AoS Faction-Specific Endless Spells

I do get your point about there being enough summoning, but it feels fluffy to do so as we're all in flying pryaminds awaiting to be remembered!

I think distance damage spell would be good, there's not a lot of shooting that we have.

To agree with Canas, I'd go the other way with the EotG. Maybe a spell that could specifically pick

 

Don't know how I managed to press post without finishing. A spell that could let you pick what effect the EofG has that turn?

 

The EoTG should first just have effects that consistently fullfill the same sorta niche before we give it that. Right now the thing's a mess that doesn't really has a clear purpose… Once it has a clearer purpose that'd be a good mechanic to add to it.

 

I quite like that it's multifaceted, I think giving ourselves the choice to either do damage or spawn would be a great addition indtead of relying on the dice gods, especially the more it gets wounded.

 

Having a choice between 2 or 3 playstyles is fine. Currently it's more like he has 6 different roles he wants to fullfill at once.
- A healing platform
- A frontline powerfull melee behemoth
- Long range artillery
- Medium range AoE
- Powerfull buffing platform
- Summoning platform

That's a bit much to be put onto 1 unit and not have it work weird. For example, there's no position on the battlefield you can put it in where all of it's abilities really "work". Put it in the back so it can summon and buff easily and all the short range stuff doesn't work. Put it in the front and you might not have space to summon, plus it'l rapidly be too wounded to support. Put it just below your frontline so it's in range for support but protected but now it can't actually use it's powerfull attacks... there's no good place.

It's just rather a messy unit with no focus. Have it focus on actually fullfilling a particular niche and it'l be a much nicer unit to play with.

 

Totally agree, I played with two of them this weekend and it's really hard to decide what to do with both abilities. I started by thinking summoning was the best way to go, but then it can do so many things during the battle it's hard to get fixated with only one ability result. Now I really understand why some lists are using 4 of these guys. One for each "role" they want it to fulfill.

 

1) Is happening randomly in Siberia. Sudden holes, everything collapses into them, they’re not 100% sure what the physical process is.

2) could be called “Eruption” After you get done damaging things in a small radius, place a crater pit with a lava puddle at ground zero.

Sure you can. Use the word “Earthquake” entire table is affected: no problem.

I don’t wanna...

And yet simulating a small earthquake is doable with table top rules.

• Roll 2D6 for magnitude; discard the lowest
• Trees sway but are undamaged
• Structures sway but may be damaged
• Damaged Structures may injure figures if there are any inside
• Structures severely damaged get replaced by ruins / rubble
• Figures inside ^ such structures are killed unless they roll high enough
• Troops in the open are prevented from moving at all

 

It's doable, but I suspect that'd rapidly be increadibly broken in-game. Or reaaaaaaaaally underwhelming to make up for the fact it literally hits everything.
Might be interesting for properly massive-scale games though. A wizard using this would be kind of the equivalent of fielding titans in 40K in terms of how it compares to the power of your average footsoldier.

 

I think any Endless Spells we get shouldn't interact with conjuration. It's already powerful enough (although I don't think inherently broken, as assassinating the Slann completely destroys it as a strategy).

- Jungle Swarm that doesn't affect Seraphon keyword models (so rolling it back on us achieves nothing), if within 12" of a Bastilodon with an Ark of Sotek, the Seraphon player always has control of the Jungle Swarm.
- Avatar of Sotek (like Ravenak's Jaws, but only inflicts 1MW on models it passes over/ends within 1" of, and Skinks gain +1 to hit rolls while within 18" of it, cannot inflict wounds on Skink keyword models)
- Celestial Locus (cheap stationary Endless spell, reinforcements/conjuration/Engine summons may be placed wholly within 12" of a Celestial Locus and more than 9" from enemy models)

 

I want it to interact with it specificly so we can move some power away from the slann. Both to allow the slann to do something else & to prevent us from being hamstrung if there is no slann. Endless spells would be an excellent way of doing this as they have clear counter-play available to everyone, it avoids getting completly getting stomped by a specific counter, and it's vastly more interesting than "sit in a corner and do nothing to generate points". For clarity, this wouldn't be a (significant) buff, it'd be moving power from the current summoning mechanics so as to allow for more interesting gameplay.

That'd be neat. Imho I would love some more flexibility for the placement of the various summons. The undeath and nurgle variant are the only ones where I feel it really makes sense for the placement to be that limited.

 

How about a slann can cast a duplicate spell which you can set up a ghost slann a certain distance away. Has one wound and can be targeted for attacks etc. If your main slann is killed you can remove a 'ghost' and set up your slann there with the 1 wound remaining. All spells, effects etc can use the 'ghost' as the basepoint.

 

one wound might be a tad easy to destroy. THe idea is cool though.

 

The whole conjuration mechanic is deliberately based around Slann (which is actually also very thematic), so it can be hard countered through assassination. If conjuration is further enhanced (keeping in mind that Balewind and Cogs already make it way more powerful than I think GW intended), it will only lead to heavy nerfs to the mechanic. I actually like the simplicity of the current meta. Kill the Slann, conjuration ceases to be an issue.

Creating an astral projection is cool, but Slann are already a pain to assassinate. We have some of the cheapest chaff in the game, with an ability that lets them chump combat at will. Eternity Wardens literally double a Slann's effective wounds, and can be summoned anew if they die (18 is steep, but totally doable with Balewind and Cogs out). Incandescent Rectrices is auto-take for the same reason, it's a 3+ to respawn if your opponent runs out of damage just as they kill the Slann. So in terms of denying assassination runs, short of Nagash or Archaeon using their 'delet this' abilities, or the Sun rolling over it, your Slann will survive most things long enough to bring down 500+ points of value.

Most endless spells we've seen so far either are utility, damage dealing or wizard-enhancing/debuffing. Only Balewind, Dais and Cogs actually improve your survivability so far. We're already accused of being OP, having summonable ghost totems we can shunt damage to would be a bit absurd.

 

Ahhhhhh dammit, I love the idea of having slann surrounded by guard and ghost slanns drifting around the board. Plus it would be neat if he could give up a spell casting to swap places with one of the ghosts. OOOOOOoooohhhhhhhHHH (ghost noise)

 

I dislike hard-counters and much prefer soft-counters. Hard-counters tend to quickly devolve into situations where either you can predict who wins from the get-go as you already know your chances of winning are neglicible or results in situations where it's just a matter of whoever's first with their mechanic(e.g. assasinate before I summon you win, summon before you assinate I win). I prefer soft counters, which in this case would require spreading out the power of the mechanic a bit from the slann.

Furthermore there's a bunch of "problems" with the mechanic regardlles. It al depends on 1 model, making it basicly mandatory due to its power. The mechanic works by going against what that model should be doing and makes it just sit in a corner looking pretty. And it doesn't scale in any way shape or form with the size of the game. All of these could be mitigated to some degree by moving some of the power towards other models. Have skink priests increase the point generation, have a slann still able to cast if he's next to an EoTG, have an endless spells that interacts with it, etc. Plenty of options that leave the slann as the crux of the mechanic but that remove the current problems.

I don't want the mechanic "enhanced" I want quality of life improvements given to it. I'd gladly take a nerf to the mechanic if there were ways to support it using other models due to the sheer increase in quality of life.

I think the damage soaking component of his suggestion might be a tad much. But I'd love for projections which we could use to cast through and switch places with. It'd be a neat mechanic. Especially the casting/summoning through it as it can help circumvent some of the position restriction.

 

Yeah but they won't do that. I imagine they already discovered how dumb conjuration can get with multiple Slann during playtesting, hence the General requirement (as in Matched Play you can't choose a new one mid-battle). Same reason why Astrolith is the only other thing that generates Conjuration, it's an expensive and easily killed utility hero. It's not a 'soft counter' to have greater redundancy lol. Slann are already quite a tall order to assassinate. If they're no longer the loci, you'll just see hero spamming lists.

I disagree. Slann were never damage dealers prior to Conjuration, you never moved them around much anyway because they need to be screened and protected, and the old summoning was much weaker as a mechanic (and limited by their spell casting per turn, and subject to unbinds/failed casting rolls on top of that). In a way, Conjuration has toned down our teleport ability, because now you need it to move both the Slann and Astrolith.
It is already scaled by how expensive the combo is, at 1k you can probably only afford the Slann+Astrolith realistically, and at 2k it's still over a quarter of your list gone on utility, not damage output. Shunting Conjuration to other models would mean Slann would get dropped out in favour of hero spamming. Engines already interact with Slann just fine, making them even more auto-take isn't a good way to go IMO. Balewind+Cogs already supercharge Conjuration in ways no other Endless spell does, and I doubt our faction-specific ones will be as powerful (unless GW want to see us bust out a Dread Saurian for free Turn 2).

You're also kinda ignoring the thematic aspect to the ability. Slann are the only means by which Seraphon forces deploy (even if they're not on the battlefield physically). It doesn't make much sense for the memory-clones to also be able to conjure up reinforcements.

But you are asking for enhancements, by introducing unnecessary redundancy and power. The current Conjuration is completely balanced by the fact that when the Slann dies, the whole strategy dies with him. It will take an Astrolith rolling max points for 2 turns straight to bring down even the cheapest reinforcements. Depending on how many points you're proposing each Priest can generate, it may be that the Astrolith gets shoved out the door as well.

Spellportal already does that though (it has been nerfed into the ground admittedly, but that's its function, arcing spells). We also already have unrestricted teleport, potentially twice, which can't be stopped by any means, so positioning your Slann is pretty easy tbh (and if we're talking Conjuration, you only need to move the Astrolith where you want reinforcements to show up).
I think an Endless spell for new conjuration/summoning loci would be the least offensive option, as the enemy can always just unbind/dispel it, it can't move, and it only matters if Conjuration/summons is still a threat (not to mention that the Seraphon player has to waste a spell casting the Endless loci in the first place). Maybe some kind of Totem? I'm still annoyed Stormcast already stole the comet idea for a faction-specific, it's not like they need extra ways to generate MW bubbles.

 

I'm not saying make it so we can bring multiple relativly hard to kill slann, I'm saying spread it out over various mechanics with varying levels of counterplay. Move some of the power to an endless spell that can be unbound or dispelled, have skink heroes that are leagues easier to kill help with generating points. This way the opponent has more oppertunities for counterplay, while simultaniously making the seraphon has more redundancy. Basicly it's no longer all or nothing, but various degrees of effectiveness depending on how well both players do.

Also, can't we choose a new general now when the Original dies? Or is that rule only apllicable in one mode? The game modes are getting confusing especially seeing as noone ever really seems to play anything besides matched play with some house rules here and there.

I'm not entirely sure what you're disagreeing with here. Yes they never were the most mobile of models, but at least they were still having a direct impact on the battle with their spells. With conjuration they themselfs have close to no impact on the actual fighting for most of the game. All the other summon-mechanics either work by doing stuff the model should be doing anyway (e.g. tzeentch wizards casting spells) or are completly passive rules that you have regardless of your army list (nurgle and his corruption). Ours is the only one that requires active investment in a certain model, but then hasn't have him do much other than sit there and generate points.

That's not exactly "scaling". It's just that it comes at a fairly steep initial cost for small games. But the mechanic itself is equally effective regardless of game-size. You're going to pump out just as much models be it a 1k game or a ridiculously massive 10k game.

Depends on how it's done. It should be more than possible to make up a mechanic where the slann remains important, just not all-important.

Imho engines need a near complete rework anyway as they're a mess of a unit. This would simply be a decent way of going around it.

The skinks still help em with their various rituals. The slann might be required for the ritual but skinks helping making them more efficient would be perfectly fitting to the fluff. And given that in the one story we got for malign portents a skink actually spawned more saurus arguably them being able to do minor summoning would fit in with fluff as well.

Obviously those enhancements would come alongsides changes to the current system. E.g. if one of the new mechanics would be say "skink heroes generate 1 point whenever they succesfully do a priestly rite or cast a spell" a counterbalance might be that slanns only generate 2 points per spell sacrificed. It's really not too difficult to think of ways to at least attempt to balance it without throwing all of it on the Slann.

As for the astrolith, it has multiple buffs & is a halfway capable melee hero & generates conjuration points, if between all that we can't find a way to make it worthwhile to take one in certain lists something would be terribly wrong.

 

Maybe being back some old school models as a summoned endless spell;

-A unit of 5x old school skink horned One riders until dispelled.

-or maybe big Maz on his stegadon himself (obviously limited in power)

Or yeah a swarm would be cool

 

Meh, it's mostly that the differences are fairly arbitrary and split over 10.000 books. The sheer amount of F.A.Q.'s doesn't help either… So the stuff I don't play as much just gets confusing. I want a summary book...