vinnyt

Overwhelming hype for 2x40 clanrats that can be save stacked to a 4+ and rally themselves as well as 10 stormvermin to bodyguard warlock engineers. I'm not sure if I can justify running 30 stormvermin anymore with the 1" reach and points hike, but 10 little bodyguarding rats for synergy pieces in this super fun shooting meta seems like it may have a place.

I mean, my vault wars list is finalized and I think it's pretty good. Battle report vs tournament Fyreslayers: https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=475196794396454&set=a.475213887728078 Basically it's King, Caster general with tideflip and bonus boat, 2x10 thralls, 1x10 reavers, Ancient Tortle, 2x2 sharks. Sharks and turtle are in hunters and rest is batreg. Very solid TAC list that solves the tempo issue I was having with the army and doesn't lose a huge amount of output if the king goes down. I don't really have to care about being double turned because I asf on turn 2 which kind of dissuades my opponent from taking the double there. It's got a lot of shooting and a ridiculous amount of mobility. Tidecaster has steed of tides which lets me pretty much yeet the boat wherever I want if it goes off. Still think the list struggles against 1+ saves, but overall I think I can definitely go 3-2 and hopefully go 4-1. Unfortunately I won't have time to get in any practice games beforehand which is super annoying but I've played this army a lot so feel fairly comfortable with it.

Alrighty, here's my latest attempt at some lists after getting in a few more reps with the book. I still believe nautilar is the best enclave for how I like to play the game. Akhelian King w/ Polearm Tidecaster general w/ tideflip and bonus boat 10 Thralls 10 Thralls 10 Reavers Ancient Tortle (Hunters) 2x2 Sharks (Hunters) Rest is in battle regiment as a 4 drop army. Flipping the tides is super cool, not necessarily because you get to fight first in combat (although that is super cool), but also because it basically forces opponents to stay out of combat with you. Nobody wants to charge 2 sharks that always fight first and can unleash hell. Which means that I get another entire shooting round out of them without having to worry about losing output before high tide comes around. Granted, I have to forsake the blender king to do this, but the amount of times he died to chip damage was getting annoying. He still hits pretty hard with the polearm and lets me keep the high tide effect rolling onwards in turn 1 (if a good opportunity presents itself) or turn 3. I've always been a fan of bonus boat and I'm still a fan of bonus boat. As for the ever-delightful deepkin shooting, this list packs 34 reaver equivalents, which is a moderate amount, but hopefully sufficient to ruin some days at range. 20 Thralls to screen and asf in turn 2 is fairly spicy, as they'll be quite defensible in turn 1. Reavers do reaver things. Now, if you want to embrace the skew/are playing against nurgle where combat is less than ideal and there aren't many monsters about... Polearm King Tidecaster with tide flip and bonus boat Ancient Tortle 2x10 reavers 2x2 sharks Lifeswarm This list brings the shots. 44 reaver equivalents will put in WORK and the lifeswarm can heal the tortle/sharks/return models to the reavers. You can also hide the reavers in boats to make them tougher to take out. Meanwhile, the core of the list is really 2x2 sharks and the ancient tortle. This army is a 1 drop because either I get to perform a reasonable alpha strike with shooting while not worrying so much about being doubled since I asf in turn 2, or I choose to go second, still shoot a lot, and then my opponent has to contend with possibly being doubled and absorbing 88ish reavers worth of shooting before 4 sharks and a nautilar leviadon hit them in combat. I'll be testing these lists out on saturday against some competitive tournament lists to see how they do!

@DocKeule that is an extremely good list. I think you're really going to like it!

First 5-0 result!! Sydney GT!! Took a little over a month for someone to go 5-0 with the new book but there it is! I'm sure AoS Coach/THW is gonna have him on to talk about it real soon and I can't wait to hear about his thoughts behind the list! Beat 3 SCE, 1 troggherd, and even a drowned man nurgle (with GUO)!!!

I mean, off the cuff, just take my favorite nautilar list. It'll do the trick. King w/tome Lotann (swap for soulrender if you don't have the model) Ancient Tortle 20 Reavers 10 Thralls 2 harpoon sharks 2 harpoon sharks 44 reaver equivalents of shooting and 4 excellent hammers in the king, tortle, and shark units. It's a one drop, your opponent goes first, and then you light them up before slamming them in melee. Reavers will die but cause horrendous damage and then you mop up with the hammers. It's a fast, brutal list that rampages through a lot of armies. Still struggles against oops all dragons and nurgle but that's how it goes.

ummm... ok yeah exactly. It's not that super great. Here's how to beat KO in like 3 easy steps. Step 1: Take blender king and 1 shark Step 2: carefully charge the ironclad with both of them, ensuring the wee sacrificial shark ends the charge move closer to the boat. At this point the shark will be murdered by the unleash hell/last word Step 3: King pops lord of the tides and erases the ironclad with consummate ease because there is likely 3-4 units in the boat as well as the boat itself so the king is going nuts with roughly 11-15 attacks at 2/2/-3/3 damage plus all his other attacks. That's it, that's how you immediately beat KO. It's really not a challenging matchup (outside of the SDG/WLV variant) How to beat demon heavy armies. Shoot them to death immediately ASAP they absolutely need to be shot to death. Specifically, Belakor and Kairos gotta go first and then just touch the other stuff with sharks/tortle and watch it disappear. This is easier said than done but it's absolutely possible. Nurgle is a stupid brutal matchup. Not really sure how we deal with the fly bum rush. Maybe a thicc thrall screen with soulrender in morphann to try and outheal them while shooting everything else to death? Very very tough opponent.

I think the shark list actually does quite alright in the shooting meta. You can pretty reliably drip feed any shooty death star single sharks while removing the rest of your opponent's army. The dirty deepkin secret is that pretty much all our units immediately die to shooting so it's all about ensuring that low-value targets are the closest unit to any big scary shooting block. Since we tend to be a low unit army, this can get tricky in the mid-late game as stuff starts to die. Single sharks are fantastic for this since they're individually pretty good at shooting/cc, easy to manuever, excellent for eating unleash hell, and can always threaten vulnerable small units. Basically that block of 15 judicators is gonna shoot something. What's it gonna be? Thralls aren't fast enough to reliably be the closest target.

they're excellent little backfield objective holders that can easily sprint up the board to score savage spearhead/kill vulnerable characters/swipe unguarded objective. They've got excellent reach on their shooting and can zone out cheeky deepstrikes. They require actual investment by your opponent to kill and function at 100% capacity after taking 7 wounds. They serve a very very different purpose than the fat units of 3 but aren't without value.

Yeah, KO is a super favorable matchup for us in general so long as you avoid/play around the WLV/SDG wombo combo they can randomly bring.

You don't lose levels until the BS phase. Incarnate charges, eats an arbitrary number of MW from unleash hell. Kills a dragon, now level 3. Goes to level 2 during BS phase. Dragons can't retreat out of combat. Incarnate eats an arbitrary number of wounds, kills a dragon, goes to level 3. Goes to level 2 during BS phase. Rinse and Repeat. And even if you fail to kill a dragon in one combat phase, you still get a second chance to do so since you'll just bounce between levels 1 and 2 instead of 2 and 3.

Incarnate is excellent in deepkin, imo. It almost single-handedly solves our problem with the oops-all-dragons army lists you see everywhere. Chuck it into a unit of 4 and watch as it never dies and kills the unit over a couple phases. Or chuck it into characters. Or chuck it into any big beasty. It's an extremely flexible little addition that I think really shines in Ionrach. Just gotta be careful to not accidentally trap your morrsarr in combat but that's not too tough to manage. And @That Guy is correct. The bonded hero dying is basically only a minor inconvenience since you can absolutely line it up against whatever target you want. 12" move. rr runs, and rr charges is plenty of mobility. Oh, you're absolutely going to see it everywhere because 3 gatebreakers and the incarnate is 1975 points and simply S L A P S people.

Don't forget Indystorm, where IDK went 4-0-1 and got 2nd place with the following Fuethan list: Blender King Tidecaster Scinari Loreseeker!!! 20 Thralls 10 Thralls 3x2 Sharks A 4-1 Ionrach list was: Caster with reverse tides King Volturnos 20 Thralls 10 Thralls 10 Reavers 6 Morrsarr 2 Sharks So it seems like sharks are doing juuuust fine. Super happy about the variety of lists we're seeing do well and it seems like there's still a lot of design space to explore!

it's a huge priority for all deepkin armies because being doubled just melts us and if we double someone that's basically a free win*. I cannot stress enough how much I think deepkin want to be as FEW drops as possible. And I can't really comment on a new dragon warscroll because I'm not a fancy insider or anything but rn they're insanely good in a shark build. But you absolutely don't need them. I think the shark list I proposed is pretty darn good. And yeah, a 2 drop is liiiikely ok. Big opponent one drops where you REALLY DON'T WANT TO BE DOUBLED are things like DoK (changes comin for them), teclis, IJ, and weird seraphon builds (thunderlizards pretty much perfectly counters sharks). *assuming you build your army that way which I always do specifically to cheese free wins about 40% of the time.

@Derek literally played this list last week except minus lifeswarm and plus lotann for an even 2k. It's ok but I'm of the opinion that deepkin need to be a one drop army. Making it 2x3 sharks and 1 shiver lets you do that but you lose out on board presence. If you're not a one drop, you risk being doubled and that's usually game ending for deepkin, in my experience. In fact, that's why I lost the game in which I used the 9 sharks. A similar, but likely more competitive shark-centric list would be something like: Blender King Lotann Soulrender 2x2 sharks single shark 20 reavers 2 stormdrake guard with lances 1990 points This list is a one drop, has 40 reaver equivalents of shooting (versus the 9 shark list having 36), has much more control over priority order, which is VITAL for IDK, and also has 2 SDG to provide mortal wounds and all the good stuff they do. Alternatively, you can swap the SDG for 2 additional sharks, making the configuration 3 shark, 2 shark, 2x1 shark, and 20 reavers. That gives you backfield presence, an excellent turn 1 screen, 48!!! reaver equivalents of shooting, and some decent hammers.

This weekend I'm gonna be trying out my beloved sharkpocalypse list King with unstoppable fury, arcane tome (countercurrent), voidchill darkness Tidecaster with steed of tides and bonus boat Lotann 3 Sharks with harpoons 1x3 Shiver (all with harpoons) 1x3 Shiver (all with harpoons) 2000 points (hunters of the heartland for big shark unit and 2/3 of one shiver, warlord battalion for extra artifact) This list has 36 reaver equivalents of shooting (a pretty decent amount) and 9 sharks worth of sharking people. Hopefully it has the board presence to really disrupt people and I look forward to hopefully counter-currenting a unit and then redeploying out of charge range. That would be choice. Turn 1 is likely going to be FA with the characters Turn 2 likely broken ranks/bring it down on a vulnerable target with the goal of yeeting a king and fat shark unit into something juicy Turn 3 will be broken ranks, the gloomtide one, or possibly an objective one like conquer or aggressive expansion Turn 4 will be an objective one/savage spearhead Turn 5 will again be an objective one/savage spearhead. I always try to go into games with a mental "road map" for battle tactics- when do I think my army will be able to easily achieve one vs another and how to switch the order around based on my opponent's list. Against something like nurgle, it's likely a good idea to focus on the positioning tactics like savage spearhead and AE in the super early game, giving me time to chip down vulnerable units before going for the broken ranks/other killy tactics in the mid-late game. Otherwise, against most armies, saving the mobility tactics for the late game is usually pretty safe with this style of army.

This is huge, IMO. I also like how sharks can take 7 wounds and still fly around operating at maximum capacity. It can be difficult to maximize eel frontage to get all of them engaged if you're taking 6-man units, which is kind of annoying. That being said, I'm impressed with the ishlaen damage- will have to try them out one of these days. I've always been pretty frustrated by morsarr. Always seems like they charge in, do some decent but not outstanding damage, and then die in my opponent's turn. This sort of comparison is also why I really like the points efficiency metric (number of points spent per wound caused- lower is better). This is for the unbuffed profiles. Sharks Combined: 39.4, 27.75, 21.4, 17.4, 15.7 Ishlaen: 47.85, 31.9, 23.9, 19.14, 15.95 Morrsarr Charging: 35.1, 24.84, 19.2, 15.67, 14.15 Morrsarr NOT Charging: 61.9, 39.27, 28.76, 22.69, 18.74 So really, if you look at this, sharks are more EFFICIENT damage dealers than eels (except for the charging morrsarr). It's pretty close though. I think 20 reavers is a super reasonable inclusion for competitive lists. Those little fellas do SO MUCH damage and punish charges like you wouldn't believe. No AoD in the charge phase means that stuff with a 3+ save charging into them takes roughly 9 wounds from the stand and shoot, and that's without a turtle buff. With the turtle buff, you're looking at more like 11. As a turn 1 castle, alpha strikes are really going to struggle to blast through the 3+*/5+ saves after eating the unleash hell, and if there's no deep alpha strike, getting a full round of shooting out of them is extremely good. I use them pretty darn aggressively (should probably walk that back a bit), but I usually get 2 full rounds of shooting, plus an unleash hell, before they die. At that point they've caused some serious damage. They're also great for holding backfield objectives, since you otherwise want to be pushing up with a lot of your army, and can be super helpful into matchups like nurgle or SCE dragons, since touching them in combat means eating mortal wounds/unleash hell.

lmao ok so I guess it's thralls, king, lotann, and maybe morrsarr. I guess in a week or two you'll add some more stuff to that list. Leviadon effects reaver shooting. Lotann effects mounts. Deepkin is definitely a super high skill ceiling army and it's gonna take a while to work out all the kinks. Losing to stormcast dragons and lumineth (that you would have won under the current ruleset) seems like a pretty reasonable result for someone piloting a high-skill army 1 month after release. Ionrach is a very techy enclave and I'm not smart enough to pilot it. @mmimzie seems to have some good advice! I haven't even tried out the thrall builds yet since I'm having way too much fun gunboating people off the table. My preferred list right now is: Nautilar King, unstoppable fury, voidchill, arcane tome Lotann 20 reavers 10 thralls Ancient leviadon 2x2 sharks with harpoons I've been finding a lot of success leaning heavily into shooting, with multiple hammers available to clean up afterwards. 20 reavers, 4 sharks, and a leviadon are about 44 "reaver equivalents", which is quite a bit. It forces opponents to really push to engage you, while the turtle, sharks, and king can all handle themselves pretty well in combat. So far I've really only struggled against a 4 Mega Garg list, and that really came down to some bad dice rolls in the end. This is a book that rewards reps and learning the army inside and out. It's not a point and click sort of tome.

Reavers are super well supported in terms of buffs though. You can heal em with the Soulrender, give them additional survivability with the turtle and faction terrain, give them better output with the turtle, make them harder to wound (or even buff their terrible cc) with the thrallmaster. You can make them wound harder (in cc) with the storm or lotann. You can outflank them with the soulscryer, they get buffed by the tides in every turn of the game, etc, etc.

I could maybe, MAYBE see some use for him with either a single fairly chunky unit of thralls or to prevent alpha strikes from erasing your reaver screens. That being said, I still think that the thrall horde build is kinda overrated. I really really really am starting to think that deepkin is gonna be an army that wins off their shooting and then one or two surgical combats on turn 2 into 3. I don't particularly like the Sea and I REALLY don't like the Sea when he isn't the general. If he's not the gatling caster I'd much rather just have a tidecaster and more shooting. I do like the MSU morrsarr with sharks- gives you the opportunity to soften up targets with morrsarr before killing them with sharks.

Yeah, I think the all-namarti lists are a bit of a trap. They're just not fast enough to dictate ideal combats or tough enough to survive the attacks of what they want to kill.

Another day, another win for the feesh against a Fyreslayer army with 3 magmadroths, 2x10 berserkers, and some foot characters. I ran my nautilar list except swapped lotann for a soulrender to see if that might help prevent annoying chip damage against the reavers/thralls. Turns out that a Runefather and 20 hgb will murder 15 reavers no problem so didn't get to test it out. Big takeaways: 1) our shooting is incredible- turtle and 20 reavers deleted a runefather after he popped AoD on a different character. 2) Nautilar Turtle and Blender king cannot be stopped and will murder whatever they touch. Turn 2 the king will be where you need him to be and the turtle just sort of lumbers around gunboating everything to death 3) Sharks are fantastic midgame threats. They shoot for a turn, move up and shoot/charge, or shoot, shoot, charge. We don't have enough models to have units not be contributing from turn 1 onwards. Thralls were kinda disappointing but honestly having 10 around is pretty much just objectively fine. 4) We're a shooty army that fights, not a fighty army that shoots. 5) 20 reavers is a helluva screen. People really don't wanna engage it, but it does feel bad losing 340 points of models when I could be losing only 260 Haven't tried the other enclaves yet because I'm having so much fun with nautilar so won't comment on them, but I feel super comfortable saying that the Blender King is a BIG deal and that the nautilar turtle slaps exactly as hard as I thought it would. Still trying to find the shooting sweet spot. Right now I'm running 40 reaver equivalents (1 harpoon gun is roughly 4 reavers worth of output, so 20 reavers, 3 sharks, and a turtle = 40 reqs),

king gets the bonus attacks when he uses his ability since the wording is "units you picked are effected by the high tide ability from the tides of death table in addition to the blah blah". So yeah, he gets to hulk out for 3 straight combat phases. He's only got 7 wounds on a 3+ save though, so if any hgb survive his initial hits, they'll demolish him. If you spend the cp to make the hgb fight first, the way the sequencing would go is: Fight first subphase: He fights with king, you fight with hgb, he fights with 2nd unit effected by the king's ability Regular fight phase subphase: He picks first since it's his turn, then you go, etc, etc Definitely an uphill battle against IDK, but man those magmadroths can bring the hurt.

The trip tort list is pretty fun, but may have some problems against big waagh that can reliably get a very high armor save and smash the poor torts in combat. Double torts is a list I've been thinking a lot about but can't really find a configuration I like where you don't give up a lot of utility for the 2 beasties. Interested to see which list you end up going with! Let us know how the battle goes!

t's TIIIIIIMEEEE! Back from vacation and time for the feesh to terrorize my friends! Nautilar Enclave Akhelian King w/ polearm, unstoppable fury, voidchill darkness Tidecaster with Rune of bonus boat and countercurrent Lotann Tortle with Ancient 20 Reavers 10 Thralls 2 sharks w/ harpoons 1 shark w/ harpoon 1980 points, GS is keep battleline alive, triumph is +1 wound My opponent brought a new and improved annihilator themed list to reflect that raptors are now walking point bags. Relictor with tome Shooty boi with mirror shield? Imperitant 2x3 grandhammers 1x3 shield annihilators 10 Judicators with the bows 5 judicators with the crossbows 5 Vindictors 3 aetherwings Also 1980 points lmao. Pretty much everything is in hunters. We roll up Feral Foray and here is the terrain! This is gonna be a fairly even matchup, he's got a lot of chip mortal wounds with the judicators, annihilator drops, and the shooty guy whose name I forget. I also have way fewer models than I would like and he can dictate the tempo with his deepstrikes. However, I have a shocking amount of shooting and speed so can probably get to where I need to go. I deploy my single drop in a nice castle where all the auras are nice and tight. He deploys in the corner since he can pretty much go wherever he wants with translocate and deepstrike. Ignore the boltstorm guys in the bottom right- they're actually deployed in the forest area. I give him first turn. We both fail to get command points and he ferocious advances stuff nobody cares about. Mystic shield goes up on the xbow guys and he flings them in front of the reavers to shoot them before they shoot him. Big bow guys puts 3 MW on the turtle and a smattering of wounds around my backfield. RUDE. Boltstorms shoot off a few more reavers. Annihilators fail their 7+ rerollable charge (honestly wouldn't have been the end of the world since 12ish reavers unleashing hell is pretty darn spooky). But, them's the breaks and the turn ends with him scoring 4 points (BT, hold 1, hold 2) Score is 0-4 SCE Time to CRUNCH Hero phase sees me fail to get a CP, but successfully riptide the annihilators for 1 MW. I rally back one reaver. BT is ferocious advance on my 3 characters. I pull the ol' Deepkin switcheroo and bring the sharks around to help support the right flank and threaten a deep turn 2 charge while keeping them safe from grandhammers. I chuck down a boat to stop annihilators getting into my King (which is why the boat artifact is great). Shooting isn't great but I kill 4.5/5 crossbow guys while the annihilators take no damage due to AoD. I didn't want to kill the last judicator since I needed him to cheese a cheeky reaver charge and also possibly get a free Broken Ranks w/ monster next turn. Charging sees me get the tortle and reavers into combat. The reavers charge in to expand further out of my deployment zone and ensure that grandhammers can't come down and threaten my squishy backfield/stop me from threatening his objectives. Tortle kills the 3 annihilators and the reavers do nothing. I also score 4 points and it's 4-4 going into turn 2. I win priority but give it to him since there's nothing I really need to do right now. I need him to bring in more guys for me to kill. He declares conquer on the back left objective and translocates 5 vindictors back there. I made a mistake not having 5 thralls camp there so that one's on me He brings down 3 grandhammers and the skybolt judicators after running the gryph hounds and aetherwings over to provide some measure of screen. Shooting is brutal and all the reavers die. He makes his 8" charge with the grandhammers into the turtle and does 6!! MW off the impact hits. That plus 2 MW for them coming in means the tort is a-hurtin. I stand and shoot with the shark but only do 2 wounds. Uh-oh. The remaining judicator charged the turtle first so I couldn't stand and shoot with him. Combat comes and the grandhammers can't quite get it done as I save 5/6 4+ saves and the turtle lives with 2 wounds remaining! The turtle then immediately kills the grandhammers and dies to their explosion!!! RIP sweet tortle. He scores 6 points (hold 1, hold 2, hold more, monster kill, battle tactic). Score is 10-4 going into deepkin turn 2. Time for ZOOOOOOM. I declare conquuer on my bottom right objective for easy points. I cast mystic shield on the sharks and run the sharks and king up the board as fast as they can with the hopes of eating the unleash hell with a wounded shark. Thralls move onto the objective but don't feel like trying to fight the invictors since my armor butter and they're in cover. No shooting. The wounded shark fails the charge. The 2 man shark unit baaaarely makes the charge which means the king is gonna have to eat some standing and shooting. The king rolls a big money 11" though, so he makes it in and only a few judicators get to unleash hell on him. He takes 5 wounds from the unleash hell though. I then pop his ability so he gets to fight first, and then the sharks get to go first in the regular priority combat. The King kills everything. By like a lot. I get 9 polearm attacks at 2/2/-3/3 and then other attacks too. He kills the relictor and the 10 man judicator squad not even breaking a sweat. The sharks then kill the aetherwings and gryph hounds, taking 3 MW from explosions. Oh also lotann charges and kills the last crossbow judicator (8 attacks at 3/3/-1/1 is preeeetty good) End of the turn, I score 5 points (1, 2, more, battle tactic). Score is 9-10 until I win priority for turn 3 and we call the game. I would have used the wounded shark to eat unleash hell from his big bow guy and then killed all his characters, leaving him with 5 vindictors on 1 objective and 3 grandhammers in the sky and me with characters who can get to any objective and burn them. DEEPKIN WIN Will it blend? YES. Man, did I feel the lower model count. Every loss was real bad and I needed every last bit of output against my opponent. This game is a bit of an unusual one in that I'm playing a much faster list than mine, and the amount of deepstriking meant I couldn't be too aggressive. The Nautilar turtle is insane and just an absolute TRUCK. Chip MW will get it killed though, which is what happened here. Granted, it killed 2 full annihilator units on its own so it's definitely a staple for me. Blender king is obvious MVP. Absolutely insane what he can do but you really gotta be careful about unleash hell. 7 wounds is NOT a lot and I was 1 wound away from being just super sad. He'll kill anything though so that's nice. Reavers gonna reave. Not really sure how I could have done anything better with them. Something was gonna get shot and better them than the other stuff in my list. Output is good, but not great. I think 20 is around the sweet spot though, 30 is just kind of expensive and they die real fast, even with the defensive buffs. Lotann and Thralls... kinda underwhelming. Thralls die as fast as reavers and can't shoot. They're also super slow compared to everything else and can't can open very well. I have a TON of shooting for 4+ish save things and thralls really only bring some light screening to the table. Lotann is amazing but just sort of slow. I'm still gonna use him though, since he makes the initial castle absolutely impregnable. His tide shenanigans was irrelevant this game and it's hard to see how I'm gonna abuse that mechanic much since games are super quick. Sharks didn't really get a fair shake this match. They do shoot pretty well though, and that's the key. Overall, this seems like a mobile shooty army that can fight rather than a mobile fighty army that can shoot. A great game that ended in a similar matter to many many deepkin games with the old book.