Nice to hear! Yeah, Kroxigors seem like the best overall unit and you need some type of cavalry to screen/take objectives and the Slann is the best caster (sucks that Kroak got nerfed so much). As for the rest of the army being weak, that's unfortunately always been a big issue with Seraphon in AoS. It's not an exclusively Seraphon problem, but having played since early 2nd Edition now I can definitely say that our army has always been held together by the Slann being consistently good and having a few strong/spammable units while the rest of the army hasn't been worth the points. By the end of 2e and when our book came out in 3e we had a bit more variety in options, but 4e seems to have gone back to 1/3 of the book being decent and the rest being bad.
AoS in general seems to suffer from factions revolving around fairly spammy-lists with the same handfull of units being constantly used. But yeah, it's especially noticeable with the bigger factions. And especially with seraphon thanks to our split personality subfactions/playstyles that they can't quite seem to shake.
I think the bigger factions thing is a big part of it. The more units you have, the harder time GW seems to have balancing them. When writing rulebooks they seem to have clear "this army should be focused around this one specific unit type or playstyle" tendencies. They're very averse to having armies that are actually good at everything. With our army having basically every unit type available they seem to just decide "ok, this is how we want them to play so these are the units we'll make good" and leave the rest of them in the junkpile since they don't fit with the "intended playstyle" for the army.
It doesn't help to have a larger faction where half the units don't match with the intended playstyle, but the problem isn't just limited to the big factions. Smaller factions with a more focused playstyle have similar problems. I think the biggest problem is just how badly they have failed with battalions. Battalions have been GW's only attempt at encouraging list building that requires a vaguely healthy mix of units in AoS. Both by requiring "tax" units and thus forcing you to bring a "weak" unit, and by providing unique benefits that could give a weaker unit the edge it needed to be relevant. Except battalions kinda sucked, and were never all that well implemented. And in 4th they're gone completly. Which means there isn't really anything left to encourage players to use a unit outside of the top 3-4 units for their faction.
I think you could argue that Aggradon Lancers edge out the Kroxigor, only from the standpoint that they are a bit faster. Kroxigor have better potential damage and equal health/save, but they are a little slower. Regardless, you can't go wrong with either Aggradons or Kroxigor, or both. Right now, they are the same points. So, they are practically interchangeable in lists (from a points perspective). But, this is also part of what leads to "spamming" them. They're the best all around combat units we have.
True, just wish that with so many other options in the army that we could see some variety in listbuilding. My second army is the Idoneth and they obviously have a smaller number of units than we do, being limited to one melee and one ranged infantry unit, two cavalry units, one monster and few heroes. I've noticed however that just about everything in Idoneth is viable, and I'm often able to play around with different army compositions and still do well. This was the case in 3e and it seems to have carried over to 4e.
Meh, it's less that everything is "viable" for Idoneth, and more that there is just less overlap, with more distinct roles between units. So even if a unit is "weak" it still has a clear role, and you can at the very least make a halfway functional list with it. For example, idoneth have 2 infantry units, one ranged one melee. Even if one of those is absolutly terrible, it will still have some kind of niche because it will always do something the other one just can't. Similarly, if you compare their infantry and cavalry, there's some clear differences. The cavalry has universally better stats, but they all come in small units with low objective score. So, even if the infantry is worse stat-wise, at least it will always provide more objective control. In contrast let's look at our two hunters of Huanchi units. Those things fullfill basicly the same role. So one of these is always going to just be the bad one. Same with rippers & terradons, they fullfill mostly the same role. So one of them is just going to be "X, but worse". Or look at raptadon chargers & rippers. What is supposed to be the defining difference between those two? They are so increadibly similar in terms of stats. And neither of them have any superspecial rules. They're both just light cavalry, with a decent-ish damage output. They perform the exact same role. Why do we have both? On that note; the two raptadon variants could've been rolled into 1 unit of skirmish cavalry that has an internal synergy. Was it really necesary to split that into two seperate units? And this trend kind of holds for most of our army. There is just so much that is doomed to be "X, but worse", because there just isn't much to distinguish them from the alternative options they compete with.
many units now have abilities that trigger on charging. so the meta is pretty heavy into cavalry that can get the first strike to move block and limit charges. Since fast cav and spells are our two remaining strong points, we will do well until the inevitable meta shift to something else.
I don't want to let AoS/Seraphon discussions totally disappear here on Lustria. The most recent round of point changes really reduces the cost of our monsters. Ark Bastiladon is more affordable and even the EotG is a potential addition at 180pts, just for the possible healing. Stegadon Chief is actually cheaper than a Stegadon. GW changed Kroak's rules a bit. His Celestial Deliverance is now 18" range and d3 damage. It actually might be a little too good in 4th. He also gets +1 to Unbinds. Regular Kroxigor went down by 10 points.
The changes to kroak are definitely good and tempt me to play him. The decrease to the engine also tempts me to play him. A list I am working on is Kroak 12 kroxigors bastilidon with ark eotg starpriest 2x hunters of huanchi With kroak, bastilidon, and realmshaper you are looking at max 15d3 mortal wounds a turn, before any mortals done by morbid conjuration endless spells. Its a lot of potential mortals that we can put out much more reliably now. Using engine as an ambulance to heal/bring back krox seems worth it at 180, and hes cheap enough you dont mind just charging him into things. Against 1 drops you can even give him the prize warbeast trait
I recently played THUNDERQUAKE Primal Lore Primal Manifestation Kroak Ark Bastiladon EotG Starseer EotG HoH-Dartpipes HoH-Dartpipes Steg Chief 6xRippers SCarno It was just a fun, but hopefully decent, Thunderquake list vs. a friend's SBGL list. He was running a "let's try it list" list too; Coven Throne, Luaka-vai, 2x10 Black Knights, 2x10 Skeletons, Vargheists, and Terrorgheist. After getting hit hard by a double turn, losing the Steg Chief and all of my Rippers, the rest of the army punched back hard. Kroak blasted and the Thunderquake +2 Health saved my SCarno. I healed him back to full by the the end of the battle and I had practically tabled him. The Quetzl asterism (-1 Rend) is life saver too.
Same here! This forum is awesome! The point cost reductions were very good for us overall. Although as Caleb Hastings pointed out in his video on the changes, it's really weird that the Stegadon Chief is now less expensive than the regular Stegadon, lol! Kroak looks actually playable now, although I still hate that he's only got three casts now instead of four. Meanwhile Teclis doesn't even have to roll for spells anymore, he just auto-casts four spells per turn The dinosaurs have always been my favorite part of the army though and while it seems they'll never get truly impressive stats it's nice that GW is realizing that they need to be cheaper to make up for it. I can actually see a more monster heavy list being viable now. Although it's honestly still not really encouraging me to switch from 3e to 4e yet since I really don't play tournaments...
Yes, the fact that a Steg Chief is actually cheaper than a Steg is funny. He died before I could do anything with him. The Ark Bastiladon is still probably our best monster, just because of its awesome rampage (maybe the best in the game?) and its 2+ save. On some level Kroak might be a bit too good for his points? 18" D3 damage is pretty solid. +1 Unbind/Banish is cherry on top. If you haven't tried 4th, I'd say at least give it a go. I think it's good. I do wish our Stegadons were better. But the Carnos having 3 damage claws and bites can really wreck... when you hit.
The pts changes were very much a throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks situation. That said it is nice to see some form of the old magic dominance seraphon back, even if it lacks the good screening and shooting it had.
That's sadly the state of the art with AoS, as if the team responsible of it still doesn't know how to deal with things. The way GW handled Nighthaunts is puzzling at best.
Yeah, I agree that point drops or point hikes aren't usually the solution. IF point drops do anything, it might make so someone try out a unit/model in game. That's the only reason I tried out the EotG... it was cheap enough to give it ago. I still haven't tried out Skinks or the Salamander.
i tried skinks, but they are too expensive for something that just dies. in the 2nd edition when we could summon them every turn i didnt mind it, but now that you pay for them, its very pricey for a meat shield. if they drop them to 60 it might be better. i think it should be a 20 model unit for 120 that gets reinforced to 40 for 240. then i could see it getting useful
It's kind of funny how Skinks topped Saurus in 3rd, just because we needed bodies and screens, and Skinks were cheaper, faster, and had ranged combat. Now, I don't know that Warriors or Skinks really get fielded much. Warriors see the table more often than Skinks, despite Skinks still being faster, cheaper and with ranged combat. I guess it's more about the Saurus' durability with a potential to do some damage. I think if Skinks were 20/40, that might be too "good." They do still have ranged combat, regardless of how effective it is. That could be a real nuisance in those numbers. I suppose GW could put them back down to 1 attack and then they'd be the same. But, since 4th has a lot to do with claiming and holding objectives, 20-40 bodies on an objective would be crazy.