whispersofblood

Well the most obvious change is there is no reason to have marauder horsemen in a 15, I would 100% recommend splitting them up. This almost seems like the ideal set up to include sayl so you can teleport 2 units in your first hero phase I would only take despoilers with this set up if I planned on taking the cmd trait Paragon of Ruin, and using the Artefact Helm of Many Eyes, otherwise a Ravagers or Cabalist set up is supperior If you aren't using a warscroll battalion or trying to get as few drops as possible that a S2D list should not include Chaos Furies, they are an extreely powerful unit, especially in a cabalist list including Binding Damnation I would be tempted to make at least one of the Chaos warrior units Nurgle, primarily the one sticking around the Warshrine, and trying to get it up to 15 Now most of those changes require points, so you might have to do some cutting in general.

2 teleport spells isn't a bad idea, but its still better just to have 160 marauders.

Well to start I'd like to say welcome. I'm always a little jealous of new players as they get to experience so much of this game with fresh eyes, fewer hang ups and develop their taste on the models and units of today. Also there is nothing wrong with losing at this stage, in reality you are probably going to lose for months and primarily it will be because of core rules, and strategy rather than the strength or lack there of in the S2D book. There are definetly levels of discussion to be had, but there is also a place for identifying what elements don't work together so long as their is a weighty explaination as to why. I would hand on heart say if a faction has a battletome it is playable, and with effort it is generally possible to get almost any faction to say 4-1 level when played by a competent player. There are no autopilot 5-0 armies though, so that is a bit of a red herring. The question for me usually is twofold. How well do the rules reflect the description, and how closely do using the rules and playing the game align. That second bit is the most imporant because the game changes and as the game changes factions move with it. So I am always thinking about the game in that manner, what kind of battleplans do I need to play, and what armies in absract do I need to play around. So in that regard its a bigger problem for me at the moment that 5 knights aren't very reliable than the fact that 10 or 15 aren't effecient. I said in one of these threads that a lot of factions are moving into msu territory, so almost every build needs to thread the needle between being able to form smaller groupings and being able to fight combat units. Orignally the elite, and combat nature of S2D gave me the feeling that they would naturally fall on this path, and that they would be a strong addition to the current environment, but they fall very flat in that regard. IMO obviously. My advice on Archaon is wait until you see a list or come up with an idea that really energizes you. He will dominate your list as he is effectively half the army its possible that you might, but I find he is actually quite easy to play against, and not really all that killy. He is extremely cool, and large but I so far my experience with new players picking him up is they usually end up very disappointed with him. Anyway my advice to you in the short term is play the game using as many different unit types as you can, land focus on the core rules more than anything. Particularly the rules concerning any time a model is moved in any fashion.

duplicate

50% is the bottom of what THWG suggest is the sweet spot, just to be clear. Also, winrate is a pretty uninspired measure of if a faction is good, it doesn't even do that. It only measures the ability of the book to produce lists capable of being played in a competitive sense, in abstract.

Honestly I think the DP is a bit garbage, it somehow got less useful despite being buffed. I think it's the interactions with the marks. CMD abilities was not the way to go. And, it can't go into any battalions so 9/10 you should just take Bel'lakor if you are going to 2 drops. Despoilers is interesting, I just don't think it's that good a subfaction overall due the limited flexibility and utility inside the book. Maybe if we had access to those LoCA warscroll battalions. It just doesn't come together despite having so great pieces.

The first is probably Cabalist, Fatesworn, msu chaff, magic heavy. Which only really works because of being able to summon horrors, and being nominally 1 drop with a teleport spell. The second is probably some sort of 1 or 2 drop Ravagers, extreme msu that doesn't kill much but scores near max points every round. But I don't see how it wins something like knife to the heart, maybe with a maxed out unit knights. So Slaanesh or Khorne to retain the 1 drop. The problem most builds run into is that their dmg per point is very low so even if you are doing good amounts of dmg overall you are still losing the fight/battle. Marauders are fine, but realistically unless you are going to 80-120 I don't see much point investing into the combat tree for a unit of their capacity.

You get both. The host of the everchosen, are subfactions for each of the three main hosts. So Lurid Haze are a host who are an Invaders Host. So you get both, and must follow the restrictions of both.

I think we need to carefully seperate two sets of facts here. S2D has probably 2 extremely competitive archetypes, like oppression tier if played by a good enough player. On the other hand, all the reasons a person might be interesting playing S2D are not included in those lists by default, but you could compromise the list sort of to include some of them. The thrid problem is the game is actually moving away with a lot of speed from the things that make Knights and Warriors actually a sort of strong. Concentrating your points in infantry units, that are not either extremely offensively powerful and durable, or able to take 4+ rounds of high end combat dmg is on its way out. 5 man knight units are actually alright as mobile walls, they generally take more than their points to remove, but they aren't at the peak of the role, so often cheaper units will be surperior because you can get more of it.

Hellforged swords is on an unmodified roll of 6.

You cast the spell and end it's movement within 6", it can be removed and set up again within 6" of the other mirror.

Sorry. Just to be clear here. You can unbind any number of Endless spells cast in the opponent hero phase. But a Wizard can only dispel one endless spell in your turn. Similarly a wizard can only cast one Endless spell per turn. So even Nagash can only dispel one Endless spell at the start of the hero phase in his turn.

Well yeah, Any death army with our without Nagash are very different beasts. So lets talk about w/o Nagash since as far as I can tell most don't have him. The thing about endless spells is you can only ever dispel one in your phase. So you want to plan to incrementally overwhelm the OBR player's ability to manage. I quite like the gobbapaloza, and several other casters, and I like scuttletide, since it also gives you +1 to cast. But in reality, GSG don't kill models, you basically are designed to frustrate your opponent from playing the game. So if you don't fallow your optimum philosophy everything else leaves room in your game to be exploited to beat by, Honestly, I don't think Mortek guard are that good. They are excellent as a 10 man unit, because I would have to spend probably 300 points to remove them in a turn, and even then its not certain. But one you start maxing out, and taking support pieces that efficiency starts dropping and it make more sense for me to spend more points to remove them, and it removes the OBR player's model count to play the game. The key is taking enough but not too many,

GSG actually have a lot of OBR counters, its actually one of their worst match ups, they are extremely vulnerable to blocking with endless spells, and don't have strong objective playe. Relentless discipline is +3 mv btw.

Well one, OBR are much less powerful then the hypotheses found earlier in this thread, I actually find them much weaker than even I thought they would be. I find their movement game to be extremely poor, and their offence extremely predictable and ponderous. They have none of the shanangins of an Orruk army, they lack a cutting edge like an Aelf faction, are pretty weak generally in places of power, and aren't very reactive once armies have clashed. Worse still you can measure out exactly their movement for the next 3 turns and call the winner or loser pretty much on the first combat phase. Catapults are just as swingy as everyone with some discipline expected them to be They are extremely tough to remove, and in a heavy Slaanesh meta I can see why they would be dominant, and a smart player builds a list so that he isn't reliant on RDP so their recourse management is actually not as difficult as you might imagine. That being said if I was building an OBR build to last more then one event it would be radically different from what we have been seeing so there is a lot room for growth competitively if people want to stick with them. As to power creep, there are two mutually true affects happening. One is that some factions are straight up easier mechanically to learn. Because they have limited mechanisms, SCE are a great example, they have one strange mechanic, their alternative deployment and other than that they basically play in all the phases to some degree at the base level, with a hero based synergy or two. This is a great way to learn the game, and it will provide pretty consistent results. It looks like power creep against factions which have complicated mechanics with less direct risk/reward results. HoS are a great example of this, at launch they were basically impossible to alpha unless your army was fast, and had a lot of wounds, they however didn't have any natural durability. That durability was generated through depravity and summoning, this isn't a basic mechanism as it has a lot of moving parts, but the better you are at using it the exponentially greater the rewards are. I think the table at launch was probably a little to easy to use, in regards to how fast you got a KoS back. The new table is closer to what I would call advanced play, where you get a powerful tool, but misusing it will lose you the game. There are many situations where even in ideal depravity and summoning locations, summoning a KoS is the wrong choice, but there are also many situations where summoning a KoS is the right choice. And, there are situations where it doesn't matter what you have the points to summon the opponent has killed the right things, moved to the right spots and the game is gone. IF a faction is in a starter box it is almost always going to be closer to SCE then it is to HoS, it just doesn't make sense to do otherwise. So it will always look like the armies that come out after starter boxes are strong than before. And, in a lot of ways they are, but they are also more difficult to get their maximum potential out in each individual game then say a Hammers of Sigmar build.

CP are capped at 1. Also drops and a second artefact.

The problem with a lot of builds these days is that they are all order of operations based, what makes DoT so powerful is that no single piece is that fundamentally important. If you want to waste The Dark Master ability on 3 flamers the DoT player will tank that. The S2D components are easy to manage, the only heroes that project an aura are the DP, so he is locked in as either an offensive piece or a defensive piece. Just as a funny aside, here is how I could turn one nuke this army. Blue Scribes 2+ Spell portal, from 30.1" cast daemonrift through portal, If I can tag the Sorcerer, every unit within 7" of the spell portal can take d3+sorcerer/spell portal/potential Be'lakor MW. Lord of Change dispels spell portal. The S2D player is forced to deploy in a shell with his heroes probably very deep to avoid the 27" threat range of walking flamers, which means they are probably using the 20 man as a screen. IF the heroes are protected its actually pretty easy to remove the marauders, even with -1 from Aura flamers hit on 2s. 2x3 flamers and 2 exalted flamers can quite easily removed 60 marauders in one round of shooting. Or, they can remove 11 marauders, and force you to use a cp on Battleshock, for the 20 man, and then use the rest to target the 40 man. Once this build loses its numbers, and its CP usuage can be forced out, where is the dmg and abilities? It is a mistake to target the heroes in this match up, but you do need to understand their purpose in the list, the main problem is that if a build has reach this army has to deploy deeper and deeper to maintain its integrity or it just gets pulled apart. Its a common issue with basically every S2D build except maybe Fatesword Warband which is just chaff, and mws.

That's a 4 drop list, so it's not even very capable of going first very often late into day 2. It's probably a pretty good interpretation of Plague touched. Auto loses to any competitive Tzeentch build, including S2D so keep in mind your local meta if people choose to build it.

There is a strong chance I bring this to heat 2. Also anyone know what base the Hellcannon is on? Doesn't seem to be on the base size faq.

The list is a little schizophrenic. I'd drop the whole Royal Court. Kings, are only work when they are the general otherwise they don't do to much besides fight. Reavers are basically strictly worse than Shadow Warriors so keep that in mind when you are planning your strategy. I also think you are being a little inflexible with your stated strategy. Soulscryer is easy enough to zone out so you are getting two or three eel models in combat. I actually think reverse tide is a bit dated at the moment, and just straight morrsarr might struggle to combat some of the more recent units in the game. I think a regular Ionrach build might suit you more, but you have to make some sacrifices, mostly the efficiency of Volturnos Ionrach King (General) King 3 Ishlaen 18 morrsarr 30 Shadow warriors 1 CP You can move the specifics around but I think this might give you more tools to apply your strategy.

Adepticon, and Heat 2 are coming up fast.

Sure. But Chaos has like ten 1 drop battalions. And, several 2 drops. So I don't really see why that specific attribute is problematic. Now that horrors are much more manageable in the mid and late game I actually think dumping 400 points upfield with limited support (due to one teleport) as a viable strategy. Unless, the opponent leaves the door open with poor deployment.

I mean... If you've ever 4-1ed there is no way what you described is happening to you. And if it is, you are probably losing to factions way further down the totem pole.

Does nothing in your army fly? Or function as a screen?

A phone is a barrier to entry. Personally my kid wouldn't have an portable internet capable device until they were 16/17, unless they were exceptional mature. Battletomes are fine, I don't even read the fluff anymore and I still pick them up. The problem is the expectation of value, which will eventually stop being a problem once GW sells the points booklet separately every summer and the culture changes to match.