Sagittarii Orientalis
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Posts posted by Sagittarii Orientalis
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55 minutes ago, PrimeElectrid said:
So thinking further about GHB20 lists, let’s try and see what we can do.
A few assumptions:
1) Battleline, Leader and Monster/Behemoths are good. We want to try and take these, and also need to be conscious that the opponent will field lots of these also (and also lots of counters to them).
2) 5 wound support heroes are in a lot of trouble and we should minimise these as much as possible
3) Better Part of Valour and Total Commitment make it unwise to utilise min Libs or rely too strongly on Scions.
2 & 3 feel like the final nail to Gav bombs. Not only is it easily countered by screening, but you have to invest 100-200 points in additional 5 wound support heroes in case Total Commitment comes up (which are likely to then be shot off the board turn 1).
My starting point is actually the Tauralon. This is now 280 points, which is only 20 higher than the gryph charger started (lol), for a 10 wound leader & monster that flies (#1 & #2). Staunch Defender gets it to 2+, mirror shield makes him -2 to hit by missile weapons, and with Steel Pinions a 6+ after save. That actually covers most of our bases.
Importantly, this also unlocks Sequitors, which is the only battleline capable of contesting objectives in Better Part of Valour (fulfilling #1 and #3). The Tauralon also gives them +2 run (good for getting on objectives) and it’s wide base size makes it easier to pass Staunch (without relying on a Castellant, because #2). We could add a Heraldor to further take advantage of the CA, but again #2.
Now, we could just take 3x big blocks of Sequitors. While they aren’t nearly as tough as they used to be, 120 wounds with a 4+ (sometimes rerolling) is still a lot to get rid of. But as anyone who has played Sequitors will know, those bricks are tough to manoeuvre, and 1” grand hammers is not ideal. There’s also no longer any points advantage to going big, and you get more grandhammers (and attacks) from the Prime. So perhaps 1x20 (for anvil duty) and 2x10 for board coverage? Or even 4x10. Probably no right answers here.
(We could also explore the use of a large Judicator unit here. A bit of a liability in Better Part of Valour as they have little hope of attacking, but perhaps could sit on one to defend it).
So now we’ve spent 1240 points. What next? Steering clear of 5 wound heroes, we could add in a Stardrake or Drakesworn Templar (more leader monsters with fly). I don’t think we should chase leader/monsters too hard though (as they aren’t very good, and the Stardrakes in particular rely on more 5w support heroes). Also, we don’t as yet have anything to really fight enemy leaders/monsters.
At this point we could consider slotting in a LO ballista battery with Knight Azyros (680 points) or some Longstrikes with an Azyros and birds (650 points). Yes, this means 5 wound support heroes: but the advantage here is they can be hidden off board and still contribute (not the case for others whose abilities go off in the hero phase). TC is still a liability but partly compensated by the range of the shooting units (eg deploying ballista 39” away from their targets and single shotting).
We could also go the other way and, for 400 points, pick up the Prime and Comet for low-risk (due to range) MW splash damage.
The idea in either case is to kill leaders/behemoths, or otherwise soften them and battleline, so that the Sequitors have a chance of clearing them.
Note that I have specifically avoided Evocators, Dracoths and Paladins because they are not battleline/leaders/monsters (#1), or rely too heavily on support heroes that have to be on the board (#2 & #3). But perhaps we can slot in a small support unit alongside the Prime/Comet combo.
What do people think of this reasoning so far?
Oh I forgot about Kroak of course.Tauralon
Celestant Prime
Kroak
4x10 Sequitors
Comet
Balewind
2000 exactly
Just became curious after looking at your list. How would you react against steamroller combat armies? Orruks, fyreslayers, Ogors, DoK for example. Sequitors are just slightly better(and expensive) liberators, and I never expect them to hold against moderately good combat units.
I understand your reasoning for excluding 5~6 wound heroes. But the problem is that you are limiting even more options for SCE by doing so.
Heraldor provides valuable source of AoE mortal wounds and extra mobility. Castellant gives that sweet modifier to saves. Incantor has her voidstorm scrolls to deny a spell at critical moment. Take these away and SCE are left with slower and more fragile units.
Your list also gives up what I believe is still the bread and butter of SCE: evocators of both variants, dracothian guard and long range shooting. Sure, Celestant Prime and Kroak can burst out mortal wounds. But Celestant Prime is just still too fragile. And I strongly doubt Lord arcanum can achieve anything meaningful at the critical moment, mostly due to severe lack of modifier for casting values.
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I am not sure about efficacy of SCE magic, because of how awful SCE wizards are at casting spells. The only spell worth taking would be an expensive comet which is far from reliable to cast.
However I agree shooting is effective vs petrifex. However even then they are surprisingly effective at providing target saturation with their good saves(even vs rend -2 attacks), deathless minions save, resurrection and healing. Important petrifex characters are even tougher to remove if you consider immortis guardians.
And even SCE shooting will struggle to win the game when playing new missions favouring those with good battleline and monsters/behemoths. Losing board control isn't as dehabilitating to them as it is to SCE.
I will practice with the same list as all-comers roster for awhile to better understand how it works. On a side note, the new vanguard chamber looks powerful. But I am doubtful how well such list would perform when the strength of the entire list depends on 4+ save models with only 18 wounds total. Crawlers, lumineth sentinels, salamanders, kharadrons, tzeentch flamers, and even orruk arrowboyz would delight seeing such list.
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I just played my second game applying GHB 2020 against ossiarch. And the mission was......focal point.
I had celestant prime, lord castellant(staunch defender and lantern of the tempest), incantor, heraldor and ordinator for leaders. Then 3 mandatory units of 5 liberators, 4 fulminators, 3 vanguard palladors and 3 ballistas.
Opposing player brought petrifex list. It has liege cavalos as general, and then arkhan, vokmortian, 2 units of 20 mortek guard, 3 deathriders, 1 gothizzar harvester, 1 mortek crawler and 3 immortis guardians.
In the end I conceded at the end of 4th battle round. And there was a grave mistake I made. Instead of using Prime as mobile mortal wound artillery, I prematurely charged him into combat.
Despite this loss at 1st battle round, I was able to remove arkhan, his immortis bodyguard(tanking wounds allocated to arkhan on 2+!), some thirty mortek guard and 3 deathriders. I had castellant, heraldor, single pallador, 5 liberators and 3 ballistas by the time I conceded.
More alarming however was the gap between victory points. At the end of the game I accrued 13 points while my opponent earned at least 25 points, thanks to his arkhan, harvester and the crawler sitting near objectives most of the time.
On average, my opponent earned double my victory points per battle round. He also scored as much as I did even when he conceded the central objective and partial board control.
Granted, I started playing GHB 2020 missions after 4 month long hiatus since covid outbreak. And I could have used the Prime more cautiously. However, the sheer advantage granted to already strong factions with good monster/behemoth/battleline seem to broaden the gap between battletomes even further.
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I find vanguard palladors to be decent. They are cheap enough to use as fast, relatively durable while being hitty enough to clear most chaff. Their ability ride the winds aetheric also comes in handy when you cannot rely on scions of the storm battle trait. For example......Total commitment.
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2 hours ago, CommissarRotke said:
the new points changes are really making me want to buy a box of Judis... I might do so just because I love the models so much, but darn if this wasn't sad to read through even without the full Lumineth/Seraphon rules context
Well, I just bought the ebook version of this year's handbook. I won't be buying anymore stormcast until the new battletome comes out. No need to boost their sales now.
And sadly, Total Commitment remains as same as before.
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I hope the mission Total Commitment has been modified to not hurt armies relying on reserves too much. It basically negates almost the entire stormcast(and also the poor nighthaunt) allegiance abilities.
The mission might have had purpose during 2018 summer by keeping new SCE in check through penalties.
Nowadays SCE suffers even with their allegiance abilties, let alone when these bonuses are negated. I always feel unjustly penalised whenever I see Total Commitment.
I would have been totally convinced of its existence, had there been missions where armies relying on magic, summoning, fighting twice or fighting first were equally penalised. But no. The worst offenders of the meta suffer none of these penalties which SCE players always have to remind of.
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6 minutes ago, Roark said:
In celebration of the throttling of Endless Spells and aftersaves, I was thinking of using both in quantity, with Liberators and masses of birds to claim objectives and gum up the board, but someone told me it was unfriendly. 🙂
My adage nowadays is that it is nearly impossible to write "unfriendly" SCE lists with rise of latest battletomes.
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1 minute ago, Maturin said:
They do get +2 to save if in cover but otherwise, they've got a shorter range if you want use their maximum output, which you should.
While they cannot achieve maximum firepower, the option to shoot at respectable 36" range is very useful. Vanguard raptors cannot, and they are more likely to die before getting into the range where their firepower is maximised. And I can expect Celestar Ballistas to wither enemy shooting more comfortably than raptors.
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After the Seraphon rework, I am leaning towards using celestar ballistas instead of longstrike crossbows for SCE firepower.
Combination of Anvils of Heldenhammer command abilities with longstrike crossbows is indeed powerful no doubt. To maximise its firepower however longstrikes need to sacrifice their 30" range, as command ability is used before the longshot ability come to effect. Longstrikes crossbow vanguard-raptors are also extremely fragile for their points, making them an easy prey to enemy shooting and magic. Tzeentch, Seraphon, Ossiarchs, Cities of Sigmar, Lumineth Realm-lords, Orruks with kunnin ruk arrer boyz, and other factions and their units can actually win the shooting/magic war against vanguard raptors. This is why I start to think Celestar Ballistas maybe more effective in the future games.
Yes, generating the number of attacks based on d6 is random. However the ballistas have significantly longer range, and are more durable in terms of save and wounds per point compared to vanguard raptors. They do not have to cower in fear of getting shot by bastiladons, steagadons, ossiarch catapults, arrer boyz or Lumineth archers unlike vanguard raptors. Another advantage of the ballistas is that their effectiveness do not diminish against coalesced Seraphon, against which vanguard raptors are even more powerless. Pity that ballistas did not have their points reverted to pre-2019 handbook version. I never thought the points increase was justifiable from the first place.
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I do not usually post comments on threads that were recently "revived" via threadomancy.
But I must say it is very amusing to read those comments defending HoS so fervently.
Especially with the wisdom of hindsight, knowing what nerfhammer HoS took last December eventually.
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I actually welcome Malign Sorcery artefact becoming obsolete. Only a handful of them were being used, with vast majority of them being not even used in friendly games. It clearly shows how unbalanced the entire range of artefacts were. And I never found fun in seeing every people bringing the popular few: ethereal amulet, scales of ignax, etc.
Although these powerful artefacts gave more benefits to relatively underpowered factions(scales of ignax on stardrake for example), I did not see it as a huge improvement for the weaker factions.
SCE might lose an arm because of this change, but SCE was already a cripple without two other limbs anyway.
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So sad to see SCE in such miserable state.
Ironically, the Covid spread has put a halt to almost all group gaming activities in my region and I did not have to see SCE crushed by latest armies.
Although that also means SCE will not have their new battletome soon. Assuming if the GW rules design team is actually aware of the sorry state of SCE.
Speaking of which, is anti SCE sentiment still significant nowadays? Because at this point it would be almost impossible to hate(if not pity) SCE after seeing how they perform.
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11 hours ago, Sleepa said:
No kidding! The Lumineth leaks were super depressing. All of their battleline choices are great, and put Libs/Judis to shame. Their female support wizard is amazing, their monsters are legit, and Teclis is.... a God. Paying points for magic outside of Death, Tzneetch, Seraphon and Lumineth is really starting to seem pointless.
It is actually funny that many were disappointed by the Lumineth rules because they were underwhelming compared to, say, seraphon or tzeench.
Meanwhile we SCE players are stuck with some of the worst battleline choices, battle trait and many more.
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8 minutes ago, Mark Williams said:
I doubt that it will help due to the fact that it is modifier rather than a base warscroll value. All modifiers are added at the same time, where as the bastilidon creates a situation where you start at 1 and then modify from there.
I see. Makes sense.
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So I just read the latest designer's commentary for the new Seraphon. The file addressed the much debated issue of 1+ save bastiladon and its interaction with rend characteristic. Below is the full query.
"Q: How does the Rend characteristic of attacks interact with the Bastiladon while it has a 1+ Save characteristic? A: An unmodified save roll of a 1 always fails. When a save roll is modified by the Rend characteristic of an attack, it can never be modified to less than 1. When a model has a Save characteristic of 1+, modified save rolls of 1 are successfully saved. This means, while the Bastiladon has a Save characteristic of 1+, only unmodified save rolls of 1 will inflict damage regardless of the Rend characteristic of the weapon used for the attack."
So even with rend -2 or -3 you cannot modify the save to below 1 as per the commentary. Will it help Stardrake weather high rend attacks which are common nowadays?(KoS, Terrorgheists, Salamanders, etc)
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26 minutes ago, Turragor said:
You wouldn't plug 6 longstrikes into most lists though. Not unless they already have more longstrikes. Kroak gives much more than 6 longstrikes - in a lot of lists.
There's nothing "bad" about having more CPs even in lists that don't focus on CP generation. I hadn't even considered the CPs when I thought of plugging Kroak into Starcast.
I think, perhaps, Anvilstrike might be a list that just wouldn't have use for him.
And most of those lists without enough longstrikes never sell itself. To me, at least.
Perhaps because anything outside anvilstrikes were a disappointment to me. That is, even in games where competitiveness is not pursued to an extreme.
And if Kroak brings so much for SCE armies without anvilstrike, so much that it could make those lists much more viable, that simply shows how abysmal SCE is.
An army that cannot stand without a crutch borrowed from other battletome. That is why I wouldn't be glad even if Kroak could make some SCE lists viable.
P.S.
Apologies for long haranguing. I just couldn't find any half competitive SCE lists without Anvilstrike nowadays. Seeing the new Seraphon update simply added insult to the injury. Nevertheless I will try to be more open-minded regarding this topic.
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Kroak's casting/unbinding rules and spells are good, but I think he is expensive for additional command points. Despite the points reduction, Kroak costs nearly as much as 6 longstrikes. Kroak will take up points which should be spent on Stormcast units that need the extra command points most. It is a paradox.
To be honest if you really want to use Kroak and be competitive at the same time, play Seraphon instead. Don't play Stormcast.
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At least giving SCE dracothian guard as battleline would improve the sorry state of the army. Make them conditional battleline unit if Lord-Celestant on Stardrake or Dracoth is the general. That can also give value to a hero that is almost always never taken.
Although I must say even this is a humble suggestion, seeing how several armies get cavalry or even behemoths as unconditional battleline. Flesh Eater Court, new Seraphon, Cities of Sigmar, Beastclaw Raiders, Orruk Warclans, Idoneth Deepkin, etc.
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10 hours ago, Mark Williams said:
While I agree that stormcast is in a bad place, anything that shuts down or counters anvilstrike is a good thing imo. The anvilstrike’s core strategy involves essentially removing any interactive play from opponents and creating an experience where your opponent just systematically removes their units one by one with very little engagement. I sincerely believe GW can’t be happy with that sort of gameplay persisting indefinitely in the game, and remaining a dominant strategy of sce armies. I don’t see anvilstrike living past the next book in its current form personally. I realise this post is going to get downvoted, but I seriously think anvilstrike lists are boring and one note for both you and your opponents, and bad for the game and the army.
I am afraid I do not follow you.
There are plenty of counterplay against Anvilstrike lists. Don't deploy valuable units within 24" of longstrikes so that their double shoot command ability cannot be used on crucial units.
Put the heroes within 3" of friendly units. Or even better, deploy terrain peaces cleverly and hide your important heroes for buffs.
Use numerical superiority to flood the SCE, which most of the factions can easily do. Aetherwings can be disposed of with even minimum shooting and magic. Or use double move abilities like Bladeds of Khorne and Orruk Warclans.
And surprise! You can actually beat the dreaded anvilstrike by using your own shooting! Raptors are surprisingly fragile for their points. OBR catapults, skaven artillery of any kind, CoS crossbowmen/handgunners/hurricanum, bonesplitterz, bastiladons/stegadons, etc.
The list goes on and on. And most of aforementioned factions actually have enough number of wounds to weather SCE shooting and counterattack with their own shooting. Running an Anvilstrike means bearing all these counterplay in mind, and that is far from "non-interactive" and effortless point and click play.
And if someone still firmly believes that Anvilstrikes are too strong, they need to remember how much a big unit of raptors cost: 510pts for 18 wounds 4+ save unit with 9 models. That is over a quarter of an entire army. Of course they should be powerful when used correctly.
Or are these people implying that SCE unit should never be powerful no matter how expensive and fragile that would be? Then my only answer is: Git Gud.
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Looking at the new seraphon rules, I cannot help but feel SCE will dive further into low-tiers in the near future. The Coalesced Seraphon is a colossal middle finger against Anvils of Heldenhammer Vanguard-Raptors, since all Coalesced Seraphon models decrease the damage of enemy attacks by one. The Vanguard-Raptors will struggle even more to earn their points back, and they weren't even dominating the podium. On the contrary despite being perhaps the most competitive SCE list, Anvils of Heldenhammer with Vanguard-Raptor belonged to the middling lists in most tournaments.
What is more funny is that Coalesced Seraphon are not only more durable, but also are sporting more effective shooting attacks compared to SCE. Thunder Lizards, the Coalesced sub-faction that can take stegadons as battlelines(yup, another faction with behemoth battlelines while SCE are stuck at horrible liberators), also has double-shoot command ability like Anvils of the Heldenhammer. With Stegadons shooting 3 rend -1 3+/3+ damage 3 ballistas, and Bastiladons their 9-shot solar engine, I can confidently say Seraphon will win shooting war against Stormcast most of the time.
Did I mention that each of their 3-wound salamanders cost 80pts with ablative 3 wounds from skinks handlers, and that their shooting attack is 4/3+/3+/-2/d3 damage? Oh, and on unmodified hit rolls of 6 their shooting attacks cause d3 mortal wounds. Granted, they do have short range of 12". However with Coalesced battle trait(reducing damage of incoming attack by 1) and additional wounds from the skinks, I think they can easily approach within 12" range and start blasting their enemies.
If previewing the new Seraphon battletome brought any consolation to me, it is that more people would stop thinking stormcast as "totally fine" or even "overpowered" as more factions receive excellent warscrolls and allegiance abilities like Seraphons did.
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5 hours ago, PiotrW said:
Yeah, checking her stats she seems like someone who can wound a monster some good, but will usually end up getting killed once the monster has a chance of striking back... On the other hand, if you combined her with a Protector unit supporting her..?
Speaking of combinations: are Lord-Ordinators good? And would it make sense to field two of them - and combine them with two Ballistas and two Castigator units to have two Hailstorm Batteries?
Stormcast warscroll battalions are generally terrible. Hailstorm Battery is no exception.
It is almost always better to take an additional or two ballistas for the cost of the battalion and the mandatory castigator unit.
The castigators especially are notorious for being useless in current Stormcast tome.
And bringing two lord ordinators is an excellent way to waste your points, in most cases. He is too expensive, and just one model is enough to buff your ballistas.
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9 minutes ago, jhamslam said:
lmao im Mrigank. So thanks!
I know. You dont need to tell me. I met all the other SCE players there, none of their armies ever stood a chance against this new meta.
My list only has a slight chance, and requires extremely tight play to do so. Jack from Re Rolling Ones on YT was also at LVO, playing shootcast, didnt do so well. He also wasnt playing any evocators so...
I should have noticed that from your ID "jha"mslam! How silly of me.
I felt the need to comment because there are always people who glance at a few results and say "nah they are fine" without further analysis.
Again, congratulations for your results.
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I applaud Mrigank Jha for his outstanding record at LVO with his Stormcast army.
However, I do not think his record alone shows that the Stormcast is in a finely balanced state internally and externally. So far Stormcast has been showing low performance at least since the launch of 2019 handbook as can be inducted from winrates compiled by HonestWargamer.
While there is a stormcast in top 5 at LVO, there is also CanCon where highest performing stormcast player took 45th place. This makes hasty generalisation based on a single tournament result risky.
It would be same as claiming Imperial Guards are doing fine at current 40K meta because one of them placed in top 10 at latest GW Grand Tournament HEAT 1. Or saying Orks need nerf because they took 1st place while being ahead of several top Iron Hands(AoS equivalent of Hedonites in current 40K meta) list in the same tournament.
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On 2/3/2020 at 1:24 AM, jhamslam said:
lmao they might see the lvo result and be like "nah sce is clearly fine"
Speaking of which, how are the results of LVO AoS tournament? I keep searching for the results, but I struggle to find them.
AoS 2 - Stormcast Eternals Discussion
in Stormcast Eternals
Posted
As of now, I am playing with this list.
Celestant-Prime is still too fragile for hist points cost, but is devastating when cautiously deployed as mobile artillery that can put some dent on toughest foes.
Lantern of the Tempest is the artefact of my choice because of good ranged units dealing mortal wounds on hit rolls of 6. Longstrike vanguard-raptors, Lumineth sentinels, Seraphon salamanders, for example.
For similar reasons, I took fulminators as my main damage dealing unit due to their high resistance to shooting attacks. Their bonus damages on the charge also mean they are less penalised than other Dracothian Guards when up against coalesced Seraphon.
Vanguard-Palladors are mobile enough to grab distant objectives in Total Commitment, and also strong enough to clear chaff units holding objectives.
Lastly, I chose ballistas over longstrikes because they are more durable against enemy shooting, i.e. they have lower points-per-wound. Balliastas become even more resistant to enemy shooting when tucked in cover. And I greatly appreciate it in the era when SCE is no longer the prime shooting faction in AoS, even if it means I must sacrifice reliability of firepower(i.e. number of shots).