AoS Summoning in 40K

Warhammer Community published an article today on how points are going to work in 40k 8th edition and specifically had this passage:

So if anyone was holding out hopes that GHB2 might change how summoning works I think this just crushed it.

 

Whats wrong with it im AoS?

I think it works fine for us but armies like death need their own special rules - reanimate rather than summon. Which they have but could be slightly improved.

 

Yeah, I think the summoning in AOS is fine. Certain factions deserve some tweaking or special rules as @Mark Sinosich said.

 

Oh my bad. It's likely I'm confusing discussions on TGA with here or old discussions from last year.

 

Don't get me wrong, the rule is far from perfect. If you roll a lucky spell cast you can often double the amount of models you summon in... but not if you don't have the points set aside for that many!

 

The issue with summoning is mostly just that stuff was initially "balanced" around the notion of being able to summon whatever, whenever. Then they introduced the point-cost and it effectivly became a glorified thunderstrike. In AoS the summoning would need one of the following:

• Keep it a glorified thunderstrike, but significantly up the range & reduce the limitations (e.g. allow a summong within 6" so you can reliably charge) so that instead of a glorified thunderstrike it becomes a better thunderstrike but with more risk (summoner might get killed prematurly)
• Tweak armies like the seraphon (or units like the slann) for whom summoning was supposed to be a major mechanic, give them another major mechanic in return.
• Give a free point reserve, say 10-20% of your total points, or reduce costs of summoned units, say they cost 50% of their normal cost. Or a way to generate points during the game (e.g. cast "generate reinforcementpoints"). With the current system the cost is just extremely high. Especially stuff like tzeentch horrors are hilariously expensive if you want to truly make use of their summoning.
• Give units that specificly benefit from being summoned. Give me a unit that can Always charge 12"when summoned or something, or gets +1 to all its rolls that turns. Just something that makes it more than a glorified thunderstrike that can be stopped prematurely.

Currently everything that really relies on summoning is just "meh". They're not necesarly bad, but they're not really worth it in most cases.

 

I do agree that summoning needs some tweeking. I feel if nothing else the Seraphon really lost some of their flavor when summoning was nerfed, making our main mechanic something I could almost never use in a "fun" way in the small 1000pt games I was forced to play.

I guess I just miss the feeling of an endless horde of space deamon lizards

 

I'm holding out hope that we get Priest abilities like the Stormcast, Tzeentch, and Khorne books did. That'd be a major mechanic for us considering how many of our models are priests!

 

Give every unit in the Seraphon army this rule.

Celestial Memories- The Seraphon are celestial beings, memories of a long dead race brought back to life by the powers of the Slann. For as long as the Slann is alive, he will continue to summon the Seraphon to aid him in battle. If this Seraphon unit would be destroyed, and at least 1 friendly Slann remains in play, roll 2D6 and compare the roll to the summon value on this unit's warscroll. If the total of the roll equals or exceeds the summon value on this unit's Warscroll, remove this unit from the table, then summon this unit within 8 inches of the Slann. It is summoned as a new unit. This unit still counts as being killed for the purposes of objectives and victory points.

It would be balanced by pricing. The carnos and dread saurians would need 10+ to resummon, but you could still do it. Cheaper units like skinks and saurus warriors would be easier to resummon, letting you keep that feeling of an endless tide.

 

That'd be a massive improvement over what we have now. And it'd work especialyl well for the stuff like tzeentch horrors that are specificly designed to keep spawning more and more as they get killed. Similarly this is fine for other summons that work under specific conditions such as the magister bolt of change creating chaos spawn. The unreliable nature of it should more than balance things out. Take the horrors, if even only 1/3th of the horrors doesn't spawn it'd already be such a reduction in free reinforcements.

For the seraphon as a whole it might be too much though, having your carnosaur respawn several times in a row might be a bit problematic. And with our constallations & astrolith bearer we could reliably respawn considerably amounts of stuff.

Also, this form of summoning is briljant for the never-ending tide feeling of summoning, but much less fit for summoning specialized troops to support (e.g. summoning a unit of razordons in the path of a charging horde of daemons.

I think I shall see if I can incorperate this in my magic rules.

 

Well it wouldn't be a summon spell it would be an ability so things like the bearer would not affect it but other things like the starseer which require points to invest into would. So that would balance that part out as well. So you could bring back carnos but it would be a lot of setup and a lot of work to do so. And you would need to roll really high on natural 2d6.

 

It's a 10+ that's eh, 6 out of 36, so 1 out of 6 chance that it works. Meh, could work potentialy, especially if you disconnect it from being a spell. To be honest I wouldn't even mind it being influenced by spell mechanics. Make it sort of an automatically cast spell that could be unbound. Would also introduce some extra complexity to magic as a whole (do I use my unbind now to stop the spell, or do I use it to stop the carnosaur from respawning).

I still think it wouldn't solve the entirety of summoning, but it'd at least be a vastly more interesting mechanic.

Edit: added a variant of it to my magic rules.