AoS The new Battletome: A Discussion

Defensive wise, Feather Cloak still wins imho.

 

As long as I am able to field myself under the colonial (forgot how to spell it) seraphon I am happy and as the seraphons greater daemon I support my chances at doing an absurd amount of biting and doing chunks of 12 damage a bite

 

Summoning is indeed dead in the water, which I am personally happy with as less summoning in AoS is a good thing. Sacrificing 2 spell casts to get 1d3 points on a slann seem very inefficient, bringing a 260 pts 3 cast wizard, just to not cast. d3 points will on average require 3 rounds to bring home 6 points to summon a 10 man skink unit... Is that really worth the 6 spells you missed out on? I don't think so at all.

I can see both starborn and coalesced being good though. Starborn lists with teleporting blobs of skinks or salamander units will be really good, supported by casters who can become quite potent, with the staff buff you can choose now, and Slanns getting +1 cast by default and astroliths giving +1, you can get +3 to cast easily. I can see Kroak on a balewind being an absolute terror, or maybe even garrison him, the astrolith and some saurus guard in the pyramid...

Coalesced will be my main choice though, I am not too fond of skink hordes, and coalesced lends itself to saurus and/or monsters. My first go will be with thunderlizards. While the skink chief on stegadon is really good, I still love the carnosaur models so much, and they can be potent as well now. With the command trait, the base +1 jawz attack and possibly the +1 attacks to a hero choice, you can get an oldblood on carnosaur to be quite dangerous, and with 14 wounds and scaly skin, they can be quite efficient, with 6 bites with 5 dmg, 5 claws with 2 dmg and the oldblood himself with 4 attacks with dmg 3. That is very nice for a 250 pts model monster indeed!

I don't think saurus guard will see much play outside of starborn Slann babysitting, why take a saurus guard over a saurus knight? Saurus knights as coalesced get 7 attacks total, and will do a lot more average damage, they also got way more move, the same save, same wounds and bravery. If saurus had 2" on the polearms maybe that would help them out some, but as is, they only got 1" so I think saurus knights win every time.

 

I think they purposely killed summoning to make coalesced the "obvious" choice, to force us into a new playstyle and sell more models. but hey that's just me lol

 

I know what you mean with summoning, but to be honest I expect 90% of tournament meta lists to end up as Starborn due to Fangs of Sotek (possibly dracothions tail) and use 40 man blobs of buffed skinks with blowpipes and also Salamander hunting pack spam.

Blowpipe blobs with priest support dishing out 7 MW + 14 regular wounds per salvo, also able to shoot in the charge phase for 1 CP.

Salamander hunting packs for 240 points you get 18 wounds with 4+ saves, 12 shots with 3+/3+/rend -2 and d3 damage, mortal wounds on 6 to hit! Same output in melee too!

So yea, I do not think coalesced will be all the rage in min max top end play, but not because of summoning...

 

But looks like Starborne is still have more potential. Teleporting is very strong.

 

So anyone notice Tiqtaqto has his own warscroll again? "Terradon Chief".

But, unless I am reading it wrong, it looks like the chief himself can't even drop rocks - even though his model is clearly holding a rock! He can only modify the rock drop damage of OTHER Terradon Riders! Is that right?? FAIL if true!

I have preordered my battletome and Realmshaper Engine tonight. Painting race everyone let's go! Mod's will have to create a new thread in the Itza Gallery!!

PS If Salamander is the new meta then please everyone post your proxies because there''s no way in Itzl's name that I'm gonna collect any more of those ugly minis! In my opinion they're the ugliest and most dated in the whole range right now. I even prefer some of the cancelled models (like Skink Chiefs bring them back!) over the Salamander ones.

 

There might be truth there. I think it was just an "over-correction" because summon became a hard mechanic to counter. I think we were a little different, and possibly more "cheesy" to other players, because we could summon any unit from our army.

I will say, I feel like Starborne need one more THING to round them out. Not quite sure what that could be at the moment.

 

I think, they went a bit too far with summoning. Anything that you need more than 3 turns to summon is definitely not worth it. On average, you will collect 18 CCP. Everything, that is above 15 CCP will probably be summoned only in the already won games.

 

I agree, they might have gone a bit far with our summoning too. However, I think they wanted to bring us more into the "Bloodthirster in the 4th-5th round" territory, not in the 2nd or 3rd rounds. But the rules read like it might be tough to get even "smaller" units out on the board. We'll see.

 

I mean you can tell right away they jacked it up even at lower levels when skinks are 6 and everything else is on a multiple of 5

 

That about on par (a little more offense, less wounds) point for point with scourgerunner chariots. Thats impressive.

 

Does anybody know if a coalesce koalt’s claw sunclaw temple host can be lead be a oldblood on carnosaur yet. The thought of a +1 to hit -1 to tend on its jaws sounds a little too good.

 

i personally dont believe so. because it says saurus oldblood and not the oldblood keyword like the firelance host does with scar-veteran. this saddens me but at least its multiple options for the leader.

 

until otherwise I will argue that it does work, he is a saurus oldblood on a carnosaur. He has the two required words. Our jaws ability works on anything with the jaws word in the name, so it’s a precedent already.

 

I know, that other faction's FAQs doesn't count, but FEC were in the same situation and were FAQed that Abhorrant Ghoul King =/= AGK on Terrorgheist. You need an exact name of unit to use it.

 

I feel saurus guard are the biggest losers in the book. With the loss of the eternity wardens aura and the battalion for them they are as effective as saurus warriors with clubs.

As for the rest of the thread, I am on Sunday going to be doing 2 meeting engagements.

I'll be running in my spearhead an oldblood on carnosaur and a unit of 5 knights.

Main body is 20 warriors, a starseer with a bound lifeswarm.

Rear guard is 2 units of 10 skinks and a unit of kroxigor.


Looking forward to it

 

What I like about this setup most - you don't need much to invest in it.