Dogmantra

I think the main reason you see Grandhammers more often is because they have a much clearer singular role - drop down, charge, and annihilate a target. Regular annihilators lack the punch to drop and one shot so are often overlooked. I've had luck with them though, they're good to cripple a unit or wipe a weaker unit and then act as a roadblock with their absurd 2+ save. The big downside is that while they can weather a lot of normal attacks, if your opponent has even moderate mortal wound output they are extremely fragile. That doesn't matter so much for the grandhammers since you're probably bringing them exclusively for offensive power, but the tankiness of the shield annihilators is a big selling point. Overall, they're good but not really a top tier pick so they get overlooked in favour of other options. Definitely worth trying out and annihilator focused lists (either hammers or shields) are some of the most fun stormcast lists I've played.

Unfortunately this is no longer how the rule works - this was one reading of it when the book was first released, but it was FAQed to be more clear that the intent is a single wound blocked, this is the new text of the ability: I do kind of wish it worked like this though, I don't think it would be super gamebreaking. Well done on 3-1 though! I don't want to take away from a great result, and the TO allowed it so as far as I'm concerned you won those victories fair and square.

Not necessarily stuff from the new announcement, but stuff from 40k in general that I would like to see: Totally agree with the addition of Objective Control as a stat. I believe Kings of War has a similar stat. It's already a dial the AoS team fiddle with a fair bit, formalising it as a core characteristic will save a lot of text and hopefully encourage some interesting designs that might differentiate units a bit better (already imagining choosing between a good defenses and good objective control to build towards either slogging over singular objectives or running around opportunistically swiping objectives). Better differentiation between weapon roles via a few special rules. This is something 40k and Kill Team both do really well imo. You can sort of see this with the new Kharadron Overlords book which has pinched the 40k Flamer gimmick of d6 shots which auto-hit for its Fumigators. Kill Team does it so well that simply with the core weapon rules they recently managed to model a syringe full of tranquilisers as a standard gun with no extra explanatory text required! Role Keywords. Something that I think would help to make standardised rules for weapons more plausible is a small bank of keywords that are applied liberally to units. I'm not sure if Fast Attack and such will stay as keywords or not but looking at the Termagant datacard it clearly has the Infantry Keyword. At the moment in AoS stuff that interacts with "Infantry" actually interacts with "units with a wounds characteristic of less than 4 that do not have a mount (excluding companions)" which is a bit of a mouthful. Add Infantry, Cavalry, maybe Irregular to the already existent Artillery, Hero, and Monster, and the designers now have a lot of space to play with that is already kind of there but is also very wordy. I'm not saying force organisation charts by the way, just stuff that interacts with them. Infantry & Cavalry as keywords and things that affect it could also bring in a teeny bit of that historical flavour. Again, nothing huge like changing to full on rank & flank play, but a few little bits and pieces to nod to the weapons' actual historical roles. I'm not sold on splitting magic up into the different phases. If it means we get a nice variety of effects then I am all for it, but I don't think a variety of effects requires the splitting up of magic. Looking at something like the Khorne prayer scripture, they have several neat effects that aren't just straight MWs to the enemy, and a lot of it works because it's in the Hero Phase.

This is absolutely a legal list, although you haven't picked a Holy Command. Stormcast Eternals get one for free just for being Stormcast Eternals. The only one that really works with your army is Steadfast March, which once a game lets a unit run and then still charge. It's quite good with fast units like you have. Gardus's buff is very powerful, but you might struggle to take advantage of it because the rest of your army has quite large bases and 12" movement, so keeping them wholly within 12" of him might be hard. If you have time and other models to experiment with, give it a go and see how it feels. The units you've chosen are generally just quite strong, Stormdrake Guard in particular can be pretty powerful, but as you noted you're missing Galletian Champions which (at least in this current season) will limit scoring opportunities - your gameplan will usually be to kill as much as you can quickly so you can grab objectives freely late game. It's not typical to take a list with no non-unique heroes, because you do get a free command trait and a free artefact and it's a shame to waste that - I can see keeping Karazai as your general to make your Stormdrake Guard battleline but I would suggest seeing if you can squeeze an unnamed hero in there. If you find Gardus is difficult to keep up with the rest of your army, you could drop him for a non-unique hero to at least hold an artefact (arcane tome is very good, and on a fast hero like the Knight Azyros or Knight Zephyros they can score, act as a galletian champion, and be in the right place for buffs).

Correct, Thunderbolt Volley only works on minimum sized units now. Still probably the best of all the holy commands, if not top half. Longstrike Raptors are still good but with Galletian Champs being harder to shoot they're not quite as strong and I've seen people using Judicators with Crossbows or Castigators as ranged support more to clear chaff units out of the way than pick off single important targets. The rules for Sworn Bodyguards are found in the latest General's Handbook, 2022-2023 Season 2, and they are found with the other Pitched Battles rules. To summarise, one of the new core battalions availalble in the current matched play season is called Galletian Command. It consists of a Galletian Champion hero and one infantry unit. The infantry unit is the Sworn Bodyguard, and when either unit in the battalion fights in the combat phase, if it's near enough to the other unit, the other unit can immediately fight also.

I'm really not sold on dropping them - a 9" charge with a reroll is about a 50/50 chance to make it, with two units that's 75% chance at least one of them gets in, which is a pretty good chance of leaving 500 odd points sitting there. You're also giving up the chance to cast empower which really increases their damage output, and to mystic shield them. If you want a unit to drop with Scions, I really can't see a reason you'd go Dracolines over Annihilators. Same cost for grandhammers, they get a 7" charge with a reroll which is a much higher chance of succeeding, even if they fail they possibly do a little mortal wound bomb, and they have similar damage output. Sadly Gardus and Astreia's buffs are mutually exclusive - Gardus's ward only works on Hallowed Knights and Astreia's only works on Hammers of Sigmar. You do probably have a 6+ ward from Hammers if you're going that route though.

Dracolines are some of my favourite models and they make a lot of my lists. Personally I think Astreia is a better babysitter than the generic LA - they already hit very hard and while 1 extra claw attack each is nice, +1 save guaranteed helps shore up their core weakness which is that they are pretty fragile. It's especially nice against armies with better magic than you, because it means you're not quite so reliant on getting mystic shields off and it's more of a nice extra if you do. The downside of Astreia over generic LA is that you're missing out on Scintillating Trail which you're probably not getting anywhere else. I also think running as a 6 is a good idea and will run a 6 most of the time rather than two lots of 3. You're not getting the full melee potential if they're at full strength, but 18 dice on the mortal wound bomb is devestating, and the extra durability is key imo. One of the big troubles with dracolines in threes is that losing a single model really hurts their damage output, they stop being able to reliable clear targets. With a 6, obviously you have a much harder hitting unit to start with, but losing one or two models doesn't hurt nearly as much, and the big upside is that rallying becomes easier, and getting even a single dracoline back is huge. If you're missing 4 models, you have a roughly 50/50 chance of getting one back on a rally. Combined with Astreia, you can turn them from a squishy glass cannon into a pretty difficult to shift blob that does a ton of damage.

My big hope for the new book is merging some of the special weapon profiles, I'd really like to see it cut down to maybe three - the standard shot, the mass but weaker shot, and the elite shot, maybe with a special ability for the various weapons to make up for them having the same profile. Thunderers potentially having six different profiles in a single unit is silly. I hope that drill launchers become a bit less of a fish for 6s game, and that they differentiate the ship weapons a little bit more. Instead of d6 shots for shrapnel launching, 1 shot for each model in the target unit feels like a good replacement with a very specific role. I hope the code as a build your own subfaction stays. I'd actually particularly like it if they don't even do special subfactions and simply say "if you want to be Barak Nar, pick these options". Doubt that will happen but I can dream. If there's a new unit I'd honestly like to see a new foot infantry unit. I don't think a new ship is really needed, and there are a lot of foot heroes already. Some sort of specialist would be cool, perhaps the foot equivalent of skywardens?

They stack. Under Dice Roll Modifiers, the info box says "In most cases, modifiers are cumulative. However, some dice rolls, such as hit and wound rolls, will specify that the roll cannot be modified by more than +1 or -1." If you then look at the ward section, it does not specify that the ward can only be modified by +1 or -1, so ward modifiers stack.

I've seen the Knight Draconis used with the Luckstone for a sort of "budget" celestant prime - drop him down, guarantee the 9" charge. I love the idea of using the luckstone like this but the Draconis is the only one it really seems worth it on, since all the other big hitters are named characters.

The chariot is incredibly good for its points imo. 12 wounds with a 3+ save is pretty hard to shift. They're probably best in Hammers of Sigmar for two reasons. Firstly, the 6++ ward gives them a couple more effective wounds and is I think the most generically useful stormhost. Secondly, and it's very minor, the biggest downside of the chariot is that they are not elite so they can't issue commands to themselves. It makes rerolling charges a bit trickier, and landing a charge is super important if you want to get the value from the chariot. If you bring Bastian Carthalos in Hammers, he can issue a command to anything on the board once a turn. Not worth bringing for that combo alone, but it's nice for a little extra reassurance that if the chariot fails its charge I can use a command to reroll. For charge augmentation, the only native SCE thing I can think of that works on chariots is just the Knight Vexillor's aura of reroll charges, which works wholly within 12" so is probably not worth it. Cities of Sigmar Battlemage with the Ghur spell is the best charge booster available, giving a +2 to charge rolls, but that only makes it more likely you'll succeed, it doesn't increase damage.

Now that the battlescroll's out, and Evos on Dracs went down 40 points, mounted LAs went down, Sequitors are now sensibly priced the same as Liberators, and even ol' reliable the Knight Incantor got a cheeky points drop... Season of the Sacrosanct baby!!

Yes. "Unique" is a little bit of a misnomer, I think of it as they're unique to the faction or the battlepack rather than something you always have access to, like artefacts. 27.3 Enhancements says: "Enhancements are divided into command traits, artefacts of power, spell lores, prayer scriptures, mount traits, triumphs and one or more sets of unique enhancements." - this establishes that there are multiple sets of unique enhancements. 27.3.7 Unique Enhancements says: "Each set of unique enhancements will explain how they are used if you take one or more of them for your army." And if you look at a specific unique enhancement, you'll find the wording includes something like this: "You can always take 1 Holy Command enhancement for a Stormcast Eternals army." which is telling you that you can have one from that set regardless of anything else.

I received the same thing, I would be very surprised if anyone got anything else. I'm fairly happy because I love the sacrosanct chamber, and this tops me up to another unit of sequitors.

I think it's good that you're making your own battlepack. The addition of battlepacks as a concept had me thinking that GW was expecting at least some people to make their own battlepacks for events and such, and so far it doesn't seem like too many people really have. I think it's a really good idea for events as opposed to house rules, because it makes it really explicit from the get-go that this is not using the matched play rules. So kudos for that. Formatting is good, you've matched the GW house style pretty well I think. Miscasts - I understand why you've taken them out. I would personally advise against it. Firstly they're a core rule, and I think a casual battlepack should try to stick to core as closely as possible. Even though you've taken a core rule out of the game, it sort of acts like an extra thing to remember because you have to remember that in this battlepack you don't miscast. Secondly, for casters with large enough bonuses, the miscast rule is the only way they can fail a cast (e.g. Nagash with +3 to cast will always get a 5 or more so will always successfully cast mystic shield & arcane bolt). If you don't auto-fail on double 1s, it could mean that with sufficient bonuses, it's impossible for a caster to fail, which could be quite frustrating for your opponent especially if they don't have enough unbinds to challenge every cast. And thirdly, I think many self-professed casual players quite enjoy the extra bit of randomness that things like miscasts add to the game and would be sad to see it gone. I totally get your reasoning for ditching it and I wouldn't think it's enough to ruin this pack if you decide to keep miscasts out, but I thought it felt a bit out of place. Moments of Glory - I like that these are your replacement for battle tactics/grand strats. I think Vendetta and Tear Them Down might be a little bit too similar, and with both of them together combined with the save our heroes rule might encourage having a weedy general and hanging back to keep them safe, that way denying the potential for 2/3 moments of glory to your opponent. I'm not sure what I'd do instead - I like that they are all counted at the end of the game so you don't have to remember to track anything extra. Maybe swap one of Vendetta/Tear Them Down out for something like Plant A Flag: When the battle ends, you complete this moment of glory if your general is wholly within your opponent's territory and no enemy units are within 3" of your general. Idk, something to encourage pushing in a bit more - it's a critique I've seen from more casual leaning players that picking your little 100 point foot hero and hiding with them all game is encouraged by the rules but doesn't really push the fantasy of having the best warrior personally leading the charge, which is a lot more cinematic. Battleplans - They seem solid, I haven't read through all of them. I would say that the attacker picking the north end of the table is an unnecessary extra step. I'd say something like 95+% of my games, both people put their stuff down on one side of the table, you go through the setup for terrain etc, and then neither player can be bothered to swap sides regardless of who wins the roll-off. Alternating setting up terrain pieces is a clever way of giving both players some influence over the state of the table and I think it perfectly fulfills the function that defender sets up/attacker chooses sides aims to achieve in the GHB. Imo, just pick sides at the beginning, determine your territory, and then start laying out terrain.

I'm not super experienced seeing fyreslayers on the table so I can't really say but I love both of those lists. Proper big monster punch up. My instinct is that you have a slight range advantage with 18" on your big dragon shooting, so if you can take one magmadroth out early that will give you a nice advantage. I think using Atavistic Tempest (Krondys's spell) well will be pretty big here too, since their army is so elite being able to take their rend down a point and then save stack will be useful. I noticed you don't have a holy command listed - if your TO is really strict they might not let you update it, but worth adding one just in case. Personally I'd probably go run & charge just to get a bit more manouevrability with your chariot. None of the commands are that amazing but it's still nice to have, and being able to get a full round of shooting off with some decent rolls into a nice chariot charge for the impact hits could be enough to take out a magmadroth pretty much risk-free.

Yeah I think so, took me a while to work out exactly what was going on, but if I'm reading it right, you're Coalitioning the Berzerkers and the Hammerers, and Allying the Runesmiter and Runelord? That should be fine, although of course as allies the Runesmiter won't get to pick an extra prayer, and neither the Runesmiter nor Runelord will benefit from subfaction traits.

Update: Pack is now live at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cJt7Kl_1gG3KhHee3PoSrJlE7ZZgQyf7/view?usp=sharing Terrain pack at: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1D_uZbNd2klNgajnR9K_EUN9zVjEkCo3drcS-zXAeZ-g/edit?usp=sharing

As a general rule, when you're not tooling a list specifically, do you prefer drill launchers or sky cannons on Gunhaulers? I ask because I have committed to a list with 3 gunhaulers in it for a local league we're doing, and I went for drills on all of them because the allure of 3mws on a 5+ at 36" range was too tempting, but now having played my first league game I'm not so sure. I'm in two minds because the sky cannon is pretty reliant on getting a good d6 roll (either for damage or number of attacks), and the extra rend for the drill seems like a mo brainer, but then only being able to do a max of 3 damage feels bad compared to the possible 12 if everything goes well on the cannon.

I think you've answered your question pretty conclusively and have all the right citations. I'm confident in saying Strike and Fade Away happens before fight-on-death. As you mentioned, the core rules state that the attack sequence is finished when you've allocated all the wounds. The core rules FAQ states that "before" and "after" always mean "immediately before" or "immediately after", so you would resolve strike and fade away immediately after the fight is resolved (which we have established is at the moment that wounds have been allocated), then fight on death immediately before the model is removed. The only other possible interpretation I can see is that they're simultaneous, since allocating wounds and removing the model happen one after the other, the argument would go that immediately after allocating wounds and immediately before removing models are therefore the exact same moment. However in this interpretation, strike and fade away would still happen first, since it's the sylvaneth player's turn, and they resolve their effects first. EDIT: to clarify, I'm specifically talking about fight-on-death abilities that let the model fight before being removed, which afaik is all of them, but aos has a ton of rules, wouldn't be surprised if there was an exception out there.

Event Title: South Coast Series - Age of Sigmar Tournament - Ageas Bowl Southampton Event Author: Dogmantra Calendar: Events UK Event Date: 10/22/2022 09:00 AM to 10/23/2022 05:00 PM South Coast Grand Series Age of Sigmar Tournament on the 22nd – 23rd October 2022 at the Ageas Bowl Southampton. The event is a 2000 point event with 5 games across the two days, 3 on Saturday and 2 on Sunday. Tickets are for 60 players. Terrain will be to a high standard using Neoprene Mats and Age of Sigmar Terrain. The event is run by Entoyment Wargaming and Hobby Centre’s Age of Sigmar Community. Tickets are non refundable 28 days prior to the event. This is due to terrain and mats having been already arranged and event hall hire. A rules pack will follow shortly. Tickets are available at: https://entoyment.co.uk/product/22-23-10-22-age-of-sigmar-scs-southampton/ South Coast Series - Age of Sigmar Tournament - Ageas Bowl Southampton

For 1k point games, the 10 Liberators from the start collecting box will be enough battleline, if you want to move onto 2k points at some point I'd recommend another 5 Liberators (they can be found pretty cheap on ebay) for your third battleline just to give you a base. But really you have everything you need for a legal 1k list already, it's about choosing what you want to add for flavour. The Retributors that come in the starter box, frustratingly, have a unit size of 5. If you want to run them (and they're decent infantry), you'll need to find another couple. They're not too hard to find second hand either. Annihilators, Fulminators, and Stormdrake Guard are all solid units, and any of them would make a good addition. In 1k games you might struggle to have enough models to properly contest objectives, which is a point in favour of Stormdrake Guard, as they're Monsters, counting as 5 models each. Annihilators are probably my personal preference of the three options you mentioned, especially for "flair" because they really lean into the dropping from the sky mechanic, which is one of my favourite things about the army. You'll need to source a Lord Imperatant to make them work properly (he lets them drop from the sky 7" away rather than 9" which is a massive increase to the chance they'll successfully make their first charge), and unfortunately the Lord Imperatant is only available in the Harbinger and Extremis starter sets, as well as the out of print Dominion box. Ebay is probably good here. Other models you didn't mention that I would consider are the Knight Incantor and the Stormstrike Chariot. Knight Incantor is the cheapest wizard in the faction and has a useful automatic spell unbind once a game. Having a single wizard is a nice to have so you can try to unbind spells and cast mystic shield. The Stormstrike Chariot is, depending on what exactly you mean by flair, exactly what you're looking for. It's not super common to see them played despite the fact they're good, so you get the unique angle. They hit hard on the charge, are tricky to shift, and pretty cheap. They're also a fun model to build & paint, and I think kind of underrated. At 165 points, they also slot really nicely into almost any list.

I popped into my local WHSmith (south west) the other day, they usually have copies of Imperium, but no luck for Stormbringer.

The deny is a big reason to pick them, but there are others too. They're the cheapest wizard in faction. Their warscroll spell is unreliable needing a 7 to cast but it is decent if you manage to cast it. The once a game automatic unbind is incredibly useful because most armies will have at least some magic, so it's unlikely to do nothing for you at all, even if it just denies a mystic shield on a key turn. The points cost is pretty big because one thing Stormcast struggle with is having bodies on the table, since you pay so much for each individual model, you really want to save as much as you can. That's not to say other wizards in faction are useless, they're just usually situational, and importantly, until you go up to spending 600 points on Krondys, the more expensive wizards aren't really better at being wizards, they just have other stuff going on too. If you just want a wizard, the knight incantor is not only the cheapest but also one of the absolute best with the auto unbind.