[Archive] [AoS] How would you combat this stormcast army?

ross_lionheart:

I played a one thousand point game of age of sigmar the other day with my chaos dwarfs against stormcast.  And to be honest I felt like selling my chaos dwarfs after the game, which lasted 3 rounds before every model in my army was wiped out.  I was shocked to find how under powered our models are compared to stormcast so much so that I dont even think there is a point in playing if lists created are not going to be balanced.

This is my list, which i feel is fair and well balanced.

Heroes

Daemonsmith (100)

- General

- Darkforged Weapon

- Trait: Lord of War

- Artefact: Crown of Conquest

Bull Centaur Taur’uk (180)

- Darkforged Great Weapon

- Artefact: Crown of Conquest

Battleline

3 x Bull Centaur Renders (160)

- Scalding Great Weapon

- Battleline (Legion of Azgorh)

20 x Infernal Guard Ironsworn (200)

- Battleline (Legion of Azgorh)

10 x Infernal Guard Fireglaives (100)

- Battleline (Legion of Azgorh)

10 x Infernal Guard Fireglaives (100)

- Battleline (Legion of Azgorh)

War Machines

Deathshrieker (120)

Total: 960/1000

My opponent on the other hand had a slightly smaller but more powerful army:

Heros:

Celestant-Prime (360)

Knight-Venator (120)



Units


5 x Paladin Retributors (220)

5 x Liberators (100)

-Warhammers

5 x Paladin Protectors (200)

Celestant-Prime could apparently drop a marker on the battlefield anywhere he chooses, with the marker placed he rolls a D6.  every model within D6 suffers D3 mortal wounds, oh yes and he can also change the dice roll as he sees fit.  So if in an ideal situation he needed a 6 and rolled a one he could simply say, Im going to change that to a 6.  He could also do this to roll to wound.  

My poor bull centaurs and tauruk who charged his retributors were wiped out clean within two turns.  My tauruk was wiped out in one due to his D3 mortals wounds!  And by the time I managed to engadge his liberators with my infernal guard there numbers were so low from fire he literally just smashed through them.  I spent alot of money on this army, building it, painting it… Im just gutted tbh

Thommy H:

From what you’ve described, he was using some of the Celestant Prime’s rules wrong. You can find his warscroll here for reference.

First of all, he can’t be deployed on the battlefield at the start of the game: he can only appear in his first movement phase (and he’s much less powerful if he shows up right away). This means, with a bit of luck, you can have at least a turn savaging that tiny force before the big guy drops out of the sky.

Second, the Cometstrike Sceptre does D3 Wounds per unit within D6", not model. And I’m not sure how your Taur’uk got wiped out by that in one turn since he has 7 Wounds on his profile!

Finally, the Prime can only change one dice roll per turn. So he could max out the Mortal Wounds from his sceptre, or he can use it on his To Wound rolls later, but not both in the same turn.

The Celestant-Prime is good, but in a 1,000 point battle he’s a massive liability. Just make sure you’re playing with the right rules…

ross_lionheart:


From what you've described, he was using some of the Celestant Prime's rules wrong. You can find his warscroll here for reference.

First of all, he can't be deployed on the battlefield at the start of the game: he can only appear in his first movement phase (and he's much less powerful if he shows up right away). This means, with a bit of luck, you can have at least a turn savaging that tiny force before the big guy drops out of the sky.


Thommy H
So what force would you use to combat this?

He deployed the Celestant prime during his first turn on the board. He kept him in reserve so he was not set up alongside the rest of his army.

Thommy H:

I’m sure we’ve had a conversation like this before: your force isn’t the issue if your opponent isn’t using the right rules. There’s no particular reason you couldn’t have beaten him, based on the lists. For a start, you could have just concentrated everything on the rest of his (tiny) army and ignored the Prime.

Roark:

Yeah, there’s no point discussing tactics when he isn’t playing by the rules of his own warscrolls…

You should consider using more fireglaives and magma cannons in general. They’re quite strong at 1K. Magma cannons especially are devastating to expensive Stormcast models.

Black_Fortress_Immortal:

For 1000pt you need bodies. Don’t waste points on artillery. I like running something similar to this:

Daemonsmith

Daemonsmith

Ironsworn x 40

Fireglaives x 40

Sometimes I substitute some K’daai or a Balewind in for a 10 man of Ironsworn/Fireglaives. Mystic shield on the Ironsworn is a must-have, and I like running minimum-sized-units for Fireglaives - on top of the Daemonsmiths, this offers 6d3 mortal wound grenades on your 2+ roll - avg of 10 mortal wounds/game which is more than enough to slaughter the Celestant Prime. Take the Command Trait that gives +1 to hit rolls against Order, and you’ll see some crazy damage on him, and will be able to shrug off his hits.

As mentioned above - his list isn’t legal for matched play, as he only has 1 battleline unit - I’m assuming you’re doing matched play because you’re using points.

Roark:

I agree that bodies are great, BFI, but against a unit of 10 Libs with a 2+ save rerolling 1s (easily achievable with Stormcast at 1K), or a Dracoth Lord, I think that magma cannons with a 24" range are most definitely useful and valuable. Reliable mortal wounds are king.

moogoodoo:

My 1k army is

1�- Castellan

1�- Daemonsmith

10�- infernal guard

10�- fireglaives

1�- magma cannon

1�- deathshrieker

6�- k’daai

I just hold back shooting. first to charge is kdaai .then I use the guard to tie up big things and make the most out of magic and command abilities . it’s not easy winning but can be done just have to pick your flights, use kdaai for infantry or as cavalry. I find our war machine’s are what makes our army i always take both of these and in 2k take either a hell cannon or a dreadquake, with 2k games I take drazhoeth so people tend to put a part of there army against him then try to avoid my cannons.

Imo must takes are magma cannon and K’daai daemonsmith and a Castellan but that’s just me

Roark:

Yeah, the Dreadquake is pretty damn good now, although I think it needs to be partnered with a Daemonsmith and other warmachines rather than towed around on an Iron Daemon or Skullcrushers (which is very suitable for the magma cannon).

Have you tried out either of the trains yet? They are kickass now.

Roark:

Uggh… why can I not edit posts?? I mean Skullcracker not Skullcrushers! Sorry!

Hashut’s Blessing:

From the little context given, it does sound possible the Stormcast Eternals warscrolls were being used incorrectly, mostly with the Celestant-Prime. Step one is to go to the Games Workshop website an download the most recent version of the warscrolls for your opponent’s army (not just the ones listed here as I imagine their force has progressed in the nearly 2.5 years since) - that will not only help you make sure units are bing used as they should be, but also give you a better idea of what threat each poses and what your best plays will be. As someone else has ntoed, it’s best to make sure that the force is legal in the same way yours is (note: You can’t use the same artefact twice, so no double Crown of Conquest - that may be where we’re in the second edition of Age of Sigmar now though).

For your Chaos Dwarfs, I’ll assume you only have these models (for now). The Legion of Azgorh is good at shrugging off wounds and dealing heavy damage at range - for the most part, ignore the existence of the Celsetant-Prime and target the rest. You can target 100% of your army against literally two-thirds of theirs and remove them fairly swiftly, then focus what you have left on the 1/3 of an army in a single model (if you want to go for army annihilation over objectives).

Having just looked at the rules for the above, the models are pretty tough, but target selection becomes quite obvious. I’ll focus on the units for a moment first: your Bull Centaur Renders and the Taur’ruk want to avoid the Protectors since they get extra damage against you - shouldn’t be too hard since they are slow and you are much less so, so you might as well target something else. It’s be easy to smash apart the Liberators (even if they have Stormshields) with the four bulls bearing down on them, but that’s 340pts for 100 - better to target something much juicier, like the Retributors. Sure they are tough, but you put out a lot of attacks, have some rend, have the bounceback from Spiteshields (and as noted below, more attacks at you means more bouncing back at them) and do have the advantage of the character as well, not to mentioned the massive increase in damage if you charge (and you should be able to) and the Taur’ruk’s Command Ability allowing for re-rolling To Hit rolls of 1. Besides which, your troops can handle other stuff at the same time.

Protectors are more resilient to shooting, so there’s no use wasting your time firing at them. Instead, feel free to attack them with your Daemonsmith’s magic and bog them down with the Infernal Guard Ironsworn. After all, they can tank pretty well, especially with our Allegiance Ability (Blackshard Armour) and they will also excel at taking them down due to the bounceback of our Spiteshields - more attacks heading to us, means more attacks bouncing back at them Add to that (and this goes for the Bull Centaur Renders above too) the lovely fact that the Spitehsield bounceback is a mortal wound and suddenly their good armour isn’t helping them. You still have more wounds than they do as well and you can always support with your other models if necessary. Again, your magic will come in handy here, combinations of Fireball for direct damage and Ash Storm to protect your own guys (or slow down your opponent if they are out of position).

Meanwhile, you have two units of Fireglaives and the Deathshrieker for picking off the Liberators (shouldn’t take too long, especially with the double bonus to Pyrelock Weapons since your post) and the Knight-Venator. Deathshrieker first turn should go for the Liberators before all other attacks to get a slight bonus, the Fireglaives should try to remain stationary where possible, and your Daemonsmith should always be near the Deathshrieker for the bonus to its attacks (+1 attack leads to potentially +3 damage, after all, and you don’t want your Daemonsmith ont he front line. The long range of Ash Storm, the low number of models to block lines of sight and the decent enough range of Fireball [considering most of your army will turtle and pull your opponent towards you] means he shouldn’t be out of position either).

That leaves just the Knight-Venator and the Celestant-Prime untouched. Except we have the Knight-Venator as a secondary target anyway and to boot, Burning Skies will help to hamper his effectiveness - every time he moves more than half his base movement, he risks taking mortal wounds (again, bypassing that great armour save and it doesn’t cost you anything). It may well be that your opponent ends up not able to support best or be in range (despite the massive range of his attacks) of a key target or reach an objective - alternatively, they may well ignore it, but they’ll occasionally lose one or more wounds. In fairness, you will need to be wary of Star-Fated Arrow (looking at your Taur’ruk and Bull Centaur Renders), but there’s not much you can do about it on the first turn, which is probably the time your opponent would use it (they have the range and no reason to hold back with it, after all). Some concentrated fire and magic will take the guy out quickly enough if you take out easier targets first (or use attacks of opportunity - if he’s in range of a unit of Fireglaives and the Liberators are a move-and-shoot away, feel free to try to cripple/eliminate him).

Now for the ‘Big Bad’ ™ Celestant-Prime. If he’s not on the board for turn one, yes he becomes more potent, but it also means you aren’t threatened by it too much for a turn (and he may stay up there for longer to maximise the use of Ghal Maraz). Either way, focus on the rest of the army a little first - it shouldn’t really take too long to eliminate a unit or two and every time a unit of yours frees up, you can add it to destroying the rest of your opponent’s army or try to piecemeal approach the Celestant-Prime. The Cometstrike Sceptre and Orrery of Celestial Fate means he has some ranged threat, but his primary impact is in combat - shooting and magic will help here (Ash Storm will slow him down, meaning you might avoid direct combat an extra turn or two). Ultimately, he’s very offence based, but only has 8 wounds and a 3+ save, with no special rules for making him tougher.

Apart from the Trample and Gore attacks and the Fireglaives’ close combat attacks, everything your force has a Rend of -1 (and the Taur’ruk has -2). That makes his saves only a 50-50 chance of success and with only one re-roll per turn, against a host of attacks, shouldn’t be too much trouble. Extra ways to deal with him - give your Taur’ruk Grotesque as your General and charge straight in (then support the Bull Centaur Renders after - personally, I think better to treat them as his entourage and remove the Retributors first) and/or fire the Deathshrieker at him for a couple of turns (remember, he doesn’t need to be visible