Welcome back, brothers and sisters! I’m Anvil, and today, we will FINALLY be wrapping up the tactics on Stormcast Eternals.
I know that there are more battalions available to the warriors of Sigmar, but to keep up with them and not get to other armies is just out of the question. So let’s do it, to it. Be sure to check out other great Tactics articles like this one over in the Tactics Corner.
Devastation Brotherhood
Requirements: 1 unit of Retributors, 1 unit of Protectors, 1 unit of Decimators, 1 unit of Prosecutors
The Devastation Brotherhood is one of the battalions you want to take if you plan to run an army of paladins. Lacking a strong backbone of ranged attacks and speed, it makes up for it through slowing your enemy down and increasing their damage output. Each unit covers the other, with Protectors staving off ranged attacks and being absolutely brutal against Monsters, Decimators taking on any Hordes and lowering the Bravery of all enemy units nearby, and the Retributors assisting either of them with whichever model they come across. This battalion encourages you to keep all of them close together, marching slowly up the field. With their Crushing Assault ability, if all three units are able to inflict any wounds on a single enemy unit, then they deal an additional D6 mortal wounds by marching over them. The best way to trigger this is to have Starsoul Maces in each unit, as it guarantees to trigger it. It can plow through any force foolish enough to get in its way. Backing them up is the Prosecutors, who target an enemy unit to reduce their Bravery by one and their Movement by D6”, which has the potential to completely immobilize something until you are ready to deal with it. This is some nice crowd control, as it can keep another unit from bogging your Paladins down from their objective. In my opinion, it’s not the most powerful battalion in the book, but it is a great option if you want to eventually build up to an Exemplar Chamber, which we’ll get to in a bit.
Wardens of the Realmgate
Requirements: 1 Lord-Castellant, 0-1 unit of Gryph-hounds, 1 unit of Protectors, 2 units of Liberators, 1 Baleful Realmgate
Perhaps one of my favorite battalions in the book, the Wardens of the Realmgate brings a lot of defensive and flanking options for your army. Firstly, you set up the Baleful Realmgate when you deploy your Lord-Castellant instead of during the terrain setup. Knowing where your opponent is placing their valuable Support Units or where another realmgate is located opens up a whole host of possibilities. The main benefit is the reliability of having a Realmgate where you want it to be rather than having to position your army away from it or to throw off some positioning to get a few key units near it. You can set up your army as you want, and then wrap it up with the realmgate placed next to a unit that you think will benefit the most from it.
This battalion also acts as one of the alternative summoning options to the Stormcast Eternals. By rolling a die in your hero phase and getting a 4 or better, you can bring in any Stormcast Eternal unit within 6” of the gate. This can only happen if you have your Lord-Castellant near it, but it allows you to play more aggressively on the defense and use this ability to replenish your forces. Even though some people think that summoning is very powerful, I would have that this is actually the weakest of the abilities of the battalion, as the flexibility of having teleporting for your army and the next ability are used much more often.
Finally, your Protectors act as a buff for the rest of the units in this warscroll, as any of them within 6” of the Protectors reroll their save rolls. After the FAQ that was released a few weeks ago, we now know that it affects the Protectors as well, making them a very sturdy unit to get past. Remember that you have a Lord-Castellant as well, so by using his lantern to buff their Save by 1 makes them very difficult to kill them. I’ve had my Paladins and Liberators from this unit take on half of my opponent’s army without breaking a sweat for half the game, letting the rest of my forces overwhelm everything else. Because of this ability, I would suggest taking Liberators with dual weapons and great weapons instead of shields, as they would basically have the best of both worlds when escorted by these Paladins. A very strong battalion if you are looking for a goal to reach.
Warrior Chamber
Requirements: 1 Lords of the Storm, 3 Thunderhead Brotherhoods, 3 Hammerstrike Forces
If you plan to reach Apocalypse-sized games, this battalion would fit in very well. Consisting of a bare minimum of 106 models (all on Terminator-bases), you’re bringing to the table at least 45 Liberators, 30 Judicators, 9 Prosecutors, 18 Retributors, and 4 Heroes chosen from the Lords of the Storm. On top of the rules that they gain from their respective battalions, they gain access to the Lightning Strike ability and Wrath of the Storm. Lightning Strike, as we have covered in the past, is basically their Deep Strike, giving you free reign on where to place them on the table. I would suggest reading up the tactics article covering the Knight-Azyros and the Knight-Vexillor combo to make this army particularly deadly. Wrath of the Storm is a massive buff, allowing the entire battalion to reroll all Wound rolls as long as 50 models still exist on the table. I don’t care who you are, but having that level of reliability available to 100+ models is insane, bringing down even the toughest of units in a turn. Your Judicators will be doing most of the work in the first few turns of the game, but anything left over will have to deal with massed Liberators. I like this battalion because it makes extensive use of Liberators and Judicators, which make up the bulk of Sigmar’s forces. I like seeing armies on the table that look similar to what you would expect in the fluff, and large numbers of models.
When it comes to your Lords of the Storm, I think that the Lord-Celestant on Dracoth is the stronger choice over his unmounted counterpart. With such a massive army, making them all immune to Battleshock whilst he’s alive will ramp up the durability. Your opponent will have to rely on brute strength to bring your units down, if they can survive your barrage of arrows and flood of melee attacks. For your other Hero choices, I think that the Knight-Vexillor with the Meteor Standard is one of the best to further weaken your opponent on the first turn and to make charging more reliable. The Knight-Azyros, as you will notice throughout the rest of this article, is a very strong option as well, since you can bring your army closer to your enemy via Lightning Strike, and increase the accuracy of your Judicators. Knight-Venators are always a good choice to pepper opposing Support heroes, and use his Star-fated Arrow to bring down Monsters.
Harbinger Chamber
Requirements: 1 Lords of the Storm, 3 Vanguard Wings
Unlike our last entry, this can be a much smaller force of less than 50 models making it up. This force is mostly made of the angelic warriors of Sigmar’s army, the Prosecutors. The Harbinger Chamber is the ultimate Flanking force you can bring to the table for Order. The Liberators can teleport all over the table, with the Bearers of the Storm ability from the Vanguard Wing giving them a little extra push in damage. They also gain the Lightning Strike ability, further expanding their mobility. The Celestial Nimbus ability compliments the Bearers of the Storm ability, allowing the extra wound rolls to trigger on at least a 5+ to hit instead of 6+, in addition to increasing the chances for the entire army to hit more reliably by adding 1 to all hit rolls. This is great for a lot of one-shot attacks, like the Star-fated Arrow from the Knight-Venator, or the Javalins that Prosecutors can wield. As far as what you should take for your Lords of the Storm, either of the Lord-Celestants are good choices, as the mounted one can keep up with the rest of your army, while the other on foot adds more firepower through his hammer cloak and further increasing hit rolls by an additional 1 through his command ability. I would probably stick with the Knight-Azyros or Knight-Venator for the rest of the choices, as they bring a lot of abilities that really compliment Prosecutors, from assassinating opposing Heroes and Monsters, to increasing ranged attack reliability through the Azyros’ Illuminator of the Lost. Probably the weaker of the Chamber battalions mostly due to which units compose it, but a really big boost for anyone that wants to make Prosecutors the core of their army.
Exemplar Chamber
Requirements: 1 Lords of the Storm, 3 Devastation Brotherhoods
An army of Paladins is a very attractive option for many players that play Stormcast Eternals. This battalion is a sledge hammer, staying compact and just hitting your opponent with as much force as possible. Again, they gain access to the Lightning Strike ability. This time, however, it’s a much bigger deal, as most of the army moves at a painfully slow 4” without running. That is a lot less time spent getting shot up, and more time smashing faces in. The other ability they gain is Martial Bond, which helps keep the army going as they start dying. Every time a unit from the battalion is killed, they can choose another unit from the same battalion within 10” to add 1 to all of their attacks for the remainder of the battle. Your opponent has to keep pressure up on you in order to survive the onslaught that is to come, helping make up a bit for the normally slow movement. Any of the Heroes that can be taken with the Lords of the Storm have their place to further enhance the battalion. Knight-Venators bring much needed ranged attacks to support them, Knight-Azyros brings them closer to the enemy on the turn they arrive if he can survive, Knight-Vexillors can bring AoE attacks and move units across the table, Lord-Castellants can make units even tougher to kill, Knight-Heraldors increase their speed to get into combat, and the Lord-Celestant brings +1 to hit rolls for your army. You really can’t go wrong with any choices. This force is devastating, but I think the Warrior Chamber barely squeezes past it with the sheer number of ranged attacks and bodies that the opponent has to fight through. That being said, the Exemplar Chamber is probably easier to field as it requires a lot less models.
Host Azyric
Requirements: 1 Celestant-Prime, 1 Knight-Azyros, 1 Knight-Vexillor, 1 Knight-Venator, 1 Knight-Heraldor, 1 Knight-Venator, 4 units of Prosecutors, 3 units of Liberators, 2 units of Judicators, 1 unit of Retributors
One of the few free battalions released for the Stormcast Eternals, it is a very restrictive army built around the Celestant-Prime’s abilities. The Host Azyric is designed to grind down your opponent over several turns through the Celestant-Prime’s Comet Scepter attack. Firstly, the army gains the Comet Strike ability, which behaves almost exactly like Lightning Strike. The differences are that you can’t hold the Knight-Venator and the Knight-Azyros off the table, which leaves them very vulnerable in the first turn should you choose to deep strike the rest of your force. However, when any of the rest of them do arrive, enemy units within 15” of them halve their movement for until the beginning of your next turn, and can only roll a D6 for charging instead of 2D6. It’s very powerful in that it gives you a turn to charge your opponent should they try to get closer. It’s unlikely that their melee Strikers will reach your forces, giving you the option to counter-charge any attempts they make.
The other ability that they have is From the Heavens they Come, another summoning ability that is probably the strongest one in the game. Whenever your Celestant-Prime uses its scepter to launch a comet, you can summon any Stormcast Eternal unit within 10” of the center of the blast, and as close as 3” from any enemy unit. Because of how powerful this ability is, I would say it’s not a bad idea to bring the big guy onto the table turn 1, and just bombard your opponent each and every turn. Go ahead and change the radius of the blast to 6” through Orrery of Celestial Fates, it just spreads the mortal wounds love that much more! Combine that with the constant summoning, and your opponent will have a difficult time breaking through.
That’s a wrap! Stormcast are done, and it’s time to move on. Next time, we’ll delve into several of the Chaos Factions, beginning with the Nurgle Rotbringers. Until next time!