AoS Balanced games Seraphon vs. X

I think it may be unit, the warriors are somewhat squishy, but buffed by the scar-vet and the bastiladon shooting everything, they should be able to hold. I have been wrong before though!

 

take something shooty to take out the bloodsecrator and his army rapidly falls apart.

Other issues with the bloodhound army: The bloodsecrator is slow and his army needs to stick together. Some skinks constantly falling back whenever he engages and just pelting him with ranged fire would wreck his army.

the bloodreavers are squishy, battleshock immunity is cool and all, but 40 skinks firing a single volley into it should kill somewhere around 10 fairly reliably.

korgoraths might actually work if you have more than 1. They'd actually stand a chance at regularly killing something for healing themselves then (one korgorath is too little for that, also where the hell do you buy em)

the warlord is only really interesting if he gets to fight our lord or big monsters with his magic one shot axe. Again, skinks running away from him will ruin his day.

Valkia is the first one that would be able to keep up with the skinks so she is a nice addition.

anyway approaches for the seraphon to deal with this:

1) loads of skinks.
2) chameleons, especially when combined with terrain to hide behind
3) a bastillidon or stegadon to shoot down the bloodsecrator and tank the korgoraths. They need protection from the magic axe though.
4) split his army up threaten multiple objectives, his synergy falls apart if he can't stick together.

id say those are the safest counters. Going against him in me lee is probably a losing battle unless you get to go first and decimate him or can at least kill the bloodsecrator first. Also watch out for the magic axe. a lucky roll on your lord will be pain full.

 

take an eternal starhost vs a small army that has no mortal wounds and laugh as they can't even scratch you small armies are easy enough to steamroll as long ad you pick appropriatly. Id say seraphon is probably weakest in medium sized games. Too small to get full blown synergy, too big to rely on one battalion tailormade for the situation.

 

Just got home and realised I ignored two possibilities:

• Take a carnosaur & attempt to eat his lord before he gets the chance to attack you. after which your carnosaur can roam through his ranks fairly unupposed. Especially if you can manage to eat his lord & the bloodsecrator.
• Take an eternity host and bet on the dice gods favouring you.

Basicly there's 2 things that you need to do in order to win.

1. Keep his lord from using his magic axe on your big stuff
2. Quickly either decimate his army or take out the bloodsecrator to minimize incoming attacks.

So get some big monsters to quickly kill stuff, or use the range and disengaging of skinks to bleed him dry, or use an eternal starhost and bet on the dice gods not screwing you over (statisticly you should stand a good chance, especially if you get to attack after standing still, that's easily 20+ wounds).

That should be all the options we have I think.

 

Stormcast vs Seraphon is hilariously unbalanced at low point levels.

Their mortal wounds and vast ranged superiourity mean most of our stuff will die rapidly, especially if they roll well.

On the other hand, an eternal starhost is borderline immortal to anything that isn't mortal wounds and dishes out horrific amounts of damage. Similarly some of our monsters can go on a hilarious rampage, especially at such low point levels. Carnosaur goes off in the first round and eats an entire unit, or better yet the general, and the balance is now heavily skewed in your favour.

If I'd have to make a guess against a "balanced" stormcast army you'd get the following:

- A skink based list loses, unless the stormcast has little to no ranged firepower. As long as the skinks can kite they might eventually wittle the stormforged down. But the moment there's a single stormforged with shooty thing the skinks will probably get killed. They're too squishy while not dishing out all that much damage. Skinks could be used as effective supporting troops though.

- An eternity starhost will win if the stormforged don't bring copious amounts of mortal wounds or has amazing luck. The starhost is borderline immortal, especially with a priest for rerolls, and deals hilarious amounts of damage. The stormforged ranged superiority might allow them to pull through in certain situations. But in general the starhost will win as long as they don't get annihilated by mortal wounds.

- A monster based list stands a decent chance, but they're a tad expensive at this pointlevel. Plus a monster based list would be ignoring some rules.

- A saurus knight list depends heavily on the charge. If your charge fails you lose. In prolonged combat Knights do note trade well with pretty much anything

 

I've been playing my girlfriend who currently has

- Lord celestant on dracoth
- Lord castelant
- 5 liberators
- 5 liberators
- 3 Retributors
- 5 judicators
- 3 prosecutors
- Knight-Heraldor

It's about a 1000 points of the top of my head.

I've fought her with a eternal starhost, a slann, and some varying filler troops.

In neary every fight my starhost would eventually start annihilating entire units because they'd pump out 10-15 unsaved wounds in a single turn PER UNIT OF GUARDS whenever they could make use of the bonus they get when standing still. The only threats of note were her judicator's magic crossbow of doom & her dracoths stormbreath & her retrbutors. If she rolls well with them the starhost can be annihilated in a few turns.

Basicly the following happens in every match:

intially:
- She shoots at my stuff, 1-2 guards die to mortal wounds, my eternity warden probbly gets a wound.
- I shoot back, nothing of interest happens

Second/third round:
- We get into melee, if my guard have their bonus she losses at least 10-20 wounds worth of stuff.
- Some more guards get shot, apart from that no real losses.
- I summon something near her judicators or have my filler run around and charge them or something
- Something of hers blocks the remaining filler troops send for the judicator/castelant.

Fourth/fifth round
- My guards kill whatever is in melee with them, the retirbutors, liberators & lord celestant are probably the first to go down.
- Guards die to mortal wounds until only a handfull are remaining (usually about a unit worth remains), suffering no "normal" wounds.
- Eternity warden dies.
- Her judicators die

six round
- I proceed to mop up whatever is left.

In all honesty it's kind of depressing. She can't figure out a way to reliably kill my starhost and I can't figure out an army without the starhost that doesn't just get annihilated in turn.

 

I think a major issue is the low points value we're playing at. At such a low point value you simply can't make a very well-rounded army. It'l be heavily focussed by the 1 battalion you can actually field. So if it happens to be cost-effective and counter your opponent the difference is immeadiatly staggering. It also doesn't help that our eternal starhost is the only small battallion that's provides a effective "core" for an army. For example if you'd take a shadowstrike host you might kill something good with your initial attacks, but the lack of good line-infantry means you'l most likely be overrun quickly after it as the surviving stormforged just cutthrough you. A shadowstrike simply doesn't have anything to follow up that intial attack with on its own.

 

Any army with any mortal wound output will chew through any army relatively easily though... So singling out SC as being vulnerable to them seems an odd choice.

SC are powerful because they don't rely on synergies - their individual units are powerful by themselves, so once things start dying they don't individually drop in power.

Consider two armies, both are considered equal while at 100% unit count.

Take away 25% of a Seraphon force and you could easily lose 50% of your armies power.

Take away 25% of a SC force, and you have 75% power remaining.

That's where SCs true power lies, which is overlooked quite often. Lots of armies rely on synergies and buffs, Seraphon are particularly vulnerable because we're actually bad without them.