AoS Let's talk about nerfs and buffs from 3.0

oh fuck i forgot the terrorgheists. i never found stonehorns to be all that durable. but then again im a fucking oddball compared to most people in the forum in terms of priorities(mental) and theories(logical) on army discussion. that and i am kind of a terrible player overall even though i got a decent win rate at gw events(note i have only ever played at 10 gw events 7w-3L). omg im bad i completely spaced gargants im terrible

 

meh, the gargants aren't so much "durable" as much as they just got way too many wounds on a single model. They don't really have acces to good re-rollable saves, wardsaves or loads of healing as far as I know.

 

warriors are probably our best anvil. when you support them right they get very hard to kill

 

ok im admitting defeat. what? help me get this because im confused, i do not find warriors to be any bit durable at all to be considered an anvil

 

ok first warriors can have a high model count and smack back hard when they need to, meaning they hold OB well and don't just sit there when charged.
second they take defensive buffing very well, depending on how heavy you want to go with it they can go from just a 3+ save all the way up to a 3+ 6++ -2/-1/--1/-1(3+ 6++ -3/-1/-1/-1.againsed range) they also benefit from reinforcement which our monsters can't

 

Meh, that setup works with half the units we have, as none of those buffs are warrior specific. The main advantage saurus have is that they're the cheapest option to do this with alongside having the most bodies. Plus out of the various option we have that we can turn into 3+ 6++ etc. warriors are the weakest offensively, unless you bring 30 of them at which point the difference is cost isn't that big anymore (and that's ignoring the fact that you'd be spending a lot of support to keep a MSU of saurus alive...).

As for reinforcements, that cancels out to some extend against heroic recovery given that most of our monsters are heroes.

So meh, they might be our most cost-efficient, but beyond that there isn't a whole lot of difference between them and most of our other "anvil" options.

 

both very very big positives

why are to trying to anvil with a MSU? thats a terrible idea. no this is ment to be used on a block of 20-30 making them both a serious threat and tanky

it actually doesn't since reinforcement can be used as well as other CAs and you are limited to 1 heroic action so you would be missing out. AND on top of that our stegadons are really really bad at heroic recovery.

no no difference at all just better control, higher wound count, bigger foot print, bravery debuffing, better target for buffing, better charges, provide look out sir, and can bubble wrap our less durable units while still fighting well .... no difference at all.

 

How's our healing is not great? We have apotheosis, healing prayer, eotg and bound lifeswarm we can heal up to 4d3 per hero phase. And while bastiladon indeed loses his safe, we have even more ways to play around it - either stack saves from different sources to easily keep him in 1+ (easy until the last bracket) or use Ghur CA to ignore damage table.

 

Ghur CA is the best CA this edition

 

The prayer I had simply forgotten since it's new. As for the others.

Apotheosis is underwhelming as it needs a high casting roll to be an average healing effect, plus it takes up a casting slot for your slann (though with the new "enhancements" this might be less of an issue in 3.0)
Using the EoTG for healing conflicts with its ability to actually deal damage, and generally speaking people are fishing for those mortal wounds. Which means it has a significant oppertunity cost.
Lifeswarm is fine.

Anyway, let me rephrase. If we build specificly to heal the bastiladon, then yes we can pump out quite a decent amount. But that comes at the cost of a specific list & a large investement into this one aspect at the cost of not taking care of other aspects. The average Seraphon list, or at least the usual AoS 2.0 lists, tended to be fairly underwhelming where it concerns healing or comes at the fairly high oppertunity cost of dedicating half your list to it.

As for the save stacking, that's again relativly new thanks for all-out-defense and mystic shields, up till recently this was impossible and it takes a while to adjust to the new rules. Same story for the Ghur CA of course.

At 20-30 they're no longer all that much cheaper than other options. If you want them to be as tanky and as offensively powerfull as other options the price difference becomes negliceable. Especially as it means it's now eating into your limited reinforcement points. Leaving only body-count. Which has its value, but, especially in 3.0, with monsters now counting for 5 and MSU's generally being more common that's no longer the massive advantage it once was.

And similarly CA's are limited by the amount of heroes, CP etc The oppertunity cost is fairly similar..

Also, can't you use a heroic action per hero? Or am I misremembering things?

Bravery debuffing is available to other units. Other units are easily as buffable (e.g. knights and their general synergy with starpriest venom), all our saurus have the charge buff, we've got a metric ton of units to provide look out sir. Bubble-wrapping is considerably more tedious with a large unit nowadays (and again, we got loads of options for bubble wrapping...) etc.

There's only 1 thing that's special about saurus warriors and that's that they're the only option that's sturdier than skinks while still providing the same bodycount. Which is an significant advantage, sure. But it doesn't help them much with being an anvil.

In short; are they a decent unit with advantages over other units in our army? Sure. Are they a better anvil than others? Not unless you are specifically looking for an anvil with a large footprint. If you're simply looking for an anvil that can take some damage and survive they're neither the best, nor even unique, as most of their defensive power comes from generic buffs that can target everything we have.

 

It was adresses but deleted on the new FaQs.

 

I had thought there was language in the FAQ documents that explicitly says that the latest FAQ at Warhammer Community was the one in place and all previous FAQs "don't count anymore," so to speak. But the language isn't there. I mean, I would have bet money it was, but I don't see it. But yeah, I think only the errata/FAQ currently online should count.

 

I'd swear it was there too, that's why I said "deleted". As far as I remember, newest documents overwrites older ones. I'd say Coalesced reduces MW input, but I think we should talk to our opponent first.

For the core rules:

14.5 MORTAL WOUNDS
Some attacks, spells and abilities cause mortal wounds. Do not make hit, wound or save rolls for mortal wounds. Instead, the damage inflicted on the target is equal to the number of mortal wounds that were caused. Mortal wounds caused while a unit is attacking are allocated at the same time as wounds caused by the unit’s attacks: after all of the unit’s attacks have been made. Mortal wounds caused at other times are allocated as soon as they are caused. Mortal wounds are allocated in the same way as wounds and are treated in the same manner as wounds for rules purposes.

But I'd say yes.

 

The issue is that scaly skin says: "Reduce damage from succesfull attacks"

And in their F.A.Q. they stated that spells, abilities etc. are not "attacks". Hence scaly skin doesn't work against mortal wounds because there are no attacks that deal mortal wounds. The mortal wounds always come from abilities or spells, and those apparently aren't attacks cuz reasons.

 

Designers commentary doesn't change rules. It no longer existing is irrelevant to the way the rule should be played. The language describing mortal wounds is identical between 3.0 and 2.0. Any interaction that doesn't have any updated language or rules (which this doesnt) would behave exactly the same.

The existence or not of the faq was not what didn't allow mortal wounds to be affected. That's simply the way the rule works (which is still exactly the same) and GW was just clarifying that fact. The existence of that clarification doesn't have any impact on the actual rule.

They actually didn't state that. They simply stated it didn't effect mortals. What you are saying here tho is a good interpretation of why GW clarified the way they did.

 

Well that's a shame, would have been a nice boost to coalesced

 

I think they explained this in a seperate post. The designers commentary does indeed just say "does this apply to mortal wounds? No."

But there was a seperate explenation at one point that explained that the distinction was cuz of how they define "attacks". I distinctingly remember that being the case cuz I was angry over it being a really stupid and arbitrary distinction given that a considerable amount of abilities aren't different actually from "attacks". With stuff like the stegadon or better yet retributors who's attacks can stop being an attack when they roll a 6 cuz it's now an ability that happened to be triggered by an attack...

 

I still would argue. Healing prayer is the first choice in monster-heavy lists, since Curse is a bit unreliable and situative. And priest wants to be near a bastiladon anyway. If you have kroak, you will auto-get apotheosis and in half of the times it will proc d3 wounds recovery. If you only have slann - agreed, you need to naturaly roll 8 or 9 (depends on asterism), but you still can easily shift to it, if you feel like that. The only exception is the lifeswarm, but we may see it in our lists way more often, since 2d3 recovery per round is very strong. Time will tell.

 

Help me out, I don't follow this.

Buffed Saurus are doubly as sturdy as buffed skinks. How does being sturdier not help with being an anvil?