AoS The new Battletome: A Discussion

This was one of my concerns when the battletome first dropped. By trying to "please" both sides of Seraphon fans (real vs. star-stuff), I feel like GW watered down the focus of the army. I must confess, it seems GW enjoys trying out weird rules on Lizards. (I think) We started the teleporting and summoning trend in AoS, and that led to several balance issues. Now we are a single army of two minds; one coalesced and one starborne. That's similar to Orcs or Ogres having multiple armies grouped into one battletome, but it's not the same because there WERE previously separate armies with different focuses and costs.

I can see the rationale of different point costs, but I think that could just muddy the water more. I almost wish GW had made us two separate armies, or just picked a direction for the army so we could be more focused.

 

I'd be rather sad if they "dragged" Starborne down to the level of Coalesced instead of pulling Coalesced up. I also dont think the two suballigiances have to be near identical unit-wise to both be useful. I dont think it is an issue that Salamanders might be better in Starborne than in Coalesced. Saurus should be the main focus point in Coalesced anyways, but when GW design a melee focused suballigiance with zero tools to the current activation wars, cant take a punch and is super slow, I dont think it is surprising that it might not be the hot take in the tome.

 

O of course the coalesced and starborne don't need to favour the same units. But they're different enough that while say a 100 point salamander in Starborne would be reasonable, it'd be extremely overcosted in coalesced. It simply kind of surprises me that both subfactions have the same point costs while one subfaction has (quite underwhelming...) summoning & teleports and the other doesn't, cuz that's rather a difference in available tools to take into account.

Anyway, I'd fully expect LoSaT salamanders to be nerfed. I just hope it gets nerfed by targeting starborne specifically and not by ruining salamanders for coalesced. More in general Coalesced definitly needs a bit of love, with scaly skin being weird, primevil terrain being fairly underwhelming and cold-blooded being detrimental the faction abilities seem a bit on the weak side

 

But this problem of having one stronger subfaction isn't unique to us. For example every OBR list is petrifex elites. In many battle tomes one subfaction is just stronger than the other. It is really unfortunate but that is just how it ends up. There similarare relics and command traits in some armies that are autotakes too. And similar to our constellations, you almost always take +1 to cast.

I am really not sure how you would balance things. At first glance a lot of people thought coalesced was better. But a free teleport is just more powerful.

 

I dont think coalesced is that far behind starborne. Knights, warriors, and scar vets are all extremely efficient for what you get.

I can see some kind of saurus horde army being very hard to deal with. 160+ wounds, all with a 4+, all reducing damage by 1.

Also, tts will always lean towards shooting lists because they are just easier to play online. Horde armies struggle with all the unique stuff you can do in melee.

Shooting and magic is fairly straightforward and functions the same online as it does on the table.

 

The issue isn't necesarly that one subfaction is better, the issue here is that the two subfactions are so wildly different that what is easy to abuse in one is going to be weak in the other. It's probably going to lead to some rather swingy balance.

 

The reason I have little faith in Coalesced is that I look at the subfaction, batallions and warscrolls and I dont see anything unique. What exactly is their jam and what will they bring to the table that the enemy has to be aware/afraid of? To me it is all around decent, but honest warscrolls, that is it. Nothing else really. There is no fight first, fight last, fight twice etc. The damage output isnt even THAT insane compared to other melee units.

Big Waagh comes close to the same kind of playstyle where they "fight honest", but the difference here is that the entire Big Waagh army hits on 2s and wounds on 2s with pretty much army wide rend 1 and almost any unit you want will have at least damage 2 profile. That is a really solid and efficient combat profile. Ontop of this they have mechanics that can make them cover a lot of ground in 1 turn and "steal wins" by punishing the opponent if he moved into a bad position or left a flank open - Like double moving Gore Gruntas, Maw Krusha or Rogue Idol. Despite this, Big Waagh still suffers in a lot of the strong melee matchups like Fyreslayers etc., where their efficient profiles dont really matter since they are often turned to minced meat before they get to fight Hermdar.

Coalesced simply cant do any of this, they are slow and have to do a straight up fight with the opponent. No tricks. OBR is super resilient units with high saves and save rerolls, plus good damage output and healing/return model mechanics to refuel their gas. Most of the other melee armies got some ways to just smack their opponent first (or even twice) before the opponent gets to fight back at all.

I would love to be proven wrong though, and alas I dont think you can or should read too much into the lists/results from TTS. The physical games will be different no matter what, if anything because people are actually limited by their purchases and cant just whip out 50 Salamanders out of thin air.

 

Compared to other armies I guess Coalesced bring "good melee troops supported by powerfull magic". Only issue is that this is basicly the exact same as starborne brings, but they have a teleport.

Imho, cold-blooded & scaly skin need a power up to distinguish it from starborne at which point it should be fine.

 

While people will not have 50 salamanders I don't think 6 salamander/counts as salamanders is out of the question and that is more than enough to cause lots of trouble.

I think things would be more balanced if dracothian's tail was coalesced. You could say the coalesced Seraphon know the land so well they can appear out of no where. They wouldn't get a teleport but could set up half way in reserve which would really balance things out. Shadowstrike host should also switch as coalesced wants to set up in reserves and starborn already has that power.

Also I really wish coalesced cold-blooded ability only effected negative modifiers as right now it is a liability and nowhere as good as a flat 10 bravery.

 

The only exciting lists I can think of in coalesced is TQTL and mass cavalry. And they look strictly worse then any good starborne builds that I can think of. Starborne combines mobility with high out-of-melee damage. I feel that we are forced to go shooting/magic, since we have nothing to compete in activation wars. Extremely low leadership of skinks and the fact, that they are our best units, also make Starborne more appealing. Coalesced rules are weird, Cold-Blood is more of a nerf actually, because we lose number bonus, which could be very helpful both to skinks and saurus. Primeval domain is situational and we wouldn't lost much without it. Scaly skinks is heavy dependant on the opponent. It shuts down kharadron for me, for example, but almost useless vs ossiarch. Additional jaw attack is the best thing, probably, but once again, it doesn't affect all units. Constellation certainly have some good stuff, but not good enough to compete with Starborne.

I don't think, that GW will directly nerf starborne, because they are hesitant to change rules. I think, they stated at one point that they always prefre point changes to rule changes. If we look back to how they changed broken factions, it is always almost a couple of tweaks. For FEC, I think, it is was only ASF warlord trait. It was enough to make the experience of playing against them way better. Don't think that skaven were directly nerfed at all - only plague monks were changed and it was to remove too much dice rolls. Slannesh got Locus tweaked and summoning costs increased. And I don't see how allegience makes us bad or something. Summoning could be frustrating, but not single teleports or deep strikes - this is how it was for the whole last edition. If the problems are kroak/salamanders/skinks/terradons, they will just get their points up. And I'm not against it, if Slann, Oracle, Stegadon, rippers and other overcosted stuff will go down too.

But we'll see - it is too early to judge. The meta has to learn how to deal for seraphon first and only if it doesn't - we'll get our nerfbat.

 

yeah, but the starborne can do all of that as well. And the only noticeable thing the coalesed really seem to have offensivly is +1 bite attack. Which isn't exactly mindboggling. Especially as it means our biggest and scariest models don't benefit too much from this.

imho it seems like scaly skin is supposed to be the coalesced main selling point, but it is so limited that you can't rely on it unless you know you're facing an army that's specificly weak to it (e.g. orruk lists)

 

Units of Saurus actually trade really well with 'ard boyz, mortek, and hearthguard for what they cost. They also will be supported by stronger magic (potentially) than all 3 of those factions, and much better shooting.

You've specifically avoided mentioning these advantages coalesced have access too. They might not have a double moving Maw Krusha, but they have salamanders, terradons, or chameleon skinks which all add a level of play those armies dont have.

Coalesced has extremely efficient battleline with high -1 rend and mortal wound output, supported by good shooting and powerful magic. It's an "honest army" that needs to fight, but thats not all it's doing, just like that's not all OBR, big waagh, or fyreslayers are doing.

With all that said, I don't think coalesced is better than starborn (at the moment) and thats why i said i thought it wasn't too far behind. I do think salamanders and kroak are going to be nerfed and that will push people to looking at coalesced more seriously.

It's always going to be difficult to move 160+ wounds of models that are all reducing damage and start out with a respectable save.

 

yeah, but saurus knights isn't why you play seraphon...

The carnosaur is better, bit the benefit there is relativly speaking smaller.

And don't get me wrong, in both cases the ability is good. But +1 bite attack on a carnosaur, or +2 bites on a knight are not what you build an entire faction around. Scaly skin & coldblooded (but mostly scaly skin) seem far more like they should be the main selling thing, especially scaly skin. It's potentially super powerfull (or at least it would be if it didn't work in such odd ways), it's nice and fluffy & it's unique.

+1 to bites simply isn't all that novel or interesting. Maybe if we still had the old starpriest venom, and maybe some additional abilities that interact with bites. But as it stands it doesn't mean much more than "this subfaction is slightly better in melee than the other subfaction". It isn't even enough to get them on par with the more combat focussed armies, it just puts them on the upper half of the scale.

 

Speak for yourself!

Why coldblooded? It is pretty average ability at first glance, since not many armies can stack leaderships debuffs. And Legion of Grief is not that scary anyway. In fact, it hurt more than helps, because of loss of horde bonus. I don't think, that GW tried to sell Coalesced with such a mediocre ability. Predatory Fighters are way better at catching one's eye (mine, at least). But Scaly Skin is the main seller, I agree.

But new venom is strictly better on Knights. And on Carnosaurs it would be ridiculous, but that's it. Other saurus' bite attacks are 1 damage and bonus MW is better then 2 dmg in this case.

And I think, the main selling point of coalesced is Constellation Rules, not basic allegience abilities. They are still worse than starborne ones in general, but still allow to do unique stuff, like dual-shooting bastiladons.

 

Coalesced being middle of the road in terms of power is really not that bad of a thing.

If starborne is op then having a middle of the roads army seems fun. Taking Carnasaurs, knights and big lizards is fun.

So we have a tourney strength army and a table top fun army.

 

Really now?

I think coldblooded + scaly skin are supposed to be the main selling point because those two should work together to create a sturdy, difficult to shift army. It's thematic, it's unique & it's potentially very effective.

Only issue is that the way coldblooded currently works makes it kinda bad and scaly skin is just weirdly limited.

But I think the intention was to make these the big selling point.

Yes it's strictly better, but it no longer interacts with bites in any way, it's on all attacks. Which is why I don't think predatory fighters is supposed to be the main selling point. It simply has no interaction with anything, nor is it good enough to turn us into gods in melee. It's nice, but in no way something that makes the army interesting or stand apart.

meh, if that'd the way GW intended it I'd be dissapointed and I'd find it a waste of the allegiance abilities. Though I have to admit that subfactions in general often seem to be oddly balanced, with 1 subfaction being the obvious best or the limitations on artifact & command traits not really being worth it. Often feels like GW doesn't entirely know what it wants the subfactions to be.