AoS What to do about Stormcast

[Kalokagathia]

I was playing against a Stormcast army today and got tabeled. My opponent had several wizards and shooting units and I had no cover for my central but vulnerable models (Slann, Astro and Engine - playing thunderquake).
Can we counter something like that?
I also have a problem when facing non-demon Khorne. They hack my army to pieces...

Any suggestions?

 

[Aginor]

Shooting and magic heavy SCE is tough.
I honestly have no clue how to beat that as I haven't faced such lists yet.
So I am as curious as you are.
Can you remember details of the list?
How many points were you playing?

 

[LizardWizard]

Chameleon Skinks are always handy for shutting down enemy shooting. You can ambush them into combat with his gun line forcing them to be the target. Also, the Palisade endless spell is wonderful for protecting units from line of sight bases attacks.

What their list was composed of, what Stromhost they ran, and who their general was would be helpful for me to provide more specific advice.

Mortal Khrone is a pretty top tier army if run as Gore Pilgrims. The best way to shut down any Khrone army is to kill the Slaughter Priests and the Blood Secrator.

 

[Kalokagathia]

Shooting and magic heavy SCE is tough.
I honestly have no clue how to beat that as I haven't faced such lists yet.
So I am as curious as you are.
Can you remember details of the list?
How many points were you playing?

It was a 2000 points game and the mission was Three places of power on a board with not a single terrain piece blocking line of sight.

I had a Thunderquake with two Bastis, an Engine and four Razordons. I then had skinks, a Slann and an Astrolith Bearer.

Hm, I can't remember his exact list and it's not posted anywhere, but he had six different heroes. He had Astreia Solbright, a Lord Castellant, a Knight Heraldor and to more Stormcast heroes I can't quite place (they all look the same in my opinion). He also had some shooting guys (Judicators, perhaps) with 24" reach and a Luminark of Hysh (that bloody thing flat out killed my Astrolith bearer with one shot that did 6 damage).

The opponent was a really great guy, but it was pretty frustrating playing a whole game with an army that did almost no damage and crumbled like a house of cards.

I

 

[Kalokagathia]

Chameleon Skinks are always handy for shutting down enemy shooting. You can ambush them into combat with his gun line forcing them to be the target. Also, the Palisade endless spell is wonderful for protecting units from line of sight bases attacks.

What their list was composed of, what Stromhost they ran, and who their general was would be helpful for me to provide more specific advice.

Mortal Khrone is a pretty top tier army if run as Gore Pilgrims. The best way to shut down any Khrone army is to kill the Slaughter Priests and the Blood Secrator.

I can't remember who the general was or what Stormhost they ran, I'm afraid. But I hope the information I've given in my other reply is at least a little bit helpful. I appreciate any thoughts you have on this!

 

[Canas]

Against SCE shooting our saurus work relativly well. A lot of their ranged attacks have rend, so our shields take away a lot of their power.
Also, summon starlight, look-out-sir & mystic shield help. An eternal starhost would actually be amazing if the SCE for some inexplicable reason don't have mortal wounds. But then again, they're SCE so not gonna happen.

Beyond that the only thing I've found that really works is to horribly murder them before they can hurt you.

A good tactic can be bringing a shadowstrike and firelance starhost (or at least what goes in em seeing as the firelance bonusses are underwhelming for the most part) as the core of your army. The shadowstrike goes in as soon as your advancing melee force gets in range to be shot at, tying up their archers & hopefully killing a good chunk of them while the firelance advances quickly and can clean up the surviving archers with relative ease, plus the starpriest from the shadowstrike host is usefull for protecting and buffing your Knights so there's some nice synergy there.

For the shadowstrike, remember to bring chameleons to maximize the losses you can do with your initial ambush.

Another good trick could be to teleport or summon razordons near them when you use your shadowstrike's ambush for some additional carnage.

Beyond that, the thunderquake is kinda weak to shooty SCE. There's too much rend so everything apart from the bastiladons just get shredded. The decaying stats on the other big dino's in a thunderquake don't help either.

A good thunderquake approach could be: EoTG + 2 bastiladon + emerald lifeswarm + a slann. Hide the slann behind the big dinosaurs, heal with the Thunderquake bonus, the EoTG healing and the endless spell while your bastiladons shoot back. Then use summoning to throw fodder at the enemy while your thunderquake slowly advances. But if your Slann can't be hidden nicely, or your EoTG gets focussed down too easily this'l probably end up badly.

Another fun one could be to take a troglodon in your Thunderquake. Buff him up and teleport him into the archers to wreck some face and buy the rest of your forces some time to get close.

And your last option is to just bury your opponent in skinks with blowpipes. He can't shoot all of em if you bring 200.

Edit: I forgot, but this is about the one time our slann's command ability is actually usefull. Don't forget about using that.

 

[dinoSTARZ]

I've played against stormcast a ton. Not usually too much magic but the guy has tried all sorts of ranged bullcrap, most recently 3 ballistas with a lord ordinator. Play the objectives and use loads of bodies/wounds. Keep the slann somewhere in cover/safe and screen him for their deep strike drops from the heavens. He wants to stay in a blob usually to stack buffs. Your blob off buffs will lose because of the comet plus honestly I think SCE is better (we can hardly hurt them). Make sure you take the double teleport (a second "lords of space and time") skill on the slann so that you can move bodies to objectives as needed. It's kinda boring but basically fight as little as possible and just eat some of the ballista wounds with groups of 10-20 skinks that you continuously summon and in use to reinforce objectives on subsequent turns. IF he moves towards getting objectives, now you have some targets for your razordons and salamanders or any heavy hitters because he'll be unlikely to fit his +1 save from staunch defender and the +1 from lord castellant. I like to make them spread out and then punish their mistakes. If they don't spread out, then I just win through attrition on the objectives. I've actually only lost once (out of 7-8 games), but all of those games against the stormcast player so far have been fairly close and fun.

 

[Putzfrau]

a board with not a single terrain piece blocking line of sight.

I think I found your problem I've always felt that the game plays better with a good chunk of terrain on the table (including some LOS pieces).

If that's not in the cards, a list change might help. With Thunderquake your essentially trying to outshoot an army that does shooting better. I echo a lot of what @dinoSTARZ is saying. In all the games i've played I simply outlast them with tons of bodies and tons of wounds to chew through. Being able to throw a block of 40 saurus warriors right in front of their face, or forcing them to chew through dozens of skinks on their way to anything important has gone a long way in the games i've had against SCE.

 

[ChubbSkink]

I would say strike first, always. Hit the units that are more problematic, like the shooty ones. As Seraphon you almost always have first turn, so take this advantage and capitalize on it. Stormcast are strong, but fold pretty easily to overwhelming numbers which we can get in the form of skinks and rippers being summoned every turn. I have faced two lists pretty similar to what you describe and though it was a tough match, I prevailed due to summoning.
The thing is to eliminate heave hitters and then use chaff to block their remaining heroes while you LoSaT your forces around the table grabbing objectives or just avoiding their remaining heavy hitters.
Of course this all depends on your Slann surviving the whole game, so use cover and bubble wrap as much as possible to protect him.

 

[Killer Angel]

I would say strike first, always. Hit the units that are more problematic, like the shooty ones. As Seraphon you almost always have first turn, so take this advantage and capitalize on it. Stormcast are strong, but fold pretty easily to overwhelming numbers which we can get in the form of skinks and rippers being summoned every turn.

Pretty much this.
Against shooting armies you cannot play a war of attrition, you must jump at their throat. And SCE units lack numbers.

I know it's not always feasible, but try to don't let them dictate the game.

Protect the slann and the astrolith with look-out-sir and bubble your command ability