AoS Wish-list for a theoretical future "balance patch"

Overall I am incredibly happy with our current battletome, and the Starborne/Coalesced split was imo a genius move that really let GW have their cake and eat it too. As a returning Lizardman/Seraphon player, who played in the days of blocks of saurus and skink screens being the norm, I was never a fan of the hyper-mobile army Seraphon was designed as in the last book. But at the same time I recognize that they were that for 5 years, and AoS players have only seen them in that style.

That said, no book is perfect, and it seems that some units either were purposely slapped with the nerf hammer for being too ubiquitous last edition, or simply had design elements that slipped through the cracks (or both, rippers) and there are a few things that my TTS and listbuilding expierences have left me wishing were tweaked in the book.

None of these would require overhauls or new books at all, its mostly numbers adjustments that I would like to see. Let me know your thoughts!

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• The parting shot errata: just wanted to note that I really like this change, helps a lot with the "fairness" of the army.
• Lord Kroak: +50-80 points.
  • The source of most of the cries of "Seraphon is OP", and somehow missing the first round of point adjustments, lord kroak is a better caster than a regular slann, and both tankier and cheaper than a slann with 5 temple guard. All 3 of those should not be true.
• Saurus Knights: -1 Rend on their spears. Possibly +10 points per 5.
  • As far as I know, these are the only cavalry lances in the game that dont have rend. It would make them a lot more of a solid unit without buffing them overly much (since the 4 jaw attacks still dont have rend)
• Ripperdactyls: -1 Rend on jaws, 4+ save. +20 points per 3 (+1 spear attack?)
  • Ripperdactyls lost: 3 claw attacks per model, 50% of the extra beak hits per model, the ability to re-roll wounds, the boad control of toads, and ignoring -1 rend. Sure they got cheaper, but thats just excessive. They should be a hybrid of the speed and power of Terradons and Knights, not cheaper melee-only Terradons. And why are they carrying shields if they have the same save as terradons?
• Saurus Warriors: brought more in line with lore
  • Personally, I think these are fine for their cost in Coalesced (especially Koatl's Claw) armies. But in lore, they are these legendary beings of destruction on par with SCE. In rules their cheaper than a human with a crossbow. I would love to see a buff with a points increase. Maybe an extra attack base?
• Chameleons, Ark of Sotek, Troglodon, Eternity Warden
  • Simply outclassed by other options, most just need a small points adjustment (80/200/200/100). The Troglodon I would really like to have an actual unique spell instead of just copying the Slann's, would make him more useful in his designed role of "slann spell conduit".
  • Similarly, regular skinks being 70 points might be a good idea

• Realmshaper: please fix deployment rules. I want to use it.
• Battalions: Swap firelances and shadowstrikes, add flexibility to the Sunclaw and Firelances
  • Starborne is about speed and skinks, and already has deepstrike and teleport. So they get a damage buff to saurus and deepsrike flyers? And Coalesced that has no deepstrike and likes using Knights for damage, gets a damage buff to skinks and a speed buff to knights? These would be way more useful the other way around. And personally, I really dont like the 3 units exactly requirement, they are already more expensive battalions, and that 3rd unit often is hard to fit in. What is wrong with 2-4?

• Bound Endless spells: targeted points increases (the other issue people have with our army)
  • Personally I think this whole mechanic is effectively a Seraphon alligience rule, and since LRL dont pay points for their aetherstuff the whole thing is moot, and honestly I think a rule that said "Seraphon cast predatory spells are controlled only by them" would have inspired less grief even though its stronger due to how peoples minds work. But, people keep complaining, and one day GW is going to increase all bound spells by like 20-30 points and we will lose the mechanic entirely. So, to head off the over-reaction, any predatory endless spell over 50 points should increase to a 20 point premium for the bound version. +10 points would effect a 30 point spell more than a 80 point spell, and the whole bound mechanic is basically useless for non-predatory spells anyway.

Anything I miss? Do I sound crazy? let me know your thoughts!

 

Most of my post (other than the bound spells point) was directed more at internal balance than external. Kroak could be completely fine against other armies (which I disagree with), but if that means a regular slann is never worth taking he still isnt balanced. He needs the point increase for the Slann's sake more than anything. (Maybe slann goes to 250 and Kroak goes to 350? They need to be at least 100 points apart to even pretend to be fair)

You also cant compare Seraphon to two armies in the top 3 and say that were fine compared to them, they also need nerfs not to be the new point of balance lol

 

why do people keep saying this? the slann is defiantly worth taking he performs a compleatly different roll to kroak, and as far as results go he is taken as often and does just as well as kroak in the tournament seen

so you want to nerf every thing that is doing well? if you do that then you just shift who is on top and then you will need to nerf that. if seraphon compare well with the armies that are doinging well DoT KO DoK FS LRL IDK CoS skaven then that probably means we are fine and people are just complaining about what is new. we don't want a slaneesh or FEC deal where they triple nurff us into uselessness and we aren't even as powerful as those where at their peak. at the moment we are just a counter meta army that does well in a game that relies so much on dinky support heroes

 

How does he preform a different role? its the exact same statline but with 1 less cast and squishier for 60 points cheaper. The only reason to ever consider taking a regular slann is if you desperately need those 60 points. Yea kroak can do an additional role, but he also can do everything a Slann can but better.

And Im saying this as someone who doesnt even like the character lol

 

I want to be 60 points cheaper

 

Considering I just got one for Xmas, I wouldn't say no lol. Though I never want forgeworld models to be "meta", that just turns into pay to win really fast. Should be viable enough for casual games and thats it

 

a slann can (and does) take an artifact/ command trait making him a better caster then kroak specifically in dracothian but this caries over to other factions. not having access to RoI he focuses much more on our sweet of support spells and is also not as much of a target letting him get away with much more aggressive placement. points are also very tight in our lists so 60 points can go a long way. also saying he is only 60 points more is a bit disingenuous as you also need kroak support
or you know you can just look and see that people take a normal slann all the time in lists and do well.

 

I personally think Kroak is fine, although a *small* points increase wouldn't bother me too much. Kroak is fine on his own compared to other big wizards, as un-supported he's not going to outperform things like Nagash, Teclis or a Lord of Change. People who play against Seraphon don't like the board-wide unbinding, but regular Slann can do that as well. They also don't like the Kroak power build, but that requires bringing multiple units and an endless spell and ends up costing as much as one of the big boys. The arguments I've heard from Seraphon players always seem to boil down to "Kroak is better than a normal Slann, therefore he should be nerfed to make a normal Slann a more appealing choice." While I'm not an expert on point values and how GW balances them, pretty much all named characters seem to cost only slightly more than their generic counterparts, are significantly better, but can't take traits or artifacts and can't be used to fulfill battalion requirements. In that respect, the only reason Kroak is so much better than a Slann is because our traits and artifacts are so mediocre that none of the options elevate the Slann enough to be better than Kroak most of the time. That's a problem with our faction rules, not with Lord Kroak as a unit. If we had a trait/artifact that gave an extra free spell per turn (like several factions do) or something that buffed the Slann's casting or saves, he'd be in a lot better position, imo.

100% agree on Saurus still needing some small buffs. Rend on the weapons for Knights would be awesome. Personally, I would still like to see Warriors be made significantly tougher even if their points had to go up. Rend on the jaw attacks and 2 attacks base with their weapons would go a long way to making them the melee beasts they're supposed to be. A 4+ save would also be nice, but I don't know if that would be too strong or not.

Chameleon Skinks should have a damage increase, either through more attacks, better hit/wound numbers, or rend on their weapons. They feel like they really should be character assassins, but all they're really good for right now is to try and grab empty backline objectives.

The Troglodon is weird because it's a monster that doesn't do any real damage, and a caster that only has 1 spell and shares the unique spell with the Slann. I'd personally like to see the Trog go up to 2 spells instead of 1. That way, there'd be a reason to take him as a magical monster. You're not expecting him to do a ton of damage in melee, but he'd be able to throw out Comet's Call and then either a lore spell, endless spell or one of the basics. This would actually make him worth taking over a Slann in some cases, particularly in Thunder Lizards.

Ark of Sotek just needs a better weapon profile, period. Generally good shooting is better than good melee in current AoS, so if you're going to make the Ark a full melee monster/tank it should actually be able to fulfill that role. Either that, or give the Ark some sort of aoe debuff like how it can do a poison pulse in Total Warhammer 2.

Ripperdactyls got nerfed way to hard. I really like the idea of them being between Knights and Terradons. They should get an increase to their damage and base save, and give the old blot toad rule back, or change it but still keep it so that you can place a toad and keep it there for some sort of continuous buff.

Realmshaper is a cool idea, but why on earth do we have the only faction terrain that's not useable 50% of the time? Just let us deploy it when and where we want like everyone else...

I totally agree that the Firelance and Shadowstrike battalions would be better swapped. The buffs sync so much better with the sub-faction that they didn't get put in, lol!

Bound Endless Spells are fine, imo. They refused to give us faction spells, but we're supposed to be the strongest faction magically (I don't care that Teclis is now a god, he still learned from the Slann and they've been able to do things on the level of what the current AoS gods are doing now since the dawn of the Old World). So the bound spells are a nice way of showing our superiority. That said, I can't help but wonder if GW has decided that endless spells were a mistake, since they removed the entirety of the Malign Sorcery rules and have discontinued stuff like the Balewind Vortex. Personally, I like them but I wouldn't cry if they went away *provided* that GW gave factions that relied on them something good enough to replace them. If they don't replace them, I would love to see them actually gain the rule that Cities has where they always get the realm buffs, and get a price increase to go along with that.

 

They actually already have a 4+ save, they just dont feel tough with 1 wound. I wouldn't mind either 2 wounds with a huge points increase, or two attacks with a small points increase. I think both would just make them saurus guard though

Id actually rather see a Troglodon become a cheap monster than buffs, since its main problem is its a generalist (having melee, shooting, and magic), buffing any one of those to be good enough would make it a wizard with too much melee strength or a monster with a free spell, its just too expensive for the generalist role that it fills.

 

Here is my wishlist of random things

- Bring the old rule for the Ark of Sotek back

- Fix deployment of the Realmshsper

- Two casts for the Starseer

- Give Saurus Guard 2” range on their polearm

- Change the Eternity Warden somehow, there is no reason to take him at all atm

- Make the oldblood on foot more scary in combat, in lore he is supposed to be a combat monster, in game not so much

- Buff Ripperdactyls damage output, more attacks/better hit/wound/rend anything

 

I agree with almost all of the above! Also:

- I’d welcome some added ‘In a Seraphon Army’ clauses for Slann and Kroak to remove their value as allies (rather than points increases to take them out of range).
- It would be a huge errata, but I don’t see why Slann can’t learn from both Lores. It won’t happen, but I can dream.
- Part-reverse the points increase for salamanders.
- Coalesced damage reduction tweaks to apply more usefully.

 

- Give regular slann something properly unique to distinguish them from Kroak (e.g. a different unique spell, command ability) so they don't need to be the general by default just to distinguish them in a meaningfull way.

- Troglodon needs some love, either make it a better monster or a better wizard. Right now he isn't really good at either.

- Starseer needs some love, or alternativly, we need more builds which really like that charge-bonus.

- Better stats for ripperdactyls with, maybe, a slight point bump.

- Easier acces to battalions/artifacts/traits. Especially now that subfactions have mandatory traits/artifacts, limiting the used traits/artifacts even more than they already were.

- A purpose for saurus guard besides being ablative wounds for a Slann.

- Eternity warden to actually be better than a unit of saurus guard (seriously what's his purpose right now?)

- Saurus foot heroes to be more capable combat heroes. They don't need to be super powerfull, but right now they struggle to do 1-2 wounds per round, which is kind of the other extreme.

- Saurus in general to get some love.

- Skink foot heroes (and to a lesser extend the ripper/terradon chiefs) to get some (minor) protection so it isn't as trivial to rip apart our all-important synergies.

- Better/more varied faction spells, as well as acces to more spells so we can actually work around the issues the rule of one gives when you have this many spellcasts. We seem to heavily rely on endless spells to fill out our available spellslots. And while our spell lores aren't necesarly bad a lot of spells are fairly strict in what niche they fill, being outright un-useable outside of that niche. Which can feel rather awkward, especially as the game progresses and you run out of viable targets.

- Scaly skin to be less binary, where it's amazing against certain armies and borderline useless against others.

- Realmshaper to be useable.

- In general the faction bonusses of Coalesced could use a second look.

- I'd love to get prayers & mount traits at some point.

Edit: before I forget:

- Kroxigors finally getting something worthwhile

- Something that encourages mixed forces of skinks & saurus. There's very little synergy between the two subraces of lizards.

 

Kroak +50
Priest +20
Skinks +10
Saurus Warriors -10 for min and -20 for max
Saurus Knights -10 (hehehehehe)
Trog -10
Bound Geminids +10
Bastiladons +10
Oldblood on foot -10
Sunblood on foot -10

Think you could also cut the cost of almost all the battalions by 10.

Probably something like that.

Really? At 110, they are still probably too good but they need a warscroll change not another point increase. At 80 they were in the running for most grossly undercoasted unit ever released.

 

Might as well throw something in.
- Something for kroak and slan: i like the idea of a small point increase for kroak and new spell for him as well.
- Saurus Sunblood: love a FNP on him, if not really he doesn't need changed much except a small point decrease
- Foot-oldblood: A reason to take him beside being cheaper would be nice. Weird ask but give foot version the Sunbolt Gauntlet or a ranged attack so hes unique.
- Eternity warden: Again make him useful. Make him deadly in melee when a slann is nearby or something. Even better move him out leader and make him like the Grimwrath Berzerker in fyreslayers, a non leader hero. Adding the Aurics Hearthguard ability could be great if you make affect all non mounted heros.
- Oracle with trog: ditto to everyone else, CA and new spell would be nice.
- Knights: lances with rend and a use for clubs would be great.
- Saurus Guard: 2 inch range and a better use than bodyguards, if not make saurus warriors a little better. Also if GW is set on bodyguards make thier bodyguard a 5+ for skink heros, to make them less static.
- Kroxigors: Give them synergy with some heros, e.g. trog CA for kroxigor body guards would be interesting.

- Battalions: One for guard and one for kroxigors would be great but thats a BR or WD thing not a FAQ.
- Scaly Skin: Just let it reduce mortal wounds.
- Allies: CoS would be nice. Let other factions ally us as well not sure who would likes us that much except CoS, SCE and Slyvaneth, maybe LRL but magical rivals in the lore also works.

 

Make saurus Atleast as tough as orcs giving it another wound would help alot.
And GW Give kroxigors more synergies they need some love man.

 

A cool new plastic Slann/Kroak/Starseer kit
A cool new plastic Kroxigor kit
A cool new plastic Chameleon kit
Cooler new Saurus Knights... wait, is this not that thread?

Seriously, I wish I had more meaningful input, but there are already several interesting suggestions here (some more extreme changes and some just point adjustments).

My main opinion is that, for good or ill, some of our rules are based on the decision to split our army into starborne and coalesced. I don't necessarily dislike that concept, but if Seraphon were ALL summonable or ALL mortal (I know, I know, they're all real) then I think some rules/points/warscrolls would be different. Plus, we're a horde army and you can't have SCE stats with horde bonuses, can you?

Saurus Knights do lack rend and a 2" reach when compared to most other "standard" cavalry units (Black Knights, Chaos Knights, Dawnriders, Darkriders, Drakespawn and Wildriders). But our steeds generally attack better and we are the cheapest of all cavalry (yay?). I guess we compare more closely to Black Knights (LoN). I think our kit also works against us just a little, because GW needs to provide stats for two weapon types since the kit has it. They need to make them different/viable without one being blatantly better (which is debatable). If knights only had a spear/lance option then they might be a little better.

 

Give the Troglodon a CA. Until it gets one its a glorified spell range increaser.

 

not gonna lie, I preferred the hyper mobile army. we aren't lizardmen any more and the change removed an identity I liked about being Seraphon. but to fairly respond to your other points:

1. I also like the parting shot errata
2. Kroak does not need that much of a points nerf. its 100% unfair to compare him to a slann with Guard for a points comparison. +30 is fine
3. knight lances need a second inch of range along with that rend... they are the only "spears/lances" type weapon I know off the top of my head with only 1" of range. and they need it with no increase in points, or only +10
4. I definitely agree with most of your ripperdactyl talk, they shouldn't be more swarmy than our battleline. they should be treated as our actual cavalry.
5. Warriors need a second wound imo. There's no way to convince me that a fragile human is as hearty as a saurus
6. Chameleons aren't in a horrible spot imo.. I would leave them alone and see how the other proposed changes affects the army before I tampered with them. Ark is just... gimmicky at best. I wouldn't make a points reduction, I would up that to wound roll to a 5+ and leave it where it is. Troglodon… is actually ok... I think it need a -10/20 point reduction to see more use. that said, the spell being the same is an issue I have across the slann too...worst case leave his points the same, but make it slightly harder to wound so it can actually be a delivery system for Nuke-nado. Eternity warden is literally useless in my book... there's not a single reason to take it. EVER. it needs more than a price decrease, take that one back to the drawing board. old books EW actually did something... all they needed to do was unify the buff arua ranges, instead of having three different buffs (including the battalion) at three different ranges
7. 100% agree with realmsahper stance.
8. agree with the battalions, also take eternal and bring it back to the guards... cant even use it in a matched game
9. I think the +10 bound spells price is fine, but I don't disagree that it basically could have been a free allegiance ability