AoS So.... are Seraphon really that bad?

True, and nothing is quite as awesome as slaughtering some overpowered faceroll build with a considerably weaker force by sheer virtue of your awesome tactics

But I'd still wish they'd at least fix the issues revolving around magic & summoning. They're increadibly versatile mechanics when done right & since they are so versatile they can allow for interesting and powerfull tactics that can elevate a weaker army leagues above what they'd normally do.

Right now we're just a weaker army with 2 broken core mechanics. Fix those two mechanics & we're a weaker army but with two very versatile core mechanics that in the right hands more than make up for our weaknesses. Let those stormforged come with their overgrown chicken mounts & their mortal wounds, we'l crush them under weight of 100's of summoned skinks, we'l threaten all strategic locations at once with a potential carnosaur dropped on top of it, we'l obliterate their ranks with powerfull spells, empower our humble skink with protective spells till he slaughters dragons, or polyform their scary demon into a harmless little toad... the potential of a well-done magic system is tremendous, even without needing to go to the extremes of warhammer fantasy..

 

Speaking as a very new Seraphon player ive been winning consistently (albeit only at 1000pts or below) using the following tactics:

1. Playing the mission not the man. So many people just aim for a tabling.
2. Assassinating lynchpin enemy characters with cavalry and carno.
3. Mobility - cavalry, carno, chamos.

Granted, ive been horribly stomped by stormcast a couple of times and been left with one or two models a few times. But its cool playing Seraphon, it forces you to play two turns ahead and focus the objectives.

 

Coming from my 40k experience, I can tell you that powerful magic/spells and summoning is super tough to balance. I like the early approach GW took with AoS. It is not close to perfect, but at least it prevents a lot of game breaking things from happening. I like the simple rules like the rule or 1, but it does disproportionately. hurt armies depending on how much of their strength came from spells and summoning. In the case of Seraphon, as you pointed out, that was two of the army's strengths. Still, I like the fact that they haven;t turned it into 40k.

 

I will add one thing that I've been thinking about and hearing from others. Age of Sigmar, sometimes, is a lot about the big monsters and heroes. That being said, I really think an army that has good infantry can really shine. It takes more skill and thought but building armies with big infantry blocks and units is something I think is under utilized in AoS. Some armies already do it well, but I think more people should try it.

Now, can we do it? Maybe with Warriors. Skinks are more for bubble wrapping, movement speed and "shunting" out of combat. It's not easy to position a large block of slower models, but when done properly it can be really good. Especially when you play the mission more than tabling. Just my 2 cents.

 

The simplicity of rule of 1 is nice, but it vastly overshot its mark. A better variant for buggs/debufs would've been "you can only benefit/suffer from 1 copy of a spell at a time" so you can't just stack mystic shields on 1 unit. And spamming damage dealing spells wouldn't have been such a big issue if they just did normal damage instead of mortal wounds. Which would also have openend up much more variation in damage dealing spells (an AoE, a horde killer, a hero sniper etc.) with mortal wounds they all end up doing more or less the same amounts of wounds since 1 wound is insignificant and 4-5+ wounds will rapidly be too devestating so you get stuck with D3...

Summoning however I don't have a quick fix for. The best I can do for now is what I suggested in http://www.lustria-online.com/threads/idea-for-magic-summoning.19107/ something like that seems viable to stop it from being overwhelming.

But yea, magic is difficult

 

They work amazingly well together. The knights are faster, so can protect the skinks, but skinks can chaff for a turn, then run opening up an enemy for a firelance charge.

 

I would argue that Seraphon isn't underpowered, it's just fragile. It's a buff army. You don't have things that are amazing in a vacuum and you never will because you have to pay a buff tax. Everything that has come out and will come out is balanced around your buffs so nothing will ever be blatantly overpowered the way other factions are.

Like all buff armies, you have to stack 2-3 buffs on a unit to make it reach max potential. If you can do that you'd be surprised how much better your stuff is than anyone else's. But If you can't or you let your opponent kill your wizards/heros, then you will see your army weaken immensely.

*Edit* I would like to add to that how Seraphon unlike most factions, have a lot of different ways to play. You can go from super defensive thinderquake/eternal Starhost to super aggressive bloodclaw Starhost with 4 carnos and 30 knights and everything between. You aren't limited to certain play styles. All of it is capable of winning but not all the time. A good read of the meta and knowledge of the scenarios is key to determining the right list on a given day. We don't have the blatant power level to take the same models everytime and win. We need to plan it out more. It's definitely a faction that rewards the players who have built a collection they can draw from

 

The issue with our buff focused army is that our potent buffers are wizards. Which gets screwed a bit by the rule of one... if all our stuff was tied into abilities instead of magic like the stormcast we'd already be in a better place.. there'd be a point to fielding multiple starpriests alongside a slann in that case..

 

I agree a little but also consider:

-Skink priest rerolls
-Skink starpriest serpent staff buff and really good unique spell
-Eternity Warden
-Extra bloodclaw command abilities
-Saurus oldblood on foot
-Sunblood buffs
-Stegadon buff

That's decent amount of non spell based buffs.

Prime example:

Eternity Starhost, Skink Priest, Skink Starpriest and Dread Saurian:

When your Skink Priest goes off, you get a 2++ on the guard and a 3++ on the Dread, plus the other rerolls. Then you can serpent staff the Dread and either cast either mystic shield for another 2++ or summon starlight for the to hit debuff. That's only one spell.

 

I play a lot of bloodclaw battalion. These lists are usually wizardless but sometimes run a priest and a starpriest. But basically you use your heroes to buff your troops with their command abilities. Command abilities are super strong and often better that spell based buffs. Additionally they have the nice benifit of not being countered.

 

Bloodclaw pumps through my veins

 

Yes we do have them in others as well,

Yes we have other sources, But a couple of remarks.

1) Imagine how much more potent our buffs would be if we could actually field 2 starpriests.
2) Half of the units in that list aren't there for the buffs. The buffs take them from monstrous fighter to capable general/captain. But their main value doesn't lie in their buffs. Unlike the starpriest and priest who are pretty much solely there for the buffs.

Our other buffs are by no means weak, but they're never the focus of that particular unit.

 

I'm hoping that it doesn't get touched whenever we get our new book. It's really good.