To elaborate a little more, obviously we just have a little corner of the picture. That corner looks pretty dynamic, and supportive of multiple playstyles unlike what we have currently. That's something i really enjoy. Asterisms, while not the most powerful battle trait of all time, are beautifully thematic and flexible given the army your playing against and the battle plan. Also provides a good base to build on. Maybe there are artefacts, command traits, or once per game abilities that can affect the great plan and which asterism you have in play. Carnosaurs look mean on the charge, which i love. 7 damage 3 attacks, with another 5 more being damage 3 on the charge means this dude hits and hits hard. Both his terror and blood frenzy ability make him great into other monsters, which is something he should do thematically and i really appreciate that. Still a little squishy, but at least he has the OOMPH to make up for it. And imagine them with exploding 6's! Engine's key thing is his ability, which got more consistent. All the buffs are strong, and you don't "lose out" just cause you didn't make whatever roll you were going for. That's a fantastic quality of life change. Vengeance of Azyr is a really interesting battle formation ability. Letting you use it in every turn gives your guys a lot of sneaky extra movement, especially considering how pile ins now work. The extra mortals is always nice, but largely a secondary effect. If the other three are somewhere in this world, we'll have 4 great, varied ways to build our armies which leads us nicely into... Starborne and Coalesced apparently no longer being a thing means we'll likely see more general playstyles be effective. You'll get to bring your slann and have your magic fun while still getting to stomp around with some monsters and not feel like you're sacrificing by not leaning wholly into a super narrow mechanic. I was also pleasantly surprised we kept a little bit of our unique jank. Global unbinds is such a uniquely powerful ability and we still have it. Slann still being a 3 cast with access to multiple casting bonuses is still on the menu and makes them feel like that dominate spell caster, especially now that we have some flexibility with free endless manifestation lores. Multiple accesses to -1 rend makes our stuff tougher than the initial saves wouuld make you believe, especially in a new edition where +save is much much less frequent. Points and the rest of the scrolls (specifically probably skinks and the astro) will play a huge roll but for what we got, i think we have every reason to be super excited. Sorry for the novel
Previously, they were designed around 1 big bombing run, doing a lot of damage in one go. As long as they had that 1 big payload as the focus it was fine to not have a run and shoot. Now that they're no longer designed around 1 big payload, but around multiple bombing runs, they need something to support that. Run & shoot, and a retreat out of combat, being obvious candidates to support that style of bombing runs. They didn't get any of the sort, hence the glaring flaw in the design. Does it seriously not click what I am saying? Yeah, and magic has been a dissapointing system for the entirety of AoS. With prayers, random abilities, and CA's being able to easily equal or overshadow it without the downsides of magic. It'd be different if prayers & such didn't exist, or at least where very rare, or even just weaker, and magic was the only way to really buff your troops. But magic doesn't even have that going for it in AoS. And look, I'm not saying we need 8th edition fantasy nonsense. I'm saying give us something interesting. Give me spells with dual offensive and defensive effects like Soulblight got vile-transference. Give me spells that are specialised against specific targets like Gobsprak has strangle hex, and Shalaxi has refine senses. Just give me stuff that's more interesting than basic buffs which you can get in 10 other ways, most of which don't run the risk of being unbound. Great, so the best argument you can give is that we need +3 to join in an arms race for bonusses to cast. That's such a fun reason to need +3 to cast.... O for crying out loud, they didn't even change that? Seriously, what's the point of having a level 3 wizard when the only thing he brings is a +1 to cast for other wizards? God, I want GW to do an article where they actually show how magic in 4th is supposed to be better than in previous editions instead of posting random spells. A freeguild marshal has 5/3+/4+/1/2 with his sword. And a gun. And a horse that will kick you. So a fairly regular human on a horse is apparently pretty equal to a stegadon. Seems a bit silly. Anyways; more important is that the EoTG has put 90% of its power in the engine. Given that the intended design is that you regularly do nothing with it; that's rather lame. It leaves the EoTG in a weird spot where during turns where you don't use the engine (or it simply fails) it's a oversized minor hero. Which is kind of silly. Cuz that's what it's replacing? So it's obvious to draw the comparison? It also was obvious that we'd get some variant of this given that virtually every army that had summoning has gotten rules like this? Yeah, because without slanns we did so much summoning. Summoning based lists with only an astrolith or a few starpriests where totally a common sight.... Sure, it has no cost. But it's also the only summoning variant that can fail. Also, the other summoning variants have more relaxed positional requirements (E.g. soulblight can summon near every piece of terrain, or near heroes), whereas we can only summon near the slann. Making it overall pretty comparable when it comes down to it. If all it is is a fine-tuning, then this entire marketing campaign is just such a waste of time, and a great way to set the wrong expecations. Though at least that's in line with my overall complaints so far. You'd expect big exciting reveals with a big marketing campaign like this. Or at the very least, you'd expect them to display some potential combo's or something new that is now possible thanks to these relativly minor changes. But GW refuses to do that; and just shows random warscrolls and spells without any real context most of which barely have any noteworthy changes. Which just highlights the dissapointment when they do show a halfway significant change and it's flawed (like the terradons, or tzeentch's fire mechanic) Anyway; tl;dr: great you're excited, but as far as marketing campaigns go, this one's terrible
I get what you're saying i just fundamentally disagree with your assertion that terradons need x, y, or z to fulfill a role. People disliked the one and done mechanic. It made the unit feel hollow after you used it. They alleviated that problem. Which kind of goes back to what i said before... you never liked it and this is a refining of what you already don't like. Real talk... DO you play aos? How often? Do you actively enjoy the game in any context? FWIW, i had the expectation that 4th was a refining and what i've seen so far makes that very clear. They had clear design goals and what they've shown has brought that to life. Things are... mostly the same. Which is what I, and i think most people that play and engage with 3.0 on a regular basis, expected. They cleaned up wording. Added more reactivity. Simplified some jank. If that wasn't your expectation, thats on you. Basically, just feels like more and more that you dislike the DNA, not the execution. As we so often have to, i'm good to agree to disagree. Happy to engage in more positive ways, but i've reached my capacity to entertain this kinda constant, across the board negativity about basically any and all aspects they are showing. edit: I think its funny you reference vile transference as interesting. Think just reiterates how far apart our opinions are on the topic. Deal damage and heal is hardly the epitome for "interesting" mechanics. Especially when like almost everything, its basically just a copy and paste of what the spell is right now lol. Refined senses, +1 wound and +1 save = interesting. +1 cast = boring. Just not gonna think we'll see eye to eye on this one.
Preface: I'm a glass half-empty kind of guy. Plus, I agree that we've only seen a few units and rules. So, it's too little to completely judge Seraphon. I was mistaken. I tried to quickly look back at the armies revealed so far, and not as many of them have "return a half-strength unit" as I thought. So, that could be considered a boon for us. Thematically, I understand why it's attached to the slann, but I wish it was more universal. I also wish it wasn't a 50/50 roll. But that's just me wanting my cake, as they say. I agree that the Asterisms will (hopefully) allow for versatility in play style despite the army/sub-faction. Plus, it might help cater to just personal play style. Do you like running in and fighting or just want to surprise with fast units? +2 move. Just like running and wrecking with monsters/mounts? Crit (2-hits). Want to be more of a spell-slinging force? +1 casting. Want to slow play with more potential anvil units? -1 rend. If you pick properly and play goes well, you can get a 2nd one. Can you imagine a successful Seraphon monster/mount army running around the table with Crit (2-hits) AND -1 rend. Personally, I think the Carno is a just slight upgrade to lateral move. It's damage is more evened out, but I still think it's going to whiff more often than it's a powerhouse. Plus, one less wound and 4+ save means it's still kind of fragile. At least it's combat doesn't drop off as hard. I do find it interesting that the Carno in the "real" game has a rampage geared towards monsters, but the spearhead is more about troops. I guess that's because there are more troops in spearhead boxes? I think the Spearhead rampage is more generally useful than the AoS monster rampage. EDIT: But I'm glad that Carno finally has something geared towards helping it fight a monster. I guess the Engine got a more consistent mechanic, but it still doesn't read as fun as did the late 2.0-early 3.0 version. I would like it better if you could just spend as many tokens as you wanted. But, I guess that would cater to hot rolls too much? I also wish it had an easier roll option you could try each round, like a 2+ laser/burst attack or something. IDK, maybe that's also too much like the earlier version. Even though, I balked at the combat statline, it's basically just the combined "Jaws" and "Stomps" of the current Stegadon which would be 7 attacks at 3/3/-1/2 at max health. I'm going to guess that the Stegadon is a flip of the EotG, and it's rampage will be MWs/defense on the charge. That said, I don't like that the EotG's rampage is only useful if it gets charged and can't be used any other time. I will say that, so far, I miss our teleport options. Looking back at other armies, several of them do seem to have a similar mechanic. I know we will get that option with one of our formations, but as the army that's been known for this in AoS, I think Seraphon are gradually losing that image. To that point, and to the point of Terradon design, that's something I think our Terradons/Rippers could have had for a while. They can fly high in the sky and drop down onto the battlefield in a later turn. But, I know that's our chameleon's role. Just as a tongue-in-cheek comment, I think it's funny that our Terradon's fly so high that missile attacks get a -1 to hit, but melee troops can hit them just fine. ;P All in all, I was down on the preview this morning, but softening as I reread the article.
Sure, but by removing the one-and-done; and not really giving it anything in return, it's left without much of a purpose. Very simply put; what exactly is it's role supposed to be with this new warscroll? What are terradons supposed to actually be good at? You see a months long marketing campaign for a new edition, with articles promising to discuss each and every individual faction as well as articles promising to go into detail about the changes to individual mechanics. A marketing campaign that's bigger & more detailed than their campaign for ToW which is a whole new system. A campaign that still isn't even finished, and is going to include a world-wide event. And you expect things to mostly stay the same? Really? What kind of fanfare would you expect when they do release something with major changes? For someone who talks about paying attention to context a lot you really do not listen very well to the context I have given multiple times. Anyways I'll try one more time; cuz this is getting boring, but here goes. Most of what's shown is fine, or at least fine-ish. However, most of what's shown is also rather dull and basic with minimal and fairly predictable changes. At the same time it's a very big marketing campaign and GW is making a lot of fuss about how this is the next big thing. This combination of dull & basic with a giant fuss ends up highlighting the bad things, because those are often the only interesting thing in an article. It also begs the question; why even bother with a new edition if all you're doing is fix some minutia? Even if the actual updates are overall good; this failure of a marketing campaign puts a massive damper on things. Had they simply released 4th without this massive fanfare, it'd have been fine. Or if they at least focused on vaguely "interesting" stuff, it'd have been fine. Put in a battle report, show off a combo, write an "orders sir?" style article for the new edition. There are so many options that would be better than simply throwing random warscrolls around. But instead GW chose to do this. And it simply isn't great and, again, highlights the worst aspects as those are simply vastly more interesting than the minute changes. Overal; I'm expecting 4th to be slightly better. There are some good updates here and there, and the bad stuff isn't worse than the bad stuff from 3th was. It's just dissapointing that it doesn't seem to go beyond "slightly better". I'd expect more from such a big release, and I'd expect them to have learned more from the first 3 editions.
Im good dude. I get it. Sorry if my statements implied otherwise. If you've existed for literally any edition change ever, or the 10th edition 40k roll out from last year, nothing here should have surprised you. At least not in my opinion Genuine question, Is this your first edition change? Also, TOW is essentially completely forgettable from GW so comparing anything to the TOW release is kind of hilarious. It's not really a standard i'd use to judge anything.
They said one of our battle formations would be teleport focused. I think that could potentially be pretty impactful. Would you want it to be more of a battle trait? What would have helped that out for you.
True. I was just sort of thinking about how Seraphon used to be called out as THE teleport/summon offender. But I'd say GW is gradually moving us away from that image. Or maybe it's more fair to say GW is giving more armies similar mechanics to balance?
Definitely think that mechanic is getting spread around. There's so many situational teleports/drop from deepstrike type mechanics in 4. Genuinely feels like almost every army has access to it in some way or another.
I'm definitely not as experienced a competitive player as many on here, but I have been playing AoS since late 1st/early 2nd Edition, so I have been able to follow along with the changes, especially to Seraphon. My very basic thoughts so far: First of all, 3rd Edition was/is actually quite well balanced, *finally*, so it's a bit disappointing that GW wants to change editions so often. I really think 4-5 years per edition would be better, not 3. Plus, we only got just over a year to play with our 3rd Edition rulebook, which did a lot of things I had been wanting them to do with Seraphon for a long time. Making Saurus on par with other melee troops, new models, etc. But it also heavily nerfed my favorite playstyle which was the Thunder Lizard monster mash army, which was *amazing* in 2e but got gutted in 3e. I've been skeptical about some of the general changes from 3e to 4e, but there's also some good things. Reinforcement rules in 4e are nice, free endless spells, armies all getting their basic rules at once to help balance them against each other instead of having to wait years for your book to come out to be able to play "properly" for the current edition, and the overall reduction in save-stacking are all positive things. I'm still a bit iffy on some of the reactions, especially since some armies seem like they will *constantly* be shooting, moving, and charging you IN YOUR TURN. I know a lot of people are excited about more reactivity, but I don't like that everyone seemingly has "trap cards" to worry about when you're moving and trying to do what your army wants to do. I know that everyone gets it, but it adds an unnecessary layer of complexity imo which is kind of weird since with each new edition they always tout how they're simplifying everything to pull in new/younger players. I'd rather save my CP for doing stuff in my turn, not dumping them all trying to shut down my opponent during their turn and knowing that they'll probably do the same to me. Other than that, most of the changes so far are minor and not really that positive or negative. I guess it's nice that if you choose to take a double turn you don't get a battle tactic that round, but if you're double-turning you're most likely gaining way more in victory points than you would by getting a tactic that round. I will say that even with GW supposedly getting rid of save-stacking, with everything now having rend and most things having some sort of crit effect on their weapons I hate that it looks like nearly everything in our army will have a 4+ save, which means that in practical terms 90% of the time all our units will be rolling for 5+ saves and will probably die very quickly as a result. One negative thing people are bringing up that I agree with is the short casting range. Basically all magic we've seen so far has a 12" range, so they really want wizards to be in the danger zone if they're going to cast any spells, and buffs seem to require that a unit be wholly within 12" most of the time, which is also pretty short range. I don't know if we'll get priests back or not, but the Khorne priest preview showed an 18" range on their prayers, which seems a bit strong compared to the near-universal 12" range for spells... Biggest thing I dislike though is the loss of bravery and the addition of control score. It's a cheap way to "improve" a unit by giving it a buff to friendly units' CS or reducing enemy CS, and they're throwing it on EVERYTHING! I'm not looking forward to constantly having to count up all the increases and decreases to each unit's CS every turn... As for Seraphon specifically: Ok, I'm glad the Carnosaur is at least a bit better than the Spearhead preview lead us to believe. The addition of the claws to the weapon profile and the strike first against damaged monsters are both nice. Still fragile as heck with a 4+ save, since everything in the game has rend he'll be sitting on a 5+ save most of the time and will still die to most other comparable attackers or troop units. It's weird that GW seems to want our biggest, baddest dino to focus on picking off wounded things when it should be going head to head with anything smaller than a Maw-Krusha... Engine of the Gods is at least useable again. Not good, but useable. I guess GW still has trauma from the 2e Engine spam days, we'll probably never see a "good" ruleset for EotG again, or at least not for another couple editions at this rate, lol! Also makes me wonder what they'll do with the Troglodon since it was always in kind of a bad spot right until our new battletome for 3e, I hope it still keeps it's role as a ranged attacking, spellcasting monster. The -1 to hit aura buff is amazing, I really hope it keeps that. Kroxigors and Saurus look to be doing pretty well, at least they should be able to hold their own vs. other comparable troop types. Hope we at least get a crit effect on our weapons since you know, basic Stormcast troops do mortals on 6s to hit now Slann warscroll seems pretty good. Hopefully it's not crazy expensive as I imagine he'll still be a near auto-include in most lists. I never liked having to build around summoning so I'm kind of glad that's not much of a thing anymore. The revival roll is nice, but with only a 50/50 chance of getting it on one destroyed unit per turn I don't see it being reliable in most games. Arcane Vassal is still once per turn, boo That said, I'm surprised to see global unbinds stay, that alone makes the Slann super useful in most situations. Built-in +1 to casting is also nice to see remaining. Losing bonuses to unbinding is rough though. Asterisms are nice, good to see those come back, even in a weakened state. Pretty solid faction ability overall. just wish the second buff kicked in earlier since most of my battles are already being won or lost by turn 3, lol! Guess our bites are all gone and our ability to deal mortal wounds is going to depend heavily on subfaction, it will be interesting to see what the other 3 are. Terradons getting unlimited bombing runs is nice, but having to hug the Terradon Chief to make them useable is not. The auto-wounds on 6s at least makes their ranged attacks somewhat useful. Depending on their cost, I can definitely see them being good ranged support, flying over and bombing things already in combat, getting behind them, and shooting them the next turn before making another bombing run. Overall, Seraphon seem relatively interesting to play and at least in-line with the rest of the game. Still have mediocre to decent warscrolls, nothing looking particularly strong compared to other units we've seen previewed so far. But then again, this seems to be the edition of "if everything is nerfed, then nothing is nerfed," lol! Everything sitting on a 4+ save while most other armies' good units are at a 3+ save... I remember when the lack of rend was one of the biggest issues for our army, at least that seems to be better but our lack of saves really concerns me now that literally everything has rend, lol! All in all, nothing *amazing* but nothing terrible either. Our army looks perfectly playable for the release of 4e, but of course we're only getting a preview of a couple of warscrolls, one subfaction and one spell. It will heavily depend on how good the rest of our stuff is when the indexes officially come out whether I will want to actually play 4e or not.
Nope, been around a while. As far as I remember the other new editions were handled considerably better. Still not great, because GW in general just kinda sucks when it comes to marketing & release strategies (I mean, just look at whatever they're doing with ToW), but better than this mess. 4th in general seems to be going for more homogenization for the sake of balance. Teleports & such are no exception. Rend 2 is also pretty common. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if we're effectivly going to see a lot of 5+ and 6+ saves in 4th (or even 7+ if you're a squishy faction like Tzeentch...). If anything, we seem to have gone from mortal wound spam to rend spam. I honestly do not understand GW's dislike of wizards. The effects themselves clearly aren't the problem, cuz they're fine with prayers & random abilities having similar or more powerfull effects. Considering that magic is the only mechanic where an opponent can interfere, you'd think it'd be the most powerfull option. But for some reason it never is. Aside from GW's tendency to throw CS mechanics on everything for some reason, the biggest problem with CS is that it creates weird edge-cases when you look beyond basic infantry matchups. If you have 2 basic infantry units, with comparable CS & comparable damage output, then CS is fine-ish. And something like terror from a carno even sounds like a vaguely interesting buff. But the moment that carno itself starts contesting the objective things get weird quickly. Very simply put; that carno with its CS of 5, terror, & its damage output, can reliable steal an objective from around 10-15 saurus warriors (or equivalent); cuz it'll simply kill most of em. If you want to defend your objective you'll either need to bring your own monsters (with some backup possibly), or bring a ton of models (especially if you want to last more than 1 round). At which point you might as well just kill the carno instead of trying to contest the objective. And a carno is a relativly basic example of such an edge case. There are monsters with better CS, and with better damage. And that's just looking at monsters, there are other matchups that can create similar edge-cases.
In general it'll be much harder to contest objectives without being in combat because of how small they are now. You'll also see a lot more just body blocking the objectives to ensure the opponent has to clear the unit off before being able to contest.
I mean, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Something that always bothered me about 6" objectives was the whole, "I have a monster exactly 5.98 inches away, so your Saurus hero and three aggradons don't get control"
meh, not like the shorter range truly fixes that problem. It's just an inherent flaw in the way objectives are controlled. Also, doesn't the smaller range might make the whole CS mechanic kind of pointless. A 3" circle isn't exactly big. How many saurus can you fit in there? Like 10? Anyways, certain units, like monsters, probably just shouldn't be able to control an objective. Avoids a lot of these problems. Plus, limitations like that are an easy way to encourage people to build a vaguely balanced army and prevent people from showing up with an army that's just some OP nonsense, so that's a nice bonus.
Anyways; Slaves to darkness: faction: recieve blessings from the gods after killing something. Beasts and non-hero monsters can't be blessed No rule of one limtation? A miracle. roll a dice, get a buff. You can re-roll but if the re-roll is a 1 you suffer damage buffs: heal +1 to hit 6+ ward, or a 5+ if you already have a ward +1 to rend (companion attacks are not excluded?) Pick an effect you'd like Effects last the entire battle, and stack Marks of chaos: Pick a mark when list building, some units have a predefined mark (e.g. belakor is undivided) undivided +1 to wound against monsters & heroes Khorne +1 attack when charged Tzeentch 4+ ward against mortal wounds from spells and endless spells (so regular attacks from endless spells don't get protected? bit silly) Nurgle -1 to wound defensivly Slaanesh +1 to run & charge A miracle; fun & thematic rules and they're also fairly decent. Subfaction: defile an objective you contest Then deal damage to enemies near defiled objectives Also surprisingly fun & thematic. However, it needs clarification if you can defile the same objective twice. Also; depending on the number and layout of objectives this is either quite good, or quite terrible. The fact that you can only defile 1 objective per turn kinda sucks. Would be nice if you could spread the tokens more easily. Spells: give a unit an extra dice when charging 12" range It's fine... Given that you cast it before moving and it's a charge buff the short range isn't as much of a problem. Still not terribly inspired though. Units: Belakor: Very reliable profile (8/3+/3+/2/2 crit (auto-wound) and 2/2+/2+/2/2 charge (+1 damage)) Ignore safe roll modifiers Rampage: strike-first for belakor and some allies Dark master remains Personal spell: -1 to hit & crit-rules don't work. Has 18" for some reason. Daemon prince: 6/3+/3+/1/3 crit (mortal) is pretty solid Can have a trophy rack or wings: Wings: fly & +2" move trophies: weapon gets anti-hero Ability: bless a non-hero unit using the faction ability No wound table 3+ save chaos knights: +1 rend and +1 damage on the charge for its lance 3+ save Again, pretty reliable profile: (Lance: 3/3+/3+/1/1 Hooves: 2/5+/3+/-/1) Marauders: 2/4+/3+/-/1 +1 to rend FOR THE REST OF BATTLE if it charges with a natural 8+ while near a darkoath hero: deal mortal wounds when a model dies Spearhead: Tweaked Blessings; but they don't stack Chaos warriors: 3+ save 2/3+/3+/1/1 +1 to wound against enemies that control an objective you don't contest So; definitly an above average reveal. The blessings are nice & fluffy. Having them last the entire game is nice. And most importantly; the mechanic isn't immeadiatly undercut by a rule of one style limitation. Watching units become truly blessed throughout a game is an great idea. The daemon prince being able to bless as well is cool. Belakor's personal spell is having anti-crit on top of a boring -1 to hit is great. That anti-crit actually has fun interactions if you throw it on the right target. Marauders are honestly kinda cool for basic canonfodder. Chaos warriors being specificly good at taking objectives is a nice touch. O, and they got rather good stat-lines.
The marks and eotg table is just an exact copy+paste of their current rules with a lot of stuff cut out. No heroic actions for the marks and the eotg table has shrunk from a table of 12 to a table of 6.
I know, I'm just happy to finally have something vaguely interesting, with a coherent theme, & without it immeadiatly being undercut by gamey limitations like the rule of one. Which says a lot about how unimpressive most of these reveals have been.
Mean this as no offense, literally just super interesting to me. We legitimately couldn't be more different in how we look at these rules. These rules were not at the top of my list, for sure. I think slaves battle traits are already super boring and eliminating most of the the interesting parts about it just made this feel a little womp womp to me.