readercolin

No. There are 2 HUGE problems with this idea. The first, is that there is no way in heck that GW would go ahead and modify the coalition rules to only push out stormcast and not just turn it off for everyone. Second, the only stormcast units that are problematic in Cities armies are also problematic in stormcast armies. Are Stormdrake Guard good? Unquestionably yes. Are they good in the Cities? Yes. Are they good in stormcast? Yes. Same for Fulminators. Are they good in the cities? Yes. Are they good in stormcast? Again, yes. If these units are "too good" in the cities, I would also argue that they are "too good" in stormcast as well. Hit those units with the nerfbat, not the cities.

To give a different list build - here is a potential "Castle" build that you could go for: Lord-Relictor - general, high priest, translocation, mirrorshield or arcane tome Yndrasta Gardus Steelsoul 6x Longstrikes 15x Vindictors 5x Vindictors 5x Vindictors 3x Annihilators (either variant, though I'm going to bet that you have the shielded ones) You are missing 2 things for this list - Gardus and 3x more Vanguard Raptors. The objective with this is to have Gavriel there to give his 5+ ward bubble, making your army notable tankier than it would be otherwise, and Yndrasta able to bring models back to either the vindictors or the longstrikes. This list wants to run Scions for the annihilators but if you want you can swap them out for another unit, though for gardus to be effective you will have to run Hallowed Knights. You can either run this as a battle regiment for the 1 drop, or as hunters + Command Entourage if you want to get a 2nd holy command. The plan with this list would be to sit back and shoot your opponents key pieces off and playing very defensively, and then once your opponents forces have been whittled down you can then move forward and take over the game. If you don't want to go the Gardus route, another option would be this: Lord-Relictor - general, high priest, translocation Yndrasta Lord-Imperitant 6x Longstrikes 10x Vindictors 3x Annihilators (shields) 3x Annihilators (shields) 3x Annihilators (shields) This list has to go Knights-Excelsior to make the annihilators battleline. But you have a defensive bubble with the Longstrikes, relictor, and vindictors forming a small castle, and then the annihilators coming down on turns 1-2-3, dealing mortals on impact, then charging in to pin a unit in place and do impact hits. Again, this list requires you to pick up another 3 vanguard raptors, but you have everything else. And once again, you can either run a battle regiment, or hunters + command entourage for either a holy command or a 2nd artefact.

We do... ish. The only source that I am aware of is "Drillmaster" in greywater fastness that gives a bubble around your general of re-roll 1's to hit with missile weapons. I believe that the Hellstorm Rocket Battery also gets re-roll 1's to hit if near an engineer. That being said, I believe those are the only sources left in the Cities that will affect all Cities units. For Coalition, I believe that the Arkanaught Admiral has one for KO units, and the Arch-Revenant has one for Kurnoth Hunters. I am not aware of any other re-roll abilities beyond that though.

Where GW is probably coming from with this is that they have a 4+ base save, and 2 wounds apiece. So you are paying 170 points for 20 wounds on a 4+ save, or effectively 10 wounds on a 4+ for 85 points. Defensively, this is on a similar rate to freeguild guard, and a better rate than stuff like liberators, or even chaos warriors. Additionally, if fyreslayers keep their multiple ways to get +1 to save, it shouldn't be too hard to get them to a 3+ ignore rend -1, maybe even ignore rend -2. If we ignore the offensive side of the equation, defensively that is actually pretty good. The problem though is that GW has a habit of DRASTICALLY overvaluing defense, and pointing incorrectly due to that. The closest comparison that I have is Drakespawn Knights, which they originally valued (in 2.0) at 170 points because they were rocking a 3+ save. Offensively... they are actually better than vulkites (mostly due to coherency, if all 10 vulkites could attack their damage would be similar), which feels really, really bad to say because drakespawn knights are one of the worst damaging units in the entirety of the Cities roster. Those same drakespawn knights are now still unplayed, but have dropped down to 125 points, and it is hard to say if GW can drop them any lower because they do at least have a 10" move and being cavalry bases can actually be a decent screen if they drop too many more points (I might actually consider running them at 100 in something other than a themed army). Compare this to the vulkites, and even though they have twice the wounds, I would still take drakespawn knights over vulkintes 9/10 times, unless fyreslayers have a REAAAAAALLLY good allegiance ability. On top of that, vulkites suffer from the MASSIVE problem of hearthguard berzerkers doing the same thing but better. I could see that if hearthguard berzerkers didn't exist, and you had to choose between vulkites, auric hearthguard, and then magmadroths for your hammer, vulkites would actually have a place in lists. But they are too close in usage to the hearthguard berzerkers, so they are basically never going to see any play.

Page 61 of this thread has pictures of the new warscrolls. Yes, they have been dropped to 1 attack in melee.

Path to glory can certainly be discussed, however as it tends to be more of a casual playstyle, it tends to get more ignored due to not tending to be a format where you want to min/max. So the key thing here is - what is your play group? Is your play group really competitive trying to eek every advantage out? Then your army list is (probably) fine. Does your play group tend towards more casual, or lean towards rule of cool rather that warscroll power? Shelve your idea and don't run any massive monsters like Bastian/Knight-Draconis until you are at LEAST at 1k points. Something to keep in mind here is that if you want to keep your playgroup interested and not just stomp them, you need to remember to keep the game fun. Running over your opponent with 2 nearly impossible to kill monsters (at least at 600 points) is going to make your friends just not want to play with you. It is not an entertaining game to sit down and go "there is exactly NOTHING I can do to win". This is then going to lead to "Yeah, we just don't feel like playing anymore" and you not having games at all.

I would really like this in the next StD book. Especially if it is treated more like Coalition in the Cities of Sigmar rather than the crappy coalition rules for the various gods. What I mean by this is that in the cities, if I coalition in some stormcast, they gain the cities keyword AND they gain the specific city keyword. So I can give a block of judicators the buffs from a hurricanum (which affects the cities keyword), and also tempest eye specific effects. However, with they way they structured coalition in the chaos gods... its terrible. Yes, I can technically bring a block of chaos warriors/knights/whatever in Nurgle, and they will have the nurgle keyword. However, the 5+ ward and disease effects aren't locked to nurgle, they are locked to Maggotkin of Nurgle, which is not a keyword that the Slaves would get when they get coalitioned in. This is honestly my biggest gripe with Slaves to Darkness at the moment. I bought into them originally specifically because by doing so I was actually buying in to all 5 god armies. Yes, they generally weren't the best in those armies, but if I bought the KO vs Tzeentch box, I could always go ahead and run all of the Tzeentch units from that box and back it up with my blocks of chaos warriors/knights and hero's as a tzeentch army. Or if I bought the Khorne start collecting, I can run the hero's from that and fill out my army with chaos warriors and test Khorne out. The whole purpose of all of this was to be able to purchase the cool units from the various gods and not have to spend time purchasing all the units that I don't like, or the repetative battleline units, etc. Making StD the coalition army fulfills my goals. I want to run the Skyfires that I have. I want an excuse to buy and run a Bloodthirster. I want to run that cool slannesh unit. But I don't want to have to go purchase a whole 2k army. Eventually I might build out enough to be able to run a full army for those factions - that is what happened to my cities armies. But I want an excuse to buy selected cool models and run them without having to purchase whole new armies. To give an example, I have just finished out a full 2k Kharadron Overlords army. It started as me getting some endrinriggers to run in tempest eye, and then later getting a set of thunderers + ironclad to run in that tempest eye army. Because those models seemed cool to me. But getting those 2 sets of units to run as coalition led to me having 1500 points of KO, and it was pretty trivial to go from that to a full 2k list, so I decided to do that. I want to have a list that I can run and bring in some fun units from various factions. If I can do that with slaves to darkness, I might go ahead and buy a Tzzangor shaman to go with my skyfires, and now I have 555 points of Tzeentch. If I decide in the future that I want to build a bunch of flamers, suddenly I have another 700 points of tzeentch (2 squads of 6). Combine the 2 and I have 1200 points - get a lord of change and some pinks and suddenly I have a full tzeentch army. Heck, I would prefer that to the 2.0 rules, as I can do all of this without needing to buy the other books.

There are 2 changes that I would make to this list, with a third option. First, I would swap the knight relictor with a lord relictor if possible. Since he isn't your general, getting the 2+ is better than the 3+, though it would matter less if he was your general with high priest. Second, I would swap one of the vindicators for an incantor. Having an auto unbind is usually fairly important when facing legions to deny Kairos on turn 1 before you can blow him away. This also let's you afford to be able to give away turn 1 if you want, as it also let's you fit everything in the battle regiment. The last thing would be to combine the dragons into 1 unit. This is more playstyle dependent, but I like it because it makes it easier to buff them with celestial blades/mystic shield. It also forces your opponent to decide if they want to belakor the dragons or the longstrikes, and forcing them to make that choice will always leave them in a bad spot. That being said, there are arguments both ways - I just prefer the 4 man squad to the 2 man squads.

1. Prices increasing with each new release. I have a budget that I use for my hobbies. ~$100 a month dedicated to whatever hobbies I want, whether that is warhammer, video games, magic, or other hobbies. Recently, I have dropped my other hobbies due to time commitments, but I can keep doing warhammer because I can just sit down and paint/hobby in the evenings after the kids have gone to bed. But $100 a month comes out to $1200/year, and unless I am specifically going and purchasing some high-cost/low points models (ex. gyrocopters), you can generally get 3-4k points of models for that amount of money in a year. Additionally, because of those other time commitments, in the past 12 months I have gotten ~4k points fully built, painted, and (almost) based. I could compare this to some of my other hobbies. Some are more expensive. Some are cheaper. If I stop getting excited about building/painting my armies, I will move on and do something else. But in the end, if prices are going up for models, it just means that I will buy less or I will adjust my hobby budget. 2. Rules bloated. It sometimes takes more than 4 books / releases to have all of the rules together. Meh - the AoS rules aren't particularly bloated in my opinion. I can bring the generals handbook which has my core rules + battleplans, my faction battletome, and the FAQ (either downloaded or printed out). There are a few armies that have some optional supplements (ex. cities of sigmar having additional cities in about 4 extra books plus a white dwarf), but unless you are hyper-competitive about it, you can pretty easily just ignore those extra rules. And if you are getting hyper-competitive about it... you probably are playing the wrong game. 3. Power level increasing with new releases, leaving older armies behind. Not applicable? Or are you telling me that the new slannesh battletome has been tearing things up with its new releases? Or how about how BoneSplittaz are now tearing up the meta? I know, you can go into detail about how Soulblight Gravelords are taking home all the trophy's. Anyone that is saying that power level is increasing with new releases is suffering from a massive case of cherry picking. Did the new edition change things and leave some armies in the dumpster? Yes. This is a new edition problem, not a new release problem, and it happens every time there is a new edition. Some armies do much better with new editions than others (see Sons of Behamet), while some do much worse (see gloomspite gitz). But anyone saying that GW is releasing new books and power creeping older books out when they do so needs to get off their crazy train and do some fact checking, because any amount of that will tell you that is CLEARLY not the case. Or maybe it is for 40k, but it isn't for AoS. 4. GW basically neglecting certain factions, wich just don't get anything new and up to date. It happens. Sure, it sucks that GW hasn't done jack for Fyreslayers. Sure, it sucks that you can still buy brand new skaven models in metal. But if I am buying models, they are because they are something I want to paint and play with, whether they are new models or not. If you are referring to the rules for the armies, again, not too worried because GW has been going through and updating a bunch of the older factions. However, if you are limiting yourself to 1 faction being updated a month, it would still take GW 2 years to go through and touch every faction in AoS. Again, the problem I think people are running into is that they are getting hyper-competitive with AoS, and if they are, they are probably playing the wrong game. 5. Models being locked behind paywalls, or big box sets, for a long period of time. Whatever. Is it annoying that if I want a Lord-Relictor, Karkadrak, or Bloodsecrator I have to buy a start collecting that contains a bunch of other stuff I don't care about? Sure. But there is this thing called Ebay that I can use instead if I just want those models. Or I can kitbash something together to make it happen instead. As for stuff like the Sylvaneth Arch-revenant, or the Endrinmaster with Dirigible suit, yeah, it can be a little annoying to have to wait before you can purchase them, but again, you can use Ebay if you really want just that model, or you can kitbash, or you can just wait. 6. FAQ debacle. I must have missed something here, because I don't remember this. So clearly this isn't a big deal. 7. Massive FOMO This is called marketing. I recommend you look at ways to ignore it. But when it comes to AoS, there isn't really anything that stays exclusive forever, and a bit of patience will go a long way. I do this by making a plan of what I'm going to buy/build for the next few months, and then stick to that plan. Reducing impulse purchases and planning things out helps you both avoid FOMO AND stick to your budget, while avoiding getting mountains of grey.

I have been having a decent amount of success with a StD list that is focused on board control and durability, though I need to make some adjustments after the last battlescroll changed the points on the Sorcerer Lord's. Here is the list: Ravagers Sorcerer Lord on Manticore Sorcerer Lord on Foot Sorcerer Lord on Foot Chaos Lord on Foot Daemon Prince 20 Chaos Warriors 20 Chaos Warriors 10 Chaos Knights Everything but the Daemon Prince has the mark of Tzeentch for the re-roll 1's to wounds. However, with the update to the Sorcerers on foot going up 20 points each, this list is now at 2010 points, and I haven't figured out what I want to change yet to make it work... but swapping the Sorcerer Lord on Manticore for a Lord on Manticore has not been a success. Next thing to test is swapping the Manticore out for a warshrine, as I rarely end up using all 4 ravagers summons anyways. Obviously this list can't beat gargants (there is like, no DPS), and a recent game also shows that it will struggle against Dragoncast Eternals, but it has actually beaten a few competitive lists in Daughters of Khaine, Lumineth, and more annihilator focused stormcast lists. Additionally, it can win more casual games without the opponent feeling like they are getting dumpstered. The key thing to winning with the list is playing the objective game and deciding where to stack your saves to prevent your opponent from just running right through you, and finally figuring out where to summon to keep pressure on objectives. To be fair, I don't think you can have a competitive StD list that can take all comers without Archaeon. The roster is either trash (the various warcry warbands), too defensive (knights and warriors), or there are too many synergy pieces needed to get the most out of the units. This means that you either have to bring Archaeon, or you have to accept the fact that your only real path to victory is attempting to outlast your opponent... which there are other armies that can do that better. That being said, I'm not sure if there are any armies that can do save stacking as well as StD can, and it is fairly easy to get multiple units that are going to be ignoring rend -1 or -2, which can make it really, really hard for some armies to do much against. Leaning hard into that has given me the best results in 3.0 (without archaeon), but again you just have to admit that some matchups are impossible (ex. gargants).

You can only run a single stormdrake guard for each knight-draconis that you run, which means you cannot run this list. You either have to drop the Fulminators to run a pair of stormdrakes, or drop the stormdrake and keep the fulminators in.

@Arzalyn made a number of good points, and I would also recommend the list that he posted as a starting point for a 1k list that wants to go heavy on hunters. For the other questions. Dryads vs tree revenants. Tree revenants are harrassers. You bring them because it makes getting some battle tactics fairly easy, and it forces your opponent to hold back rather than committing everything. However, they are too weak to really fight through much in the way of resistance. Dryads on the other hand are a more traditional screening/objective grabbing unit. Take a squad of 10 of them and you can toss them on an objective and they'll hold for a while - especially if it is near trees. They aren't going to be able to hold against a big hammer unit, but they are resilient enough that if your opponent wants to take an objective from you, they have to actually commit. Additionally, they have more board presence, screen better, and basically are just a different role. Most lists I would actually look to run significantly more dryads, except that you basically always want to bring a Branchwraith because that can summon squads of 10 dryads with her warscroll spell, meaning you can effectively get an extra 40 dryads most games with her. Next up, on the hunters. Look into Magnetizing them if you haven't tried magnetizing before (I am not aware of how easy/hard magnetizing the hunters would be as I haven't built any myself yet), as that would let you build all 3 variants out of a single box and switch between them without having to go out and buy a ton of boxes of hunters. This means that if you want to try a 15 bow hunter list, you can do so, and then the next game you can swap back to try 5 squads of swords, or 2 reinforced squads of scythes and a unit of bow hunters, etc. Finally, the questions about who to make general, what battalions to take, what spells to take, what additional artefacts to take, etc. Luckily for you - you don't have to commit. Build the army, test some things, and figure out what works for you. The list I provided can be a 2 drop list with double battle regiment, and you can test to see if that helps you. Or you can run Warlord + hunters for an extra artefact + immunity to monstrous rampages on your melee kurnoths. Or you can buy a start collecting (easiest way to get dryads and kitbash a branchwraith), and build the big guy as a treelord ancient, and bring him instead of the warsong revenant. Basically, unless your focus is to buy exactly the models listed and have an exactly 2k list with nothing else (not recommended - GW keeps changing points around so having a bit of slack is good), you can (and should) experiment with a few different lists to determine what works for you.

You can certainly try something like that. Probably some sort of list like this: Allegiance: Sylvaneth- Glade: Harvestboon- Grand Strategy:- Triumphs:Arch-Revenant (105)- General- Command Trait: Seek New Fruit- Artefact: The Silent SickleBranchwraith (95)Warsong Revenant (275)5 x Tree-Revenants (80)5 x Tree-Revenants (80)20 x Dryads (190)- Reinforced x 16 x Kurnoth Hunters with Kurnoth Scythes (430)- Reinforced x 13 x Kurnoth Hunters with Kurnoth Greatswords (225)3 x Kurnoth Hunters with Kurnoth Greatswords (225)3 x Kurnoth Hunters with Kurnoth Greatbows (225)Umbral Spellportal (70)Total: 2000 / 2000Reinforced Units: 2 / 4Allies: 0 / 400Wounds: 122Drops: 10 Is this the best list? Nope. I certainly wouldn't look to run it competitively. However, if your goal is to run a bunch of hunters and get the most out of them, it is probably where I would start. The big question for me would be more which hero should be the general, whether you want a revenant or a treelord ancient, whether you want the block of 20 dryads, or just more tree revenants instead. The next question is whether or not to keep the melee focus on the kurnoths, or whether additional units of hunters should be swapped for more greatbows. Finally, battalions are open - want to run a battle regiment? This can be a 3 drop list. Warlord + hunters? Its an available option. Etc.

The arch-revenant does 2 things - Kurnoth's get re-roll 1's to hit, and can give a unit +1 attacks (in melee) as a command ability. If you are playing in a Kurnoth heavy list, and aren't playing Gnarlroot, bringing a revenant can be a good idea, and he saw a decent amount of play in 2nd edition when people were running 12-15 Kurnoth lists. However, since at the moment Sylvaneth have moved more towards gnarlroot and more towards being spell heavy, he has fallen out of play because you already get the re-roll 1's to hit near a wizard. Additionally, the limit of max 1 command ability per phase means you need to think hard about whether the +1 attacks is worth it, especially when you have to choose between that (at wholly within 9", so hard to use) or just hold your CP for all out attack/all out defense. Basically, if you decide you want to play a hunter heavy build in something like winterleaf, he can be worth bringing with your army. You'll just need to keep in mind that he might be hard to use. As for the Revenants, by referring to the teleport I'm assuming you mean the tree revenants? Basically, their use is to hide somewhere on the field away from objectives so that your opponent has to commit something if he wants to make them go away. But, just having them on the field makes the battle tactics "Savage Spearhead" (2 units from your starting army in your opponents territory) and "Ferocious Advance" (run 3 units and end within 3" of each other) basically trivial, even later on in the game. This is important to helping you hit all of your battle tactics in a game, and letting you choose other battle tactics at various points when they are available. The second thing it does is forces your opponents to play a bit more conservatively. If they leave an objective undefended, you can easily hop in and take it - and they are battleline which is important if you are playing "Power in Numbers". You are also doing this with only 80 points per squad, which can have a big impact if you are forcing your opponent to keep 100-200 points back to defend their objectives. Finally, while they aren't particularly strong in melee, with the ability to re-roll 1 die per turn, they don't have too much trouble teleporting and charging, and have enough damage output to threaten squishy support hero's/units. Going with that, if you need something to eat an unleash hell, they are perfect for that as well, which can then let you charge in with a stronger unit more freely. On the other hand, if you mean spite revenants... they exist because they are cheap battleline. Otherwise, they are useless. They were actually halfway decent in 2nd edition as a way to throw massive amounts of attacks at something and as a somewhat weak hammer unit, but between coherency rules, reinforcement rules, and the save stacking going on, they can no longer serve that purpose and you now only run them because you were 5-10 points over in your list and need to downgrade a unit of tree revenants to spite revenants.

What I would like to see happen with Stormdrake Guard: Remove the hero phase move. There is literally no reason for that to be on the warscroll, and it gives them unmatched mobility in the stormcast roster. This ability alone is what makes them so hard to balance, because it gives them a role that cannot be matched by anything else in the stormcast roster, and makes it so they can't be easily balanced by points cost changes. Adjust the breath weapon. D3-d6 mortals is extremely swingy, and is what really leads to feel bad situations. Yes, the average damage for a single dragon's breath weapon is 1.8 mortal wounds, meaning a squad of 4 has an average of 7.2 mortal wounds. However, that isn't going to help when someone has a lucky day and spikes 20 mortals off their breath weapon, and then another 20 mortals from a hero phase shoot. Instead, they should either have the fulminators breath weapon (d3 on a 4+), or if they want to keep it slightly better they can make it 3-4 = d3, 5-6=d3+1. This takes the spikes off their damage and makes them less swingy. Those 2 changes alone will drastically adjust the stormdrake guard, and put them in a position where their original 285 points is about right for the models. It still allows someone to play the all-dragon list, it still keeps them fast, tanky, and able to perform their roles. But it eliminates the easy turn 1 charges that they can get right now, and also eliminates the feel-bad situation of someone getting lucky and spiking hard with the shooting. It also puts them into a catagory with the rest of the stormcast roster where they can be fairly easily adjusted with points costs, as nothing that they do is so far out from the rest of the roster to be in-comparable. Personally, I'm a big fan of being able to run an all-dragon list. I totally want to run one myself one of these days. However, I think that they need to do the same thing as the rest of the roster and perform a role that is desireable as part of the army, but not as the whole army themselves, and an all-dragon list should be a fun meme-list (like the all steam tank list), not an actual top-tier competitive option.

I don't think it is stormcast, I think it is "spam" armies that people hate losing to. For example, I don't get a lot of salt when I bring out my mixed arms forces with longstrikes + fulminators + infantry + hero's. It feels like there are a number of things going on that my opponent can react to, and they feel like they are in the game. However, I tend to see a lot of salt to losing to spam armies. 50 sentinels. 60 pink horrors. 10 dragons. 4 megagargants. A lot of spam armies tend to lean into a single warscroll that does one thing well, which means that spam armies tend to have more lopsided matches where they win harder against what they beat and lose harder against what counters them. And when someone ends up playing against a spam army, it all comes down to "does this spam beat me?" because then it feels less like the game is decided in the game itself and more decided in army building, and the player doesn't feel like they are even in the game at any point. Finally, people tend to feel saltier when they don't feel like they were ever in the game at all. Did your dice betray you from turn 1 onwards? Salt salt salt. Did you end up playing against megagargants with an army that can't pass the DPS check? Salt salt salt. If you feel like you have a chance of winning the game, or the game feels close, it is an interesting game. Being on the receiving end of a curb stomping that it doesn't feel like you have any play against isn't.

Yes, I have no idea what error checking was going on when they were updating some of the old warscrolls, but they clearly missed it on the dragon blades. Don't expect it to get FAQ'd either with them being in legends - they might do that when they switch things on over to AoS 4.0. As for the saves, just like the dragonlord/dreadlord, they have a 4+ save but get +1 with a shield. Yes, this means that effectively they have a 3+ save. But, when save stacking, you can never get it down to a 2+ - it will always be a 3+ even if you throw +100 to their save at them. I would like to say that this seems to be a deliberate decision by GW to do this... but they aren't consistent with this across other warscrolls, so I'm just going to chalk it up as something deliberate by one game designer that isn't shared across the whole team.

For your price range, I would recommend getting the "Warrior starter set". You get 5 vindictors and a knight-arcanum, as well as 12 orks to fight against. But more importantly, it also gets you some other starter stuff, like the core rules, some dice to use, some measuring sticks to use, and a little game mat to play on, as well as reference sheets for all those models. Basically, it gives you everything that you would need to pick up and play a (very) small game. From there, you can expand however you want. But even if you decide you don't like stormcast or orks (or you do... just not the ones that came with this box), you will still find the core rules, dice, and measuring sticks useful to keep around, and the simplified learning environment to learn the game can still be useful too.

A few things. First, the dragonlord has a better breath weapon attack. Like, even against hordes I would prefer the dragonlord breath attacks most of the time. Second, the rider gets noticably better attacks. 4 attacks at 3/3/-1/D3 is a LOT better than 6 attacks at 3/4/-/1. The lances are a bit more even, but always being 2 damage is a notable improvement over base 1 damage. Third, the buffs. The biggest thing for dragonlord is that you really want several of them in a deathstar. They get a once per game +1 attack and once per game +1 to hit, both of which are a 10" bubble. The +1 attacks portion will stack as well. This means that a deathstar can land on someone and blend them fast - especially if you can get one of the dragons to fight first (living city or tempest eye can do that). Lastly, keep in mind base sizes. Dragonlord is on a 120, dreadlord on a 105. This is mostly to annoy you as you consider swapping between them. Overall, neither will be worth it's points. But either can be a fun option. I would probably run dreadlord because they are cheaper, but if you want to emphasize the power of the hero, the dragonlord does that better.

Swords and lances are about even if you expect to charge and stay in combat for 2 combat phases. If you think you can reliably get charges every turn, then lances are better. If you expect to sit in combat, swords are better. Overall, I would go swords every time, but other people have different opinions. Finally, running the knight Draconis as a unit leader. If you aren't running any knight Draconis in your list, you are probably fine. But I wouldn't run one as a unit leader and another as a hero, as that can easily lead to confusion.

So if you want to run this as the core of your list, you can. However, you are currently lacking 3 things. 1. Objective Holders. You need something to sit on the ground and hold objectives for you, which is where something like squads of liberators, or maybe judicators come in. 2. Screen clearing. Annihilators can do boatloads of damage if they get in. However, if they get in and hit some chaff... they then don't have the mobility to move on and hit what needs their hammers. Note, you also have issues with Unleash Hell shooting units that can punch through and kill an annihilator or two. 3. Mobility. Once the annihilators come down, they are stuck there for the rest of the game. Finally, you are restricted to only bring 1 squad of annihilators down at 7" per turn, and anything in the skies after turn 3 is dead. This means that having 3 squads is forcing you to drop a squad per turn, or drop a squad at 9" instead of 7". This doesn't mean you can't do that, but it does mean that you might want to consider merging 2 of those squads into a single squad of 6. Or maybe even get another 3 annihilators and run 2 squads of 6. As for the rest of the army, the first thing that comes to mind is a mixture of objective control and screen clearing. This can be a squad of vanguard raptors with longstrikes, though that is going to keep your army very fragile. Or, you can run squads of Judicators with Skybolt Bows. Alternatively, you can run vanguard raptors + liberators to have separate mixes for clearing and for objective holding. Finally, the easiest answer for mobility is a Lord-Relictor with Translocate. This would put the final army like this: Allegiance: Stormcast Eternals - Stormhost: Knights Excelsior Lord-Imperatant (175) Lord-Relictor (145) Knight-Incantor (125) 3 x Annihilators with Meteoric Grandhammers (240) 3 x Annihilators with Meteoric Grandhammers (240) 3 x Annihilators with Meteoric Grandhammers (240) 5 x Liberators (115) 5 x Liberators (115) 5 x Liberators (115) 6 x Vanguard-Raptors with Longstrike Crossbows (480) - Reinforced x 1 Total: 1990 / 2000 Reinforced Units: 1 / 4 Allies: 0 / 400 Wounds: 87 Drops: 10 This list I would maintain the high drops, grab a hunters battalion for the annihilators, and stick the hero's and raptors into a warlord battalion so you can get an extra enhancement (either extra artefact, or take thunderbolt volley and unleash thy hatred). Or, if you want a more condensed list that can fit easily into a one drop: Allegiance: Stormcast Eternals - Stormhost: Knights Excelsior Lord-Imperatant (175) Lord-Relictor (145) 6 x Annihilators with Meteoric Grandhammers (480) - Reinforced x 1 6 x Annihilators with Meteoric Grandhammers (480) - Reinforced x 1 15 x Judicators with Skybolt Bows (600) - Reinforced x 2 5 x Liberators (115) Total: 1995 / 2000 Reinforced Units: 4 / 4 Allies: 0 / 400 Wounds: 89 Drops: 6 As mentioned, this can easily fit into a battle regiment, and the reinforced grandhammers can punch through even a megagargant in a turn. You would have to choose between unleash thy hatred and thunderbolt volley though. An alternative for this is breaking up the judicators into smaller units that can sit on objectives better, and maybe getting a knight-incantor in the mix for the auto-unbind. Doing that though would mean that thunderbolt volley looks a lot worse, and unleash thy hatred is probably the best as a holy command. Note here that both cases basically boils down to grabbing a shooting unit and a relictor. If you would rather run tempestors rather than judicators/vanguard raptors - go for it. Castigators? Sure, why not. Crossbow judicators? Go for it. Ballista's... I supposed they work. As for non-shooting, liberators are nice because they are cheap, but if you want to run vindictors, you can do that. But you just need something that can sit on objectives while your annihilators go on the offense.

In tempest eye, you have +1 save turn 1. You can also mystic shield and all out defense. After that... You are basically done with defensive buffs. As for wards, bless and luminark are the only wards available in tempest eye. However, you CAN run settlers gain if you aren't elf averse, and get access to protection of teclis for a 5+ ward. Remember that his affects all friendlies, not just lumineth. Whether teclis is worth running to get that is a completely separate story.

Hammerers don't see play for 3 reasons. First, let's go over what they can do for you They can actually be the highest damage melee unit in the cities. Without any buffs, they can be a bit underwhelming, with a squad doing only 11.67 damage on average. However, they can get +1 to hit, +1 attacks on a target, reroll 1's to wound, +1 rend, and mortals on 6's to hit in addition. City specific can give them +1 to wound, or +1 attacks (again). With the +1 to wound buff, you can get a squad of 10 of these guys up to a max of 35.3 damage. Literally triple their base output. More importantly, they can dish out an average of 22.5 to a 2+ save. So why don't they get used? First off, they are slow. 4" move means that even in tempest eye, they won't be able to get to the opponents territory till turn 3 at the earliest. This means that they (massively) suffer from the gotten effect - your opponent just walks away from them if they don't want to engage. Secondly, they are squishy. 10 wounds on a 4+, especially on such a dangerous hammer unit is really hard to justify. If your opponent has any shooting, it is going to be trivial for them to shoot them off, and as a target they are asking for it - especially mortal wound shooting. Third, they require a lot of buff pieces. Longbeards for the reroll 1's to wound, a runelord or two for curse/+1 rend, a warden king for +1 attacks, a hurricanum or command point for +1 to hit, a spell for +1 to wound or +1 attacks. These are a lot of disparate pieces that you have to pay points for and bring together to make this all happen, which means you are putting a LOT of points into making a package that struggles to get an engagement to function at it's max. If they could reliably get to a target and kill it, they might be worth their points. But being unable to reliably survive to get into range, and reliably choose their engagement, and needing so many support pieces to function, they tend not to make up their points. Especially when you can just run irondrakes instead.

Tell me - have you actually tried this yourself before you started spouting nonsense? Go ahead and try to put the list together. We'll wait. What's that? You ran out of points before you could even add in the paladins? 🤔Hmm... maybe someone has already tried doing this, and discovered it doesn't really work. Oh well, lets take out one of the known good units and stick the paladins in anwyays. Hey, wait, I failed to make my charge (you know, because a 9" re-rollable is only 50% likely). And then my opponent dared to just... walk away from me. Not even walk away fast, just walk away. And then he shot my paladins off. What could I have done to do this better? Oh, I know - take annihilators, because a 7" re-rollable charge is 75% likely to happen instead of 50% likely to happen, AND they at least do something even if they fail their charge. Hmm... lets try just walking them up the board next game. Wait, I spent 200+ points on a unit that... did exactly nothing, got charged, and then died because my opponent swung first? Or died because they casually got shot off the board? Or just did nothing because my opponent just... casually sauntered away? 🤔How odd... if only someone could have told me to expect such a thing to happen. What if I just sit on an objective and force my opponent to come to me? That ought to work, right? Wait a second, you have a monster toeing the far back edge of the objective? How will I ever take this from you now? There is a reason why you haven't seen many battle reports fielding paladins. There have been a few, mostly near the launch of the book. There have been a lot of people who experimented with paladins, mostly before the FAQ removed the move after teleport. And even then, paladins were suffering and failing to perform better than the alternatives. It is almost like people have tried this before, and then shared their results. But of course, that doesn't fit into your narrative, so you conveniently ignore it in favor of telling people to keep beating that dead horse and maybe this time gold will come out.

Ahh, yes, the person who sees that 1-2 decent stormcast lists exists and assume that makes everyone happy. Can't have a thread without them. Are stormcast players salty that their army isn't the most broken thing imaginable? No. Are stormcast players salty that 3/4 of their units aren't worth bringing? Yes. If you want to play stormcast competitively, you can run Liberators, Fulminators, Annihilators, Vanguard Raptors, Stormdrake Guard, Gardus, Knight-Draconis, Knight-Incantor, Knight-Judicator, Lord-Relictor, Lord-Imperitant, and the Lord-Arcanum on Taurelion. Some questionable picks include Celestant Prime, Bastian, Yndrasta, Vindictors, and Judicators (with Skybolt Bows). That is 17 units that are at least questionably worth bringing. There are 79 warscrolls. Let me repeat that. THERE ARE 79 WARSCROLLS (not counting endless spells). 17/79 is 21%. That means that 79% of the warscrolls in the book, 79% of the models that people have AREN'T WORTH BRINGING. Stormcast players don't want their army to be broken. Stormcast want some of those 62 warscrolls to be playable. Does move after teleport actually help any of the units above? Fulminators, sure, though not really in a way that makes them a ton more powerful than they already are. Anything else, probably not. But it does make evocators and paladins playable. What about Gardus's +3" charge ability? That would make other paladins and evocator units worth playing over annihilators, or be able to play annihilators without paying the Imperitant tax. Bring back the Heraldor's ability to give a unit run+charge, and you make paladins potentially playable, and open up other dracothian guard for playability. Adjust coherency to be 1-6 models in the unit and Evocators on Dracolines become viable, and Vanguard-Pallidors might be worth at least considering. Do just some of those and we can jump from 21% of warscrolls being viable to 50% being viable - that is still a great improvement. But noooooo. Stormcast are "Fine". Just like they were "fine" in 2nd edition because they had a single army that could, if played well, take an army 3-2 in a tournament. After all, that is about where they should be sitting at again, right?