of course he's more survivable it's a stormforged, their theme is "OP base-stats" As for sigmarines, it is rather disturbing how many of them are being realised. Though at least nurgle is getting some stuff soon, so that's something.
On a sidenote, apart from wizards & cheap fodder like goblins or skinks, isn't every single type of unit already represented in the stormforged? It's kind of amazing they keep churning out more stuff, there's only so many variations you can make of "dude with a warhammer".
Oh they still miss quite a few things I think: - artillery (although the Celestant Prime and the Knight Venator) fill the role a bit - assassins - wizards (yeah they don't need them they have better stuff. Still) But yeah they are pretty complete.
- well, ignoring the lack of official key-word artilery; they have a celestant prime, a knight venator, vanguard raptors with longstrike bows & celestant on a dragon all of which have long range attacks, and the venator is the only one that doesn't have mortal wounds. I'd say artillery is covered. Also, freaking dracoths with their stormbreath AoE mortal wound spam at medium-range deserve a (dis?)honourable mention.. Not to mention the oher ranged mortal wounds, at least those aren't as long ranged though or as plentifull... - assasins; I suppose they don't have them on the technicality that none of their stuff is particularly sneaky.. though in between thunderstrike mechanics & stuff like those guys on the ugly chickens that can jump halfway across the board in an instance I'd say they're probably not really in need of it. If you can jump half the board you can just do a frontal attack and jump over the enemies lines onto his wizard in the back, no need to be subtle about it... - wizards; yeah.. if only "abilities" just counted as magic. Magic could be a lot more in depth and the stormcast wouldn't be so ridiculous with what is essentially spells that you can't unbind..
The thing about artillery is that it often works long ranged without line of sight. Only the Celestant Prime can do that, the rest can't. But yeah, they can live without that. They have SO much strong stuff.
I think their dracoths and drake can. But yeah, they do have to actually see stuff for most of their attacks.
I see it exactly the other way round. I kinda like Sylvaneth and I am fed up with SCE. But actually ANY other Order army would have been better than yet another uninspired SCE model.
What almost makes me furious though: The way his star observation scrying stuff is described is almost exactly as Slann or Starseers do. So bye bye uniqueness there as well. SCE just do everything. And even though that hero is described as someone not made for battle but for the background work I would bet he has a 3+ save and deals mortal wounds... Grrr....
Every order faction can be allied with SCE. AFAIK every order city includes always SCE as faction. Even some battletomes for specific armies include battalions with SCE units (Kharadron Overlords for sure, IIRC also Sylvaneth) GW is forcing SCE into everything that belongs to order.
Yeah that sucks. At least you don't have to use those bataillons and in the Sylvaneth case it is a meh bataillon anyway.
meh, observing the stars is common enough for wizards and all such I suppose, but yeah if they keep pushing i like this eventually order will just be SCE + some random funny looking guys... And yeah, of course he'l have a 3+ save, tbh that's the one thing I do like about SCE supporting heroes, they're not entirely useless on their own unlike a say a starpriest who's basicl useless without another unit to help him... admittadly that they then need to have a 3+ save with mortal wounds and 3/4+/4+/-1/d3 melee attacks on top of ridiculously effective supportive abilities is a tad much, but having supporting heroes be capable of doing something is kinda nice. you're kidding me right? They've actualy included that in battletomes? Not just those weird citythings?
and in the meantime we have armies that are still going on, but are almost less supported than chaos dwarfs (warherd)
In the Sylvaneth Battletome there is one that has to include 2xLiberators 1xJudicators and a Lord Castellant. I think it is purely open or narrative play. You cannot use it in matched play. It stems from a scenario in the Lore when the SCE came to help Alarielle. I am fine with it.
To be honest I find pestilence the weirdest. It has a battletome, but also has a whopping 6 units, half of which is fodder, the other half are siege engines. It barely resembles a functional army yet it has a freaking tome. meh, it existing is fine I suppose... but that does put the focus rather heavily on SCE again... Would've fit better in one of those fluff-books about the search for sigmar's hammer or some such.
Pestilence at least can be combined with the other rats. I'd like to see beastmen (warherd+brayherd) become viable again. Same for Dispossessed and some Elves.
True, but those other skaven then don't have a tome for some reason. Skaven in general seem weird right now, being split up in subfactions with no clear benefit as only 1 has an actual rulebook. Did they exist as seperate armies like this before? Or were they just subfactions of "skaven" with some special rules if you went completly with a subfaction? And yeah, plenty of others that need some love..
Oh and most weird: Aleguzzlers have one bataillon, and a cool one to boot, but it is impossible to play in matched play....