Dogmantra

Sleeper use for Sequitors will be if Nighthaunt get real big with their new book, running the primes with a Redemption Cache means no coming back for units within 3". Will make them less sticky. EDIT: also if the Lord Exorcist gets a points drop and the Knight Incantor a points raise like I think they probably should, Lord Exorcist is also gonna be pretty nice against the large number of "rally on 4+" rules we're seeing.

Stormcasts do also have Prosecutors as a battleline option with the Tempest Lords subfaction. Although if you're not super keen on stormdrakes then you might find the troop choices lacking if you want to go all flying. There are enough flying heroes to be getting on with, but flying troop choices outside of stormdrakes are limited to just two flavours of Prosecutor and Aetherwings. Would be pretty cool to see an all flying army though, and would be quite reliable for charges since Prosecutors charge with 3d6, and tempest lords lets you reroll one die for the charge on all your flying units.

I'm curious about your methodology because these results seem very strange to me. Unless I'm mistaken, a CV4 spell should always be easier to cast than a CV7 spell. Let's break it down into the possibilities, let's call the CV4 spell Spell A and the CV7 spell Spell B - Your roll is greater than or equal to 7, and greater than or equal to your opponent's unbinding roll (success for both spells) - Your roll is greater than or equal to 7, but your opponent's roll is greater than yours (failure for both spells) - Your roll is greater than or equal to 4, but less than 7, and also greater than or equal to your opponent's unbinding roll (success for Spell A, failure for Spell B) - Your roll is greater than or equal to 4, but less than 7, but your opponent's roll is greater than your roll (failure for both spells) - Your roll is lower than 4 (failure for both spells) As you can see, this is every possible outcome, and Spell A succeeds in every situation that Spell B does, and additionally one extra situation. I don't have the exact probabilities to hand for each of these situations, but there's no way for the number of situations in which Spell A succeeds to be less than Spell B. I also did the maths with a handy program called McDie, which is built to simulate complex dice interactions. This is the test I ran. It rolls 2d6, adds it up and performs two checks: that it's greater or equal to than the CV (in this image 4), and that it's greater than or equal to a second roll of 2d6 (the unbind roll). The network then outputs this to a graph which shows the % of the time that both of these are true, and the % of the time at least one is false. This is achieved by simulating 100 000 repeats of the rolls, so the numbers vary very slightly. An output of TRUE means that the cast was successful, and FALSE means it failed. For CV4, we can see that you successfully cast vs an unbind around 55% of the time. Editing to CV7, we get this result: And you succeed somewhere around 45% of the time. Here's a graph of the chance to succeed for all casting values vs an equally powerful unbind attempt. The leftmost bar is a quirk of the program (the actual methodology behind this chart is that it shows the chance of the output being >= the x axis, with the output being either the casting roll if it was greater than the unbind, or set to 1 if it was less than the unbind roll because as far as I can tell this program doesn't have a way to do exactly what I want) Or if you prefer actual numbers because it's a bit hard to read. Again this is based on 100 000 rolls rather than actual calculations so it's quite accurate but the exact percentages will vary very slightly. CV Chance 2 55.525 3 55.455 4 55.004 5 53.66 6 50.578 7 44.904 8 35.174 9 25.039 10 15.74 11 8.109 12 2.761

On the topic of damage, don't forget that auto-wounds on 6s is pretty decent. If my maths is right, on a 4+/4+ attack, without auto wounds on 6s you're getting an average of 25% attacks through to the save. With frightful touch, a 4+/4+ goes to an average of 33% attacks through to the save. That's not to be sniffed at. Makes the chaff hit just a little bit harder. Death by a thousand cuts.

This is different because the battle tactic Monstrous Takeover requires you to pick a monster from your starting army when you choose it. Since it happens at the start of your hero phase before you have cast spells but after any previous metamorphoses have worn off, so any unit that doesn't inherently have the Monster keyword is never going to have it from metamorphosis at the time you choose the battle tactic. Beast Master as a grand strategy has no such requirements to choose a monster at the start of the game.

For what its worth, this is what the GHB says about starting armies, on pg 14: From this it does seem to me that you would be able to score by using the metamorphosis spell just because this clarification doesn't say anything about checking the state of the unit at the start of the game. I realised also that I have naturally been using this interpretation in a different way -- Evocators are wizards only when they have 2+ models in the unit. It seems plain and reasonable to me that you cannot score Prized Sorcery with only a single evocator model and no other wizards.

It did, and no, they were regular base, layer & shade paints, as well as a couple of technicals (stirland mud, nihilakh oxide, and stormshield varnish). I didn't read all the painting guides, but the assumption in Mortal Realms was that you are only using what comes with the magazine, which means no spray primer. I suppose they could suggest brush-undercoating with a light colour for contrast paints but I can't imagine that would give particularly great results.

Something I've been playing with recently is the Everblaze Comet. I like endless spells as a concept a lot, and the fact this one has 36" range is so appealing. My current experiments have involved Lord Arcanum on Gryph Charger as a general, with Master of Magic & Scintillating Trail. You use the Gryph Charger rather than a cheaper wizard for Ride the Winds Aetheric - this lets you make sure that you can start out of unbind range for your initial cast and then either play keepaway from enemy heroes if you want to dispel and recast it, or simply teleport to where you need to be if you're leaving the comet in play for the -1 to cast on enemy wizards. CV6 with a reroll is pretty reliable if you're out of unbind range, which isn't too hard. The comet itself does just under 3 MWs on average to everything within 10", and at the start of the game it's pretty easy to find a good location to hit 3+ units. If you're particularly lucky you have a small chance to just straight up delete a foot hero on turn 1 which might scupper your opponent's plans. Spreading damage, while not ideal compared to concentrating all of its damage potential on one target, does have its upsides - hitting multiple units and heroes means that it's not so easy to nullify with Rally & Heroic Recovery, and some damage will stick. I killed Kragnos last night with a couple of Comet casts and 3 grandhammers. 295 points is admittedly pretty steep. And to make it reliable enough for me to be happy with it you do pretty much need Master of Magic, which does mean you're not taking High Priest. I don't think it's necessarily a top tier option, but when combined with Annihilators it seems to be pretty decent. You have several big area MW effects, then MWs on the charge, with the Annihilators' own attacks being enough to finish off a lot of targets. I don't own Bastian or a suitable proxy, but I think that he might be a nice addition. Currently I'm running Yndrasta with this list because she hits decently and defends quite well (plus a single liberator surviving and getting a mate back is always a great feeling), but I would like to try Bastian in that slot. You lose a little bit of mobility and defenses but you get a slightly stronger attack, another board-wide MW ability, and his ability to re-set up models means you can guarantee that your Gryph Charger is in optimal position for a comet even if you're low-drops. Anyway what I'm trying to say is that I like this spell. It's expensive, but fun. I think more people should try it.

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Squishy, a bit unreliable since Empower failing or being unbound loses them a fair bit of power, and foot evocators being slow. I run them fairly often (and just bought another 3 mounted ones), and they do hit hard. The thing is you have to hit first, because if you don't, that 4+ save means you're probably losing a couple of models at the minimum, and losing even one really hurts your damage output. The squishiness means you probably want to add some support with some sort of access to +1s to save, but that's more points you're spending that require you to have a turn first, potentially require succeeding on a roll, and most sources of +1 to save can't keep up with them. The edge case bonus is that Evocators dealing lots of single damage hits is that they work nicely against Gotrek & the -1 damage from atacks vs Coalesced Seraphon, and people aren't that used to it.

Not yet actually tried it, but I am planning on trying a Ghurish battlemage for the +2 to run and charge spell to help speed up a slower Stormkeep list. Combined with the Run + Charge Holy Command or even Translocation for effectively 7" charges I think it will help to mitigate what you lose from not going Scions.

Could be that they're battleline, but you can fit a reinforced longstrikes (480 points) and a minimum size unit of liberators (115) in the same space as 15 judicators, so it's not the only thing.

I've been thinking this lately, although admittedly only theorycrafting as I don't have a full unit. They're the highest wound count per point in SCE and their attack profile isn't terrible for what they are. I would honestly love to run a couple of Lords Relictor with Curse & Divine Light, get a ward from Hammers of Sigmar, and just spam the heck out of Gryph Hounds. Quantity over Quality. I don't think that's anywhere approaching the best way to play them but I think it'd be fun. How have you been using them?

Thanks for the post! It kind of confirms the common wisdom. I think the quoted example is an interesting one, and possibly the odd one out on your list in that Stormkeep vs Scions doesn't feel like so much of a no brainer as something like prayer choice or command traits. I am thinking this may be an artefact of the rest of the book and the SCE meta, where Stormkeep does nothing or almost nothing for a large portion of lists -- anything relying on alternative battleline like stormdrake spam or dracothion guard spam will get zero benefit from being a Stormkeep. Given the benefits, I wonder if we will see a surge in popularity for Stormkeeps if and when a points change/meta shift makes the current meta armies less popular.

Yes, you can only pick each model once with Cavernous Jaws. Also, you're sort of right about the Stardrake not doing as much damage as comparable monsters. If you go in expecting it to rip units to shreds you might be disappointed. What I think it's better at is sitting as a nice block of wounds, preferably save stacked to an effective 1+ save, and getting as much mileage as possible out of the -3 rend on its Rain of Stars.

Yeah having run the stardrake a fair bit recently, I usually just ask my opponent if they have any special models in their unit and target those. Coherency is pretty difficult to break with Cavernous Jaws. The other use is that it does have a 3" range, so if you can manage to sneak into 3" of an otherwise screened out 5 wound foot hero, it can be worth throwing one of your chomps onto them just for the chance of a lucky 6 getting you a kill.

That's because the core rule is indeed a roll off for priority on turn one. This applies to Narrative and Open play. However, the General's Handbook overrules this to mean that whoever finishes deploying first has first turn priority in Matched Play. See page 11 of the General's Handbook 2021:

Stormdrake Guard cannot retreat with their hero phase move. Their hero phase move allows them to make a normal move, and a retreat is not a normal move (See 8.0 Movement Phase in the core rules). Even if they could, 8.2 Retreating states that a model that retreats "cannot shoot or charge later in the turn"

Oh dang! I remembered there being an FAQ but was so sure it was the other way around I didn't check. That's hubris for ya.

The Hallowed Knights bonus only allows you to fight, not to pile in first.

As Beliman said, you pick the order. But in this case it doesn't particularly matter because the Mortal Wounds from Blaze of Glory are applied at the end of the phase, so it's impossible to kill anything and make it so you can't fight with the Hallowed Knights bonus.

I agree with a lot of what you said but I think this is too harsh on Sequitors. If they dropped to 115 points, I'd swap Liberators out for them in a heartbeat. Yes the 4+ base save hurts compared to the 3+ you get with the other two basic infantry battleline units, so they do fare worse against ranged attacks, but in the combat phase, that 5++ ward is very nice. Perhaps a little overcosted, but they are solid. I would also add that personally I prefer Astreia Solbright over the generic LA on Drac to boost Evocators on Dracolines, just because they're so squishy that the ability to get an extra +1 to save is big. Ideally she can also drop a Mystic Shield on them, and get them to 3+ ignoring 2 rend which makes it less likely they melt into nothing after the first time they're hit.

Ah yeah good point. Hm, does mean he's a bit more one-trick than I hoped it seems.

Either there's a third ability or the flavour text for the bodyguard ability is just very long. If there is a third one, my money's on wizard or a ward, I can't think of anything else that's concise enough to fit.

Love seeing that Heraldor/Chariot spam. What a wild army! I do love the chariot, and I can imagine that 60 wounds on 3+ is pretty tough to shift. And since so much of the chariot's damage comes from its impact hits you don't care too much about having so many separate units. Would like to see how something like that plays out on the table.