Competitive Faction Focus: Stormcast Eternals

In our Faction Focus series we take a look at the game’s factions and talk about their rules, their units, how they play, and what competitive lists for the faction look like. This is part of a larger series of articles in our Start Competing series. In this article we’re looking at Sigmar’s chosen, the Stormcast Eternals. You can find the rest of our Start Competing  Stormcast Eternals Articles here.

Why Should You Play Stormcast Eternals?

Stormcast are an aelf army with survivability. OK, hear me out, I’m not crazy. Stormcast are elite and have units specialised for particular battlefield roles, plus they’re mobile and make use of every phase of the game. That’s aelf-coded! 

Beyond being a starter-set army, it’s easy to see why Stormcast in their current iteration have been a popular faction on the competitive scene. The army-wide 3+ save is forgiving, and the units at your disposal are effective on their own. There’s not much need to apply complicated combos or synergies, most of the army does what it wants to do off the back of its own warscroll. To top it off, model counts are low and they’re not overly complicated to paint. 

There’s a lot to recommend Stormcast, but they’re not currently at their best. Earlier in the edition the faction was very popular and performing well, a good indication that the army was powerful in that metagame. The current GHB has seen a bit of a fall from grace for the army, with it currently floating somewhere in the bottom third of winrates – a solidly 3-2 or 2-3 army. Stormcast balance has always been on a knife edge, with small changes to points or rules making big changes to their effectiveness and popularity with top players. Last season saw a bit of a crutch combination of bodyguard Praetors with a big dragon and powerful shooting from Longstrikes, and both of these have been toned down substantially by the new GHB. There’s still lots to recommend in the army, and there are avenues left for players to explore and find success.

Five Things You Need to Know

• You can’t rely on teleport alpha-strikes. The days of Stormcast arriving from reserves and getting various bonuses to 9” charges are over. The bonuses that do exist are terrible and 4th edition’s version of redeploy makes this kind of surprise alpha strike incredibly difficult to pull off. Sure, you can attempt it in a pinch, but it’s not a battle plan you can build around.

• You should exploit command abilities. You have units that can pull off some powerful moves using the default commands, so use them. Whilst their ability to redeploy and covering fire has gone, Longstrikes are still great at shooting in the enemy turn. Stormdrake Guard can make incredible use of power through to get themselves stuck into your opponent’s backfield and your priests can use magical intervention to teleport your units in the enemy hero phase. 

• You don’t need to commit to just one chamber. The army building rules and battle formations look like they’re pushing you towards a mono-chamber approach, and you should resist that temptation. Stormcast are an army of power-unit building blocks; they are spread around every chamber and you shouldn’t restrict yourself too much. This in turn will drive your selection, as it makes warmasters incredibly valuable.

• Combined arms is still the way to go. Stormcast have access to units that are powerful in each phase of the game, and units that can act in multiple phases – make use of this. In fourth edition an army being truly multidimensional like this is surprisingly rare and it’s of significant advantage to Stormcast that they can kill or cripple enemy units at range. Stormcast melee alone generally won’t hold up against the best the game can throw at them, so tilt the odds in your favour. Equally though, Stormcast shooting isn’t efficient enough to do all of the heavy lifting on its own, and you need the melee hammers to finish the job.

• You still need to invest in mobility. Stormcast have a great selection of cavalry or cavalry-adjacent units that can get around the table pretty quickly. That’s an easy way to solve the mobility that this GHB asks of you. If you’re determined to run mass infantry, that doesn’t mean you have to totally sacrifice mobility. Invest in the Stormreach Portal, Priests and look at manifestation lores like Forbidden Power to get your troops where you need them to be.

Are There Any Must-Have Units to Start This Faction?

As mentioned above, Stormcast are an army where access to all of the different unit type keywords is important, but this creates list building restrictions around the heroes you want to take to access them – you want heroes that can bring the chambers you want without themselves being a tax. Throughout fourth edition this role has been filled by Karazai and Krondys, but both of these have had a fall from grace following the loss of the Bodyguard rule from the previous GHB. They’re still both fine (particularly Krondys), but other recent changes to the faction have given more options. 

If you’re looking to lean heavily on the new Ruination Chamber units then an excellent choice is the brand new Scourge of Ghyran Iridan the Witness, who received a massive glow-up from the battletome warscroll and now provides a whole host of bonuses for Ruination armies and can bring any Stormcast units in their regiment. If you’re looking for a more generic option that can act solo then the current best bet is looking to be the Lord-Celestant on Stardrake. They’ve got solid offensive and defensive profiles, have a unique ability to pick off models before fighting in the combat phase, and are the best unit for taking traits and artefacts.

Either way, if you’re taking a big dragon then you’re likely going to want Praetors to keep your investment alive. Praetors hand out a 5+ ward and get one themselves when they’re next to your big dragon, which is obviously incredible, but they’re quite handy in a fight themselves.

As an army, Stormcast are designed with combined arms in mind, but now a lot of the old roster has entered Legends your options for shooting have narrowed rapidly. This has left Stormcast players relying heavily on Vanguard Raptors with Longstrike Crossbows. Longstrikes are eye-wateringly expensive shooting, to the point of not being efficient at all, but they’re also by far the highest quality shooting in the faction (and up there for the whole game) and that counts for a lot. With damage 2, rend 2 (rend 3 into heroes!) and crit auto-wound they’re just supremely reliable. Add the vanguard ability to run and still shoot into the mix and they’re a unit that just adds a huge amount of ranged threat to the army. A budget option can be taking 1-3 Knight-Judicators – they’re cheap and high quality shooting themselves and a sub-hero, though being forced to take extra regiments to accommodate them isn’t the death sentence it once was. Three Knight-Judicators are now 10 points cheaper than reinforced Longstrikes and put out basically the same damage even without their own buff up. You lose out on the flexibility of Longstrikes on the battlefield, but gain flexibility in your list building.

If you’re not running Krondys then the wizard options for Stormcast are surprisingly limited; fortunately the Knight-Arcanum is fantastic. They’re a cheap and cheerful 1 cast wizard that comes with a baked in +1 to summon and banish manifestations. Manifestations are a huge part of 4th edition and can bring a lot to a Stormcast army, so this ability is powerful.

For your meat and potatoes damage dealing units, there are a few options available. Stormdrake Guard are popular and powerful, but are eye-wateringly expensive. Their damage for the points you spend (they really do want to be reinforced) is quite poor compared to the other hammer units available, so you are paying for the privilege of the utility they bring in their health pool, movement, footprint, and ability to power through. A more budget-friendly option for the extremis chamber is Dracothian Guard, particularly Fulminators and Concussors. Fulminators aren’t the be all and end all damage unit they used to be, but they still hit the hardest on the charge. Concussors are pretty close though, and are a better target for the quicksilver draught combo to fight when not charging. With just 5 wounds per model these are the most fragile Stormcast cavalry, but they give you the hitting power of Stormdrakes on a budget. A budget but actually decent option are Stormstrike Palladors. They’re the lowest quality cavalry option, but also the cheapest and they pack the exact same defences as all of the others, so end up being quite efficient without being flashy. The last cavalry option that sees play is Vanguard Palladors, particularly the variety with javelins. They do by far the lowest damage of these units but pack in a mountain of utility. Vanguard palladors move 14”, can run and shoot & charge, and have great wound density.

Options for Stormcast infantry are currently a bit more limited, the army just struggles to deliver them despite all of the teleporting. The sole tech for charging out of reserves now is the Lord-Imperatant but they are almost unplayably bad. For dealing damage the best options right now are looking like Reclusians and Prosecutors. Reclusians get crit mortals and can do the quicksilver draught trick with a Lord-Terminos without costing too many points, so can work well to anchor some boardspace for you, particularly into matchups where your opponent doesn’t have much shooting to move them. Prosecutors have pretty good damage output for their cost and are one of the few Stormcast units that can make reliable charges out of reserves, as they charge 3d6. The downside is that they’re incredibly squishy, but it’s a solid unit. Vanquishers looked initially appealing as they are cheap and a total nightmare into infantry but they’re just completely one-note in a way Stormcast don’t want their units to be. Probably the most common pick for infantry is Vigilors, not because they do any damage (they’re really inefficient archers), but for the hit bonus they can hand out that lasts for the full turn. All-out Attack is not attractive to Stormcast in the new battletome, so Vigilors have an important role here in getting your 2+ to hit for a hammer unit. They’re even better if you are running multi-phase units like Vanguard Palladors, Stormdrake Guard and Dracothian Guard who get to double dip on that hit bonus. Finally, Questor Soulsworn are a generically great choice for leftover points in a list – they’re one of the more efficient units in melee here and can teleport themselves for the mobility that infantry can otherwise lack.

How Does This Faction Take Objectives and Score Battle Tactics?

Objectives

Stormcast are typically low unit count and low model count, so you usually can’t afford to have more than a token force on home objectives; it sounds obvious, but you really do want to be killing enemies and flipping objectives. There is a decent amount of control tech in the book, especially for the ruination chamber, but this has not yet proven itself to be worth pursuing. The proven fourth edition gameplan is to kill your opponent rather than play tit for tat with control scores. Do try to keep in mind that Stormcast aren’t as immobile once committed as they have been previously, and this can give you access to objectives that your opponent might not be expecting. Vanguard Palladors can cross the board extremely rapidly, and don’t forget that you can use the Stormreach Portal to teleport even after moving, so can make sneaky plays with that. The current GHB has more battleplans with a high number of objectives spread across the board, that’s not necessarily an issue for Stormcast, but it does require you to invest in mobility at the list building stage.

Battle Tactics

A common reaction from players is to look at the list of this season’s battle tactics, panic, and pick Intercept and Recover as it looks like the easiest. We think this is a bit of a trap – killing units is a simple game plan, but that’s not the same as being easy. It puts too much of your scoring in the hands of your opponent, as you have no control over the matchup that you get paired into at a tournament and your opponent then gets to pick the three hardest units for you to destroy. Having an in-built punishment for double turning is the cherry on top for wanting to avoid this.

It’s worth thinking about opponents picking Intercept against you, however, so we’ll note that you can only pick a unit to be an Intercept target if it’s on the table – if you deploy all of your tougher units in reserve it will force you to make less than ideal choices. Sometimes it’s still worth making those reserve deployments, but it’s always worth keeping in mind when playing against Intercept. 

Because Stormcast are typically so heavy with infantry and cavalry it can be tempting to also look at Scouting Force as a good selection, but this can also be a bit of a trap. Certainly, it’s possible for Stormcast to be good at this but you need to specifically build towards it. A typical Stormcast army wants to concentrate its power in fewer, reinforced units. Scouting Force ideally wants you to be running lots of units in order to score it. If you want to go for Scouting, then consider un-reinforced units of Stormstrike Palladors and Prosecutors. 

If you’re looking for a battle tactic combination that will do you the best most of the time then the combination of Master the Paths and Restless Energy are two with good winrates and that Stormcast are good at. For Master the Paths, Stormcast are very good at killing enemy heroes (as there’s no requirement to do it in melee) and then taking and surviving in neutral territory (though this one can be battleplan dependent). Restless Energy asks you to flip an objective, which is rewarding you for something you want to do anyway, and controlling objectives in enemy territory, which Stormcast have the mobility to do as the game winds down.

How Does This Faction Do Damage?

Stormcast hammers are very expensive and this edition demands more than one, so competitive lists typically invest most of their points into doing damage, rather than attempting more traditional hammer and anvil strategies. 

Generally you’re looking for high rend multi-damage attacks, mortal damage, ways to fight at range and in melee, and ways to fight first. Stormcast can do all of this, and you can even do it all at the same time. Scourge Iridan, a Lord-Terminos and 6 Reclusians can pump out a lot of attacks with rend 2, damage 2 and crit-mortals. Put the Quicksilver Draught on the Terminos and you can do it with Strike-first. Alternatively, if you take the Lightning Echelon battle formation and a Lord-Celestant on Stardrake you have a unit that shoots, can remove tough models by just rolling over their health characteristic and then fight first on the charge. A pair of Knight-Judicators will put a respectable amount of rend 2 damage 3 shooting into your opponent whilst being relatively easy to protect themselves. 

A nice way to think about Stormcast is to look at the multitude of obvious unit combinations the army has that float around 4-800 points and how you can put those together to form an army that delivers its high quality damage in a few different ways. 

Are There Any Combos To Build Around?

Stormcast aren’t a particularly combo-heavy army, but there’s some you’ve seen us mention a few times: the quicksilver draught and the stormreach portal.

Quicksilver Draught

• A hero with the ability to let a unit fight immediately after it has fought
• An appropriate hammer unit to stand next to the hero

The combo is pretty simple: the quicksilver draught is an artefact with a once-per game ability to give the bearer strikes-first. With the clarification in the FAQs, you can now pop this to fight with the hero and then immediately with the unit next to them. There’s a couple of major uses for this: creating a zone of area denial by having a unit that will always fight before your opponent can in their own turn, or setting up a big chain fight in your own turn by getting three (or more, if you run extremis chamber) activations before your opponent.

Good targets for the combo are:

• Lord-Terminos & Reclusians: the cheapest combo here, both the Terminos and Reclusians can hit decently hard with crit mortals and can be very tanky with the ruination ability and possible 5+ ward from the sentinels of the bleak citadels battle formation. You can throw in a priest for bless weapons +1 attack if you want to double down.
• Lord-Celestant on Stardrake & Concussors: expensive but brutally effective. Concussors are your best bet here as they retain their damage when not charging, so can be used reactively better than Fulminators.
• Lord-Celestant & Annihilators with meteoric grandhammers: this combo just got a nice points drop in the latest battlescroll. It’s the most fragile combination here, as Annihilators lack the defensive options that Reclusians have access to and it lacks an obvious way to deliver itself quickly, but grandhammers hit like holy hell and this might be an avenue worth exploring. 

Stormreach Portaling

• A stormreach portal
• Prosecutors
• Or Longstrikes

This is as much “look at two units that work well with the portal” as it is a true combo, but prosecutors make fantastic use of the portal with their 3d6 charge and shooting attack. If you can fit a priest into the list, then prosecutors being infantry that hit like cavalry make them a fantastic target for Bless Weapons. 

Traditionally, longstrikes are a unit you would deploy off the table and then place wherever you wanted to take out the best target. With the portal there is now potential to deploy them on the table as a covering fire threat and still be able to redeploy them somewhere else on the board. Good if you know your opponent wants to do an aggressive seize the centre play early.

Sample Lists

At time of writing Stormcast have been conspicuously absent from Competitive Innovations, but what is there so far this season has focussed on Iridan leading the Ruination Chamber. 

chimp's List - Click to Expand

Stormcast have an all-killer, no-filler approach to listbuilding and you really do need to be ruthless with your selections to fit in everything you need. Scourge Iridan passively makes your Prosecutors and Reclusians better at ignoring abilities and the double-priest here means you can target one of those units with both +1 attack and +1 rend for a substantial increase in their hitting power. Knight-Judicators give you good hitting power at range, and the Vigilors do a bit of chip shooting as well as providing a +1 to hit bonus for your army that is invaluable in this GHB. Questor Soulsworn are just a really solid inclusion (don’t be surprised to see Stormcast armies rocking multiple units) and the Stormcoven are yet another source of Strike-first for your army. Stormreach Portal is here to play nicely with Prosecutors and to keep your mid-game mobility threat high. Finally, Aetherwrought Machineries are… free. Something has to give. 

Rich's List - Click to Expand

I asked Rich, our other resident Stormcast Enjoyer, for his take on this GHB with a list that isn’t focussed on Ruination and got this. There’s basically no fat here with 3 combat bricks backed up with high quality shooting and buffs. Grandhammer Annihilators are the priciest and trickiest to use of the strike-first infantry combos available to Stormcast, but they certainly do hit the hardest if that’s the goal. Alongside that, Lightning Echelon means the army has access to strike-first with another unit from either the Dracoth riders or the big dragon. It does require you to charge, so to keep it the threat in the enemy turn you need to be positioning for counter-charge. The Lord-Relictor provides you with the only repositioning tech in the list with Translocate, but is also a walking buff for the Annihilators with Bless Weapons making them true monsters.

Final Thoughts

Stormcast aren’t doing so hot right now, but the building blocks are still there for a very solid army and they’re always one battlescroll away from being back near the top. For a brand new player, the way to go currently looks to be a core of Ruination units backed up by shooting, spellcasting and mobility. For Stormcast players with a deeper collection that’s still true, but there are options to slot in units from every chamber with success. 

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