AoS Second Edition

If when they were first released they were not painted gold I would have probably bought a unit or two, now I can't get that out of my head.

 

That's what I remember as well. As an archer and someone interested in medieval history I have read some stuff about that period and I vaguely remember a british historian saying that it actually isn't true, they didn't regularly mutilate enemy archers in the european middle ages.

 

Ok this might be silly but I just read something and... I can't help but laugh a bit because it is too good to be true and also... simplified and probably wrong but I would like to see that happen for a change:

A guy over at TGA tells a new player that Seraphon will rule the edition and is asked why. He responds with this:

 

He has a point but I wouldn't say anything is broken just strong, I think the EoG is one of our strongest units now especially combined with a Slann

 

Not casting but our summoning power is pretty good put aside we can’t cast we sure as hell can summon

 

Yeah, I also think the person who wrote this has a somewhat distorted view on Seraphon (although I think he is right with the versatility. We are a pretty complete army).
I don't know which armies he plays or can compare Seraphon to, but especially the "shooty and tanky" bits made me think he is probably playing against a weird subset of Seraphon lists.

I mean: We have two "tanky" units IMO: Bastiladons and Saurus Guard.
If you have ever played armies like Ironjawz or Bonesplitterz and ran into an army consisting of Bastiladons and an Eternal Starhost, failing to kill a single Saurus Guard with 90+ attacks at rend-1 (and people playing against me have done exactly that) then you probably think Seraphon are a nigh unkillable army. There are people in my shop who fail to see the ubiquity of mortal wounds in certain armies so they think those two units are outright broken. Because rend-1 immune and rerolling a 2+ save is damn bad news for them then. But at the same time there are armies with such a high mortal wound output that they tear through those Guard like through paper.
Actually if you consider the 'meta' right now I guess Skinks are actually better "tanks" than Saurus Guard, since you get a lot more wounds for the same points, they work against mortal wounds about as good as against normal ones, they move faster, and they work outside of a bataillon.

Sure, the Bastiladon qualifies as tanky, even by pretty high standards. And yes he has a 20" rend-1 attack that does decent damage. But its attacks are fairly random, the range of 20" isn't exactly stellar, it is a 4+/3+ attack and he is 280 points.
...and that's probably our best ranged unit. Most of our shooting is pretty short ranged (the only one with longer range is the Stegadon and that 25" range bow rarely does a lot of damage), we don't have ranged units that shoot 30" or more, none of them has special rules to do mortal wounds, and we don't have artillery that ignores line of sight.

 

If he regularly plays against a Thunderquake I can see why he thinks we are tanky, especially if the list includes a Slann.

 

You can if you run Kroak, Slann, Bearer and EotG

 

Maybe a destruction army. Those have a hard time against us.
...but then...so do they against everyone else I guess.

 

I can't even remember the last time I lost against Ironjawz.
Their lack of shooting and the nerf of their movement ability makes them suck against most lists I played.

Granted, if my poor buddy had a bit more luck he could have won a few games I guess. I think in the past year it is 12-1 in my favour or so when he played IJs.
And I cannot imagine that am _that_ much better of a player, and I am not playing our best lists either. No Kroak (yet), no Rippers (Terradons), Thunderquake usually with Troglo+Stega+Basti instead of way better combos like EotG+Basti+Basti.
He tried mass Gore-Gruntas (almost beat me with that once), mass Ardboys, Brute-centered, Allying with Bonesplitterz, Allying with an Aleguzzler, Rogue Idol (never did a single point of damage I think), allied artillery (Everyone makes fun of those Scrap Launchers but in one game the two things killed ~20 Skinks in a single round

I hope the recent changes make his army more viable.

 

I've only played mine twice both times against my son with Maggotkin and he wiped the floor with me, they are seriously lacking but with the changes to shooting in combat I hope they are a bit stronger.