AoS The new Battletome: A Discussion

I mean it is pretty common that a new tome changes things up and some people lost things they deeply loved and dont like direction the new tome is going. It sucks, but thats how it goes.

The old Astrolith and especially the old Thunderquake were tiresome imo. and felt like a band-aid fix to a broken army. It was annoying having to roll 5 times to determine damage for Razordons and Bastiladons. I'm surprised they kept the 2D6 for Razordons but oh well. The new Bastiladon is different to the old - It lost the MW save and ethereal, but gained a significantly better save at max health and now you can go Coalesced and get -1 damage, that's pretty big. The damage from the new Bastiladon is pretty close to what you got from the old Bastiladon with rerolls to hit and wound, and in Thunder Lizard with shoot twice it is significantly better. It is also somewhat more reliable now with flat 9 attacks at full health and +hit buffs. It really sucked to teleport a Bastiladon and then roll double 1s for the amount of attacks.

Loads of stuff is viable now. You just have to open up and embrace the new playstyles.

 

RAW as is you can only roll once on the EOTG chart regardless of how many models you have, so there is no point in bringing more than 1. I personally dont think the EOTG is that great, but the aoe healing seems decent for sustain if you field a couple of bigger dinos, unless they just get sweeped in one round of combat.

 

the rule for endless spells states something about only being able to bring 1 model of a given spell and both the bound and regular spell use the same model. So no you can't bring both.

 

oh right, yeah - they fucked the bastiladon too

 

Wait, an EOTG can only roll once?
it's an ability right? abilities -unlike spells- can be cast multiple times (not by the same model)

 

ah and of course games workshop puts this in the most awkward wording possible and NOT UNDER THE SPECIAL RULES TAB WHERE IT BELONGS so I missed that part - roflmao seraphon got nerfbatted to the stoneage, I'll just run 3 sets of skinks, 2 slann, a skink priest or 2, and as many salamanders as I can -

text edited by a Mod. Plese tone down the language.

 

We lost pretty much everything and got mainly shit spellslinging in return - nobody is ever going to run a saurus/carnosaur army anymore, ever.

whoooooo a double cast on a decent unit, yeah it's not terrible, but it's not exactly good either
oh some extra wounds or taking less damage? yeah but that means you pick coalesced, which means you can't have any of the other abilities that you might want.

Liked your army? liked your playstyle? pick a different faction and pawn off your models, you need to switch to some daemon shit now

 

sorry - I'm fekin salty over my favourite faction being... well... turned into something it isn't.
I don't wanna fling spells, I want to summon and run dinos around - and Seraphon doesn't do that anymore

If I liked magic plays, I'd be playing something with Nagash

 

i play saurus and they got better. they are a soled option now.
i don't think you understand how this game works you keep saying things are terable when they aren't

 

Saurus is perfectly fine. Saurus Warriors can get quite beefy with all the Oldblood command abilities etc. Saurus Knights is a thing too especially in Firelance.

That is fine and understandable, but this isnt 4chan or twitch chat.

 

I think it’s pretty recognized that our power level has increased overall from one time to the next. We have more than 2 viable builds. I don’t think we will take top spot at many large tournaments, but now we have enough units and strategies that can be effective that, for most players, open up different play styles.

That said, I can understand the frustration of certain players who were expecting something from Seraphon (namely summoning and mass teleporting). It’s a fairly massive paradigm shift, arguably the biggest change of 2.0 battletomes. It would be similar to them releasing the new Stormcast tome and making them a horde army.

I think it’s fair to say most Seraphon players have a few regrets over aspects of the new book. I wish our dinosaurs were much stronger on the warscroll (and not as big of a disparity between coalesced and starborne). But I will make do.

These days make me realize that there are worse things in the world than not having an OP battletome with untouchable dinosaurs that zip around with impunity.

 

Nothing should be OP, actually. It is bad both for players, who play with the army and for players, who play against it (unless they are tournaments players, who cares only for effectiveness, which is ok, or WAAC players, which is not ok).

The battletome is really good after all and decently balanced both internally and externally.

 

I agree. Now they just need to nerf some OBR, DoT, and a few other super broken battletomes, and we’ll be just fine!

 

I love the variety... when you set up on the table the opponent planned for Thunderquake or Starstrike.... now they have to gear for Coalesced or Starbound.... ummmm.... ok so maybe we will have a different mix of models but, strategically, we really didn't change ... except skinks got nerfed and saurus units got slightly better... oh... we got bound spells, better spells in exchange for crippled summoning.... and our battalions abilities were split in half but still cost the same points. We will need a large FAQ to clan up some sloppy wording and the cost of all of our battalions need to drop 20-40 points.

We are in an OK spot right now...just not OP like many of us hoped... I suspect GW wanted to curb the power creep that has been infiltrating the army books (especially looking at the last 4 army books) and they started with us.

For a fun weekend army there is nothing cooler than a colorful space lizard army
Competitively, we moved from a bottom tier 2 army to a middle tier 2 army. We will most likely average 3-2 and a top player will have a crack at 4-1... neither will make the final round with any regularity.

That said, I play for fun more than glory so I don't have near the angst that some of the more serious players have. I still want to play with a salamander/razordon heavy army in both starborn and coalesced flavors... it will be fun to experiment with this book. We have so many different combinations and synergies that have yet to be explored. I want to encourage everyone to keep playing around with combinations and hopefully we can find a few advantages that we can leverage against some of the OP armies out there.

 

I confess, I'm a little mixed on the battletome. I also miss a few of the previous abilities and tactics. But I didn't care for skink spam, and I'm glad that saurus got a little better. So, I'm trying to move forward too. I guess, since my group doesn't play much, it's all just theoretical for me anyway, ha ha.

I do wish we weren't such a command point hungry army. A few more abilities just working within range of certain heroes would be nice. Don't some other armies have that?

 

I hear you. A lot of our mandatory heroes are super squishy to boot.

We have a bunch of units that do well on their own without significant buffing required. Terradons+Chief, Salamanders, Kroxigors to some extent, Slann/Kroak (arguable; whole good, he does SO much better with Astrolith bearer and a Balewind).

Was it too much to ask for ONE monster that fell in this category? Like make the Oldblood on Carno a beast, and keep the Scarvet as is. Bump his points by 100 but give him 16 wounds, better to hit, more attacks, a save aura or some sort, *anything*... right now they are basically the same unit with almost negligible differences between them.

I dunno. I will have fun with this battletome but I still feel there were lots of missed opportunities.

 

Koatls claw literally is one of the better things to run due to the buffs the saurus have especially since coalesed gimps d3 damage dealers.
Fuck I dont even run formations right now that I got buffed. I run 3 of myself a few skinks and a starpriest. Most of the time I railroad through everyone unless my gf is running an extra shooty skaven army