@Seraphage I will do my best!
I personally have an affinity with 'Death Stars'- groups of elite units that tend to stack and overlay buffs to create a beefy killing machine. These are not always the best option, and objective games can be...dicey sometimes, but the aim is generally to win through sheer overwhelming force.
Let's take a look at tanky/shooting based list- fair warning, this is going to be lengthy and a ramble, buckle up.
Anyone that knows me on here will not be surprised in the least when I start off talking about the Bastiladon. Oh space turtle, how I love you. Fawning aside, the Basti is an absolute powerhouse, and combines hardiness with a strong ranged weapon that will form the groundwork for our Death Star. Anything within 20" of this beast will take 2D6 / Rend -1 / 2 Damage attacks- brutal. Yes, I am aware that there is another variant of the basti, but is far inferior to what comes later in the list. We will want at least 2 in our list, as I have previously mentioned that killing one is difficult and killing two is damn near impossible.
Next up is our battleline. My theory on battleline revolves around them either being cheap filler or something to be built around. As we are trying to be cheesy, we will choose cheap filler (that happens to synergise nicely). 3 Minimum sized skink units are what we want- a grand total of 240 points to fulfill our requirements for a 2000 point list. They do have the upside of being fast (if we need to dash for objectives) and having a ranged attack, not to mention their wary fighters rule disrupts our opponent's combat phase.
On to our lynchpin- what will turn this list from strong to cheese? Enter our next unit of choice, the
Celestial Hurricanum. This thing is an absolute powerhouse, let's take a look at what it gives us:
- Mortal Wounds: This thing gives out mortal wounds like its chocolate at Halloween. 3 shooting attacks with a range of 18", and a spell that has inlimited range, think of this thing as Lord Kroak being pulled by horses.
- Buffs: The Hurricanum provides two innate buffs- the first is a blanket +1 to hit to all nearby Order units. That is incredibly powerful, as it will affect everything in our army. The second is a buff to casting for Collegiate Wizards nearby- it should be noted that this does include itself as well as all flavours of empire battlemage.
- Bulk: Unlike a lot of buffing units for other armies, the Hurricanum is fairly bulky, with a 4+ save and 11 wounds.
But Beany, I hear you cry, what about all the deep striking threats like Stormcast and Stormfiends? Look no further than the
Gryph hound. For 40 points, this is may be one of the broken units in the game. Yes, I am serious. It lets you take a free shooting attack at any unit that sets up within a certain rangeof you, with all of your units in range. Summoning? Dead. Sylvaneth redeploying? Dead. This little guy keeps your opponent at arms length for as long as you need.
Next up is our Versatility Suite- how are we going to continue to stack our buffs for maximum benefit? First is the Starseer- he's great for tilting turn order in favour of us, and can get some mileage out of his spell by targeting the Hurricanum. The Starpriest is also an excellent choice- great for defending or neutering an enemy unit. Finally, the Skink Priest. Normally I would vouch against a unit that only does one thing, and even then only 50% of the time, but with support from the Starseer he becomes significantly better. He also gives us access to:
The Heavenswatch Starhost. For 100 points, we get to target an enemy unit and everything re-rolls hit/wounds of 1 against them. More interestingly- our Bastiladons heal up by one wound every turn, no dice rolls needed. Tasty stuff.
Talking of healing, our next special guest is the Jade Battlemage. Another staple of my lists, this chap lets you heal something by D3, then gives it a 6+ extra save. Excellent for our hardy units, annoying for our opponents if we use them on our skinks. He can be infuriating to go against as he undoes all our opponent's hard work with one spell cast. Potentially soul destroying.
We will also need a command ability- so far all our Heroes are spellcasters and if we are to min/max this cheese list, we want everything. So, we take a look at our compendium warscrolls, and see how cheap the Skink Chief is (60 points!), and that he can give a skink keyword unit +1 to hit, and we put him into our list.
Finally, we do need some sort of anti-close combat countermeasures. That is where our Razordons come in, 3 to be precise. 2D6 attacks each, and they can be part of our Starhost, and they can shoot in the combat phase. Coupled with the Gryph hound, these guys can shoot up to
3 times each battle round- that is
18D6 shots. Nice.
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So, put that all together and what do we have?
Celestial Hurricanum 320
Jade Battlemage 100
Skink Chief 60
Heavenswatch Starhost 100
Skink Starseer 160
Skink Starpriest 100
Skink Priest 100
10 Skinks 80
10 Skinks 80
10 Skinks 80
Bastiladon 300
Bastiladon 300
Razordon x3 180
2000 Points Total
Battleplan, numbers and synergy map to come, stay tuned!
im kinda new!
