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The AoS box set gave us a glimpse of the marvelous Stormcast Eternal's, (Stormcast Eternity? Plural for Eternal? LOL), and the models are really top notch. With the rumored leaks of the new book, we've seen all the new models. Here is where the disappointment comes in:

The Stormcast Eternal's have no wizards.

The magnitude of this is HUGE. It means your opponent gets to cast whatever spell he/she wants, and there is nothing you can do about it. The SE player loses out on the two basic spells that would just make the SE's even better: Arcane Bolt and Mystic Shield. Arcane Bolt is good, but Mystic Shield is awesome. Adding plus one to their saves turns them into juggernauts!

Just seems odd to me that the Stormcast Eternal's, beings made of magic, have no magic of their own. It's not a big deal of course; this is AoS and I can just happily add a Empire Battle Wizard, High Elf Mage, Skaven Greyseer, whatever. I just like the idea of "Faction Pure" armies, and having no Wizards and facing someone with Wizards hurts.

 Tamwulf wrote:
The AoS box set gave us a glimpse of the marvelous Stormcast Eternal's, (Stormcast Eternity? Plural for Eternal? LOL), and the models are really top notch. With the rumored leaks of the new book, we've seen all the new models. Here is where the disappointment comes in:

The Stormcast Eternal's have no wizards.

The magnitude of this is HUGE. It means your opponent gets to cast whatever spell he/she wants, and there is nothing you can do about it. The SE player loses out on the two basic spells that would just make the SE's even better: Arcane Bolt and Mystic Shield. Arcane Bolt is good, but Mystic Shield is awesome. Adding plus one to their saves turns them into juggernauts!

Just seems odd to me that the Stormcast Eternal's, beings made of magic, have no magic of their own. It's not a big deal of course; this is AoS and I can just happily add a Empire Battle Wizard, High Elf Mage, Skaven Greyseer, whatever. I just like the idea of "Faction Pure" armies, and having no Wizards and facing someone with Wizards hurts.

I think it's right to say: You don't know that yet... We don't know all the missing mini's there are out there ready to be shown...

Besides, they are from "Order"... You can always bring wizards from Empire and other "Order" races

I don't have a copy of the relevent warscroll in front of me but is the One Lord-Relictor considered a wizard? Wasn't he was casting spells to raise dead Stormcast warriors in the Gates of Azyr novel?

Lord Relictor is a Priest (has the Priest keyword).

To make a Deny the Witch roll (unbind) you need to be within line of sight and 18" away, which isn't always easy, though it's made a little easier by the spellcasting phase being before movement.

However, you need to end your turn with your Wizard within LOS and within 18" of the enemy wizard at the end of your turn; which means that it could be exposed to a good, old-fashioned thrashing, and that's not necessarily worth the *chance* to counter their spell.

Not to mention that you have to make sure you're not within range of some hero's ability to damage you, as they can do that before they cast a spell, and then you can't counter

Couldn't this be balance? I haven't played yet so not sure how anything plays. (slow painter and modeller) are not the Eternity (love your plural name ) strong so this is their "weakness"?

Maybe like how some armies are strong in the psychic phase but weak in other areas in 40K, and other armies are strong in shooting or what not, but have no psychers at all. The way I see it, the Eternity are Space Marnines with no psychers. Hmmm, maybe they should be painted up as Black Templar colours.

Magic is the manipulation of the Winds of Magic, which are Chaotic in origin. The Eternals (everything released by GW refers to them as Eternals, don't know where you got Eternity from...) very existence is an antithesis to Chaos, so it makes sense they wouldn't make use of the Winds of Magic.

...yet.

I am pretty sure that they will get Psykers in the near future.

Magic isn't ridiculously powerful, either (...yet).

So far as I can see, it's not game-breaking in the way that it can be in 40k or that it has been occasionally in FB -- in the sense that if you roll the right spells (that you fish for) and get them off, all your other models are just there to look pretty while you super-magic-destructicon takes over the game. Or wipes out the enemy.

They are a force of order, which means they can take wizards from lizardmen, all elves, empire and bretonnia.

 Talys wrote:
Magic isn't ridiculously powerful, either (...yet).

So far as I can see, it's not game-breaking in the way that it can be in 40k or that it has been occasionally in FB -- in the sense that if you roll the right spells (that you fish for) and get them off, all your other models are just there to look pretty while you super-magic-destructicon takes over the game. Or wipes out the enemy.

GW pretty much copied the KoW magic system. Bar the summoning. And guess which part is broken

While the Relictor doesn't have the wizard keyword, as a practical matter doesn't he function like a wizard? The only difference is that he doesn't get the standard spells, right?


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 JamesY wrote:
They are a force of order, which means they can take wizards from lizardmen, all elves, empire and bretonnia.

Is there anything (other than adhering to the story ) preventing you from taking wizards from Destruction or Chaos in your Order army? I'm sure you could come up with some rationalization for it if you thought about it.

Summoning is big these days.

Given the new 'rules', can't you just use whatever wizard you want with them anyway?

 Alpharius wrote:
Given the new 'rules', can't you just use whatever wizard you want with them anyway?

Right. At least a wizard from order.

Bede19025 wrote:
While the Relictor doesn't have the wizard keyword, as a practical matter doesn't he function like a wizard? The only difference is that he doesn't get the standard spells, right?

No, you can't counterspell (or "unbind a spell"), which is a free roll. Wizards can do so during their opponent's turn as long as they're in line of sight and within 18". Since the very first phase is hero abilities and spells, you can position your Wizard so that you always get off the unbind roll (if they cast). But, it's not before other specials, so for example, the new lantern dude can autowound chaos or do D3 wounds to a demon; and if that model were also a caster, the lantern could kill it (without even a roll) before it gets to counterspell. Since everything has a range, positioning becomes important.

Bede19025 wrote:
While the Relictor doesn't have the wizard keyword, as a practical matter doesn't he function like a wizard? The only difference is that he doesn't get the standard spells, right?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 JamesY wrote:
They are a force of order, which means they can take wizards from lizardmen, all elves, empire and bretonnia.

Is there anything (other than adhering to the story ) preventing you from taking wizards from Destruction or Chaos in your Order army? I'm sure you could come up with some rationalization for it if you thought about it.

Nothing at all, you can take kairos and archeon as your spell casters to go alongside stormcast as far as the rules go.

 Tamwulf wrote:


The magnitude of this is HUGE. It means your opponent gets to cast whatever spell he/she wants, and there is nothing you can do about it. The SE player loses out on the two basic spells that would just make the SE's even better: Arcane Bolt and Mystic Shield. Arcane Bolt is good, but Mystic Shield is awesome. Adding plus one to their saves turns them into juggernauts!

Stormcaste has priests, relictor can heal or harm 1d3 (mortal) wounds in 12" because its a prayer this cant be unbound, it also goes off on a 3+

We also have the castellant- auto 1 mortal to chaos or 1d3 mortal wounds to chaos demons. However they can cast better than mystic shield on an ally stormcaste in the form of +1 to saves and if you roll a 7+ (ie a 6) you heal wounds.

Additionally lord cellestant can either have lightning breath 4+ on a 2" radius template dealing 1d3 mortal wounds or hammer cloak -16" 1d6 mortal wounds on a 4+


From what I can see we have the same if not better options than the base wizard spells, none of our stuff can be dispelled and all our heroes have strong combat utility.

 Brork wrote:

From what I can see we have the same if not better options than the base wizard spells, none of our stuff can be dispelled and all our heroes have strong combat utility.

Yeah, special abilities are just spells by another name (that can't be countered).

On the other hand, you can't counter enemy spells either, though I find this to be a dubious benefit because of how you must be positioned (particularly LoS) exposes your wizard. For me, I would rather have the ability that can't be unbound, and not be able to unbind, than the other way around.

Summoning spells are HUGE in AoS. You could, quite literally, start the game with a single Vampire Lord on the table. Without some way of stopping his spells (unbinding them), he can spam summon 10 model units of skeletons, zombies, or ghouls or just about anything else in the VC Army every turn simply by rolling around a 5 or better. Some of the units, like Zombies, have a casting value of 4 for 10 zombies. If you roll an 8 or more, you get 20 zombies. If you had 2-3 Vampire Lords on the table...

Victory conditions are on a model by model percentage basis in AoS. They only count models that start on the table. So, in the above scenario, if I had 100 models and you had 2, if I killed one, I just killed 50% of your army. You would have to kill 51 of my guys to score over 51%. Summoned models don't count towards this model percentage. So if you go for summoning, then you need to wipe your opponent out.

A few more comments on stuff so far:
There are factions in AoS (Order, Chaos, etc), but as of yet, they play no part in what you bring to the table outside of models that can only affect other models with certain keywords. I'm really looking at bringing a Vampire Lord or Dark Elf Sorcerer until/if Stormcast Eternals get a wizard (which I'm pretty sure they will... can't see them not getting one...).

I coined the term 'Stormcast Eternity' because that is the proper plural form of Stormcast Eternal. Stormcast Eternals... well, it's a nice little quirk of the English Language that you can't take an adjective (Eternal) and make it into a noun (Eternals) with an 's' suffix. There are exceptions of course, but...

Mainly, I want a Wizard for the Arcane Bolt and Mystic Shield spells. Being able to target and deliver d3 mortal wounds on a 5 or better, or giving your model/unit a +1 to their saves is huge. Incidentally, there is nothing about stacking spells, so I could bring 2-3 Wizards and have them cast Mystic Shield on one of my big, bad close combat monsters and have him get a 1+ save. As there is also nothing about how low you can go, I could push him to a -2 armor save- as in, you will need to do either mortal wounds or a wound with a rend value of at least -4 to make my armor save a 2+. But that's not really the type of AoS game I want to play.

Side note: I really hope the Stormcast Eternals get a big monster. I played a game yesterday with just the AoS box set of Stormcast Eternals against a Vampire Ghoul army. My opponent brought a Terrogheist with Ghoul King and while I got it down to just 1 wound, it took just about my entire army to do it. Because I didn't kill it, he regenerated a bunch of his wounds and proceeded to decimate my army. LOL

How about a wizard from the Empire?

Lol eternity isn't a plural for eternal in any way of form.

Also a Vampire Lord can only cast 1 spell a turn, so they will only be summoning one unit a turn.

Vampires and High Elves fought alongside (and against) the Empire in previous times and even Karl Franz/Sigmar in the ET

 Bottle wrote:
Lol eternity isn't a plural for eternal in any way of form.

Also a Vampire Lord can only cast 1 spell a turn, so they will only be summoning one unit a turn.

Hmm. When I look it up in my Merriam-Webster dictionary, it says the plural of eternal is eternity.

I have ran into this problem too, especially against death wizards. I have absolutely found no way to counter arkon or even a regular necromancer when he just summons more units. It's especially frustrating when It's the Morghast... those things shouldn't be summonable in my oppinion.

In regards to the "eternal...eternity" question: we've been playing a game where dwarves have always been called "Dwarfs", so I don't think we need to argue about correct plural forms

 Tamwulf wrote:

 Bottle wrote:
Lol eternity isn't a plural for eternal in any way of form.

Also a Vampire Lord can only cast 1 spell a turn, so they will only be summoning one unit a turn.

Hmm. When I look it up in my Merriam-Webster dictionary, it says the plural of eternal is eternity.

You must be reading it wrong.

When using Eternal as a noun, the plural is Eternals.

When using Eternity as a noun, the plural is Eternities.

Simple :-)

 Tamwulf wrote:
Summoning spells are HUGE in AoS. You could, quite literally, start the game with a single Vampire Lord on the table. Without some way of stopping his spells (unbinding them), he can spam summon 10 model units of skeletons, zombies, or ghouls or just about anything else in the VC Army every turn simply by rolling around a 5 or better. Some of the units, like Zombies, have a casting value of 4 for 10 zombies. If you roll an 8 or more, you get 20 zombies. If you had 2-3 Vampire Lords on the table...

I don't think this is possible without one of those units actually being present on the table or in the army as a reserve.

 Tiger9gamer wrote:
I have ran into this problem too, especially against death wizards. I have absolutely found no way to counter arkon or even a regular necromancer when he just summons more units. It's especially frustrating when It's the Morghast... those things shouldn't be summonable in my oppinion.

Necromancer can only cast 1 spell per turn though

 Third_Age_of_Baggz wrote:

 Tamwulf wrote:
Summoning spells are HUGE in AoS. You could, quite literally, start the game with a single Vampire Lord on the table. Without some way of stopping his spells (unbinding them), he can spam summon 10 model units of skeletons, zombies, or ghouls or just about anything else in the VC Army every turn simply by rolling around a 5 or better. Some of the units, like Zombies, have a casting value of 4 for 10 zombies. If you roll an 8 or more, you get 20 zombies. If you had 2-3 Vampire Lords on the table...

I don't think this is possible without one of those units actually being present on the table or in the army as a reserve.

This is a 'House Rule' perpetuated via a few forceful personalities in the YMDC forum. Nowhere in the four pages of rules or the Warscrolls themselves does it say that a unit of keyword 'Whatever' must be on the table before it can cast the spell Summon Whatever. It's reasoned that in order for a Wizard to gain the summon spell, the unit has to be on the table first, thus granting the Wizard the summon spell.

Most Wizards can only cast one spell a turn, but unless you can counter them with your own Wizard, they can always cast a spell. Then it's success depends on the Wizard rolling poorly. There is no limitation on spell casting (like running, charging, close combat). Keeping your Wizard back and out of line of sight enables you to summon a unit every turn. One Wizard? Maybe not that bad. Two or three? Bad. Very bad.

I did manage to pick up the AoS big book this weekend, and I do like that the Stormcast Eternal Lords have abilities that are basically spells, but can't be unbound (unbinded? LOL I love the idioms GW uses for words.). Kind of creates a situation where you have abilities that your opponent can't counter, and your opponent has abilities that you can't counter as well.

It's fun talking about English! I've only found one source for the plural of eternal- https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/eternals#Catalan And they don't site a source. Meriam-Webster and Dictionary.com have nothing for the plural of eternal. /shrug I'm probably wrong, and I'm breaking Interwebz Rulez #5- never comment on spelling or grammar unless it's so bad, you can't understand what the OP is trying to write.

As long the model has Order in its keyword it can be used by the SE.