AoS What do we want from an update?

It would be interesting to see LoSaT to be "primed" in the hero phase so it can also be used defensively. Adding wording that "model/unit affected can trigger this ability at any time until your next hero phase". My Carnosaur gets charged = LoSaT. Or Slann gets charged = LoSaT Skinks in front of the charging unit. Enemy wants to attack our Saurus Knights = LoSaT them out of combat. We can play a more reactive game which would allow the army to be more competitive against different types of armies.

 

that'd be horrificly overpowered. It'd make priority targets nigh impossible to attack. Also quite frustrating to play against. Decently fun to use though

 

I think that would be a fun secondary mechanic we could have. It'd be cut down to a once per game ability likely, and the counterplay could be that they could always try and guess where you'd go.

I thought of another thing that could be interesting.
Along side summoning, why don't we pay a few extra summoning points to declare the unit summoned it joining other units to make a battalion?
I could see having a few units of Temple guard present (perhaps) and if you need to summon a Warden, you pay a few extra Summoning mcguffins. Boom, you now have an Eternal Starhost in your army/facing down whatever was coming at you.

 

As long as the entire table is technically possible guessing where we'd go is nigh impossible defensivly at least.

Also, personally not a fan to once-a-game-mechanics. They never feel good.

SDRW-08D1S-U
I thought of another thing that could be interesting.
Along side summoning, why don't we pay a few extra summoning points to declare the unit summoned it joining other units to make a battalion?
I could see having a few units of Temple guard present (perhaps) and if you need to summon a Warden, you pay a few extra Summoning mcguffins. Boom, you now have an Eternal Starhost in your army/facing down whatever was coming at you.[/QUOTE]
Imho this is one of the biggest flaws in summoning, it can't be used to reinforce. If we could reinforce existing units it'd be so much better as you could maintain your battalion or horde bonusses. Which would be a considerable buff to everything not skink summoning wise.

 

What should GW do?

Two words... BABY KROAK

 

I agree on both accounts, not liking once a game abilites, and the shortcomings of summoning.

It'd be nice to reinforce a battalion, or be able to summon one of the last components needed for one. It would gives us more of a reason to summon other things, not just spam Skinks. Of course, like others have said, the warscrolls of things that can be summoned need a rework to make them more useful for summoning or even to be taken in a list.

Perhaps we may get a new Battalion that affects summoning, depending on if they axe Thunderquake or Shadowstrike ...

 

To verify Lizardswizards response: screen shot from the core rules

 

It definitely does seem odd. I guess what's stopping them would be the points they have to accumulate But lore-wise, I suppose we have to assume they have to build up the required amount of magical energy to summon more powerful units. I definitely think there should be a way to get summoning points other than sacrificing spells cast, though.

One idea I came up with would be that each Slann has a starting pool of 0 summoning points, but other models like the astrolith bearer can still add to that pool. Then, a unique model or terrain feature is added that both generates summoning points, possibly determined by a die roll, and serves as a locus for the summoning itself. And instead of sacrificing spells to add more points, the Slann get a command ability that does that instead. So, sacrificing command points instead of spells. The units can be summoned either near the Slann or the summoning model/terrain. I think it would be pretty easy to balance this so that the units able to be summoned are still in line with what we have now, but with the Slann still able to cast spells.

Maybe to keep it from getting too out of hand the amount of actual summoning points generated by the summoning model could be less than what you'd typically get by sacrificing all the Slann's spellcasting. Or maybe it could be something more random. Like, you have to roll like you would for an Engine of the Gods and see what units you get. Then, you have a choice of either summoning said unit or not summoning it and instead adding more points to the pool so you have a chance to summon something better next round. Not sure how that sounds, just theorycrafting at the moment.

Yeah, while it would be really cool to just be unstoppable magic-wise in game like they are in the lore, it doesn't exactly make for good game balance. The fact that the lore in Warhammer is often super-epic and over the top makes it even harder to translate in-game. Going just off lore, a Slann should be able to simply erase most of an opposing army with a spell or two, but that's not exactly fair on the tabletop. So the actual game effects will rarely live up to the legendary feats described in the fluff.

 

Basing it off command points would be worse.

1) You only get 1 command point/turn so there's not very little room to play around with. Right now you can sacrifice 2 spells and cast 2 others instead of sacrificing all four, at least in theory.With 1 command point per turn you're either sacrificing everything, or nothing.
2) Since under normal circumstances you only have 1 command point, the few turns in which you do manage to have multiple points will see massive spikes in summoning. Which just begs to be abused.
3) Although sacrificing command points in an army with just slann & skink is fine, seeing as we have no worthwhile command abilities anyways, it becomes problematic when fielding saurus who benefit greatly from their command abilities.

Imho, it needs to be it's own seperate mechanic that doesn't require you to just flat out sacrifice the entirety of another mechanic. Preferably even something that just rewards you for playing your army properly, like how Tzeentch gets points for flinging spells around, Slaanesh gets points for stabbing things & Khorne gets points for collecting skulls.

 

The biggest question I have regarding this suggestion is how such a seraphon army is supposed to be played. Whilst I'd rather not have it be a hero-heavy army, playing a geometry game with your units for summoning purposes might work, if rather tedious to implement. Alternatively, generate a set number of summoning points for each stardrake icon, astrolith banner, and/or spellcaster in your army that's within X" of your general, or something to that effect (really emphasize the "constellation" aspect of a seraphon starhost).

EDIT: I'm still mulling over refining the "constellation" idea further. Bear in mind that this is a half-baked idea cooked up at 2AM when I probably should be sleeping, but I'll do my best to make it as coherent as possible.
At it's most basic level, the idea revolves around stardrake icons generating at least one summoning point each if either of two conditions are met:

• the icon bearer is within X" of the general; or
• the icon bearer is within Y" of a hero who is in turn within Z" of the general.

Whilst I haven't come up with numerical ranges for this, it should follow that Z>X>Y in this case.

I'm still thinking of edge cases such as the astrolith bearer (hero unit that generates summoning points?), where this summoning capability could be enhanced (summoning sub-faction? Warlord traits? Prayers?), and so on, but I'm all ears as to what you guys have to say.

 

personally I'd go for the following:

- Slann generates X points, and A points for every nearby starseer and B points for every nearby priest/starpriest
- Skink starseer Y points and B points for every nearby priest/starpriest
- Skink priest & starpriest Z points + 1 for every nearby priest/starpriest

with X > Y > Z > A > B

Divide the board into several areas (e.g. your territory vs enemy territory, or the 4 quarters of the moon the grots have) and you get points for having a priest/starpriest/starseer/slann in each area establishing a new geomantic network.

All Icons/banner/astroliths generate 1 point when near a priest/starpriest/starseer/slann or when you can make a chain of icons to a priest/starpriest/starseer/slann. So if you have this:

banner 1 <- 6" -> banner 2 <- 6"-> starpriest

you'd get 2 points from the banners

but if you'd have

banner 1 <- 6" -> banner 2 <- 12"-> starpriest

you'd get no points for the banners

Possibly also give bonus points for making chains of priests and such. Maybe if you get a chain of at least 20" you get another point. That sorta thing. You can even put in silly shapes if you'd want to. Get a bonus point if you can form a (rough) square with the chain. However, that is probably unlikely to be very effective, but could be flavourfull without necesarly breaking the game.​

possible improvements:
- Battalion that increases points generated per banner
- Artifact that allows a saurus hero to generate points like a priest
- Banner artifacts for heroes that give various buffs (e.g. +1 to hit aura) and also counts as a banner for the purpose of summoning
- Subfaction that increases point generated
- Traits/artifacts that improve the various points generated

This way you can make a pure saurus army with very minimal summoning. A saurus army with skink support for average summoning & magic. Or a slann led army for loads of summoning & magic.

Also, it'd make for an interesting minigame to chain together icons and such.

 

Before I talk about summoning, I thought of something for the terradons’ drop rocks ability. What if we had some dinosaur with a large crate on it’s back filled with more rocks, and the terradons can fly back to it to get more rocks and use the ability again? Just an idea.

Anyway, as @Canas and @ChapterAquila92 have discussed, we need to think about is what makes our army unique. We need to decide what our play style is that we should be rewarded for playing, and what our general philosophy is when it comes to war.

To do that, let’s examine the other summoning armies, what is their fighting style and how is that translate onto the tabletop.
Khorne is all about killing and taking skulls. It doesn’t matter who is doing it, as long as there is good fighting going on.
Tzeentch is about casting spells, so the more spells are cast, the more points you get. They also have the interesting mechanic with the horrors where they split in two and become the next type of horror.
Nurgle is all about spreading his uh...gifts, and gets points from infecting other territories.
Slaanesh is about sensations through pleasure or, in this case, pain. Therefore they get points for wounding models without killing them.

But what else other than the Slann’s magic makes the Seraphon special? The Seraphon have a relatively large diversity of races and characters, each with their own personalities and fighting styles. So maybe there could be different ways of getting points for different generals or Old Ones they are dedicated to.
This way, players could be rewarded in different ways for the variety of play styles the Seraphon could have. They could also add new characters, like the skink chief, a Kroxigor hero, or even bring back Nakai the wanderer!

 

It might just be my relative inexperience regarding how quickly summoning armies can generate points and get units on the table, but this particular aspect has me a bit worried.

Provided that I'm reading this right, and assuming lowest whole values for this to work (X=5, Y=4, Z=3, A=2, and B=1), a slann, a starseer, a priest, and a starpriest in close proximity would generate 9+6+4+4=23 points in one turn before anything else is added. Granted, that's little over a quarter of a 2000pt army invested in just four heroes for this capability, but it feels a little excessive.

On top of that, there is a scaling issue that makes massed skink starpriests and priests a more effective use of points than starseers or slann when it comes to generating summoning points:

Starpriest yields 3
starseer yields 4
slann yields 5
2 starpriests yield 4+4=8
starseer+starpriest yields 5+3=8
slann+starpriest yields 6+3=9
slann+starseer yields 7+4=11
starseer+2 starpriests yields 6+4+4=14
3 starpriests yields 5+5+5=15
slann+2 starpriests yields 7+4+4=15
slann+starseer+starpriest yields 8+5+3=16
slann+2 starseers yields 9+4+4=17
slann+starseer+2 starpriests yields 9+6+4+4=23
slann+3 starseers yields 11+4+4+4=23
slann+2 starseers+starpriest yields 10+5+5+4=24
4 starpriests yields 6+6+6+6=24
slann+3 starpriests yields 9+5+5+5=24

 

I'd assume the summon cost of stuff would be adjusted accordingly to keep things balanced. Keeping the current summon costs but overhauling the mechanic of generating them is a recipe for disaster

meh, it's fine as long as you only look at it from a pure numbers point of view. It is powerfull enough, there's an extend of control, it's reliable, you can plan around it.

It is however, utterly boring and rather a waste of the concept of a slann... point generating batteries simply aren't very interesting..

 

I know this may not be the best mechanic (or what people want to hear), but since Chaos seems to be about what they INDULGE in to gain points perhaps GW intends for Order "daemons" (i.e. Seraphon) to be about what they ABSTAIN from doing to gain points? Just a thought.

 

maybe but that doesn't seem to apply to BoC or FEC

 

That's fair. I don't really know the armies that well, but can they bring in whole new units? Or just heal the ones they have?

EDIT: I did a VERY basic search on this. I think I'm right that FEC heroes can only summon once per hero, per battle. BoC gain 1 point per turn, and must sacrifice units to build up more summoning points. Correct?

 

FEC can spend a comand point to bring in units but it's free if the hero doing so is standing next to the throne they have
BoC use a points system like we do but they gane points by dealing mortals to there units

 

issue with abstaining as a mechanic is that you get essentially what we have now. A model that's little more than a summoning battery sitting in a corner only really doing something once or twice per game.