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Hey Everybody!

So I keep working on SCGT Style Tournament lists (for fun and for my own OCD). Now, obviously lists vary greatly based on armies/alliances, but I was just wondering what some of your personal lists preferences and go to build-types were.

Do you all tend to go more Hero-heavy or large units? (Or small units)?

Are Monstrous Creatures a need? I know this kind of goes into the previous question a bit.

Do you tend to play a combination of Armies in a Grand Alliance or a more "pure" list of a specific army>

Although it's obviously more weighted for some armies over others; but do you tend to focus on more ranged that CC or vice versa?

Thanks!

For me the first consideration is who will go first or second, and do you a.) want to be in control of that decision or b.) make that decision as difficult for your opponent as possible.

The worst case scenario is: Your opponent finishes deploying first, chooses for you to go first, you can't do much in your first turn, you then get smashed by a double turn against you.

So to mitigate that you can either shape your army to have as few units as possible so that you finish deploying first, or you make sure there is enough first turn threat to make you opponent question giving you the first turn.

If you go for the first option you are not going to be able to have lots of 5 wound heroes, chaff or MSUs and will instead have to use a mixture of massive units, monsters, monstrous infantry, or hero monsters (like Archaon) to make sure each unit you put down uses a good chunk of your pools.

If you go for the latter you can have as many MSUs as you like, and in fact chaff is going to be useful as you'll likely go up against a double turn early on. You'll want to have long range threats to do as much damage on turn 1 as possible, so warmachines and long range missile troops are a must.

I think your whole army will probably evolve naturally from that first decision. For me I go for the later choice and have as much turn 1 threat as possible. Mainly 3 cannons (Empire Cannon, Cannon and Steamtank). That gives the opponent a tough call to make if they finish deploying before me. Either they give me the first turn and face a round of 5 cannon balls with no Mystic Shield or Inspiring Presence, or they go first to cover as much ground as they can but run the risk of facing a double turn from me (10 cannon balls if they can't take one out).

After that I like to look at keyword synergies from your General. Look at the command ability and decide how best it can be used. For me that's the Freeguild General's "Hold The Line" which utilises the "Freepeoples" keyword.

Is this a useful starting point for you? :-)

Very helpful as usual, Bottle!

That does help with decision-making. It's also making me think of doing less house-ruling in our AoS games because what we once thought would be broken options now seem manageable (for instance not static turn order)

To add to Bottles excellent general advice, with SCGT specifically you are best off not sinking more than half your points into big blocks of units because they aren't quite as points-efficient as heroes/monsters. That said, you probably want at least a quarter of your costs to be in basic units of some sort because they add body count to the army; monster mash and superfriends can have trouble with chaff units or board control if they don't have some troops to back them up.

If you are rolling for initiative then make sure you have some reasonably long-range threats in your army (24" or better) so that you can take advantage of a double-turn early on as well as dissuading your opponent from giving you the opportunity like Bottle said. Also if you want the freedom to pick who goes first then bring a decent chunk of your army as a battalion, since a whole battalion can be deployed at once instead of one unit at a time.

Of course! Battalions are going to be crucial to securing that first turn choice in SCGT Comp.

Yes, I agree with Ninth that monsters have the upper edge in the SCGT pools. You can see that the winning armies deployed lots of them.

I think there are some interesting strategies with the AoS mechanic of the first to deploy choosing the initiative and rolling for it every battle round afterwards - the only problem is it can be so dominating that armies must be built with it as their central focus; either being built to secure the choice (quick to finish deploying) or crammed with long range threat (24"+ as Ninth says to allow first turn shooting).

Every now and again I would bring back your house rule of a fixed turn order just to give some breathing room for the players in your group to build with different strategies in mind.

I am enjoying this thread and hope we can get more tactical discussions like this going! I am attending a tournament next week and although it uses Clash instead of SCGT many of these principles apply still. I am playing with an army with first turn threat, so I'll put this into practice and report on how it turns out!

Me and my buds have brought turn order back to 8th ed; roll for initiative turn one with the person who finished deployment getting +1 to the roll, then alternate from there. We're a lot happier with it that way, but YMMV.

I'll have to try that out then. I didn't even think of secure the first turn based off battalions. I guess I'm going to have to pick up some Longbeards then at some point. Quarrellers I keep hearing are a must-buy as well but I love the punch power of Thunderers.

I'm also thinking with Burlokkson increasing the Thunderer range it would counter the 16" range issue. Giving them a 4 inch move puts them in the 24" thread range.

I did just get a cheap mining cart on ebay for my Miners as well so that might have to be put into good use.

How does Clash comp work? The only one I've seen so far is SCGT so I'm interesting to see the other Comp systems and I know the few people I play with are looking for different ways to mix things up.

My one last question: I've been hearing a lot about Legacy units on another forum. What exactly are these? Are there Dwarf units I can't use anymore?

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Me and my buds have brought turn order back to 8th ed; roll for initiative turn one with the person who finished deployment getting +1 to the roll, then alternate from there. We're a lot happier with it that way, but YMMV.

Yeah I can understand that. I am enjoying the strategy that comes with rolling for iniative but as it is SO dominating over the game, playing instead with the old fashioned turn order allows for different strategies to be played for instead. Mixing it up from time to time should be healthy for gamers who play a lot.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 IronMaster wrote:
I'll have to try that out then. I didn't even think of secure the first turn based off battalions. I guess I'm going to have to pick up some Longbeards then at some point. Quarrellers I keep hearing are a must-buy as well but I love the punch power of Thunderers.

I'm also thinking with Burlokkson increasing the Thunderer range it would counter the 16" range issue. Giving them a 4 inch move puts them in the 24" thread range.

I did just get a cheap mining cart on ebay for my Miners as well so that might have to be put into good use.

How does Clash comp work? The only one I've seen so far is SCGT so I'm interesting to see the other Comp systems and I know the few people I play with are looking for different ways to mix things up.

My one last question: I've been hearing a lot about Legacy units on another forum. What exactly are these? Are there Dwarf units I can't use anymore?

Yes, Burlokkson is a great model for the range extension rule. Sadly I think at a tournament (and I am taking him next weekend) I will have to use the updated 'Cogsmith' rules which aren't nearly as good.

Clash Comp is basically the same as SCGT, or to put it another way, it's the predecessor of it. A deployed Clash Comp force is 20 pools (with a sideboard of 10) vs SCGTs 100 pools (with a side board of 50). What SCGT did was base their system on Clash but times the pools costs by 5 so they could add more granularity between the unit costs. They also have similar scenarios. I think I prefer SCGT overall but Clash is certainly good for quickly adding up an armies worth as most things cost 1, 2 or 3 'pools'.

As for legacy units, yes officially at SCGT anything that wasn't brought forward into the Grand Alliance -with the exception of entire armies- wasn't allowed. This meant that Hellcannons weren't allowed but Tomb Kings were for example.

But they included all the pools costs anyway, so I would use them to your hearts content :-)

That's good because I'd be quite sad to not be able to use my Miners any longer. Worst case scenario I'd use them as Longbeards with GreatPicks.

Yeah exactly, I have some Dwarf Miners too, as well as an Empire Cannon and Empire Knights which are "legacy". The most important thing is GW's 'matched play' will have rules for them and even if a tourney comp doesn't you can always proxy them as something else.

Hey Guys!

This is turning more into our own personal Dwarven Tactical Thread: Which I'm perfectly ok with!

So after my game this weekend against my usual Skaven opponent, I've come to a few solid conclusions:

Stormcast Eternals make a perfect ally to the Dwarves and I'd highly recommend their use. I'm also very grateful to having a really solid and fun opponent to play AoS with right now. We played 150 Points (SCGT)

My List:
Celestant Prime
Lord Vexillor
Lord Celestant on Dracoth
3x Prosecutors
10x Retributors

Grimm Burloksson
Thane with Battle Standard Bearer
30x Thunderers
15x Hammerers
20x Ironbreakers
Cannon
Organ Gun
Flame Cannon

My Opponent's list:
4 Gray Seers
Thanquil
40x Storm Vermin
8 Rat Swarms
6 Jezzails
2 Ratling guns
1x Drill Team
2x Mortar Teams
10 giant rats
30 clan rats
Warp Lightning Cannon
2x Pack Masters
6x Rat Ogres
Doom Wheel
8x Gutter Runners
2x Assassins
10 Plague Monks

I wound up winning the battle! Retributors did great "deep striking" in with the Vexillor to tie up and kill off the Storm Vermin as well as giant rats and rat swarms. The Hammerers were able to assault and kill Thanquil and tied up clan rats for a few turns IronBreakers finished off the remainder of the Rat Ogres after being shot consistently.

The war machines did great ranged damage with the Thunderers on the flank taking out the Warp Lightning Cannon and Doom Wheel. The Celestant on Dracoth and Prosecutors ran defensive flanks to take out the jezzails and weapons teams. The Vexillor was able to tie up the gutter runners and assassin for a few turns thanks to dice rolls. The Celestant Prime was more of a lingering threat most of the game but made him think about his tactical choices. It was a lot of fun and reaffirmed my choice of the Stormcast/Dwarven front.

My thoughts going forward, I know for a fact he's going to use the drillers to bring in those storm vermin from the rear so I'm going to have to consider that tactical option. The Storm Vermin are usually his star players, followed by the doom wheel and Thanquil. The key is to neutralize them as much as possible.

Awesome! Do you have 4 Starsoul Maces in the Retributors? :-)

First off, gratz on the victory! It looks like you have things pretty well in hand now

In regards to starsoul maces, they aren't actually that good on retributors because their basic weapon is so awesome. I'd only include 1 per 5 for the he consistency.

I would still max out on Starsoul Maces personally, although the Lightning hammer can do 4 wounds (or 4 mortal wounds if you roll two 6s) on its standard attack you'll need to roll 3+, 3+ and bypass the save (rend is only -1) vs straight up D3 mortal wounds.

4 Starsoul Maces would get you 4D3 mortal wounds on attack which is nothing to scoff at in my opinion!

 Bottle wrote:
I would still max out on Starsoul Maces personally, although the Lightning hammer can do 4 wounds (or 4 mortal wounds if you roll two 6s) on its standard attack you'll need to roll 3+, 3+ and bypass the save (rend is only -1) vs straight up D3 mortal wounds.

4 Starsoul Maces would get you 4D3 mortal wounds on attack which is nothing to scoff at in my opinion!

Actually you're right, SCGT doesn't charge points for weapon upgrades do they? Starsoul maces are strictly better so if there's no cost totally take 2 per 5. I'm used to PPC where there's a cost for each one.

Yeah if you're using a comp which points upgrades you'll have to weigh up if the points could be better spent elsewhere. Under SCGT and the upcoming GW points system (which is rumoured to just be a warscroll cost) - you might as well take every upgrade available as they are all *free*

I was using one model as a "stand in" for a starsoul mace as the only retributors I have are from the original boxed set. I want to try and pick up a few single retributor models with starsoul maces at some point.

That unit with a Vexillor is the single balancing factor I've truly seen in my games. It keeps my non-mobile dwarves far more competitive.

Awesome, glad to hear Hammerers did well.

The Trophy Kill Count for the Hammerers thusfar has been:
Thanquil and Boneripper
Khorne Daemon Prince
Bloodthrone
Khorne Soul Grinder

They're highly effective when I can get them to attack before the enemy does.