Requizen

I've been musing a Vanguard Justicar as more of an MSU list. ~6 Longstrikes, 2x3 Hurricanes (or 3 and 6), dropping the Hurricanes in the middle of the board with the Birds to play distraction while the Longstrikes whittle down. But 6 without double shooting is just... very inefficient, even against a perfect enemy unit. If you're going Vanguard Justicar, it would only (imo) be worth it if you're going heavy Hurricane Raptors and just trying to play a midfield field of fire type list.

Like I said, if I stick with Anvilstrike (might need to for my next big tournament), I'm thinking of jumping to 2, 3, maybe even 4 units. There's lots of ways to get overwhelmed by fast melee, and we need all the slowdown we can get.

30" is not as safe as you might think when there's plenty of things that can move 18+" and still charge, or teleport and charge with rerolls, or charge with +multiple inches. The game is extremely fast right now, and even if you park at max range, you're not really as safe as you might think.

That doesn't particularly bother me, I already have a hard competitive army, I'm looking for something fun where I can be a midtable hero and feel good if I go 3-2 at best. Anyone kitbashed a Rogue Idol? I like the FW model but I'm wondering if I can make something similar without dropping that much for one big rock boi. Plus, you know, hobby time.

There's also the rounded TAC list: mostly Sacrosanct + some other things, mainly focusing on a 20-Sequitor Brick with Arcanum and Castellant, 3 dropping Ballistas + Ordinator, and 10-15 Evos for counterstrike. It doesn't have any really hard counters but also lacks a solid win condition. We've also seen some success with 6+ Dracovator star units, though that can be fairly fragile to counterstrike and has little to no way to deal with Gristlegore other than trying to table the rest of the army and ignoring the ASF General. As for Stardrake, I don't think the Les Martin Stardrake + 2x2 Fulmis is the way to go, I'm far more interested in Stardrake + scoring bodies in Sequitors and Skinks. Either way, I think GHB19 will be a big shift for Stormcast, any point changes will change how we approach list building.

Like I said, there's likely a solid variant after some tweaking and what not. More Aetherwings could mitigate the alpha strike issue, and a swap towards a brick unit could help as well. But Alpha lists will always be strong against this sort of thing.

It's less about the results and more about how I got there. I did beat DoK along the way, but it was his first event and I was simply taking advantage of his executions along with some luck. He killed my Longstrikes on Turn 2 with little to no issue, and then I only won because I made some longbomb charges with the Evos, got the Double Turn, and he messed up positioning for Knife to the Heart. Also if he was HaggNar for the extra durability, I wouldn't have done nearly as much damage. I beat a mixed Order gunline with 40 Arkanauts, but I should have lost. I had no way to chew through that many bodies and he tabled me by the end, but I only won because I snuck past him to burn Better Part of Valor objectives and won immediately despite getting tabled the turn after. There were too many dice and bodies for me to win if it was any other mission. My two losses were against "meta" lists. Gristlegore and Bestigor/Enlightened Beasts of Chaos (similar to the popular Tzaangor/Enlightened Tzeentch build), and I was on the back foot every step of the way until I fell. Anvilstrike, or at least the way I run it, does not have a real answer to a uber-killy melee unit that gets into your lines on Turn 1, especially when they get the Double. If there are two such units, as there often are at the moment, it's an even more difficult ladder to climb. I think I could have won all my games - if I made no mistakes and got all the luck I needed. Anvilstrike is very strong but so unforgiving that it can feel very frustrating to play. I don't want to insinuate that my opponents are bad players, since indeed I knew many of them and they were extremely good players, but their armies are much more straightforward and resilient to missteps. There's plenty to be said about playing a very technical list and overcoming adversity through proper play, but it can feel very frustrating when people are receiving much better results with lists that require far less precision. Again, that isn't a knock to any of my opponents, but just a statement of the state of the army I have been playing.

Went to a local 2 dayer, 3-2 with Anvilstrike. Very depressing after a good showing at Adepticon. The meta is just so fast and killy right now that if you don't have lots of redundancy and/or disruption, the game is really on a knife's edge. Anvilstrike can probably still hang with some tweaks, and I probably could have won both of those games had my opponents not gotten the double turn... but I dunno, it always felt like I was on the back foot even in the games I won. Bestigors, Enlightened, Witch Aelves, Morathi, FEC - all can get across the board reliably on T1 unless you backline most of the army, and even then you're not safe if they get a double (and they will since they outdrop you 99% of the time). I lost my Longstrike unit in four of the games, even with Aetherwings to block. I'll try Anvilstrike with more bodies and shutdown - maybe trading some units for extra Aetherwings is apropos. Swapping the 10 Evocators + Heraldor for 20 Sequitors + Castellant takes a lot of teeth out, but it also gives a harder frontline that can help to soak a charge or two and still isn't too bad at hitting back. Going for a more castle approach to the list, though the damage output of 10 Evos is just nothing to scoff at. I was also looking at the lists I ran against and thinking about how Gav would do against it. I think the Daughters matchup wouldn't be too bad - just my own 10 man unit was able to boop of 30 Witch Aelves per charge fairly reliably (though they were Khailebron rather than Hagg-Nar), and once the bodies are down, Morathi herself isn't super terrifying. FEC and LoN are still horrid for Gav since they'll just blob out Ghouls and countercharge with monsters. BoC/Tzeentch speed melee would depend heavily on mission and positioning. Honestly I'm leaning towards Ignax Stardrake. There's so many horde-heavy armies in the game with a smattering of MWs. Grimghasts, Gobbos, Bestigors, Ghouls, Witch Aelves, Plague Monks - all of them bounce off him. I would go for Smouldering Helm, but Terrorgheist Maws and WLCs are still in the game, as are Endless Spells, so Ignax is probably necessary most of the time. I still feel Shootcast should be the way we build, since it spoilers a lot of things and we're one of the few armies that can really do shooting well... it's just so flimsy due to points. Our weakness is already bodies and when someone can just chuck 90 Aelves, or 60 Bestigors, or 60 Tzaangors, or 120 Plague Monks, etc into it, without something like Sequitors to block it up it's a bit rough. Aetherwings are great but they basically stop 1 charge per unit, which is great against slower armies that you can pick off but nothing against 2+ units in your DZ at the bottom of 1. Maybe I'm just a bit salty at my own performance, but it just felt like the meta has shifted so hard that SCE need to refocus to deal with it. Luckily, we're an army with a dozen different possible builds and will never be out of the meta just due to variety, but it can be frustrating to see the build you've worked hard on suddenly lose viability.

Prosecutors are... Fine. If you have 100 points and want some extra speed, you could do a lot worse. Javelins for shooting are usually the way to go. Non-Hero Cavalry is something like: Dracolines with Support Heroes > Dracoths with support > Dracolines without support > Dracoths without support > Palladors

There were rumors that everyhing FEC/Skaven and later was built around a different power scale, so AoS2 books released prior will see big price drops in the next GHB to be on a similar level. I don't know if that's true, or how it would affect SCE in any case, but I wouldn't be surprised to see pre-Sacrosanct units get a drop in points. Edit: Also WHERE ARE MY BATTLELINE DRACOLINES

I think this only works if you're talking about one person with a full set of everything playing host. In Magic the Gathering there's a format called "Cube", where one has a collection of 360+ cards that are used for drafts. Players curate their cube and then bring them to a game night or event and draft off of them. I believe something similar could be used for Underworlds - with the only caveat being that you would have to sort of do 3 different drafts, one for Upgrades, one for Gambits, and one for Objectives, otherwise you could easily end up with illegal decks. That aside, it could be a fun way to play with different deck constructions and see play for underutilized cards. I think it might look something like this: Underworlds Cube: for 4 players Select 12 Factions, 80 Neutral Objectives, 80 Neutral Gambits, 80 Neutral Upgrades, 5 of each Objective/Gambit/Upgrade, Faction Specific per faction. Step one: draft factions. Separate the factions into four stacks of three (face down). Each player selects one Faction from a stack and then passes them, repeating until each player has 3 factions. Players then reveal which faction they will play simultaneously. Players gain access to their limited Faction Specific cards. Step two: Draft Cards. Separate the Objectives into 4 stacks of 20. Each player picks a card from their stack and then passes it to the next player, until all players have 20 Objectives. Repeat this process for Gambits and Upgrades. Step three: Deck building. Each player builds an Objective and Power Deck, using their Drafted Cards and Faction Cards. Play games! Curate the cards and factions involved to be interesting. Maybe no BAR or other currently very popular cards such as Hidden Paths or Inspiration Strikes. This gives you the capability to see cards that otherwise wouldn't see play and end up with crazy situations. ...Actually I might formalize this into a document and try to make some cube setups later this week. Would be cool to see something like this catch on.

Yeah, Vanguard in general is overpriced for what you get. GW assumed that trading damage for speed would be worth the price, but in practice fast, elite, low damage units are pretty terrible unless they have something else going for them such as debuffs or ultimate tankiness. Instead, you just have a small army that is slightly quicker to get places and do nothing. As it stands, they're unlikely to change Warscrolls any time soon, but a flat 20-40 point drop across the board wouldn't be amiss, save for perhaps Aetherwings and Hurricanes, which are actually pretty good units in general.

Azyros for reroll 1s, at the very least. You could potentially go nuts and ally in a Hurricanum to buff them up as well, but mostly you're just looking for weight of dice. Remember that if you teleport, you don't count as having moved, so 9 shots per model is quite a bit, especially with 9 models in the units. Yes, I much prefer Longstrikes as well. The ability focus off important targets is what makes it work imo. However, if armies tend towards independent Hordes that don't particularly require Hero support (Plague Monks, for example), Longstrikes lose value and double shooting Hurricanes bump up. I have a friend who is bringing it to a pretty big event soon, so I want to see how he performs.

I will note that I've seen a few people playing Anvilstrike with Hurricane Raptors instead of Longstrikes. There's less point and click removal of Heroes and Monsters, but they are more efficient shooting against most units in the game. Translocate + 18" General bubble makes even a turn 1 Hero Phase shooting possible, and the extra points let you get more Aetherwings or Heroes.

What models are in the lot? No one can tell you what's good without knowing anything about it.

Yes, it does. The reaction window for Aggressive Defense is "During an Attack Action that targets a Friendly Fighter, before the dice are rolled" and the window for Lightning Whip is "After this fighter's attack action that succeeds", so you both React during different windows. Basically your opponent declares an attack -> Aggressive Defense before they roll -> They roll, presumably succeed, and react with Lightning Whip -> Attack is now complete, you can make your Aggressive Defense attack.

Pretty much everything in the Stormcast line is good. The question is just a bit too open to have an answer, you could run any variety of things and do fine unless you're going to tournaments. You'll get a range of models no matter what you do. Stormcast lists take a variety of Heroes (buffing foot Heroes, fighty mounted Heroes), a variety of Battleline (semi-chump Liberators, position-focused Judicators, elite Sequitors, tricky Hunters), variety of mounted Elites (linebreaker Fulminators, hit and run Palladors, charge forward Dracolines), varied melee foot Elites (mostly Evocators, but Paladins are still viable as well, shooting Elites from Raptors), and Aetherwings because Birbs. What kind of list are you looking for? Shooting focused, melee focused, or mixed? Hyper-elite or semi-elite? Punchy Heroes or supporting Heroes? Stormcast are flexible enough that there's no one straightforward way to build a list.

Got in a couple practice games last night. I think these guys are super strong, at least in many matchups. With some reasonable Score Immediately cards, you can inspire everyone pretty quickly and then just play zoning game. Tundrik is such a beast himself, tanky as all get out and a solid shooting attack, with just a couple upgrades he can go from "solid ranged threat" to "absolute terror".

It's Underworlds but a video game. They're committed to making it as close to possible to the board game, from their own mouths. I've been hanging out in their Discord and seeing what information I can glean but obviously they're still in the early stages. I'm very excited. I'll continue to buy physical releases but this is great for a number of reasons. It lets me get non-Tabletop friends to try the game, lets me play with people at any time over long distances (without fussing with TTS which I'm not super crazy about), and let's me quickly get reps of the game in when I feel like playing but not going out. I can see people enjoying one and not the other for their own purposes, but I think there's room in my life for both, kind of like how many of my friends play MTG and MTG:Arena (though there is some overlap in purchases there).

20 more is occasionally quite difficult to fit into a tight list, and while they both can Translocate, the Relictor's base abilities (-1 hit or heal friendly) is extremely useful, potentially more than the unbind depending on the opponent. Both are very worthwhile, and the Veritant bringing birdpuppy is solid too.

Base set Nightvault or Shadespire? They're pretty similar but some different cards. You're a bit limited and will be more or less forced to play Objective focused, but Godsworn can do that at least ok. Assuming Nightvault, you could try something like this: https://www.underworldsdb.com/shared.php?deck=0,N175,N180,N181,N183,N306,N330,N331,N332,N333,N334,N374,N185,N189,N192,N193,N409,N414,N446,N469,N454,N460,N194,N196,N197,N198,N202,N475,N504,N506,N521,N550,N178 Hm, I would say you very much could. Taking Damage is the normal way to be Taken out of Action, but they are not necessarily the same thing.

Their site says that there will be free card releases with "Extra Warband DLC expansions". That leads me to believe everyone will get all Universal cards and then just buy the Warbands you are interested in playing. I think that's probably the best split for "good for the devs" vs "good for the consumer". Obviously we would love the game to just be free, but that's really not sustainable without some sort of things like cosmetics or whatever. I'll be playing and perhaps streaming as soon as I get my Early Access

This is the thread for discussing Ylthari's Guardians, I have created a new thread to discuss potential rotations:

Not the place to talk about it, but first, nobody knows what the rotation will look like, and second, nothing prevents you from playing with whatever you want at club night, likely the format will only be for tournaments/events.

There's a post in another thread detailing why a rotation should happen and the proper way to do it. I personally think there will be one for a few reasons and will be more than happy when it does.