Dayman85

I didn't mean to offend you and I wasn't pointing out things that counter it directly, I didn't use any armies as an example. I also didn't say the prime or the comet were a bad idea, I just pointed out that you have points of the table that you could utilize better considering you have 1 caster. I would adjust that 40 pts into some other units so that you get the most bang for your buck. I would take the 30 from the dais and put that into longstrikes instead. Or I would rather drop the 10 pts and pick up a triumph rather putting in a MM. I get the just of the comet, but when it doesn't go off first turn your going to want to cast it on the second turn and usually I'm looking for a mystic shield in turns 2-5 on an evo unit if my comet has been cast (especially if I'm buffing them with a castellant why wouldn't I want 3s rerolling 1s?), rather than buffing my caster thats been at the back of the board casting his spells from 30-36" out. Usually my caster is holding down the objective on my side of the board and doesn't need the mobility, imo that's what the deepstike gav and your prime has a 24" effective range (12" move and 12" auto charge) Also if your opponent has gotten first turn and stuffed you with a dispel then you may not get it off either. The comet is amazing in combo with the prime and is worth taking everytime. However; there may be games where you want to autodispel a strong caster as well and thus need to move up your incantor. I'm just saying 3 endless spell aren't ideal if you can't get them down for half the game or get value from them. I would switch it up and drop the liberators and add some raptors either 2 units of 3 or one unit of 6 and keep the same amount of drops in and off the table. This will give you some ranged threat to pick off the targets your stacking your comet and prime on. You sacrifice 4 wounds but add tons to your ranged threat control and ability to pick off key targets. I just went undefeated in my last tourney in February right before covid hit using staunchcast with a stardrake, prime, and comet, but I do own and have played the entire range. I like your strategy in all parts and I think your spot on with strategy, but like I said I think you get more out of the list by dropping some of the extra spells since you have only 1 cast per turn in your incantor. Also instead of Starfall you could pick up Azerite halo for reflecting mortal wound 6s in your buffed evo unit or give them +1 to wound (celestial blades) to combo with empower. Maybe even speed of lighting for a charge reroll using gav idk. Ex:Allegiance: Stormcast Eternals- Stormhost: Hammers of SigmarMortal Realm: AqshyLord-Castellant (120)- General- Command Trait: We Cannot Fail - Artefact: God-forged Blade Gavriel Sureheart (120)Knight-Incantor (140)- Spell: StarfallCelestant-Prime (340)Battleline5 x Liberators (100)- Warhammer & Shield- 1x Grandhammers5 x Liberators (100)- Warhammer & Shield- 1x Grandhammers5 x Liberators (100)- Warhammer & Shield- 1x GrandhammersUnits3 x Aetherwings (50)6 x Vanguard-Raptors with Longstrike Crossbows (340)10 x Evocators (440)- 10x Grandstaves- Lore of Invigoration: Speed of LightningEndless Spells / Terrain / CPsExtra Command Point (50)Everblaze Comet (100)Total: 2000 / 2000Extra Command Points: 1Allies: 0 / 400Wounds: 102

I don't know how to feel about 3 endless spells and one wizard. If you fail your comet into turn 1 potentially maybe even 2 you've essentially got 140pts off the board, 190 if you count the command point.. that's almost 200 pts that may not see value until turn 3 or ever. The comet is a must take for sure but idk about the dais and malevolent, seems like you could do more with the 90 pts that you get from that and the command point only having 1 wizard. After 2 games a week for 2 years with sce what I've learned is you don't want spare points off the board cause you will absolutely feel it more in this army then any other; the more bodies you can get the better. We're already cookie cutting things together and have a low body count as is. That extra 100 pts can be a late game objective capping liberator unit or a unit of aetherwings to tank a charge, allowing your evocators to mop them up. But unless you have a 2 cast wizard I would never include more than 1 endless spell. Again just IMO, I'm sure other will absolutely disagree!

Gotcha! My bad! Still have yet to try out the hurricanum!

Azyros makes it so you can reroll 1s to hit, how is that buffing them to hit on a 2?

I have a buddy who plays nurgle frequently, ignore the plague bearers completely; they are there to soak wounds. Sequitors are you best friend against that army from the demon d3 hits. Shoot the units that buff his other units, like if there's a guy giving 5+ feel no pains to the whole army he's your first priority. Let them move across the map toward you and try to use your mobile units/ teleports to try and snag late objectives. If you have a relictor and they're rocking blight kings make sure you blast them for -1 to hit so they don't get their on 6s d6 hits.

SCE are actually really good at most things, we just don't do particularly well at any one thing, (except shooting I would say) but we're pretty decent at everything so it's hard to say this army is bad on paper. This statement took me a long time to figure out; and I felt the same way you do now for a very long time. We have units that are mobile, we have units that are tanky, we have shooting units, we have magic units that are okay. The problem is the current meta is very mortal wound heavy, and we fold like paper to mortal wounds.....which can make us feel weak (looking at you gristlegore). The thing I've noticed though; is that we can dish out some serious mortal ourselves to combat other army's mortals. Between the comet, stardrake and vanguard raptors you can snipe most heroes while they're far enough away to not have them be an immediate threat to your army. Then in later turns when those threats are gone we make are move and take board control. The guard units coming down as well as vanguard just upped our mobility and mortal output even more imo. I don't think there's much that GW could do to make us even stronger than we already are; the variety we have already is pretty crazy.... Look at lord relictor, he's 100 points, he can heal d3, or he can deal d3 and -1 to hit. You can have him bless weapons to give 2 hits on 6s or translocate to teleport somebody 24"; he costs 100 pts and can legit do soo much for his price tag. I went months thinking that using bless weapons was the way to go and have since used translocate. I've probably won over a dozen games off that small change alone. You can really pigeonhole yourself into one specific type of play; if you havent yet, just make sure you try everything out. Our army is not straight forward unfortunately and that type of playstyle doesn't suit everyone. My point is, with the amount of variety these units have; it's hard to balance one specific type of play. You can make an SCE list to pretty much counter anything you want it to, fighting gristlegore? Go full shooting. Fighting Dok? Roll with a higher block of sequitors, staunch defender, azerite Halo and castellant and you'll reflect more mortal wounds then wounds you take. The problem for us is "all comers list" tend to be more of a dime a dozen because we are going to fall short in one facet of the game. Other armies can't make a list to combat whatever they would like; they face hard counters and that's that. We can adapt pretty easily list wise to what we're fighting against most in the meta and imo that's what makes me happy when I think of my army of golden Bois. We're versatile. Adaptable. And obviously..... Badass. 😎

I think one thing that plays to our advantage and little seem to talk about is the command point changes. And to add onto the Desolators conversation, we can now reroll 1s to hit for a whole unit of dracothian guard. If you take 4 units you can reroll 1s for 8 models shooting a d3 mortal wound attack, not to mention we can do that on 1s in melee as well. A lot of armies have baked in scrolls that allow for rerolls but Sce eally don't, I think it's a small change along with the point changes that is really going to benefit us. That being said I totally agree.... I hate playing gimmicky Lists and I hate being forced to play one to be competitive. That being said I was playing a list prior to these updates that had a stardrake shooting and spells and it was by far my most successful of 2018 and that's playing 2-3 nights a week and tournaments. Play around with different things and don't always pay attention to what everyone else takes. This army is a lot of turn based decisions and awaiting the perfect opportunities to make your moves and not playing hyper aggressive; which I like. Wins come harder, but feel satisfying when you win games you feel like were difficult on paper

The difference is that the Desolators will have 5 attacks each with their axes and vandus can buff that to possible even 6 or 7 and with command points you can rerolls hits of 1 with a command point. I disagree with the mortal wound output, 2 more desolators have 2 more breath shots for d3 a piece from 12" away. As opposed to paladins needing to get into actual melee combat to get their mortals off, to add they aren't as resilient since they don't have rerolls of 1s and are 4+s as opposed to 3+s. Despite the 5 more wounds a unit of 5 can carry, two Desolators will last longer in combat and if you use them effectively, and can be much quicker.

I would drop the ballistas without an ordinator. Then take that 200 points and invest in some other ranged as well as maybe dropping the concussors for Desolators. Drop the paladins for more desolators as well. That way you can buff the attacks to obnoxious levels with vandus's command ability. And you'll have the movement to keep up with vandus, the problem with pallys is the 4" movement and you have no Gavriel to buff their charge or heraldor to run and charge so they're just super slow. I would take that 200 and maybe the extra 80 from the Desolators change (280 total) and maybe grab two units of hurricane raptors instead. That way you can have a little variety and some shooting. You should be able to clear out screens with that and the breath attacks from the dracoths and then hopefully get a juicy charge off to use that command ability.

I just posted a new list above that has worked really well over 2 games so far. Now this is coming from a player who took staunch defender majority of the time and played really defensive. Due to the 20 point drop Desolators got it made taking 6 a lot more viable for 60 pts cheaper. I also think that tempestors work a little bit better with the new command abilities and being able to reroll 1s for missiles. That's the route I intend on going and I have no dracothian guard yet (just the correct bases) but with list building it made sense on paper and seemed very strong while playing.

Also to add, second round I usually throw castellant buff onto the unit of 6 Desolators. They will then be saving on 2s and rerolling 1s, healing wound on 6s and spitting out a mortal on 6s. With this list you lack wounds on the table, but the Draco guard units really make up for it in their tankiness and their ability kill things. Especially at their now listed 200 points, it's a lot less of an investment then previously compared to things like evos on foot.

I don't know how to correct my post... But yes the point is to have 1 unit of 6.....

My apologies that should be a correction.... It is 1 unit of 6 Desolators. I just wanted to show that it was made up of 3 units.

Zzz2k list: Stormhost: Celestial Vindicators Leaders: Drakesworn Templar: 460 pts Stormrage blade and Arc Hammer Knight Incantor : 140 pts Azerite Halo Lord Castellant: 120 pts Lord Relictor: 100pts Translocation Battleline: 3 x5 units of Liberators: 300pts Other: 3 x 2 units of Desolators : 600pts 1 x 3 unit of Longstrike Raptors: 170 pts Endless spells: Everblaze Comet : 100pts Malevolent Malestrom :10pts The idea here is you use the bow on the general to give your Desolators plus +1 to hit, this will affect both their breath attacks and melee attacks. You only need to hit not wound, so on a 3+ you can guarantee lots of damage from your deso unit. Use the command point to reroll hit rolls of 1 in the shooting phase in your dracoths and with Vindicators you're rerolling 1s to hit after a successful charge. Desolators get 3s to hit, rerolls of 1, for both melee and with their breath attacks which do d3 mortals a piece. So their axes have 30 attacks with 6 models -1 rend 2 damage a piece, along with claws which hit on 2s and you reroll 1s. I tried this last week against Idoneth and it wiped out a unit of 6 eels without a problem. Now let's get to your general..... He has the arc hammer, with your artifact you get 2 extra attacks. And 6s are two hits as well as they do an extra damage, if you charged you reroll 1s. So 4 attacks 3/3s -1/3 damage a piece. 6s are 4 damage and an extra attack... This with the stardrakes natural ability to eat little guys was insane. It was taking out units of 20 thralls in a single charge without issue especially if you take keen clawed.... It's an absurd amount of damage. So the raptor unit, your comet and rain of stars are going to be your on foot hero killers. Basically table wide way of putting wounds into hero's that are priority targets. If you get a successful double turn off of turn 2 these 3 things can be devasting together. You get 2 comet activates, 2 rain of stars and 2 rounds of raptor shooting which means you can usually kill 1 hero and wound another pretty badly. The maelstrom is for magic heavy armies where you may find one wizard to be underwhelming (Looking at you LON and Tzeentch) I usually play very defensively so this list was loads of fun to play with. I think with command point changes it really has potential with Dracoths getting more mortal wound consistency. Hope you enjoy this little write up!