I agree. Points balances are the "band-aid" approach to attempt to force people to take less of a powerful unit and more of a weaker unit. But as has been pointed out already, points changes often don't mean much a lot of the time. People will still bring what's good whether it costs more or not, and they won't bring what's bad even if it's a bit cheaper now. The Ark of Sotek Bastiladon is still crap. Yes, it's hard to kill, but not really. Anything and everything has mortal wound output in AoS these days. Heck, in my last Path to Glory game my Bastiladon lost half his HP just from a single prayer and use of the banner artifact from a Khorne Slaughterpriest. And this is one support model. If anything decent tries to fight a Bastiladon, it's going to die. If you throw it at a chaff unit, it might stick around but it doesn't even have the damage output to clear a 10-man, 1-wound, 5+ save chaff unit in a single turn. It needs a warscroll re-write to make it useful, unless GW dropped his points down to maybe 100 and you could take several of them just to tie up enemies and be board control annoyances, but that's not going to happen. Salamanders are still good. I agree that they aren't the only good unit in the army, but they're one of only 2 units in our entire book (aside from the Dread Saurian, which was also nerfed to make sure it wasn't competitive) with -2 rend, and it's the only one with a shooting attack with that level of rend. And as a lot of people are pointing out, AoS 3 is all about range and rend. Everything you want to kill is going to be on a 3+ or 2+ save, so our old "swamp them with volume of attacks" strategy doesn't matter nearly as much as it did in 2e. Our only source of mortal wound output on our basic units comes from a hero who is super-easy to kill, and it applies on wound rolls. Multiple other armies have either warscrolls or allegiance abilities that do this on hit rolls for their entire army. So a Salamander unit is the most reliable source of damage we have. If you need something killed, you are relying on Salamanders to do it. So people would still take them even if they were 200 points each. Consistency is the key. *if* you roll really well and your opponent rolls really bad, it's possible for a buffed-up Carnosaur to one-shot a Maw-Krusha. But it's very, very unlikely. The problem with trying to kill tough units with things other than salamanders is that it often takes your entire army to bring one thing down. And that's not efficient. And "just run away" isn't nearly as viable an option anymore with the smaller board sizes and the existence of many units that will either always be able to shoot you or always be able to catch you. Plus, if you're running away, you're not taking objectives or scoring battle tactics. So people will continue to take Salamanders just because they're the best at killing those 2+ save targets that nothing else in the army can deal with efficiently.
razordons are rend 0 most of the time and wound 4. this is terrible. we cant buff to wound so they will always miss half their shots even before hitting 3+ saves. lets take the best case scenario of them rolling 12 attacks. 8 hits 4 wounds and then if you are right up in their face 2 unsaved hits. that is awful. 4s do not belong in a combat units stat line especially a stat you cant buff it's the problem the carnasuar has it's the problem kroxigor had.
This is just some weak theory-crafting, but what if Fangs of Sotek allowed Terradons/Ripperdactyls to be battleline? EDIT: Honestly, I guess that wouldn't really help... large units of our "birds" haven't really been a thing; especially with the 3.0 coherency rules. Maybe if GW allowed them to spread out like the new SCE dragons?
Im really just sad that nothing was done to help the Saurus side of the book at all. Where are my 2 wound warriors? But seriously, Ive never thought the Solar Engine is the problem, the Priest that buffs it is just too cheap. If the Solar Engine was deleted from the game, people would just use Stegadons and the only change would be the double shoot CA. The engine at 235 and the Priest at 100 is a way healthier internal balance.
I think all flyers on stems like that need to get the wider coherency rules, it really makes them hard to use as it is. I just think there's not many factions that have them so it may not cross GW's mind. But everyone already knows that half the stuff in our book needs a total warscroll re-write. Terradons, Ripperdactyls, Razordons and every Saurus unit in existence except maybe the Astrolith Bearer. I imagine that's probably what we'll get when our 3e battletome comes out, however many years away that may be.
We all know that GW will "revenge nerf" things that people hate and complain about loudly. Before KO and Seraphon dominated near the end of 2e, Slaanesh ran roughshod over the meta for quite some time. Now with their new book, everything is so overcosted that even though they have some good units and mechanics they just can't bring enough of anything to do well. Same with Kroak, and now with Salamanders. Eventually Lumineth will end up in the same place, since they and the Gargants are the hated ones right now, and will probably remain so for quite a while given that they were the first 3e books (came out in 2e, designed for 3e.) This is one of the reasons I'm kind of hoping our book doesn't come out *too* soon, even though I want a new one already If we got a new book now, it would be a major nerf and we'd be in a terrible place because of how much people still hate Seraphon for the Kroak, Skink and Salamander shenanigans that were dominating at the end of 2e.
Blissbarbs suffer massivly from GW's approach to balancing the cost of summoning armies. The summoning tax is rather silly.
Yeah, that's true as well. It's one of the reasons I really wish that Starborne and Coalesced had different point costs for different units. Things that are quite ineffective in one subfaction are amazing in the other, but all of our units have that summoning tax built into their point cost. It doesn't help that our summoning is miniscule compared to the Chaos factions or the ability to just bring units back in Death armies. So even in a Starborne army, you're either summoning 10 Skinks per turn, or your summoning *maybe* one or two slightly bigger units per game. Chaos typically brings in a bunch of stuff in either turns 3-4, or just resurrects something as soon as you kill it. Death does the same thing, but with more resurrecting than summoning.
Even more Easterlings teased: It looks like a new captain and Sorcerer are coming, preferably in plastic I am stoked Grrr, Imrahil
The most interesting news to come out of yesterday’s news is a passage that appeared right at the end of the article: Looks like an AoS Battlebox is also on the horizon, I’d like to think between the recent 40K Battlebox just gone and the one previewed yesterday, and I love a good army speculation. ‘A battle of the elements’ is particularly intriguing, as there are 4 main Order factions that would classify as being rooted in one of the 4 base elements: Kharadron - Air Sylvaneth - Earth Fyreslayers - Fire Idoneth Deepkin - Water I can certainly see Idoneth being in this box, as after the recent Maggotkin release they are the only faction now still languishing in First Edition, and are struggling in the meta even with the recent Broken Realms update for them. And you know what the counterpart to water is? Fire. Fyreslayers vs Idoneth would make a fantastic Battlebox, as neither have appeared in one before and, in particular if, like the Craftworld Eldar vs Chaos Marine Box, they gave both factions one or even two new units to play with, as both need some additional units to bulk out their rosters (Fyreslayers in particular given their variety problem). Though I certainly hope GW don’t just give each faction a solitary new character and be on their way, because if there’s one thing Fyreslayers do have, it’s plenty of unnamed character models!
yeah, fyreslayers are pretty much a given in that box, and so are elves. The main question is what flavor of elves. Also, don't exclude GW's favorite the Lumineth, their whole stick is being elemental focused.... So you know, you might get those. The only downside is that I don't really care about any of the factions involved
I mean if they can put out a bunch of gargants. Way too many high elves. A wasted chance to actually get a cool as fuck model for kholek suneater(kragnos should of never been an idea). And a whole new line for orcs. They can give the dwarves and eel riders a couple units a piece
Yep. Idoneth vs. Fyreslayers. https://www.warhammer-community.com...p-the-next-warhammer-age-of-sigmar-battlebox/