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AoS How is 3rd Edition going so far?

Discussion in 'Seraphon Discussion' started by Kilvakar, Oct 31, 2021.

  1. Putzfrau
    Skar-Veteran

    Putzfrau Well-Known Member

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    Tom played nighthaunt and ended 3-2. Vince played sce to a 4-1 and tyler beat my buddy joe's soulblight on table 2 for the lower score 5-0. Ridge did indeed take the whole event with his fangs.

    Nashcon was fun, i ran karazai and dragons haha. ended 3-2, lost against Nate's nighthaunt in an expected loss and fell to Leo's sce dragons in my last game by a single point in an epic game.

    My list for nova was:

    Allegiance: Seraphon
    - Constellation: Thunder Lizard
    - Grand Strategy: Defend What's Ours

    - Triumphs: Inspired

    Leaders
    Lord Kroak (430)
    Skink Priest (90)
    - Universal Prayer Scripture: Heal
    Skink Starpriest (130)
    - Spell: Bind Endless Spell
    Engine of the Gods (265)**
    - General
    - Command Trait: Prime Warbeast
    - Artefact: Arcane Tome (Universal Artefact)
    - Mount Trait: Beastmaster
    - Spell: Hand of Glory
    - Universal Prayer Scripture: Curse

    Saurus Astrolith Bearer (140)
    - Artefact: Fusil of Conflaguration

    Battleline
    10 x Skinks (75)***
    - Boltspitters Celestite Daggers & Star Bucklers
    10 x Skinks (75)***
    - Boltspitters Celestite Daggers & Star Bucklers
    5 x Saurus Guard (115)***

    Behemoths
    Bastiladon with Solar Engine (250)**
    Bastiladon with Solar Engine (250)**

    Endless Spells & Invocations
    Horrorghast (40)
    Purple Sun of Shyish (70)
    Ravenak's Gnashing Jaws (60)

    Core Battalions
    *Command Entourage - Magnificent
    **Linebreaker
    ***Expert Conquerors

    Total: 1990 / 2000
    Reinforced Units: 0 / 4
    Allies: 0 / 400
    Wounds: 95
    Drops: 10
     
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  2. Just A Skink
    Skink Chief

    Just A Skink Well-Known Member

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    Congratulations on placing so well at Nova! It's good to see that Seraphon is flexible enough to adapt to the current playstyles. I hadn't really heard much until recently. For all of my grousing about the book's flavor and warscroll changes when it came out, it's obviously better than I understood.

    If I remember correctly, you're more of a Skink player, but have you tried any Saurus with the current Gallet rules? If so, what do you think?

    P.S. Thanks for the correction about Tom playing Nighthaunt. I forgot that, and I just typed Sylvaneth.
     
  3. Putzfrau
    Skar-Veteran

    Putzfrau Well-Known Member

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    No worries at all. I play skinks competitively, just cause its traditionally a much stronger choice but i took a koatls list to an RTT about a month or so ago and won all 3 of my games with it. I think GV makes saurus with clubs pretty awesome. Ran 3x5 knights, 2x20 warriors, carno, engine, starseer, starpriest, slann and the ppurple sun.

    it was a blast to play, and definitely has the legs to make waves, it just doesnt do anything the skink side of the book just does better.
     
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  4. Jason839
    Salamander

    Jason839 Well-Known Member

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    If you look for 1st place seraphon lists on BCP its pretty much all Ridge Hanna lists. They are on fire this year.
     
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  5. Putzfrau
    Skar-Veteran

    Putzfrau Well-Known Member

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    Ya, ridge and Gavin both make up a good chunk of the seraphon 5-0. Think Gavin is sitting on 3 and ridge 2 since the new GHB dropped. Books in a great spot.
     
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  6. Killer Angel
    Slann

    Killer Angel Prophet of the Stars Staff Member

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    I believe this can be discussed here, rather than in "rumors"

    IMG-20221110-WA0004.jpg

    that's interesting. Leaving aside that obviously SoB use 100% of their 6 warscrolls ( :p ) you can note some weird results, that cannot be dismissed with "of course SCE are bottom list, they have so many warscrolls".
    For example, we have basically the same number of warscrolls of beast of chaos, yet we use only a fraction of them while BoC use more material. And Skaven are in a MUCH better spot than StD

    I think this tells a lot about the fact that some battletomes can be competitive (as Seraphon is) but they totally lack internal balance, with some strong warscrolls and some that are garbage.
    The problem is that GW sees these data (which would be good) but apparently fails to understand the reasons behind it, and their solution is "Let's raise the points of the most used warscrolls", which obviously fails completely in fixing the issue
     

    Attached Files:

    Last edited: Nov 11, 2022
  7. Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl
    Slann

    Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl Eleventh Spawning

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    I'm particularly interested to see that my boyz the Fyreslayers are using 18/21 of their Warscrolls - 6/7 essentially, after all the complaints about how weak their book supposedly was compared to the 2nd Edition one. There are certainly some moments of missed potential in it (why the hell did they make Grimwrath Oaths an Allegiance Ability when it's only used on one model, when they could have just chosen the new bodyguard ability and applied it to both Household Runefathers and Runesons and Zharrgrim Priesthood characters?), but they did make more stuff viable, particularly foot Runefathers and Runesons who can now be protected by their infantry units in the style of Warhammer Fantasy, and buff those units with their powerful attacks and Command Abilities. Before there was very little reason to take them because they could be picked off too easily when you could just use their Magmadroth-riding version that had far more Wounds and attacks.

    In this way the 3rd Edition book is an improvement on the 2nd Ed one, where the only viable units were Hearthguard Berzerkers, the occasional Runemaster or Runesmiter, standard Hearthguard and Magmadroth-mounted characters, most of which remain viable in the 3rd Edition one. This combined with their middle-of-the-road performance as an army now shows the Sons of Grimnir are in a good place.

    I'd say the three unused Warscrolls are Vulkites with Shields, standard Hearthguard (both of whom were unnecessarily nerfed) and the poor old Doomseeker who can't seem to be anything more than a substandard Grimwrath. They really need to rework his abilities to give him his own niche to fill. Perhaps as he's pretty much a Fantasy-style Slayer, he should be able to 'Taunt' enemy units into attacking him and then boost allies upon his death, like the Flamekeeper gives out buffs on deaths of allies?

    On the other hand, GW's favourite Stormcast are feeling the full force of Warscroll bloat :p
     
  8. Canas
    Slann

    Canas Ninth Spawning

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    That's one of the fundamental things they got wrong with AoS. Support heroes on foot are absurdly easy to kill, and the tools to protect them are extremely limited. And at this point it's difficult to fix that without considerable effort as things have been balanced around this.

    Honestly, most of those are pretty meaningless.
    The main thing this shows is that no faction really uses more than 20-25 unique warscrolls, which is interesting, but not terribly surprising once you consider how many basic types of units & unit-roles you have. The ones that use more nearly all have distinct subfactions, which are basicly fullfledged armies on their own (e.g. SCE with it's chambers, CoS with its races/cities, Skaven with their clans). The only exception being BoC.

    Also, the skaven make sense once you think about it. They're neatly divided into their clans, which actually have fairly coherent niches. So there's relativly little competition between units. E.g. clanrats fullfill a different niche from plague monks.

    The lower ranks actually highlight several of the inherent flaws with the statistic used.
    SCE, CoS & StD suffer from having loads of overlap between their subfactions. E.g. SCE has it's chambers, CoS has it's races, all of which bring their own ranged troops, infantry, etc. So there's bound to be units that just aren't going to be picked.Similarly StD have like 8 or 10 variants of what are basicly just chaos marauders thanks to the warcry warbands.

    In all three cases you got a surplus of very similar units, just with different fluffy flavours. So those are never all going to be represented at a tournament scene. Even if the internal balance is quite close. So of course this statistic will be bad for them.

    Then we have Khorne, which is a very straightforward "bash your guys against their guys" melee-type faction, honestly it's surprising they even manage to get to 20 commonly used units given the lack of troop variety Khorne is inherently stuck with (There's only so many variations you can make of "angry guy with big sharp weapon")

    Then you have the soulblight, which has something like 20 characters, most of which are named characters, as well as a bunch of novelty units from the cursed city. That alone will heavily skew the statistic.

    Then you have the gloomspite who have 7 or 8 novelty units from underworlds and the goblinpaloza thing, which probably skews their numbers (unless those are somehow super competitive, but I doubt it).

    Which only really leaves seraphon for which there isn't an easy way to explain the statistic away.

    It's a shame they don't mention any trends about the underutilized/overutilized units (something like race X is overrepresented, at the cost of race Y in CoS) in the article they posted. Because like this it's fairly useless.
     
    Last edited: Nov 11, 2022
  9. Jason839
    Salamander

    Jason839 Well-Known Member

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    I still see so many tables wide open with very little cover ala WHFB. AoS isnt 40k, but its closer to 40k than fantasy battles. It needs true los blocking terrain. Players don't play with that and I can't help but think the data is skewed because of bad terrain.
     
  10. Killer Angel
    Slann

    Killer Angel Prophet of the Stars Staff Member

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    Yes, AoS desperately needs useable and impactful terrains.
    I would also like a more meaningful mechanic for look out sir.
     
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  11. VikingRage
    Razordon

    VikingRage Well-Known Member

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    Agreed! We were running a slow grow league a year ago and when I got paired up with a fairly coy nighthaunt player. They politely insisted that we play with some blocking terrain (they wanted all of it to be blocking, but I politely insisted that we compromise and create firing lanes as well), I had a think about what their army was supposed to do, and what mine needed to do as well, and it was apparent that, with the rules of the time, I would pretty much table them by turn one or two at the latest with shooting alone. Ended up having a great game for it. Been building some tall blocking terrain ever since.
     
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  12. Canas
    Slann

    Canas Ninth Spawning

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    Just toning down damage output in general would already help, cuz while support characters are by far the biggest victims of the lack of terrain & protective options, there's plenty of artillery pieces (or buffed up ranged units) that'll just as easily bring down bigger targets.
     
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  13. Killer Angel
    Slann

    Killer Angel Prophet of the Stars Staff Member

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    Finally our skink priests / starpriests will be (relatively) safe!
    New season brings us untargettable heroes (in a similar way to Look out Sir of 40k).
    Of course no big heroes or named characters, but many armies that rely on support heroes (Fyreslayers, Nighthaunts...) are going to enjoy it
     
    Last edited: Dec 22, 2022
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  14. Canas
    Slann

    Canas Ninth Spawning

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    well, took em long enough to introduce a rule like this given the amount of squishy support heroes there are in the game.
    The sworn bodyguard rule is interesting as well.

    Kinda makes me wish we could just attach the hero to a unit though. Instead of having to deal with heroic actions.
    Just treat the Gallatean command battalion as if it's 1 unit. That needs to maintain coherency and all attacks first need to target the bodyguard unit.
     
  15. Colossal Marlin
    Skink

    Colossal Marlin Member

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  16. Just A Skink
    Skink Chief

    Just A Skink Well-Known Member

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    Yeah, I saw that and hoped it wasn't accurate. But I think those point changes are correct for the new GHB. :(

    I guess I see what GW was going for. My frustration is that, while we do have a decent number of units, not all of them are equally effective. Raising the points on the EotG doesn't mean I can just take a Troglodon to replace it. I guess GW REALLY wants us to field Carnos. Raising the points on both the Slann AND the Guard stings a bit. Sorry, it's just a "knee jerk" reaction, but I'm a little bummed about these points changes.
     
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  17. Colossal Marlin
    Skink

    Colossal Marlin Member

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    Yeah, it does feel very reactive, I am probably being overly optimistic though hoping that we see some nice rule changes in the future to some of these units that have received price increases like the EotG and Eternity Warden.
     
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  18. Canas
    Slann

    Canas Ninth Spawning

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    Why in the world is the ark of sotek seeing a point increase....

    Aside from that, nothing particularly surprising. The usual suspects are nerfed, They'll still be spammed because unless they make them flat out unplayable point nerfs will won't change how important they are to the core strategy of the army. The handfull of units where a point buff might actually make them relevant, like the Troglodon, are ignored yet again, because GW hates them for some reason. And then there's some random buffs to units that are too niche or weak to see much use unless you make them criminally undercosted (e.g. the ripper chief just isn't ever going to be a popular pick with its current design unless it's just absurdly cheap)
     
  19. VikingRage
    Razordon

    VikingRage Well-Known Member

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    This is just a fyi, and not me trying to tell you not to, but Spikeybits got blacklisted by a large portion of the community for fairly toxic behavior and it all came to a head when he got called out for attacking another miniature artist/channel fairly out of turn. I had already stopped using his site a while back when I realized that it was mostly just ads and copy-pasted articles from other sites.

    Again, you can happily continue on using whatever info sources you want to with no further grief from me, I personally just avoid that site as much as possible these days.
     
  20. Colossal Marlin
    Skink

    Colossal Marlin Member

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    I don't have any strong draw towards any source of GW news, nor am I much of a fan of GW themselves, this is just the first article I found that had this information contained.
     
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