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Just curious if any Stormcast players have played against any of the summoning armies like Daemons, Seraphon, or Death. If so, how did the Stormcast do? Did they hold their own or get torn apart?

Very curious

Thanks

SG

We have had a couple stormcast vs seraphon matches.

The seraphon won both games simply because they summoned quite a bit which makes a huge difference if you also aren't.

The stormcast lists were not fully optimized to max out mortal wounds though. There is a match this week coming up where its summoning battery seraphon vs stormcast pushing 30-40 mortal wounds a turn so we'll see how that goes.

auticus wrote:
We have had a couple stormcast vs seraphon matches.

The seraphon won both games simply because they summoned quite a bit which makes a huge difference if you also aren't.

The stormcast lists were not fully optimized to max out mortal wounds though. There is a match this week coming up where its summoning battery seraphon vs stormcast pushing 30-40 mortal wounds a turn so we'll see how that goes.

Curious where that many mortal wounds are coming from in a SC list?

 ServiceGames wrote:
Just curious if any Stormcast players have played against any of the summoning armies like Daemons, Seraphon, or Death. If so, how did the Stormcast do? Did they hold their own or get torn apart?

Very curious

Thanks

SG

Are we talking matched play? I play Death (LoN, FEC, and now Nighthaunt). All use heavy summoning. If anything I've sometimes struggled against Stormcast lists with a lot of shooting. The new Stormcast chamber just adds fuel to their fire.

mikosan wrote:

auticus wrote:
We have had a couple stormcast vs seraphon matches.

The seraphon won both games simply because they summoned quite a bit which makes a huge difference if you also aren't.

The stormcast lists were not fully optimized to max out mortal wounds though. There is a match this week coming up where its summoning battery seraphon vs stormcast pushing 30-40 mortal wounds a turn so we'll see how that goes.

Curious where that many mortal wounds are coming from in a SC list?

I don't have his list, that was just what he was saying over the weekend.

It's not difficult to put out that many. One could probably do more (much more) but there is a point of diminishing returned where even more mortal wound output becomes less valuable than rounding the list out. Now don't get me wrong; that point is above (often FAR above) what any army other than Stormcast, Tzeentch, or Skryre can put out, but it is there.

At any rate, off the top of my head: a retributor unit with +1 to hit from a lord celestent is putting out 8.6 mortals a turn, four units of such is easily in the 30-40 mortal wound range a turn and still well below 2000 points. That isn't an ideal way to do it but it shows how easy it is for Stormcast to spam mortals.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
It's not difficult to put out that many. One could probably do more (much more) but there is a point of diminishing returned where even more mortal wound output becomes less valuable than rounding the list out. Now don't get me wrong; that point is above (often FAR above) what any army other than Stormcast, Tzeentch, or Skryre can put out, but it is there.

At any rate, off the top of my head: a retributor unit with +1 to hit from a lord celestent is putting out 8.6 mortals a turn, four units of such is easily in the 30-40 mortal wound range a turn and still well below 2000 points. That isn't an ideal way to do it but it shows how easy it is for Stormcast to spam mortals.

The problem with this particular example is that it actually shows you how difficult it is to actually get mortal wounds out of stormcasts and how easy it is to sidestep them. Taking 4 units of retributors and a lord Celestant(pre-new codex) was 980pts and only had the POTENTIAL to do 40+ mortal wounds. In reality you either footslogged all 5 units across the board at which point you were lucky if you had 4 retributors left when you finally got to swing in combat, or you deepstruck them, which meant only about half the combo would likely come in and you could easily end up in a situation where the Lord Celestant never dropped. And even if they did all come in, you have a 28% chance to make your first charge or immediately die. Some of these issues could be reduced by taking a single large unit of retributors, but at that point you're now struggling against an 880pt unit having bravery 6. Hammerstrike was an option but it required picture perfect precision use of very fragile prosecutors, a heavy points investment, and still did nothing to help the 'well we landed and killed the first unit we saw...what now?' problem retributors have.

tldr; there's a reason none of the successful stormcast lists really emphasize their mortal wound output (Vanguard wing barely has any, Lez Martin TM just uses what are inherent to the dracoths, no other stormcast list was competitive.).

So our seraphon player is now 4-0 with the new rules. Played the stormcast player. Stormcast player was doing decent mortal wounds but wasn't able to keep up with the new units being created by a Lord Kroak summoning battery hiding behind woods.

The two undead players are also as of now undefeated for similar reasons. The summoning.

The tournament minded stormcast players have now all put their armies up on ebay lol and are getting into seraphon or undead.

Summoning is straining the fragile interest that a lot of new players had in AOS 2.0 here because its slowly being seen as a must-have to be competitive. Its still early though. So we'll see.

auticus wrote:
So our seraphon player is now 4-0 with the new rules. Played the stormcast player. Stormcast player was doing decent mortal wounds but wasn't able to keep up with the new units being created by a Lord Kroak summoning battery hiding behind woods.

The two undead players are also as of now undefeated for similar reasons. The summoning.

The tournament minded stormcast players have now all put their armies up on ebay lol and are getting into seraphon or undead.

Summoning is straining the fragile interest that a lot of new players had in AOS 2.0 here because its slowly being seen as a must-have to be competitive. Its still early though. So we'll see.

It will be interesting when it's Sepheron vs Death Army.

Maybe we will have to House Rule Auticus's (I believe it was his, sorry if it's not) rule about too much summoning the opposing player gets an "instant victory condition" (again sorry what it's called). That could make the games more fair and simple to implement.

auticus wrote:

The tournament minded stormcast players have now all put their armies up on ebay lol and are getting into seraphon or undead.
Summoning is straining the fragile interest that a lot of new players had in AOS 2.0 here because its slowly being seen as a must-have to be competitive. Its still early though. So we'll see.

If GW treats AoS similar to 40k, those "evil" tournament armies will get their nerf in 2-3 months

The houserule in question is if you summon more than a certain threshold that your opponent gets to draw a sudden death victory card yes.

That threshold is the tough part. I recommend 20 or 25%. I also do not recommend that rule in a matched play context, but rather a narrative one.

How did the Sudden Death victory worked in the last edition? I can't remember. Is it the same for 2.0?

auticus wrote:
So our seraphon player is now 4-0 with the new rules. Played the stormcast player. Stormcast player was doing decent mortal wounds but wasn't able to keep up with the new units being created by a Lord Kroak summoning battery hiding behind woods.

Probably because if they were spamming Mortal Wounds they lacked mobility and the ability to do things like, y'know, Fly over the woods and beat the crap out of Lord Kroak using Prosecutors or flank around the woods using cavalry.

The two undead players are also as of now undefeated for similar reasons. The summoning.

The tournament minded stormcast players have now all put their armies up on ebay lol and are getting into seraphon or undead.

Summoning is straining the fragile interest that a lot of new players had in AOS 2.0 here because its slowly being seen as a must-have to be competitive. Its still early though. So we'll see.

Yeah...I think that's one way to look at it.
The other way to look at it is that they're still playing to the meta that existed before.

 Kanluwen wrote:

auticus wrote:
So our seraphon player is now 4-0 with the new rules. Played the stormcast player. Stormcast player was doing decent mortal wounds but wasn't able to keep up with the new units being created by a Lord Kroak summoning battery hiding behind woods.

Probably because if they were spamming Mortal Wounds they lacked mobility and the ability to do things like, y'know, Fly over the woods and beat the crap out of Lord Kroak using Prosecutors or flank around the woods using cavalry.

The two undead players are also as of now undefeated for similar reasons. The summoning.

The tournament minded stormcast players have now all put their armies up on ebay lol and are getting into seraphon or undead.

Summoning is straining the fragile interest that a lot of new players had in AOS 2.0 here because its slowly being seen as a must-have to be competitive. Its still early though. So we'll see.

Yeah...I think that's one way to look at it.
The other way to look at it is that they're still playing to the meta that existed before.

Im sure Kroak was just sitting there undefended and the rest of the board objectives were unimportant enough to ignore in favor of killing him. Come on man, he has a valid point here. At least try playing against it before saying it isn't a problem. As for your 'one way to look at it' it's the community being damaged. One way to look at that is a problem, the other way is denial. If it were as simple as just playing a little differently they wouldn't be selling their armies--people don't do that lightly.

Davor wrote:
How did the Sudden Death victory worked in the last edition? I can't remember. Is it the same for 2.0?

There are a number of sudden death victory conditions in the open war deck, and my GHB 2018 came with them as well. They are all different. For example, one is if you kill the enemy general you win the game. Or if you get three units in the enemy deployment zone, you win. Things like that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Probably because if they were spamming Mortal Wounds they lacked mobility and the ability to do things like, y'know, Fly over the woods and beat the crap out of Lord Kroak using Prosecutors or flank around the woods using cavalry.

Kind of hard to flank around and get him with prosecutors or cavalry when those items of theirs were being screened against by the seraphon player's own units.

Without the context of a full battle report with diagrams its kind of hard for you to state what happened in the game I'd think

Before the battle even started the stormcast player's entire stratgegy was find a way to get across the board and kill lord kroak to stop the summoning.

Easier said than done. Seraphon player brought four citadel woods with him, and when they were rolling terrain each time the seraphon player's turn was up he'd place a wood near a corner of the table as his whole strategy was camping a corner with kroak out of line of sight and his screen and keeping his screens in such a way the stormcast couldn't just teleport on top of him.

The seraphon army had fliers of their own that matched up against any flying stormcast unit.

There was no hard counter against this strategy, as there never really has been a hard counter against bunkering in a corner. The same thing was true in 8th wfhb or aos 1.0 with the summons or 40k 7th edition with the summons. When someone wants to castle in a corner the only real way you can fight that is with ranged superiority, which will be negated with line of sight blocking terrain blocking the corners, or brute forcing your way over through the screens.

Not sure how to define or respond to "they are playing to the meta that existed before 2.0". He was trying to kill the summoner. He wasn't able to because the summoner was locked out of sight behind screens and the rest of his army was being occupied by the entirety of the seraphon army that was constantly adding free points to itself.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I'm sure Kroak was just sitting there undefended and the rest of the board objectives were unimportant enough to ignore in favor of killing him. Come on man, he has a valid point here. At least try playing against it before saying it isn't a problem.

Sure it's a valid point, and I'm not saying it isn't. It's just that he makes mention of "mortal wounds not being able to keep up" with the summons and "tournament minded stormcast players"--both of which suggests Retributor spam, which is less than impressive when it comes to moving around without aid.

With Lightning Chariot, Scions of the Storm, Hammerstrike, or Storm Vortex Garrison(which requires you to hold back the 2x Vanguard Hunter units and run your Paladins in to die to work)? Yeah, they can get in a bit quicker--but that still doesn't change that without knowing the lists being ran it kind of is a moot point.

If the argument was "Not all armies are going to be able to counter this stuff!"--then yeah, I agree. It seems like the summon farms are going to necessitate some shifts in how people think about the game--and most notably that is going to be you can't just try to kill your way in.

As for your 'one way to look at it' it's the community being damaged. One way to look at that is a problem, the other way is denial. If it were as simple as just playing a little differently they wouldn't be selling their armies--people don't do that lightly.

He's specifically making the qualifier of "tournament minded stormcast players" when he talks about people putting their armies up on ebay and "are getting into seraphon and undead". It's not uncommon for that crowd to dump an army when it "sucks" and move on to whatever the new hotness is speculated to be.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

auticus wrote:

Probably because if they were spamming Mortal Wounds they lacked mobility and the ability to do things like, y'know, Fly over the woods and beat the crap out of Lord Kroak using Prosecutors or flank around the woods using cavalry.

Kind of hard to flank around and get him with prosecutors or cavalry when those items of theirs were being screened against by the seraphon player's own units.

So kill the screens to flank around...? I don't think I should have to say that it's very convenient that an army with flipping Kroak and likely quite a few Astroliths was still able to afford to start off with enough of a screen to deny Prosecutors being able to get at him.

Without the context of a full battle report with diagrams its kind of hard for you to state what happened in the game I'd think

Hence why I said words like "probably" and "if". But as per usual, it's the Kobayashi Maru when it comes to your games.

Before the battle even started the stormcast player's entire stratgegy was find a way to get across the board and kill lord kroak to stop the summoning.

And what was the list?

Easier said than done. Seraphon player brought four citadel woods with him, and when they were rolling terrain each time the seraphon player's turn was up he'd place a wood near a corner of the table as his whole strategy was camping a corner with kroak out of line of sight and his screen and keeping his screens in such a way the stormcast couldn't just teleport on top of him.

So why didn't the Stormcast player place some terrain over in the Seraphon's corner to block the placement of the Citadel Woods?

The seraphon army had fliers of their own that matched up against any flying stormcast unit.

Yeah...Ripperdactyls and Terradons aren't that scary for some of the Stormcast stuff.

There was no hard counter against this strategy, as there never really has been a hard counter against bunkering in a corner. The same thing was true in 8th wfhb or aos 1.0 with the summons or 40k 7th edition with the summons.

Not sure how to define or respond to "they are playing to the meta that existed before 2.0". He was trying to kill the summoner. He wasn't able to because the summoner was locked out of sight behind screens and the rest of his army was being occupied by the entirety of the seraphon army that was constantly adding free points to itself.

Locked out of LOS as long as you're measuring at least 1" through the Citadel Woods.

Anyhow.

My goal is to write some battle reports with photos and diagrams in the future.

For right now the hypothetical "yeah but you just counter that with this" circle won't get us anywhere.

The guys playing this game are both long time tournament players that do things like Adepticon and Nashcon and have for years. They aren't incompetent or new.

Not suggesting they were--simply suggesting that with a new edition, it always happens that people try to bring the "same ol' thing" and expect it to work like it did before.

That's true that can happen. The stormcast army was an army built around trying to character snipe and stop the summoner.

In this game anyway it just didn't work out very well for him.

Kan, I strongly suggest you play against the type of Seraphon list he is talking about. Because with all due respect you are suggesting strategies that just aren't going to work. For starters; Prosecutors aren't killing Kroak. They won't be putting out enough wounds in a single turn to pull it off, especially if he has cover/balewind & rerollable saves. We are looking at a 3+ rerollable, needing to put at least 6 wounds on him in a single turn to even have a 1/6 chance of killing him (and if you don't kill him all those wounds are wasted), and his melee attacks aren't terrible either. This is AFTER making it through the screen that is continually being reinforced by summons while your units are not. If Kroak is bunkering him it's pretty much required to mortal him to death (and again, it has to be all in the same turn). Not to mention he can shave a few spells off summoning to blast you with mortal wounds.

The real counter to bunkering is to play the objectives, but that won't work because the Seraphon player will just summon you to death & has a tremendous advantage in objective games thanks to being able to teleport only unoccupied ones. It's basically a case of cheesing harder or hoping for the dice gods to win you the game.

But this is just an extreme context; the greater problem is that a seraphon player not even trying to min-max shows up with a tremendous advantage just by bringing a Slann general. It's not only entirely possible to accidentally unbalance games this way but will actually happen by default unless the player understands the problem and specifically holds back. To me that is a much, much bigger issue than a cheese list existing (I think we are all used to that by now...) and it's very bad for the health of the game.

However, I am optimistic that GW will errata Seraphon summoning because the issue is so easily encountered; there will be a lot of feedback as opposed to just a niche list being a singular problem. I am hoping that they will implement some method of scaling Nurgle summoning as well since while it isn't game breaking at 2k it absolutely is at 1.5 or 1k (and path to glory for that matter).

auticus wrote:

Davor wrote:
How did the Sudden Death victory worked in the last edition? I can't remember. Is it the same for 2.0?

There are a number of sudden death victory conditions in the open war deck, and my GHB 2018 came with them as well. They are all different. For example, one is if you kill the enemy general you win the game. Or if you get three units in the enemy deployment zone, you win. Things like that.

Thank you for the answer. I just got my General's Handbook and saw how they work now. You mentioned cards. I think I have a deck of cards from last edition. I can't find them at the moment. when I do find them, are they still usable for 2.0 or do I need to buy a new deck if there is one?

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Kan, I strongly suggest you play against the type of Seraphon list he is talking about. Because with all due respect you are suggesting strategies that just aren't going to work. For starters; Prosecutors aren't killing Kroak. They won't be putting out enough wounds in a single turn to pull it off, especially if he has cover/balewind & rerollable saves. We are looking at a 3+ rerollable, needing to put at least 6 wounds on him in a single turn to even have a 1/6 chance of killing him (and if you don't kill him all those wounds are wasted), and his melee attacks aren't terrible either. This is AFTER making it through the screen that is continually being reinforced by summons while your units are not. If Kroak is bunkering him it's pretty much required to mortal him to death (and again, it has to be all in the same turn). Not to mention he can shave a few spells off summoning to blast you with mortal wounds.

The matter is moot anyways. I just looked and Kroak has "Fly"--meaning that Citadel Woods do not block LOS to him per the rules in GHB. If either unit has "Fly", they are unobscured.

The real counter to bunkering is to play the objectives, but that won't work because the Seraphon player will just summon you to death & has a tremendous advantage in objective games thanks to being able to teleport only unoccupied ones. It's basically a case of cheesing harder or hoping for the dice gods to win you the game.

And this comes, again, into the idea of "killing bits". The Astrolith Bearers are the ones allowing for the reinforcement to be done outside of the area near Kroak--killing an Astrolith Bearer allows for you to 'break' the chain, even if just for a turn or so.

But this is just an extreme context; the greater problem is that a seraphon player not even trying to min-max shows up with a tremendous advantage just by bringing a Slann general. It's not only entirely possible to accidentally unbalance games this way but will actually happen by default unless the player understands the problem and specifically holds back. To me that is a much, much bigger issue than a cheese list existing (I think we are all used to that by now...) and it's very bad for the health of the game.

But that's the crux of the issue, wouldn't you agree? It's not exactly going to be the case that a Seraphon player "not even trying to min-max" will be given a huge, unbeatable advantage by them having a single Slann and an Astrolith Bearer. It's when people stack for it that it becomes an issue.

However, I am optimistic that GW will errata Seraphon summoning because the issue is so easily encountered; there will be a lot of feedback as opposed to just a niche list being a singular problem. I am hoping that they will implement some method of scaling Nurgle summoning as well since while it isn't game breaking at 2k it absolutely is at 1.5 or 1k (and path to glory for that matter).

This is a fair and reasonable thing to want. But so is my wanting rules for the darned Wild Riders to have shields on them, as they're in the kit.

Davor wrote:

auticus wrote:

Davor wrote:
How did the Sudden Death victory worked in the last edition? I can't remember. Is it the same for 2.0?

There are a number of sudden death victory conditions in the open war deck, and my GHB 2018 came with them as well. They are all different. For example, one is if you kill the enemy general you win the game. Or if you get three units in the enemy deployment zone, you win. Things like that.

Thank you for the answer. I just got my General's Handbook and saw how they work now. You mentioned cards. I think I have a deck of cards from last edition. I can't find them at the moment. when I do find them, are they still usable for 2.0 or do I need to buy a new deck if there is one?

I don't see why you couldn't use the old open war deck to be honest. They are similar enough for me to accept them if we needed to use them in a pinch.

Thank you auticus, greatly appreciate the help.

Anytime. Let us know how it goes.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Kan, I strongly suggest you play against the type of Seraphon list he is talking about. Because with all due respect you are suggesting strategies that just aren't going to work. For starters; Prosecutors aren't killing Kroak. They won't be putting out enough wounds in a single turn to pull it off, especially if he has cover/balewind & rerollable saves. We are looking at a 3+ rerollable, needing to put at least 6 wounds on him in a single turn to even have a 1/6 chance of killing him (and if you don't kill him all those wounds are wasted), and his melee attacks aren't terrible either. This is AFTER making it through the screen that is continually being reinforced by summons while your units are not. If Kroak is bunkering him it's pretty much required to mortal him to death (and again, it has to be all in the same turn). Not to mention he can shave a few spells off summoning to blast you with mortal wounds.

The matter is moot anyways. I just looked and Kroak has "Fly"--meaning that Citadel Woods do not block LOS to him per the rules in GHB. If either unit has "Fly", they are unobscured.

The real counter to bunkering is to play the objectives, but that won't work because the Seraphon player will just summon you to death & has a tremendous advantage in objective games thanks to being able to teleport only unoccupied ones. It's basically a case of cheesing harder or hoping for the dice gods to win you the game.

And this comes, again, into the idea of "killing bits". The Astrolith Bearers are the ones allowing for the reinforcement to be done outside of the area near Kroak--killing an Astrolith Bearer allows for you to 'break' the chain, even if just for a turn or so.

But this is just an extreme context; the greater problem is that a seraphon player not even trying to min-max shows up with a tremendous advantage just by bringing a Slann general. It's not only entirely possible to accidentally unbalance games this way but will actually happen by default unless the player understands the problem and specifically holds back. To me that is a much, much bigger issue than a cheese list existing (I think we are all used to that by now...) and it's very bad for the health of the game.

But that's the crux of the issue, wouldn't you agree? It's not exactly going to be the case that a Seraphon player "not even trying to min-max" will be given a huge, unbeatable advantage by them having a single Slann and an Astrolith Bearer. It's when people stack for it that it becomes an issue.

However, I am optimistic that GW will errata Seraphon summoning because the issue is so easily encountered; there will be a lot of feedback as opposed to just a niche list being a singular problem. I am hoping that they will implement some method of scaling Nurgle summoning as well since while it isn't game breaking at 2k it absolutely is at 1.5 or 1k (and path to glory for that matter).

This is a fair and reasonable thing to want. But so is my wanting rules for the darned Wild Riders to have shields on them, as they're in the kit.

Honestly I don't even see the LoS blocking as a big deal anyways; see what I said about Kroak's durability (have you read his warscroll btw?). To address the other points, he can bring more than one Astrolith Bearer, can LoS hide them, can teleport then summon off himself, and can summon Bastiladons with a 20" shooting range anyways; four counters to the counter-strategy you suggested. The summoning points from them aren't too important when talking balance since we are looking at a minimum of 13/turn off Kroak (10 off a regular Slann) while the astrolith provides d3. I didn't and won't say the advantage is unbeatable, but it doesn't even need to be close to that dramatic for it to be a tremendous issue. A consistent, noticeable advantage is all that's needed. And the advantage is well more than merely noticeable; it's pretty significant. Again, I really must emphasize that you need to play a few games against a competently run Seraphon list to see in person the degree of advantage that is gained here.

I did read the warscroll--if he's not gibbed, he heals himself. That's actually why I commented on the "Fly" bit--because ostensibly the idea behind this scenario is that Kroak is "untouchable" to conventional methods because of LOS obstruction, but that's not the case as Kroak has Fly.


While you can certainly bring multiple Astrolith Bearers, putting them out of LOS messes with what space the Astrolith Bearer has for summons--especially given the order of operations for the summoning.

As mortal Khorne I autolose agaisnt a summoning list that works like this. I lack the ranged tools, shooting or MW to kill the summoners, and I cant win the grind fest. Khorne summoning is probable the worst of the bunch, but my biggest problem is that I really dont like summoning as I dont play demons, but in 2.0 you cant play a summoner army without summoning.

So the placing of the scenery...Are those houserules? Can't find in AOS 2.0 anywhere that you get to bring your own scenery and both players put a piece in turn... And I would not play a game against a player that puts a bunker of citadel woods in each corner...

Tournaments that I have attended always have had premade tables. And other games we usually put some scenery on and discuss it with each other to make sure both player are okay with what they see. Especially when playing competitive as at that point we try to mimic tournament conditions...

Is this somewhere in the rules that I overlooked?(possible as I only have the book a few days)

LoS isn't key to the problem, and as Kan established Kroak can't avoid it using woods anyways.