readercolin

I've been playing with a somewhat similar list for a while, and to a reasonable amount of success. For reference, here is my list: Lord-Arcanum on Celestial Dracoline Knight-Incantor Knight-Heraldor 3x 5 Sequitors 6 Evocators on Celestial Dracoline Then, I run one of these two: Knight-Vexilor 9 Vanguard Raptors with Longstrike Crossbows Lord-Ordinator 4 Celestar Ballista's Command Point If I run the ballista's, then I will generally run with either Astral Templars (+1 to hit monsters) or celestial vindicators (command point for an extra attack on the kitties). If I run the Longstrikes, then I am running Anvils of Heldenhammer (Command point shoot/pile in and attack in hero phase). So, lets break down how and why this list works, and what I would recommend with your models. First off, the sequitors. From a year and a half playing with them, you are either going to run them in a block of 20 to maximize their killing power, or you want to run them as a block of 5. A block of 5 sequitors is enough that they can deal with other MSU units, take down foot hero's, etc, and are a big enough threat that your opponent might just throw a large unit at them to clear them out. But that remains the same whether there are 5 or 10 of them. It is only once you get to 15-20 (and with the points discount, taking 15 is kinda questionable) that they can become a threat on their own. However, why run sequitors as a threat when you can have evocators? Hence my running them in blocks of 5. Next up, the evocators on dracolines. Some people may talk about putting them in the sky to ambush, but I'm going to say that that is a waste. With a 12" move and re-rolling their charge rolls, they can get in on most targets on the ground without too much issue. The only reason to put them into the sky is to prevent them from being shot up if you are opposing a shooting heavy army. Next, lets look at why I run them in a block of 6, rather than 2 blocks of 3. First off, with pride leader, you can give them +1 to hit, meaning they are all hitting on a 2+. If you are running celestial vindicators, then they get to re-roll 1's on the charge, meaning that as long as you can stay close to your arcanum, you are missing 1/36 attacks. Next, celestial blades can give them +1 to wound, which means they are wounding on a 2+. However, you can only cast celestial blades once, so it is better to buff a big unit than buff a small one. Lastly, we want to look at efficiency in combat. If I take 1 unit in and charge, then I get to activate that unit and obliterate whatever they hit before the opponent gets to go. If I take 2 units, then I activate one, and then they can respond and damage my other unit before they get to go, drastically diminishing the damage that I can do. Also, if you are wondering what that block of 6 can do fully buffed, with the pride leader bonus, charging, empower, celestial blades, and celestial vindicators command ability they can deal ~87 damage on average to a save of -, or 52 damage to a 4+ save, and then still throw an average of 6 mortal wounds at another unit afterwards. Without any buffs, but still getting a charge off, they can still dish out 42 damage to a save of -, and 26 damage to a 4+ save, with of course another 6 mortal wounds added in afterwards. Here we can see that getting the buffs off is great, but the number of available buffs basically means we have some redundancy when doing so. This brings us back to the knight-heraldor. This guy is key to making the kitties as deadly as possible. As long as he can stay near them, he can let them retreat and charge again, and he can let them run and charge, giving them a huge threat range without forcing them to stay in the sky. Finally, in my list I have the choice of longstrikes or ballista's. Realistically, I play with whichever I feel like that day, and they both do the same job - they provide a ranged threat that can dish out a ton of damage, and give my army another angle of attack. This way I'm not 100% all in on just the kitties to do the job. The lord-ordinator is pretty obvious about what it does for me. But the vexilor may not make sense - basically, I play him with the banner that gives a once-per-game teleport, so that I can re-position the longstrikes if needed if my opponent starts threatening them. ------------------------------------------------------ Now, lets talk a little bit more about your list. You can have a very similar setup to my army, but you would be using a second block of evocators on foot as your secondary hammer rather than a shooting force. Going back to what I said about the evokitties, you are going to want to group those evocators into single units, to maximize their hitting power without getting struck back. Additionally, I would recommend either cutting back on your sequitors and dropping the cleansing phalanx (it only reduces your drops and allows you to better empower buff sequitors, which isn't worth it with 5 man squads), or putting all the sequitors into 1 block, getting another 10 for 2 5 man squads and running the phalanx with a big block of sequitors that can be re-rolling hits, wounds, and saves. If you go that way, I recommend getting Gavriel so you can drop them from the sky and get them on target right away. For example, here would be a list: Hammers of Sigmar Lord-Arcanum on Celestial Dracoline Knight-Heraldor Gavriel Sureheart 20 Sequitors 2x 5 Sequitors 5 Evocators 6 Evocators on Celestial Dracoline Clensing Phalanx This gives you 2 units of 5 sequitors for screening, a hammer in the sky of 20 sequitors, gavriel, and 5 evocators on foot to come down and empower the sequitors on later turns, and then a hammer on the ground with 6 evokitties backed up by the lord-arcanum and heraldor. New purchases needed - Gavriel, Knight-Heraldor, and a box of 10 sequitors. Another option would be to make the evocators as scary as possible. Here is a list: Hammers of Sigmar Lord-Arcanum on Celestial Dracoline Knight-Heraldor or Everblaze Comet Knight-Incantor Gavriel Sureheart 3x 5 Sequitors 10 Evocators 6 Evocators on Celestial Dracoline Command Point This list instead uses gavriel to put 10 evocators on foot into the target. Then you have the kitties on the ground again as a secondary hammer, and either the heraldor to back the kitties up, or the everblaze comet to dish out some mortal wounds from the start. Lastly, you could look at running a ranged threat with either longstrikes or ballista's, similar to my list above. I think any of these 3 lists will help you to maximize the power of your list.

It depends upon the list. From the ones that I listed: Sorceress list: This list will have a sorceress accompanying each unit of darkshards, and another accompanying the executioners. The Lord-Arcanum can be doing whatever. Everyone would start bunched up for turn 1 to maximize the spell casting bonuses, and then split up as needed to get objectives. Realistically, the objectives determine how things are going to go south, and how that can be dealt with. But by having 3 independent forces, you should be able to be mobile enough to react where needed. Wanderers list: This army doesn't really have a good way to turn things around if things start going south. Realistically, it is going to split up into two forces, each containing a unit of sisters and then having a unit of eternal guard to screen them. However, the list is relying on the firepower of the sisters to pull things off, and has the downside of not being particularly mobile, as both the eternal guard and the sisters get better if they don't move (note, bridge is a re-deploy, not a move, so they can be bridged and still get those bonuses). Freeguild list: This list is relying on bodies. As listed, it has 100 bodies if you go with 60 crossbows, or 120 bodies if you have 40 crossbows. Once again, the list isn't particularly mobile, as the crossbows want to sit still to maximize their firepower. But, if you give those guard swords+shields, then you have large blocks of bodies with a 4+ save, which is going to be tough to chew through and give you the time to deploy your firepower as needed. Therefore, you should be able to have time to react to whatever changes you need. Dwarf List: If things start going bad for you... roll better? The list is a little inflexible, but you are basically going to split your forces in 2 with the warden king and 1 unit of hammerers going forwards (maybe with a wizard), and the second sitting back a little bit more to defend your other wizards who are lobbing in long-ranged damage. But it is definitely relying on the fact that 30 hammerers will have a tendency to obliterate whatever they end up in combat with, and having a 4+ save makes them somewhat durable to return fire as well.

Coming back with some time for more potential lists beyond the above. For a ranged-focused list that is leaning heavily on Sister's of the Watch, take a look at this: Nomad Prince Celestial Hurricanum w/ Battlemage Battlemage 2x 20 sisters of the watch 2x 10 Eternal Guard Soulscream Bridge This list comes out to 1470 points, and has the bridge for immediately pushing the sister's out into position to unleash 40 shots at a 3+/3+, or a 2+/3+ if you have the hurricanum in range or use the nomad prince's command ability. In case you are wondering, for a 5+ save one unit of 20 sister's will be doing ~22 damage on average. For the same number of points, a unit of 30 darkshards without a hurricanum buff would be doing about ~13.4 damage on average, which means that this setup gives you a lot more ranged punching power than the above, but it comes at the cost of less magical punching power. An alternative to this list would be to drop the wizards and run living city instead, possibly with drycha coming in to help out too. Sister's coming in from board edge's can be scary. Enough of elves, lets look at what some good men can do. Freeguild General Luminark w/ Battlemage Battlemage 2x 20 Freeguild Crossbows 2x 40 Freeguild Guard Soulscream Bridge Alternatively, drop each unit of guard to 20 to give you another 20 crossbows. This list comes out at exactly 1500 points (if you are ok going slightly over, you can swap the luminark for a hurricanum, and the list will function similarly). The key trick here is to have the guard screen, and use the general's command ability on the crossbows (and a unit of guard because... why not) and the crossbows will get 40 shots at 3+/2+. That is a bit less damage than the sister's from above, but you get more bodies to screen with (also, 60 crossbows will deal the same damage as 40 sister's to a 5+ save, and cost about the same number of points as well if you prefer to focus on range). Lastly, for a little dwarf action. Normally here, you would expect a load of Irondrakes. However, their rend isn't as good against nighthaunt, so instead, lets see how many hammerer's we can get on target eh? Warden King 2x Battlemage (ghur) Lord-Arcanum on Gryph Charger 2x 30 Hammerers Soulscream Bridge Umbral Spellportal Everblaze Comet Here, the bridge gives us the ability to bring the hammerers into range. A ghur battlemage gives us wildform, which gives us +2 to run and charge rolls (hence doubling up), while the musician gives us +1. This means that we only have to make a 6" charge roll. If we want to guarantee that a bit more, we can bring in cogs (and drop a unit of hammerers to 20) so that we only have a 4" charge to make, but since that also helps our opponents there is a good chance this will backfire on us. Warden King gives us +1 attacks, and ignite weapons gives us +1 to wound. This means that 30 hammerer's can be doing ~48 damage on average to a 5+ ethereal save. Then, on the other side we can drop the comet and cast the spell portal. Comet dropping gives us 1-3 wounds in a 10" radius, while spell portal can be placed and we can cast Roaming Wildfire through it. If we get lucky, this alone might be able to pick off a hero or two, otherwise we have a reasonable chance of eliminating hero's starting the second battle round with just the spells. This becomes much more likely if we can go second and the opponent has to take the comet hit and take the damage at the start of battleround 2. Hopefully these idea's all help in some way. There are definitely a lot more idea's and ways to play this out than the above, these were just a few themed ideas that I thought might have a reasonable chance of beating nighthaunt.

I haven't played nighthaunt with my Cities army yet, so I don't have personal experience with the matchup. However, here would be things that I would be looking at. First, Nighthaunt ignore rend. This means that the staple of teleporing a bunch of irondrakes with rend -3 forward isn't going to be as effective. The army also has a lot of 4+ or 5+ saves, has decent mobility, and flies everywhere. This means that I want to focus on volume of fire, and mortal wounds. The first part of the army I'll focus on then is the mortal wounds. Luckily, Hallowheart does this quite well. I would definitely look to run 3-4 wizards, possibly with whitefire retinue. I would also look to run the spell portal endless spell for throwing out roaming wildfire and elemental cyclone. As for wizards, a battlemage from Aqshy or Azyr would be decent for their own spells, while sorceress's are good for word of pain. Both the Hurricanum and Luminark are also great for dishing out a ton of mortal wounds from both spells and abilities. From the stormcast side a Lord-Arcanum on Gryph Charger has a spell that can heal itself and is a great target for Arcane Channeling, and can make the best use of Arcane Bolt from all the casters available. The Knight-Incantor can also be quite good as a tanky caster who is also carrying an auto-dispel scroll. Moving on from wizards, we look at the other models that can dish out mortal wounds. Here we have some incidental damage here and there from units like the black dragons, or doing some flyovers with the flamespyre phoenix and gyrocopters/gyrobombers. We can also get more massed mortal wounds from Executioners/Hammerers/Greatswords, with the ability to easily deliver them via bridge (or just run and charge with executioners), as well as ranged mortal wounds from sisters of the watch. Lastly, we can bring in some more stormcast for mortal wounds, like a Stardrake, or bringing in some of the Drakesworn Templars (Concussors, Fulminators, Desolators), or just dropping some evocators and letting them go all jazz hands on you. Lastly, there is the option for sheer volume of fire. Like Dwarfs? How about ironbreakers/hammerers attacking with 3 attacks each? Humans? A blob of 20 crossbowmen are unleashing 40 shots at 3+/2+ as long as they don't move and have the freeguild general using his command ability on them (or a 2+/2+ if you add in a hurricanum buff). Elves? Darkshards can also pump out 40 shots from a unit of 20, though they will have a 3+/4+ to hit (can make that 3+/3+ with the use of warding brand, or 2+/3+ by also adding in a hurricanum), and they can do that while running forwards thanks to a sorceress. Overall, I can see a few different builds that will give nighthaunt trouble. The first is a dark elf focused build: 3x Sorceress 1x Lord-Arcanum on Gryph Charger Whitefire Retinue 2x 20 Darkshards 1x 20 Executioners Umbral Spellportal This army comes in at 1360 points, leaving 140 points for more endless spells or another 10 darkshards/executioners. ... Sadly, I now have to run, so I'll have to offer up other army lists later.

This is not a 5 drop list. This is an 8 drop list. Remember, they changed how things work with embarking being changed to garrison rules, so you drop your ironclad as 1 drop, then garrison your thunderers in it as drop #2, and then garrison your chemist in it as drop #3, etc. As for the list itself, it looks decent. That being said, the thunderer's fumigators and chemist ability don't work while they are garrisoned, which means that you'll have to deploy them to use those abilities. Doing that though is going to lose you mobility, and that is the #1 benefit of running KO at the moment, so I would be cautious of planning to go in giving that up.

KO is completely unnecessary for Tempest eye, and also wasn't really necessary prior. If you don't want to run them, you will just have to run Irondrakes, Sisters of the Watch, Darkshards, Shadow Warriors, Handgunners, Crossbowmen, Rockets, volley guns, pistoliteers, outriders, dark riders, or steam tanks. Or... and hear me out here... you could even run Judicators. Or maybe a unit of Vanguard Raptors with Hurricane Crossbows? After all, Longstrikes are soooo stormcast only. Basically, before the new book KO was good in tempest eye competitively because you could take a block of Arkanaut's with skyhooks, get 2 shots from each skyhook because of the Khemist, and have the +1 to hit from the Hurricanum and +1 to wound from Hawk Eyed, making them a unit that could delete a lot of stuff. However, even that was arguable as to whether or not that was better than teleporting forward a unit of irondrakes or sisters with the bridge. Now that Arkanaughts have changed, there really isn't anything that KO provides that cities doesn't do better outside of the mobility of boats with Fly High - which Cities can't take advantage of anywhere near as well as a KO only list can do. This leaves KO as a fun addition to the army for flavor, but not something that is vital in any way. This of course is also ignoring the other things that tempest eye can do, and only focuses on the shooting. Because shooting was the only thing that KO brought to the table that was arguably better than other units in Tempest Eye. Now though I expect to occasionally see a boat for flavor reasons, but they will probably disappear from any competitive tempest eye lists.

I would recommend reading through the KO thread here (ignore the first 100 pages or so though because they were for the previous battletome) and you will see a number of different lists that people have been posting (as well as a good bit of arguing).

Its a valid army. That being said, that army might work better as something other than tempest eye, as you don't really have anything there that really benefits from tempest eye allegiance abilities. For tempest eye, I find it best to run more shooting to take advantage of the "Hawk Eyed" command trait, or to run a big monster that can take advantage of Swift as the Wind, or run a hard-charging army (ex. demigryphs) to take advantage of Aether Guard Captain and Zepheryte Banner. But if those are the models that you want to run, go for it - and then just change up what city you are running it as until you find a city that works best for them. Personally, I would run that list as either Hammerhall or Hallowheart.

... shush... you saw nothing... I totally wasn't staring back and forth between two warscrolls for 5 minutes while I did the math for that post... On the other hand... now I literally can't think of ever running Wardens outside of that ones specific skyport that gives them +1/+1 to hit/wound rolls when they charge. They literally provide nothing beneficial over riggers...

Doing the math (ish) when using AoS Stashammer (https://aos-statshammer.herokuapp.com/), we can look at them when in melee or at range. If we decide to maximize their melee power, then a unit of riggers does more damage than a unit of wardens on any save better than a 5+. This remains the truth for any set of balloon boys from 3 models all the way through 12. Looking at ranged power, riggers have more shots, but only a 9" range with their rivet guns. Wardens have fewer shots, but a better profile and better range. Looking at damage though, riggers will always outdamage wardens (if they are in range). However, if you are trying to maximize ranged power for either, you are going to be running their special weapons, which are exactly the same between the two. Notable here - wardens can shoot their pistols after they hitch a ride, while riggers would be out of range (but now you have a boat AND a unit of balloon boys, which is tighter on the points in Cities than in KO). The last "special" thing to note is that wardens can do mortal wounds if they retreat, while riggers can heal a boat. After reviewing through everything... I would probably always run riggers in a CoS army, and only look to run wardens to tag along with boats and shoot after they land. For those points, you aren't bringing either to charge into a hordy low save unit, as even a unit of 12 wardens maxes out at about 16 damage in melee. So instead I would focus on having the saws for better melee damage, and if you want fast ranged units you are going to be bringing special weapons anyways, so the model really doesn't matter.

Options: The Darkling Coven: 2 Sorceress on Foot 2x 20 Darkshards 30 Black Guard This army gives you great mobility, as the sorceress's allow you to run and still shoot/charge with any darkling coven unit (though it does cost a command point). Note with the darkshards, this means that they have a minimum 11" move (6+3 from tempest eye + 2 from run and hornblower), alongside a 16" shooting range, for a minimum of 27" range with their bolts turn 1. Black guard meanwhile have a 11" move + 2d6+1" charge, for a minimum of 14", but an average of 21" threat range on turn 1. Make one sorceress the general with the +1 to wound at range trait, the other the adjutant, and give one of them the spell that gives you a command point, and the other the spell that gives +1 attacks in melee. The Fortress: 2 Runelords 1 Celestial Hurricanum with Battlemage 20 Irondrakes 10 longbeards 10 ironbreakers This army is built around the fact that you can have a block of 20 irondrakes that are hitting on a 2+ (hurricanum), potentially with re-rolls due to the command trait, wounding on a 2+ (tempest eye command trait), re-rolling 1's because of the longbeards, and then hitting with rend 3 (rend 1 buffed twice with the runelords). This has them doing an average of ~40 wounds if they don't move, 20 if they do (and that is do a 4+ save or worse). Meanwhile the longbeards and ironbreakers are there to screen you with their 3+ saves. Freeguild Detachment: 1 Freeguild General 1 Luminark of Hysh with Battemage 40 Freeguild Guard 3x 10 Handgunners 50 points for a command point or endless spell This army uses the fact that the general can buff all 3 units of handgunners at once, and they can be hitting on 2+/2+ with the command ability and not moving (plus 3 30" range -1 rend 2 damage shots from the sharpshooters). The guard are there to screen, and the Luminark gives some spell power, a 6+ shrug aura, and some more ranged damage. There are a lot more potential builds that you can run with tempest eye (much less cities of sigmar). Realistically, for 1000 points I would tell you to look for you to decide what battleline unit (which is most of the non-war machine/monster units) you like the best, and then build around that unit. Figure out what that unit wants to do, and what role it plays, and then give it the support that it needs to shine.

Assuming that these are the current kits (and not really old ones) you can purchase a sorceress ($15 on the GW site) and build the units as the following: Executioners as Black Guard (multi-part kit, you should have the instructions to do this in there) Dreadspears as 40 Darkshards (again, multipart kit as part of the same box) Drakespawn as... drakespawn (prepare to be underwhelmed) Put together, you have the following force: Sorceress (90 points) 20 Black Guard (280 points) 40 Darkshards or 2x 20 Darkshards (400 points) 5 Drakespawn Knights (150 points) Which all comes out to... 920 points. Cool. Grab an endless spell, or drop the knights for some other models and you have a cool 1000 point list right there. Run it as is, and I would recommend running Tempest Eye as your army to maximize your mobility and your shooting. If you drop the drakespawn for something else, you have 230 points to fill with something, and if its a hero you could even make it your general if you have the 2 blocks of darkshards instead of just 1. Some options to think about there would be even more darkshards (3x 20 darkshards is a LOT of shooting, and really good in tempest eye), or you can grab another pair of sorceress's and have 50 points left over for either a command point or an endless spell - and with 3 sorceress's, then Hallowheart looks like a fun city. If you want bling, you can grab 3 units of Scourgerunner Chariots for more fast shooting. Or you can get a Hurricanum (with no wizard) to buff your army's attack rolls. If you REALLY don't like the idea of a sorceress, then you can skip her because dark shards are generic battleline, and run them in 2 blocks of 20. This then gives you 320 points for something if you also drop the drakespawn knights. A few options there could be a Sorceress on Black dragon, or a Griffon, or a Wizard on Celestial Hurricanum, or a steam tank w/ commander. Ok, that last one is probably the worst option there, but as long as you have a hero in those 320 points, you have a solid 1000 point list. Then, if you want to go for 2000 points later, go for it, but you don't even need to continue the dark elf theme if you do so.

So first things first, your list is only 1840 points. If your opponent was playing at 2000 points, being 160 points down from the start is going to turn out poorly for you. Second, your "hammers" are an understrength unit of raptors, and the rather squishy celestant prime. A minimum strength unit of evocators just isn't competitive at 2000 points, and 2 ballista's without any ordinators are also going to be underwhelming. Basically, the problem with your army is that you are dabbling in too many different things and not concentrating your power. Want to run the longstrikes with anvils? Bring 9. Want to run Celestar Ballista's? Run 4 and a Lord-Ordinator. Want to run Evocators on foot? Run at least 10, and bring along Gavriel for a gav-bomb, or bring a long a Knight-Heralder to give them their much needed mobility. Want to run Evocators on Dracolines? Run a squad of 6, and back it up wtih a Lord-Arcanum on Dracoline. Want to run the Celestant Prime? You need to have something there to clear a path for him so he can come down turn 2 and actually be able to get to a target to murder. As it is, your army is fine for trying a few things and seeing what models that you like. But from here you need to decide how you like playing and focus in on those models. Build your list to maximize those models, and then make sure you get enough screen to hold your opponent back to deal with them. Slaves to darkness isn't a super killy force (unless they are doing nurgle demon prince cheese, and even then you are doing more damage to yourself with that list then they are). But they are a very tanky army, and you really want to throw stuff with a lot of rend at them. Luckily, you have both raptors and ballista's that you can use to deal with them. An example for how you can make your army more focused without changing too much would be to drop the evocators and 5 sequitors, and the balewind vortex in exchange for 2 more ballista's, and Ordinator, and 3 more longstrikes for your raptors. This gives you some light screening and a lot of ranged power. If you don't want to drop your current models, at least go ahead and grab something to fill in those missing 160 points.

Magnetize it. Then you can easily swap between the two depending upon how you want to play today.

Here is my first suggestion: Don't buy 2000 points at once. No if's, no and's, no buts, don't buy 2000 points. Unless you know FROM EXPERIENCE that you like painting and playing enough that you know you will build and paint 2000 points, that much plastic is going to be intimidating, and it will sap your motivation, and you won't be able to finish your army. Instead, aim for 500(ish) points to start, and then if you decide that you like it expand the army from there. For reference, that Slaves to Darkness start collecting comes in at 630 points (you can easily look up what the points totals are and how to make an army by going to https://www.warhammer-community.com/warscroll-builder/ which will allow you to "build" your army and tells you what your points are/battleline/etc). In this case, I would recommend getting the start collecting and then decide if you still like modeling after that is done being built. All this being said, if you like the looks of those models and you buy the AoS untamed beasts rather than the warcry ones (difference, warcry comes with the warcry rules and cards, AoS version comes with 2 sets of the models) that comes in at 1060 points. So if those are models that you like, then just get those models and start painting, then work from there to figure out what models work ok at 1000 points and how you like to play and expand that direction. Taking that army out with 1 unit of untamed beasts on the board and the other not in play, you can run ravagers and use a command point to bring that second unit on to the board later in the game.

Total of 4 combat phases may be a better way of phrasing it then (combat phase after charge, and 3 combat phases after that).

Just built the manticore - if you don't glue down the rider, it is really easy to either leave him off or swap between the Sorcerer and the Lord - no magnetization needed.

A unit with lances does more damage on the charge, and less in sustained combat. The difference in damage is such that for a unit of 3, if you charge with the lances, get average damage output, and then stick around without retreating for another 3 battle rounds, then the average damage of the halberd will catch up. Even with a 3+ save, most of the time you are stuck in combat for 3 rounds, these guys aren't going to survive. On the other hand, if they get charged, then the halberds will consistently do better damage. Against some armies, you can guarantee your charges. Against others, good luck. So build them with lances if you are confident that you will have the mobility advantage. Build them with halberds if you want them to still be able to do something after they get charged by some chaff.

So what allies make the biggest difference to a Slaves army? If I mark my guys for one of the chaos gods, and then bring in an ally for that chaos god, what stand out the most? For reference, I have ~2500 points of slaves, and would like to get a unit or two from the various gods that can go with them to vary how they play out. So what makes the biggest difference for a slaves force?

Gavriel dropping a block of evocators or sequitors on something tends to obliterate that something. However, then you are stuck with a unit of evocators/sequitors in your opponents backfield, either far away from other units, or just sitting there as a tempting snack. Additionally, the most command points you are going to be able to have turn 1 is 3 (that is if you take a battalion + buy command point + turn 1 command point). When your opponent doesn't know how to screen against the deepstrike charge, this will win you a lot of games (and generate a lot of salt). Once they figure out how to zone you out though, you are going to start doing much more poorly. Additionally, many people complain that this leads to games being too samey, with them always doing the exact same thing every game. If you would rather play with something fast, I recommend looking at either running Evocators on Dracolines, or looking at one of the stardrake lists that are floating around backed up by some Dracothian Guard (Concussors/Fulminators/etc). They aren't currently the "meta" lists, but building around either of them should be enough to get you a list that could go 3-2 in a tournament.

As I mentioned, this list has 2 separate forces to kill stuff. Usually I put the ballista's + ordinator in the sky, so that I can drop them 18" away from a must-kill target. In general, I try to get the ballista's to kill one of my opponents centerpiece units - whether that is a monster, or a big block of infantry, etc. The 18" range of rapid fire means that I can even hit targets that are somewhat bubble-wrapped as well. This leaves the kitties to do their thing. And their thing is charging around the board at a rapid speed and attempting to obliterate whatever they end up running into. Usually in a game with objectives, the opponent has to split their forces up to capture the objectives. What I tend to do is shift the kitties around so that they can strike on the board wherever the opponent is weakest. For instance, take the battleplan shifting objectives. In this battleplan, there are 3 objectives in the center of the board. If my opponent decides to group up to take the middle objective, then I will bring my ballista's down to engage them on that objective, and then bring the kitties around to either the left or right objective. This generally allows them to obliterate the smaller force that was put over there on the charge, leaving the kitties free to move on to the next separated unit the following turn. Offensively, the cats will obliterate whatever they charge. I run mine with 4 staff's and 2 tempest blade's. Without any buffs, a unit of 6 will deal 31 wounds to a save of -, or ~19 damage to a save of 4+, and then follow that up with 6 mortal wounds. However, you can get the mounts to hit on a 2+ with pride leader, everything wounding on a 2+ with celestial blades, and re-rolling wound rolls with Empower. Put all 3 of those together, and your block of 6 will be doing 51 damage to a save of -, or 31 damage to a 4+ save, and then follow that up with 6 mortal wounds. So believe me when I say that they will obliterate whatever they hit. However, having only a 4+ save in return means that most armies can deal with them on the crack-back. This means that you have to be careful of your positioning so that way they don't get charged back, or shot off the board in return. Generally, if you can successfully get off 2 charges in the game, the game is yours. This is why I tend to have them slaughter around the edges of my opponents force, leaving them stuck between going after the ballista's or going after the cats. For reference, the 4 Ballista's + ordinator do around the same amount of damage as the 6 cat's do when the cat's don't have any buffs going. Lastly, to demonstrate the difference between the buffed charging cats and un-buffed, non-charging cats, here are a few numbers. Fully buffed, the charging kitties can do ~57 damage to a save of - between damage and mortal wounds, or ~37 to a save of 4+. Without the buffs and without a charge, they will do ~29 damage to a save of -, and ~19 to a save of 4+. If they get their buff's but aren't charging, that changes to ~42 damage to a save of -, and ~27 damage to a 4+ save. Hopefully this demonstrates to you how you really want to use them in combat.

There are several ways that you can build out this force. Option 1 is to build my army: Celestial Vindicators Lord-Arcanum (I use dracoline mounted, you don't lose much by going gryph charger though) Knight-Incantor Lord-Ordinator Knight-Heraldor 3x 5 Sequitors 6 Evokitties 4 Ballista's 1 Command point From what you have, you would be missing the Ordinator, Heraldor, and a ballista. General gameplan is that you have 3 units of sequitors for screening and objective grabbing, and then 2 strike forces, with the first being the Arcanum + Heraldor + Kitties, and the second being the Ordinator + ballista's. I'm a big fan of the celestial vindicators, because giving the Evokitties +1 attacks to all of their attacks per command point is just brutal, but if your regular opponents like monsters than Astral Templars is a decent option as well. I've been building into and playing this list for a bit over a year, and can say that it has the chops to compete with most of the big names. Is it going to win you a tournament? No. But it is probably good enough to let you go 3-2. Option 2 is to build around your foot evocators and a Sequitor blob, with the gav-bomb Lord-Arcanum Gavriel Sureheart 20 Sequitors 5 Sequitors 10 Evocators This list gives you 1350 points and 2/3 of your battleline units. How you want to fill out the rest of your list is up to you, but the idea would be to drop Gavriel and use him to either get all 10 evocators into combat to blend whatever they hit, or to get the blob of 20 sequitors into combat. This list used to be decent, but it has fallen out of favor recently with all the fight-first/last shenanagins. Option 3 is to go all out with the evocators: Lord-Arcanum Knight-Incantor 2x 5 Sequitors 1x 10 Sequitors 6 Evokitties 10 Evocators Clensing Phalanx This list has the advantage of you not needing to buy anything. It is also a 4 drop list. The idea here would be to try to maximize the power of your evocators and get as many of them into combat as possible. Additionally, we could drop the 10 block of sequitors down to another 5 block to open up room for something like Gavriel, or another Knight-Incantor, or a Knight-Heraldor. Alternatively, the Knight-Incantor can be dropped for a different hero as well. Going the other way, dropping either the evocators or evokitties to a minimum sized unit allows you to max out that squad of sequitors to a 20 squad, which if it is in the phalanx can get buffed by the Evocators to be re-rolling hits, wounds, and saves. This list is a little more all in, but provided that you learn how to get your evocators into combat, you'll be able to blend many armies without much issue. As for running Gotrek, I wouldn't advise running him with Stormcast. The problem is that he is so expensive, and so are the stormcast units as well. Additionally, none of the stormcast units can really buff him in any way, leaving him to plod slowly towards a target and hope that he can eventually get to and maul an important target. However, if you insist on running him, I would look to run him with the option 1 army, and just bring him in in exchange for the Heraldor and evokitties, and possibly either fill out a squad of sequitors to 10 or add the 2nd Knight-Incantor. This will leave the army much slower, but the ballista's will at least be able to force people to get closer to Gotrek so he can slaughter them.

With the points drop, I can go back to running this list: Celestial Vindicators Lord-Arcanum on Dracoline (general) Knight-Heraldor Lord-Ordinator Knight-Incantor 3x 5 Sequitors 6 Evocators on Celestial Dracolines 4 Celestar Ballista 1 Command Point This particular list is not going to go 5-0 in a tournament. However, it might be good enough to go 4-1, and definitely 3-2. I was using this list prior to the GHB 2019 coming out where the points increase for the sequitors and ballista's forced me to drop something, but now that the kitties have dropped 80 points for the pack I can go back to playing with this. If you started with Soul Wars and got the battleforce, all you are missing for this army is the Heraldor, the Ordinator, and a few ballista's. While I prefer to run it with the Dracoline Arcanum, the one mounted on a Gryph Charger is almost as good. To date, I haven't gone to a tournament with this list, but I've done a lot of practice games with people prepping for tournaments and have an overall positive win-rate with this list. If you aren't fond of the ballista + ordinator plan, you can swap them out for 9 Longstrikes + either a Relictor or Vexillor, and swap on over to Anvils to have a small variation on the current standard anvils lists. If you got the Soul Wars box, then you would end up wasting a Ballista (as well as of course the castigators and evocators), but if you only have the battleforce then it takes about the same amount to do the longstrikes as it does the ballistas. So if you like the models, don't be afraid to build for a force like this one.

So let me get this straight. You are saying that you can't have a mobile damage sponge that hits like a wet noodle for only 100 points? Cause I have actually run drakespawn Knights (at 1000 points), and that is literally all that they are. At least as a damage sponge they would have a purpose in this army, and at around 100 points is about the only time I would consider running them again. Otherwise, the only thing saving these dudes is a warscroll change.

Drakespawn Knights have 2 units that are "competition" in Cities of Sigmar. The first and most obvious are Demigryph Knights, as they are nearly the same unit (10" move, 3+ save) for 180 points. The second are Wild Riders, which are basically a slightly less armored version of them for only 130 points. The first comparison are Demigryph Knights. With lances (because that is the closest comparison), 3 Demi's give you 10 lance attacks with the same profile as the drakes, and then 9 demi attacks that have a 3+/3+ profile, rend, and a chance for mortal wounds, all while having a smaller front (only 3 models) and more wounds (12 to the unit as opposed to 10). To compare, the drakes get 6 lance attacks (5 for each block after the first), and 10 drake attacks. Putting in a simple comparison, 5 drakes on the charge deal a little bit less damage as 3 demi's with lances who aren't charging, and if the demi's charge they deal almost double the damage. Wild Riders on the other hand trade 2" more movement for a 5+ save, but they get 2 attacks with their lances as opposed to 1. So a squad is basically always going to have 5 more lance attacks with the same profiles, but their mounts only have a 4+/4+ profile. Despite that, when not charging, they have slightly more damage than drakespawn knights that didn't charge, and when they charge they get about 33% more damage than the knights. Next, we look at ways to buff them. Dreadlord on black dragon gives drakes a +1 to wound. Compare this to demi's, which get a +1 to hit from a griffon, or wild riders which get +1 to hit from the Nomad Prince. We can get +1's to hit from Hammerhall, or the Celestial Hurricanum. We can get +1 to wound from Hallowheart. Lastly, we can get +1 attack from Tempest Eye. The clear standout here is the +1 attack from Tempest Eye. But what does that do for us? Well, with +1 attacks across the board, a unit of drakespawn knights on the charge will deal about as much damage as a unit of Demi's on the charge when unbuffed. Throw that same spell onto the Demi's, and we get a 33% bonus in power though. Realistically, if you want to maximize Drakespawn Knights, you are going to want to run them in tempest eye, accompany them with a hurricanum (casting the +1 attack spell) and a dreadlord on black dragon. This will give you a unit that has a 2+/3+/-2/2 lance attack, with 11 attacks for the first 5 and 10 for every 5 after that, and a 2+/3+/-/1 damage mount attack with 15 attacks for every 5. However, we are now spending 580 points on buffs for these units, and if we were to throw that much support at either the Demi's of wild riders, we'd get a good bit more bang for our buck. Running the numbers myself, I would consider running Drakespawn Knights if they dropped down to ~120 points. At 110 points, you get as much per point from them as you do from demi's when both are charging (though the demi's still have the advantage of a smaller front and more wounds). This means that to compete with demi's, you really need them to drop down to about 100 points. And strong arguments can be made that demi's are overpriced as they are as well.