Agreed. The battletome is an improvement. We lost flavor and some our uniqueness, but we are very very competitive.
we can bind enemy spells? Awesome. imho the new command ability is healthier and more fun. And fairly neutral in terms of nerf/buffs. It changes the playstyle and a msu of skinks is less usefull. But skinks as a whole are still quite good. In short, they're far sturdier. Especially if you field just 1 unit. If you field multiple units the rule of 1 gets in the way. Anyway potential buffs just from the warscrolls: - thick skin, -1 damage - starseer spell: +1 to save - Mystic shield: re-roll 1's - Astrolith: 6+ ward-save - Bind a lifeswarm and keep that next to them to constalt heal D3 wounds. This leads to a 3+ save, re-rolling 1's, 6+ wardsave, 2 wounds, -1 damage from multi-wound attacks, healing D3 wounds. That's faaaar sturdier than what we had before, and not very difficult to pull off. Also, I wouldn't be surprised if with some clever play you could further improve this.
So, our Slann generates D3 from the get go instead of 1, can generate D3 once for one spell and the Astrolith can generate D3 aswell, the goonhammer review said that the Starpriests can generate D3 aswell or do you have to choose either the Slann or the Priest? If the Starpriest can do it aswell that would mean you could gain a potential of 12 points? Either way that means you can generate points and still cast a decent amount of spells, so it's kind of a trade off isn't it? Summoning is still possible, but way harder and does not demote the Slann into a mere CCP generating battery. Still I'd wish the Slann would generate a flat 3 points instead of relying on too much dice luck but it is what it is.
Also, it annoys me Kroak's melee profile doesn't have a minimum value. It's kind of silly for him to struggle to duel an enemy hero simply because he only has 1 attack in that situation. Even if the 4+ save & 4+ ward-save should allow him to duel most opponents fairly easily since he's just far sturdier.... The biggest question seems to be if you can sacrifice multiple spells or not, cuz none of the sources seem to agree on that. Can we take a coven of slann and starseers and each sacrifice to generate points? Or are we stuck with 1 spell sacrificed total? Cuz if it's the later then summonin is utterly pointless as it's limited to 3D3 per turn which is simply too unreliable, one round of only rolling 1's and you're screwed. And lastly I'm concerned about the way AoS is going with battalions. They seem to be making those far and far less usefull lately, leading to a lot of armies only fielding only 1 battalion. Which has 2 major downsides; 1 it leads to far less unit variety as factions tend to stick to the 1 battalion that's actually good. And 2) since people rarely field multiple battalions in a single army we also get a lot less artifacts/mount traits/etc. which is just a bit weird. I'm curious why this is such a noticeable trend. You'd think GW would activly encourage you to use as many (different) battalions as possible.
Really wish we had a usable 1 drop battalion like DoT. Still very happy with the book. Losing our unique style of play is a bit bitter sweet though.
My favourite thing so far is the following combo on a skink chief on a stegadon: Coalesced: +1 jaw attacks Thunder Lizard trait: +1 mount attacks Skink Chief command ability: +1 attack characteristic for skink unit Skink priest command ability: +1 to hit Creates the following melee attack profile: 5x 2/3 -1 1 5x 2/3 -1 4 6x 2/3 -1 2 8x 2/3 -1 2 It's a lot of eggs in 1 basket but if this thing sees combat it will end or cripple pretty much whatever it comes into contact with. This new book could be really great.
So did we lose Eternal Starhost in its entirety?? I know the Saurus Guard lost the +1 save when near a hero and the ignore -1 rend. But if they lost that too then RIP
I bought 80 Saurus Warriors last week since I was excited about the coalesced, now however I think a Starborn army with skinks/terradons and salamanders will be much better unfortunately. Time will tell though :/
Knights are decent now, they have an excellent volume of attacks and with a skink starpriest they can be lethal
Ok, so I have a question about the wording of something. In a lot of the units it says something to the effect of ‘in units of 15 or more add one to the Attacks characteristic.’ Does this mean a unit of, say, 20 skinks rolls 40 dice to attack instead of 20? Am I reading that right?
The CCP are generated from a either a slanns first spell or an Oracle. So we can get 1 D3 for Slann General 1 D3 for Astrolith and 1 D3 for each slann and troglodon we use one cast for. So at maximum (if points weren't an issue) we could get 8 D3 because of 6 leader slots.
Saurus as a whole losing the ignore rend -1 is bad but I just realized it's even worse for the Sunblood, yea he has a 3+ save but he ignored rend -2! Big loss imo
Ok some units will be able to fight better now, but what is going on with the Scarvet on cold-one? 3 attacks with damage 1? Just why take this guy. I will most likely put focus on thunder lizards, that makes up for the poor saurus traits too. A carnosaur base has 3 jaws attacks for 5 damage. +1 for coalesced, +1 for thunderlizard trait, if you want you can use great drake constallation for +1 attack to all melee weapons. You are now looking at 4 dmg 3 spear attacks, 4 claw attacks and 6 bites at dmg 5. With +2 wounds and scaly skin to reduce damage, it should be a decent killing machine. Although all this is just to do as much damage as a unit ironguts, for more points and with less wounds... eh ok, but still better than before I guess! Saurus knights with +1 jaws attack is pretty good for the points, each model got 7 attacks, 8" move, 4+ save with reroll charges all for the price of a unit liberators, not bad.They do make saurus guard completely worthless though. Same wounds, same save, just knights got more move and far more damage.
It does suck a bit, but in some cases saves improved by 1 for models with shields. The major losers here are scarvets and saurus guards. I do think it is to balance out Scaly skin, but that wont save it for the starborn though.
Having a better save is better than ignoring rend but it doesn't make sense that they'd just take out all shield abilities as a whole. Like maybe projectiles have -1 to hit a shielded Saurus. Be better than just removing it. It's not creative on their part and lazy "Let's just remove it" is far worse than actually reworking it to work around abilities
well I saw the whole video and I see that the poor krox still do not fit anywhere -.- and lore's spells ... there are 1-2 good ones of rest ...
GUYS AS SOON AS YOU GET YOUR BOOKS, GET TO PLAYING Start experimenting, play, play, play, and report everything!! This community is the biggest advantage we have over the other factions. Let's find fun lists, competitive lists, strong lists, weak lists, cheap lists, expensive lists, let's give it all a go. I'm super excited for this book. We finally get o have CHOICE. Let's see how far we can take that