firtahl

Im running an army with 10 khorgoraths, and have been fiddling with what else to add. Im curious if anyone here has any opinions. Ive liked 40 bloodreavers, 2 sets of 5 flesh hounds, a couple of slaughter priest's amd a 1 or 2 cheap supporting heros plus a judgement or two. Ive been running the skullfiend tribe, so that artifact is set. Any thoughts or suggestions are welcome!

I definitely didn't catch the hero phase activation, which I agree makes it much less attractive. I don't think I agree that a 12" bubble is so easily avoided, especially in the hyper alpha strike meta for most armies outside of something like OBR. Even if its focused down, that's attacks spent stopping it rather than the truly important units. +5 saves don't make it much of an attack sponge, but maybe the low save will entice people to make the wrong choice because its easy and go for it over better targets. For me the 10" move, 10 wounds, and large fight last bubble (even if its hero phase activation make it more reactive than proactive) make it a steal at 100 pts given that a lot of armies will try to t1 charge as things get more competitive. Its utility is even more pronounced if you go first since the effect is until the end of the battle round rather than player turn. Definitely not a game changing unit, but I don't expect a 100 pt model to be what makes or breaks a game. It just seems like its hard to go wrong adding 1 to a lot of factions. I guess we wont know for sure until its released and people get to try it out.

How is there not at least 1 mindstealer in every StD list? It seems like an amazing tool for just 100 points. Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but ill be allying in 1 to all my eligible chaos factions.

It's hard to find anything meaningful in this argument, just broad and sweeping opinions masquerading as facts. "Incredibly biased and small sample size" is a great example. What about it is bias? What about their data-set do you think qualifies it as being small...which is another way of asking what you consider a robust data-set to be. The site is pretty up front with what comprises their data-set. In this case I see 55 tournaments since July, and there are multiple games recorded in each meeting. Were talking an average attendee rate of 40-50 people playing 5-6 games each. That's thousands of data points. If you think that's not an adequate sample size of games then I question your ability to make that assessment. Your argument of bias could hold water if you provided even a modicum of effort to actually make the case. The most basic one is sampling bias, where we only see the stats at a very competitive level for a very specific number of matches. He doesn't track stats for all the multitude of smaller tournaments that run 3 games. If you cared to make that argument, you would be correct. However, it does not mean that the conclusions one draws from THW's number are false. Saying that the conclusion is false because the argument is false is itself a fallacy called an Argument From Fallacy. Indeed, we cant actually say that in aggregate the stats for smaller tournaments is any different than the stats for larger ones. "Their stats alone don't tell the whole picture". This could have been a great place to elaborate on what it is they aren't telling us. The discussion here seems to suggest that, in general, the win rate for STE is lower than people expected. This is borne out by the stats on THW where STE is in the 45% win rate grouping which is in the lower tiers compared to armies like khorne, skaven, or slaanesh. That doesn't mean its God's honest truth that STE don't win >50%, but finding multiple places all telling you the same thing lends that narrative some measure of credibility. Look outside this forum if you are afraid of an echo chamber of people complaining they don't win 100% of the time. Do you see people in the slaanesh forum complaining they don't win, that they are under powered? No, the opposite. And guess what? This is borne out in THW's stats also. Its even borne out in your third paragraph where you talk about changes they need. Last, on the comment "that doesn't mean we can't go 5-0 in a tournament setting". Accepting the numbers posted on THW is not incompatible with this statement. They have STE in 2nd and 3rd place which means we likely have cases where STE did go 5-0 or 4-1. Its not about being able to go 5-0, its about the average case where out of 230 STE players in the data-set we only see 5 in the top 3. Compare that to 153 slaanesh players getting to the top 3 34 times. That's pretty stark and probably says more about the issues with slaanesh than any perceived issues with STE, but I don't think anyone here should take that "with a HUGE grain of salt."

From a numbers perspective, spears are better than swords when fighting in 3 rows. In 10 man squads, you'll rarely if ever be fighting 3 deep, so when taking MSU, swords are optimal. However, if the only rule you care about is the rule of cool then follow your heart on which weapon to model. I for one think spears look way the best.

My first few games are probably just going to be 40-40-10-10 MG with Arkhan and Katakros using Petrifex. the 40's will be spears and the 10's sword. This will help give me time to learn katakros and get a basic feel for playing the army without having to remember rules for a bunch of new units. Once I see where the MG are weak in context of some actual games then I'll look at something with more moving parts that can handle a bigger variety of opponents.

I've seen a lot of talk about swords vs spears, and decided to see for myself. I'm going to assume no special weapons for any models. The assumption I'll make on attacking models is that for any given block of morteks, we can get 2 models attacking with 1" reach and 3 models attacking using 2". This means I assume we can get 50% more attacks with spears than swords up to a max of 40 attacks. I also assume no re-rolls on either side. We all understand that positioning is rarely perfect and the simple analysis here doesn't attempt to correct for piling in over time or the different decisions we might make about how to pull losses. Its just some good old speadsheet math. In a nutshell, unmodified rend has the swords and spears equal in value on saves of 3+, with spears pulling ahead on 4+, and if you add the PE extra rend they are equal at 2+ with spears being better on 3+. Before you fire off that rage reply, remember that spears get that extra attack in this math, so of course 50% more attacks are better. Sound like fake news? Lets look at the calculations and maybe someone can point out funny business that changes the numbers. 2 attacks per model. we hit on +3, with it more than likely being +2 since you almost cant help but get +1 to hit in this army. +2 is .8333333. Add in exploding 6's and each roll is, on average, going to generate 1 hit (missing on 1's and double hits on 6's evens out). 4+ to wound is going to turn into .5, so each hit will generate .5 wounds. Long story short, every 2 attacks generates 1 wound. For a pack of 20 mortek we are currently at Swords 20*2*1*.5=10 spears (20*1.5)*1*.5=15 Now the weapons diverge on rend. 0 for the spears and 1 for the swords. Below is a simple table showing the number of wounds not saved per weapon type per wounding roll. Post save wounds sword spear vs Save 0.333333 0.166667 2 0.5 0.333333 3 0.666667 0.5 4 0.833333 0.666667 5 1 0.833333 6 Ugly, but we can see that on a per wound bases the swords are better because the rend moves the damage up a spot on the matrix. But what about adjusted for that 50% extra attacks? Post save wounds sword spear vs Save 3.333333 2.5 2 5 5 3 6.666667 7.5 4 8.333333 10 5 10 12.5 6 And now you can see that while the rend is cool, its not quite as good as 50% extra dmg. Add in the PE extra rend ability and you get: Post save wounds sword spear vs Save 5 5 2 6.666667 7.5 3 8.333333 10 4 10 12.5 5 10 15 6 Takeaway for me is that in 10 blocks its swords, and in 20 its a mix, but in 30+ ill probably be rocking some pointy sticks. Let me know what you think!

Just checked on the app and your are exactly correct

If the goal is to have a +6 after save for all models than this is not true. Read the ability: Arcanite Shield: Roll a dice before allocating a wound or mortal wound to a model that has an Arcanite Shield. On a roll of 6, the shield deflects the damage and the wound is ignored. This means you have to decide which wounds go to a shielded unit and roll, one at a time, for each wound on each shield model. If you fail that +6 then the model with the shield is removed and the remaining wounds must be assigned to other models. If you only have 1 shield model then your ability to elect to assign a wound to a model with a +6 is lost after the first failure. If you want a +6 for the whole unit, then the whole unit must have shields. Knowing that, I don't think there is a composition that tzaangors should always have. It depends on what you want them to do in your army and what units are buffing them with what spells/abilities.

Am i correct in understanding this tracks hits only? Not wounds and or failed saves? Just making sure i understand what youre showing.

I think you did say that. Could it have been poor phrasing? It also seems to be a statement of fact based on no supporting data. Opinion or not, its hard to tout the merits of an unbiased analysis followed up by an opinion that used some fixed %. You arent wrong that statistics can easily be misrepresnted, and a comment like that shows exactly how easy it is to commit the exact offense you are trying to bring attention to.

Just a minor issue with the Judicator prime w/longbow. You have: 3.5 x .8333 = 2.9166 (Looks good) 2.9166 x .5 = 1.4583 (The .5 would mean a 4+, but this is a 3+. Probably a copy paste error since the x-bows wound on a 4+) Corrected for 3+ its 1.9444 You might consider adding a line for the vs chaos on the judicators and the vs nighthaunt and daemons for the castigators. maybe those edge cases aren't something you're too worried about, which would be reasonable.

Sounds like the only option is to do some serious screening with either the birds or something cheap like skinks...anything with single wounds will work really. Closer ranks/screens will help prevent teleportation assassinations given the large footprint of the keeper base. Might be a chance to check out the mercenaries, could be something there that can be an interesting speed bump. If you play him a lot you'll probably have to build toward ranged solutions since 3 keepers against an entire army of melee focused multi would units is always going to be a hard match up, if not specifically listed against STE. Judicators might shine a bit here given the free re-roll 1's vs chaos, which is what I used against an opponent that brought 2 (and it was a rough game). You could even (god forgive me for suggesting it) bring a 6 man or two of castigators over judicators to burn down hp since they ALL get exploding 6's on hits vs daemons on the same +3/+3 profile with the additional benefit of -2 rend. Don't forget we got a points decrease on hunters, who can also provide ranged damage while your main ranged units do work. Combine all this range with a azyros and its going to get dicey for the keepers inside of 18". Debuffs are always powerful, so your caster can bring thundershock with its -1 to hit component in addition to the MW. There's also the relector who can debuff them with prayers for which they have no dispel answer in addition to the cheesy teleports on a +3. Making the keepers stop in front of the chaff for a turn is key, though after the first 2 go down to your choice of the above suggestions you'll still have another summoned up to give you grief. Fortunately by that point his summon mechanics will start loosing steam, and the over investment in large single models will start to show. Assuming an alpha strike like your last game, you can deep strike some of STE's good multi wound melee units in his back lines while the keepers are tied up in low value chaff/distraction. If there's no Alpha, when you can creep up laying down the hate fire. Is it always going to be a tough match-up for STE? Absolutely. I also think there are a lot of armies out there it would perform very poorly against, so its not like the meta is going to be bring 3 keepers for gg. Hopefully there's some ideas in here you find useful. Good luck!

Did he kill those 15 sequitors with a single bracketed keeper? Just trying to understand the order of how it went down. Or did other units wipe out your guys after they killed the two keepers?