Alienmorphe

In between tournament I played three training games, 2 against a blightkings nurgle list and one against a classic idoneth deepkin with 24 eels. I won’t go as in depth as for the tournament games, I’ll just do a small recap. The blightkings lists were slightly different for each other, switching some putrids for a glotkin and 40 plague monks. Both the list plays in the same way, 3 packs of putrid blightkings walking deceptively fast to take the objectives, and then holding them till the end . They are really tanky, can hit a lot with their proc, and can run and charge while in range of the feculent gnarlmaw. However, they dont have a lot of body, and get slower when away from the tree. The plague monks add a real threat, but also a juicy target. In the first game, we played on total conquest. I had the initiative, I just teleported 30 skinks in front of him, 10 in a corner behind him and drop the rippers on 5 blightkings, killing 4 of them. Gotrek run (i always make him run 6) to meet the big packs of 20 blightkings. In his turn he charged this pack in my 30 skinks, wiping them but it was the end for him. I was the initiative, summoned and tp layers after layers of skinks between him and the objectives, and charged gotrek in the end of his line of blightkings. I wasn’t that confident in this move at first, but i managed to charged skinks in the same spot, surrounding him. Putrid blightkings are a bad matchup pour Gotrek : they do damage 1 and a lot and lot of hits, and have à lot of health and in that case and save after the save. But with the skinks surrounding him I was able to minimize the number of model that could pile in on him, so he took like one or two damage, and delivered the usual punishment. He also let 2 skinks alive, so they pile just 2,9’ from him, locking him in combat. The match was already lost for him, they were nowhere he could go with his two remaining units except into skinks, I had charged the remaining rippers on his support characters, so he could not come back from his point deficit, even with a double turn. We just rolled the fight between his putrid blightkings and gotrek. Unable to pile in efficiently, He put the dwarf at 2 life while I killed 10 more bk. The lesson here is that Gotrek is not immortal, you must minimize the amount of damage you will take. The corner charge is such a good tool for that, if you manage to stop your opponent to surround you there is not a lot that can kill you in combat, but if you charge head on he can go down. Second game against an idoneth deepkin with 28 eels and an eidolon of the storm, on shifting objective. Idoneth are a pain to fight in seraphon. They have a lot of mobility, can fly by your skinks, are tanky enough. A bad match up as far as I am concern. The plan was to park all my skinks in front of the left objective, gotrek and his bodyguard on the center one, and the bloodfrog on the left one to drop on the right one with the shadowstrike. Depending on how the match will be going I could switch side with my slaan, switching side to the right. I just advanced all my pieces except on every objective, and waited for him to make his move, and banking the conjuration point. Kind of like I anticipated, He moved the majority of his army to my left, to threaten my slaan, sending 6 defensive eels on the right objective, and avoiding the center and Gotrek. He got the double turn, charged and wiped the skinks that were screening my slaan without reaching him or the astrolith, charged the skinks on the skinks that were keeping the right objective, wiping them too. In my turn I teleported my slaan from the left to the right corner, followed by the astrolith (and leaving the poor starpriest alone against half my opponent army… rip), and summoned 50 skinks around them, in reach of the eels keeping the right objective. I also dropped the ripper on them, destroying them. I won the roll for the third turn, but choose to let him start. He decided too to keep his blob of eels and akelian king on the left where they were, mostly in fear on getting to close to gotrek. He moved and charged 6 offensive eels and the eidolon on my rippers on the right objective. The charge of the eels was almost off, meaning only the closest could reach my rippers and the other had to trail. Even with the pile in it meant that the last of the trail were too close to Gotrek for his comfort. Two eels and the eidolon proved to be sufficient to kill my rippers. On my turn I (as always) teleported et summoned some skinks to threaten every objective, taking the one the right. I switched the cogs to fast forward, so only had to do a 7’ charge, and rolled a 10. I impacted the eels just 3.9’ away from the eidolon, to be able to reach him on my second activation without having to suffer his attacks (someone then point to me that even if you charge, you have to be in 3’ for your second activation, so it was not a legal move. It did not change a lot, as i had rolled enough to get in reach of the eidolon, and he would not have kill Gotrek, but still, my bad). I also charged 10 skinks beyond the eel, to keep them from piling on Gotrek. The 40 skinks did a few wounds on the eels before the fighting phase. He fought first, activating his eels, putting everything he could on the dwarf, the remaining into the skinks, killing them but only doing 2 wounds on him, and that was all. Everything else was out of reach. Gotrek activated, doing 21 wounds, plus the 3 wounds the skinks did before that’s 6 dead fishes. Second activation and the eidolon died too. Without gotrek I would not have been able to get the right objective back, and with his mobility he could won the game, but here, it was too much of a blow, loosing a lot of his army and getting far behind on points (it was 12 – 2 or something like this), and he conceded. Last game was against the other blightking nurge list, with 3x10 bk, 40 plague monks, a glotkin, harbringer of decay and a warshrine on scorched earth (the old version). He deployed by having 10 bk screening his plague monks, glotkin and other characters, putting the other two bk units on each side. I deployed with a line of 30 skinks in the frontline, Gotrek in the middle, and the slann, starpriest and astrolith in the back (but not that far back), 10 skinks around them and the last unit of skink on the last objective. On my first turn I cast the balewind vortex with the starpriest, putting his plague monks in range of the stellar comet, killing 11 of them. I cast cog with the slann for the starpriest to use, putting a -1 to hit on a bk unit (no more proc for them), and only collecting 10 conjuration points. I also teleported one pack of skinks behind the enemy line, and the astrolith bearer in the middle of my skinks to give them full reroll to hit. In the movement phase, I run Gotrek (surprise?), put my skinks in range of his plague monks, and dropped the ripper on his frontline. The goal here was to do some damage and keep the bk from moving. I shooted everything I had on the skavens, killing 9 of them. The rippers charged, and with the dead plage monks I had enough space to put one in contact with them, and the other five on the bk, killing 5 of them, and 8 monk. He killed only 5 rippers, so I had him locked for the next turn. He didn’t have a command point at this point, so he lost the remaining plague monks to battleshock, and 2 more bk (but got out of combat …). I did control the centre of the map (he didn’t want at all to come and meet Gotrek), and threatened one of his objective, and he lost his main threat and one of his three units of bk, so I was pretty pleased. On his turn he decided to go around my center, going for my left objective, and trying to delete my skinks on his left objective (the charge would take him further away from the angry dwarf). He used his command point on the harbringer ability The glotkin did kill 10 skinks with his shooting attack (yes, he have one …) He missed his charge, so nothing more really happened on this turn. I won the initiative, so I started teleporting skinks on the objectives he could take, planning to using them as speed bump. The last ripper went to his right objective (and stayed here for the rest of the game), the skinks charged the BK on my right, Gotrek charged the same BK, the 30 skinks corner charged the BK on the left. I did some damage in the shooting phase, but nothing really impacting. On my first activation I got away from the fight on the right, taking the objective with my skinks. He then activated on the left, but unable to put a lot of BK in contact, only killed 5. I then activated Gotrek, killing 3 bk (but he had 4 in reach, so my second activation was incoming). He used his own activation to reach for the skinks (they were just 3,5’ away), killing all of them, and doing one wound on Gotrek who killed 4 more in revenge. 7 dead BK, 8 bravery, and he rolled a 4. Tough luck with his battleshock tests. On his turn he kept going on my left, rushing his glotkin against my astrolith bearer (hello doppelganger cloack). He still had a 10 bk units he charged against the skinks guarding the left objective. His surviving two bk on the center kept by his own center objective with the warshrine, 14’ from Gotrek (spoiler : it ends badly). His 10 bk did their job, but missed some skinks that I could then activate, running away. It meant that the glotkin had to fight first against the cloacked astrolith bearer, wasting his turn. At least he got one of my objectives and burned it. He then got the double turn (Hello astrolith bearer …) so his BK went to the center, where three layer of skinks awaited them. He obliterated 10 of them and the glotkin got his revenge for his wasted turn. On my turn I switched the cog to fast forward, charging the 2 bk and the warshrine with the dwarf, and summoning skinks everywhere. Skins and … a carnosaur, because my opponent wanted to see what it was worth (the game was already won). Gotrek killed everything, and the carno one blightking (after wasting one cp on him for rerolling his charge, a very efficient use of resources). I charged some skinks to pin the glotkin. At that point I had most of the objectives since I didn’t burn my opponent’s, and I woun the initiative. we fast forwarded, Gotrek moved, charged and killed the Glotkin in one activation (24 wounds …). We decided to call it night after that. During this game, Gotrek had killed 12 blightkings, a chaos warshrine and the Glotkin. I was once again very pleased To sum up, Gotrek was the lynchpin of my army in all these three games. He had a threat range that is wider than most anticipate and force your opponent to do some difficult choices. I think he is more vulnerable than it appears against mass of attacks, and you have to make sure he is on the offensive. If not, you risk him getting surrounded, and in this case he can get low on life quickly. I thought that I could keep him surrounded with skinks at all times, but in the end he usually loose his bodyguards fast, and it’s not that easy to get him new ones. Against monster, he is a joy to watch, and I must confess that the simple pleasure of seeing him deleting 400pts monster like it was nothing may have make me use him even if he wasn’t that good. Turns out he is.

This is the follow up of my gotrek experiment. I brought him at two 1 day tournament, with 3 training matches in beetwen. I used this list every time with just a little tweak for one artefact, switching the betrayer’s crow for the doplleganger cloack in the end : Allegiance: Seraphon Leaders Saurus Astrolith Bearer (160) - Artefact: Doppelganger Cloak Skink Starpriest (80) - Spell: Stellar Tempest Slann Starmaster (260) - General - Trait: Great Rememberer - Artefact: Miasmatic Blade - Spell: Celestial Apotheosis Gotrek Gurnisson (520) - Allies Battleline 30 x Skinks (210) - Meteoric Javelins & Star Bucklers 10 x Skinks (70) - Meteoric Javelins & Star Bucklers 10 x Skinks (70) - Meteoric Javelins & Star Bucklers Units 6 x Ripperdactyl Riders (280) Battalions Shadowstrike Starhost (180) Endless Spells / Terrain / CPs Balewind Vortex (40) Chronomantic Cogs (80) Total: 2000 / 2000 Extra Command Points: 2 Allies: 520 / 400 Wounds: 93 The first tournament was againt some of the best belgians players, with five ( five !!) shootcast lists for 16 players, so i was a little worried. First match was against a khorne list with 30 bloodwarriors as the main threat, a bloodthirster, 2 packs of bloodreaver, and the usual package of bloodsecrator, slaughterpriest and invocation on total conquest. He also add 2 skullcanons I was a little worried about a fully buffed blob of bloodwarriors, and was wondering how gotrek would fare. Seeing that my opponent (who for his defense didnt get nearly enough sleep the night before) did not properly screen his bloodthirster, i decided to deploy the dwarf in front of the bloodwarriors and let my ripper take care of the demon. I made gotrek and his skinks bodyguards run, teleported skinks in front of the bloodreavers, dropped the rippers on the bloodthirster. The rippers tore appart the bloodthirster, engaging the skullcanons, so he was down to one real threat. On his turn he wiped the rippers with his bloodreavers and skullcanons , and charged his bloodwarrior on the skinks and gotrek, with the bloodstroker, bloodsecrator and a slaughterpriest following. Long story short : gotrek’s skinks died, then he destroyed everything in the next two phases. My opponent misplaced his support caracters so gotrek managed to charge one, pile in on another, charge the third in the next phase and pile in again. So I lost 10 skinks, and he losts 30 bloodwarriors , 1 bloodsecrator, 1 bloodstroker and 2 slaughterpriest. That being said, It was in this match that i first encountered something that would become recurent : the use of endless spell to block gotrek’s mouvement. In this case it didnt matter much because I still managed to make my charges, but it’s still pretty effective (bonus point if you do some damage, even if if’s not the goal). And after the game we talked a little, and he explains to me that his initial plan was to pull gotrek to one of his slaughterpriest with his prayer. It could also have been effective if not for his lack of sleep. Second match was against one of the shooting stormcast list, based around 3 celestar ballista and 9 vanguard-raptors with longstrike on shifting objective. I will be brief : I had gotrek and my slaan both surrounded by skinks for ‘look out sir, the slaan was on a balewind vortex and with the cog in cover ( so -2 to hit, 2+ save rerollable). He shoot the 3 ballista on gotrek and killed him ( he previously took a damage on an arcane bolt). You can do the stats, they were not supposed to do that at all (I estimated it at 3 damages ).Then he shoot his raptors at my slaan, killing him too. Very sad time…. The rest of the game was obviously one sided, even if my skinks did their best to be their usual pest on the objectives. It was an hard defeat, but there was a thing to remember from it : sometimes the dice roll kills you, it’s the game, but you have to assess if your decision was good or not despite the result. In this case, I think he would have been able to kill either of them on his following turn. So on a double turn it would still have been game over for me, and if i had kept the initiative, it could have won me a turn on the objectives that could have turn the game. Ii would still have loose the game 40% of the time, and it would have been a toss 60%. That was still pretty bad. Third match was againt (another) khorne player with a tyran of blood list on scorched hearth. He was rolling with skarbrand and two bloodthirster ( the general was the one that could make all daemon pile in 6). Scorced hearth is one of the best scenario for seraphon. It’s almost impossible for a lot of armies to compete with teleporting skinks if they dont have either a lot of bodies on the table of strong shooting / extremely fast units. For those who dont know the tyran of blood / blood lords lists, it consists basicaly of 3 bloodthirster. After one of them activated, the other two can fight immediatly. And with the bloodlords artifact, one of them can activate first, so they all fight before you, even on your turn. And with the 6’ pile in, he can put his three bloodthirsters close to each other, and if you charge one of them he will be in the 6’ range of the one that fight first, so he is basically not chargeable. Well… except by gotrek ! the dwarf is a really bad match up for the bloodthirsters because he can tank the three of them and kills two in retaliation ! Being aware of the the power of gotrek and of the rippers, my opponent had a very tough choice to make : spreading his big daemons, loosing at least one to the shadowstrike or keeping them together and dodging gotrek, but allowing me to control a large part of the map and burning his objective. He elected to keep his thirsters together, rushing the side of the map gotrek wasnt, slaughtering my skinks by the dozen, while slowing down gotrek with chaff and endless spell (told you it was becoming a trend). I simply teleported skinks on his objectives, winning the game turn 2, and then spend the rest of the game being butcherd by the three bloodthirster while he did all he could to slow down gotrek. It was one of this victory where your opponent keeps playing and you end up feeling like you’re the one who were defeated. I was almost tabled, and he racked up the maximum 10 kill points while feeding gotrek 3 minimum size units of flesh hound and a slaughterpriest. (And he did finish just one point ahead of me in the ranking, 88-87, validating his strategy) This tournament had a good level, and i think gotrek is clearly an excellent option in seraphon. Each game showcased his strenght / weakness. He is a beast that can kill everything, but he can be killed by mass of attacks, especially ranged ones. Mouvement impeding abilities are huge against him, but even if your opponent manages to slow him down or choose to get away, his very presence will create control zone on the table that are very valuables. You can win because the other player choose to desert the center of the table because gotrek is here, even if he doesnt kill anyting. Next time : My friendly match …

I didn't read it that way, but you're right it make more sense that way.

How can you do 22mw with the purple sun? As I read it, you do 2d6mw on the unit, not for each model, so max 12. The wording is unclear, maybe you're playing it right, but reading the faq it seems to me that it's only 2d6 on a 6+ per units with more than 5 wounds. Wich is underwhelming... The pendulum seems better against : Unit with less than 30 models Characters Units with more than 5 wound And worst against : 30+ models units Élit units. The other difference is the base size : with it's huge base, the purple sun is able to touch a lot of units, but is also really hard to actually move through them. In particular, I founded it impossible to use it against tight castle because there is nowhere I can land it, whereas the pendulum is much easy to use and can't be throw back to you. If the way I read it is right, the purle sun has only a few nich uses (hello hearthguard berserker...), but if it is 2d6mw per big model it could be one of the best answer against flayer or stormfiend deathstar.

I don't think the purple sun is that effective. 2d6 wound on a 6+ is a little less than 1.2mw on average.

The main problem of the double shadowstrike is that you double down on an element that doesn't like redondancy: you can't use 2 packs of 6 rippers in the same turn, because they're too squishy for the second pack to survive your opponent activation. You also have an hard time going throught screens, and spending so much in your ss will actually make it harder to bring units that can chew those screens and let your rippers do their job. So, against some lists, you drop down 6 birds on the main enemy threat first turn, and do that again on the second biggest threat turn two, and everything is fine (and fun), but it's hard countered by good screening that can take away your target for too long. And screening is kind of a basic in list building for most army

After playing a few matches with Gotrek, I must say that I'm quite impressed, and I think it's something to try further. Context : I think gotrek is not a really good model in most of the order armies, and that it's slow mouvement is a no go for them. More precisely, I think he is too easily tar pittable, and I dislike having such a pricey model with such an easy way to counter. The other important point of context is the way I think seraphon is the most efficient: taking the board early, hopefully taking out an enemy threat with the rippers, then spending the rest of the game loosing control just slowly enough to win the objectif game. It usually includes either a shadowstrike or stegadon+ripper, and an heavy dose of skinks tarpitting everything they can to death ( usually their own death...) The reason for this style of play is that the seraphon lack a real hammer threat. The only unit that can fill this role in a competitive environnement are the ripperdactyls, and they suffer badly of their lack of tankiness, and have a hard time reaching well screened targets. What seraphons are good at is mobility. (Double) teleport is easily one of the best allegeance in the game, skinks are fasts, tricky, and Invocation after tp can push a lot of body on the board. Then come gotrek... First thing first, our short legged friend is a beast. He hit like a truck and is really reliable: you can bank on 15 dommages and 3 mw every activation, and he can spike much higher ( personal record : 18w and 15mw on a very surprised Nagash). We have nothing that can do that and survive the enemy turn. And while I'm talking about survivability... If you spend the modest resources of 10 skinks (renewable) and occasionally the - 1 to hit from a starpriest he just doesn't die... Obviously gotrek can die if your opponent has the right tool and focus him, but if he does he trade a lot of damage against your board control, and I think it's worth it for us. And then again, nothing short of 50 damages before save can reliably put him down. And in a séraphon army that's good enough. Obviously it's a battleplan by battleplan analysis : On the maps that need a lot of mobility (relocation orb, total commitment, srarstrike, scorched earth), we already had the tools to compete and I think we can mitigate the cost of gotrek using him as the costliest distraction carniflex ever. Gotrek is good on the 3 objectives types battleplans like shifting objectives or focal point ( I know... Not 3 objectives but close enough) where he can hold the central, strategic objective like no other lezard unit can. And on the very static battleplan like duality of death or knife to the heart... He is fun. Really fun! Gotrek can hold the objective all day long if you spend spells on him (remember that our heal spell, though pretty bad in a vaccum, can heal him, and one wound a turn can go a long way with him), and in knife to the heart he is maybe the only way we have to take the opponent home objectif if it's well fortified (think sequitors or hearthguard pack). I mentioned early that one of the worst trait of gotrek was that he was such a valuable target to tarpit. But I should add "by multiple msu" (like our very own skinks superstars for example ), because everything that will come in contact with the dwarf will die (again, a double activation of gotrek will output in average 30w and 7mw before save, that will hurt every tarpit pretty bad), so the best way to slow him down is to feed him cheap units after cheap units. And seraphon, with their good map control, are pretty efficient at contering it. It's screen again screen, and we are the best at it thanks to the skinks (and more so with our Invocation). So to summarize, I think gotrek play well with the strengths of our lovely saurians. In fact it cost us a little on the battleplans where are supposed to be good at, make us a little better on the 50/50 ones, and give us a good chance on the ones that were autoloose previously. So you can check the rulepack of your next tournament and see if the battleplans choosen offer opportunity for Gotrek to shine.

Seriously... Calebexnihilo only said that you can't alpha shoot anything with the thunderquake, explaining quite in detail why you can't, and you answer 1 - that you can get your eotg in range easily. Well.. Except with a teleportation or a stegadon, no you can't, and both are ressources that you can use but may be more usefull elsewhere. And after that you sill have to roll with low odd. Yes you can still pull off the Invocation, but it's not an alpha strike by any mean 2 - you can outshoot jezzail. You can't. You just can't. For the cost of a bastiladon or a eotg you get 6 jezzails (that will be supported by a warps tone charge), and they one shot either of them. While you kill at best one jezzail. And no, they won't shoot the super tanky dino when every other target is bettee. Obviously things get better turn 2, after your charge phase, but only marginally, and even with full reroll you are still far worse at shooting than skyre skaven or Sce. Seraphon have other perks, but you claim that thunderquake is one of the best list in the game, and with a claim that bold, you have to present better arguments than "I win with it", and not just ignore counter arguments. You are the one making extraordinary claims here