AoS Lizardmen and summoning (lets keep discussion civil)

Played a game last night…

Summoning is OP.

I had 3x Chak'ax in the end… Even if they have ambushers, even if they have shooting… your Slaan will always be protected by these guys. If one Chak/ax fails to take a wound, use the next… and summoning is SO EASY. By only needing 5's to summon almost EVERYTHING (except monsters) I don't know why you wouldn't and until FAQ come out, there's nothing stopping you having as many duplicate heroes as you can field. It's kinda broken.

I also got two BSB which meant easier summoning. EoTG is so powerful with the slaan nearby and the Skink Priest is also really worthwhile if you take the bubble buff.

If you wanted to cheese your opponent, take two Slaan (one Kroak), BSB, Priests and Chakax and EoTG as your main force, then fill as you like. I placed one Razordon on the field and then one turn summoned three down, allowing me to shoot 6D6 shots… my opponent didn't like it and I didn't either.
Rumor has it, there will be a competitive game rule version (or addition) for tournament play coming out by GW… we'll see but right now the game is kinda broken.

 

I am predicting that we will see something like a "summon sideboard" or "reserve" slots for armies with "summon" abilities.

Like on of the two following examples:

Example 1

You have 5 reserve slots. Units in these slots can only be deployed by using a summon spell or ability
- All units count for 1
- Heroes count for 1 extra
- Monsters count for 1 extra
- Wizards count for 1 extra "


OR if army list restrictions gets introduced

Example 2

Summon is only available for units in your list that WASN'T deployed at the start of your game.
Like:
- You have Kroq-Gar in your list
- You decide not to field Kroq-Gar because you see a lot of heavy fire could take him out early.
- You play a couple of rounds, get closer to the opponent and removes a couple of the threats
- You decide that now the table is suitable for him, and then you summon him in with the Slann.

 

That untitled page from BoLS
said something like
you can only summon 1 extra copy
of a battle scroll you fielded.

 

It's not in the rules in their current form. There are no restrictions. When the unit is summoned, the opponent has one attempt at trying to unbind the spell. If it gets through, he's there for good. You can even summon another BSB into the game, and plan his standard in the same hero phase.

You need to start the game with the unit on the field. Otherwise your Slaan doesn't know the spell… So if you want Kroq-Gar, he needs to start so the Slaan knows the spell. If I am wrong, feel free to quote the rules but you don't get unit special rules (like Slaan Wizard "summon carnsaur") without the carnosaur being there to begin with. The spell comes with the unit on the field. To me, it's a way to get you to buy more models and spend lots of cash on monsters and duplicate heroes. Without substituting or converting current one, it would add up dramatically.

But even looking at Nagash… Double units summoned, +3 cast roll and 8 spells per phase… The game in its current form is broken as hell.

 

It's Nagash, though... I think every army has one of these ridiculous characters, including us. He was broken in 8th, too.

I hate to the employ the, "But it's Nagash!" defense, but...

It's Nagash! He's the best there's ever been!

Summoning could use some work, I agree. It wasn't super pivotal in the game that I played because of stuff like Rend & Damage > 1 vs. small summon unit sizes, but I can see how it would be against particular armies. That said... maybe some armies just have that as a weakness.

 

A house rule fix: the summon value on a scroll is for the first summoning, the second attempt it goes up by 1 point, third time by 2 points...and so on up to 12.

 

This is just irritating, did you even read the context of my comment?
Why would you state the actual rules, when what I said was a hypothetical prediction of possible CHANGES to those rules?

 

Because they wouldn't change the rules they only JUST released when the BRAND NEW VERSION of the rules contradicts what you just proposed they change? Any 'possible CHANGES' will come in the form of clarification of the already new 'CHANGES' made just a week ago… It's all context, right?

 

How often are we going to need to check for an update to this PDF rulebook?

 

At least as far as Chameleon Skinks are concerned, never summon them!

During deployment just use Chameleon Ambush to "deploy" as many units of Chameleons as you own "in hiding" Then, as you need them you can plop them down anywhere on the board (3" away from an enemy" with 0 chance of failure.

 

I honestly think there is something wrong here.....named characters were always supposed to be unique so I can't imaging that they would be planing for you to have more than one. Especially considering some of them are so uber powerful.

I think that by having the scroll it is included in your starting army but held in reserve, after all the rules do state....."Any remaining units are held in reserve, playing no part unless fate lends a hand.", and as currently there are no rules for reserves this would make the most sense.

I also feel that this means any units waiting to be summoned will count towards the Sudden Death rules.

 

I don't agree, because exactly that happens quite a lot mate.
Its normal for starter sets to have refined rules for quick play, and that a later release contain a more thorough rule-set with addendum and explanations of situations not covered in the "Tutorial" rules.
"Would" or "would not" is up to speculations, but precedence is in my favor non the less.

I hope we can agree that we both hope that they WILL release addendum, as it doesn't hold up in any way as it is

 

Limits the number of special character models that might get sold: one each, per player. Marketing geniuses hate that idea.

 

I had a chat with a GW staff member who said that you may summon any unit using a Slann even if the warscroll is not currently in use in the game, as he put it: "The Slann always knows the spell, its just that the spell is in the unit warscroll to keep the size of the Slann's warscroll to a reasonable size.

 

They kept jumping subject at the workshop about summoning, the customer said Slann can build on units by summoning. Then the next he says Slann can summon anything
I will just go with summon anything, just as long you have the model with you and all. Not sure about characters, multiple cloning of characters but it doesn't specify that only one can be summoned so yep. Cloning is a go.

 

I disagree with the staffer.. it simply doesn't add up. The entry would be no longer than by one sentence. If you field a Slann, his warscroll grants him only 3 spells. Without other warscrolls, how could he know those spells?

The opposite being true results in a pretty nasty implication: if my Slann doesn't need Warscrolls to gain the abilities present within others, then do my other characters or units need them to gain passive abilities? If there is an army-wide passive ability granted by a warscroll (on any warscroll in the game), do all units in the game benefit from it since, in theory, any armies could have fielded that warscroll?

About the cloning of characters, the ones on foot are pretty weedy and, aside from Tetto, Gor-rok & Oxyotl, they seem good for support roles but won't have much of an impact otherwise. I'm more worried about people summoning Salamanders, Krox and Razordons, to be honest.

The monster-mounted ones can kill the crap out of crap, yes, but they are also hard to summon. Even with Sage's Staff and a BSB (which, once again, taking Sage's Staff has the potential to hurt your entire army.. and eventually that BSB's standard will need to be uprooted), you gotta roll an 8.. doable, yes, but failing (which is likely) will hurt you.

The other thing is that our other 3 spells are really, really good. Mystic Shield and Arcane Bolt, I could cast every turn. In fact, I'd recommend casting Mystic Shield constantly. Is it worth it to cast 3 summons over them? 2 summons? One summon per turn, I could see as being viable. Two summons, maybe sometimes. But for the most part, I'm definitely casting Mystic Shield on something every turn (especially if a priest w/ Rites is around). Arcane Bolt, too, has useability every single turn.

With summons, the units are small and often easily knocked off/crippled. Summoned characters can see a quick departure, also... after all, they're just a single character. But even if the characters stick around, are they as good as a unit? A summoned unit makes great fodder, and might be great in combat, but could I cripple whatever is making that unit fodder with Arcane Bolt? If I start losing a lot of my summoned units/existing units because I failed to protect them with spells like Mystic Shield, just how many points am I giving to me enemy? That +1 save is no joke, and it'll save your tail more often than not.

Lots of thinking to do on summoning's viability, imo. As tactics evolve, I think we'll find that it's not as strong as we think it is now. Taking two Slann could be interesting, but I wonder whether it's worth it? Against Ogres, I needed every unit I had on the field active. One less unit having gone forward could have ended the game. *shrug* A whole lot to consider, here.

 

Good point about the ogres Ixt, I guess the biggest advantage is, you can let your opponent get his models out, and you can carefully let him sit over the sudden death limit, giving you amazing win conditions while summoning more units as defense, balancing the game to your favour.

Phatmotha, We can both agree on that point, but if I made a prediction and said the core rules (4 pages we have) didn't change, but clarification was given (like I said earlier) it would be in my favour (which is what I said). Do you see them changing the Hero phase? Movement phase? Or the order of phases? No. I don't think so. You will still be rolling 2D6 to cast (unless an ability says otherwise), but those core rules won't change. I hope some of them do, but as far as summoning is concerned, it's fairly black and white until further clarification is given.

What I think about the game system is my opinion, I think it's completely flawed. That doesn't change the fact that we have 4 pages of the most basic rules GW has ever made for WFB. They COULD change them. They MIGHT change them, but they probably won't since we (as you said) haven't seen what they still might bring out.

I am interested to see what 'happens a lot' in your eyes entails. Enlighten me with examples relevant to this discussion please.

 

What passive abilities are you referring to? At least in the Lizardmen pdf, the only passive abilities that don't say "this unit" or "models x inches from this unit" are the "Slanns know this Summon X spell" abilities. Even the Battalion abilities say "units from this battalion".

I guess the answer to your question is yes, all the abilities of all warscrolls are "active" even if you haven't deployed the unit. And right now the only abilities that would do anything are the summon spells.

Having each unit define its own Summon Spell allows two things to happen easily:

1) New units can be created with their own summon spells without having to modify every Slann's Warscroll
2) Every Slann Wizard warscroll does not need to have an extra rule saying... what exactly? "This model knows all Summon spells for Seraphon units and characters that have a Summon Spell"? That's weird, and it also adds another mechanic: "Unit X that has Ability Y". It seems more like GW wants to use Keywords to reference other warscrolls, in which case it's much more natural to have each Summon Spell refer to the Slann Wizard keyword, than to have the Slann Wizard warscrolls refer to a class of Abilities that certain Warscrolls might have.

bonus 3) It is trivial to create a new warscroll that gets all the Summon Spells by just adding the Slann and Wizard keywords to the warscroll.

Hypothetically a mega summoner unit could be created that has the Wizard, Slann, Death, Chaos keywords and it could summon all the summonable units (so far) in the game. That would be weird, yes. But I would expect interesting crossover/synergy units to be created in the future (just like Magic's multicolor creatures ... you might see things like a Goblin Necromancers and Skaven Zombies ... or Death Chaos Wizards!)

tldr: Yes, if a warscoll has a passive ability that just says "X can do Y. period." then it does not matter if a unit of that warcoll has been deployed, you can take advantage of that ability as long as you have deployed an X.

 

When you express it as a matter of convenience, yeah, you may be right. I see your point.

However, it doesn't change the fact that the Slann's warscroll (as well as others) are worded as granting them three spells, not "three spells 'in addition to summoning.'" To me, the "three spells" wording overrides the other warscrolls' Magic sections because the Slann's specifically states that he knows only three spells.

Eager to see how they rule this one (if the rumors of a ruling are true).

 

So you're saying that any ability can be used if the model is not on the field? Passive ability or not. You can't say that it would work for a passive ability and not for an active one...