Tutorial A Guide to Seraphon Battalions - GHB2017

STARBEAST CONSTELLATION​

This is the last battalion of our battletome, and it's a compendium of all the other 5 "main" starhost

UNITS REQUIRED:

1 Saurus Oldblood OR 1 Saurus Oldblood on Carnosaur
1 Skink Starseer
1 Sunclaw Starhost
1 Eternal Starhost
1 Firelance Starhost
1 Shadowstrike Starhost
1 Thunderquake Starhost

Minimum size cost: 3570 pts (Starhost, Oldblood, Starseer, all 5 minimum costs of the 5 Starhosts)
more realistic size cost: around 4800 (Starhost, Oldblood on carno, Starseer, realistic costs of the 5 Starhosts).

You can easily see the problem. In theory, the max size of an army, using the GHB2017, is 2750.

Points are for matched play, but in matched play you couldn't legally field the Starbeast Constellation. And if you want to pick a Slann, you are easily going to have a 5000 points army!

That said, I suppose there will be gaming groups that will play titanic clashes with 5000 pts, or that will use big scenarios as the Battleplan "the Temple of dead Gods", so we can do some considerations about it.


The Starhost gives:
- you don't have to take battleshock tests
- The saurus Oldblood and all the other heroes can use their command abilities, if they are within 20" from the Oldblood




HOW TO MAKE IT WORK

This is basically a full-fledged army, composed by our classic, main starhosts.
Each Starhost got a role, and you can read about them in the relative posts.
You will have a large block of basic infantry (the Sunclaw), elite infantry (Eternal), air support and scout / vanguard / snipers (shadowstrike), a core of behemoths that offer ranged shooting (Thunderquake) and some light cavalry (firelance).
Give magic support with Slann, Starseer, skink stepriests and priests

The battleshock is kinda worthless, but it's still handy to have on your Group of 30-40 saurus, especially if they are not buffed.
The use of the different command abilities it's nice too, to make the Constellation work with more power.
You should count on:
command ability of the Oldblood (that will buff all your heroes)
command ability of the Sunblood (that will buff your sauri)
command ability of the scarvet (that will buff your sauri, in a different way)

Basically, 2 additional abilities, which is nice but not exceptional, especially considering that you are playing a 5000 pts army.


EVALUATION:

Sorry, unless you request it, I'm not going to give one.
This Battalion is not a Starhost, is a bunch of starhosts, and if it works, is thanks to the various abilities of the Starhosts combined (from this pov, it's almost a wasted opportunity to do something really good, to justify such a huge amount of models).
I don't want even to think on how much complicated it would be to efficiently manoveur a so large army. Probably you cannot even use the 5 turns limit.
You are going to miss a lot of opportunities and you will have problems in covering the needs of the various units with just a bunch of casters (if you use the Rule of One), but on paper it should work great... but not thanks to the Constellation, that should be the excuse to play all the classic Starhosts, but IMO gives too little incentives to effectively do it.
In a single sentence: nice idea, but poorly supported.

 

No clue how it works lore wise but in the game it just works similar to summoning.

...actually the trait that allows the second teleport is called Great Rememberer so that really points to something like the summoning. They just change reality in some way by will power.

 

Didn't they say that it isn't quite clear if summoning is really imagining them on the spot or calling them from somewhere they actually live down to the battlefield, or both? I think someone asked the lore team on Facebook and they gave an answer that was implying both could be the case.

Either way, Slann can control space and time by magic, and that's how it works.

 

But you still wanna build it don't ya?

 

There is no such thing as enough dinosaurs!

 

Wait until you can field it (which I can with spares) and your still looking at getting more

 

Well, I've finished the evaluation nonetheless.

 

BLOODCLAW STARHOST​

UNITS REQUIRED:

1 Saurus Oldblood OR 1 Oldblood on Carno
3 heroes at your choice: Sunblood, ScarVet, ScarVet on CO, ScarVet on Carno, Eternity Warden
3-9 units from: Saurus Warriors, Knights, Guards

You can have a so great variety of units that you cannot really list a size cost.
However, the heroes alone will cost something between 480 pts and 780 pts. The Starhost itself will cost 200 pts.

The Starhost gives:
- warriors / knights / guards make an additional attack with powerful jaws
- The saurus Oldblood and all the other heroes can use their command abilities, if they are within 20" from the Oldblood

This last one is basically the same one of the Starbeast Constellation, but this time you can have it on a reasonable and playable Starhost, which means that you can exploit the command abilities of four heroes at 2000 points games.


HOW TO MAKE IT WORK

The possibility to pick the combinations of troops you want, gives you an enormous flexibility in the composition of the army itself.
As leader I'd pick the Oldblood on Carno ('cause he's going to buff your other heroes), but you can still use the Oldblood afoot if you feel that you need the bonus on move or you're really short on points.
For the other heroes, you can pick whatever you want, but my suggestion is to avoid the Eternity warden, because he's got no command ability, and one of the best thing in this Starhost is the fact that you can use many command abilities, which is a rare thing for us:
ScarVet on CO: reroll charges and 1s to hit for saurus units; additional Attacks for Cold Ones' bites
ScarVet on Carno: gives additional attacks on rolls of 6s "to hit" for Saurus units.
Sunblood: all saurus units may reroll failed to hit rolls against target unit
Eternity warden: no command ability... it's useful for the buffs to Guards, but you can have those even if you take the warden by itself, so there's little need to pick him (even if you are short on the heroes slot, just summon him).

Side note about the ScarVeteran: the model itself doesn't exist... IIRC it was intended as the actual Astrolith Bearer (which in the old warscroll was "ScarVet with battle standar")


You can field many combinations of units: probably the most efficient is a large Group of warriors as powerful meatgrinder, Knights to have some fast units, Guards to have an elite force (but don't overspend on them!). Mix the quantity and the numbers as you want, it depends on what you need.
What you need to keep in mind is:
all the abilities of heroes buff the heroes and the troops; only the Oldblood on Carno will buff other heroes, but things will synergize very well:
for example, the Oldblood on Carno will give 2 additional Attacks to himself, the Scarvet on Carno and the Sunblood; all of them (and nearby units) will re-roll failed to hit tnx to the Sunblood and all the units will gain additional attacks for 6s on to hit tnx to the ScarVet...
And so on.

This starhost gives an enormous amount of melee power and brute force, what you need is magical support and shooting

The magic support can be easily be offered by a Slann, and I'd say a couple of stapriests.

The starpriests are wonderful because of the Serpent Staff, that can increase the damage dealt by bite / jaws.
The main trick is fairly known: the Carnosaur of the Oldblood that can deliver 7 bite Attacks, rerolling failed to hit and threatens 6 damage for each 6s "to wound", is no joke.
But you can have also other units that can become truly nasty: Knights usually have 1 attack of jaws and 2 Attacks of CO bites. Tnx to the ScarVet on CO and the bonus of the Starhost, they'll have 2 jaws attacks and 3 CO's bite. 10 Knights will do 50 attacks that can threaten double damage on 6s! ...plus the ones with the "standard" weapons of knights.

Shooting: the only annolying thing is that we can buff to the stars all Saurus, but we have no saurus units with shooting.
So, you need to save some points; as a bare minimum, the most efficient (cost-wise) thing you can do, is probably to pick a unit of 4 razordons (160 pts), and teleport them to deliver 8d6 shots. Even better if you can also squeeze in 5 chama skinks, to have at least a couple of shooters.




EVALUATION:

Power level: medium-high.

This is basically the Definitive Starhost, when it comes to Sauri. It's the top of Saurus' melee power.

this Starhost is significantly better than the Starhosts of 2 on 3 of the units that form it.
Saurus warriors will gain more from Bloodclaw than from Sunclaw, and the same can be said for Knights (they gain far more support from heroes, as they don't have to choose between scarVet on CO or on Carno).
Guards will be "weaker" than with Eternal S., but they can be still taken as elite that will be buffed by combined heroes.

The only drawback in this Starhost is the lack of support. It's heavily focused on melee, so you will be truly strong in close combat (even if you could suffer the lack or rend), but the Starhost got nothing in terms of magic and shooting, and we NEED that kind of suport.

So, to make the Starhost work, you need support (and this means that basically you cannot play it at less than 2000 pts):
For magic you need no less than 2 casters (Slann / Starseer and Starpriest), possibly 3.
For Shooting, you need no less than 2 units with some power (razordons are good, but also sallies are a solid choice, if there's need for some rend).

A good support for this Starhost could be the Shadowstrike, for shooting, movement, magic and assassination. The overall cost of the army will of course increase...

Basically, the Bloodclaw is a very strong Starhost, with our Saurus Heroes that will shine... but if you don't support it, usually it won't win the game by itself

 

Good points, I intend to raise them in the overall evaluation.