Hello everybody if it's Wednesday, it's Warhammer and that must mean it's time for another episode of Warhammer Weekly Joining me as always is my co-host Tyler. What's up, buddy? How are you doing? Good man. Good to be here. It's good to have you. Good to have you also joining us for the first time a Gentleman who is a from what I am told Stormcast aficionado. It's my first time meeting him, but Tyler speaks highly and anybody Tyler speaks highly of I Will speak highly of so Dylan welcome to the show buddy. Good to have you. I think thanks for having me Thanks for the high praise See if I can live up to it. There we go. We're gonna we're gonna talk about the Golden boys and girls of Sigmar Striking down from the heavens of Aesir to bring peace To the mortal realms and how they're gonna survive and fair in this new magic dominated meta That's gonna be our topic tonight, but of course first the news Rumor engine so is this a flesh-eater quartz rumor engine we're looking at here No, it's not my first thought zingy thing. Okay. Yeah That's a zingy leg. It's a zingy leg Also, the way that they did the actual text around the rumor engine was completely zingy and like it's all weird and chaos and Yeah, and it's a bird leg and so and it's stepping on a bearded guy who looks like a wizard and it's got candles on it So it's a magic thing cuz candles equal magic. That's just a direct equation in the mortal realms So, yeah, so it's a zingy. All right, cool Okay, give me down for that So, maybe maybe it's like the zing I Don't know harbinger dawn bringer thing whatever that is like whatever the zing Oh, yeah thing they're gonna get is for whenever they show up and take part in the in the dawn bringers situation I assume everybody gets something so we'll see Yeah Makes sense gonna pull the show here and say I'm looking at the rumor engine. I can definitely see the zinge Yeah, it's a little like skeletal. Sorry like I could see it being flesh orders, but yeah, I think zinge is the right call Yeah, yeah, absolutely Okay, oh, I see you've got some fans in the channel LeRan and some keep Let's get on let's get on Missouri and boys and girls here. Okay, so we have another cities of Sigmar Preview, you know the what wilder core hunters. I think was the name sure thing along those lines don't think to that effect I'm doing that effect And yeah, I've got some puppy dogs So we're inching closer toward being able to run an entire 2000 point list Puppy dogs. I'm excited about Yeah, I like the look of these guys they are doing a little bit more for me personally than most of this range so far Dylan, what about you? I I'm really liking the new cities stuff I think the helmets are kind of where the divisive Part is lied from the people I've talked to and I'm a big fan of them. They're very like They remind me of an old game Here was a might magic five the like peasants in that game had like a very similar I'm a bucket hat and I like grew up playing that game And so a lot of my fantasy likes or from stuff that was iconic in that game You look too young to be talking about here's of my magic Hold hold the phone on this. Okay heroes of my I'm literally typing something on my other computer All right, let's let me got it. We got to check this. Okay heroes of might magic five came out on May 16th 2006 So like I was eight at the time this old game This yeah, sure. I played I must be thinking about three two and three because those were 90 games. I'm pretty sure Yes, I mean absolutely in college when I was playing heroes of might magic two That is correct A decade earlier so sure um But anyways on these guys I like it is the helmets I think the helmets are pretty Marmite either you think they're cool or you don't they I will say they look better here Then they did on some of the other troops things. I like about these guys I mean dogs are good hit like for dogs if you like dogs. Do you like dags? Oh Dogs yes, I love dogs Um So You know like fine cool I like the dude back here and like the top left the guy with the spear who's just kind of standing regally This is this old guy with the beard. I like how in the city's units were getting like a lot of mixed body types You know just like people of lots of different shapes and sizes like yeah, yeah, sure everybody you're all welcome Let's get in here. The mortal realms are big. We got a lot of stuff to defend Come on in join the join the core as it were here, right? It's kind of like stout and kind of yeah, just hanging out. Yeah, exactly. All right. I like that So that's cool. The I am worried about that that like so now we got five dogs like half of this unit is dogs This is like a Pacific ring rim thing where it's like the first two Breaches were you know a year apart then six months at this rate. They'll be you know, 10 minutes apart It was like first we had the crab and then we waited months and we got this thing and now We're getting half of the unit is dogs, you know by 2025. We're all just playing Dungeons and doggos like there is no more. It's all just pet animals Humanoids are have been eliminated. It's like an animal farm thing Um Yeah, like they've clearly figured out that pets are Popular and so they're gonna throw pets into every ancillary sort of product because this is both a unit in cities But also a war cry warband, obviously, right and so with stuff like that I just sense that every underworlds and war cry warband we can stick some kind of cute Small pet creature into we're gonna do it We're just gonna do it just get them in there It has to be like I want to see the memo that came down to GW sculpting Directors that's like more pets Period. That's it. Yeah, I Feel like war cry in underworlds like the perfect space for that kind of stuff though because like you get like the like powder monkey the One that came out a while ago for the pirates and all that and they can kind of just like be a game piece for that But it's also like a lot of people like specifically like to paint the underworld stuff And so that gives them an option without necessarily encroaching on being a full unit. Sure. Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely All right, we got the preview the Sunday preview war cry crypto blood starter set coming out So that's got some terrain pieces. It's got Zendair's truth seekers the Crimson Court And some of the nice vampire models. I think there's at least three there Yeah, I believe you get the vampires and the storm cast guys. Yeah, we talked about it on the previous. Yeah, so yeah, it's like underworlds teams repackaged into a happy war cry starter set situation sure and sort of a weird mix of terrain That looks like the guard to more but isn't the guard to more looks like the garden more like somebody sculpted the garden more from memory and And then a really cool bust of nefarada. You just get for free. Yeah I like that play mats that they've got with this I don't know looks good though the photo that they come out with I have to try war cry at some point still never gotten a game in with it Dylan you ever play any war cry I played a couple games. It's uh, it's pretty fun. I like it a lot The night arcaneum is hilariously busted in work right, which is so funny because she's so terrible in actual a just like mark But it's fun. It's you know, it's a just like my light That is often the way it goes in work right like if you're bad in AOS you're probably amazing in work right like it's almost They did tends to flip Pretty pretty pretty directly For a long time KO we're just like the most sideways broken thing and Work right they were outrageous. So maybe that's maybe that's a counter example to my point. Sure And Some exciting news for this show. We've got the quest or soul sworn coming out independently separately as well as the royal beast flares People like Richie are doing terrible things with them at the moment With what you can do if let's you to courts right now Especially with Nagash Richie just went 5-0 in the UK over the weekend But yeah, this you will talk more about this unit later on This is gonna be I think one of our hot picks of the night quest or soul sworn. Yeah, it's gonna be big It's gonna come up in conversation. Absolutely. Yes All right, very good Anything else in the news or is that bring us to the end? I think that was it. All right, let's uh, let's move on to some pick of the week Dylan, what did you want to share with everybody? Yeah, so I shared Hey woe's Faction focus guide for Stormcast Eternals. He put this out about six months ago. I think I love everything. Hey woe does I think he's got a really Fun take on how he like makes content for age of Sigmar He very much Focuses in on it being a dad game But also focuses on like the inner depths of the game to like I think he understands the game and what people who play The game like really well, and I think his stormcast guide was Fantastic a few disagreements on some of the meta choices, but you know, that's how it is. It's always how it is Absolutely. Yeah, I know it's a great video would would recommend 10 out of 10 or five out of seven is hey What would say? Tyler What do you got a reasonable three this week? week and decadence Thomas Instead of doing a battle report. He did a nice video breaking down completing battle tactics in the new GHB So going through all the factions same idea got some disagreements But a lot of positives lot of a lot of good points he makes in that video Yeah, put a lot of work into it. It's excellent Goon hammer. They had an in-depth article by Gareth Hall Apparently got to be named Gareth to play blades of corn sure I did catch that in the beginning of the bloke. Yeah, yeah Start competing blades of corn Fantastic article incredibly in-depth Just about all the ins and outs of blades of corn So if you're interested in learning more or getting better with that army how they recommend that and then finally For some reason my friends keep inviting me back to the cubic shenanigans podcast to talk about the GHB So we just did a a pod a few weeks back that came out a couple of days ago with Brendan who I think is in your neck of the woods now I'm waiting for him to show up at your house and to maybe start taking over some co-hosting duties So I can have some more time off Is Brendan have you talked to him yet? You're not paying attention. He's not paying attention. This is what happens Just completely zones everything Melnick is he have you seen him yet in Ohio? I think he's in Ohio now My understanding is he's just arriving. So I'm letting him get settled in we've been texting. Yes. Okay. All right, cool I'm very excited. He knows he's got a game coming. He's gonna be he's gonna be rocking over here into the dojo soon I'm sure excellent. Yes. Yeah Yes So, yeah hopped on with Melnick and Dan. We had a good time going through the The GHB and the July battle school. That's all I got. No, that's fine. Very nice. I really I just you had so many picks I completely spaced out and I was like Tyler's gonna be going for a while. Just let him go. It's fair Yeah, I don't have to dial back in My pick of the week for everybody is actually a really fun video from Sam Lenz A friend and an all-around amazing artist. It's him talking about painting a combat patrol Actually for 40k, but nonetheless the lessons I think and things he talks about in there are applicable to miniature painting of any fantasy or sci-fi variety and Sam is an awesome dude as always. So do check that out links for all of that Down in the description below All right, and as we segue into some hobby time go ahead and you know hit that like button subscribe Do all those things that make all those dings. It's helpful and help to the people find the channel and cost you basically nothing It's as easy as a little click All right, so let's talk about some hobby time Dylan, we've been working on buddy So yeah as I alluded to when we were pre talking before the show I've been working on my gateway open list Which is a tournament down here in Missouri and it is the evocators on Dragonlines is what I've specifically been working on I've been trying out some speed paints trying some stuff to kind of speed me up because I am a notoriously slow painter And I've been really enjoying the speed paints. Nice. That's fantastic. Is this the new formula you're using these speed paints 2.0? Indeed very nice. I've been experimenting with those myself recently. So there you go. How about that? They are they are interesting. No, that's cool and kitty caters, huh? Okay. All right. Yeah, I like it I like it. We're gonna talk about kitty caters. I'm sure as well. So we're gonna have some we're gonna have some fun times When we get into the unit discussion. All right Tyler by you buddy. What's been on your desk? What do you mean? I I know it's been too many weeks where I haven't been doing anything works been insane So I'm gonna have to put a stop to this soon. I wanted to give a sincere Thank you all of the BS that we give each other our friends Anthony Bocastro had a couple of big boxes show up At my house when I was out of town and so thank you Anthony a couple of terrain tables for ball wars So very appreciative. I think some others Steve Herner. I think had that happen to him as well I saw a tweet go out my herner. So yeah, Bocastro the legend grows I I got a game in with my list and it actually things were clicking Okay against a really strong zinch list last night. So felt good about that Got a game against OBR next week. So we will see how that goes Against the horrifying OBR right now of Catacopos Narcan and the usual So yeah, but yeah, yeah, it was it was nice to see it working as intended. Nice fantastic For myself, it's actually been quite an intense hobby week. So next week is Gen Con so as a note to everyone next week show will be very early on Wednesday I don't know the exact time yet but if you're watching this do please note the show will be like very early in the day at some point whatever I can figure out for time with with Tom and So what that means is since I'm teaching there it's model prep time. So I was actually spent most of the weekend just assembling and prepping models for Both Gen Con and for Nova so I got like I've got two teaching events coming up. No visit the end of August Obviously Gen Con's the beginning just easier to kind of knock it all out at once So I mean it was like assembling at just a metric ton of minis to put together for people to paint In my classes and stuff like that. So still didn't get totally done But I made a lot of progress. There's only so much you can just continually assemble stuff before you lose your mind I Also did get a little painting going on two different projects one I can't share the other being I'm continuing to work on my towel that are back there so yeah, and Also got a bunch of bunch of that footage for working on everything. I'm working on record it So, you know then and then made more videos and stuff because I have to now because I have so much travel coming up I have to like pre-record a bunch of videos. So It was a very very intense hobby weekend and beginning of the week for me Not as much as I would have liked it was actually just sitting there painting Assembling and priming masses of minis is never the most exciting thing of it, but hey, that's okay That's me You don't want people to show up to a class and be like, well, I hope you all brought a mini because I got nothing That's not gonna work As you were talking about pop to my head I don't I didn't catch in one of our Facebook threads It was a grid of content creators and where they Fall on the spectrum the indie spectrum and they nailed you my friend with cat a good That was just just perfection. Thank you. Yes. That's like using the 25 bar Sort of insane alignment chart as opposed to like the standard of D&D That's like if somebody that that's some horrible offspring of like riffs plus D&D But that being said, yes Yes, I do Agree with that take. I was perfectly happy with my placement. Thank you all for I'd like to thank the Academy for voting me cat and good I fully support that and will now rebel against anything the Academy has to say going forward, of course because Authority Derives only from the governed not from there. Not from anywhere else. Okay So With that Let's uh Let's turn to our topic shall we gentlemen everybody everybody ready to talk a little Storm cast Eternals in the new movies. Yeah, right? Let's Congrats Caleb on the on the 5.0. He's there in the channel. Once again Yes, yes, I mean the man is man the myth the legend absolutely He can't be stopped Okay, so Storm cast in the magic meta. Let's get into it. I love this piece of art Hey, whoa, also has a version of this you mentioned. Hey, we're earlier where he like he photoshopped like Bastion's chest to be like huge So he's just like super ripped. It's very funny He did like a really subtle version of it Okay, but this is a great piece of art All right storm cast quick overview and I'll look for your feet your feedback here as well gentlemen to get your ear overview and your feel on this But here's my general take on it current season aside Storm cast is just always complicated to build with like it's especially challenging for newer players You pop that book. You got like 70 war scrolls 39 40 of them are human our heroes. Sorry, right? There are just options and traps at plenty all Over the place like there are some that are just straight-up traps complete zots for their points basically At the same time this army when built right I think does combined arms better than than most other forces out there I can have a nice mix of all the different roles you would want threatening at different ranges Playing in most of the phases in interesting ways. That's pretty great, right? and One of the challenges I think with storm cast it has been since 3.0's launch and frankly this goes back farther than that It's just getting a lot of these units costed correctly Like it's a it's a high armor Elite ish force should just call it. Let's just call it elite and That kind of stuff is always tough to point Because if mortal wounds or magic floods the meta or something your troops are basically Much worse and worth a lot less because they just roll over and die if the meta is full of like a bunch of rend one and rend zero and no like just kind of bodies that you can pretty easily blow through with Models that we like we've mentioned here like like like kitty caters or like draco Sorry, or like a fulminators or stuff like that Then suddenly it's a whole different story. All right, so so like what is that the objective? I'm gonna put giant finger air quotes around that right correct points value for these guys is often really tough It's not as easy as like saying Okay, well, this is just like ten average dudes With like a four or five up save that have a decent attack profile. They're like somewhere between 80 and 100 points, right? It's like it's not gonna be off that much Right a lot of these units can be way off because their price like so high They can just be way off the mark Right now and have like a material impact on your list building capability Okay, but ultimately having that kind of wide toolbox Having a mix of shooting melee mobility screens all of that now moving to the current season Factoring in Tyler. This was your point like magic or anti-magic and kind of you know Or a little of how you're gonna ride that wave and can't or is these kinds of things becomes really important, right? All right, so Dylan, I'm gonna go to you first But I feel like a fair summary or is that kind of your take on the on the the army overview as a whole? Anything I said there you disagree with or anything you want to add? No, I think what you said definitely Goes with most of my thoughts. I think the I Think we do a lot of things Okay, and if you really want to do something well, you really have to index into doing it well and I think it's a hard hard ask for the army to like Be a true like jack-of-all-trades army like with your like standard list I think you definitely like heavily index into am I gonna be like alpha striking am I gonna be like Super like anti-magic am I gonna be very like durable and hold points I think you kind of like heavily index and to which way you want to go But I think they do Do the combined arms thing Well because they kind of like have like a secondary like thing you can put into lists Like you'll put in these big like blocks that sit on objectives But then you also get shooting that supplements it well Or a little bit of magic that supplements it well. Yep. Okay Tyler Yeah, so yeah, I've long thought I'm not sit on the show before that This faction has been one of the more underrated factions when it comes to the Pleasure that you know the joy the the experience one can derive from playing them like how Fascinating how enriching they can be deep they can be they have tremendous variety in list Even though we often don't see that as much as I think we should because it's easy to get Focused on the shiny which is you know fulminators or stormdrake guard or right long strikes And so you often don't see as much diversity variety in list as one could as we could but yeah I think the faction has held up incredibly well throughout third edition It was strong out of the gate in terms of at least what I'm biased to like which is variety and Toolbox armies combined arms armies. Yeah, where you can you can have depth You can lean into combo plays really well with this army You know, it's like you're setting up synergies often with storm cast where a to b to c So it's very much in my mind getting a lot out of it and my games against Dylan You do this well Dylan which is creating an experience of where the hole is greater than the sum of the parts With storm cast and so I think a lot of people in my mind Just don't take that approach enough with their list building and their play style with the army They tend to fixate on hammers hammers hammers hammers hammers, and it's more of a straightforward play experience Like trying to kill your opponent early right when early score late that sort of thing Exactly yeah, yeah, yep. Okay, cool All right. Well, let's get into some deets So we're gonna start with some traps and overrated units. How about that? Okay? So these could be overcosted These could be things we think that like people take a lot of that we think are actually not very good at all These could be things that are just straight up traps like they they have rules They have points, but in fact It's a trap, right? Do not play them. Yeah, do not play them It is you have made a mistake if you have added them to a list. Yeah, absolutely Okay So Let's kind of start with maybe some heroes type stuff, right? So what are the what are the sort of heroes that we think potentially? fall into this Uh into this zone of like traps like what should players be avoiding? Especially in the current season Dylan I'm gonna let you I'm gonna let you throw out the first couple feel free to toss out a couple, right? We can discuss as we see fit, right? So I think Unfortunately storm cast units like you were saying some of them are just like you cannot play them Like yes, they have rules, but if you put them in a list you are Not doing things right And some of them that come off the top of my head is gavriel sure heart mace lord castellan's um Or lord lord celestine. I think you mean. Yeah. Yes, of course. Lord celestine. Yeah, castellan's great Lord celestine the celestine the guy with the worst attack profile than a claw lord is meant to be the the The sort of our big melee punchy. Yeah, exactly. Just just yes unreal. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, sure. Um I got what am I thinking of uh going to take over tyler while I'm thinking. Oh, that's fine.  That's an incredible series But yeah, my god the war school that's probably the number one on the board of war schools that need to get updated Aaron questor Lord ordinator, you know, the celestar blisters is the one obvious shooting in in my mind that does not get there I mean, I know they dropped the points, but I'm not sure leaders first. Yeah. Oh, sorry leaders first Yeah, the lord ordinator is terrible. I do you guys rate the night heraldor at all. I haven't seen that much on the table I've so I've seen it on the table and I think every time they play I'm like, this is a mistake Like you sure you'll blow up some new players or people who don't know what the heraldor does But like any player that knows just stay three inches away from terrain. It's just like, oh, okay Now your 110 point hero does literally nothing Well, especially because most Tournaments and the way that gw recommends you play keeps all objectives away from Terrain right like it has to be set up sort of a minimum of usually three inches away from terrain and so the problem with the heraldor is that You once you explain what he does Right, it's exactly what you said Any sensible player will just be like, okay I just won't touch the terrain unless I like Absolutely need to for some obscure reason and even then it's not as though that's suddenly going to be Backbreaking in most cases, right?  That's a totally different thing. That that's a good way to interface with terrain because it's putting it under your control Right, exactly So yeah, this your opponent just be like, oh, I'm literally just like three inches out And like like you said like even if they are unless the person is playing like the super meme like five night heraldor list Like they take d3 mortal wounds and they're kind of like, okay, whatever, right, right Exactly, okay. Oh, no Anyway, yeah, it's just yeah Were you doing one bucket vents with traps and overrated or are you doing? Yeah, this is all this is all overrated bad traps anything that makes them anything like that. Yeah. Yeah So just to get a couple of the more obvious ones out of the way drags warren templar That's the other version of the the dragon the old dragon, right? I do think it is the better version for what it's worth. Uh, interesting. Okay. I think uh So I think the four up save is obviously what like really really hurts pretty corn sunflower But he is 50 points cheaper. He does have better shooting and he still gives you the plus one magic which I think is what you really want from him and being a A properly key worded behemoth hero so you can take like master celestial menagerie and all that To get your other behemoth minus one to win. I still don't think he's good But I do think he is better than the start interesting Like I completely agree with that take my my issue with it that guy With the drakes warren templar and it's a shame because he does as you mentioned you kind of mention this in passing But it's worth it's it's worth deep diving into this. Okay. Like I do want to I do want to talk about this for a minute Because I feel like this guy is uh Sort of endemic of something that happens a lot. So the drakes warren templar is 400 points Okay, this is the this is the This is everybody knows this this is the big storm drake, right? And You you mentioned the the range attack. I mean, yeah, he has his extra bow. I'm not sure I'm going to call that better range But sure. I mean I'll give it to you. He does have more of a ranged attack, right? the The funny thing about this guy is he has something that feels really aligned to the current season So he has this giant radius like 18 inches of plus one to cast for you and minus one to cast for your enemies All right That's a big that's like a big radius off of this base because he's on the like You know uh imperial knight 170 mil base And he can do the whole like eat people thing and stuff like that's all fun, right? So it's all fun. It's all fine The problem with this dude is exactly and you mentioned it like A four up base save on a monster of that size with no ward save, right? He's got 18 wounds. Okay. Sure. Like let's not that's a decent number of wounds But he's on a four up save and and his actual attack profile is like what? fine It's not great I Fine he has like the big claws or neg two rend and that's it everything else is neg one rend Or no rend Whatever you happen to have um and so The issue is it's not that he doesn't have some really interesting utility because Here's here's why I'm where I'm saying this is endemic a lot of these units a lot of these especially like monster mounted Stormcast heroes And I would argue the same is like true for event spire strike and people like that, right? Is that it's not that there's no utility there There is there's some cool utility there Okay, it's that the cool utility isn't 400 points of cool utility But yeah, if that utility was on a 200 point hero, I would I'd be like, okay We we we came to play we got something going on here right now like I'm assuming it isn't a giant monster and all that like It's just right dude who's six or seven wounds But still does all those same things Right could like give my army the bonus that you mentioned like from the command trade or Still have this big giant or to cast or or whatever, right? um That's fine My issue is and I see robert bolshein showing up to defend it He's saying the drake's horn template is very good. I just can't agree man I just can't agree because my problem is he's not 400 points I don't know the world where he pays off those points like I agree. He's super interesting and useful in the season In that magic buff and if he and if there was a 200 point version of him I'd take him But 400 points is just too much for what I get out of this guy. He can't fight anything He dies very easy Yeah, what's he doing? I mean like he's comparable to cron spine almost like you think about like if you're really wanting him like for the magic bonus like It's like you pay 80 more points for a cron spine and get like a very similar effect while Being an incredible actual like anvil that you can like just throw into the middle of the board While like the drake's horn templar and especially the star drake Like you've got to be like really careful with them because they get touched by any kind of hammer unit And they just die and you lose all that utility and 400 points your army So robert's defending him with the tempest axe which of course strips away like has no it has a very bad attack profile but it does strip away the Piling move from enemies and he's saying when you have so you take retreat and charge you take the axe So that way no one can pile in Like okay, that's an interesting bit of utility. I'm still not buying it. I'm really not like Maybe maybe maybe against some units, but like at the same time I just like I don't OBR just hits you with three big giant elite dudes to have a horrendous profile Strip your armor completely off and then murder you Like and they cost less than you do Mm-hmm Like buy a decent amount Yeah, I mean every once in a while All right, I could I could see catching some people out with a combination of cavernous jaws and tempest axe Right where you you break coherency through the combination of those two And But I mean cannot move more than one inch I mean they can still pile in one inch So it's not as if they're not moving at all in that situation But yeah, that seems a little situational and yeah tend to agree And it's like what in the meta like is that actually good? Yeah, there are certainly more large units floating around zombies and and You know squig herds and stuff like that continue to be a a thing Right as far as like units that you have to be aware of so things like your cavernous jaws are are higher value this season certainly but like I I just I think right now. I kind of I honestly i'm going to agree with mergongon That's when I think it's just too lethal the meta right now for for what this dude Is like it's pretty easy to just do to eat something Right white gore drake has had a hard time seeing the table throughout the entire third edition with its four plus save compared to the Yeah, the three up with the cabbage Despite the notable output that you can get from gore drake the Yeah, so some of the others let's see Somebody mentioned stormkeep mentioned vandals. Uh, I think that's dead wrong personally I'm obviously a huge stan of vandals I know I think you thought he was overcasted, which I find surprising as well. Do you want to say more about Yeah, let's talk about vandals. Vandals is an interesting guy I'm I'm think I'm going to come down more on the tyler side, but I'm willing to be won over So just let's let's lay down. Let me lay down some basics. Vandals is worth a quick discussion So our our classic original Oh, gee stormcast boy, right best boy in like the very first scenario in the very first book This was the one guy you played right you put him down and then he went out and fought a cord breath like that was Game one day one, right? Okay So Uh, 190 points for a 10 inch move nine wounds The perfect number of wounds With a three up save right Obviously he has his little storm blast his little spit. He's got his hammer Which is three attacks on threes twos neg one three damage Uh, he gets two extra attacks if he charged so he goes up to five attacks Um, he stops he strips off battle shock for everybody within 24 inches of him Not that that's generally a huge deal But he does it and then once per turn at the start of the combat phase You can pick one friendly hammers a sigmar redeemer unit Holy within 12 add one to the attacks characteristic of that unit's melee weapons until the end of that phase So he makes some redeemers more attacking for free Okay Now Let's talk him. So so dylan you're you're not right them. Okay, where do we go? so I Let me be clear last season. I think vandals was great I think losing galatian veterans is pretty much the worst possible thing that could happen with vandals Because right now his force multiplier is so much worse. You're either putting it on like a unit of five redeemers so sequiturs vanquishers or liberators or vindictors and Anything except for vindictors. You're only going to be able to get five in and you're getting like one extra attack and it's like okay I think liberators and vanquishers their output is Atrocious and I think taking him to boost a unit of five of them Is definitely not what you want to be doing a unit of five sequiturs is better But I still think there are far better ways to spend your points And so then the obvious like thought is the big block of vindictors that you juice up with them And I don't think vindictors get to be killy enough even with an extra attack There's still there would be three attacks each with mortal wounds on sixes Like but you're paying an extra 190 points to juice them So then you're looking at like It's what like 450 points total for vandals and the block of Is that right? Yeah 450 for the block of 10 vindictors and vandals like at that point you are 10 points more Okay, so 430 So 10 points less than a double block of protectors Which I think does that but so much better like your tankier your killier You have more attacks like you're more resilient. I think it's just A much better way to go than the vindictor like used up on a vandace route. Okay, all right, tyler Yeah, so I think that's a great point on Galatian veterans hurting vandace as far as broad broader value Obviously, I've been playing him with 10 vindictors and trying out every once in a while 15 now I do think 15 is notable with him, but yeah, it is Also a fair point the comparison with protectors So I I do at least for me With vandace, there is a little bit of the get out of gel card of the special snowflake going on Because I want right because I want to play something that's a little different With that said, I think he does get there enough So with the comparison of 10 protectors, I had not thought about that before I think that's reasonable That yeah, you look at that on a lot of lists on paper that's going to get more value at think now that Is potentially impacting your list building. So with my list building, I'm often going warlord and torian acolytes So that means I gotta have five heroes And I like him as part of that set of five With the battle shock community that he's providing the army now I'm often not running a list that is going to be heavily impacted by battle shock But even being impacted a little bit It just means that I simply for the most part don't have ever have to worry about it And I've been keeping track in my games How often that's coming up and at least for me it's coming up To a meaningful degree in my it's definitely relevant as somebody who's played a lot of indrasta who has the same kind of battle shock immunity even just like Saving a cp like once a game is fairly relevant. Right when you're so starved on cp with storm cast Yeah, and so this so there's that element and he does have potentially notable output so up to Let's see eight 15 23 damage. I believe some are around there. So up to 15 from his hammer And up to eight from the drag the drag off On the charge Right exactly. Yeah, so now, of course, he's only minus one rend on the three damage He can be swingy With the attack with that type of attack characteristic as it often true With with these types of heroes, right? And drost is the embodiment of this bastion so but Yeah, uh on the whole I can see that like I'm not going to argue that he it's a slam, you know sure sort of Clear clear case for him, but I do think he he gets over the line in a meaningful way for me So I'm going to come down a spec slightly in the middle Because here's where I sit with him I actually think that third ability that we're focusing on there at the beginning is just a complete and total trap I feel like Dylan. I think you're actually right.  Yeah, plus one attack Like if it if it incidentally triggers sometime on my unit of indicters or whatever like neat You know what? I mean like I'm not trying to set it up if it's convenient for me to do so Great. I generally hate tight bubble buffs because I feel like they make you play worse Like let me just I'm just gonna say that like I want to be able to especially in storm cast I think storm cast win when you can use your pieces Your your game pieces as individually as possible To do whatever you need what I mean by that is using them in concert When you need to use them in concert and using them independently when they need to go independently Okay, I don't ever this is why I don't rate I like I'll go right to my hero here, which I think showed up on somebody else's list is very high But one of my biggest traps is is goddess Okay, like I understand what a five up word does But he but you you end up I don't care what anybody says you change your play And you start playing gather round him because you you fear losing that ward and it just makes you play worse Like all the success every any time I've ever had success in a tournament with storm cast It's when like I could just because I needed to this unit's gonna go over here This unit's gonna go over here. This guy's going straight up the middle.  We need to now suddenly combine on right so it's Like to me that's like I don't I don't want to have to care about balancing bubbles If you're balancing bubbles and storm cast it's a trap. That's just a blanket statement for me That's why I think goddess is a trap His ability is super strong Like it's super strong Like so strong. I cannot stay how strong having a five up word in this army is It is so strong Okay But I feel like you just are you you're generally gonna play worse and make worse decisions because of it now back to vandals for the reasons that I said uh like Vandals I would love him and he would be an a plus choice for me if one of these two things were true He was like 170 points not 190 or he had rend two and I would prefer the rend two Okay Now But it's not a deal breaker for me. I like base damage three I do think he can do decent damage. It just means you have to pick your fights a lot more carefully with him But I do like that. He's a fairly mobile fairly tough interesting piece right Again, I'm not sure I wouldn't take bastion first Bastion dead lacks the mobility, but it has a lot of other things. I really enjoy we'll talk about him in a minute. I'm sure but To me he's somewhere in the middle ground where like when used correctly He's an interesting independent operator and that bubble of his battle shock community is so huge.  It's it's so massive. You could just like whatever. He's he's way over here and it's like it's fine His bubble still extending. It's just like it's the board, you know, right That's my Dylan. I'd love to hear. Yeah Yeah, I'd love to hear you say a few things about guard is still in because I know you played him quite a bit But just as a lot I didn't say anything about the plus one attack again. I've played Probably 16 games now with the band as Tim and Dector's combination and I rate it pretty highly personally. I mean, yeah May not seem like him a lot, but The the comparison with Tim protectors is fair, right? Like yeah, sure. Again, I don't that's why I think it's a trap You're you're like Dylan's dead on you just take the 10 protectors Yeah Yeah, so That's yeah, if you're talking about pure optimization. Yeah, I it's hard to not just conceive that And so yeah, but anyway, it's I've I've been impressed by it I can't treat that plus one attack like the ice cream. It's sprinkles That's all it is. It's sprinkles on the sundae if it's there or not. Who cares, right? It's not why I took him either the ice cream is good enough or it's not That's so I think a problem with that. So Um, this kind of goes I think about this army a lot of the times in like opportunity costs And I think a lot of these heroes, um that want to fight So bastion and drosta vandis, um, you are giving up An actual fighting unit And so like I think you need to be comparing like if you're talking about vince like sending vandis to go be a lone operator Um and kind of like supporting the board like from a distance. I think there are I think you just take a unit that does that Um, and so something like a unit of fulminators who I'm not particularly high on right now either Or like a chariot or something like that sure and I don't know. I also think we have differences in battalions I tend to try and get like as close to three heroes as possible Well, it sounds like you guys are trying to fit more for like five or six I have been at three historically. Yeah, the acolytes battalion has got me. Yeah, and like yeah, so But yeah, I don't like doing five heroes personally. Yeah, it's it's painful Yeah, so I'm like I would love to drop this hero to take a more efficient unit that also Like goes out and kills things because the heroes are not efficient at killing things Like I've done a lot of calculations on damage and like the damage heroes do for their point is so abysmal compared to like units You're you're on that. I have no disagreement. You are absolutely right and and just like as a statement in general uh This is an army where it's very easy because as I mentioned more than half the worst girls are heroes It's easy to get caught up in the hero trap in this army So like one of the just we should state this as a as a thing that I think we would all agree with Too many heroes in storm cast is just a trap in and of itself because then you just don't have the actual Useful units you need to go and do things. I've I've always had more success with Basically less heroes rather than more is the shortest answer there like uh in general I do actually tend to agree with you I'm I'm preferring a three hero list most of the time most of the time so okay, uh Other other traps and overrated units.  I just want to we're gonna get we're gonna get a take on them. We're gonna get a take on them Okay All right Okay, everybody ready We're doing like lightning round like it's like lightning round. Yeah. Is this unit a trap? Okay. It very well might be Is it a trap? Is it a trap? All right, let's figure it out. Here we go. Okay Lord exorcist Trap is a trap. Yeah, if he were 50 points cheaper, I think I'd love him Uh, but god, he's so expensive Tyler Yeah, he needs to be a little cheaper But he is getting close if you can drop a little bit because in this meta with obr bringing back models other armies bringing back models It's interesting As definitely better in this meta than it was, you know, like six months ago or whatever Yeah, yeah, I like I love the idea of having an exist in a game against obr That's nope. Just saying no to immortal scar putting models back or stalkers putting models back Yeah, nine inches is tough though for a little that is a little tough as well You've gotta kind of got to set that up. Yeah But yeah a little too high right now This guy is so fascinating to me because it is the definition of like can a sideboard card Get good enough in the current meta To actually main deck in your army, right? Because that's what he is Right, like if no one's returning models, who cares who cares who cares about this guy. He's obviously a complete waste right But if the sort of like slain models being returned is happening left and right And everywhere center, then maybe this guy can do some stuff My issue is exactly what you said nine inches at an 150 points. That is way too close And like this dude is just gonna get like they're just gonna kill him if that's what they're if that's what their plan is He's not surviving. I think we got to rate this guy a trap. Absolutely. Okay All right, let's talk about the big brothers Krondis and Karzai the big the big Karzai. Sorry. Yes. There's an extra a there the big boys All right, Dylan. Where are you sitting on on these two? So I think Karazai is a You are having a four fun game if you play him. I think he is basically unplayable in a competitive game I think Krondis I don't know jerry's out on Krondis. I've played one game with him since the point drops And I think the list I had around him was bad because it was more of a casual game But I think he actually did very very well It's just he's a lot of points. It's hard to fit him in and support him Because I think he also needs a lot of support pieces. Okay. Okay. Yeah Tyler. Yeah, I don't like them as much for different reasons than I did last season so friend of ours John he did really well with Tim Pestor's Krondis and some other pieces playing in Missouri a fascinating list Leaning into the reducing save and Basically like buffing up the rend on Tim Pestor's and judicators with bolster and crossbows It was an awesome list that John put together So with Karazai this season. Yeah, I think it's going to be too many points In one model where the nature of the battle tactics going to be looking to achieve the way that these missions operate It just strikes me as it's going to be more challenging than he was last season. I think he was probably a little underplayed Yeah, giving a long answer. So for the for Krondis, I suspect he's going to suffer from Anti-magic like my general as we've said on the show My expectation is that the first move right is to think There's going to be more magic on the table. So I need to Lock into some anti-magic and then people are we're going to have too much of an over waiting into anti-magic Which may then have some interesting, you know next steps from that point on but so yeah I just I think Krondis is kind of a harder time getting his spells out and getting the value. Yeah Oh god, I love these guys. I really do like I love them so much. They're so cool They're like the coolest dudes like awesome And I put a lot of effort into my custom guy and I've run both of them in tournaments actually like I've run a Karzai focused Listed a couple tournaments and a and a Krondis focused list at Nashcon last year did did pretty good with it um And personally, I think Karazai is more playable to me than Krondis this season Like if I were going to try if I were going to go to tournament, I would run Karazai personally Okay, just for the extra rend or like yeah for the more For the more reliable output because I would be expecting To have less value to ride from the Krondis's casting To me it would be more of a Yeah, melee output play with some pre-doors to help keep Karazai going because the only difference between I'm right if I'm remembering Right is that one of Karazai's attack has an extra rend on it Um, and then Karazai is the level up thing and Krondis is the magic thing, right? Uh I don't remember exactly to that level of detail off the top of my head that sounds right But I'll double check here real quick But the point being is that they're both like fairly comparable in melee Um, so I'm surprised to hear that you like it's two more attacks on the jaws Okay, it is two more attacks on the jaws And the rend yeah, yeah the so I think I think I'm gonna come down with tyler on this one I actually am gonna stand Karazai as well Because I mean, look, let's just say both of these things are like near suicide plays right now I mean, let's just be let's just start there opening bid. Okay I think you look at the plus three to cast on Krondis if that plus three was also to unbind and dispel My opinion would flip faster Than then than a flapjack on a hot griddle. Okay, just like boy. Oh boy But The issue is it's not it's just a cast and there's going to be lots of people out there taking He has a great spell, but people are just going to have a bunch of stuff that makes them ignore magic Yeah, right to either auto spell or ignore you're going to see no myriad You're going to see lots of corn players You're going to see people with auto unbinds So like it doesn't matter if you can get it off It doesn't like getting an extra plus three is neat But I just think the second order consequences of how the med is going to react to the magic I really do still stand behind the fact that I think anti magic is going to win In this season and yet again, we're going to be cursed with another season where like The thing it's supposed to be about isn't the thing unless it's too like Unless it's two middle players. I don't mean mid table players I mean just like middle army players playing each other where it's like They have one wizard with plus one to cast and the other guys one wizard plus one to cast And they found each other at the tournament, right? And it's like They're gonna they're gonna have a grand old time. I still stand behind this, right? They're gonna be using primal magic dice and all sorts of wacky ways. It's just gonna be it's gonna be great for them But Karzai At 530 points, which is still 30 points too many at least these guys should be 500 like jeez Yeah, they should be 500. Can we please just make them? Sure, um At least I've got the play to say, okay, this guy can do Like a lot of extra damage like neg 3 rend is a lot better than neg 2 like a lot lot better than neg 2 Yeah, and and he buffs up. We haven't said that yet the fires of engines his ability. He does buff up He has his rpg mechanic. Yeah, which by the way, don't under count that like in all the games I played with him. I leveled him some in every single game I ever played Did you get the the meaningful level up though? Because I feel like the hero one is the only one that's like really meaningful I mean the hero one's amazing and no the hero one's amazing. I think they're all fine Like it's all good buffs or buffs, right? Like I'll take free buffs. You know what I mean? Like I'm not gonna I'm sorry. I'm too good for that. No, I don't need plus one to run in charge. Thank you All good over here. No, I mean so so they're all like, you know, they're all Functional that is to say but yes, obviously the hero buffs amazing And I mean, I think probably two games in out of the two like I took these guys at two tournaments The cars I at the helm and I think probably two out of five games. I managed to kill a hero with him It's actually not that hard if you can if you protect him well enough, right?  No, but you're gonna get it somewhere in the mid game, right? Like it'll happen and then hopefully that just brings him into the point where he can then really back clean up But I think he's a super high-risk piece just because of the season and the lethality of it I think that's the downside But if I was gonna pick one I'd pick cars I and say like I like I'll put all my chips in on melee At least I'm gonna get something out of it So yeah, but I think right now they're both probably traps or borderline traps just just because I think they often will just roll over Yeah, yeah, they're really easy to just blow up turn one like unless you have like so much invested in protecting them And then it's not worth it anymore. Yep Okay All right Let's pick another guy here. Okay Knight vexelor But But which knight vexelor I was gonna say which one because I have very different opinions about the two of these guys Let's talk about them in general. Uh, oh sure. Sure. Sorry app totally Uh, all right dylan give me your knight vexelor breakdown. Where are you falling? I know which one I'm backing But go ahead. Okay. So, uh, for those who aren't in the know, there are three of them one rezzes slash heels One drops a big aoe mortal wind meteor and one teleport stuff translocate. Um, I think the I think the obvious good one is the aoe meteor one I think he can do some pretty neat stuff Especially with some of the other tools that stormcast has like cellist in prime or like the everblaze comet Uh, you can kind of just like kill all of an opponent's foot heroes before they move, uh, which is Obviously really good in this foot wizard hero season. Uh, so he can kind of be seen as like anti magic in a lot of ways um, I think the teleport one is There's some like gimmick strats. I've seen with them, uh, but I don't think it's particularly good You're still dropping outside of nine inches. It's still like interhero phase. It's kind of whatever um And the apotheosis one the res slash heal one I think has some fun casual, uh builds But I don't think we'll ever actually see play it like a like a top table dylan. I knew I liked you That's exactly the way You're exactly right look I think people look at the banner of apotheosis Or sorry of um, the storm ranger. I apologize the pen and the storm ranger I think they look at the apotheosis and I think they look at the meteoric standard They look at those three And they go Well, that teleport seems really cool mobility is good in this game, right and bringing back models is really cool And this is just a d3 mortal wounds Right, I think that's what often ends up happening a lot, but I look at that and go Yeah, but that's like a d3 mortal wounds to a 12 inch diameter I guess a six inch radius from the point you pick So it's like I just carry this little nice 12 inch clear ruler from war cry I like set it down and then spin it like a helicopter in place and I'm like All of this taking all this d3 all of it. I'm not this isn't a too up to make it happen. No, no It just happens And that's why I four inches too, which is like yeah, yeah Yeah, good range. Absolutely and I think the problem is it's like Uh, this is like Nausea and a fast and furious movie. You don't want to pop it too early Okay, like your instinct is going to be to hit it when they're castled up at the beginning But actually I found it's usually better in round two or three That's where it's going to do the damage where they've tried to like sort of group valuable things in a place Some things have gotten damaged you're able to wound some stuff through what through some of the methods You've talked about and now this can potentially finish off as you mentioned like this can clear out some foot heroes, right?  Yes, exactly. It seems like such a good idea on paper Um, but I love it and I actually do love it in the season for the reason that you said So because there's a lot of little wizards who are going to be very protected normally like they're going to be trying to run around trying to be Uh little and or in locuses being untargetable by shooting at farther than 12 inches, but The band are going to get you the band are going to get you Um, you just got to make sure it's combined with enough stuff That like it will take them out You don't want to sit there and give them a chance to heal back up basically so Yeah, well you blow too early.  Yep. Okay. Cool. Very good All right, let's move on from leaders. I know it's a lot of the book heroes is is Let's be honest too much Of this book. Okay 39 war scrolls is too many heroes. We don't need a couple We don't need them. Let me let me just get an upper down from dylan Since he's got you kitty caters astras old bright somebody asked about astrea in uh in the chat It's a fun additional question I I like astrea, but god, she's so hard to use Um her spell like minus one to hit bubble sounds absolutely insanely bonkers But it's got a six inch range and you can only do it in your hero phase because it's a spell And it's she's so hard to use the plus one to save is only in combat phase So it doesn't help with shooting or anything like that and she is like we talked about earlier She is a unique hero that is going to get out performed value wise by other units So I like her but you have to really position her perfectly to actually get value out of her Right. Okay. Okay Uh, all right. Let's talk about overrated units. So now now now tyler traps and overrated units Now it's the time where you can mention the Uh, the the ballast a ballastee or whatever you're gonna stay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that was just an obvious one There's not a lot to say about it. I mean the war scroll is an absolute disaster With the point value they they keep dropping it But yeah, have you ever tried them dylan even I mean I just so I have I love the ballista. Let's be clear I love the the model the model. Um, it's one of my favorite models in stormcast and I So wish it was good.   I've I've had dylan. Do you want to complain about them because god knows I've complained about them Every opportunity on this show for a long time. I told you Tyler. We'll go 190 and that's perfectly fair I was gonna say you guys ever seen the the river rolls worse scroll and you look at that You're like, wait, these are the same war scroll, right? And we get mortal wounds. That seems good. That's why we're 30 points more And then you realize they get five extra dudes And you're just like, oh Yeah, it's god I think they were I played them a lot at the start of 3.0 because that was the monster meta and I think they're really good at hunting monsters These big high save monsters that don't tend to have very good wards You can just kind of like pick them off and whittle them down Uh, I think against basically everything else you feel terrible shooting into it. Uh You're just like this is not enough damage 30 more points. I could get raptors and actually kill stuff Yeah Yeah, we were two of the rare ethical storm cast players running 10 judicators when we have Thunderbolt volley with a We reinforce units, you know, very reasonable that these other jokers like mcgonak and Yeah, the last mcgonak killed it for us all the savory types out there. Yeah running running six long strikes Yeah, so now it's it's a it's a horrific unit right now at 200 points. Yeah Uh, I'm glad you agree Vance. We can move on. Yeah, no, that's fine. Like, yes. I mean It's A problem that you it's really funny because of how they've swung In value over the time. Let me give this answer as we leave judicators behind Which is to say I wish more shooting in aos was on that kind of a points level That's how it's how shoot. It's how shooting should be pointed. That's what I'll say Yeah, unfortunately, we're the example that I am trying to be playing minor roles here. Yeah, everybody else is just over here going nuts Uh, hold in the bag. Okay Yeah, I don't I don't want to get lost in that. I don't know if I necessarily agree with that But we've had that debate before I I think you're still yeah putting more value on shooting than I am Particularly in the in the game today, right where we now have this new lookout, sir Long strikes are no longer just picking off little heroes, etc Yeah, I mean it could be that that given all of the sort of systematic changes that have happened around it The the pressure on that has has lessened. That's totally fair Like a lot of things have occurred into the ecosystem over the course of 3.0 that have like That have weakened the overall efficacy of shooting Whether we're talking about the ability to protect heroes in many of these seasons including the current one Whether we're talking about the the not only the initial introduction of rally, but then also the proliferation of You know high numbers of rallies Of regenerating units like units that can self-regenerate like quite efficiently and effectively Um units that like can self heal quite easily When they're when they're heroes, right restoring something like six wounds every combat phase like You know like the certainly the ground has shifted From say the end of 2.0 To now as to the overall just like efficiency of what shooting is going to buy you Right. Yeah. Um, so I do certainly on that point I I think that is another big reason why I like Judicators more at the beginning than now because I feel like so much of the big shooting you see now like slanesh And like deepkin to a lesser extent Um, they just kill the unit and so they don't get to rally They don't get to come back. They just full blow the unit out with volume shooting While judicators can't do that Like you have to chip them down over the course of the game And that's when this stuff like this healing this rally all that Just hurts them so much more than it hurts the other units that can just kill shit Yeah, I mean attrition in general has not been a strong play for a lot of 3.0 And it's only gotten worse and worse frankly, uh to be to be fair Yeah, you know, that was the one thing we didn't talk about. I don't remember due to an rghb review Just when you're because I was thinking about in the following weeks, right? Is that I don't think we emphasized enough one personally I don't know to what degree you're feeling this but one of my main concerns right now with the ecosystem The state of the game is the state of replenishment recursion bringing stuff back, you know, obr sold blight, etc Like yeah, that's that's like to me one of the obvious potential Um systemic issues right now that we've got going on All right with some of these things Agreed, but let's stay on our stormcaster and overrated. Okay So I want to I want to ask some some Let's there's one we didn't mention yet, which is just prosecutors. We can just move that aside. I had a lot of They charge 3d6. That's all that matters I had a lot of hope for them at the beginning of the launch of third. I really did as like an interesting Mobile chaff unit as like because they could split up so far apart because they could sort of Dominate a lot of board space and hedge out like they they do they offer an interesting amount of board control But relatively small bases just because of their little three inch Touching tips spread out and stuff like that. And I thought hey, you know the The ones with the javelins have a three up save. Maybe they'll get there. Maybe they'll be good enough You know so one and so forth a They were not and I It's it makes me sad because I I really It's like the coolest unit right like these stormcasts with wings They're so awesome looking And they've never never been good. Maybe there's like five minutes in 1.0 But like I said, I think we're going to play them once at a big tournament and did well. Yeah Yeah, it's it's it's really they were They were a bubble unit in my mind early on in third edition for an alishel soker. They would soak up an alishel Yeah, that was about it. Yeah Okay, there's just too many points for that Exactly. Exactly. That's that's ultimately what it always comes down to like those things should be I'm going to be honest They should just be cheap as chips Right. They're just not worth anything more like if they're ever going to show up They're going to have to just be cheap as I'll get out Okay Uh, I want to talk about a couple of interesting pieces here and get your get your hot takes on these Are they potential traps? Let's talk about that chariot got mentioned earlier. How we feel it on the chariot Uh, I think the chariot is solidly fine. I don't think it's like a crazy piece Um, I I don't think I ever see a chariot in a list and I'm like This needs to come out like I think a chariot is It's 12 wounds on a three up save and 160 points now. I think uh, so like it It covers a lot of space and has good wound density It moves 12 so you can get around the board at the end of the game really fast On impact it can actually deal some decent damage and kind of clear out some chaff units But it's not a very reliable piece because it's not elite so it can't issue commands Which is a huge problem with the unit. That's a big issue that I found. Yeah So you miss that charge you just kind of say okay Go next right Yeah, I wanted to use it as an independent operator, but then you're not issuing it Yeah, it's not taking commands So that was frustrating. Yeah, you have to power pair it with a with something and that yeah that I tried it. It wasn't working for me. I've seen some lists that are spamming them And you know one of the joles over there Somewhere in the world one of the joles is as usual doing interesting things with stormcast And uh, yeah, so I've seen some people get some work done. I played a game against laran where you had like, you know Six other things. Oh god. Yeah, I remember that list. Yeah It was terrible like that. That was the the meme list I alluded to earlier It was five night heralders like five chariots and a bunch of crossbow duties You just uh, not a good list but entertaining. Yeah So yeah, they don't get there for me personally. Yeah, I think I think they're close That's that's probably it. I think that my My honest problem is The elite thing breaks it for me. I don't think it's probably a bad unit But it doesn't do what I want it to do. I think there's a fundamental misalignment with the role I think it probably could be used by a better player than me in interesting ways Especially in multiples, but I have no desire to take multiples of the thing um, is what it comes down to And one of them just ends up annoying me more than it ends up helping me like I I charge in somewhere I do some mortals. I want to be able to all at defense. I'm like, oh, there's no one nearby I just think like it's I just think If It would fundamentally change my experience of the thing if they just put the word elite on there That's oh, yeah, it would be so much better. Like I don't think it would need a point to change I don't think like it would break the game or anything like that Just put elite on it and I I would love it like I Frequently think about putting one to two in a list and it's always the first thing to cut. It's like the It's the 61st card for people who like playing magic or Pokemon or other TCGs Love that it's such a good such a good analogy You know and and pickle people in the chat said the vanguard battalion can help with the non-elite thing and I'm like, I don't I'm not throwing good money after bad. Like I don't if a unit doesn't I don't like storm cast to me is in the situation Where it's like you got to be playing with your best in class pieces filling in your roles To to to hang in the current meta and I think the the results from the last weekend's Rounds of events certainly bear that out to some degree. It is it was not a great weekend for storm cast. Okay Um, there's a couple people who went three two and they were like the kings of storm cast over the weekend yeah, so You know to me like trying to take a sub par piece And then throw good money after bad to say like let's try to make this sub par thing work average That doesn't work for me. That just doesn't work I want I want best in class performers all around and it's really yeah, at least my mind It's really about getting the all-out defense so that it can actually function as a pinning piece that you're wanting it Opt into function s. Right. Yeah, so it's not necessarily about the real charge or auto run in my mind Yep, but yeah Okay, any other traps or overrated units We want we want to talk about before we move on to the good guys They're the good stuff them goods tyler anything else you wanted to hit on Well, so this is one that dylan and I agree on now I've not played these much personally because again special snowflake syndrome Refuse to play long strikes and fulminators for the longest time. I've got three long strikes in my list. I need a t-shirt It's only three. It's fine Fulminators I have Consistently been underwhelmed by fulminators I get the idea of fulminators. I did try them out a little bit I found it to be challenging to execute the delivery of them to actually get them in at the right time There's a lot of ways in this game where things can get interrupted a lot of ways And uh, yeah, so Dylan, what's your overall thoughts on fulminators? So I think fulminators have been power crept out of being meta like pretty straightforwardly I think their points have not come down a lot of other points have come down And so the fulminators biggest advantage before was that they were the most efficient unit in the book damage was on the charge, of course Like they would just be like I spent 240 points on this unit and it just killed a gargantt or whatever And you just felt great about it But like you said people are getting more used to fulminators They know what they do. They know that if you stop them, uh, they get real bad And there's also a lot more minus one to hit minus one to wound kind of floating around with like corn and spinach and all that stuff And that destroys fulminators. They need to be as close to twos and twos as you can possibly be with them Anything else and they really start hating themselves. And so they're just Obviously, it's not what it used to be either in this certainly in this game. Yeah And I mean obviously there's whorefrost out there. Maybe I mean you should not be relying on getting whorefrost off of your playing stormcast so But uh, yeah vents any take on the fulmies They should come down like they would be fine if they would come down to join their brethren Because right now I think they are overcosted for what you get out of them in the average game They're not worth 240 anymore. This is the objective sort of points estimation We were talking about at the beginning, right? I think at the launch of 3.0 They were absolutely probably worth 240 points that they they could deliver you 240 points of value I think right now you'd be lucky to get 210 out of them is my honest answer Um, I do think they're still good. They're they're they're they're good like the bones of the thing is good Don't get me wrong. Yes. It's just it's overcosted. That's it right This is a nice segue to another unit that I think is let's let's use this. Yep Hold on. Let's use this to segue into into some winners. Okay. We'll flip this right on its on its nose Let's let's use this to flip right over into winners and hidden gems. Okay Can't because sure Well, I was gonna I was gonna stay on the dracothean guard tip. Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah, they're good, too Uh, and I was gonna swing up swing our our journey from fulminators over to uh To tempesters so so which I do rate how how are we all rating? Uh, how we all rate in tempesters. We think they're they're a winner now This is a this is a this is a gem Yeah, 100% Okay, for those who aren't initiated somebody tyler or Dillon sell me on dillon. Go ahead. Sell me on the tempesters. Why why do we like them so much? So tempesters are what judicators wish they were Um, they have they're the crossbow dracoths and so there's six wounds each two in a unit three up save And they have exploding hits on their crossbow. So they get three attacks each threes threes minus one for one That explodes and so You put like an all-out attack on these guys and you get like pretty consistently like eight to ten Like rend one uh damage one hits onto state that the exploding is not like he didn't say exploding sixes Yeah, just explodes just super clear here. It's exploding hits. So every hit is two hits That's going to be important for people who might not be as familiar with storm gas. Yes Yeah Hit when they have the mortal wound breath too And so like if you are like having to shoot into like higher Really high armor stuff like you just have mortal wounds too Um, and they have good melee like especially for a shooting unit They have good move like they're just such a good all-around unit and so good into big volumes of wounds Like the zombies and the skeletons and the Squigs and all that other associated squig related nonsense. Yeah Like they're so good into that kind of stuff And they're just they're an independent operator Like more so than I think any other unit in the book like they just go out do their thing and do it well Totally agree. They also work. I mean, obviously it should go without saying that because of their ranges They're great in scions whether they happen to be starting up or down So they're just very useful because of their combination of speed and that decent range giving them a nice 22 inch threat It's it's just solid all over the board Uh, completely agree like tempesters are absolutely top of the heap absolute gem for me 210 points for them is fantastic right now Uh, love them. Love them. Love them. Yeah, I'm I'm here for them hardcore Uh, so I think I think that's going to get a big thumbs up from all of us now You wanted to get there. Let's you you wanted the best you got the cats. Let's talk about yes Let's talk about kitty caters. All right. I'm still not sure I'm in there. I want to love kitty caters Quick story may we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna have quick fun story time with Ben's I believe the first public facing game That ever featured kitty caters was played by me Okay Because at war emmer fest where 2.0 launched I played against Byron On the launch weekend There, okay And it was the first time they showed those models and we we played an actual battle that people were recording, right? So we played on camera for the launch of 2.0 on like that saturday morning or whatever and uh I got handed some ridiculous phoenix guard cities of sigmar nonsense Okay And Byron got handed a full army of kitty caters that someone had painted up In advance For the launch and this was a classic white dwarf battle report trap, right? Where the new thing that was introduced got to stomp all over me and I got Run over sideways by these kitty caters. I mean it was Awful, okay Now so I I am deeply scarred on these things. I I I want to I I want to hate them so so because they they wounded me understand they wounded me They do that Uh, but yes now now story time complete sell us on kitty caters in the modern meta Okay, so I think uh, the closest comparison is these are fulminators new and improved Um, I think they fill an extremely similar role in that they want to charge and blow stuff up and be this fast cavalry unit But I think they have so many like layers of buffs that you can put on them Uh, so I think they're one of if not the best like Unit to be buffed in like possibly all of age of sigmar and certainly in storm cast Because they just have so many things that go so well for them We briefly touched on it earlier But whore frost is obviously an extremely strong spell That a lot of people are going to try and stop this season And I think whore frost is Absolutely nuts bunkers on these guys if you do get it off Which I think they are also a better receiving target than most Because they can be outside of unbind range due to the louch and synanigans you can do with them Right and and you're probably running grand staves because there are two damage and you're trying to get a rinse on the grand staves Yeah, three attacks three threes no rent, but get whore frost and two damage. Yeah That's cool Yeah, so like the idea is like you kind of so for those of you who haven't seen this uh very finicky mathematically correct setup You place uh the all six evocators in this circle around each other with a perfect Spot in the middle like a donut uh to put louchin in and then louchin can move the whole thing 18 inches in your hero phase and then the cats can move another 12 inches after that And so you get this massive threat range on the board Um, and you just set up so all your buffs go on them outside of unbind range Uh, and so your opponent unless you're playing seraphon, of course Just can't interact with it and you're just hoping to not fail the like six up that louchin is And so you usually save your primal dice for that if you need to Uh, and then you put the plus one to wound on them you put whore frost on them You put castling shields on them and you just send this big juiced up unit forward and just destroy stuff Nice nice The having them move around with with mr. Soulseeker with a fairy man with louchin with lunch box Uh Is is very funny once rhymes with lunch this opens up an entirely new avenue of of uh With the rest of the word is i'm sorry. Uh, it's great. Uh at any rate. Uh, yes, it's lunch time for sure. Okay, so, uh Tyler how you feeling about kitty caters in this season about our yes somebody asked I should I should watch our use of these cute cutie names evocators on celestial draco Right. Yeah, we haven't actually said the name yet. Have we Yeah, I've not tried them personally, but I think dylan is onto something I'm I'm in on paper would would love to actually give it a shot But yeah, I feel like it has real gas this season and yeah What do you think about the ones on foot? Oh god, so this is actually a pretty interesting comparison. So the Uh one's on foot and the comparing them to the ones on the mount. Okay. So they're a 30 point No, they're a 20 point difference. Sorry. Um, there are 20 point difference between them and the ones on Uh mount the riders have the exact same profile as the foot guys And so you're essentially getting two riders for three of the mounts and the mounts are better than the riders And the mortal wound jazz hand things at the end is nine dice versus 10 dice and so you're essentially paying 20 points For an extra an extra profile of attacks the mount attack Um and the 12 inch move and they're the same number of wounds And so I think just the comparison between them is just like laughable I think the fact that the foot ones are still 220 while the cats are 240 is horrendous internal balance I'm with that seems reasonable. Yep. I'm completely with that read like Honestly, you could have stopped at the movement And you would have sold me for the 20 points like that's the issue, right? It's like 20 points. Here's the move difference For basically the same unit. I'm like, well, obviously I'm gonna pay the 20 points, right? Like I like it's not that all the rest of your points were wrong. You're dead on Right, it just keeps getting more right, right exactly. Just like we could have stopped there and I was I was I was already in the mix, right? You know, uh, okay. Yeah, tyler Who else? I mean just go for it. Oh, yeah Well, I was gonna say uh mergon pointed out. I mean just to say we there's a social lightning arc, right? I mean probably a lot of people are familiar with it because we saw a lot of evicators early on in 2.0 But the yeah, you roll three dice as Dylan said So about a base unit you're nine dice four ups each mortal wound But it's got a three inch reach and it happens immediately after they attack So yeah, it's a way that you can take out heroes small heroes for example potentially in particular But yeah, it's just extra great damage. You made the point about how it You know mortal wounds on top of all the dice that they're putting out with with some rent It's it's really nice and after combat is so huge too because like you can go in and like I played a game against slaves to darkness Where I went in and the cats Like killed a whole bunch of chosen and I was like if they don't kill enough I can zap the chosen afterwards But if they do kill enough I can just zap something in the back Like and I don't have to worry about making the decision of splitting before attack I can just see what the attack did and then make the decision Right. Yeah Yeah Yeah, uh other hidden gems. Is that what what are we on? Yeah, exactly. Yeah other hidden gems Like we'll stay in the units. We're gonna stick away from leaders for the moment or heroes, right as it were Who else who else you rating here? Well, so I still don't see many people playing vigilars I've talked about them a little bit on the show. They have gone down in points twice. So they're now at 150 They started out at like what 200 195 Uh, I've been getting a lot of games in with them. Uh, shout out to my friend Dan. He was the one that turned me on to them I like them a lot. So they match my personal play style Uh, I so a few thoughts with them. Uh, so they have an 18 18 inch range They have two shots each you're putting out 11 shots plus one for the champ Three's and three's minus one one damage. Okay, so nothing too crazy to write them about obviously the the highlight is the marker lighting that they do So if they do a damage to an enemy unit You get plus one hit for the rest of that turn melee and shooting So again, leaning into the combo damage plays with storm cast That's been quite nice. I like the two units because it allows me to potentially spread that out Uh, you could potentially, you know, try to get greedy and put shots into two different units If you want to have the plus one hit against two different units, right? Uh, the 18 inch range, that's pretty solid I've liked them with these battle tactics this year. So They can be nice to where let's take surrounded destroy Where you're having to write have three board edges with units.  So that's been nice Uh, it's a way of getting some more ranged output without playing the obvious pieces That is getting there for me. Uh, I've been doing a lot of Nitro conus with luck stone who does a prime imitation once per game auto charges 12 Uh, that combo damage as well with the vigilors Uh, it helps, you know overcome minuses to hit on his small number of dice five attacks and four attacks from the dragon So it's it's a lot like I could talk for 15 minutes about vigilors It's a lot of nuance with how you can play them and I think it a lot out them that yeah, I really wish more people try them Yeah, okay. Good defense. Good defense of them. I'm willing to back that I think I've these are this another one of those units that when we first reviewed the book, right? And they were like 195 one of the things we said at that time. I mean, I'm pretty sure again I don't have a photographic memory of everything, but I believe our stance was These are good, but they are horrendously overcosted right like That that utility is really fascinating, but man, are they too expensive? I feel like at 150 we're getting We're getting there. We're getting there. We're we're in a place where I'm like, okay I I have to I have to at least give these a try now right, uh Because they They weren't I mean look we all know 195 was dead in the water there 190 or whatever that bit of Crazy original points value of them was was nonsense. Okay Yeah, but like Because of that extra utility, they are just some extra damage. I I agree with all all your all your points. So yeah, I'm with you I'm with you. I've been yeah, I haven't Ramon is making the cp point the command point That's another way right that I yeah, sure offset my low my low command point issue That it allows me to lean into other other elements that otherwise not be on the table Especially a lot of defense like getting getting very greedy with that, you know Like, okay. I want all that defense shooting phase and combat phase and I can do that consistently things like that Or I'm gonna I'm gonna reroll a charge or I'm gonna auto run. Yeah, it's just it frees up a lot Yep, absolutely Right. I mean we haven't talked We haven't talked to these guys yet, but we we mentioned them earlier. I want to get this I want to get these guys and out on the table and talk about them. Can we talk about quest or soul swarm? can we can we Have this discussion Dylan you want to you want to introduce everybody to this to these guys because this is one of those things like I really As a as an almost rule. I kind of hate this That these guys are so useful that I'm gonna come down on the positive on these guys Because basically every other thing like this Read underworlds type work right type thing, right, whatever you these ancillary units that get injected into the game, right? Nine out of ten of them are complete trash and you never need to learn them or look at them, right? That's the rules and then every so often Every so often They're getting better, but I just say we got two winners in the same box for this one I think I think the flesh eater ones actually probably Right now you're probably not wrong there, but that's that's that's fair. Like there's flesh eater ones really good Well, I'm just I'm I'm more uh, I I am Admittedly leaning on the total history of all of these things. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah historically. They're not good Yeah, nine out of ten of them are bad. I will stand behind that number, right? Okay So yes explain the quest or soul swarm dylan take us away through these boys Yeah, so quest or soul swarm. I think are Uh definition independent operator. They're a six man unit, which is kind of interesting New coherency they like There are three up save three wins a piece So you got 18 wounds on a three up save for 230 points, which is above rate for storm cast I think that's like one of the better three up save wound efficiency for points we have in the book maybe the best And they got a pretty good melee profile. They have the chosen profile for those who don't know It's three attacks threes threes minus one for two damage 200 pitch Yes to entry entry definitely relevant And once per game they can translocate themselves in the hero phase They just get to pick themselves up and put them anywhere on the battlefield nine inches away from stuff And most importantly they count as three Per model on objectives that are wholly outside of your territory. Yep So these guys are These guys are the upgraded chariot. I think I think these guys fill a rather similar role as the chariot, but do it so much better I'll believe that they I completely believe that How so just just to expand on that how so yeah, so these guys are they have a champion so they can't issue themselves commands They can trade and kill stuff and they can hold an objective by themselves Because what I usually found so I've played with them a few times now I found that what I'll usually do is I'll kind of keep them in Like the screen line, you know, like your line of dudes in front protecting all your stuff early in the game And they will probably not do a whole lot. Maybe hold a point. Maybe protect your hero or whatever But then once your opponent starts to move away from their territory, they can just zip back there And suddenly there's this a chosen level threat that your opponent needs to go deal with And they usually aren't in position to ever do that.  They can issue themselves all out defense Like they count as 18 models on the objective Like they're they're not going anywhere. They can just kind of fight stuff and like If they do like if you do get in certain positions You can kind of push them off the objective and start threatening backline with them too Uh, and so I just think they do a lot Um, they are 230 points, which is A really competitive price bracket in this army. Um, you're like giving up raptors for these guys is usually the Argument that the choice that I find myself making um But they they do a lot. I I think they are absolutely playable And in some lists they are the best choice I I actually think your chariot comparison is dead on because like consider that that here's here's some of the things It's funny too when you look at this goes back to the earlier point I made Because this is 18 wounds on a three up save For 230 points as opposed to the monsters we were talking about which are 18 wounds on a three up save For like 500 points, right or something like that And the difference there is so notable, right? Like it's I mean, duh, but like but it's but I really mean it. It's super It's super important and that the chariot comparison the chariot's neat Yeah, I can pin it can do these things, but like what's it ultimately counting as two? It's two right. It's it's two models. That's what accounts toward an objective, right? These guys rock up on most objectives as 18 Yeah, right Like that is a huge difference in efficacy Right because not only can they get there and potentially pin they can take Right, they can take it right out from under many units with just even like moderate casualties They're often just taking it directly away And the fact that yeah, they have that once a game Fantastic exactly the way I want to do it. I don't want to take another hero to do it Like we talked about earlier with the With our standard boy with the vexelor But built into the units a completely different play if they're already delivering the value Right, which I think they are. Yeah, I think these guys are an absolute hidden gem I mean, I'm sure many of the storm cast players already know for the rest of the people like Who who or maybe people thinking about storm cast like absolutely these guys are in my mind just straight fire right now They're they're one of the better units in the entire army Like just straight up Yeah, 100 so a couple other things. Yeah, I mean they're addressing a critical need Which is bodies on objective helping us with primary scoring within the lead army The imperitence is great with them to give them the seven on the charge Obviously, we can still benefit from battle mage. We will see with new cities of sigmar book Whether that's gonna remain the same with wildfire. I'm giving us plus two to to charge I'm sure it won't I would write that That's gonna say I would not hold your breath All right But as of right now if anything says step one use a city's thing fire that off the roof right now. That is not a thing Absolutely, yeah But appearance is is great with them So, yeah, I've tried them out once so far As delin said you have them on the board say hit them with a castellant shield You don't even necessarily I mean because they're fine without it too and they've been fine without it But just the way that they can take buffs if you have the Traditional relic tour either night or lord with translocation You can hit them with translocation and then maintain their built-in translocation to use that later So they've got something that almost no other unit has right, which is a way to do two hops You know the lord or night relic to hop and then the hop after that That's incredible board play with this guy. Yeah, it's just an extraordinary unit. Yeah, you guys are 100, right? Yep All right So there you go We all agree definitely on the hotness of these guys. I want to I want to leave We we need to keep moving. There's got a lot more to cover in this and we have been going for a while But I do I think there's one more important discussion to have in units before we then talk about some winner heroes We'll cover some some hidden gem and winner heroes But I do want to have this discussion real quick around battle line and Redeemer models in general, okay Because I think this speaks to what you were talking about earlier, Tyler We all talked about this a little before the show I think of like I think people under count just having redeemer models of the value of having screens of having these extra bodies and having this stuff Like I I have always been a fan of vindictors for myself. They've always been where I fall but the other people might like Uh liberators more. I think it just depends on the list and your points and kind of what you're overall aiming at I think either can be completely viable and are our winners in my mind They're in there to me Almost an invaluable part of every list I've ever built and just like a core MVP in most games and I just wondered if you both had the same feeling or not Dylan, I'll go over to you first Yeah, so I think uh There's obviously a ton of different ways you can build stormcast And I think unless you're playing the way that's like my opponent isn't going to have an army by turn two And if that plan doesn't work, I lose and just kind of accept that game plan Uh, I think you need to have at least one swat of redeemer is probably two Um, they Are screens they can trade with other chaff reasonably well because they do have good saves and sequiturs do put out Pretty good damage. Uh, they're getting to the point where like I never feel bad about taking them Uh, and oftentimes in list I'll even go up to like four or maybe even five battle line slots because I just want These guys in there as screens Call for aid if you don't have a better Holy command to take is just pure value And so you're just like hey, yeah, they come back and I've called for aided on to objectives to take them before Uh multiple times and so it's like they kill this unit and they're like, okay We have this objective and like nope call for aid This objective is mine now because you killed my unit in your turn Right and the sole blight showed us exactly how impressive that can be so Yeah, agreed on all counts I actually lost a battle tactic once because I accidentally killed some of my opponent was playing storm cast And I wasn't thinking and I left a rear point undefended It was like one of the it was the super automatic battle tactic that was like Just hold this point for the round or something, you know, whatever that one. Oh, yeah In two seasons ago And I just like had it way back buried in the line and moved your way away from it wasn't thinking And then I went up and just smashed his unit of of liberators And he was like I call for aid and he said I'm on my thing and I lost the battle tactic and I was like Good lord I am a moron like he losing the auto battle tactic. So yeah, it can happen, right? Absolutely. I just think I actually always favored call for aid in my list Just because I liked being able to to reach in the unit I was always a two two units of vindictors with call for aid. It just it gave you good flexibility Um, I'm with it. I'm with it. Tyler Uh, yeah Everything great with everything you guys said. Yeah. All right. Nothing more to add. They're critical Fair enough. Let's talk our winners hero winners and hidden gems. Who are who are our winners dylan? We'll start with you. Let's just get some picks on the on the on the floor here. Who are we taking? Uh, lord castellant lord relicter. I think our nigh auto includes in this army right now Uh, arcane tome keeps getting nerfed and castellant loves it He keeps uh getting indirectly buffed because of the nerfs to all of our artifacts And so I think unless you have somebody else to take an artifact like an imperitent or a draconus with luck stone like Tyler was saying I think you uh, have to take a castellant like him with arcane tome is like one of the only options for artifacts I feel storm cast has and then relicter is just like Translocate is busted. It's why storm cast are still a moderately competitive army Unless you have really good reasons not to take it. You should always take it. Yeah But I agree on both of these selections. Tyler any any disagreement on any both of these selections? Uh, yeah The makes sense the knight in cancer obviously is high on the board this season the auto ambiance We've already talked a lot about being cancer in prior shows So yeah, you're gonna see that one everybody's favorite new ally. Yes Shipped out in mass from azer down to every other order army you know Dylan mentioned the nitro conus of luck stone I have been a little surprised at the lack of that getting play That has just been an extraordinary Peace for me and a lot of my games as combo damage plays ongoing threat either. It's on the board Buff up with you know castellants Maybe mystic shield on top or frosts and get whatever just take taking as many buffs as possible And then just 24 inch threat range from there or it's deep striking and I'm waiting biting my time round two round three Looking instead of combo damage with vigilores long strikes. It's it just it asks questions that are sometimes difficult to answer from your opponent And with a very good output that that piece has The let's see what else laura came in on grip charger I think dylan we might have a difference of opinion. I am super low on the grip charger. Okay. Okay I I see what it's doing. Um, I see it's kind of jumping around the board providing support Being a wizard and being a three up save eight wound hero is good but I just like it's 170 points like Think about that like surely there's 60 points in your list you can cut somewhere to replace it with a quest or soul sorn Like I think it's one of those units that I think just gets trumped by The in the job it wants to do Um it buy other stuff too much Yeah, I mean I I wouldn't necessarily Push come to show I've won and put it on my true winners list. I'm cheating a little bit here I do just want to give it a shout out for purposes of spellcasting savant because boy If you want a way to get a grand strategy with this army, I do think that's a pretty Sound choice going lord. I came on grip charger as opposed to let's say a knight in cantor as your general with Pray doors three or six pray doors to help keep that General alive the grand strategies in my opinion are going to be a little challenging Love to hear if there's differences of opinion about that was stormcast this season And they've always been rather challenging for us Well, that is we had take what's theirs, which was the thing that everybody played a stormcast Other than that they were challenging for us. So I I think it's interesting in that regard I did play the lord I came on grip charger about five games I'm a little less high on it than I was at the time But I still think it's a noble pick that I don't see a whole lot of let's see as far as units so Let's see We've talked about that line rest Oh Yeah, it's go ahead. Uh, I think long story short. Uh, these things love six man coherency more than most things They become a really really good screen.  They can bounce out of combat I think there's just a lot of upside to them that people aren't Really looking at it because they were so bad with five man coherency. That's a good point The coherency change is big All right, I want to stick on heroes for a second because I want to talk about one of my winners I'm not I'm not here and discussed here But it was he's definitely uh, he's still making my list He's still making my list and this is where we're gonna have a difference of opinion. I'm ready Here we go. And that is that is the man himself the guy who was on the original screen. That is that is bastion carthalos Uh, man, I I deeply I do I have feelings for him. You know, that's fine Uh, I think he's I think he's good now. Look, I will openly admit Okay, so just back off I will openly admit that at 300 points It's a lot Yeah, it's a lot like I can't I can't defend those points. Okay. I really can But I still think he's good. Do I wish do I believe do I think he should be cheaper? Yes Yes Absolutely, okay Um, but I'm gonna back this guy and the reason I back this guy Is because I love everything about him Uh in what he does I love The he's he's like relatively tough at eight wounds three up four up. Okay Um, he I mean like all the all the good utility he packs enough utility In there Then I'm still willing to overpay for him. That's what it comes down to. Okay Like I agree with everybody that he's too much. I know folks. That's why I started it and also people Get out of here. You're out of your mind Storm keep your first of all never trust more gonker storm keep Yeah Ever okay, you guys don't you guys we take your vote and then a sane person's vote average amount will get to the right I love you guys, but you are way too deep in it. You are too hard of stands. Okay Like I wouldn't go to a swiftie and ask who the best, you know, recording artists of all time, right? Like I know what their vote already is So Like basically here's my here's my argument My argument is this if you build your list And it's like often 30 or 40 points under Which a lot of the lists we'll look at today when we look are going to end up around 1960 1970 a storm cast lists often are Okay, right Then instead of getting a triumph. I'm just taking I'm spending the extra I'm spending my triumph points on bastion. That's how I look at it Okay Because if he was like 260 Which is probably where he should be right um Like I would be I would be unreserved in my praise for him Right. So to me, I'm just trading a triumph for bastion. That's it. That's all it is Like I'm going to take I'm going to go best in class for all the stuff we've described for the rest And then this guy and like, okay, I have a pet 40 points. Like, all right. What else was I buying for 40 points? Okay like I just I love everything about this dude the Let me also say In the current season there are some battle reports not a ton, but our battle reports. I'm sorry some battle plans Where I really love his Swippy swap people at the beginning of the game Yeah There's a couple little long tail or unusual L shapes that show up in some of these A couple of the like the the the one where you can be touching. Yeah, where you touch tips, right? Yep um Battle plans like that. I really love his like d3 Reset at the beginning. I think it's super high value in in that in those scenarios A friend of mine took me out with that one game a few weeks ago. Yeah It was like four dragons I just wasn't thinking about it that he relocated it to complete the other side and it totally caught me out Yeah, yeah, he can still hit hard.  He's a very like if people want to remove him They do have to dedicate significant resources to remove sure.  I like him better than all of his Sort of competitors in that band The kind of like two to three hundred point named hero band, which is where they tend to to fall, right? That's that's which is what's appropriate. Like that's how those kinds of heroes should be costed Ultimately, like I said, I do think he's 260 but but I would I would defend him as being completely worth it in my book Dylan, have you played in middle? So I played bastion a fair few number of times, uh, not like a ton, but maybe like five games or so Um And I think bastion is the toolbox for the toolbox army, right? Like his His utility is crazy Like it's all about what you can get out of those utility I think the d3 redeploy at the start of the game is super strong And people who aren't used to playing against it will absolutely get caught out by it Like I have played games before where like I drop my raptors like on the front lines And I'm well or dropped so I get it side who gets to go first, right? And it forces the opponent into the decision Of do I respect these raptors with their insane threat range turn one to just thunderbolt volley something down Or do I call him on his bluff that he's going to pick him back up? Um, and I think he gives you a lot of those kind of like options in mind games And so I don't think he's bad. I definitely don't think he's bad I just think he's too expensive and too against what I like in my play styles Because he's also not a very Like I talked about how the evo kater on draka lines They go up like they get buffs really really well And I don't think bastion like absorbs buffs hardly at all No, he is like he is at his ceiling basically from the get go. Um, and if he can't get into like Or if he's trying to like punch up Above his weight class like he'll get bodied And so you really got to put him into stuff that he can like handle like Him into hordes and kind of being able to project his presence outwards is where he wants to be And that's not going to happen every game. It's happening more now with the current meta we're in And so I think he's more valuable in this meta than previous ones. Sure, but I I don't know He's he's not how I like to play the game because he doesn't he's an expensive unit that doesn't get Or he's just he is what he is and he got a lot of room to play with and he's got a lot of tools, but I've been just if you thought I haven't played him in a while I played him a lot last year events. We talked about him last year. I think you probably remember some of my experience with him, right? So, you know, I was like crazy last year as well. Yeah, absolutely. So we were both fans It was my thunder buddies list So it sells in prime bastion 10 judicators 2 by 5 liberators 10 protectors So what I like about that list is that it had four threats Bastion, which maybe that's being a little generous and go with me sell us in prime again Maybe generous and the mind some people 10 protectors 10 judicators and then a decent number of bodies still So that that armies was designed to play five rounds I would give me I would get down early and I would play late prime always would come on the board round three ideally So bastion was my uh, castellan shield and mystic Castellan shield and a mystic shield ideally and then trends locate him now He's going off to a corner right. He's being a distraction carn effects Now some players would ignore him, but I generally found that it's not Yeah, some games you can get away with quote-unquote ignoring him But it's not as if he's not providing value as you've laid out here He provides value in a number of fronts and he can do work against chaff, especially as dylan noted And so I would always do that. That was my round one play Okay, they have to respond to that round two play as the protectors Judicators continue to work round three plays prime if prime comes in round three seven attacks And round three round four round five. He was incredible pretty consistently my games So that army had a lot of combo damage, right? Because the protectors keep so I I found him to work really well Like I won a lot of games with that list last year against a lot of tough tough list And but I I get all of the issues that that that people have with bastion Especially I you know like worse maybe fewer monsters on the table not getting as much value as lightning bolts nowadays I don't know, but he is a fascinating piece. He's a lot of fun to play and yeah, yeah All right, so gorgeous too. Yeah. Yeah, the model is incredible. All right, so It goes without saying with basically everything in his army. Okay. Let's talk battle tactics for just a moment I do want to discuss that and then we're going to there. We're going to do some lists We'll move quickly through the list But let's talk, uh, let's talk battle tactics Tyler, I think you put this list together So you want to kind of take us through this and what you're thinking like you have this divided into relevant stormcast battle tactics What you should be your priority tactics in the ghp and then what are your lower priority tactics? Okay, so take us through it. Yeah, absolutely And obviously dylan feel free to push back on any of this if I missed anything So, uh, I just hit what I think are the relevant stormcast battle tactics for the most part So, I mean if you want to run cities of sigmar fine, I like there's a battle tactic for you, but I'm not considering that, right? There's one on battle shock that I'm not considering for the most part So, yeah, it's so bad. Okay. So no challenge too great Kill any enemy hero with wounds caused by redeemer melee weapon Now that one's going to be all a sequel pretty tough to execute, right? that's another situation where vandals and 10 vindictors is interesting a little more interesting for weirdos like me that wants to run something like that, right?  I've gotten it multiple times. Uh, I Actually think this is the stormcast tactic. I've gotten the most Mainly because I play redeemer spam a lot By far my most played list is just running like 30 redeemers Um, I think it's one of those battle tactics that like you just kind of like look at like halfway through a game and be like Oh, I can actually get this like sequiturs do definitely meaningful damage.  Sure Uh, so it's it's a hundred percent list dependent like all the stormcast book tactics are Yeah, and again a running theme with a lot of these things is you got to be thinking about combo damage with the stormcast kind of aligning you getting your ducks in a row like okay I'm gonna shoot this hero if I'm in range, which is a little more challenging this time, you know in this season with the 12 inch range limitation now, but Yeah, it's it's going to be running theme with these things and how you have to think about them Okay, so hammer strike assault pick kill starting enemy hero with 10 plus wounds and no wounds allocated to it so That's again another one where you want to be looking to set that up That's come up a fair amount for me personally You know, so like again niger conos of look stone Long strike so the key here is 10 more wounds. So you're not getting benefit from lookouts, sir So you can actually target this yeah with your more than 12 inch away shooting units The is that one dylan that you've found so you've gotten very often or I think this is like If we're looking at the stormcast book tactics I think this is the best tactic we have but I also think it's the easiest to just be like Oh, this is not attainable in this game Because obviously you play against a lot of a list that don't have any heroes with 10 or more wounds and there's a lot of There's a lot of chip damage in this army like between like the explosions and like our shooting Usually doesn't kill like big stuff like just outright And so like I feel like that zero wounds allocated to it is actually extremely relevant Um, not even to mention some of the armies that hurt their own big heroes.  I think the I will also say it's it's eminently counterable when you call it No, yeah, all right, like absolutely like I this is what I'm doing Cool. Okay. Now I'm gonna find a stour. Yeah, exactly. Just like and we'll bam, right?  Yeah Yeah, I've not found that I go after this one that often for some of the reasons that we're laying out here Yeah, it can just be at times challenging. I mean unless you're playing against I don't know. Maybe like a lord there's a lord of change and you feel like, all right It's you know, like I've got actually a chance all the the things are aligned here for me to get the 14 or whatever wounds it's at now to that said something with a relatively low save as one Or like a four up at least or a five up save right on which is not that common Exactly. That's the problem like I and I think the major problem is here There will just be games where this is blank. But this is just yeah, because they the relevant target just doesn't actually exist Yeah So now one that I do think is you're going you should see a lot of folks thinking about draconin destruction and their list building Pick kill one starting enemy units with 10 plus models with either a draconin drag off or star drake attacks Just a tax. I believe I did that right. I think it can be shooting a tax as well. Yeah, okay, cool So now with the way that this is worded it means that they have to have 10 plus models at the time of you picking the battle tactic again You're allowed to do combo damage as part of this right whittle them down and then Something finishes them off with one of these keywords. So that's why I I have a nitro conus in my list right for it's also one of the Additional benefits potentially a vandus. Yeah, it's situational. But vandus has got the drac health keyword, right? And so like I whenever I mean in general is anybody what goes to tournament, you know would say or at least for the most part I think when you're writing a list, you've got to be thinking first and foremost my mind about your battle tactics and like you're trying to line up as many Sources of options for you to achieve your battle tactics and that's I feel like storm cast is a huge example of that with a lot of these things Dylan, have you done drac in the destruction much? Did you look at that one? Yeah, so I've definitely done it before and I think these two battle tactics drac in the destruction in matter of honor are a Big reason why I think storm drake are still good and not nerfed out of the meta And drac off specifically is only on this one But tempesters are really really good at getting this battle tactic. Yeah, and so that just increases their stock even more and Like you said, it's just like if you like are Considering some of these units like which one you like which one you don't like the battle tactics absolutely will push a unit over the edge for me Uh, I just want to leave us with it's an absolute travesty that dracoline isn't on here Oh, yeah, they'd be too good It wouldn't it would be reasonable if there was some battle tactic that mentioned This unit I did like it's things like that really like still get up in my craw about the design of this book Right. Yeah. Um, this this like like that just reads so terrible with the the age of the thing It's so obvious that they were just like, yeah, sure these these couple new units or whatever these these units like What about all these guys? Uh, whatever. That's all the cavalry, right? Are we missing somebody? Yeah, I can't be missing anything. We're good No need to give that a second pass. All right. Anyways, yeah You mentioned matter of honor. Let's talk that let's talk the the ghp tactics because I think that's where people I don't want to really get some get some Some meaty discussion here Yeah, Dylan, why don't you take this one? Uh, what are your thoughts on yeah How how's this list looking to you and is there ones that you think are more likely to be achieved early or later? Yeah, so I definitely uh agree with your list here like to the nose I think these five are the ones I look at in every game. I think the other three I kind of keep in the back of my head, but I don't really go for Um, I think turn one You're almost always going to be doing intimidate the invaders or magical dominance depending on the battle plan If you're far enough away from your opponent that you're out of unbind range Magical dominance needs to be done turn one because otherwise they start getting the primal dice They start getting close and they start shutting off They only have to unbind one spell and then you're just hosed out of a battle tactic And intimidate the invaders like on some battle plans like where you are closer or something You just move your stuff up and you just get the deck Yeah, people and people love giving us stormcast players first turn We often have higher drops than one drop in our armies. So yeah magical dominance is often a really nice one to plan for And then as for the other three, I think these are kind of your like You do these in whatever order the game is kind of laid out for you Uh, you mentioned surround and destroy really benefits our ranged units being able to kind of like park them on the edges Um translocate makes this tactic almost always doable even if not optimal Um, and then as for the charge ones, um I find myself lacking a battle line to charge a lot of the times because like I run a lot of like low man redeemer squads Uh that either get into combat or get blown up And so I have a hard time getting this one, but I see the battle you know, you know, what's battle line? Timberdictors and uh You know what you can run with Timberdictors This tempester is the answer to every stormcast question pretty much Uh, but yeah, no, that's fair point So and you got to be really careful with I've had some games come up right where You kill too much or you just you got to be careful that within three inches of an enemy unit People people do some tricks with pylon and so on and so forth Yep, but uh, but yeah, you kill too much stuff and just fail your tactic because you like tabled your opponent It's it's not that like worst feeling because like you killed a whole bunch of units, but like don't get your tactic I I yeah, I think you're dead on on the five I mean the other one that you just always want to keep a side eye on is obviously reprisal if that happens People will be hunting after your general that will be happening. You hopefully it doesn't occur Like you should be trying like you your general should survive most games given the various and sundry things Yeah Happen here in how you play the thing But if it does go south like you just want to keep a side eye on that if the opportunity arises to then You know counter punch that unit it can be an often easy thing to do So because they might have had to overextend to get your general based on where your general is going to often tend to be Be the rest of your battle lines. So um Yeah, looking at these battle tactics as a whole like to me i'm curious because think that this Emphasizes what we're going to get into with list building, which is too many lists having too many hammers And I'm not not enough of the the combined arms approach So not not a big enough toolbox where if you want to achieve five battle tactics consistently with storm gas I think you like these battle tactics are telling you you need to have a nice toolbox You want to have you know multiple High mobility or teleporters you want to have a wizard or two To help you get magical dominance You want to have you know, maybe an aggressive hero for getting led into the melstrom With maybe some mobility as well some good mobility as well. It's like it's just it's this nice mix I feel like that pushes us toward more interesting lists to help help achieve these things. Yeah Agreed. All right speaking of lists What a wonderful segue tyler Let's talk lists everybody So we got a big selection of lists from tournaments around the world here this most recent week tyler went through and Pulled a bunch of lists for us. We've also got a list from dylan and tyler themselves As well So what I want to do here is I want to look at each of the list and tyler I was hoping you could kind of like give us your general thoughts On the list and dylan same with you like I want I want you know, I'm going to throw this over to you guys basically, okay, yeah Um and talk about where you see as sort of the challenges With the list or what you like what you don't like that sort of thing So we're starting here with the at the Tacoma open This is the list example number one. So this is a nice excelsior and scions Grand strategies over shadow. We got a relicter high priest and translocate Of course, we got a lord imperitent with the mirror shield. We've got a knighting cantor. We've got a knighting cantor They've both got merciless blizzard We got six annihilators with meteoric grandhammers three annihilators of shields three annihilators of shields Six raptors with longstrike crossbows three raptors with longstrike crossbows And this is wrapped into a battle wretch and an ent Dorian acolytes for a total drops of three All right, so Uh Stormkeep says all gas no screens tyler what you take on that. Yeah, what you take on this this one I mean, yeah, so that's going to be running theme with some of these list Vence mentioned it a little bit ago It was it's been a brutal a couple of weekends for Stormcast so far, but I think one of the issues at least my mind with a lot of these lists is that yeah It's often all gas no screens The highest at Tacomas to come ahead seven stormcast players at a 96 players was two three There were three two three two one four one one three didn't quite finish and an o five just brutal, right? Okay, so this one I like the double and cantor for reasons that we discussed I I think Horfrost, oh, I guess this list isn't really getting a lot of value of Horfrost It's not using Horfrost at all. Yeah And double merciless blizzard seems it's like actually one of the first things that jumped out of me like I That's that's bet in the farm way too heavy on that thing like it's right You have to imagine that they're translocating an encounter forward and blizzarding, right? Because like what else are they doing and just like grabbing all the dice and being like, let's do let's go Right, like let's let's win the game turn one or we lose. Um, it's absolutely what this list is Yeah, so and that very well could have been extremely deliberate, right? Like yeah, and and obviously we don't know like to what degree folks were wanting to be highly competitive or not Or just go and have a good time. But yeah in terms of I mean, there's not a lot to say my mind about this list It's just like this is if you're trying to do well with stormcast this is Screaming a lot of things you do not want to do in my mind with playing the army right now I feel like this is leaning into something Dylan that you talked about which is the I'm going to bet the whole farm on can I do all this damage and the merciless blizzard just leans into that play Right, you're going to try to like you're going to try to bring down your your imperitent guiding You're you're trying to have your Annihilators with grand hammers come in and smash something and you're assuming they don't have screens You're trying to do all the crossbow damage. You've got thunderbolt volley You're trying to hope to pull off of all the primal magic dice in the world merciless blizzard, right? And just like overwhelm them so much With this huge damage spike at the top of one that you're just like That they just go. Oh my god and freak and and can't recover, right? But that that's so much the farm on like them not having screens on them Not on you getting your spell off on on a lot of things, right? I love a good yellow build, but But it's so excuse me. It's so easy for this to fall apart, right? Like that's the problem. Yeah, I think um, so This list particularly is like screaming like everything that I see players do with stormcast that I hate Um, it is like the ultimate center list, right? Um, and so the number one to me is night relictor Um, and so you lose out on the consistency of translocation becomes a three up re-rolling instead of two up It's a huge hit to your consistency one of the late game translocation is usually what you need to win the game Uh lord and paratom with mirror shield. I think mirror shield is an absolute trap of an artifact I don't think it's good, especially with the new look out sir. I think it's functionally a dead artifact Both knight and cantors having merciless blizzard is just crazy. But like I appreciate the gumption Uh reinforcing the hammers is Like You're gonna kill what you need to kill with three hammers nine times out of ten So reinforcing is just wasted points in my opinion going with three of the shields Like I imagine it's similar They'd probably drop all three units of annihilators turned one just to get the splash damage with the shields and then go for the nine inch charge But that's just like such a flimsy game plan Raptors in this list you have to put the raptors down. I think Um, because you have to put all three annihilators in the sky And so like because of scion's rule being able to have half of the stuff in the sky You have to have raptors on the board. I think they're a quick map You'd have to have a probably at least one of the raptors on the board Right, which then they get they die to any kind of countershooting and like nine raptors is just too many You need raptors get their value by surviving not by full load blowing it all on turn one. So so I Uh, no offense to the player. I'm sure it's a fun list, but I hate this list like Yeah, like said, I mean, yeah, we we don't know what their intent was their intent may have been to have 30 minute games or 20 minute games Okay, let's talk about another list from this is also from, uh, Tacoma So this is hammers and sigmar scions of the storm Uh grand strat spell casting savant here. We've got a knight in cantor With a whorefrost. We've got a lord in paratont with the arcane tome We've got the lord arcane and mon griff charger tyler. This this person was looking to you as the general with the master of magic and the scintillating trail five vanquishers two fulminators Reinforced tempestors three annihilators with grand hammers three annihilators or shields three annihilators or shields three Raptors with long strike crossbows And then you've got an acolytes a battle reg and a redemption brotherhood battalion Uh, and then the holy command is thunderboard volley or call for age. I don't know what I did that Yeah, I was having to extrapolate because these were the app and the app does not show us the holy command So yeah one of the two Uh, all wrapped up into 99 wounds with four drops Uh, so all right tyler your take on this one. Why don't you kick us off? I mean this is Yeah, we can go quick. I can go quick on this one. It's similar to the last one Like I said, that was running theme with the majority of the list across all of the gts that I looked at over the last two weekends Is these too much gas? You know list and this one is a little bit better. It's got the four tempestors. We've signed the praise of those I like the lord arcane and mon griff charger all a sequel I think it's still master magic or eater of magic is You know, it's probably one of those two if you're going This setup here simulating trellis solid But yeah, there's There's not enough else going on With with this list. It's just still too many hammers for me So dylan, do you feel much differently about this compared to the obviously the last one is like the most extreme example You could imagine but this one's not as bad But uh, I definitely don't really don't think this one's nearly as bad I think the four tempestors is kind of these big saving grace in this list Um, I think they can probably actually tango in turns two and three Um, I I don't like the shield annihilators at all. Uh, you're not in nice excelsior. So they're not counting as your battle line Just take something else. Um, I I don't like fulminators right now. I think you could find plenty of other things I think the idea for the list is there, but I think they need to dial back some of the alpha just a little bit You know, I'll actually say I don't hate shield annihilators in the current world Like as a one by three At 170 points. I actually think they're an interesting little unit Because they run around on a two up save and can do a little mortal wounds Like they can actually synergize interestingly as a single unit with uh with with something else Uh, they definitely can do neat things. I just don't think this is a list for it No, but I I do not like at all nine of them. I just think that's like way over investing into something That's like supposed