AoS Thunderquake Vs. Khorne

[Xasto]

Hello all,

Last night I played a friendly match with a stranger in my LGS. I'm currently testing out a BUNCH of different lists as I have 4 armies, and so I love the opportunity to test something against an unknown force, it forces me to prepare for anything!

Anyway, I brought a Thunderquake Starhost, here is the list:

Slann Starmaster (260)
-General
-Command trait: Great rememberer
-Artefact: Gryph-feather Charm

Engine of the Gods (220)
-Artefact: Incandescent Rectrices

Skink Starpriest (80)

Saurus Astrolith Bearer (160)

40 x Skinks (240)
-Boltspitters and shield
10 x Skinks (60)
-Boltspitters and shield
10 x Skinks (60)
-Boltspitters and shield

2 x Razordons (80)

Bastiladon (280)
-Solar Engine
Bastiladon (280)
-Solar Engine


Skink Handlers (40)

Thunderquake Starhost (120)

Chronomantic Cogs (60)
Balewind Vortex (40)
Soulsnare Shackles (20)

Points: 2000/2000
Extra command points: 1

Turns out my opponent plays Khorne, here is what I can remember of his list:

Wrath of Khorne Bloodthirster
-General
-Command Trait: ?
-Artefact: I can't attack him until he's attacked first

Bloodsecrator
Bloodstoker
Bloodstoker
Slaughterpriest
Slaughterpriest

5 x Blood Warriors
10 x Bloodreavers
10 x Bloodreavers

5 x Skullreapers
5 x Wrathmongers

30 x Bloodletters
1 x Chaos Spawn
Gore Pilgrim

I think that's all of it, might be missing 1 small unit or 2 but I'm not sure.
The Scenario is Battle for the Pass, where there are 4 objectives, 1 pt for your own, 2 pts for the middle ones and 4 pts for your opponent's.

We roll-off to choose the zone, which my opponent wins. we then proceed to deployment, which I finish first. Everything is close together by my objective, with the 2 10-man units of skinks on the sides and the 40-man unit screening everything else, in such a way that it is providing look out sir! to everyone of my heroes (Wish i'd taken pictures) Seeing as how he deployed the Bloodthirster on the frontline with his Bloodletters, I elect to go first and try to reduce the power level of the incoming Bloodletter Bomb.

Seraphon turn 1

Slann's constellation gives me +1 to casting, yay! The Starpriest fails to cast the Cogs, but the Slann manages get on the Balewind. He then casts Soulsnare Shackles, which are put near the right side middle objective, hoping to impede movement from my enemy. Slann casts Mystic Shield on one of the Bastiladons, and uses the remaining spell for Conjuration points. with the Slann General and the Astrolith, I get up to 6 points. EotG rolls too low to do anything usefull, as we're still over 30 inches away form each other. I manage to teleport both the Basti's, just getting them in range of the demon vanguard. Astrolith plants his banner, as he was carefully deployed to be in range of all the big shooty dinos.

Movement phase, Skinks move forward to protect the bastiladons, following them are the razordons and EotG. 10 man skink units advance on both sides, I manage to grab the right objective.

Shooting sees me putting 3 wounds on the bloodthirster (1 more would have been a bracket lower) and I kill 12 Bloodletters!

No charges, no combat. My opponent decides to roll his battleshock, preffering to keep his command point. he loses 4 more letters.

Score is 3-0 Seraphon.

Khorne Turn 1

Usual Khorne stuff, Bloodsecrator plants his banner, 1 priest manages to fail his rerollable prayer, the other gives the bloodletters +1 to hit. Bloodstokers whip both the Bloodthirster and the Bloodletters, and the Bloodthirster uses his command ability on the Bloodletters to give them run and charge with a +1. Everything moves forward, except his 2 units of bloodreavers that were deployed deep in his zone to prevent me from teleporting behind.

Bloodletters make the charge into the Skinks, but the Razordons are close by and they shoot in riposte! 6 more die! Ouch! Blood thirster charges the Right side Basti and skinks, same thing for the Skullreapers.

Combat phase sees me losing about 16 skinks, he puts 4 wounds on the basti and I kill a couple more bloodletters. Nothing more.

Battleshock I Inspire the skinks to prevent them from running. My opponent controls the left side middle objective, but we're contested on the right side one.

Score 3-3

The all important roll! I went first so I win ties, I roll a 2 and my opponent rolls a 2 also! Priority to the Seraphons!

Seraphon turn 2

Slann manages to cast the Cogs this time, the Bloodthirster unable to unbind it. the 3 other spells are converted into Conjuration points, +1 for Slann General + a roll of 3 for the Astrolith bearer, which brings me up to 19 points. Starpriest casts Summon Starlight on the Bloodthirster, giving him -1 to hit and a sweet 3 mortal wounds. EotG does D6 mortal wounds to the Bloodthirster, but I just roll a 1... I teleport up the Astrolith bearer, just to get him closer for future movements.

Everything moves up again, I manage to capture the left side objective.

Shooting phase is where the Dmg is at. I inflict 9 wounds with a basti to the Bloodthirster, blowing him off the table. Razordons kill off the remaining 6 Bloodletters, freeing up my Basti to shoot at the coming Wrathmongers (These guys really scare me). He wounds 1 of them but thats it. Skinks shooting all over the place, 1 Skullreaper dies.

Combat phase sees the Skullreapers continue to murder Skinks on the right side objective, the Basti whiffs to hurt them.

Battleshock I roll low enough to prevent any skinks from running. I control the left objective and the right side one as I have more models around!

Score is 8-3 Seraphon

Khorne turn 2

The unlucky rolls are here... out of 4 rerollable 4+ prayers, the Slaughterpriests manage to pull off 1, and one of them inflicts himself 3 mortal wounds... Ouch...

Secrator keeps his banner planted, Stokers whip the Wrathmongers and Blood Warriors. Everything moves forward a bit, even the way back bloodreavers, as my opponent starts to think he's gonna need backup on the front lines.

Wrathmongers charge the left side basti, Blood warriors charge the Skinks holding the left side objective.

Combat phase, my opponent chooses the Skullreapers first, but he can't kill enough skinks to hope to seize control of the right side objective. I then Wary Fighters my left objective skinks in a way that I'm 3 inches away from the Blood Warriors, but still within 6 inches of the objetive, and I have more models (God I can't love enough that ability). Wrath mongers inflict a couple of wounds on the left side basti, he then retaliate and kills 2 of them. Because of their special ability, the Bastiladon now has to attack himself... and brings himself down to 1 wound! SCARY WRATHMONGERS GO AWAY. I kill 1 Skullreaper on the right side with skinks and the basti.

No battleshock for both of us, and my opponent couldn't seize control of the middle objectives, thanks to the sneaky skinks on the left.

Score is 8-4 Seraphon.

Another important roll (as always with these priority rolls) but probably less game deciding than was the first one. I roll a lucky 6, which means I can't be beaten as I win ties having gone first in the battleround. I take it.

Seraphon turn 3

Slann gets all his Conjuration points going, bringing me to a total of 37. Mmhh... EotG zaps an injured Slaughter priest with 6 mortal wounds and kills him. Summon starlight is casted on the Skullreapers.

At the start of the movement phase, the Soulsnare shackles, which had been pretty much useless up until now, deal d3 mortal wounds to my right side basti and kill it... EotG moves forward, ready to charge the Skullreapers on the right. everything else is pretty much engaged or hanging back. The skinks on the left stay put, assuring me control of the left objective. I then use 24 Conjuration points and summon in an Oldblood on Carnosaur on the right flank. FeelsGoodMan !

Shooting kills the rest of the Wrathmongers on the left side (thank god) and a couple Blood Warriors.

Charges see the EotG ram into the Skull reapers, the Carnosaur makes his 9 inch charge with a reroll thanks to a command point.

Combat sees the Carnosaur shredding the 3 remaining Skullreapers, taking 1 mortal wound in return. No other combat to be done.

I control both middle objectives and my own, for a total of 5 more.

Score is now 13-4 Seraphon, at which point my opponent concedes and shakes my hand! GG!


It was a great game and I had a great opponent, he told me he was a longtime 40k player but had recently started AoS and was loving it so far! this was only his 7th game or so. He asked a lot of questions about the rules and strategy during the game, as he's still trying to learn everything! He was satisfied with his plays and the game in general. we both recognised the game could have gone either way, especially if he had gotten that first double turn and also if his priests had not completely screwed up! (seriously, that was hard to watch, statistics man...)

Looking forward to facing him again!

 

[Nart]

Thank you for a nice report! There a couple of things to note:

1) You cannon cast two endless spells by the same Wizard in the same turn. So Slann could not cast both Vortex in Shackles t1. Not that it affected anything.

2) You do not have to plant Astrolith to have any of its effects. Since the last FAQ, description of how you plant Astrolith is gone from Bearer's warscroll. It is still mentioned in another ability, but it doesn't make any sence, since there is no description how to plant it.

Otherwise, great game. I'm glad to hear that TQ performs so good. I do have a question, however: why did you take the first turn? Are Blades fast enough to charge important targets turn 1? Surely, they could take objectives, but option to have double turn with TQ looks devastating to me. If Khorne took double turn, however, it could end up troublesome.

I'm asking because giving opponents first turn, unless they could kill slann/eotg/bsb, is a part of TQ strategy I'm thinking about.

 

[Xasto]

Thank you for a nice report! There a couple of things to note:

1) You cannon cast two endless spells by the same Wizard in the same turn. So Slann could not cast both Vortex in Shackles t1. Not that it affected anything.

2) You do not have to plant Astrolith to have any of its effects. Since the last FAQ, description of how you plant Astrolith is gone from Bearer's warscroll. It is still mentioned in another ability, but it doesn't make any sence, since there is no description how to plant it.

Otherwise, great game. I'm glad to hear that TQ performs so good. I do have a question, however: why did you take the first turn? Are Blades fast enough to charge important targets turn 1? Surely, they could take objectives, but option to have double turn with TQ looks devastating to me. If Khorne took double turn, however, it could end up troublesome.

I'm asking because giving opponents first turn, unless they could kill slann/eotg/bsb, is a part of TQ strategy I'm thinking about.

1) Yes that was a mistake on my part, I'm glad it didn't matter much in the end.

2) I mentioned that I planted the Astrolith but that is more because of the habbit. I'm aware of this whole thing regarding it's modified warscroll, and so I was still moving him in the movement phase as normal. I simply teleported him once because there was no way for him to move normally to where I needed him to be!

Regarding the first turn question, a couple things went into consideration:

1- If I let him have first turn, there was a good chance that the Bloodletters would be able to charge me indeed, with the buffs from the bloodstokers and the WoK Bloodthirster. Thats 30 bloodletters that would all have gotten into combat or pretty much all of them since they were in a big line formation, doing mortal wounds on 4's. I was looking at roughly 15 to 20 skinks dead. Battleshock wasn't concerning me, as I had a command point already from the Batallion, but losing half of my big screening unit so fast would be devastating. In my experience with TQ, Skinks are so much important for keeping your bastis from being surrounded. and keeping the enemy advance in our backline where our key supporting units are. Bloodthirster would then have much more freedom to fly over in a subsequent charge and maybe get to something important, like a starpriest or Astolith Bearer. Turns out in this game I probably made the right choice, as it meant my skinks lived longer to screen my big dinos, and I was never able to summon 20 additional skinks with the EotG, which can usually remediate the situation

2- I had the opportunity to nerf that Bloodletter bomb for the rest of the game. The Bloodsecrator Banner isn't planted yet if I go first, which means my opponent will have to decide wether he wants to take the battleshock test or use his 1 command point.

I basically wanted to make my opponent react instead of letting him act. Getting a double-turn is also harder now that the player who went first wins ties, which is something to think about when deciding, and was clearly showcased in this match!

 

[Aginor]

Nice report!
A few notes:

You might have saved your Bastiladon from the Soulsnare Shackles damage, by using LoSaT to teleport him away.

Talk about bad luck for that Basti. His own melee attack almost killing him is really unfortunate and not even very likely given his resilience. Thank the Old Ones that Wrathmongers cannot make him attack himself with his ranged weapon though.

It probably wasn't as risky as it sounds, but I would probably have summoned in reinforcements a bit earlier. Khorne has some lightly armored stuff, a Troglodon for example can do major damage there. And he has a decent chance to get that charge off in the first round if he hits with his ranged attack.

 

[Xasto]

Nice report!
A few notes:

You might have saved your Bastiladon from the Soulsnare Shackles damage, by using LoSaT to teleport him away.

Talk about bad luck for that Basti. His own melee attack almost killing him is really unfortunate and not even very likely given his resilience. Thank the Old Ones that Wrathmongers cannot make him attack himself with his ranged weapon though.

It probably wasn't as risky as it sounds, but I would probably have summoned in reinforcements a bit earlier. Khorne has some lightly armored stuff, a Troglodon for example can do major damage there. And he has a decent chance to get that charge off in the first round if he hits with his ranged attack.

Teleporting was not considered because the Bastiladon was crucial in being a model in range of the right side objective, which let me contest and eventually take control of it! Had I teleported it away, there's a round where my opponent would have scored more points and possibly killed more skinks! That's why!

And yeah, him almost killing himself was a close one, I gotta say the likeliness of it would probably not be very high usually, but here the rerolls to hit and to wound kinda worked against me!

And about summoning reinforcements earlier, that might have helped indeed, but I never felt like I was about to lose control in that game, and waiting to have enough points gave me the big punchy unit that I needed in the end to close the game. I definitely see your point though, and I love this playstyle as I must always be debating with myself wether I need more troops right now or if I can hold on for later.

 

[Aginor]

and I love this playstyle as I must always be debating with myself wether I need more troops right now or if I can hold on for later.

Yeah that is really awesome about Seraphon!

 

[DeathBringer125]

Congrats lol I’m facing a khorne player tomorrow lol unfortunately I don’t have anywhere near the cohesiveness you have for your army. Lol I’ve recently gotten into Warhammer and seraphon is my first army but it’s not complete. I have a start collecting box with oldblood on carno 28 skinks, EotG, Kroak, starpriest, and stegadon

 

[Xasto]

Congrats lol I’m facing a khorne player tomorrow lol unfortunately I don’t have anywhere near the cohesiveness you have for your army. Lol I’ve recently gotten into Warhammer and seraphon is my first army but it’s not complete. I have a start collecting box with oldblood on carno 28 skinks, EotG, Kroak, starpriest, and stegadon

Important thing is to have fun! I'd say you have a decent starter army, you just need to find what playstyle you love the most about Seraphon and expand your army in that direction!

 

[DeathBringer125]

Yeah lol. So far I’m going for summoning and making my friends angry with it lol. Lol my khorne Friend seems to think that I’m powergaming with that army and that it’s godlike. Lol I keep telling that it’s not that good but they deny it. They just need to wait until I truly have a cohesive army lol.