I hate to admit it, but Salamanders are almost definitely getting nerfed. They're simply way too cheap for what they bring to the table. Hopefully this coincides with a big point drop for Troglodons and Razordons.
I see nothing, that we haven't seen already, TBH. And we've been through worse. Solar flare is more of a debuff to casters and another way to dispel an ES than an actual assault spell. Stone attacks will really only hurt low save units. Even with 6+ save it is equal to MW for every 4+, cause 1, 2 and 6 will always fail. And to roll 12 dice he has to sacrifice two spells. I doubt he ever will. So... 5 MW at very best on average... Nothing in comparison to Sentinels with Power of Hysh. Bury is equal to similar aqshyan spell. Nothig special. To one-shot something important you need to roll 5 or 6. Chamon has Transmutation, which is way better and no one mentioned it even once. As for living Divide - Compare it to Amaranthyne Orb. AO is more random but has higher damage potential. And again, we've seen realm spells with similar effects. And, well, Arcane bolt is arcane bolt. Once again, we have CD or CC. And people can live with that. As Grotpunter already mentioned, Teclis will give at least one cast for Protection of Teclis. I think, his defensive auras are the reason why one would take Teclis at all. His support spells/debuffs carry way more value. He is far from the most survivable heroes either. He shouldn't go into melee at all. Unlike Allariel, he cannot heal like Crazy. He is really nothing, compared to Nagash. Petrifex Elite is way-way worse defence-wise. I think, the strength of lumineth lies in their offensive capabilities.
Yeah, their extra movement reminds me of Orks, and that combined with the army-wide MW spam definitely makes it look like you're going to have to stay far away from them. People are going to look at their slow base speed and think "Oh, I can run up and grab objectives," or "I can deploy near the border zone." And then all of a sudden they're going to be all up in your face wiping our half your army in one turn.
I think that what @ILKAIN was saying, is that you have to beat the 10+ when the spell is cast, but if you want to dispel an already active endless spell, you only need to roll the casting value of said spell. THAT SAID I'm with Canas on this. Teclis is absurdly strong, it will be a pain to deal with him, exactly as it is a pain to deal with a combo of Slann+Kroak+Astrolith. I hear people saying "we can do this and that, we can manage him". which is true. But we must distinguish between: 1 - how we seraphon can deal with Tecli 2 - how the majority of the armis can deal with Teclis. WE are equipped to play a magical game against that monstrosity. Other armies just take his full power on the face. Teclis is overpowered… it happens that we have some tools to contain him, but on a general level he's a powerhouse.
yep he is in the same league as nagash not as many spells but much better options and is a good bit cheaper
Meh. Who cares about other inferior factions, which we eat in between fighting Tzeentch, OBR and CoS?
Ah my mistake, keep forgetting the unintuitive ways the rule of one works at times. Why does he have both a guaranteed casting roll and a +1 effect. Why doesn't he just have a guaranteed roll of 11. On that note, are there ways to lower an opponents casting roll significantly? Maybe that could provide some hope here. I'm also of the general opinion that Nagash shouldn't really be a thing. He basicly breaks the current magic system on his own, mandating something like the rule of 1 to keep his 9 spellcasts in check. And don't get me wrong. I'm not saying Teclis is going to be unstoppable. Just needlessly powerfull and thus frustrating to deal with. As a general rule you don't want 1 outlier in your game who's magnitudes better at X than everyone else cuz outliers like that tend to ruin balance. It also makes the introduction of interesting mechanics difficult (e.g. Morathi ruining the our advantage with arcane vassals within weeks despite that being explicitly a selling point for us to pick up endless spells). Also as for the argument "it's a low model count army", yeah you might be able to beat them on objectives. But being forced to play "swamp the board with cannonfodder, they can't kill all of us" because you can't take on the opponent in a fair fight is never fun. There's noone who can guarantee all of his cast will succeed though. Kroak and Nagash will fail the occasional spell, and are considerably easier to unbind as they can still roll as low as a 6 or 7 by rolling double 1's even with all their bonusses. Yeah on average they can keep up with Teclis, but Teclis is infinitly more reliable and more difficult to actually counter. And again, most of those spells might individually not be super amazing (though there's definitly some good ones in there), but 4 of them guaranteed gets quite oppresive as it all but guarantees he'l kill, or at least severly maim, whatever he wants each turn. This is pretty much the biggest issue with him. A fully buffed slann, Kroak or Nagash might still stand a decent chance of keeping him in check, at least to some extent. But the moment they die, or worse yet if you don't have acces to one of those to begin with, he has free reign. And unlike those combo's Teclis doesn't have to worry about failing any casting rolls ever. He'l just start annihilating stuff left and right without a care in the world. On top of that, Teclis is far easier to pull off, he doesn't need any external support from other units that can be sniped. He isn't even bracketed like Nagash, so even chipping away some wounds doesn't help. If you don't have the best magical powerhouses in the game in your army Teclis basicly has free reign to do as he pleases, all he really needs to worry about is maintaining the occasional screen to keep say a bloodthirster from charging into him while he blows it apart with his guaranteed spells, which is kind of the bare minimum a player needs to take into account when using any unit... General gamebalance is nice . Plus it'd be nice if a list without Kroak + Slann would at least be viable-ish.
I am not saying that Teclis is not strong, I'm just saying, that he brings barely anything new, aside from auto-casting. His most devastating spell is his inbuilt AoE, which absolutely beats Kroak's old deliverence. But as a single-target killer, he brings nothing special. Ok, auto-cast Arcane on 10 is d3, chasm is another d3 on 2+, bury is only good against elite infantry, because fishing for a 6 is a desperate move, solar flare is anti-horde. Stone attack is only one outstanding, but only if it target a really squishy hero, which can be as well shot down by Sentinels. Into 4+ save you may expect only like 2 mortal wounds. On top of that, teclis spell range is mostly 18. It will take him a turn or sometime two to reach the juicy stuff. For a model, which is not super good in close combat and rather squshy (he is just a little more survivable than Thunder Lizard Carnosaur) and cost 660 points is does what he should. I repeat myself, but I fear his support spells much more. Without Protection of Teclis Lumineth will crumble beacuse of mediocre save and mortal wounds. Yes, they have aetherquartz to increase their saves, but only 1's per game. And total eclipse is devastating, because you may be left with single command point and unable to save a unit from running (which is very easy to do with cathallar). Also, LRR have suprisingly low leadership. They need either Cathallar or Light of Eltharion to keep it in check (both of which means less models). Teclis+LoE+Cathallar is already half of an army. I doubt that LRR will be able to bring all the toys they want.
bury is also good against things like mortec with their unit leaders being able to remove the reroll saves ability is very good. this also helps with pinks banners ,kos speshall weapons, our drums, SCE balistas and rapid fire long bows.it is probably one of the better damage spells out their becous it targets a model same as nagashes hand of death it's not teclisis best feature but it is very good and i would always have it in my army if it was one of our spells
At face value I can see that a list having just teclis and the sentinel/warden battalion being really good. You get the calathar then you can either go MSU with 4 sentinel and warden units or combine them into bigger blocks. Has a lot of potential to snipe heroes as the sentinels will deal mortal wounds on their 6s or more likely 5+ You’d have to decide what you can effectively take out. If the wardens get taken off then I doubt you’d have much trouble after that, I think the key will be spreading damage and forcing battleshocks across as many things as possible. Don’t think it will be super oppressive as teclis can’t guarantee all of the debuffs you might want. The army does seem to have more access to damage via mortal wounds than with anything else so it’s super dangerous
Didn't notice it target model, not a unit, like other spells. Than, it is indeed a good spell. It can also target salamanders in our packs, but still has to roll 4+ to kill one. But it will really shine against tzeentch and ossiarch. I must admit,that without MW their damage would be neglectable. Did I get it right, that Sentinels have only a single shot and cannot increase their number? And their long range profile is just a bit better than skinks' one. If you manage to unbind power on hysh on them, I doubt they are really killing anything with it. Lumineth also lacks rerolls so far. We have to wait for the traits/artefacts, but so far they have a spell that target single enemy unit within 18", basic command abilities and battalions. Cavalry is good but only vs hordes. Wardens are good when they've got charged. Hammer guys are not exceptional too. We have to take some time for the full picture, but so far I am afraid to state that, but lumineth looks like a balanced top tier armies. They have lots of ultra-strong stuff but some weaknesses as well.
Yes the sentinels have 1 attack each, they have 30” range ignoring line of sight, I think maybe it’s 4s and 4s. Then at 18” it gets a bit better. But yes you take them so that your firing 10 shots and hopefully 1/3 the rolls are mortals. A unit of 10 would certainly be enough to snipe a small character on a turn or at least threaten them I personally think the spear men are the biggest threat, you can take the sub faction to give them 2 Aetherquartz which means you can put them on a 3+ save twice a game, the battalion you can take them in also allows them to reroll 1s to save which makes them very defensive. The output on them can be crazy good since they have 3” range and I think 2 attacks each with the 6s dealing mortals
Isn't stone edge supposed to do on average 3-4 wounds against a 4+ save assuming you have his guaranteed cast of 10? A 5 or 6 would trigger a mortal wound, with 10 (or 11 if he gets that +1 bonus added to it) dice that'd average 3-4 damage. The main issue with stone edge isn't the average output, it's that 6 or 7 wounds won't exactly be unheard off against a 4+ save either. Which kills most heroes that aren't monstrous or mounted on a monster. Which means very few heroes can go into his range without risking getting killed instantly (and that's ignoring focus fire, if he wants to he should be able to easily pour 10-15 mortal wounds into a single target without needing to roll particularly good on his damage rolls) Also, you forgot his 4+ spell reflect bubble on the defensive side. That alone is probably already gamechanging as well. They also lack any particularly pronounced weaknesses that you can actually take advantage off. They're not dependent on any external buffs or hordebonusses though. Making them fairly reliable, much like everything else in their army. Everything seems to be extremely reliable. Even at their weakest they're pumping out ~2 mortal wounds and 2-3 regular wounds per turn at 30". Also at a 30" range they could quite reliably stay out of unbind range. And on top of that if you face 2-3 units of em you're unlikely to have enough unbinds to deal with all of them on top of the spells from proper wizards. Honestly, with everything doing mortal wounds on a 6+ baseline I don't think they need it. They'l probably be doing 90% of their damage with those mortal wounds anyway. I wouldn't be surprised if they end up doing barely any "regular" damage and consequently also performing relativly badly against armies with loads of ward-saves but bad regular saves (e.g Tzeentch mortals with all their shields), while crushing armies that rely on virtually immortal 2+ re-rollable nonsense frontlines but have no protection against mortal wounds. What are those weaknesses though? They're somewhat slow, but we have 2 movement based endless spells & a regular spell to make up for that. Not to mention plenty of ranged attacks. Their regular attacks aren't anything special, but they're drowning in mortal wounds. They're not super sturdy, especially baseline (no re-rollable 2+ stuff that also heals), but they do have a load of defensive buffs & they're not exactly super squishy either (no 6+ or even - saves). Their regular wizards aren't too extraordinary, no +4 to casts or some such nonsense, but their actual spells-effects are good & they also have teclis. Like they're above average at basicly everything they do and there's nothing they're really bad at. Don't get me wrong, it's not like they're the very best at everything either. But something like "those cows aren't as good in melee as a bloodthirster or terrorgheist" isn't exactly a weakness.
Sure but it is such a fundamental part of the game. There is probably a ton of people that grab 2.000 pts (or whatever they decide on) then line up every unit on either part of the board and then go full kill mode with no objectives at all. But that just isnt how the game works or what it is balanced around. If you dont want to play the objective game it is really just a matter of whoever has the strongest combat army. Objectives is the only thing keeping stuff like Archaon or Nagash in check. On the flip side this is exactly why Teclis needs to have powerful and borderline broken rules. Big single models have an inherent disadvantage over horde units. Thats typically why monsters need to be incredible powerful or they are outright terrible. Big models also typically bracket, where as there is no disadvantage to losing 10 Saurus Warriors out of a 40 man unit.
Yes, but defense-wise petrifex is way worse. 3+ rerollable for the whole game and reroll 1's against shooting for mystic shield. But damage-wise Wardens are scarier. They can easily get in range with all the spears and deal 20 MW to a unit with power of hysh on. So are 0 damage rolls. Discussing possibilities is pointless. So is stellar tempest. It can, in theory wipe out a unit in one cast. But this will never happen. We can deal 12 MW with kroak to a single target or can do nothing. Dice are dice. Sometimes you one-shot a behemoth, other times you fail to kill a support hero with single wound left. That's why we discuss averages. At least we know what to expect. There are tons and tons of things, which can one-shot supprt characters. Literally any good shooting unit will 1-shot them. There's no surprise, that a 660-pts character can one-shot a 80-pts one. There is stuff like Mortek crawlers for 200 pts with similar effect. And we've learned to play around them somehow. Ok, let's count. 4 casts in total. Mystic bolt = d3 MW, avg. 2. Living divide = d3 MW, avg 2. Stone attack into 4+ save = 0-10 MW, but about 1.5 avg. Innate spell - tricky here, but there is still more chances to roll only d3. But let's assume teclis got lucky and it is d6 MW, so 3.5 avg. So, we are at 9 mortal wounds into the singe target. This assuming: 1) none of his spells were unbound; 2) he didn't roll a single 1 for innate spell or living divide. 3) he rolled 5+ on innate spell; 4) He haven't used Protection of Teclis. Also don't forget that if you want to use Relentless Calm, Heavenly Blessing, Double move, Sparkling Light, which are all very good, you have to bring more supporting mages=less actual troops. This is not neraly "easily 10-15 MW at his will". I didn't forget it, I've talked about it before. Teclis has strong support abilities, while it's offensive capabilities are average for his cost. Oh, really? They are bravery 6, 1 wound models in 4+ save without any kind of ward. They can use their aetherquartz for a once-per-game buff, but that's it. They can take +2 bravery or 2 AQ per unit sub-factions, but that's it. Their main strength - Might of Hysh, can be failed or unbind - that's far from impossible. Yes, there's a shining company for Wardens, but it brings lots of restrictions. Terrible damage for a unit 280-pts unit. Full units are 560 points, 3 units of 20 are 840 pts. Add on Teclis, add on battleline. You have nothing more left. Bridge is only good for shooting units to reach their target, while melee ones still have to make 9" charge. Ferryman is not used at all. As for double movement, it is still only one cast per turn. And who will cast it? 100+ pts mage or Teclis, who is too busy with offensive stuff to make his points back? We are in game where you need to remove a 40-pts mortek block with 3+ rerollable saves, 6+ save-after-save and 4+ return model. I'd think twice before calling an army-wide 4+ save "not too squishy". They are super-squishy without Protection of teclis and even with it they are not invincible. Look at stormcasts with their overall 4+ saves and at least 2 wounds per model. Where they are? Aetherquartz are once per battle, shining company are only for wardens and requires lots of restrictions. Alarith units may tank some damage, but lack sunmetal weapons, so they are worse damage-wise. And all of their wizards cost 100+ points, same with infantry. They have very similar prices with OBR. They simply cannot fit in everything they want. They have issues they have to deal with and claiming they have no weakness is simply not correct: 1) They are low on models count, so have to think how to take objectives; 2) They are not ultimately good on defense, so they have to think how to protect themselves. Taking Teclis means taking less troops = more issues with model count; 3) They have very good spells, but they cannot cast them all at once. Teclis know everything, but he has only 4 casts, so he has to choose what to use. He cannot bombard enemy with MWs and protect all his units in the same turn. Taking more mages=taking less models (every wizard taken = -10 infantry models/-5 cavalry or guard). 4) They have low morale. And they cannot simply ignore it. You may take Cathallar to protect one single unit, but it is, once again, -10 models. You can spend CP, but we haven't seen any special ways to generate more CP for LRR. Maybe, there's a warlord trait or a relic, but they still can be wasted by subfaction ones. Taking battalions, once again, means less models. Even losing like 3-4 models means that some more can flee; 5) They have no summoning/healing/any way to return models. This means every wound made will count. Considering how squshy they are, this is huge weak spot. Are LRR a top tier army? Looks like it? Are they oppressive to a lower tiers? Do they have no weakness? Definitely not. They require a player to make choices what to take and when to use what. They have issues to keep an eye on.
Eh no, 3 things are important - The minimum - The maximum - The average +/- standard deviation. Just looking at the average creates all sorts of problems if for example the maximum is extremely high, as the extremes will eventually show up. Obviously there comes a point where the likelyhood becomes too low to practicly be considered, but that point is quite high, 1 in 10, or even 1 in a 100 are still relevant as those will happen every few games simply due to the high volume of dice rolls. So the extremes, average and standard deviations are all very important as they give very different risk/reward structures, even if the average might be the exact same. Looking at just the average is a oversimplification. Most of those other options spend their entire attack doing that though. They don't have 3 other casts left in them after oneshotting your priest. Also, they usually don't have the firepower to reliably pump out around 10 mortal wounds if they should choose to focus a single target (at least not without they themselves recieving significant support). How do you get to 1.5 average with stone attack? Unless I'm reading that spell completly wrong it should be about 3.3 on average against a 4+ save. That's sturdier than half the stuff we have. And significantly sturdier than anything a proper squishy faction like say Tzeentch has. Yeah they're not going to take the same amount of punishment as fyreslayers & OBR, but that by no means puts them in the catagory "squishy" unless for some reason anything below fyreslayers is now considered "squishy". Which would say a lot about powercreep... Aren't the archers a 140 per ten? At 280 they'd be doing double what I mentioned (on average). Which although not amazing quickly decimates most opponents, and unlike most units of that cost they can do it from range without LoS, which is a decided advantage. Eh, full units of what? I don't see any units that'd add up to those numbers. For reference @Erta Wanderer 's picture of the pointcsts: 1) Do they though? Aside from Teclis and the cows none of them have particularly extreme costs. They're on the higher end, but by no means exceptionally expensive. 10 wardens for 120 is still cheaper in terms of bodies than 10 Mortek guard for 130 or 5 liberators for 100. Yeah our warriors or grots will get more bodies/point, but they're by no means super expensive. 2) They have a bunch of potential defensive buffs, multiple -1's to hit, ward saves, ethereal. They're no fyreslayers or OBR, but by no means are they in the bottom ranks either. 3) That's not a weakness. Not unless in practise it turns out they struggle to bring more than half a combo and that half isn't super effective yet without the remaining parts. 4) They seem build around MSU, which largely negates poor bravery, makes it easier to maintain their hysh spell on as much as possible too, opponents simply won't have the required amount of unbinds. Plus, they have virtually nothing that benefits building hordes anyway. They also don't seem too command point hungry, so although they're not swimming in command points they're also not desperatly needing them for much else. 5) That's not a weakness, not unless summoning/healing is so common that it should be considered a baseline ability for any faction. And I don't think we've reached that point.
wow deathly furrows is a impressive ability against most units. it does mean that they aren't great at dealing with heroes/monsters but still ouch https://www.games-workshop.com/resources/PDF/AoS_Warscrolls/Lumineth_Warscroll_Dawnriders_EN.pdf
Wait, is that +1/+2 attacks for every single weapon? Does that mean the steedmaster (their captain) has a potential 11! attacks, and a regular model has a potential 7? Shouldn't that just be limited to say the lances, or the hooves not both? Rather impressive though, that means that in the best case (on the charge with their spell active, against a 1 wound unit) a msu would have a maximum of - 4/3+/4+/-1/1 attacks with the sword. - 15/3+/3+/-1/1 attacks with the lance, with 5+'s causing mortal wounds. - 20/4+/4+/-/1 attacks with their hooves. And that's without any external support. That's a lot for an unsupported MSU.
Warden's warscroll in english, and not as zoomed out is slightly less scary. - Moonfire flask turns out to be a once per combat thing, that reduces the mortal wound spam significantly. - The champion doesn't deal mortal wounds, which makes him one of the few captains who's weaker than his followers in certain situations. Still remains a fairly great unit baseline, especially if the enemy can be forced to charge into them.