That Guy

Hmmmm… You won’t be able to one drop, so you could 2 drop or do something else… honestly Lotann is just better than a Storm Eidolon. He does the same but also for mounts for much cheaper and is a great Isharrann character on top of that. I think the best you can do here is go thrall heavy in Dhom-Hain. Add a Tidecaster, get yourself ritual on first/2nd and 3rd turn and drop an extra boat. Hang with your storm around a blob of thralls and maybe even screen them. Both your Eidolons have multiple ways of healing while having a very beefy and tanky statline. They can sit on a 2+ save turn 1 and with mystic shield that can be even better. They have a stonehorn profile. You should include a lifeswarm as well, since you have the eidolon of the sea, you can threaten with insane amounts of healing a turn on any of the eidolons or bring back thralls. The tidecaster could metamorphosis to become a monster for a turn. You can’t spare points for stuff anymore. Something like this maybe: Army Faction: Idoneth Deepkin - Army Subfaction: Dhom-Hain - Grand Strategy: Hold the Line - Triumphs: Indomitable LEADER Eidolon of Mathlann Aspect of the Storm (355) Eidolon of Mathlann Aspect of the Sea (325)* - General - Command Traits: Endless Sea Storm - Spells: Steed of Tides Isharann Tidecaster (150)* - Artefacts: Rune of the Surging Gloomtide - Spells: Counter-current BATTLELINE 2 x Namarti Thralls (390)* 1 x Namarti Thralls (260)* Namarti Thralls (130)* ENDLESS SPELL Emerald Lifeswarm (60) TERRAIN Gloomtide Shipwreck (0) OTHER 1 x Akhelian Allopexes (330)* - Razorshell Harpoon Launcher, Barbed Hooks and Blades CORE BATTALIONS: *Battle Regiment TOTAL POINTS: (2000/2000)

Tommorrow i'll be running the following list against an OBR List, a Lumineth List and a Seraphon Thunderlizard list. The Phoenix will be mostly around the king and some sharks in order to protect them while also trying to suck in some magic power when the king casts flaming weapon. I added a tidecaster for a bit of utility and when she's in the thick of it she might even provide a source of -1 to hit. Together with the Phoenix that could be a nasty -1 to hit and wound. Namarti Thralls will travel with the Tidecaster, screening her. Sharks will hunt. For now I will run it like this and i'll see how it feels. In the future i'd like to try some 3 shark units and/or shivers. I was also contemplating Lotann, since he is amazing, but for now i'd like to try out the tidecaster. Also it's nice to have an extra source of magic to buff up the Phoenix.

Oh that will indeed be the case! Keen observation.

You can still spread your -1 bubbles. Both of the units use a bubble around them . Also know that Thrallmasters only effect units that target Namarti. If you play anything else the phoenix can protect them, because the phoenix debuffs all enemy units in range of its aura, not just the ones attacking Namarti.

You can't debuff someone for -2 to wound although if they have buffs it counters that. Usually not worth since to wound buffs are rare in AoS.

tSo uh.... https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/SeAPQtAryX4qcLM9.pdf I might have to start rethinking those dragons and fulminators in lists. That 30 Thrall block is looking real hot right now @Derek Also boys the Phoenix dodged the bullet. I guess from now on the phoenix is the most interesting monster ally option. Currently especially with our Forgotten Nightmares rules it will be tougher to justify Fulminator and Dragon allies. Although they will still perform great. Against some matchups, those units will be worth 2VP. Our allies aren't protected by Forgotten Nightmares and therefore the risk might be too great. Not saying I won't give it a shot still, since I also like those units, and I have them for the Stormcast Eternals anyways.

Looks like Nighthaunt became prime hunters. We might become a top competing army with the 3.0 tome also dropping soon. https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/SeAPQtAryX4qcLM9.pdf

Good news for OBR boys!!!! We became Prime Hunters. Therefore if we kill a priority target unit we get a minimum of 2VP and they are reinforced 3VP. In case of Mega-Gargants in Sons of Behemat 3VP! https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/SeAPQtAryX4qcLM9.pdf

Yeah, you are right. You can't spam the Lord of Tides ability I missed that little clause. Even so.. It's still an interesting list, it gives you slightly more control over which king drops down the ability and honestly... twice per game strike first still(once on all and once on d3). Is still solid enough I would say. The Kings together will still smash apart a lot. If you are extremely lucky, you could have all kings strike first in 2 turns, because if you roll the result of 3 units, you can grant 3 of them strike first, followed up by your 4th king being your first normal activation. It's still brutal. Could considering to swap out 1 king for Volturnos, drop the reaver unit and add in an extra 10 thralls. You could run the thralls as 20, 10, 10 in that case. You can also consider to drop 1 thrall unit instead and take a lifeswarm. You definitely could! Thralls are a solid unit and having 30 in 1 unit would be a strong hitting unit. They have 2" range so they'll do their work.

In fact 2 new lists for our Ionrach friends. Ionrach will possibly the most competitive sub-faction, because on top of being able to grant high tide with Akhelian King, now you can also grant Flood and Ebb Tide out of sequence and you could even grant it on top of granting high tide. Mind you this only works for Akhelian units. Now finally the cherry on top is that once per battle Lotann can boost basically a second ritual, one you might’ve granted. Ionrach is the depth of our toolbox and it will be affective. Few of the lists: Ionrach Smash of the Kings. Eidolon teleports forwards debuffs stuff, can later on also teleport Lotann forwards. One of the Kings will grant High Tide to D3 units when the time is right, while charge smashing mortals all around the field, debuffing -1 to hit with Voidchill and just smash everything apart. Lotann tries to hang with some Thralls. You have good board control, everything smashes. You can easily get objectives. It’s nasty. Also the Sea Eidolon is as tanky as a stonehorn with better healing. List 2 Ionrach Point and Kill. Absolutely murder a Mawkrusha turn 1 easily by destroying them with 6 Morrsarr. You have enough different solid tools that operate great on their own or good in tandem with each other. Same trick with the Eidolon as with the other list.

Yeah, I’ve been tempted to replace the tidecaster in some lists for Lotann, he clearly is the best Isharran. There’s also 2 other things. The Sea Eidolons spell to reduce save rolls states you can pick d3 enemy units. Not d3 different enemy units. Therefore you can possibly -3 a single unit. As per FAQ such a situation was already clarified and yes you can target the same unit multiple times with such wording. Under the professional IDK players it’s a popular choice to now take one with Steed of Tides and teleport him in order to debuff and than engage with everything else. Also for the Akhelian king it doesn’t say his strike first ability is limited to 1 model only, therefore taking more kings means you can pretty much strike first all game long. And in case of the turtle a lot of people seem to miss that with the void drum in order to get +1 to hit for your Namarti, which btw includes shooting, requires the target of the attack to be wholly within 12” of the turtle. So you need to zip your turtle forwards in order to benefit from +1 to hit. Bye bye +1 save unless the enemy is in your face.

Core rules 27.3.1: Unstoppable Fury is a command trait and mounts can't benefit from those if they affect attacks. Therefore, nope only the king's weapons. Still very 500% worth and the best command trait you can take on him. Best day ever does affect the mount, it's not an enhancement.

I wonder, do they include Entangled from sharks? What about the Thrallmaster fighting stances? These were included in the fury of the deep box.

If you are interested in such a list, you might actually consider a Mor'Phann sub-faction build. In that sub-faction Soulrenders get to add 3 to the slain models returned. This way each of your Soulrenders return 4 to 6 Namarti models per turn. Pair it with a Tidecaster to drop down een extra boat and double dip on the currents, or add in a Eidolon of the Sea perhaps for some true healing shenanigans and debuffs on your enemy. (he can also very reliably drop down a lifeswarm to up the amount of revived Namarti even more) You can play around with the build, you can also go the soulrenders + thrallmaster route and create super survivable and hard hitting units. Could even consider a leviadon since you are playing with namarti and sharks do also benefit from the void drum. Your sharks will be a supportive unit in this situation though. Your money is in the Namarti units for these lists. Not saying that sharks won't do work on their own though.

They can however place it so that you can't end your move in a favourable position. You may walk over them, if you can keep 3" of distance. However you also may not end your move on impassible terrain, which btw, boats are impassible terrain since they are a defensible terrain as per their warscroll. Core Rulebook 17.1.2. I've used endless spells in a similar way to bar the way of a gargant. It's not so much about placing the blocking piece away from you, but more about placing it in such a way that the gargant can't finish their move and/or charge from the direction they approach without ending with their base on top of the impassible piece, which they may not. And a boat... is a big piece you can't end your move on.

Very solid list my good sir. After I saw the weekly, Ionrach will definitely be written next. I already had a feeling it would be the shenanigan sub-faction. Great to see it flare up after some discussion. I was already looking at the Morssarr Guard instead of the Ishlaen. We are a very glasscannon type of army and while we do have a bunch of crazy defensive options, we have to win through our sheer speed and bite. Curious question, why did you go for the Surging Gloomtide artefact over making the King even killier? Is it for screening purposes?

Talking about Warhammer Weekly… for those who are hesitant about the power of the book. Or for those that just want to see an outside perspective, but also a professional one. Do yourself a favour. Watch/Listen to the podcast. You could skip the first 30min or so, it really starts after that. Here’s the link. I know it’s long… do it during your hobbying. Let your doubts be washed away or confirmed. Very solid coverage on the faction. https://youtu.be/Fmi_UJ8ZHUE

So i've been wanting to do this for a bit but i'd honestly like to keep a compilation of some possible builds for the different sub-factions. Now I wonder if perhaps in the future we can have a specific topic for that, because it will get washed away in the freeform topics like these. Either way I could always upload it from time to time... currently I feature a few of @vinnyt lists(with a few tweaks here and there, because I prefer a few different choices than he did(let me know if you like them buddy)). I add lists of my own as well of course. Let us start for now covering Dhom-Hain, Fuethán and Nautilar. Of course over time I like to add the others and more of the same! I'm still looking for a build that includes both Volturnos and a King or a build using the Eidolon of the Storm (I honestly starting to like the sea eidolon more this edition). EDIT: I was wrong about 1 of @vinnyt lists, leviadons become battleline and do lose the behemoth status, therefore they become troops in battalions and therefore you can actually make the 1drop list. Dhom-Hain: Namarti Corps trying to get the best of several aura abilities and hero shenanigans, all stacking on top of each other. Thrallmaster goes with the blob of 20 thralls, the same for Lotann. backed up by a blob of 20 Reavers. The king can influence himself, the 20 blob of Thralls and the Leviadon at best with strike first. Once per battle you can even make a unit benefit from 3 tides at the same time, with Lotann. Dropping a second boat up the board will allow you to have 2 zones of massive resilience. Namarti Corps V2 is perhaps a bit more of an experiment. Running 2 Thrallmasters allows you to mix fighting stances or buff 2 seperate blobs of Thralls. We are missing the tidecaster here, but with Lotann you do have a tide boost and tide grant. It is unfortunate not to have any more spells. It is unfortunate not being able to drop a second boat, but instead the King is able to become more killier. Unfortunately all the Dhom-Hain lists ended up being a 2drop. Fuethán: The Shark and the Eel. In this list we include Volturnos who will hang with the Eels, while the allopexes push towards objectives. The Tidecaster will let us double dip Tides and Reverse the tides for a massive aggressive approach earlier on in the game. The Morsarr guard are most effective when they are used in MSU nowadays, because of their shock ability. Volturnos can still effect both riders and mounts with his +1 attack ability. The +1 to hit ability will be best utilized by aggressively charging with the killer eels. I feel the killer eels do best when combined with Volturnos. EDIT: Since Volturnos is a warmaster Akhelian hero. He will always make your eels battleline, so by adding him you can have a different kind of general, while also making eels battleline. Sharks and the Dragons. Maximize on shark champions and push with a very smashy king. Double dip with the tidecaster once more. The Emerald Lifeswarm can keep critical wounded units alive, but the real sauce is in the Chronomantic cogs. Boosting the Flood Tide combined with the Chronomantic cogs boosts your run move by +2. The dragons are a great mortal source, Monsters, and just as survivable as sharks. UPDATE: The battlescroll update mid march 2022 introduced Priority targets and Prime Hunter Armies. Some of the more succesful units in the game have been named Priority target units and they are worth 1VP if killed, or 2VP if reinforced. An additional VP is scored for someone making the kill with a unit from a Prime Hunter army. The dragons are a Priority target and therefore perhaps it's smarter to take an annointed on phoenix instead. Shark Invested Waters. When you just really want to show people that you like sharks, you just add more. This list utilizes the Bloodthirsty shiver to adaptively hit flanks with movement shenanigans into combat, while one of them can take an extra hard chomp. Nautilar: Aspect of the Turtle. A nice utilization of multiple turtles. Eidolon of the Sea together with the Lifeswarm and Cloying Sea Mists can massively heal a unit. The Aspect of the Sea together with Endless Sea Storm will probably be our best shot at utilizing our lores to the fullest. It can also keep beefy units(plenty of those around in this list) alive for long, deal damage through magic and utilize ranged attacks. Combined arms. Nautilar is probably 1 of the best sub-factions if you want a nice variety of units within the idoneth deepkin range if you also plan to include the turtle. This list honestly works similar to a Dhom-Hain list, except the Leviadon "cuts" a bit harder and you'll have some beefy backup with the sharks. Like @vinnyt said before, you can even include some dragons instead of the second shark unit. Drop that second boat and let your Namarti utilize it to its fullest.

Looking good bud! A nice variety of units. You could consider to bring the thralls together as 20, since you have a nice amount of range on their melee weapons(2") now and if you hit the strike first for 2 units on the king, you can affect the entire 20 of them. You have a decent amount of units to cap points already and contest. Your turtle will be battleline, so you don't need to run 3 seperate namarti units. I highly suggest going with Unstoppable Fury on the King, with Voidchill Darkness for trait and mount trait, for a massive first striking king that has a lot of attacks, and is -1 to hit in combat. You could go further and give him the potion artefact or an Arcane tome with flaming weapons to amplify this massive smash king. You can also consider going for the scroll on the Tidecaster instead and summon a second boat, only your namarti will benefit though, but it does allow you to drop 1 further up the board. It also depends if you even have a second boat...

I swear I saw this being addressed in a FAQ somewhere before. But I could be confused with 40k… I will not post what I saw until I actually find it again. Don’t want to kick a hornet nest. For now I personally would go with the priority having guy being able to choose, because of the several “official” mentions here. Although the best one was from 2.0… I’ll dive into it and if I can’t find it I’ll mail GW. Can we… move on?

@vinnyt Liking the lists you made buddy. Personally i'm not too much a fan of once per game artefacts, but they seem to become more common by the minute. List 1 just shows how much the turtles kick into the points we have. I think the list will have some trouble holding points. I do like to see that people are wanting to include the Eidolon of the Sea more since the update. The same goes for the generic king. I am of the opinion that the Eidolon of the Storm now has a more restricted role in which he probably only fits builds including Namarti Thralls and perhaps Morrsarr Guard. Perhaps in some cases it might be better to divide the unit of 20 reavers. I think it will be tough to protect them when they are such a juicy target to mow down. But let me know how it goes if you ever run such a list. List 2 I love. I still want to run a 2 thrallmaster build, but I really... value the tidecaster and king now as well. Maybe i'll try something out. In all honesty I feel in that list you should totally put the Scroll artefact on the Tidecaster in order to get a second boat up there. It's honestly just too good with namarti spam, to give up on. I obviously love list 3. Looks like you'll go for the early engage with strike firsts on turn 2, and perhaps alpha strike turn 1 with strike firsts. I personally didn't reverse tides but I could. You went with more sharks instead of an ally monster. It is an interesting choice, except if your opponent brings monsters, it might be tough to compete with having no monsters for yourself. In case of making the tidecaster become a monster, you can't use her full utility. I do like the inclusion of the shiver in order to put in some single net sharks. I do agree that running units of net sharks is not the way to go. You still kept the 1 drop by making the shark units 3 man squads. Normally I prefer 2 mans more because if you have 6 of them, you'll have 3 champions. Although when it comes to buffs, 3 man units are better I guess. Also playing around with the 3" coherency will be fun too with 3 shark units. As for list 4. I think this will be one of the popular builds. Having the battleline turtle, with the special monstrous action and also a combined force of strong units + the fact that you'll fully utilize your Leviadon. I'm likely to run a list like this some time and find out how it goes. Currently it's this type of list for Nautilar, Fuethan Shark + Ally Monster or perhaps one with a leviadon build and the Namarti heavy focused list with Dhom-Hain that i'm most interested in to try out. I will keep hoping for some point drops in the future. But I will play around with these builds. It's probably going to be a ton of fun. Or I get my cheeks clapped every game and realize how bad it is maybe! We'll see.

Oh yeah, definitely. We are talking about nerfs though and how the army performed against other armies before. Right now we have some shenanigans up our sleeves within our hero character abilities, namarti with 2 boats, sharks, rituals and the tides. This will be our toolbox to figure out in combination with different archetype builds through the sub-factions. Especially the namarti and sharks look to be strong units since the fury of the deep box set. All the other units are also solid units though. It's mostly just that in a net total most of them are toned down on top of being made more expensive, while we were not a top table competing army. It makes people unhappy, that's all. In our situation, for a change, point reductions might actually fix things for once.

Yeah... i do feel both of you about the nerfs. Ethereal on Ishlaen is just a straight downgrade to ignoring rend, on top of the other nerfs. The buff in killyness is nice and they did need that a bit, but you take them for the defense, which got a big hit. Although i think they still can do their job against high rend armies, since ethereal will still be a solid 3+ on the charge. The price hike is mostly what makes these changes leave us with a salty after taste. Do like the Morssarr on the charge somewhat though. Actually the thing i'm mostly salty about is the Allopex nerf from 10W to 8W. They've changed in the Broken Realms book than just recently in the Fury of the Deep box set they got the 10W and now they go back to 8W for the same cost? Now I understand if you play mixed forces with the turtle included, that they can benefit from the void drum once more, but here's the thing. If that turtle gained 120P and technically became less killy, why can't that void drum just affect 10W models? In the entire book the only units above 8W are the Eidolons and the Turtle. Even if they made this change, it literally would only affect Allopexes at 10W and it would've made the point cost for the turtle slightly.... more worth, but no. Instead straight up nerf there too. It just makes me frustrated that they do this right after the Fury of the Deep box. I can now burn that warscroll card basically. I do believe our characters are plenty gimmicky to outplay our opponents, in the way that Nighthaunt sometimes outplayed opponents, but us with more viable units.I feel like shifting towards allies now for my monster inclusions, and people here already mentioned, those don't benefit from the horrors battle trait. Although they are also not 500P and force you to play namarti to benefit from all the abilities. Right now it just doesn't feel good to include a Leviadon in a non namarti build. Not saying i'm not excited to run namarti lists after all this time and the book definitely massively supports them the most. You know it's bad when even Nautilar fans only want to put down 1 Leviadon, because it just costs too much and doesn't do enough on it's own. You are forced to use it as an aura piece and maximize on a mixed force. It is bad when you have to look left and right for other peoples monster options because they are just cheaper and work better for what you are trying to achieve. A lot is just too overcosted and mark my words, we will get price reductions on some of them in the next balance scroll.

Currently trying to make a full on fuethan list work with heavy shark build i still think groups of 2 sharks are just the way to go. Since how the king works with giving high tide i feel he will be a key part of fuethan lists. With these lists i’m trying to make the best of the Akhelian King. He is a great asset for a multi turn strike first. By having a 1 drop, we can be really strong against alpha strike lists, threathening to have multiple units with strike first in turn one. Getting alpha striked if you don’t go first would be the worst but than we still benefit from cover and have a chance on the double turn. In their case going second means you can put on strike first on 1-3 units and threathen their turn 1 charge. In case of not facing an alpha strike list, but a shoot heavy list, we can comfortably advance benefitting from Creeping mist, while we put on strike first during flood tide and benefit from it during high tide as well. Against a melee heavy list that doesn’t alpha strike we can do some shenanigans late game with Spiteful riptide. Now with flaming weapon and unstoppable fury the Akhelian King can dish out 5(or more) rend -3, damage 4 attacks on the charge with just his polearm. In case of facing nurgle/slaanesh, kruleboyz, lumineth, etc. You can take the Armour of Cythal instead and laugh at their 6’s. With the mount trait i like to go defensive with voidchill, but you can take savage ferocity if you want to go ultra aggro. As for the Tidecaster. Taking Surging tides just boosts our entire army in what they already want to do. Having the option to also pick Creeping Mists or Spiteful Riptide, just allows us to specialize our tides against a specific army. Counter-Currents is a great spell, having the option to mess with your opponents movement and charge ranges has proven to be very effective in other armies as well. Her own spell is a great mix of utility and damage too. Adding in the endless spells allows you to just massively heal a shark unit or the king or cast multiple spells at once with the cogs. The cogs can also amplify the Flood tides, especially with Surging Tides ritual. Finally allies. Dragons, you can put in a phoenix here as well if you like, in fact you could scrap 1 of the endless spells and go crazy with your full 400 points if you like. I added dragons, because they are similarly tanky, mobile and hit hard in melee to sharks, but they add a nice mortal wound source. They are also another counter to extreme aggro builds and they are monsters, which makes scoring bonus VP a thing without having to waste a spell for it. Finally i have to say. This list is deceptively beefy, with the protection of the tides, all multi wound models, options for healing, all out defense. It’s also a very mobile army that can both hit hard in shooting and melee and there’s several ways to shenanigan your opponents movement, even in the combat phase(with the net shark). But first and foremost, this is an aggressive army who has answers against aggression as well. We are not nurgle, we will still have to play a glasscannon roll, but boy do we have the options to do so with this army. The hunt is on. right now i’m thinking: Army Faction: Idoneth Deepkin - Army Subfaction: Fuethán - Grand Strategy: Hold the Line - Triumphs: Bloodthirsty LEADER Akhelian King (250)* - General - Trait: Unstoppable Fury - Mount Trait: Void Chill Darkness - Artefact: Tome(flame wep)/ Armour of Cythal (matchup dependent) Isharann Tidecaster (150)* - Spell: Counter-Current - Rituals: Surging Stream & Creeping Mist/Spiteful Riptide(Mist vs Range heavy, Riptide in any other situation, especially vs alpha strike) BATTLELINE 1 x Akhelian Allopexes (330)* - Razorshell Harpoon Launcher 1 x Akhelian Allopexes (330)* - Razorshell Harpoon Launcher 1 x Akhelian Allopexes (330)* - Razorshell Harpoon Launcher Akhelian Allopexes (165)* - Retarius Net Launcher ALLIES Stormdrake Guard (340)* ENDLESS SPELL Emerald Lifeswarm (60) Chronomantic Cogs (45) TERRAIN Gloomtide Shipwreck (0) CORE BATTALIONS: *Battle Regiment TOTAL POINTS: (2000/2000)

For me those reasons are exactly why I can and will play them. I own many forces since I love a wide range of miniatures. When i like the look of a thing and they can fit within a certain fluff scenario for me, I will get a box and give it a swing. If they are also competitive, that's a bonus. I can totally see the phoenixes and dragons fly amongst the many sea creatures of the idoneth within the ethersea. Now if I will build stormcast eternals on top of those dragons, or an high elf on the phoenix... that's... something I might change although i have no problem with true allies amongst the idoneth either.