vinnyt

poor eidolon. Maybe good with Morrsarr? Hello volturnos with 4 attacks at 2/3/-2/3 ignoring spells on a 3+ and juicing high tide sharks/turtles. Plus he's the magic wound number for cover and turtle. They're really making sure that we can't do as much damage in close combat and also at range. Hopefully we get to cheat high tide somehow.

meh, i don't think my takes are earth-shattering and I don't share the doom and gloom mentality regarding the changes. I'm excited for the design space that's been opened up and think there are some strong lists waiting to be discovered. Nothing that I've seen has made me think our place in the meta has shifted much and I love the scoot-n-shoot style that seems to be promoted in the new book.

Deepkin has always been a bit of a bully army where you'll steamroll people who aren't prepared for what they can do but struggles against stuff that can hit back after the initial impact. I really don't see that changing with the new book (assuming the rumors are relatively true) but I've been hearing the same rumors over and over from different sources enough to start to believe 'em. I think the 30 thralls, thrallmaster, turtle, and reavers composition is a bit of a trap, even with thralls fighting twice. 30 thralls, thrallmaster, and turtle are probably going to be nearly 1100 points. Once you add in the 20 reavers you're at 1440ish and then you'll probably want to take a tidecaster and at least one other hero (possibly eidolon) which will take you to 2000. Thralls are pretty much the epitome of a glass hammer, but with the -1 to wound in cc and the turn 1 relative unshootability, may be able to cause a bunch of ruckus. Overall, ishlaen with an ethereal 4+ at 200 points is a pretty substantial nerf, especially considering how relatively easy it is to save stack on stuff like sharks and namarti. The turtle at 555 seems overcosted without some serious warscroll adjustments. 8 shots at -1 rend d3 damage and battleline is super interesting though and will be a great skew build against armies that can't reliably deal with tortles. Half your army in 2 16 wound models with no ward save is a big problem though. Sharks are sharks. I like em but can see why others don't. I think I'll still try real hard to make em work in the mobile castle approach since they're still our most efficient overall damage dealers, especially considering points increases on other stuff. The fuethan singles battalion is pretty much garbage without any additional benefits, but I do love me some battleline sharks. Reavers are great and I think at least 10 are gonna be required in almost every list. I'm also real interested in Dhom-Hain. Considering the prevalence of monsters, there could be some real shenanigans here. From a purely competitive standpoint, I'm looking at how do deepkin stack up against the current Big Bads: point of clarification: when i talk about the thrall blob, I assume they're at a functional 3+ save and -1 to wound in cc. SCE/Living cities since they're basically the same: Dragons: Massed -1 rend shooting is pretty good against dragons since you'll be putting them on a 4+ save. However, they're faster than us, hit harder than us, and live longer than us with a 3+. Nothing we have can rip through a unit of 4 without being absolutely mangled in response and 4 breath attacks as a stand and shoot will immediately nuke a turtle who, without rerolls, is much less of a threat than before. 30 thralls on a 3+* save at -1 to wound will lose about 16 before shooting/being dragged into hte storm. On average, the unit is basically dead if you take those into account. You'll need to chip the dragons down with a bunch of shooting and will have 1 turn to do so. They don't bracket and unleash hell from 10 reavers on average won't kill a dragon which means you need to get at least a full round of concentrated fire into them before they erase whatever they touch. Fulminators: Similar to dragons. They'll kill the 30 man thrall block instantly on the charge. You can probably throw a turtle or some sharks in there afterwards to hurt em bad, but the -2 rend on the mounts is real troublesome for deepkin. They're more vulnerable to stand and shoot though, and you can probably chip them down more reliably than the dragons (unless they start off the board) Grandhammer annihilators: These guys are the turtle crunchers. They remove turtles. After the deepstrike MW, the impact hit MW, and the hammer attacks, 3 of them can remove a turtle in one go. All out defense will probably save the turtle, as a 1+ save is huge, but otherwise you're in huge trouble. Stand and shoot/thralls can put in a lot of work here, and these guys are probably the least impactful of the SCE Big Scaries besides.... Raptors: We will have little to no problem with these because we will shoot them and they can't shoot us. Or they stay in the sky and we get to play 2000 points vs 1500 points for a couple turns and they can't double tap the turn they come down. This is the rock to our paper. Sons of Behemat So, do we pass the damage check? Honestly, we probably do. Our massed shooting is pretty reliable and we're mobile enough to be able to focus on the non-finest hour'd megas. However, there's an elephant in the room and his name is: Kragnos: This guy is a PROBLEM. Easily put at a 1+ save which makes massed -1 rend shooting nearly worthless, he also bubbles out mortal wounds if injured which we DO NOT LIKE. He crunches turtles immediately on the charge and his charge 3d6 bubble is a big big issue considering how hard we wanna play keep away. If the sons player can yeet a gatebreaker into the thrall blob, he'll likely kill about 20 (if he pops the correct buffs/uses manticore venom). Sure there'll be some damage back, but he'll cut right through em in the next combat phase. That being said, the remaining thralls will do a number on the gatebreaker. Kragnos just kills the thralls for minimal return damage. This army will still be a challenge because we need to one shot the giants without losing output and all they have to do is survive or get a couple favorable engagements. Seraphon Tough matchup but actually fairly do-able. They've got the usual bag of salamander related tricks but we're great against shooting and sharks don't care about d3 mortal wounds sprinkled about. Namarti and turtles absolutely do though, so watch out because that thrallmaster dying to incidental MW means that the thrall brick is super exposed. But, -1 rend shooting is excellent and you should be able to pincushion most things in that army and shark/thrall the big dinos to death. SBG Hoooo boy ok so this one is kinda tough to discuss because I a) don't have a lot of experience against them and b) there's a lot of variation in what they can bring. I'm gonna look at the LVO classic list first since that's the one you're probably gonna see a lot of: Zombies and friends: Thralls will put in work here. Unfortunately they're also probably gonna die in doing so but that's just how it goes. This is not the most ideal of matchups but with focused fire and charges, you should be able to rip through a 60 man horde no problemo. Just remember to kill the characters with shooting first, screen out the backfield with reavers for the 10 man skellie deepstrike, and shoot the characters first. This is gonna be the sort of game where a double turn into turn 2 or 3 will be unimaginably huge. The mega gargant is a problem but the characters have to die ASAP. Try to avoid the mega for as long as possible until you're in high tide or get a double turn. Not a favorable matchup in most scenarios. M-m-m-monster mash: Actually this isn't so bad for us. Kill the vengorian lords of -1 wound crip ****** with shooting and then do deepkin things on all the monsters. Thralls are pretty excellent here. Lumineth/DoK Same army, different day. Now we have better shooting! I'm still not that scared of lumineth. Teclis is pretty spooky but also a huge chunk of their army and now easier than ever to shoot/kill. Daughters of Khaine also fall into this category of "chip morathi down with a single unit of reavers every turn while erasing their shooting from behind the comfort of a juiced turn 1 tide" Ironjawz Sooooo, these guys are still a bit tricky considering their movement and damage. Honestly, this is definitely a matchup where the FAT thrall brick will be phenomenal. Also, and I know I'm a broken record, but -1 rend shooting on the pigs is how you just remove them. Everyone always focuses on the mawkrusha, but pigs win games. Kill them early and then capture every objective while the cabbage kills one unit a turn. Nurgle Baaaaad matchup. Real bad matchup. Horrifically bad matchup. This army has all the stuff that nukes us. They don't care about shooting. They're unbelievably survivable. They chip mortal wounds like it's nothing and they do so in EVERY turn. They're actually pretty fast and have deepstrike/outflanking. This army is just BAD for us to play into. Also they heal constantly so chipping wounds onto them with shooting is not great. They can easily kill the thrallmaster without even trying, tank the turtle and chip it to death with contagion, summon a hero that stops the thralls piling in and subsequently rip the thralls to death with blightkings/flies. Also the contagion table can also just stop thralls piling in. Conclusions: Now this may be a bit premature without the entire codex in front of us, and maybe dhom hain is something unbelievably juicy, but all in all, the new tome doesn't seem to elevate us to the same level as the SCE/nurgle books. Nothing we have can match dragons/fulminators, we still don't have reliable access to mortal wounds outside of morrsarr, everything got more expensive so incidental damage hurts even more, and our NET output didn't meaningfully increase. We also lost rerolls and tide reversals which is an enormous downgrade. THAT BEING SAID, I am a huge fan of the new options available to us. There are absolutely some big picture builds that may become even more competitive with artefacts/command traits (plz keep cloud of midnight). I assume our magic will remain pretty poor since that seems to be a pretty consistent design decision for the deepkin. If not though, I'd love to get my Aspect of the Sea off the shelf. We will continue to bully stuff like kruleboyz and those people who take like 12 raptors, so should have no problem getting some pretty solid tournament results. Reavers go brrrrt and thralls can be pretty deadly if the stars align. Plus I can take my beloved sharks as battleline and that's really all I ever wanted. Super juicing each tide is also just an incredibly cool mechanic so shout out to gw for that. Not everyone gets to be stormcast and deepkin are probably gonna be a pretty mid-skill floor/high skill ceiling army. The NPE is gonna be real with the shooting castle though, so I expect people are gonna rage at me about that if it ends up being super good and I can do something like: Eidolon, King, 8 sharks or 6 sharks/20 reavers. I'll be posting batreps here and on my fb page as usual so am looking forward to workshopping builds with y'all.

I mean, this is a pretty big blow but is still think vinnys moving castle of: Eidolon King Tidecaster* 3x2 sharks 2x10 reavers May be bretty good Can lose the tidecaster or even, gasp, a shark if you have to. Play keepaway and just gun everything down with your whole army shooting at 2s/2s/-1/1 or d3 damage for the first 2 turns and then full send round 3 with 6 sharks into whatever is left. You're immune to shooting on round 1 since you'll juice that tide and with insane shark mobility and dakka, you can pretty much just gun down whatever strikes your fancy. This list also ruins the reaver mirror match since you can just move within 12" and erase reaver units without eating unleash hell. Speaking of which, unleashing hell if somone wants to charge the sharks will also be 2/2/-1/1 with 20 shots and that'll also turn on the shark chomps. Don't need to worry about cover because you're not targetable outside of 12" on turn 1. And a nearly 600 point turtle that dies just as fast as ever and only has the ranged output of 2 sharks seems like a lot.

Great report! Congrats on the win!

If there's no additional benefit to taking that formation beyond the exploding bites, I'm not a huge fan, especially since Fuethan unlocks all sharks as battleline and not just the shiver. But, as usual, we're gonna have to see a TON more of the rules to get a complete picture. I will say, I'm super excited that this isn't just an auto-take obviously busted formation and that there might be *gasp* actual choices to make when constructing lists.

Other thing to consider is that a named formation might include a discount like the Rotbringer Coven or whatever in Nurgle. 3 single battleline sharks for like 140 each instead of 165 would be a very interesting wrinkle depending on how the rest of the units are pointed.

yes, especially when they get to go twice without any meaningful interaction from your opponent. The other big problem with the double turn, especially with turn 1 into 2, is that you get to either double down on the tempo in turn 3 by going first, or get the added bonus of burning an objective by going second if your opponent gets the "catch-up double"

He's mostly there just for the 12" bubble of akhelian reroll ones to hit which is an innate ability. I miiiiight make him the general if I don't find that rerolling runs/charges on the eidolon is worth it, but anything that saves me command points is extremely helpful since IDK tend to be a pretty CP hungry army, in my experience.

@That Guy Something to consider is that I'm not sure reversing the tides in a new shark build is necessarily the ideal play for fuethan (I know, absolute heresy). You really want to get the most out of their shooting initially, and then commit them wherever you want. I'm extremely intrigued by the double thrallmaster 2x20 thrall list and definitely would like to see how that turns out without a turtle. Offensive thralls really don't like reversed tides, since the cover save turn 1 is super duper helpful for em. 20 is also getting a little bit close to the danger zone of thralls where you're gonna have to commit a lot of resources to saving them if they take a fair amount of damage. 5+ save and 1 wound on infantry is just rough without a cooked in ward save. The -1 to wound in combat is huge but also limits your speed a bit. Remember to not pile in outside of your bubble or you're gonna be super sad. @DocKeule What turns me off of the namarti spam list is stuff like what just happened at LVO. 4 fulminators with 30 xbows are gonna evaporate basically any number of thralls. There's definitely space for reavers to put in some excellent work, but thralls are one of those things where they're gonna be super good in some matchups, but at the end of the day, you're getting 30 infantry wounds with a 5+ base save. They'll do quite a bit of damage, but there's a reason that grave guard spam builds aren't hitting top tables. Since it looks like our new book is TBD, I've been fiddling with some lists and came up with: Vinny's Moving Castle mk 1: Fuethan Storm eidolon general with Cloud and reroll charge/runs Akhelian King w/-1 to hit mount trait 2x10 thralls 1x10 reavers 3x2 sharks with the brrt brrt King is there to bubble out the rerolls for sharks on turns 1 and 3. This list pretty much starts as a bubble and then quickly redeploys wherever it needs to go. It's gonna struggle mightily against stuff like nurgle, but honestly that's a pretty brutal matchup for us rn. It should do ok against dragon spam and is a very good counter to the annihilator build that got T4 at LVO since stand and shoot from the sharks/reavers will cripple an annihilator unit while the sharks can remove raptors. Possibility here is to swap reavers for thralls and switch the king to Volturnos for the Big Bubble of Buffs. or Vinny's Moving Castle mk 2: Fuethan Storm eidolon general with Cloud Akhelian King general w/-1 to hit mount trait and reroll run/charges 2x3 Ishlaen 1x10 thralls 3x2 sharks with the brrt brrt Very similar to the last list, but much more mobile and with screens that can tank more. Since I'm not flipping tides, the Ishlaen are gonna be at a 3+ unrendable on turn 1, and with lengthwise deployment, will still be able to screen the shark battery. Unfortunately this list HATES dragons and dealing with them is gonna be the Meta Question for the foreseeable future. Wondering if anyone has had any experience with the new rules against Dragons and/or Nurgle. Work has been out of control recently so haven't been able to get any games in

I've been really enjoying that list right now and will for sure be trying it out with the new book. Sharks being battleline would open up a lot of interesting lines of play and I think that 2 ishlaen, storm eidolon, and then sharks would be a very interesting list to test This has a lot of potential, but I worry about too many resources being devoted to protecting squishy foot characters. 20-30 thralls with thrallmaster is 370-500 points, which is pretty darn good but I might hedge on a single unit of 20 with the thrallmaster as sort of a baseline before seeing the rest of the changes.

Old reavers- 30 shots, 4/4/-/1 New reavers 20 shots, 2/3/-1/1 Expected output: Old reavers- 1.25/2.5/3.75/5/6.25 (against 2+/3+/4+/5+/6+ saves) Expected output: New reavers- 3.7/5.56/7.41/9.26/11.1 Damage efficiency- Old reavers at 115 points- 92/46/30.7/23/18.4 Damage efficiency- New reavers at 170 points- 46/30.6/22.9/18.35/15.3 New reavers are objectively better and more efficient at short range across all save values and it's not even close. I seriously have no idea how you are doing math but I would really advise showing your work

unironically hilarious- solid banter right there absolutely fine even though overall relative damage output is functionally identical and objectively higher on your opponents turn, only losing out when looking at the ratio of that specific scenario to points increase (relative damage vs absolute damage). My big problem with the new book discourse is that it relies entirely on unsupported anecdotal evidence. People say things like "____ is worse" without any sort of supporting evidence or worse, just making up random numbers out of nowhere or saying "the math says (subjective opinion)." I provide the actual, calculated math to demonstrate raw stats and invite people to draw their own conclusions. I do my best to not speak in subjective absolutes and instead just give information. In fact, my all-bolded conclusion wasn't that sharks are better or worse than before. Also not what I said- I said that basically new sharks are roughly as survivable (lose out on a small amount of raw relative wounds for the ability to tank more absolute wounds without losing efficiency and command themselves) and roughly as efficient (same overall relative output, but with a ranged skew which I feel is more important than losing out on relative melee output in your opponent's turn). Evaluating them in the context of a soon-to-be outdated book makes no sense to me and leads to an "SBG-esque situation". But hey, you do you and make the buff damage tables to get the numbers you want to compare. When you say stuff like "I think the increase in ranged output doesn't make up for the loss of melee efficiency", I can absolutely respect that. That's not doom and gloom, that's a reasonable take. It's just annoying to see unsupported negativity and random numbers just made up out of nowhere. "_____ are bad"- prove it, explain why you think so, support it with as much objective evidence as you can, provide examples of how and why x may be better or how y synergizes more with what you're trying to do. Just randomly spouting stuff doesn't add to the discourse or help anyone grow as a player.

you absolutely can. Look at the SBG release. Everyone was freaking out about the army being super underpowered at the end of 2.0 and then bam! New edition and it turns out that they're one of the stronger armies around! You may prefer not to, and that's fine, but speaking like you're the arbiter of pre-codex release evaluation is foolish. I'm also not sure how you can look at the actual honest-to-god math and complain that reavers are a wash at best. I would love to see your analysis. Yes, which is why complaining about something being worse is premature. Just like how I'm not saying that sharks are the greatest unit to ever grace the table or are guaranteed meta picks. In fact, all I say is that the new sharks are roughly as damage efficient and survivable in terms of raw stats as they were previously, except now they have more shooting efficiency. However you interpret that is up to you, but the pure math is not really debatable. And if you wanna talk playing with the old book, how about you do so with the new rules and post some batreps here? I do that all the time because it turns out that most of the commonly held Deepkin axioms (turtles are mandatory, eels are mandatory) aren't true. Turns out you don't need a turtle or hordes of eels to be successful. In a crazy turn of events, actually playing games is a great way to prove your point if you're making claims regarding the viability of a unit. Hell, that lunatic who took 3 eidolons won a GT so there's clearly a lot of unseen depth (hehe) to our current book! And how often were y'all getting shark units in cover? Because I basically never did. You're not able to ever shoot at the sharks because I screen appropriately and charge with them (which removes the benefit of cover). I honestly don't think, in the 18ish games I've played with deepkin, that I've ever said to myself "man, I sure am appreciative of cover on turn one and would absolutely prefer that over reversing the tides with fuethan". In fact, you can look at the whatever number of battle reports I've posted here in detail to see exactly how I use my sharks to maximize their effectiveness. Oh, and the more (currently available) buffs you stack on the new sharks, the more insane they get since shooting is far and away the most effective form of damage in 3.0. Once you get 2srr1/2/-1/d3 damage across multiple gatling shark units, you're gonna start causing real problems across the board. And I've moved away from the turtle (in the current book) since its damage output really isn't that great (even new sharks are more damage efficient) and there are too many mortal wounds floating around the meta (nurgle just rips through the turtle). But hey, go play some games and post the reports here so we can all learn!

I would say the only background we can safely judge the changes are WITHOUT any other current rules since they're likely to change.

The rend values didn't change for any of the shark profiles so I'm just gonna skip over that part since I don't know what your mental math was for that. Can't use turtle buff for sharks without new book in theoryhammer-ville. What you can use is the fact that sharks can now issue AoD to themselves. Plus they're a better target for mystic shield, can take more damage before losing efficiency, blah blah blah Remember here that low numbers are better. It's like golf. So with that math, old sharks had 12 effective wounds at 125 points for a wound efficiency value of 10.4. New sharks have 15 effective wounds without AoD for 165 points for a wound efficiency value of 11. BUT, if AoD, they have a value of 9.9. So you either lose a minimal amount of effective wounds, or gain a minimal amount of effective wounds without needing a babysitter. Either way they're basically the same. I just value the fat bois since they appreciate mystic shield more and can tank more mortal wounds before dying. So basically new sharks are roughly as survivable and roughly as efficient as before, just with a more ranged skew to their output, which I value extremely highly. If turtle keeps the exact same save buff, then the math changes. But as of now, the turtle doesn't exist in new book theoryhammer-topia.

They're comparatively worse in the opponent's combat phase but objectively better than before. And as for my tone, sometimes things get lost in translation online, and apologize for any offense, My frustration is not with disagreement over subjective things, but rather things like "worse at everything" where new players may be disheartened. Just expecting everything to be 32% better is a very reductive look at an extremely dynamic game. My assessment of sharks is very subjective (which I pointed out time and time again), but overall, to me, them surviving a codex change with unchanged damage efficiency and a more range-skewed overall profile is an enormous boon. Will they be meta? Nobody knows, the book isn't out yet. Are they bad? Absolutely not .Even the new 3" coherency opens up a lot of ways to control the board and I think people are gonna be very surprised at how effective that can be. In general, I'd like this entire thread to be the polar opposite of the doom and gloom stormcast one where everyone complains all the time that their army doesn't have 40 overpowered warscrolls and everything is them being persecuted by gw. There are going to be big changes to deepkin and the gut reaction is to have a strong dislike to anything that isn't an overwhelming buff. That's why the damage efficiency metric is so useful. But nothing is as helpful as playing lots and lots of games, recording them, and reporting them to the community so that we can all learn from each other.

You know you can shoot in combat if you're engaged, right? You just have to shoot the unit you're fighting. Which is probably the unit you'd like to kill. And if you kill that unit in the shooting phase, you can then charge that turn too. You don't sacrifice one for the other. What you DO get to do is split up the overall shark output between multiple targets which is VERY tasty. Oh, and now unleash hell gets actually scary if you try to charge the sharks (especially a unit of 3). Shooting output is much more valuable in Age of Sigmar than cc output and giving sharks more of the better output is a net gain. No, I think you guys just aren't understanding the math. That's why I look at the damage per point as a universal measure of damage efficiency. It helpfully lets you compare across points changes, profile changes, whatever you want. You can even split it up into melee or ranged if you want. I prefer the net damage efficiency as a measure of output in its relation to points. Old sharks combined shooting/melee: 5.63/8.3/11/13.6 for an overall damage efficiency of 44.4/30.1/22.7/18.4 New sharks: 66/45/34/27.5 in CC with a ranged efficiency of 137.5/91.6/73/55. Overall damage efficiency is: 44.6/30/23/18.3 NEW SHARKS WITH HARPOONS ARE EXACTLY AS EFFICIENT AGAINST ALL TARGETS It's crazy how that turned out, almost like GW intentionally did some very similar math... What sharks lost in melee output per point ratio they made up for in shooting output. Oh, they also have more wounds now and can command themselves, which is more difficult to quantify. I'm not discussing nets in this post because you can't really quantify the importance of stopping pile in moves, but yes, they became less efficient as a function of points. thanks! I don't plan on stopping any time soon haha. There are gonna be a lot of interesting takes with the new book so I'm just trying to get ahead of the doom and gloom.

I use the bolds and caps all the time, not just when people disagree. It helps break up the monotony of the text and draws attention to the important bits that may be overlooked if one skims through the paragraph. hmmm, clearly worse in everything... So, here's a quick recalculation of that aforementioned damage efficiency table that nobody looked at. With that in mind, the math turns out roughly as follows (data is presented as wounds through a 2+/3+/4+/5+ save) WITHOUT ANY BUFFS. We don't know what buffs exist in the new book so this is purely a statistics exercise. Again, NO BUFFS. This is a change from my other table to help level the playing field in anticipation of buff changes in the new book. Tortle does 6.1/8.6/11/13.5 for 380 in CC and at RANGE 1.2/1.8/2.4/3 Eidolon on charge does 5.3/7.4/9.6/11.7 for 330 2 Sharks with 4 bites apiece do 5/7.3/9.7/12 for 330 in CC and (if using 2 gatlings), 2.4/3.6/4.5/6 at RANGE 6 Morrsarr on the charge not using blast do 7.8/11.7/15.6/19.6 for 390 (assuming all 6 get all their attacks, which is unlikely) 6 Morrsarr not having charged and not using blast do 3/6/9/12 for 390 (assuming all 6 get all their attacks, which is unlikely) 20 Reavers all within 9" (which is unlikely) do 7.4/11.1/14.8/18.5 at RANGE and 1.2/2.4/3.7/5 in CC Thralls are good and more efficient at full strength in melee so they're not a part of the conversation here. So, breaking it down to the amount of points it costs for each wound you inflict (damage efficiency), you get: Tortle: 62/44/34.5/28 and since we don't care about their ranged specifics rn, their net efficiency is: 52/36.5/28.4/23 Eidolon: 62.2/44.6/34.4/28.2 Sharks: 66/45/34/27.5 in CC with a ranged efficiency of 137.5/91.6/73/55. Their net efficiency is: 44.6/30/23/18.3 6 Morrsarr on charge: net output is 34/22.5/17/13.4 since there's no range 6 Morrsarr not charging: 130/65/43/32.5 20 reavers: 45/30.6/23/18.4 at RANGE with a net efficiency of 39.5/25.2/18.4/14.5 So, to summarize. In pure CC, the unwounded turtle and 6 charging morrsarr are more efficient than 2 sharks. BUT, when you add the ranged output of the sharks to look at the net efficiency of the unit in damage per point, the sharks become much more efficient than the turtle and roughly the same as 6 charging morrsarr. If the morrsarr do not get the charge, they are functionally paperweights. THIS WILL CHANGE WITH THE NEW BOOK To conclude, saying that sharks are clearly worse in everything is incorrect. Sharks do have worse damage per point than reavers (at range only) and thralls, but they have far more flexibility and do not degrade nearly as quickly. That's the tradeoff you make with namarti and why I didn't include them in my original table. Namarti don't get to choose their fights like the units I compared. Sharks are paying a premium for the wounds, the increased shooting potential, the new champion/ability to command themselves, and whatever else might be in store. I'm not saying that thralls and reavers aren't good, but they are used in different roles. The fact that sharks can act efficiently in multiple roles is extremely valuable.

I always assume that sharks are coming as a unit of 2, which is a good deal of points, but you gain a huge amount of flexibility. The point I was trying to make is that sharks can allow you to maintain a longer ranged damage output while also providing a very very hard hitting cc unit. Not sure what math you're referring to. Look at page 5 of this thread for my output efficiency calculations. Then look at my original post to see how that number has changed for SHARKS ONLY. Those numbers are only for cc so the shooting just elevates that damage potential even more. I'm also not commenting on turtle buff or specific synergy pieces until I see the new book, which is why there are like 50 disclaimers and asterisks scattered throughout my post. look at page 5 of this thread for my efficiency damage calculator. Thralls are quite reasonable now, absolutely no debating that. My take also has a nice all caps disclaimer of how I view this in my style of play. You do 9 wounds to that 10 man thrall unit and their output is much different. You do 9 wounds to a shark unit and the output remains the same. That's a very important thing to consider. Also SDG are like super crazy good. They and fulminators are not good for comparison because they're just blatantly insane. Sharks receive their buffs IN THIS BOOK CURRENTLY by existing in an army with army wide buffs requiring minimal babysitting. I've posted multiple battle reports here showing how well they do their job. IF FORGOTTEN NIGHTMARES REMAINS THE SAME. you have to screen your hitters with something. That has traditionally been thralls, reavers, and ishlaen. Now, for me, should sharks not be battleline, that will be thralls and ishlaen. Reavers have become too expensive to act as ablative wounds which means the "bucket" I lump them into has changed. Now they're synergy sniping pieces that can threaten objectives. FOR ME, I tend to build to a 1-2 drop, make my opponent take first turn, lose most of my namarti to their first turn, and then aggressively move up, try to shoot out fragile synergy wizards, and then hit them with multiple sharks/eidolon/turtle. I reverse the tides, WHICH MAY BE GOING AWAY, and use shooting very sparingly past turn 1, since for turn 2 I want my damage dealers in combat. A double turn into turn 2 has yielded me a 100% win rate in 3.0 against a wide, wide variety of armies. I try to build my lists so that I can begin every game with a roughly 40% chance of just winning automatically. IN A SLOWER TEMPO ARMY, reavers are extremely valuable as part of Howl's Moving Castle builds. I see that sort of build as likely being 30 thralls plus new character, 20 reavers, turtle, and then whatever else fills in the gaps. The 60 thrall, 2 turtle, 2 new character build is also a fairly spicy one. In a very aggressive tempo build like my preferred style (WHICH MAY NOT BE YOURS AND THAT'S TOTALLY OK), sharks have received an important upgrade to be both more survivable, issue commands to themselves, have a champion model with an excellent bonus (+1 to hit is extremely valuable in an army which may be able to juice attacks with volty/king), AND now have a weapon that requires an opponent to pop a CP to protect a 5+ save wizard or else lose that model a not insignificant proportion of the time. Plus using harpoons to prevent pile ins means that you're able to get much more advantageous combats. If you don't like sharks, I just see that as proof that this book allows for multiple competitive compositions and that therefore, is probably a fairly well-written book, which is all I ever wanted. Y'all may want to read the all caps/bolded bits of my posts because they tend to be fairly important to my overall point.

Oooooooh baby we are looking good with the new rules!! All these takes are ~as is~ since we don't know how the tides, enclaves, etc, etc are gonna turn out. These will likely be wrong when the whole book drops but are my initial thoughts on the changes. Thralls got objectively buffed. That's it, that's the whole take. They're actually reasonable now and if we can still resurrect them in some way, might actually see the thrall lists getting some play! New character- does some stuff sure ok, but a FLAT -1 TO WOUND THRALLS IN COMBAT is insane. Absolutely insane buff. being able to effect wounds is probably the best buff/debuff in the game. If he can't be shot because of forgotten nightmares, a unit of 30 thralls with this guy is 500 points of absolute castle that will buzzsaw if given the opportunity. I expect the turtle to be relatively unchanged which means that those thralls will be at -1 to wound and a 4+ ignoring 1 rend on turn one. Extremely interesting character and I'll be messing around with him for sure. Reavers- another sneaky buff. They will rip through things with only the slightest nudge of buff. Observe: Flat damage at 18", no buff- 3/4.5/6/7.5 wounds against 2+/3+/4+/5+ save. You kill a 4+ save wizard with one round of shooting. +1 to hit (AoA. 9" range, etc)- 3.7/5.5/7.4/9.3 wounds At this point you're threatening stormcast characters, killing a fulm, or just devastating 4+ save "elite-ish" units. And if you can trick your opponent into burning CP against their shooting for AoD, that's incredible value for you. +1 to hit, +1 to wound (AoA, range, eidolon buff- 4.6/7/9/11.6 wounds Now you're starting to cut through monstrous characters on 4+ saves. 2 units being able to reliably one shot stuff like Arkhan in an army that actually PREFERS CC is just amazing. +1 to hit, rerolling ones, +1 to wound (Fuethan basically does this across the entire army pre-new book) 5.4/8/11/13.5 wounds. Buzzsaw. Just a buzzsaw. The other thing about these bonuses is that they can't really be stopped. They're all incidental and require no resource allocation AT THIS POINT IN TIME. They just happen. The Eidolon is buffing other stuff too and these little guys are just sitting on objectives and murdering everything. This brings me to the spiciest one yet. SHARKS- I love em. We all know I love em. They're my little output torpedos and they got objectively better (AS OF NOW, FOR MY STYLE OF PLAY). Sure 165 is fairly steep, but let's look at the buffs. +2 wounds is just excellent. I wasn't using them to be baby-sat by a turtle and now that they get a champion and can command themselves, I can just AoD them if I need to. The extra attack range being increased means it's easier to shoot soft stuff and then get the +1 attack against tough stuff. Coherency being 3" is also nice for zoning out deepstrike, and aesthetics. The champion buff is just crazy and you're gonna have to trust me that the damage output is higher than i previously calculated which means that the sharks damage per point ratio I talk about on page 5 of this thread has been adjusted, but is still higher than everything else except 6 charging morrsarr (USING CURRENT RULES). And then we get to the real juicy upgrade. The HARPOON GUN. It's just wild how good that is now. 4 sharks no buffs will do 4.7/7/9.5/12 damage against a target before charging. Your opponent is gonna have to pop CP to keep any characters alive and then you STILL GET TO CHARGE WITH THE BEST OUTPUT PER POINT IN THE BOOK*. And ooooh boy, if you start buff stacking... those same 4 sharks, AT RANGE, do 8.6/13/17.3/21.6. Oh, and the way the scroll is worded heavily implies that you will be able to take at least one shark unit as battleline. So basically, I'm looking at a rough outline of: Storm Eidolon- 330ish -some caster/support hero- for likely 120ish 3x2 sharks* - 990 (probably 4-5 harpoons and 1-2 nets) Sharks do more damage than reavers at range, and if they can be battleline, I'm obligated to try it out. That list clocks in at 1440 points and I'll be filling the rest of the points with either eels and/or a turtle so it can fit into a 1 drop. At that point I'll be able to comfortabley shoot down scary units/supporting characters before 60 wounds of nondegrading sharks hit the front line. I think Howl's moving castle is also reasonable with storm eidolon, the 30 thrall/new character/turtle package, then some reavers/sharks. Basically, right out the gate it looks like deepkin is getting more army building options, and if not straight upgrades, at least multiple sidegrades. BUT IT WILL ALL DEPEND ON THE TIDES/ENCLAVES

you are absolutely correct! The tidecaster is an excellent backup hero for this purpose.

Yeah, new stormcast are insane. Between the dragons, annihilators, fulminators, and raptors, they can pretty much remove any chance you have to interact with them before your army just evaporates. Some of the new books can hang with that sort of output but many of the older ones just can't. There was a 10 man tournament at my flgs yesterday with 21 dragons and 5 stormcast players. First place was 9 grandhammer annhilators and 6 raptors, Second place was an actual, honest to god homebrew tanky stormcast list with gardus, yndrasta, and 10 protectors (even though apparently paladins are apparently hot garbage and shouldn't even be considered), and then fourth place was a 10 dragon list. So yeah, get ready to see SCE everywhere...

First of all, @jbc94, I LOVE that list. It's an excellent TAAC list and should be able to compete in just about every scenario. But you have the advantage of knowing what the scenarios are going into them so let's take a look at each one and see what we're cookin with! Apex Predators: Leaders capture objectives (but can then walk away, presuming that other heroes don't then sneak onto the objective). Eidolon is tailor made for this one. Easy to put him on one and then yeet him into high value targets. Key here is to murder all your opponent's heroes or pin them in their own deployment. Your list has the gas to do this and don't be afraid to throw away the ishlaen if it means your opponent won't be able to get to an objective. I usually put my Ishlaen in Hunters of the Heartland because they really really really like AoD and can issue commands to themselves so you'll almost always get value out of letting them use commands. Power in Numbers: This one requires good generalship in regards to burning objectives. Your list has the speed and output to sneakily steal opponent's objectives and then immediately burn them if need be. Only advice here is to constantly calculate the score in your head if you burn/don't burn objectives. The goal here would be to burn all your objectives on turn 3 for 12 points and at least 2 of his for 2 points. At that point go ahead and get tabled because a 16-8 lead is basically insurmountable. Just use Aggressive expansion, conquer, monstrous takeover, and savage spearhead at some point to guarantee you at least 8 battle tactic points. I pick those out because they don't really require opponent interaction. 8 BT points puts you at 24-18 assuming your opponent never misses any. If you then fail your grand strat and he gets his while killing your leviadon, the final score is 24-22 you win. It should be super easy to hold onto the points margin if you can play the objective game well. Just play consistently and deliberately, understanding that being tabled in this scenario is not a big deal if you can pull off a big turn 3. Feral Foray: Another crazy objective one! This one is actually a little harder since you don't want to lock yourself out of points. For this scenario, pinning your opponent in their own backfield is absolutely key. It's a hold one, hold 2, hold more sort of scoring, so always be sure that after burning you have 2 objectives LOCKED down to maximize your points. Going into turn 3, be aware that going second is a VERY large bonus since you get to remove an objective. But hopefully you've murdered everything by then. No mathematical trickery here, just be sure to burn sparingly to ensure that you always max your objective points every turn. All in all, your list is excellent and I really wouldn't change much (except drop the turtle for more sharks and that's a highly controversial opinion). As for matchups, new stormcast are reeeeeal pains in the butt. Best advice here it to premeasure EVERYTHING. He's gonna be able to drop 7" away. Make sure that you've used your namarti to prevent him coming in to bad touch your sharks/turtle. Any combo of Eidolon, turtle, and shark unit will kill anything in his army so always run them in tandem. NEVER let something be isolated and picked apart. Raptors are insanely good. Shoot them always with whatever you can. Use nets to pin dragon units and then spike them to minimize attacks back. They're gonna have incredible shooting so do your best to use namarti/ishlaen to soak it up while the hammers clear the table. Grandhammer annihilators will kill whatever they touch, even in a unit of 3. Use the cloud of midnight to bait their deepstrike, let them charge, pop the cloud, then retreat and charge them with a tandem unit for an easy kill. You can only do that once though, so be super careful with eidolon positioning. LoFP is pretty spooky but honestly not the worst matchup for us. Belakor doesn't really have great targets since the eidolon aura range is so far and the turtle output really isn't as high as people think. My advice here is to honestly just full send a hammer into Kairos (auto run 6" on shark unit with 14" move and then charge is insanely quick). If kairos gets hit by anything he will die. If you can bait him into a super defensive deployment, make him go first and waste a hero phase. The idea is that belakor won't have a good target for dark master and you can just focus on murdering everything. The khorne demon prince is super annoying and should be shot to death as soon as possible. This is another one where you have to evaluate his deployment and see if there are any gaps where you can throw a shark unit or two (remembering that kairos can auto change a single dice of a charge roll). Multi charges are your friends and playing aggressively is key. If you get a double turn the game should just end immediately. Other tough armies are things like gargs (easier now, just hit a mega with any THREE hammer units and tie the others up with unrendable Ishlaen in hunters battalion) and new nurgle (kill the characters IMMEDIATELY and score as fast as you can since the mortal wound chipping is absolutely brutal). Big bois like rotigus and new glottkin are gonna need THREE hammers to comfortably murder in a single round. Nurgle also requires some finesse around their deepstriking flies and ability to spot openings to slaughter little wizards. I also get very scared by Seraphon with the -1 damage thing. You gotta just go fast, kill infantry and wizards while scoring as fast as you can. The cardinal rule of deepkin, imo, is that a double turn in your favor should always win you the game. Playing aggressively to ensure that means you straight up win 40% of the time and then actually have to think the other 60%. Not to toot my own horn or anything but I've got a fair few batreps here that sort of outline my playstyle with deepkin and it's been pretty successful so far.

No problem! I like makin em and there are a bunch more on the fb page I've linked in a few. As for strong but not hyper tournament deepkin, there are a lot of ways to go, IMO. Double storm eidolon, any list with 20 thralls, any list that isn't Fuethan, Ionrach, or Dhom-Hain, the options are nearly endless!