AoS Metawatch Warhammer Age of Sigmar – 1 (GHB 2020 results)

Jason839 said:

None of the guys you mentioned are slow and average stated. IJ is fast. Daughters are fast with high attack stats. Plague monks have special abilities to let them do damage when they die. Storm vermin have Cheap costs that allow you to spam them. Heathguard, Phoenix guard And blight Kong's are all amazing units with Resilience abilities that allow them to play in the current mortal wound world.

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yes... that was my point GW just has to write them well.(also i love the idea of blight kongs. sounds like a big zombie monkey)

Jason839 said:

None of them are outdated warriors or knights with average to middling armor saves, relatively slow movement, and no abilities to survive in a mortal wound and shooting world. That's what I'm getting at.

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true but that's not coalesced fault(it has it's own problems). our base warscrolls are terrible no question there but that's by design(unfortunately) our defence especially comes from our heroes. weather you like that or not(i don't) but that doesn't make wariors bad i run a hammer and anvil warriors list a lot. it's just not the best thing we have and our book is misleading as the best place to play warriors is starborn not koatles claw.

Jason839 said:

The problem with coalesced is the same problem Seraphon had before our book came out. Namely it's outdated. Someone at GW has it in their head that the game is still fantasy with big blocks of warriors smashing into each other, and age of sigmar just isn't that game. It's all about movement, and mortals wounds. And abilities that give extra attacks to slow, average stated models are just not good

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Jason839 said:

None of the guys you mentioned are slow and average stated. IJ is fast. Daughters are fast with high attack stats. Plague monks have special abilities to let them do damage when they die. Storm vermin have Cheap costs that allow you to spam them. Heathguard, Phoenix guard And blight Kong's are all amazing units with Resilience abilities that allow them to play in the current mortal wound world.

None of them are outdated warriors or knights with average to middling armor saves, relatively slow movement, and no abilities to survive in a mortal wound and shooting world. That's what I'm getting at.

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I'm not saying you are wrong, as ATM big blobs of warriors are not that much competitive, but coalesced knights are pretty good, as they cover exactly, the strenghts you mentioned: movement and MWs delivery.

think to knights as elite infantry with move 8" and run 14", able to reroll charges.
with a couple of buffs (battalion and starpriest), 10 knights can deliver 70 attacks at +1 to hit, with double damage on lances and delivering 1 MW for each 6s to wound, bites included. And I'm not counting other possible buffs.

this ^ and starpriest make almost any unit in our army a MW generator

Jason839 said:

The problem with coalesced is the same problem Seraphon had before our book came out. Namely it's outdated. Someone at GW has it in their head that the game is still fantasy with big blocks of warriors smashing into each other, and age of sigmar just isn't that game. It's all about movement, and mortals wounds. And abilities that give extra attacks to slow, average stated models are just not good

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I guess by Coalesced you refer to the Saurus part of the book? As mentioned a page or two back I do think Thunder Lizard is quite awesome and a very real option for Skinks-focused lists. Great alternative to Fangs of Sotek depending on what the current "meta" is - I.e if most people play combat-focused armies I would switch back to Fangs of Sotek for the retreat and shoot. If it is largely shooting/2+ or D3 damage profiles/magic heavy I would pick Thunder Lizard. As to the Saurus part of the book I cant really comment. I never had an interest in the Saurus/Knights dudes since I would much rather play Ironjawz tbh if I wanted melee combat.

Grotpunter said:

I guess by Coalesced you refer to the Saurus part of the book? As mentioned a page or two back I do think Thunder Lizard is quite awesome and a very real option for Skinks-focused lists. Great alternative to Fangs of Sotek depending on what the current "meta" is - I.e if most people play combat-focused armies I would switch back to Fangs of Sotek for the retreat and shoot. If it is largely shooting/2+ or D3 damage profiles/magic heavy I would pick Thunder Lizard. As to the Saurus part of the book I cant really comment. I never had an interest in the Saurus/Knights dudes since I would much rather play Ironjawz tbh if I wanted melee combat.

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Hell thunderlizard works for everything honestly except the teleport mobility threat that star hosts have make it really really difficult at times to pick coalesced.

Funny thing is though is that Koatls Klaw is still good, just not as good as the other three options it seems.

I would go so far to say very few things we have are *bad* per se, just that so many armies have more or less hard counters to things like Koatl's Claw and Thunder Lizards and very few armies have hard counters to being able to teleport mortal wound-dealing units anywhere on the battlefield once per turn. KO is built around this mechanic and they're the top army right now.

The only bad thing about Coalesced is their allegiance abilities. Anything that revolves entirely around terrain rules that people don't even use 75% of the time should not be something to build a sub-faction around. And I would argue that Predatory Fighters is great and Scaly Skin is good, but needs improvement. If they had just said that it applied to all damage it would be a great reason to pick Coalesced over Starborne. Our units are fragile enough that -1 damage on everything wouldn't be too strong at all, imo. At the *very* least it should have applied to mortal wounds generated by attack profiles like Fyreslayers, or on MWs generated on charges like with Orruks have, etc. Bonesplitterz have an army-wide 6+ ward save, and that isn't considered broken at all, even on a full-melee, lightning fast army. So -1 damage on a slow-moving army with mediocre stats would have been fine. After all, it doesn't do anything to damage 1 attacks, which are what most units have anyway. And finally, they should have just been immune to negative bravery, not positive bravery. That makes no sense at all, especially when Starborne just has bravery 10 across the board.

Realmshaper is bad too, but it applies to both sub-factions, lol!

But the thing is that Fangs of Sotek's only weakness is the mediocre stats of our units in general. Every other constellation has a glaring weakness that is easy to exploit. Thunder Lizards have typically low body count and if your enemy has ranged mortal wounds you'll still probably die to them. Koatl's Claw has generally slow movement and little to no ranged attacks, and AoS is a shooting meta right now. Compare this to good melee armies like Orruks who have fast movement and exponentially better unit stats and KC isn't going to stand up to most other melee armies head-to-head. And Dracothion's Tail is built around being able to deepstrike half your army, but only around the Slann and they receive no other major bonuses. So unless your opponent gives you a perfect deployment opportunity, you're probably not going to get as much benefit out of it as you would from being able to overwatch and retreat. If they do zone you out, then a large portion of your army is now useless at least for a turn, and recovering from that is very difficult.

Kilvakar said:

But the thing is that Fangs of Sotek's only weakness is the mediocre stats of our units in general. Every other constellation has a glaring weakness that is easy to exploit. Thunder Lizards have typically low body count and if your enemy has ranged mortal wounds you'll still probably die to them. Koatl's Claw has generally slow movement and little to no ranged attacks, and AoS is a shooting meta right now. Compare this to good melee armies like Orruks who have fast movement and exponentially better unit stats and KC isn't going to stand up to most other melee armies head-to-head. And Dracothion's Tail is built around being able to deepstrike half your army, but only around the Slann and they receive no other major bonuses. So unless your opponent gives you a perfect deployment opportunity, you're probably not going to get as much benefit out of it as you would from being able to overwatch and retreat. If they do zone you out, then a large portion of your army is now useless at least for a turn, and recovering from that is very difficult.

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Eh, i think every army and list has exploitable aspects. KC is by no means some black sheep in the book that doesn't hold up to other melee armies. I dont know if id necessarily agree that Thunder lizard lacks bodies cause the whole book has access to 60 point skinks, which is just ridiculously under coasted but thats a different argument. People just choose to build thunder lizard in a specific way. Our behemoths are certainly cheap enough to get a thunder lizard vibe while also having ample room left over for bodies and characters.

Its easy to see aspects as more negative than they might be on the table when you broad brush the solution as easy. In my opinion, things end up being more nuanced then that. For example, a large part of your dracothians army is far from useless if your opponent zones well. Opponents should zone well. Its a fundamental part of the game. But they might not have zoned perfectly for what you want to do, and there are certainly disadvantages to spreading your army that thin. Having your army off the board means you have options and your opponent needs to plan for a lot of potential solutions. It forces more problem solving which creates more opportunities for mistakes. It also reduces the risk of losing your units before they can deal their damage, and you can focus more of your army on less of theres. Plus, you still have summoning, a free teleport, and asterisms if you have to deploy on the field which is still pretty great.

I know I kinda reiterate the same things a lot, but I think this type of thinking creates less creative list design. Like, someone who reads this post might think "well great, my whole meta is melee and I love saurus so was thinking about going KC but I dont want to if ill just get wrecked every game."

Its just not really the case. Seraphon aren't "easy" to exploit in almost any form they take. They have absolutely gobs of options, tons of threats, cheap screens, good magic, decent battalions, teleporting, damage reduction the list goes on and on. Its a pretty awesome toolbox, it just takes time to figure out.

Personally, I think the best build is thunderlizard, but that's just me! Fangs is obviously super strong as well and I think KC and DT are literally right behind them. Theres a 6 game tts tournament going on right now that has a KC list at 4-0 going into game 5. Its piloted by an absolutely fantastic player, but its just one easy example of the options available in the book.

Anyways, sorry I didn't mean to call you out specifically. Just wanted to use that quote, which I think is a common opinion based on some of the threads that have popped up, as kind if a jumping off point.

Cheers!

@Putzfrau Thanks for the reply, I appreciate the response, and I certainly didn't feel that you were calling me out

I just wanted to clarify that I don't think any of the other sub-factions are weak at all, just that they are more easily countered by other armies. FoS is considered the most competitive list because it has the teleporting and summoning of Starborne while it's special bonuses line up perfectly with what you want to do with the army. Extra movement turn 1 to dash up to the objectives, and an overwatch when charged with a chance to negate the enemy's charge altogether.

Sure, none of the other constellations are "bad" by any means, but they definitely require a much higher skill level to use effectively against top meta lists from other armies, and they aren't nearly as forgiving if you make any mistakes.

And yeah, I love Thunder Lizards, lol! They're my favorite constellation, although I've played all of them. I personally have had little success playing KC though, having gotten completely wrecked against Khorne and Orruks, both melee armies. I'd definitely like to see some strategy discussions on how to use them effectively, because I actually do love Saurus. I have around 40 Skinks but about 80 Saurus warriors and 36 Knights, lol!

Could someone help me understand why thunder lizard is good? I don’t think it’s bad but I don’t understand why it would be better than koatls claw. The faction rule is +2 wounds for monsters which would be good if you have loads of monsters, but effects nothing else. The artifact I feel is kinda trash, and that’s made worse by comparing it to the others. The command ability is awesome though, but again it’s just for what seems to be a mainly monster list. I think koatls would be considered much better because every part of the sun faction seem really good. The command ability I think I use the least cause it’s pretty situational and usually you kill most guys on the charge. You guys are much higher skill levels than me so if you say something is good I believe it, but I guess I need it spelled out for me.

Kilvakar said:

@Putzfrau Thanks for the reply, I appreciate the response, and I certainly didn't feel that you were calling me out

I just wanted to clarify that I don't think any of the other sub-factions are weak at all, just that they are more easily countered by other armies. FoS is considered the most competitive list because it has the teleporting and summoning of Starborne while it's special bonuses line up perfectly with what you want to do with the army. Extra movement turn 1 to dash up to the objectives, and an overwatch when charged with a chance to negate the enemy's charge altogether.

Sure, none of the other constellations are "bad" by any means, but they definitely require a much higher skill level to use effectively against top meta lists from other armies, and they aren't nearly as forgiving if you make any mistakes.

And yeah, I love Thunder Lizards, lol! They're my favorite constellation, although I've played all of them. I personally have had little success playing KC though, having gotten completely wrecked against Khorne and Orruks, both melee armies. I'd definitely like to see some strategy discussions on how to use them effectively, because I actually do love Saurus. I have around 40 Skinks but about 80 Saurus warriors and 36 Knights, lol!

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Totally fair! I do think the combination of things FoS has access too definitely has a more straightforward time dealing with most of the things the game wants to throw at you.

There's a bit of a conversation going in the tactics thread around the saurus options in the book, I think there's definitely some play there.

JscoobertDoobert said:

Could someone help me understand why thunder lizard is good? I don’t think it’s bad but I don’t understand why it would be better than koatls claw. The faction rule is +2 wounds for monsters which would be good if you have loads of monsters, but effects nothing else. The artifact I feel is kinda trash, and that’s made worse by comparing it to the others. The command ability is awesome though, but again it’s just for what seems to be a mainly monster list. I think koatls would be considered much better because every part of the sun faction seem really good. The command ability I think I use the least cause it’s pretty situational and usually you kill most guys on the charge. You guys are much higher skill levels than me so if you say something is good I believe it, but I guess I need it spelled out for me.

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While maybe more obviously powerful, KC's allegiance abilities only impact saurus units. So if you want coalesced and skinks, you're generally in the thunder lizard side of the book. The command ability is also strong enough to make up for any shortcomings from the artefact or other traits.