Yor

Well, I'm still throwing ideas around, and that's one of the things I like about the book: there are different approaches to take beyond dragon spam. Stormkeep abilities are quite nice, and Sequitors are well suited to take advantage of them. You park them next to some objectives and you only have to worry about shooting and MW. I think they might work as good or better than Vindictors, as the +1 save won't help you against MW and good rending shooters, while the 5+ ward might increase survivability. Plus, if someone does get closer, you have your own Stormkeep MW together with some nice greatmaces. And even if a unit is wiped out, you can bring back those 145 points with a free Holy Command. Also, you could further discourage close combat by choosing Hallowed Knights, so killing a sequitor in melee means risking 2MW plus 2 attacks with 3/3/-1/2. Or you could take the safer route and get the Hammers 6+ ward to help against shooting and MW. But there's no best defense than a good offense, and here you could have one or two squads of evocats sent via Relictor to wreak havoc among enemy ranged fighters. I myself would go for one feline party to be sent against lower save enemies, while a couple of drakes harass heroes and more resilient enemies. You'll need own ranged units to cover both your offense and objectives. Ballistae are still nice, or you could go for the tried and tested longbow Raptors. To cover the middleground you can probably squeeze some Castigators, as they are ok now. To round up, I'll add some heroes of choice. I favour the Celestant Prime just because. It's versatile, the added 4+ ward gives him a lasting presence, and you could deploy him turn 2-3 whenever he is needed, making your Stormkeep a little Sciony. The Lord Arcanum on dracoline would be another good addition, to be sent with the cat pack for some extra paw. I think there are still many tricks to find out and the meta will change once and again. The book is not even out yet, and it will take some time of experimenting, which is part of the fun I agree, rule of cool is the only rule we really need . Though poor Venator might still sit this one out. At least until he learns to one shoot heroes again...

The main Stormcast allegiance ability now is Blaze of Glory, and all your SCE benefit from it, so they are not playing with their bare warscoll at all. It influences your playstyle, the same way Scions and Stormkeep do. You might choose to go aggressive with Scions or play the long game with a Stormkeep. Subfactions are there to reinforce your theme and playstyle and influence list building. I'd say they work in quite an elegant way. I have mostly Sacrosanct sprinkled with some OldCasts. Beyond being disappointed with the now useless Knight Venator, I'm quite happy with most of the new warscrolls and I think I can build different and interesting lists. I really liked the new Vigilors, but I won't get them as they are a tad lackluster and I can't find a place for them in my lists. Also, I would have gotten the drakes even if they had the Venator's warscroll. So I guess the marketing strategy is so transparent I can't see it at all. It's cool to be critic and all, and I can see how this book is far from awesome and some choices are dissappointing. But it is quite solid overall and its shortcomings are more likely related to trying to balance 70+ warscrolls in an early book that has to be strong enough without invalidating older tomes.

I have read several times the sequitors' warscroll and, RAW, I don't see any requirement of any of them carrying shields for them to get the 5+ ward. Am I right to think you could channel the shields even if you were left with only sequitors carrying greatmaces?

Yep, it seems it is going to be like that: "For the full rules for this unit, see the battletome relevant to your army" 💩

It looks like they will be battleline without the need of a Lord-Arcanum general

Silly me, I thought this was the rumour thread