My local meta appears to lean heavily in favor of Stormcast. This means I have to face the Knight Venator. This in turn means the Venator frequently kills a hero on turn one. Maybe it's a starpriest, maybe it's a paladin, maybe it's a wizard. Either way, somebody within 42" of the Venator's starting position is getting hit with a 2+/3+ (probably rerolling 1s because synergy), dealing d6+3 wounds, before they can do anything meaningful. (and if they survived that, then probably pecked to death by the star-eagle). I don't have much success blocking line of sight because of the Venator's flying mobility. Assuming I don't want to buy a Venator myself, how does the Seraphon (or anyone really) stop the Venator from a turn-one hero kill? Can it be done? Do I just give up, get Lord Kroak, and rain comets down on the Stormcast? Do I surround heroes with a circle of bastiladons? Must cheese be fought with more cheese? Help
This is all assuming you go first, you can always use summon starlight on your most important hero via star priest, subtracts 1 from the hit roll. A long with a regular priest with the priestly trappings to reroll saves within 8 inches of him. A slann can cast 3 spells a turn and assuming I know what I'm talking about you can cast 3 mystic shields on some heroes. Deploying them in cover will also increase their save by 1 even with the flying.
I believe you forgot about something: I play both Seraphons and Stormcasts and well... Stormcasts are defenseless against magic, my advice is to use spells- Mystic shields, summoning spells etc. Summoning Bastiladon (15" spell range + 20" of shooting) could be quite effective..
Chameleon skinks or ripperdactyls with the Shadowstrike host. Are a viable option, he only has 5 wounds so if you go first you should have some options to take it out.
Yeah, with Serapon, if you go first, the Knight Venator is toast. We have lots of ways to kill him turn one: the easiest ones are chama skinks, rippers and summoning. Let's take a look at summoning: Summoning (15"), arcane vassal (15"), BSB (8"), sallies with handler (range 12"): you threaten 50". Potentially dealing 3d6 + 3d3. Other armies have other ways to deal with him (not all of them will be equally efficient, though)
Keep also in mind that you can protect yourself from kv . Surround your Slann with disposable skinks, or flank him with an Eternity Warden, or both.
This thread made me think... I believe I'll make a tutorial thread, with generic and specific tactics / deployments (for Seraphon and for generic army), to protect your key units from things like Knight Venator (or deep strike in general) and so on... Stay tuned!
Just my two cents- the Bastiladon does actually make for some amazing cover. Any of your smaller (non-floating) heroes can be safely parked behind a bastiladon that is placed sideways, making sure you can always tank that opening shot. Bonus points if its part of a thunderquake starhost so it can heal itself up afterwards. The Scar-vet on Carnosaur can also work as cover for the floating Heroes, as its shield ignores the Rend of the one-shot, and it has enough wounds to tank it. Alas, no way off the top of my head to heal it back up again afterwards, so use with caution. Looking forward to the new tactics/tutorial thread!
The problem in this, is that this kind of "cover" is costly (a 300 pts Bastiladon is more than a 260 pts Slann), a single Basti is not enough, and probably you can use more dinosaurs just with some formation (Thunderquake or Talon)... and at that point, the real target could be a key dinosaur, not the hero behind it. 'cause we're not talking only about KV's shooting, but also about Lightning Strike, and if I was the stormcast player, I would gladly try to kill the Thunderquake's EotG (crippling the formation). Not an impossible task. There are ways to protect youself, but IMO should be slightly different than "dinocover". Don't worry, I have the ideas, I just need to have a little more time...
I would say it's rather easy task- for Retributors using Lightning Strike and ESPECIALLY for Protectors with Knight-Vexillor combo. Teleported unit of 5/10 Protectors can smash a whole Thunderquake Formation.
10 retributors are a death machine, but I assure you that "only" 5 protectors won't be able to do almost nothing, if you're careful in the set-up. In the incoming thread I'll do some example with pictures.