AoS I don't know how you guys are winning without sallies.

I know the points hike was a big blow to a lot of people, and people have moved on to chameleons(can't buy them anywhere), but I find it hard to win games without sallies. My meta is very competitive and diverse and rogue idols and pig cav, eels, OBR praetorians, gloomspite troggoth spam, triple Terrogeists, lumineth, tzeentch flamer spam, daughters, fyreslayers, and KO regular represented at the month events. I have tried repeatedly to win with Skink spam and chameleons, and I find myself really lacking the ability to kill without the sallies. Maybe my luck with terradons just sucks or I just get bad matchups but without sallies I can't finish off these big units.

 

no that's the reality of where we are. we aren't bad we just don't have a lot of HIGHLY COMPETITVE options. for medium competitions or local events we are fine with a lot of diversity.

 

i use a saurus build really grind it out in melee. so far it seems to work well but im still waiting until things open up and i can test it in a real tournament

 

I would personally disagree with this quite strongly. Tons of seraphon lists have done well at a highly competitive level, with a lot of competitive players even making a compelling argument for coalesced over starborne.

Seraphons best buffs are basically guaranteed. They have access to army-wide rules that essentially ignore basic parts of the game (bound spells, command point generation, global teleport or damage reduction). They can be powerful in all phases. Every list will have multiple threats.They have strong out of phase mortal wounds (endless, steg charges, terradon bombs), and unlimited range unbinds which is just huge.

Simply put, the book is incredible.

IMO all of these types of lists can be highly competitive in the right hands.

Kroaknado DT
Chamos +skink spam spam FoS
Firelance
Tquake double bastis

And I'm sure there's more there.

 

double bastiladon all the way for me. Pew pew

 

"can be". but as of yet not demonstrated. its all theory, except for Jason testifying that in HIS meta, salamanders are required to win.

 

All the lists I posted are lists that have gone 3-0 at rtts, which is the best we got right now.

 

yeah we have had that conversation lol. you are free (and I encourage it) to disagree, but I will not accept simulation results as accurate representations.

 

I said RTTs not TTS, but that is obviously a place with the most results right now. Regardless, your disregard for TTS doesn't change anything because there is plenty of non-TTS data as well. For example, a Thunderquake list with terradons and a block of 40 saurus recently won a 1-day event in England. It was piloted by a very strong player and on his way to 3-0 he beat some very competitive lists, including Eels.

The book is a top 2 or 3 book in the game, and that's off the strength of it as a whole, not just salamanders. There is no scenario where salamanders are the only thing keeping seraphon competitive.

Edit: To address the actual OP, i've been doing well enough with a Firelance list against what I would consider at least a decently competitive meta.

It's hard to tell exactly what should be done or not be done without a more in depth discussion around playstyle, matchups, battleplans, etc.

 

I'm glad other people are doing well. Where are the RTT results and lists being displayed at? I'd like to look at the results people are having.

 

It really depends. I use the BCP app for American results, and then a mixture of other things for others. I mostly try to keep my eye on twitter because people will often post results or talk about results on there. Tabletop.to is popular among european events i believe.

I also edited one of my above posts to actually address your initial question and not just muck about in the comments

 

I apologize I don't know what RTT is and thought you meant TTS, what is RTT?

*edit* part of my confusion was you originally said rtts and I thought it was a typo since the r and t keys are next to each other.

 

It was a little s after the RTT

 

No worries man, RTT is an old acronym that originally stood for "Rogue Trader Tournament" i believe. It was an old GW format for smaller, 1-day events. The term has stuck to basically refer to any 3-game tournament.

 

Ummm

 

BEST RESPONSE EVER

 

Actually I find Salamanders rather lackluster the more experience the opponent gets/is and learns to screen properly. When our book dropped I dominated every game hard - I would drop down 2x3 Salamanders and wipe the table clean. Any big threat was dead the turn after he moved it forward or placed it onto the board from reserve.

My opponents have gotten a lot better and learned to screen their good shit. 9" DT summoning range and only 12" shooting range means my opponent can simply put a screen and place whatever 3,5" away from it = Not enough range to shoot the good shit. In general people have been better at preventing me from getting good angles to drop Salamanders and if they simply sit in the sky for too long, I felt I had no output at all to challenge objectives. This is a big issue for me since quite a few of the new/updated battleplans incentivize you to capture objectives early on. If you drop the Sallies too early, they get wiped really fast from almost anything and that was the majority of my firepower in the army.

In many of my games my opponent simply hang back and focuses 100% on objectives - On the majority of battleplans the 22" threat range on Kroak wont really cover most of the objectives, so people can simply stay outside and get ahead on VPs. This meant my turn 1 an 2 were terrible - Almost all the spells were out of range and my Salamanders would sit in reserve. We have so many drops as Starborne so you kinda have to rely on taking first turn every single game.

I have completely scrapped the idea of playing Dracothian's Tail in favor of Fangs of Sotek. 40 Skinks fully buffed can move up and capture objectives really easily and their output is sick - Especially when they shoot again in the opponent's turn with all the buffs. I have also come around on the Bastiladon - It feels amazing. Both the damage is reasonable and the long range means you got some fire power from turn 1. I have also adopted Umbral Spellportals to secure another damage spell in turn 1 and/or 2 if my opponent decides to stay put and be passive. This typically mean I can threaten anything with a buffed Bastiladon + 1 Celestial Deliverance through the Spellportal + 1 Comet's Call. Against Tzeentch this is pretty much 1 dead chicken. Stellar Tempest should have enough range to poke anything start turn 1. All the damage is also from outside of unbinding range and you cant really screen the huge range on the Bastiladon.

I feel like Seraphon (especially Starborne) is so powerful that we should build our lists against our worst matchups. Salamanders completely overkill our already strong matchups and basically turn them from very favourable and into almost certain wins, but they do absolutely nothing againt our bad matchups. Basically I felt Salamanders was a "win more" unit against matchups I was already going to win, but offered nothing against the tricky matchups. I also decided to adopt the fact Im 99% of the time given turn 1 and I want to make it count and get something done, hence changing to some of the long range options we have.

 

I don't use the deep strike anymore for the reasons you mentioned, but instead use it to protect the important things against shooting and then deploy them in my own deployment area and walk them forward to shoot and charge. It's been working well. I feel like the deepstrike is a good trick to have in your back pocket for opponents not expecting it, but not something to do every game.

mind sharing your fangs list? I'm glad it's working for you.

 

I could see that working well, but only against a few select armies, namely KO and alpha flamer spam opponents, but dont know if it gives you enough of an edge?

I have been trying a couple of different variations and cant really decide atm. Some people call me crazy for not bringing Bound Geminids in my original list, but honestly I feel like all the strong stuff in the game already hits on 2s (some would still hit on 2s even with -1 to hit) and deal tons of damage, so the difference between hitting on 2s or 3s is probably not that impactful against the relatively bad survivability most of our units got. Skinks sitting on 3+ save vs shooting is somewhat durable though, so throwing -1 to hit onto ranged units could be big. In many of my games I found it difficult to tag multiple important units if the opponent simply spread their stuff out a bit, and some armies will simply outrun it with 12+ movement unless you cast it and have it sit right outside your army. All in all, Bound Geminids seemed insane on paper, but after playing quite a few times I wasnt too impressed by the impact outside of a few select situations that I would have won either way.

My other issue is that bringing 2x40 Skinks means 1 unit will be complete wank. 40 Skinks with zero buffs deal very lackluster damage, and they typically just sit around and wait for the first unit to die before they get to wreck face. I should probably try to squeeze in an extra Starpriest somehow, maybe by cutting 2x10 Skinks. I have a lot of models and can easily zone out deepstrike, but Im still Starborne so will be able to bring in 10+ Skinks every turn on average (4D3 CCP) to build up screens and push out.

The second list gives you double buffs on both blobs of 40 Skinks, but I feel like the Slann brings a lot to the list, even with Kroak already around. He buffs both Kroak and the Starpriest. He gives extra CPs and Fangs is rather CP hungry between reroll 1s to hit with shooting, ignore battleshock, +1 to hit and the Fangs CP. There is also the +1 save vs shooting and gives fly from Kroak/Slann which is very underrated tbh.

The last list is really just because I dont have 110+ painted Skinks and sometimes Im not able to borrow my mates' Skinks. The list would probably be better in Thunderquake but I really like the ability to teleport, summon in 10 Skinks/1 Salamander and the retreat/shoot ability really messes with my opponent. I prefer my original list the most.

I have come to the realization that the Bastiladon is not there to be this massive powerhouse and I originally compared his output too much to the output of Salamanders when in reality they arent comparable at all. He is there to give you long range poke from turn 1, but he does turn into a beast against Chaos Daemons.

All in all I tried to look back on previous games and my conclusion was this: Im given the first turn 99% of the time, so I need to build a list around this that has teeth even in turn 1. I also need to have an answer against armies that just hang back or screen their important key pieces/support heroes for multiple turns. Objectives matter more than ever before in the early turns with the recent GHB20 so bodies that are on the table right away and can claim/challenge objectives is king.

Spoiler: Original idea

Spoiler: % Slann + Starpriest and Priest

Spoiler: % 40 Skinks + Bastiladon + Geminids

 

Updated it for more on how I naturally look when I bring the lads in