Salamanders/handlers move 8" brevery 10 wounds 3 save 5+ stream of fire 2 14" 3/3/-2/d3+1 corrosive bite 3 1" 3/3/-1/1 Goad spears 1 2" 5/5/-/1 aim for the eyes unchanged goaded to fury removed IT BURNS! deal a mortal in addition to normal attacks on a 6 to hit
Terradons move 14" bravery 10 wounds 3 saves 5+ im combining javalins with Sunleech Bolas 1 10" 3/4/-1/1 Terradon's Beak 4 1" 4/4/-/1 unit leader gains +1 attack with bolas fly Deadly cargo same as before but not once a game Sunleech bolas unchanged swooping dive unchanged moving skyblade over to a dedicated fly hero.
Skink storm priest 160 Move 14" bravery 10 wounds 6 save 4+ Skyblade 3 1" 3/3/-1/1 Terradon's Beak 4 1" 4/4/-/1 fly star touched eye of the storm: in your hero phase roll a dice for every enemy unit within 10" if they have fly 2+ halves movement if not 5+ skyblade; reroll hit rolls against flying targets command ability born from the sky: seraphon units within 6" that can fly gain 1 to attack stat Key words: ORDER, DAEMON, CELESTIAL, SERAPHON, SKINK, TERRADON, PRIEST
Skinks: drop the celestial cohorts, it's basicly useless anyway. Give them a rule where on a natural hit of 6 there's no need for a wound roll (similar to go for their eyes of the handlers). It'd give them just enough hits to at least be a nuisance offensivly without actualy making them powerfull. Chameleons: Give them 2 wounds. Elite units shouldn't have 1 wound. Star bucklers seem a bit out of place on them. I'd change their ambush ability. Either double down on the stupid amount of movement they get with it allowing them to grab objectives and be supreme guerilla fighters. For example by allowing them to just teleport freely (maybe with a minimum distance from enemies..). Or focus more on their assasin-y side and give them the power to actually assasinate, for example with them getting a bonus to their offense when they spring an ambush. Razordons: fine Salamanders: fine Terradons: Having deadly cargo every turn is probably gonna be broken or cause them to immeadiatly get nuked. 9 Terradons flying around dropping on average 4.5D3 (so 9) mortal wounds per turn on a target are just devestating. I'd give the Bola 2 attacks, but it explodes into D3 wounds. Makes it a bit more reliable and less all or nothing. Swooping dive is a bit of an odd one to keep given that their melee is by far the weakest aspect. Also, seeing as we no longer measure to models the entire rule is kind of redundant anyway, just give them a better hit and wound roll instead. Storm priest: What's star touched? Born from the sky: specificy for which weapons (all weapons? All melee weapons? What about mounts?). Also, if you add this that one spell that causes someone to fly becomes hilarious as you can make it synergize with a flying carnosaur which is cool. Also is eye of the storm his command ability? Also, does he not have a basic prayer as a priest?
skinks i don't think cohort is useless at all it can make it so you can't miss and i plan to tweek summoning so you can bring in 20 and 30 man units just like warriors. Chameleons: they aren't eleats they are assassins who aren't known for there sturdy nature. what do you meen their ambush is a terrifying ability as is i don't know how you could make it a better movement ability. ya i should drop bucklers. terradons i should drop them down to 1 damage a rock that still makes them fairly good for cavalry. swooping dive is re-roll everything i know you don't wan't to be in melee but if they ever are or you really need to kill something they can it also meens we can take cover behind wild woods to not get shot.(curse you dricha) storm priest star touched is the 6+ shrug all skink heroes get Born from the sky ill clerify but treat it like the OBoC ability with a much shorter range and works with troops. yes it's sapose to work with anything that can fly sorry born from the sky is his command ability i screwed up the lay out eye of the storm is his inherent prayer
Cohort for skinks is "useless" cuz there's simply no real advantage to bringing a big blob of skinks beyond the arbitrary rule that a big blob of skinks randomly gets better stats. Skinks are a skirmisher unit and skirmishers benefit from being small & mobile. It's what they rely on to do their job. Taking a big blob of skinks makes them worse at their job as 1 blob of 40 is less flexible, less mobile, and more prone to things like battleshock, than 4 blobs of 10. And since there's no real reason to play in big blobs there's also no reason to add in a rule that encourages playing in big blobs. Chameleons are elite versions of regular skinks. They come in smaller squads, have fancy special rules, are fluffed to be special compared to the regular skink. This makes them an "elite" version of a battleline unit. And a squad of only 5 of these "elite" models needs multiple wounds to preven them from being far too easy to annihilate. Also, 2 wounds wouldn't suddenly make them sturdy, But it'd give them enough survivability that they won't fall over to a stiff breeze. There's other alternatives as well, for example a rule that makes them more difficult to target with harmfull effects due to their camo would be thematic. 2 wounds is just the easiest solution to the problem. As for ambush, as I said right now the chameleons combine 2 archetypes and thus aren't truly good at either. On the one hand they try to be assasins, but they don't have nearly enough damage for that. On the other hand they try to be guerilla type skirmishers that fly across the battlefield, but that comes at the rather significant cost of being absent from the battle for an entire turn each time. I'd rather see them double down on one archetype instead of trying to mix two of em. Swooping dive can't be used to hide as it says nothing about LoS, just about measuring distances, and that's been changed anyway. As such it's lost most of it's interesting applications and is just a re-roll that's basicly always there cuz there's no reason not to use it.
Then EotGs needs to get cheaper. I can't count the number of times I have summoned 20 Skinks from EtoGs. LoSaT within 16" of my target and because they had the 20 unit bonus I was able to knock off 2 or so wounds from an important unit. Also, the unit bonus makes Skinks more useful to Seraphon without having to increase their base price. No one allies in units larger than 10x. There are good reasons to bring units of 20. They are much less likely to be wiped by enemy shooting while still having a small enough footprint to make use of Wary Fighter. They are pretty tanky atm when in cover. And if you aren't ambushing them into cover or onto an objective then I would argue that you are misusing them. They are the best late game objective snipers in the entire game. I have won games at tournaments because of this unit. On Knife to the Hart, Battle for the Pass, and Scored Earth these are almost always an auto turn 1 summon for me if my Cogs go off. In late game when all units are thinned they can and do nab game winning objectives. Agreed. It should just say, "on your turn reroll all hit and wound rolls in the combat phase."
i disagree with skinks i think it's a ether or. they are our closest thing to dedicated range and this makes them do that better or you can take them in small numbers to act as skirmishers. and i quote untill your next hero phase count range and visibility as if they where on the ground.
Yep, the LoS plays can be real with the swoop. Specially if you are walking them across the table instead of using Shadowstrike.
A unit of 20 is indeed still reasonably useable as a skirmisher unit. In general I don't like horde bonusses and would rather see them go regardless. As for the EoTG, quite possibly. As for the actual damage output, with the bonus 20 skinks average 3 hits or so. Without the bonus they average 2. I'd rather see them get a little bump in damage elsewhere (like I mentioned, I like the go for the eye rule handlers have and feel a similar rule would be fitting for regular skinks). As for allies and the potential pointcost that can inflict due to other armies suddenly spamming skinks. In all honesty, if aother army influences your pointcosts cuz they keep taking you as allies that other army should probably be fixed instead of making our stuff more expensive.. My concern is mostly when mortal wounds are involved. Spells or ranged nonsense like the judicators exploding bow basicly completly bypass any semblance of survivability chameleons have. And as those effects nearly always do D3 mortal wounds they're immeadiatly devestating as well. Regular ranged firepower they usually aren't too suspectible to. Though even then 2 wounds are nice just to give a small buffer against bad-luck. Yes they're really great at stealing an objective. But I'd rather see them on the table more actually doing stuff. As opposed to spending most of their time in hiding doing nothing only to show up at the last minute to snatch an objective. I think if you want a dedicated range unit you should make a seperate one for that. We already have far too many units that try to do far too many things at once and as a consequence are mediocre at all of it. Instead of amazing at one job. mm, forgot that bit. Sure then that does work.
hord bonuses arn't going anywhere every one has them and if any of our troops should have them it's skinks i did double there range attacks. i agree it was not a argument against making them powerful just one for why they where already great maby so but until that unit exists we work with what we have.
Skinks get a significant through put to the number of wounds an emey unit has to save with the 20x & 30x unit bonus. If you increase the base damage of Skinks then other army's will spam them. They are one of the best objective holders in AoS and a big reason our army is able to play the objective game as well as it does. It seems illogical to say that if other armies start to ally our units then their army is the one which needs to be reworked. No army should be good at everything. It is also less work and rebalancing across the game to mod one unit which is a problem than it is to rebalance every army that allies it. Units need to be vulnerable to something. Every unit should have obvious and specific weaknesses. Mortal Wounds and combat damage are good counters to Chameleon Skinks. Opponents need room to make counter plays. The objectives are literally the only actual part of the game. There is nothing more powerful than taking an objective. It is why they cost 110 MPP and can't deploy from ambush until turn four if summoned. Any competent player is aware of how Chameleons work. They will remember that they are in ambush. They will have to plan the entirety of the game to either not need to hold their rear objectives or they will have to redirect resources to maintain them. Chameleon Skinks thus have a huge impact on the games they are present in.
Doesn't stop me from disliking them And as for skinks having them. I disagree. Skinks don't really form a horde unit fluff wise. They're specialists (skirmishers, animal handlers, riders on various bigger dinosaurs, ambushers). The only situation in which skinks form a "horde" unit, is when you're forced into an open field battle or siege battle and you've run out of saurus to field as battleline. At which point the only thing you have left are the skinks. I know, that was a reply to @LizardWizard 's remark that the horde bonus gives him an extra wound or 2 on a unit of 20. Well we are making up new nonsense here, so no point to keep ourselves restricted to what we currently have Imho, drop the horde bonus. Increase their base damage. Do something to stop other armies from spamming them. Sure, as long as they, on average, take say a 100 points of allies. If say an SCE army brings 400 points worth of skinks it probably indicates that the SCE have an absolute massive flaw. It's obviously fine for an army to have a certain specialisation which comes with strengths and weaknesses. And can use allies to enhance strengths, or plug gaps. But if an army consistently takes large amount of specific allies something isn't right. True, I'd just like for chameleon skinks to not get decimated by a single spell. It's not like they become super sturdy with 2 wounds and are suddenly imprevious to mortal wounds. There's also very little more boring than simply appearing out of thin air to stand on an objective after doing nothing for the entire game. We're not talking about dashing an impossibly long distance by stacking various run or charge modifiers and other nonsense so your unit can barely make it to the objective. Or a unit holding out against overwhelming odds for turn after turn and barely hang on to the objective (or conversly finally breaking through the defenders in a last desperate dash). The unit literally just stands of to the side for most of the game, only to appear at an opertune moment at which the defender (for whatever reason) can't really stop them from randomly grabbing an objective. And if that moment doesn't arrive they don't really do anything the whole game. That is horrificly boring, and quite frustrating to play against. As if you counter them effectivly they might as well not have existed, and if you counter ineffectivly (or are just unlucky and for example lose too many guys to actually be able cover all your objectives..) there's no real way of coming back. Also, before you point out that you don't find em boring/frustrating. They're a perfect unit for powerplayers/competitive players/whatever you want to call this type of player. so the people who (largly...) play for the thrill of competition focused on winning the game (as opposed to say, creating a cool narative with heroes and villians, or just mucking about with silly but thematic armies or whatever other way you can think of to play the game. And for clarity people rarely are exclussivly one type of player. Usually it's a mix and all of em are ultimatly valid ways of playing). It's an impactfull unit. It's novel & unique. And it involves "clever"* psychological play. The facts that for 90% of the game it does nothing besides simply existing, that it's fairly underwhelming in every other aspect and thus only really usefull for this 1 strategy, that it's a supremely game-y unit (it's purely how its rule interacts with objectives, nothing more that gives it is strength, it's not even that it's a good ambusher) and that it's fairly black and white in terms of how effectivly it ends up being is less important for those type of players. So yeah, if you value those first attributes more I can imagine you like em. And if you do, more power to you. Just not something I like * how clever exactly is up for debate, but it's how this type of mechanics are generally defended by these type of players on account of it being mostly a psychological tool that can be used to bluff with and not just a matter of "I have better stats so I win" Also I should really start cutting these posts up into multiples to catch up to @NIGHTBRINGER (also, welcome into an AoS thread, we're gonna drag you in somehow )
except for the war of the serpent and the first demon incursion and the second demon incursion and the first war of clan pestilence the old world lore was cramed full of times when thousands of skinks went to war. i have yet to make up anything that doesn't have a model all of the things hear can be taken to the table and played if i was just making stuff up i would go about this differently but this is fixing seraphon not making a new one
That's the old world, not current AoS. And even then Skinks forming an army of their own where they had to fullfill non-specialist functions was a last resort, often caused by other better fighters being unavailable, already defeated, or in the case of the battles with pestilence it being a pure skink faction that basicly led the entire thing due to religious/prophecy based nonsense. Also, whenever skinks were forced to actually fight a campaign like this, and not just be emergency cannonfodder to pluck a gap in the saurus lines for 1 battle, they'd develope proper tactics and proper battleline units like the redcrested skinks. Instead of just being an unorganised horde that crushes the enemy under weight of number but is otherwise utterly ineffective. Also which one is the war of the serpent? I can't find anything about that online. On a sidenote, give us redcrested skinks, they're quite cool. That still doesn't mean you have to stick with what currently exist. Your storm priest may be an existing model, but a completly new unit. Overhauling an existing unit and throwing out (nearly) all it's current rules only keeping the sculpts is still making up something entirely new.
On the topic of skinks taking up combat roles apart from skirmishing and animal handling, why not introduce a separate warscroll for skink cohorts (be they red-crested or not) that can be taken as battleline in a SERAPHON army if the general has the SKINK keyword? This may be fueled by my desire to run an all-skink list à la pre-End Times Southlands at some point, so bear that in mind. Armament-wise, give them the choice between meteoric bows, hand weapons with bucklers, and maybe two-handed weapons, and the ability to take both musicians and standard bearers. To further delineate between them, saurus warriors, and skink skirmishers, it might then be advisable to remove the horde bonuses from the skirmishers and give them to the cohort with some modifications since, as stated before, skirmishers at most benefit from being small to mid-sized units.
@Canas it kinda feels like you have specific units that you want to be strong in the way in which you want to wield them and will just make up any reason why it should be that way. Like, the fluff argument for Skinks has no rooting on AoS or Fantasy. There is no part in the Seraphon book that says the majority fighting force of Seraphon is Saurus. You also only seem to consider a unit as doing something if it kills an other enemy unit. Even with Summoning your argument seems to be that if our units were good in the first place then we wouldn't need to summon. Like, it feels as thought you dislike things that are utility units and only want things to be good if they are killing. Maybe I am way off base. Wouldn't it be boring if all our units were just another version of how to best kill enemy units. I do agree that more than just Razordons and Ripperdactyls need to be good at killing things. But Skinks and Chemeleon Skink do exactly what they are suppose to do by design. Sure, everything in our book would be better if it harder, hit more, rended more, had a better save, and more wounds.
every thing our army does is old world just memorys of what was it has more effect on our army then any one else. so the only time it happened was all the time? yaaaaa fun that. quote (Instead of just being an unorganised horde that crushes the enemy under weight of number) unquote poor choise of words there. the war of the serpent is what my lexicon calls Tehenhauins crusade the storm priest is just the old master of the skies updated to work with AoS rules and the priest keyword nothing new there.