Much has been written and said since the release of the Knight Vexilor with the Pennant of the Stormbringer and his ability to teleport units of Stromcast around the battlefield. I have heard people say it is ‘broken’, that using it requires no skill and that it is impossible to defend against. The point of this article is to dispute these claims and to explain how to play against it and other Stormcast Units teleporting units effectively – I plan to do a different article on other teleporting races in the future.
The first thing is to know the rules – the most common mechanism for teleporting is of course the Knight Vexilors banner and the most typically (although far from the optimum in my opinion) teleported unit is a unit of 10 Retributors with 4 Star Soul Maces. The banner allows this unit to be picked up and placed anywhere on the board with the only caveat being that each model in the teleported unit is more than 3″ from any enemy models. Any unit within 6″ of any model for the teleported unit once it has been placed in its new location on the table takes D3 mortal wounds on a 4+.
Sounds simple enough doesn’t it – but remember that Retributors are on 40mm bases and there are 10 of them these means that they take up a lot of space – just look at the diagrams below for some idea of exactly how much this is.
As you can see you need a large gap to land those troops and given that Retributors only have a 1″ reach and are on a 40mm base this means they cannot strike through each other so some of these formations are far from optimal.
The Stormcast player is usually trying to teleport their Retributors into a spot where they can destroy a key piece or unit given that if all models strike they do an average of 12 mortal wounds and a further 4 rend 1 damage 2 hits which is enough to kill or maim most monsters or heroes on monsters. The Stormcast player will usually be expecting to loose the Retributors as a result of this but the trade is one they are choosing to make and will be to their (at least perceived) advantage.
Now you have to accept that unless you can manage to kill the Knight Vexilor before the Stormcast player gets to pull this trick that it is going to happen. What you do have control over is where they can land and what targets will be available to them when they do land.
The 10 man Retributor unit described above in conjunction with the Knight Vexilort costs 28 pools (28% of the total army) and as such if you can neuter it with less point choices then you are already ahead in the game and have probably thrown a sizeable wrench into your opponents plans.
Let’s consider a scenario of a Serpahon player versus this threat. Usually the most important parts of the Sepahon players list are the Slann and the Saurus Guard – these are both viable targets for the Retributors who should kill the Slann or severely damage the Saurus Guard if given free reign as to when and where they teleport in. To counter this threat a ring of cheap units such as four units of 10 skinks can form an outer ring around these high value targets.
The trick is to place them about 6″ away from the things you are trying to protect – this makes it impossible for the Retibutors to land between them and the thing they are trying to protect. Long thin lines are what you usually see and four units of skinks cost 16 points, have missile weapons and are capable of capturing objectives so are by no means an awful choice.
You have to remember three important things though to get the defence right – firstly that the teleporting unit can cause d3 mortal wounds – assume that this will happen and that you will take three wounds – I have played many people that forgot or ignored this and it was the undoing of their defence. In the example above I would have the skinks then wide in base to base contact in a long line. This means that if you take casualties you can remove alternate models from the line and remain in coherency.
The second thing to remember is that the Retributors have a potential 12″ charge move – during this move they can come as close to your units as they like – the only restriction being that one Retributor must end up within 1/2″ of one of your units. Assume that they wil roll a 12 for their charge range – this means that the gaps between your units of skinks must be less than 40mm otherwise they will be able to sneak through.
The third thing is to remember that the Stormcast player gets a shooting phase before the charge phase happens. Many times I have caught my opponent out by destroying blocking units with my Judicators thereby allowing my teleporting unit to charge whatever I want to. To counter this assume that you will loose one entire blocking unit. If you see your opponent has Judicators then deploy two units of 10 Saurus as an inner protective ring. This still means you are points up (26 vs at least 36) and have another 2 scoring units on the table. In terms of deployment the skinks now form an outer ring about 8″ from the high value targets and the Saurus on their bigger bases form an inner circle with the back of their bases 3″ from the high value targets.
This creates a ring of protection that no sane Stromcast player will ever drop their Retributors into and at a cost of less than the Stormcast player has spent to be able to pull this trick. Hopefully this has helped to dispel the myth that the teleporting Retributors are broken and unplayable against – I know that I used Serpahon as an example but you can do the same with most any other faction – if you are struggling just drop a comment and I will suggest what units to use to counter from what you have available.
Next time I will talk about countering the Skyborne Slayers and the Thuderstrike Brotherhood formations.