What? What does any of this have to do with what I just said? My points where the following: 1) The lumineth combine light-symbolism (fast, fluid, radiant) with eart/mountain symbolism (strong, solid, immobile, usually associated with "dark"). That is a seemingly contradictionairy and weird combo. 2) Several of their shiny new rules would fit very well thematicly & mechanicly with already existing factions 3) Some of these are noticeably better variants of what these existing factions can do (e.g. being the sacrosant chamber on steroids) or fullfill a function that would help out that faction massivly (e.g. shining company would be an absolutly amazing for us, both thematicly & mechanicly, tectonic force fits amazingly with ogers thematicly & would be a great aditional tool in their kit for objective grabbing in addition to might makes right given their low model count) 4) Several of these existing factions recently got an update, making it feel like several cool ideas originally made for those factions have been purposely kept back to be put in this faction for some reason. 5) A good chunk of it also seems to be on the overpowered side at first glance, as so far they're fast, hit hard & are sturdy with supposedly decent baselines & nice synergies. Which begs the question, what exactly is supposed to be the weakness in their playstyle? What does any of that have to do with our tome being viable or not? I'm just saying that there's stuff in their previews that seems like it belongs, thematicly and mechanicly, to other factions (including, but not limited to, seraphon) and that it seems worrisomly overpowered, at the very least at first glance (unlike say, the ogre, fyreslayer or our reveals)
Hi @Grotpunter. I don't totally disagree. I think the Lumineth sound pretty cool, too. It does seem powerful at early reading, but admittedly, those were my thoughts of OBR. My stance isn't that we don't have a decent battletome, nor to specifically say that this feature is stronger than one of our current ones. But, since we were one of the later factions to get an update, I guess I was expecting a bit more "retooling". Mostly, that's just my opinion about flavor/lore leading to interesting rules. For example, "Sunmetal Weapons" feels like an interesting take on what Celestite Weapons could have been. "Shining Companies" or "Enduring as a Rock" seems like interesting features that could have belonged to Saurus Guard or maybe even Stardrake Shields. I think there might have been others from an earlier tease, that made me feel the same, but it's not important. The "every unit is a wizard" while I am ticked off about it, may not be as earth shattering as I feel. But it still plays directly against one of our strengths, as it becomes easier for Lumineth to get a wizard within unbind range. It affects other casting armies, so I know it's not only us. But we JUST got our battletome... too soon GW, too soon. In the end, all I'm really grousing about are pluses/minuses to hit or bonuses to defend that are skinned a certain way. I don't disagree that the Seraphon battletome GW gave us is good. Initially, I think some of our features/rules seemed a little flat, or repetitive, or not polished, and Lumineth's features seem more interesting. I complain about it b/c I like Seraphon, but I understand GW putting more emphasis into a new faction.
It’s all about the $$$ sign... if you put some super fancy stuff in a already existing faction you’ll sell a few more models sure... if on the other hand create a new faction and give it a bunch of new tricks yes you do have to create said new model $$$$ for the mold but in return make up most of that $$$$ in the first week if not first hours hehehe.... I mean yes it would of been nice to get a new cold one ( and frankly wouldn’t be that hard just keep the current rider?!? The cold one are on a separate sprue anyway) and perhaps new salamander/razordon box with a bunch of handlers something similar to the SCE vanguard-raptors except have 9 skinks instead of 3 bird, would be like a mini carno/Troglodon kit. Perhaps a new character/hero.... I suppose there the rider chiefs and the steg chief but nothing new really other then the RSE.... Anyway as sick as they look so far I got a great pile to go trough before event thinking about a new army. Let’s see the warscroll GW
Indeed. What gets me the most are the trend-chasers who you can always count on jumping on the bandwagon for whatever shiny new release comes this way. You can bet dollars for donuts that their hype will only last until the next big release.
A friend of mine made a similar remark with regards to 40k, specifically with how "Loyal 32" soup is no longer the means of farming command points. All in all, not a bad time to start collecting Guard. The second-hand models likely come unpainted too.
Too bad I have enough Guardsmen for 3 brigades and then some. I've got Cadian, Catachan, and a custom regiment of Old Cadians and some out of print models from a game no one played (I believe I have the largest collection of the latter at 60+ models ).
Multiple of your points are feelings or random guesses, and thats what I mean. You really dont know anything yet from the release. They have made it clear the Aelves are somehow attuned to the Earth, so it isnt strange at all to me. There is obviously lore, which we havent seen yet, that explains it all. There is also the whole Hashnut theory. You have seen zero statlines (from what I recall) beyond Light of Eltharion. None of the rules are oppressive like fight first/last/multiple times/unit moves 3 times out of sequence/fights out of sequence/returns to life on Death etc etc. The closest thing is picking 2 units to activate at a time, but that doesnt seem to be baseline for everything/permament feature. Shining Comany seems like an awful rule. You have to worry so much about how you position them and you lose the ability when they move or lose too many models. Stabbas are just better in every regard. My point about our book is because multiple posts here make it sound like people feel cheated, as if Seraphon is lacking cool features in the new book, which just isnt true. We have so much cool shit, but people seem quick to forget and just move onto the next new thing. I will be blunt and state a non-popular opinion here, because it has been bugging me for a while. Im rather new on this forum compared to many of you, but I try to contribute to people wanting to improve or discuss the tome as much as possible in a positive way. I joined this Forum because I expected a certain quality of posts instead of what facebook has to offer, and Seraphon subforum on GTA is literally dead. Instead it seems the negativity train/“shit posting” here is really no different than the facebook fan groups. The constant slandering of GW ruining the game, constantly making the next thing OP, making lazy and bad rules when everyone has obvious and so-so easy and non-impactful fixes is just a little tiresome to read. I expected more of many old posters, but I guess some people are just negative by nature. I sometimes wonder if people even play the game or just come here out of habit and talk random things. Anyways, I shouldnt have joined the discussion in the first place since it is clearly just an echo chamber of negativity.
we have seen quite a bit more then that we have seen the mountain guards defensive abilities teklisis magic tom foolery and his 18" 5+ after save and a few of their spells it's not every thing but it is a lot to work with. we may not know every thing but we can make educated guesses based on GWS past performance are we bad no do we have problems? oh my yes i beleave i saw you raging on the realm shaper with the rest of us and more recently star priests lack of use and the lack of equity between salamanders and everything else. so the negativity while overblown is not unwarranted we just havent had much to do due to the state of the world and things have been left to fester please refrain from attacks on character. disagreements will happen and the negativity is not unwarranted just common. GW does deserve scorn for many reasons(constant unbalanced armies clear favoritism and bad monetary practices to name a few) even if some of us (at times my self included) go to far. this was unnecessary if you disagree fine but again pleases refrain from labeling disagreement as bad motives.
Yes but we still havent seen the actual stats of any units beside Eltharion. If they all have 1 wound, bad saves, low amount of attacks etc. etc. then the snippets of rules you have seen dont really matter. Many of them could be constricted to subfactions just like our abilities. The whole "the sky is falling" when you only see a couple of snippets is kinda silly. We need the bigger picture before you can make claims like "damn powercreep GW!!!". If you were presented with Scaly Skin but no statlines either, you would right away imagine it being incredible OP since it shaves many armies' damage output in half. I think we all were a little disappointed that we literally got no new models and the only new thing we received was and is a little lackluster. That was the initial reaction we all had. Following that we have been trying hard to make the best of the RSE in various threads dedicated on how to place it, tactics around it etc. The RSE is such a tiny and not very impactful part of our tome. If that is your arguement it is a little silly. The tome is amazing. Skinks are great, casters are great, Saurus are very viable - Even Knights are amazing. Terradons can be used, Kroxigors can be used. Even Rippers arent borderline terrible. Are Salamanders a little too good? Yeah, but we are NOWHERE near where the vast majority of tomes only got 1 viable armylist. Im really not sure what else you need or demand from the tome? The fact of the matter is that 99% of us arent even playing top notch players like GT-competitors, so if Salamanders are a little too good over your desired X unit, it honestly doesnt matter. Sometimes it feels like old Seraphon players expected, wished and almost demanded new Seraphon to be absurdly broken just because the old tome had been bad for many years. Thats just not how things work. I commented on the value of Skink Priests and Skink Starpriests because someone claimed that both were a must-take in every list. I challenged that claim because I dont believe it is true. I build many lists where they are included, but I also build many lists where they arent. That isnt negativity in the slightest, that is just talking about facts and contributing to the discussion. Im not directly attacking anyone at all, but I dont think it is absurd to expect a higher standard of posts on a private forum dedicated to one specific army, over say a facebook fan group that anyone and their mom joins. It takes a certain dedication to find and join this forum, so you should be able to expect/demand some kind of better quality and passion in said posts. It is fine if it is warranted, but often it is not and the supposedly easy fixes people suggest are just not thought-through. If the game (and GW) is so bad, why even bother with it? More below. Im not saying that Im right, but especially this thread has become an echo chamber. Nobody stops up for a moment and questions anything. Almost every poster just piles on the negativity and we go further and further down the rabbit hole. I feel like if GW made an article with nothing but "Lumineth" in the heading, people would still complain because the name sounds better than Seraphon, or whatever. I understand the need to vent. Hell, my previous post kind of was because Im already fed up of reading certain inviduals' posts because it feels like 9/10 they are pure negativity with zero constructive input. I dont think it is absurd to expect people to come here, read discussions and maybe contribute to make us all better players. Isnt that somewhat the goal?
Making aelves attuned to the earth is fine. Making aelves attuned to the light is fine. Making aelves attuned to both is thematicly weird & confusing and thus not fine as they're (usually) conflicting themes and symbolism. Don't get me wrong, they might be able to pull it off. But the initial reaction to such a mismatch will always be a bit hesitant and so far they haven't really given a good explenation of how these two are thematicly connected. Things that look on the overpowered side: - fighting 2 units at a time. - The leaked spells in that battlereport (there was some seriously amazing stuff in there) - 1 of their units taking on like 4 different chaos units on their own with barely any losses in that same report - Teclis having guaranteed casts (again, see report). - Mortal wounds on a 6+/5+ on every. single. battleline unit (and so far, also on every non-battleline we've seen). For clarity, the issue here would be that it seems to be on every single unit. If it were limited to 1-2 units it'd be nothing special. - There's a weirdly high amount of powerfull defensive stuff (eltharion only suffering half damage, shining company, enduring as a rock, teclis' wardsave bubble, hammer-dudes specificly being sold as sturdy, endless spell that gives a +1 to save and a -1 to hit) Things that've been shown that look weak: - nothing really Things that've been shown that look normal-ish: - the rest that's been shown so far. The issue isn't that it's necesarly overpowered or anything, it's about it being a rule that thematicly fits increadibly well with other factions as well. So it ends up turning some eyes. In all honesty, we don't have much particularly cool rules. We have decently effective rules. But we don't seem to have much cool thematic rules like shining company, might makes right, trampling charge, deprevity points etc. Our models tie together great thematicly, everything is an aztec dinosaur riding another dinosaur. Imho they should've gone all in on either starborne or coalesced, instead of this weird halfway point where starborne units don't do much with their star-based identity & coalsced don't really get to be savage due to the need of balancing both, very different, subfactions based on the same core. The effectiveness of rules is mostly fine, with a few noticeable flaws. But thematicly it's messier than our old tome which at least went all in on the whole "magic space lizards that teleport down from the skies". The current book is decently effective, but relativly boring & only loosely connected to most of our themes, with some random savagery here and a reference to stars there, but never really commiting one way or another. And that's why it's called speculation. Also, I'd blame that on GW, they tend to focus on the advantages a new faction has, completly leaving out any potential drawbacks to build up hype. And if those advantages then don't come with obvious disadvantages this is a fairly natural reaction. They should do more to show the weaknesses of a new release as well. They don't even need to focus on it, but simply adding in sentences like "They're fast, but very squisy with only a 5+ save" is already more than enough. Stuff that allows us to field thematic & fun lists which are at least semi-viable. Stegaggedon is a great example of a fun thematic list, but the lack of a "might makes right" rule makes it completly unviable. Similarly it's impossible to make a guard based list. A list based around our flyers, especially with rippers, as a core doesn't really work. On the other hand, salamander spam might be effective, but it isn't exactly thematic. And then we have some odd lists like a "summoning" list where most of the heavy lifting is done by comet call and endless spells and the actual summoning seems more of an afterthought that's only relevant to get some skinks onto the objectives you just nuked with comets. The only ones that do decently thematicly are skink & saurus warrior/knight lists, though those lists don't do a whole lot with them being magic space dinosaurs and focus more on it just being a skirmisher or cavalry based list.
Look I'm just gonna personally say this. Seraphon has the highest potential for memes and dreams out of all the factions. How many factions do you know that can just ignore specialized formations/constellations/squads/battlelines in exchange for some outrageous memeworthy build that can really fuck up a whole lot of top tier armies? Sure dont get me wrong id love to see an all dragon ogre stack or a obnoxious amount of magmadroths without any real reason. Fuck man I would kill to face a troggoth army out here. But realistically our scalyboiz and scalygalz are legendary in their creativity of memestacks compares to a lot of people. (If I do not reply quick enough just ignore me I'm having work issues with new people and its getting busy I hope you all are having a lovely time though )
My second army is Fyre slayers... we have a sub faction that can spam Magmadroths for no reason... and they ALL get traits... not just one. so that's at least one other lol. and speaking of... that actually seems balanced. a subfaction that goes all in on big baddies. it should have been the standard format for that idea. give our thunder lizard sub faction might makes right and mount traits across the board, and all of a sudden stegageedon isn't just a memelist
I honestly don't understand why we don't have a subfaction like that. Half the reason people are interested in Seraphon is because you get dinosaur riding dinosaurs. Yet our behemoths are fairly meh, and the one list that does go all on it is a memelist and we lack basic features like mount traits for some reason.
Here's the reason Lofnir can do it: Actually I think the Lofnir trait is actually quite balanced in that you can only simply add one extra Magmadroth to your army to your Behemoths allowance if you have the points. You still have to take Vulkites, HGB or Hearthguard as Battleline depending on your General. Compare that to Gristlegore FEC and Zilfin Kharadron, who can take an entire army of big things because they can take them as Battleline choices. Now THAT is unfair.
Yes, missing out on Mount traits definitely hurt us. I get that our monsters are relatively cheap compared to other factions, but they're still not effective enough at their point cost to make them worth taking more than one or two, as they will almost always die to anything that gets to fight them first, and often they won't be able to kill anything even if they do fight first. It seems to me that our monsters also suffer more from taking damage then other monsters. For example, a Maw-Krusha or Terrorgheist can easily kill any one of our monsters in one turn even without buffs. A fully-buffed Carnosaur still will have a hard time killing either one of those in one turn unless he rolls really well, and can die to the counter-punch even after the enemy's been bracketed. After getting to play several games with our new battletome, I definitely don't think our army is weak by any means. However, our Reliance on stacking multiple Buffs on a single unit in order for them to perform well makes us very easy to counter. Anything that can kill our heroes, deal mortal wounds, or even just get up in our face before our heroes have a chance to start buff stacking can wreck us quite easily. As far as negativity regarding the new releases, I really don't think people are being unfair. GW has a proven history of making new releases overpowered on purpose to increase hype and drive sales. Even when they update armies, armies that are getting new models like Tzeentch often get made very strong while armies that don't get new models like us aren't given the same level of attention. Do the Lumineth look really strong and cool? Yes! Do I plan on buying them? No. I can barely afford getting into one or two armies and it's going to be armies that I like because I like the faction, not because they're the newest OP army in the meta. As much as we play the game to have fun, losing, especially losing repeatedly, is not fun. Of course, there is always room for improvement. I have learned that I really need to get better at deployment and positioning, I've gotten my face smashed in every single time I've played against my brother's Orks, even though they're not considered top of the meta right now. Even if you try to always learn something from each game and try to improve, losing again and again does start to drain the fun out of the game, which makes you want to play it less, which is bad for your enjoyment of the hobby overall. So when new Armies come out looking blatantly overpowered, I can totally see why people start to feel down because they can already tell that this new Army sounds like it will not be fun to play against. If the rules for a new Army make you think "wow, this sounds really interesting. I wonder if this particular list will do good against them?" That's good. If they just make you go "wow, that's crazy, I'm going to have a hard time doing anything against that," that's not so good.
You explained the issue in the start. Both a Maw Krusha and Terrorgheist are twice the points of our Carnosaurs, so obviously the Carnosaurs will be nowhear near the same power, otherwise it would be horribly broken. I do agree mount traits is a fun thing and a way to tailor your list towards the current meta. Often times there is one or two very obvious choices that are pretty much always picked though, so in many cases it is really just an illusion of choice. It is true that we are super reliant on our heroes, but honestly what army isnt significantly harmed by having the heroes sniped? Every army melts to MWs and many armies in general rely on having their buffs/spells up, hence alpha strike lists are really strong if you dont screen your army properly. If you snipe your brother's warchanters (assuming hes playing Ironjawz) then you suddenly cut his damage in half (well Coalesced already does this, but it holds true to any other army) or if you alpha his army before he got the BW/Warchanter buffs up, his stuff flops much faster. This weakness isnt super unique for us. They create new rules as they go along, so obviously the very first tomes will eventually be lackluster to a degree since they experiment and come up with entirely new systems/rules like fighting out of sequence, fight multiple times, fight last etc. etc. I dont believe they intentionally create this massive powercreep though, and the assumption that the newly released tome is always stronger than the previous is just false. Why? Because this is not what we are seeing. If you look at this overview of tons of tournaments in 2019, the results are very mixed. Yes a couple of armies are showing up more than others, but it clearly shows a quite diversed meta. There will always be the "new book syndrome" which typically means a new army will win more times than not, but that is due to inexperience against said army. OBR is an example of this - People whined endlessly about this faction, but they arent anywhere near as bad right now as people made them out to be - Why? People cracked the code. I want every new release/army/updated book to feel and look awesome with incredible bonkers rules. If they dont, I feel like GW has failed. I want to feel tempted to buy the army because X, Y and Z is incredible and amazing about the army. I also want said army with somewhat unique rules so armies feel different to play against, not just a reskinned faction. I realize some armies are not for everyone though - I personally dont enjoy KO and it doesnt matter what rules they were given, I just dont like the mix of dwarves and steampunk. So for me, it is awesome to read about this Light of Eltharion guy - Finally AoS gets a worthy foot hero, everyone else are pretty much shit. I want to be afraid of him and figure out a way of beating him. I like Kroak and I like magic in our tome, but Im not gonna sit and bitch about Teclis auto casting due to being a supreme wizard - Im gonna find a way to kick his teeth in and make my magic work. I think this is where people fundamentally have different mindsets. I dont just curl up in a ball if I get beaten and cant find success. I sit down and figure out how to overcome whatever and identify the steps I need to take for success. I guess some people dont have this mentality and would rather blame a loss on the opponent having an "OP army" or "lucky dice rolls" or whatever, instead of identifying what went wrong and what could have been done better, because none of us are perfect and claiming to be so is just foolish. I guess this is why Im not a fan of page after page of negativity. It isnt productive and it isnt constructive at all. It is all just pointless filler and noise to me. Anyways thats my last 2 cents on this matter. I guess I can just cross this thread off and be fine with it as long as it doesnt spill over into useful discussions in various other threads.