are hiding behind a wall or troops, or to reach across the board and zap something that you otherwise don't want to travel to because it's in a place that you don't want to be. The ability to add this to your toolbox unfortunately comes with a bit of a points tax that probably makes the unit cost a bit more than it's damage output compared to some other types of units.
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2 minutes ago, Maturin said:
Clearly I'd rather take 10 SoTW for 160.
What does SoTW stand for?
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1 hour ago, l1censetochill said:
I wouldn't argue with you that it's the correct way to implement the rules as they're written - no movement phase, so no way to fulfill the condition. On that we agree.
I do think, however, that the Longshot rules themselves are poorly written and overly restrictive compared to newer iterations of the same idea, and should have been changed to read similarly to how things are now being written. In our book, it's "add 6" to the range of the unit's weapons if it didn't make a move in the movement phase of the same turn." In Cities of Sigmar, lots of their ranged units have bonus abilities that involve not moving - like the Irondrake's Blaze Away, which just gives a bonus if the unit "has not made a move in the same turn." Handgunners, Eternal Guard, etc. also have similar wording.
It's like the "re-roll failed saves" instead of "re-roll saves" issue. It gives the more recent books an even bigger edge over older ones because their rules are written to be more flexible. If you change the Longshot rules to "+6" range if the unit hasn't made a move in the same turn," it simplifies it and removes the unnecessary confusion and complication from having to shoot the same weapons at two different ranges in the same turn.
My working theory is that they changed the wording of the rule from the previous SCE battletome in order to reduce the number of lines in that text section by 1, so that it would fit on the page, thinking that it would be clear and not open to interpretation. In short, they took out a few words to save space on the page thinking it wouldn't be a big deal.
Anyway, I'm just glad that we don't have to have this debate anymore, honestly. Now that it's in the FAQ, we can just point to that and not have to go into lengthy back and forth explanations on why we think it works a certain way.
QuoteAnd if they're scared to go that way because it could be a balance issue with the Anvils command ability... plenty of tournaments were already allowing the 30" shots in the hero phase, and Stormcast was still rocking a 45% win rate. Unless the points get lowered to the point that a Vanguard Auxiliary Chamber battalion can be played in a 2k list, I don't think improving our rules a little bit is going to ruin the delicate balance of the metagame.
Lately I'm thinking that it's bad for the game for such outliers to exist while the rest of the tome/army/stormhosts are in such a sorry state. If they are going to fix the win ratio, I'd rather they do it in a smarter and more comprehensive way than allowing a few "broken" combos to slip through the cracks for people to exploit and take advantage of. The reason why I feel this way is that I believe it gives non-SCE players a very bad impression of SCE and the people who play them. I know that some people don't really care about "feelings," and so this is a non-issue to them....
Anyway, it seems like lately every tome that comes out has 1 sub-army within their book that is considerably stronger than the others in the same book. DoK have Hagg'nar as an example. For SCE, it's Anvils. I noticed this even happens in 40k. It's like there's usually one army that stands out as a super-obvious choice and the rest are just kinda narratively cool or maybe strong if you build a really specific list towards it.
I wonder if there's some internal design philosophy guiding that sort of thing or whether it's just accidental and internally they think everything is balanced pretty well, and then just get shocked and surprised when the players find strong combos....
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Also.... on the subject of Hurricane Raptors, the same logic should apply - they wouldn't get the bonus shots in the hero phase. However, Scions or teleports are fine as this counts as a set-up move, which is covered in the core rules as not having moved, but prevents you from making a normal move in the movement phase. I suspect they didn't mention hurricane raptors because nobody is asking about that and it isn't a dominant strategy in tournaments. If I'm going to go to the trouble of building a shooting list out of the Anvils ability, I wouldn't bother picking the weaker one unless I was trying to tailor a list specifically towards a really weird edge-case horde opponent that I was trying to get rid of. And even then, there's probably better ways to do that....
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Re: Anvils Longstrikes.
It’s because you must have a movement phase in order to meet the condition. The answer to whether or not you’ve moved yet in the hero phase is, “I don’t know yet,” not, “No.”
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6 minutes ago, Celestantpants said:
Why does the anti stormcast sentiment exist though? They haven't been truly strong in a long time. It really does seem as if gw is caving, at least a bit, to anti stormcast sentiment, so it kinda sucks that people seem to be hating on them for no good reason.
My guess is this:
1) At the low point, casual game level (500-1000 pts), stormcast are very strong because other armies can't fit in all their bells and whistles into their lists. Additionally, they are a bit of a noob friendly army at low point games, as their units are fairly silo-oriented. They just kind of do what they do without needing to combo off of other things. Other lists can be more complex or they need the bigger units to make them really effective. Most newer players haven't developed their armies this much at the introduction level. So stormcast are viewed as too strong and/or always winning, etc...
2) At the high end, the only stormcasts lists that win have to essentially resort to some "cheesy" tactic, such as fighting/shooting twice in the hero phase, or getting a guaranteed charge off. Something along those lines.
Basically neither type of game results in a good experience, and people over time have developed a collectively bad opinion of the army.
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54 minutes ago, Sagittarii Orientalis said:
I recall anti-stormcast sentiment occassionally showing up mostly from casual players in the past. Is this still the issue nowadays after cities of sigmar, orruk warclans and ossiarch release?
At the casual "local store" level, stormcast are viewed as the bully army that people hate to play against, and they are seen as kinda OP and people are happy when they get smashed. If I play there, the only people who come to watch the game are only wanting to see if I'll lose with them. I've encountered a little bit of this at tournaments as well. They are supposed to be the good guys, but in general I feel like people think of them as "bad guys" outside of he lore.
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18 minutes ago, jhamslam said:
honestly evocators at 220 are sorta ok, its just that we lack paladin removal cus theyre also at that range as opposed to the 140-160 range like they should be.
Sequitors should never have been at 130, the new Mortek Guard are basically what sequitors hope to be.
Excepting the fact thata unit of 5 sequitors gets 11 attacks total, and a unit of mortrek guard gets 21 attacks, the stats seem roughly comparable to me. I mean if you add in the great maces, the sequitors probably pump out a little bit more damage on average, plus they can choose to re-roll attacks instead of shields. I dunno it seems to me like they are at least comparable.
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Except for a handful of combo lists, SCE are mid tier at best. The Tau analogy is a good one.
I agree at this point that we need new warscrolls, not points adjustments.
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7 hours ago, Aelfric said:
The rule is to use the latest published version of a warscroll. This wording was added in 2018, though. As the COS Runelord warscroll is a later date wouldn't this latest version supersede the previous version and as the most up-to-date version does not have a limit on it, it can thus be used multiple times on the same unit.
You aren’t technically wrong but it’s pretty obvious they just copied and pasted the old warscroll. Given that the faq even exists and specifically addresses it, I’d personally not really want to use it on what seems to be an oversight on the part of GW.
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This was in the Grand Alliance: Order FAQ, for what it's worth.
QuotePage 177 – Runelord, Rune Lore Add the following to the end of the first paragraph: ‘A unit that is affected by a Rune Lore power cannot be picked again in the same phase.’
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I had a couple interesting rules questions come up this weekend in a game with Evocators and wanted to get you guys opinions.
1) We've talked about this before, but the Celestial Lightning happens after you have resolved a units attacks, which is "simultaneous" to the time where wounds are allocated. We went back and forth about this and semi decided on a house rule that whoever's turn it is gets to do this first. So if it's my turn, I get to do a celestial lightning attack before casualties are removed, but if it's my opponent's turn, they get to remove casualties first. This didn't seem like a big difference to me, but it seems like a really "grey" area.
2) In the same assault, my opponent had some shields that caused mortal wounds on 6s.
example: Spiteshield: The shields carried by those in the Legion of Azgorh are laced with malefic curses, and upon being struck erupt with tendrils of flame. If the unmodified save roll for an attack with a melee weapon that targets a unit that includes any models carrying a Spiteshield is 6, the attacking unit suffers 1 mortal wound.
There are a few similar abilities like this.
example: Gorefists: A counter-punch from a brutally spiked gorefist has spelled doom for countless overconfident foes. If an unmodified save roll for an attack made with a melee weapon that targets a unit that includes any models armed with a Goreaxe and Gorefist is 6, the attacking unit suffers 1 mortal wound after all of its attacks have been resolved.
My opponent argued that because the warscroll did not say "after all of its attacks have been resolved", the wounds from the Spiteshields happened immediately. This was then backed up by the quote in the core rules under Mortal Wounds:
"Mortal wounds caused at other times are allocated to models in the target unit as soon as they occur, in the same manner as wounds caused by damage from an attack."
Thus, reflective damage would kill Evocators before they get to use their Celestial Lightning arc. Ultimately this isn't a big deal, but it was the first time I've seen something like this, and I wanted to know if anyone has encountered this before, and how would you handle it?
The only thing I can think to sort of defend a pro-Evocator argument is that the quote in the mortal would section of the core rulebook was intended to account for mortal wounds that happen outside of the attack sequence completely, such as a unit of cavalry charging in and doing mortal wounds at the end of the charge phase, or in the hero or movement phases or something like that.
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9 hours ago, Kaio said:
Does anyone run two shrines in their lists?
I'd like to have one of each eventually just for options in list building.
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Given the new rule for chaos warriors, it seems wrong that liberators don’t get a group bonus to their shields as well.
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On the subject of how Stormcast are doing in the meta, and the relationship between the Tournament stats, I think that the tournament stats are reflective of how the army is doing as a whole.
On the whole, generically speaking, Stormcast are a middling-at-best army, a 2/5 tourney army with 3/5 if you are a good general.
Then you have a handful of outliers that can do a lot better - these are what PJetski is talking about. I don't count these when discussing the faction as a whole.
Your average guy picking up the army for the first time, and having not much prior wargaming experience, is on average going to lose most of his SCE games for a long, long time, until they key into the small handful of best combos available. Some people will take longer than others to find the right combos and learn to use them.
This is what accounts for the poor tournament statistics. If you understand where they are coming from, the statistics make sense and are perfectly applicable.
Our book is mostly bad, and the base army is pretty weak. There's a few good gems amongst the plain rocks.
Disclaimer: This doesn't mean I don't like the army. I love my army and will continue playing Stormcast. I'm just being pragmatic about where we stand. Other armies have a lot more advantages than we do, and a lot of games are just simply uphill battles. I'm throwing out the handful of outlier SCE armies that are the exception. We know about those - we know they do well. I feel those should be a separate discussion.
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On the subject of hurricane raptors, I had a theory a while back that an entire army of them might actually do pretty good. I just don’t have the resources to build that sort of army at the moment and test it out.
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Yes the depravity stuff is ridiculous. My only guess is they have some really weird internal meta in their play testing department.
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47 minutes ago, AdamR said:
As I understand it the order of start of phase actions us determined by who's turn it is. So if it's your turn you'd charge shields before getting hermdar to the face, but if it's your opponent's turn they'll be going before you get chance to charge up.
Hmm okay I’ll have a read through hermdarr rules tonight, thank you.
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I recall reading a while back that some of the "fight first" abilities will make it so that the Sequitors never get a chance to charge their shields in combat, but I'm reading over their rules, and I can't see a situation where they wouldn't get to use their shields, as the announcement of them using their shields has nothing to do with the order that they do combat in.
The only situation I can see where this would come up is if someone fights outside of the combat phase entirely, such as during a hero phase. Am I wrong?
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AoS 2 - Stormcast Eternals Discussion
in Stormcast Eternals
Posted
Played against Ossiarch Bonereapers tonight. Got tabled by turn 3. Wow they seem really good. Their basic troops are stronger than my best elites.