Autarchs suffer from diminishing returns. An extra Autarch provides a small boost for ensuring more of your stuff comes on in turn 2, but after turn 2 an extra Autarch provides 0 extra benefit.
I know you don't want a seer, but a 90 point guide seer with Warding would be a huge asset to your list (or a doom seer if you are more worried about
MCs). You could stick her in a 5 man dire avenger squad in a wave serpent, and cast guide on those war walkers, for great fun. Also consider that runes of warding helps shut down the nasty psychers which are plentiful in new books. Making
GKs, Rune Priests, Mephiston, etc take perils 37% of the time they cast, and blocking the power 50% of the time is too good to pass up for an all comers list.
Storm Guardians are indeed a solid semi competitive unit and a lot of fun. I use them often and they usually outperform my Dire Avengers. That said, I don't like your load up. You already noted that those melta guns are only bs3, and that essentially means you are paying 125 points to get a unit that performs less effectively than an 80 point Fire Dragon squad.
When I put Storm Guardians in my list I give them 2 flamers and put Destructor on my Warlock. Flamers don't roll to hit, so you bypass the weak ballistic skill entirely, and they are one of the few units (besides wraithlords) which can actually take flamers in the Eldar codex. This turns them into a solid anti infantry platform, which is still able to melee down a low initiative walker if the need arises (ork players get really confused when their killa kan gets eaten by guardians
).
If Blue Dagger posts here, he'll tell you your wave serpents are over upgraded. He hasn't yet, so I'll save him the time ;-).
you are spending an extra 20 points on each of your wave serpents, over 5 wave serpents, thats 100 points! I've found, that during the grand majority of my games, my wave serpents don't move under 6 inches, they are strafing 12 to get a better shot, or blasting ahead 24 inches. I have a single wave serpent with an
EML + underslung cannon which I use (because I bought it off ebay and the cannon was glued on the bottom) and the times I actually fire that cannon are quite rare. This is exasperated by the fact that if you are within 24 inches of the enemy you probably wanted to have moved 6+ inches so they require a 6+ to hit you in
cc.
Going over to spirit stones. Sure they can help, but they only help 1/6 of the time, and they cost 10 points per model. Some players are adamantly against them, some support them to the death. I personally haven't found them worth it, I'd rather scrap them entirely, and put the 60 points or so I save by doing so to try to afford another wave serpent!
EDIT:
I noticed that you are interested in a Saim-Hann theme, yet lack the flagship units of that build! This is quite a shame as Guardian Jetbikes are actually one of the best troop choices in our codex, in both competitive and semi competitive environments. The ability to take a breathtakingly fast scoring unit, with solid anti tank options (spear + cannon)
Its a shame to leave bikers out of a saim hann list.
