[AoS 2 - Stormcast Eternals Discussion]

1 hour ago, PJetski said:

Allies cant benefit from allegiance abilities, but they would still count as a deployed unit for the purposes of Scions of the Storm.

 

Long Shot is always active in the hero phase. Going to copy my response from the last time this question came up:

"Add 6" to the Range characteristic of this unit’s Longstrike Crossbows if this unit did not move in the movement phase of the same turn."

The way the ability is worded the 6" bonus range is always active unless you do the specific action to disable it. Since it does not specify "in the shooting phase" then it is active in all phases, even if the hero phase comes before the movement phase. 

It may seem strange at first, but warscroll abilities break the normal rules of the game quite frequently. 

I feel obliged to point out there’s another equally valid interpretation of the wording, and that is that the bonus does not activate until you have the opportunity to make a choice to move. Your interpretation is is an opinion until it’s FAQed, as is mine.

[AoS 2 - Stormcast Eternals Discussion]

10 minutes ago, Raffonerd said:

Guys, I need an help on SCE rules:

1) Castellant "creates" a Gryph on the field. This counts as a single drop in deployment. After if, in order to apply the allegiance ability i should count 1 or 2 units on the fields? I suppose 2, but no sure.

2) Does allies counts for the units on field for allegiance ability? 

Thanks in advance.

NB: SCE is still good in competitive, don't worry.

I’ve always counted it as two units, one drop. 

[AoS 2 - Stormcast Eternals Discussion]

Nice work!

[AoS 2 - Stormcast Eternals Discussion]

45 minutes ago, jhamslam said:

I just saw the Bonereaper Ivory Host rules. Every single host's rules seems to be designed for matched play or a specific playstyle in mind with lots of powerful niche abilities.They have one with an army wide Staunch Defender without any general bubble or charge clauses.

 

Seriously, whoever designed the SCE books mustve lazy as hell, it looks like a pitiful RNG collection of abilities compared to the stuff im seeing.

I think it’s driven by sales numbers. They have a rough idea of how many people play what. SCE are very popular and they don’t need help or good rules to sell better. The bone army is new and it needs awesome rules to convince people to buy it. Maybe people who are a little frustrated with their own rules, like us!

[AoS 2 - Stormcast Eternals Discussion]

1 hour ago, AdamR said:

WRT Anvilstrike - do people not just shoot the (bird)****** out of the Aetherwings? If not, why not?

I know if I was playing against it with my Skyborne Slayers that would be job #1!

This is what I do with my gav bomb.

 I have a unit of crossbow juds and hurricane raptors dropping from the sky. My deployment is as far back and as far away from their army as possible. My first drop is the shooting which I use to kill as many birds as possible. If I get a feeling that I can clear them out and get a charge in as well, I go for it. Otherwise I play a long game and wait for them to feel forced to try to capture objectives.

 I played against an anvilstrike list this way at last years masters and shut them down completely, only losing on a technicality in the last turn. Unfortunately, playing Stormcast, I still have to play a perfect game and make zero mistakes even when I’m a good general.

 I find Pjetski’s confidence in the plan a bit annoying because in my area it’s common to just lose a match randomly to bad luck even with the best strategy. Every now and then, the birds will move 2-3 inches only and eels or whatever just over-run you. And the opponent won’t be thinking too hard about it or trying something tricky with their spacing. You’re playing a low model count, finesse army and that brings with it a certain amount of risk that a tiny mistake will see you wiped out occasionally by turn 2. Don’t act like it doesn’t happen, and if it doesn’t for you don’t act like everyone else will have the same experience, otherwise they are somehow “doing it wrong.” Apart from that I agree with everything you’re saying, and Anvils is definitely the best list we have.

[AoS 2 - Stormcast Eternals Discussion]

1 hour ago, chord said:

What can we as stormcast players do to convince GW to stop listening to the Stormcast hate crowds and actually gives us more than one list?  (and fix some of our internal imbalances as well)??  

A petition?  Letter campaign?  etc?

I'm semi-friends with a store owner in our local area, and from what he says, Stormcast tend to dominate in the local small, friendly store games. Basically the 500 pts range or so, aimed at people who are playing with starter boxes or just starting out the army with a hero and a couple battle line units. He says a lot of people at the store play stormcast early on and get stomped by them, and they develop a very bad opinion of the army, and feel that the people who play them are mean/bullies, or just trashy players etc... they basically get a bit of anger and bias built up about the army early on, and as they get better and learn to beat them, it's like they "put them in their place" and they are meant to stay there.

Apparently, for a lot of people, Stormcast are actually the first "villain" army that they meet in AoS.

[AoS 2 - Stormcast Eternals Discussion]

For what it's worth, it's been my experience that whenever I win a game at a tournament with Stormcast, there's about a 30-40% chance my opponent will get angry at some point that they lost to "a Stormcast army." It's a fairly common thought that Stormcast match-ups are more or less auto-wins. Whenever I do win against people, they seem genuinely surprised and angry, like I sort of robbed them or something. So... yes not surprised at your experience in the least.

Congrats on the win though.

[AoS 2 - Stormcast Eternals Discussion]

5 hours ago, Hodges said:

Ah okay gotcha, yeah the no LOS would be a pain for sure. Can be mitigated somewhat through my own port ability, but you are right about the lists limitation without a melee threat. I was working on a build that incorporated Desolators for the dual threat - solid enough shooting that you would CP it if needed, while bringing a real tank element to the table. Might work on that angle instead. 

I've played a similar list off and on over the past year. The main issue I've found with all shooting lists is that it is very difficult to reach out and grab (and hold) objectives with it. You're banking on being able to wipe the enemy mostly off the board by turn 3, so that you have enough turns left to capture the objectives and gather enough points up to win the game by turn 5. Additionally, because you aren't fighting twice per round like other melee armies, you are relying on doing all of that damage in a single turn, which can get extremely tricky. The army has a bunch of disadvantages that are difficult to overcome. The Anvil's list works well because you can shoot twice with 1 unit in the same turn, but that doesn't apply to the rest of your shooting units, which means if you get double turned, pretty much everything will get over-run by a fast melee-focused army.

I actually have a lot of vested interest in these sorts of shooting armies, and I want them to do well, but based on the last tournament I went to where I took a similar army, I found it to be quite mediocre and to have some really tough "auto-lose" type matches.

Beware of armies that can do some sort of area of effect "bomb" type spell (endless spells like everblaze comet or geminids of ulgu). Some of those spells can completely wreck you in a couple of turns.

I've also had serious trouble with armies that can summon new units onto the board - seraphon, slaanesh, and sometimes FEC have all given me grief due to the fact that I spend the whole game shooting fodder trying to get them off of objectives only to have them pop back the next turn and keep crowding me into a small corner of the board that I can't seem to get out of. I actually had seraphon i a sigle turn once pretty much zone me completely out of the entire board on turn one with skink spam, and I've seen Slaanesh occasionally do a similar version of that too. 

I wouldn't give up on the idea, just simply try it a few times and get a feel for the weaknesses and strengths of it.

Also, as to the Sylvaneth comment. I actually haven't found Sylvaneth to be much of a problem for this particular brand of shooting, due to the fact that you can drop hurricane raptors from the sky into a good position, regardless of how they set up. With Sylvaneth, if you can knock out the right targets early on, their army gets significantly weaker. The trick is simply to set up multiple lanes of fire so that they can't LOS one unit without exposing themselves to another.

[AoS 2 - Stormcast Eternals Discussion]

56 minutes ago, Belper said:

Gavriel was the best list until people got smashed by it enough times to play learn how to play against it.

Now it's shootcast.

Well you have to keep in mind that those first few months that Gavriel came out there weren't quite the extreme counters that have appeared in the time since. I think Gavriel is arguably as good as it ever was, but that a lot of armies got a lot stronger since them, so they sort of got taken down a peg as far as the meta goes.

I agree there may have been a little bit of "element of surprise" as well in those first few months.

As for me and my army, my main issue is that Gavriel is the best move I've got, regardless of whether or not my opponent has seen it. It's a solid threat that the opponent must deal with in a specific way. Forcing them to play at least a little bit defensively. If they expose a valuable unit, even by accident, I can punish them very hard for it, and that by itself is a very useful tool.

I don't run an anvils-shootcast list, so I've sort of limited/hamstrung myself into playing HoS, so I'll keep using Gavriel until something more useful appears to me.

[AoS 2 - Stormcast Eternals Discussion]

41 minutes ago, DeathbeforeDishonour said:

Does anybody have any suspicions when a new stormcast Battletome is inbound. I’m going to get one soon but will hold off if one is close. 

I can't imagine it will be soon. Even at an optimistic  guess, I'd say we are more than a year out, if not two.

The current release schedule, as far as I'm aware, goes something like this...

- Slaves to Darkness/Everchosen

-  Bonereapers

- Mawtribes

- Tzeench

- Kharadron Overlords

- Seraphon

I'm sure the order of that might change, but after that you have to consider that a few of the death armies are in need of new releases, if not an overhaul. And I think DoK will be due for endless spells and a book refresh at some point too.

SCE is not really a priority at the moment.

[AoS 2 - Stormcast Eternals Discussion]

1 hour ago, xking said:

How would you guys make the stormhost rules and stormcast units better? 

I feel like this has been done to death, but eh.... I like talking about stormcast, so I'll list out some of the big ones in my head.

1. I feel like there's too many heroes with special abilities that are good, but you can't take them all because magic is such an important part of the game now. Lord Castellants and Knight Encantors seem almost like mandatory takes in a lot of builds, and that doesn't leave much room for the other characters which are also really interesting and good too.You also have stuff like the Lord Acquilor or the Lord Arcanums which are needed to unlock certain battle line units. I feel like this "hero bloat" has become a bottleneck of sorts, and it stops me from taking more varied lists because I feel like my hero slots have been semi forced upon me. I realize that non-Stormcast armies might look at this and think I'm just not appreciating the variety that we have, but I seriously feel like this is a problem that needs to be addressed somehow.

2. The hero command abilities in many cases are a bit lame or redundant with the new generic abilities that were added in GHB19. Again, I wouldn't mind seeing these revisited to make them a little bit more relevant again.

3.  Liberators are a bit pathetic compared to most other battle line. I'd like to see them hitting on 3s always, and to make their special ability perhaps do something else than +1 hit.

4.  We still need massive points adjustments across the line. I won't get into this here. Someone made a decent list a while back just before GHB19 came out that was pretty much spot on.

5.  We need some help holding objectives. This is killing us in otherwise tight/close games where we are playing well. I suspect they need to introduce the 40k mechanic that allows troops to maintain hold on objectives even if they are outnumbered.

6. We need battalions that don't suck.

7. Stormhost rules..... too complicated to get into them all but in a nutshell Anvils doesn't need to be the only "obvious choice".

 

[AoS 2 - Daughters of Khaine Discussion]

35 minutes ago, Chumphammer said:

So, how to deal with Drakkfoot Bonesplitters. Seems they just eat us

Rub lemon juice all of your bodies so they spit you out. 😂

[AoS 2 - Stormcast Eternals Discussion]

29 minutes ago, jhamslam said:

Greywater , and Hammerhall are where its at. Shooting twice with helstorm rocket batteries or fighting twice and activating a ton of command abilities in the same turn with Hammerhal. Clearly the most pushed.

Tempest Eye and Living City are also quite good. Hammerhall will require a hefty investment in demigryph knights however.

Yes, I've been pouring over the book since I got it this weekend, and I'm thinking the Hammerhall city makes the most sense to me. I'm interested in theming a list around gryphons, and I think you could splice in a few stormcast units here and there to enhance the theme.

[AoS 2 - Stormcast Eternals Discussion]

12 minutes ago, Maturin said:

Does it make sense to you guys ?
 

I understand your point of view. My point of view is that the answer to the question is not, “No,” but rather, “I don’t know because it hasn’t happened yet.”

[AoS 2 - Stormcast Eternals Discussion]

21 minutes ago, schwabbele said:

Could be? As I see it: In  my hero phase, the movement phase of my turn has not happened yet, which means my raptors did not move and the longshot ability is not restricted to shooting phase hence I get the bonus. 

I need an example to understand your point better   For me the rule means, either they moved or not. There is no they moved a little like 1" special section. Meaning even if they only moved 1" they still moved -> yes, else no. 

I flip a coin. When it lands, I cover it up before you can see it. I will uncover the coin and show you the answer in the movement phase. In the hero phase, you can shoot further if the coin is heads.

 With only this information available, what state is the coin in, and based on that, can you shoot further or not?

[AoS 2 - Stormcast Eternals Discussion]

3 minutes ago, Raffonerd said:

Best list if you don't fight slanesh.

Haha there’s a lot of lists it doesn’t work against.

[AoS 2 - Stormcast Eternals Discussion]

1 hour ago, schwabbele said:

There is this faq - not directly addresses this issue I think.

However longshot doesn't specify shooting phase. 

 

False imho, at the time being ( hero phase ) it is a No, because movement phase didn't happen

@PJetski mentioned something on phase order iirc , but I didn't find any rules on that. - that's the only thing which would make sense to me. 

In the end I would let a TO decide. 

From a “math” perspective, a variable can be empty or null before it’s decided. You’re assuming that the default state is no, and that there’s only two valid answers. I see your point, and I don’t want to convince you that you’re wrong, rather that there’s an equally valid different way to look at it.

[AoS 2 - Stormcast Eternals Discussion]

36 minutes ago, schwabbele said:

They do, they didn’t move in the same turn 🙂 

I realize there isn’t an FAQ on this, but if they ever get around to it, I highly doubt it will work that way, considering the way that it was worded in the previous book, and considering that many similar abilities in other armies don’t work that way either.

Even going by “RAW”, I personally think it’s ambiguous. You could also say that the condition of whether or not you moved yet in that phase is neither yes or no, but “unknown” which would therefore mean you can’t get a definitive answer and thus don’t get the bonus.

[AoS 2 - Stormcast Eternals Discussion]

1 hour ago, Maturin said:

What do you play that gives you a strong alpha strike ? I could play Slayer's with some Longstrikes or go full anvils longstrike for the first time.
I tried the desolators list with the Celestant Prime, and the same one with Stardrake + Prime. It was fun, I got lucky on FallingStars rolls, so I decimated his heroes with a MW rain. Dunno if it will be viable against DOK

I’m using a gav bomb list.

[AoS 2 - Stormcast Eternals Discussion]

26 minutes ago, Maturin said:

So guys, I'll probably have to face a DoK player pretty soon. I dont know what he's going to field, but apparently he's a competitive one. I've never faced DoK. Any advice ?
What should I prioritize, what should I be wary about ?

Cheers!

It depends on what list he is taking and what list you are taking. Lately, my core strategy is to try to blow a hole in their main witch block as early as possible. I have an "alpha strike" capable army, and if they give me first turn I usually plow straight into their main block of witches with everything I've got. It could be considered a gamble, but if you can knock out their center, it will help tremendously later in the game after their buffs start compounding. It will also put them on the defensive which is not where they like to be.

[AoS 2 - Daughters of Khaine Discussion]

7 minutes ago, Thalassic Monstrosity said:

Do Daughters of Khaine ever attack other Order factions for sacrifices? I know the narrative is loose enough that anyone can fight anyone, really. I'm just wondering if they're like Idoneth in that they are known to occasionally prey on their allies.

I got an impression that they are like one step down from Khorne, and that they basically worship slaughter to the point that they kill for fun, and when it's not other people, they kill themselves.

The notion that they are any sort of nice is just a front they put up. It's quite literally an "enemy of my enemy is my friend" type of situation.

[AoS 2 - Stormcast Eternals Discussion]

This is the Gavriel list that I've been running with for the past 6 months or so. I do intend to add a lord arcanum and sequitors at some point, one day, but this list has been doing fine, so I'm not in a hurry to change it.

I've gone 3/5 at tournaments with variations of this list  more or less for over a year now. I feel that I could do better with better play but certain armies are just extremely difficult to get past, and there's not much I can do about those unfortunately.

Allegiance: Stormcast Eternals
- Stormhost: Hammers of Sigmar
Mortal Realm: Aqshy

Leaders
Lord-Castellant (120)
- General
- Trait: We Cannot Fail
- Artefact: God-forged Blade
Gavriel Sureheart (120)
Knight-Incantor (140)
- Spell: Azyrite Halo
Celestant-Prime (340)

Battleline
5 x Liberators (100)
- Warhammer & Shield
- 1x Grandhammers
10 x Liberators (200)
- Warhammer & Shield
- 2x Grandhammers
5 x Judicators (160)
- Boltstorm Crossbows
- 1x Thunderbolt Crossbows

Units
3 x Aetherwings (50)
3 x Vanguard-Raptors with Hurricane Crossbows (140)
10 x Evocators (440)
- 10x Grandstaves
- Lore of Invigoration: Celestial Blades

Endless Spells / Terrain
Celestian Vortex (40)
Everblaze Comet (100)

Total: 2000 / 2000
Extra Command Points: 1
Allies: 0 / 400
Wounds: 106
 

[AoS 2 - Stormcast Eternals Discussion]

1 hour ago, Maturin said:

How do you plan on throwing Gotrek forward ? He's as slow as protectors

It's a finess list. With that many raptors and birds, the enemy is going to be forced to try to come to him or over time, the raptors are going to decimate them. Won't work against every army, but it might upset a few games.

[AoS 2 - Stormcast Eternals Discussion]

3 hours ago, Hamartia said:

As someone new to SC are there any units in the book just straight up not worth taking?

I'm trying get the force up and going using mostly models from the "classic" SC range (So not vanguard or sacrosanct) but im aware that as far as the meta appears, such units are not as common. Atm i only have liberators, lord relictor and celestant on foot and im not sure which direction is best to go given the classic range. I'm unsure how units like concussers, judicators or prosecutors perform in casual games.

Knight Questor is pretty much for the RPs...

 Castigators are pretty bad, and so are gryph hound units (free ones are fine).

[AoS 2 - Stormcast Eternals Discussion]

1 minute ago, OIF4IDVET said:

So taking units of “heavy looking infantry” sadly doesn’t actually equal taking heavy infantry unless it’s maybe evocators or sequitors? The other paladins aren’t good options and liberators aren't either compared to those two I’m beginning to see, which is a shame really because I love all the types, probably much the same with the many different cavalry units , they look outstanding and super capable but performance isn’t a good trade off for points. It does kinda grind me that ten liberators can’t really compare to the same core units in a lot of these other armies that cost less. Fingers crossed for a decent rebalancing because I’m gonna stick with the sigmarines regardless.  

I love my stormcast to bits. I'm at around 3500 points worth and climbing. Just because I can't beat everyone with them doesn't mean i don't like them.

Both of our cavalry options are pretty good. Both Dracolines and Dracoths are strong and have their place. I'm speaking purely from a tournament-competitive standpoint when I say I feel they are a 3/5 army. In my local hobby group and in the store, I seem to almost always do pretty good, and I'm sure there's quite a few people who don't like playing me and think that they are overpowered or something.

Different people will have different expleriences.

I'm more or less playing a Gav bomb army these days. Despite the fact that people have learned how to counter it, it's still the strongest trick I've got, and it still works against people who don't know how to block it, or don't have the tools to do so.

The 2nd to last tournament I went to, I tried a non-Gav-bomb list and I ended up spending he entire tournament at the bottom tables, unable to beat opponents that I previously had no trouble with.

As for 10 liberators, you basically have to put a lord castellant with them. This guy is unfortunately a bit of a must-take in most good lists. Not much you can do to avoid it. I think the army is intended to have its heroes buffing and making their troops stronger.