AoS Heavenswatch vrs Thunderquake

[Joshua Horchler]

Hello Lustria,

I'm sure this has been debated elsewhere, but maybe not in a while. With the changes already in place from GH2 and the upcoming changes, I wanted to bring it up again.

Where do most people stand? Thunderquake is slightly cheaper in cost but it requires you to take a EoTG. Heavenswatch requires a Skink Starseer which is expensive but very powerful in its own right. HW also allows you to have a lot fewer drops. They are very similar but also very different.

To me it comes down to if you want to run a Slann or not. A Slann in Thunderquake, next to your EotG, seems great. In dire situations, you can even teleport 2 units from the Thunderquake (or the Slann and Eotg) into range of the Slann and heal d3 wounds.

What do you all think? I love the Skink Starseer and Slann equally, it's really difficult to choose.

 

[Aginor]

I prefer the Thunderquake right now, the Heavenswatch is too...mixed for me.
The healing for the monsters in the HW isn't strong enough to really matter, and the re-rolling ability isn't _that_ strong since you only reroll ones. I usually bring an Astrolith Bearer so with a bit of positioning I reroll all hits anyway, which synergizes more nicely with the Thunderquake's Savage "The Creator's Will" ability, which enables rerolling all wounds and saves, even though that only applies to the monsters.

Advantage of the Heavenswatch is that you are not so monster focused though. You can play Skinks so you get more wounds on the table, which is nice because of mortal wound spam.
A disadvantage is that the whole bataillon is gone if the - relatively squishy - Starseer is sniped. If you play against armies that can snipe well you are toast pretty quickly.
I also don't trust his gambling ability, too risky for me.

 

[Canas]

I prefer the Thunderquake right now, the Heavenswatch is too...mixed for me.
The healing for the monsters in the HW isn't strong enough to really matter, and the re-rolling ability isn't _that_ strong since you only reroll ones. I usually bring an Astrolith Bearer so with a bit of positioning I reroll all hits anyway, which synergizes more nicely with the Thunderquake's Savage "The Creator's Will" ability, which enables rerolling all wounds and saves, even though that only applies to the monsters.

Advantage of the Heavenswatch is that you are not so monster focused though. You can play Skinks so you get more wounds on the table, which is nice because of mortal wound spam.
A disadvantage is that the whole bataillon is gone if the - relatively squishy - Starseer is sniped. If you play against armies that can snipe well you are toast pretty quickly.
I also don't trust his gambling ability, too risky for me.

Heavenswatch might become better with the changes to magic. Depending on how that pans out the various skink heroes you're required to take might become increadibly effective. Yeah a thunderquake probably has a slann next to it, but having 3 wizards that can wander about a bit might be more effective depending on how exactly it'l work.

Also, heavenswatch has the advantage of being more flexible and basicly a fully fledged army whereas thunderquake just fills your list of behemoths. If you're going to play a skink-based list heavenswatch is probably better. If you simply want the behemoths then thunderquake I guess.

 

[Aginor]

Heavenswatch might become better with the changes to magic. Depending on how that pans out the various skink heroes you're required to take might become increadibly effective. Yeah a thunderquake probably has a slann next to it, but having 3 wizards that can wander about a bit might be more effective depending on how exactly it'l work.

Also, heavenswatch has the advantage of being more flexible and basicly a fully fledged army whereas thunderquake just fills your list of behemoths. If you're going to play a skink-based list heavenswatch is probably better. If you simply want the behemoths then thunderquake I guess.

I agree. In general I think the new rules will shake up "the meta" quite a bit.

 

[Wazz]

The last game I played I ran a Thunderquake against my friends Daughters of Kaine, brought 2 20 man warrior blocks to bubble wrap his army with a double teleport, sat on my objectives and was glad I ran that bc of the healing. 10 witch aelves throwing 40 attacks is scarrrryyy. That's the only time I've ran it though, so more research is required lol.