AoS The new Battletome: A Discussion

Hey all, I'm a recent lurker of the Lustrian forums and a Casual Seraphon player since early 2019. I've been super excited about our battletome announcement since they first teased it in late January and now that we finally have a set release date I feel like it would be a good time to create a fresh thread to gather everything we know about our impending rule changes, and to discuss how this may affect our army lists and the meta as a whole. I hope we can avoid any extremely pessimistic predictions about things we don't have info on yet (such as any new/changed allegiance abilities and battalions). Most of all lets try and make the best of these new developments to show the world how awesome Aztec Lizardmen riding dinosaurs can be!

What we know​

As far as hard and set rules we don't have much to go on: a somewhat blurry image of an updated warscroll (the saurus oldblood) and tokens, otherwise there are only mentions of "nifty allegiance abilities, sub-faction rules and more".
Lets try and decipher all we can from what has been revealed so far.

From the video "This week in Warhammer" they said that "The new seraphon battletome brings this army up to date with all the latest age of sigmar forces", we learned that we can expect new allegiance abilites and sub-factions hopfully on-par with the most recent stuff we've seen like tzeench & OBR. also a means to run "monsters" (only the stegadon was specifically named) as battle line. our new scenery piece was also officially titled the "Realmshaper Engine" and revealed to have two different options for building, either "fresh from space" or "covered in creepers and vines and jungle." its uncertain if this will have any effect on the abilities of the engine or if it is just a cosmetic difference. Last but not least a new Skinks SC! box was revealed and appears to contain 1 bastilidon, 3 terradons/ripperdactyls, 1 skink starpriest and 12 skinks, only half of a standalone box of skinks.

From the post on the warhammer community website we have a descrption of what the realmshaper engine will be capable of gameplay-wise: "These ziggurats harness mystical energy to reshape reality itself into a form more pleasing to the Slaan Starmasters. This is represented in-game by turning terrain features into deadly traps for the enemies of the Seraphon." "You can garrison this pyramid with your Seraphon – a Wizard or Priest is able to activate the dread device to whip the surrounding terrain features into violent life."
These two lines seem to solidify that the engine will be able to manipulate scenery pieces on the battlefield, in what exact way we cant tell but hopefully more than giving a piece the "deadly terrain" rule. being able to garrison it should also lead to some fun or interesting tactics in competitive or casual play.

From the picture including the tokens and warscroll cards two new things can be discerned, one is the "extend astromatrix" token, nobody knows if this will relate to our new terrain piece or if it will relate to other models such as the EotG, astrolith bearer, or skink starseer. aka "technological" models.

From the image of the warscroll we can see that compared to the one currently available from the Azyr app there are some changes... (any numbers with a ? next to them i am unsure about since its hard to read the warscroll from the image)
the save characteristic has improved by one (4+ to 3+)
the bravery characteristic has worsened by two (10 to 8)
some weapon profiles have changed:
"Maul"(from 2 attacks on 3+ and 4+ to 3 attacks on 4+? and 3+,
"Warblade"(from 4 attacks to 5 attacks)
"War-spear"(from 4+hit -1 rend to 3+hit -0 rend)
"Greatblade"(from 2 attacks to 3? attacks)
the abilities on the warscroll have changed:
lost the abilities "Stardrake Shield" ignoring -1 rend and "Wrath of the Seraphon" reroll wounds of 1 for Saurus models within 5"
lost the command ability "Paragon of Order" allowing the reformation of seraphon units within 10"
gained the ability "Cold Ferocity" If the unmodified hit roll for an attack made with a celestite weapon by this model is 6, that attack causes two hits on the target instead of 1, make a wound and save roll for each hit
gained the command ability "Wrath of the Seraphon" you can use this command ability in the combat phase. if you do so, pick 1 friendly Saurus unit wholly within 18" of a friendly model with this command ability, until the end of that phase, you can add 1 to hit rolls for attacks made by that unit, a unit cannot benefit from this command ability more than once per phase.( thanks to @Asamu for deciphering this)
the keywords changed:
lost the keywords Daemon, Celestial, and Saurus Oldblood
gained the keyword Oldblood

That's all that I've gathered so far, lets make like the Slaan and interpret some plans!

 

that seems about right. honestly old blood is a sad starting point he remains a bad damage dealer he is descent defense but he is saposed to be a support unit and wrath of the seraphon is a mediocre command ability it is single target limited to just saurus and replaces 2 equally as meh abilities. lets take free guild all their leaders have a very simuler ability giving +1 to hot but for them it's every one in range not just one guy.
im definatly hoping the rest of out heros/ saport options are better as the only reason i would take the old blood is if we have no other ways to get +s to hit.
that said if the carnasuars get 3+ saves then they will be a good choise for ethereal amulet giving them some much needed survivability

 

I've very new to AoS, and still currently building/painting up my lizards so no first game yet. Not a whole lot of comparison for me to old tome (I've read it though!) but have watched quite a few different youtube videos on seraphon for AoS. As far I can gather it seems Seraphon is a current very monster centric army, not so much infantry which is a little disappointing to me, even then it's only two monsters Basti's and Stegadons.

I can only remain to be an optimist about the battletome since lack of experience, but I'm looking forward to the potential of having a buff for various current battleline units that Seraphon has, to be more in line with other factions. Overall, I'm okay with anything they throw our way for about it I'm looking forward to the terrain piece and developing my seraphon!

 

It's actually the opposite all our monsters are terrible skinks are probably the best thing we currently have followed by razordons and riperdactils we'll have to see if it stays that way

 

Personally I wouldn't say our monsters are terrible though I understand they can be a little underwhelming compared to other factions. Though I sincerely hope we can see buffs across the board for both our battleline saurus units as well as our monsters like carnosaurs and troglodons. Seeing the trog with -1 rend on all of his profiles would make me a very happy skink!

 

I am optimistic about the new batlletome, because it is finally here.
But still undeceive about the change of rules and stats and how it plays out.

Grrr, Imrahil

 

I'm hoping they completely rewrite the troglodon he really needs to be a hero and you're right Ren would make him so much better the bastiladon either needs to become tankier or cheaper it would also be nice if you did damage like at all. Stegadons are good at their price point they're just too Niche to be used in the standard list

 

I probably shouldn't base my knowledge off youtube videos then. In them, I see people just running Slann, 1-2 Steggies, 1-2 Bastis, and generally cannon fodder battle lines which die pretty much right away. I remember you mentioned having 200+ skinks is the norm, and I sorta took that with a grain of salt. since I don't understand what's amazing about them in large numbers, on paper they seem okay at most. I probably just have a hard time envisioning seraphon as a horde army of sorts too.

 

they are good because they're cheap dirt cheap and we can bring on hordes of them everything in our army dies in droves skinks are the few things we can afford to lose in droves that and the movement Shenanigans are just the best

 

I'm curious to see how the monster army is going to work. They specifically mention Stegadons, but I'm curious to see what other monsters can be used. In the video the following:

"There's a lot of very cool things you can do with your Seraphon Army with this new battletome. One of the coolest is that you can have an entire army of monsters, including Stegadons as battlelines."

Currently we have the following units with the monster keyword:

• Bastiladon
• Stegadon
• Engine of the Gods
• Troglodon
• Carnosaur
• Dread Saurian

Wondering what compositions will be possible. Will probably have to buy some Stegadons, only have an Engine of the Gods. Already have 4 Bastiladon so I'm hoping they will get some love in the new battletome.

 

So looks like everything with stardrake or star buckler shields could have built in +1save.i like that.
Could also be possible that all saurus get that thing the old blood has (6s do 2 hit) this would be like the old predatory fighter from fantasy battle.
Bravey debuff may not be as bad as it seems. Think Real lizards will get cold blooded rule or something similar. Roll 2 die for battleshock and use lowest.
Could see a subfaction for the none real seraphon which could add to bravery and possibly bestow the deamon keyword again

 

What is the upside from having a deamon keyword?

 

10 bravery

 

Is it really intertwined? Like death has bravery 10 too, but there are exceptions like the Chainrasp. Just wondering if there is or was something that targets Daemon keywords. Only one I can think of is Bretonnia Grail Knights

 

some seraphon curently has things that target chaos deamons and SCE has some but over all those abilities are rare

 

I do question the need to change the lore concerning their physical forms. I thought making them the astral projections of the Slaan dreams was super neat, tbh. Not that I am against having full cold blooded lizardmen on the table, the nostalgia in me loves it, but I think this was an unnecessary change (at first glance). Hopefully the fleshed out lore in the book will make more sense of these new flesh and blood coalesced units.

 

also slight changes to other keywords if oldblood is indicative. his final key word used to be "Saurus oldblood", now its just "Oldblood"

 

Looks like they posted a cool little "Seraphon: The Lore" community post today. Let the ramp up to Lizardmen awesomeness commence https://www.warhammer-community.com/2020/03/02/seraphon-the-loregw-homepage-post-2/

 

Can't wait to find out more about the army of monsters, I did wanted to make something fitting to Ataxa's army, which is made up of mainly monsters and smaller ones like the Razordons, Salamanders and Kroxigors. Happy days that it may be possible to pull off, again it depends on what makes up the battlelines and stuff.
Now I might have to make room for more Lizards, I don't have enough Stegadons