In this article series we’re taking a look at the infantry options available to each faction, looking at what units they pair with, and talking about the combos available to those units as well as tips for running them solo. You can find the rest of our Start Competing Stormcast Eternals Articles here.
Infantry is where much of the Stormcast Warrior Chamber lives and sadly, there’s a fair bit of repetitive junk to be found here. But never fear! The Stormcast bench of warscrolls is so deep that despite that there’s still plenty of competitive options available for players who like to foot slog.
Annihilators
Not amazing in and of themselves, but they are getting quite cheap for a unit with a 2+ save. “Blazing Impact” doing d3 mortals wounds in a 10” AoE hasn’t been limited to once per turn, so we’re approaching a point where spamming a bunch of small units of these for the mortal damage alpha and then being hard to shift has a place.
Annihilators with Meteoric Grandhammers
If you positively, absolutely have to kill something dead then this unit will kill it. Add being fabulously expensive into the bargain as well as being incredibly slow (the unit has to be in combat, so punting on 9” charges just isn’t realistic), and these have ended up not being enormously popular so far. However, they do have a ready to go quicksilver combo so are probably a points drop away from prime time.
Liberators
Not great, but at least they aren’t as bad as Vindictors! Crit mortals make these moderately spicy but the fact of the matter is there are just better options available and current listbuilding is so tight you don’t have the wiggle room to take these. If the requirement to truly screen ever returns these would be the most efficient at it, but for now they’re a pass.
Neave’s Companions
Go and read the hero article.
Praetors
Decently fighty unit that gains and hands out Ward (5+) if they’re in combat range of a hero. Traditionally used to guard dragons, particularly Krondys and Karazai. Utterly busted in the old GHB, these have fallen out of favour quite a bit more recently but if you want to take a big dragon they still have a place.
Prosecutors
These look for all the world like they’re light skirmishers and objective takers and sure, you can play them like that, but they’re kinda expensive. What they actually are is a unit that takes buffs like infantry, shoots, moves and hits like cavalry and gets a 3d6 charge to be the best users of teleports in-faction. They’ve always been pretty good, but as Ruination has gotten better over time these have also ridden the wave. It’s not all good news, as they’re still 2-health models that come in 3s, so are spectacularly fragile if they get caught out.
Questor Soulsworn
Pound for pound the most efficient melee infantry in the army, and they get to teleport off their own warscroll into the bargain. Even setting aside their ability to get a ward (which is, to be clear, really handy) this unit is worth its points and then some. Because they don’t need any external support, you can happily throw a unit into a list with no other thought and they’ll do what they do.
Reclusians
More than the sum of their parts. Looking at raw numbers it’s easy to think of these as just expensive Liberators, but with the decent amount of bonuses they can stack up for being Ruination Chamber infantry and their nice combo with the Lord-Terminos these have turned out to be a handy and good unit. Avoid the temptation to over invest in these, there are a lot or Ruination heroes you can throw at them, but there’s such a thing as too much of a good thing and Stormcast need to be getting bodies on the table.
Stormcoven
A three model non-hero infantry wizard unit that can’t be reinforced, and a really nice way to recycle an Underworlds warband. They have some funky shooting and two neat abilities: if they contest an objective they’re +1 power level and a warscroll spell that can hand out either strike-first or strike-last depending on if you cast it on a friendly or enemy. At 210 they’re quite expensive, but they’re totally playable and if you want to keep drops down but your army composition otherwise requires you to not take the Knight-Arcanum then these are a way to get a wizard into your army.
Vanguard-Hunters
Not very good, really. They can shoot and fight in an aggressively mediocre fashion and get to pick an enemy unit to hunt, they get a bit faster whilst that unit is on the board but not really in a way that is meaningful.
Vanguard-Raptors with Hurricane Crossbows
Three models with 4 shots and crit 2 hits but only having rend into infantry. These are actually the closest thing to “normal” archers that Stormcast have. They’re cheap, but the issue is that their output is just really limited and even at almost half the price of Longstrikes they don’t provide anything like the threat that Longstrikes can put out.
Vanguard-Raptors with Longstrike Crossbows
Has there ever been an edition where these haven’t been good? At 200 points for 3 and the loss of redeploy + covering fire Longstrikes are wildly inefficient but are a good example of a unit where sometimes efficiency doesn’t matter and their ability to just shoot something really hard is more important. They get high quality attacks with crit (auto-wound) and rend 2 that gets to become rend 3 into heroes. This unit lets you reach out and take out problem units – put 6 down and watch double Lord of Change players quake in their boots. If people keep taking them and winning the points are going to go up and they will hit the tipping point of being too expensive, but we’re not there yet.
Vanquishers
There was a moment early on in the index when people thought these might be the hotness – they have great rend and damage 2 into large infantry units, and are cheap. As it turns out we’re just not in an infantry horde metagame, and Stormcast have access to enough generically high damage units to need to bother with this type of specialist. Should hordes of infantry once again sweep the battlefield, these can be something handy to have in the toolbox. Even without being reinforced they can put the hurt on the right unit. Outside of their desired target, they fall off a cliff.
Vigilors
Your most commonly taken Warrior chamber infantry, Vigilors do a bit of light shooting (the quality of the shots is OK, but they put out about half as many shots as similar units do in other armies – like Namarti Reavers or Blissbarb Archers). Most importantly, if they can put a single point of damage on an enemy unit your entire army gets +1 to hit against them for the rest of the turn. Stormcast like to use their command points for almost anything other than all-out attack, so this is a hugely welcome ability. Their points have gone up, so reinforced units are really inefficient and the small units are getting expensive for their secondary role as chaff.
Vindictors
Vindictors are sadly caught in a race to the bottom. If they’re the cheapest infantry then they have a place as the cheapest infantry should you want a screen (to be honest, most Stormcast armies can’t afford to take units like that). If they’re not the cheapest infantry then they’re worse than Liberators and therefore have no place at all. They’ve got an anti-charge gimmick and can potentially strike-first but realistically, 2 attacks a model and damage 1 just isn’t doing anything. Reinforcing is throwing good points after bad.
How to Pick Your Infantry
You probably want Vigilors quite often, but only one unit. If you want generically good brawling infantry then Questor Soulsworn are your best bet. Stormcoven and Longstrikes do what they do with options to use heroes to do that instead. If you’re doing a quicksilver draught combo then pick your hero + unit of choice and enjoy, but you’re probably taking Reclusians. Prosecutors are almost always a good choice as an off-hammer with high mobility. Otherwise? There’s a decent amount of skip here.
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