AoS Fixing Serephon

Hence my earlier remark that the mechanic might need to be toned down to deal with certain synergies as that could spiral out of control. Though given that turn one it'd only really work against hordes and that as he gets wounded himself it gets toned down as well I'd actually expect it to not be too unbalanced unless your opponent is kind enough to make his job as easy as possible...

Of course this is only one possible way to make him an interesting melee hero. There's other possibilities as well. You could double down on his supportive ability as a commander and allow him to turn a mere handfull of saurus into a credible threat. Allowing him to lead a small taskforce to go and grab an objective independently or to hold together your frontlines so even a terrorgheist thinks twice about charging into your saurus when they're under his guidance. That'd be a good solution as well.

imho foot-heroes in AoS in general, especially from older factions, are currently quite underwhelming though. Looking at them some more it seems to be rare for them to be have a noticeable impact. Both in terms of supporting others and their own combat prowess. In terms of combat they have to compete with giant dragons & hordes of soldiers, which they're just not going to win. And in terms of support the average footslagging hero simply just can't really do anything impressive on his own. The mounted heroes tend to get better support abilities as well as they're the "fancy" version. Furthermore none of the footslogging heroes get enough supporting power to turn a weak unit into a credible threat on their own. 10 Saurus warriors supported by an oldblood are only barely more of a threat than just 10 warriors, which is just kinda weird.

 

well that's why i wanted to give him a much better movement ability that paired with his fairly good re-roll ability if it's 3+ that's half of failed wound rolls he could do a good job of leading armies into combat. what do you think of having his command ability allow for runs and charges instead? that would give our warriors a 10" move witch is very good.
then if you paired him with a cold one hero to re-roll charges as well.

 

The biggest issue my local gaming group have pointed out with Age of Sigmar's treatment of Seraphon is regarding the overall game mechanics and the simplification from the Fantasy ruleset that came with it. Specifically with saurus, as they put it, toughness was the reason why saurus infantry units in general were a heavy infantry choice in Fantasy, not their wounds or armour saves, and the removal of the stat from the game simply hasn't been compensated for in either wounds, saves, or resilience to rend.

This is especially true of saurus guard, who should really be shining as a bodyguard unit that doesn't just make it marginally harder for your opponent to hit a friendly hero within range. Perhaps my biggest gripe with this unit is that they don't actually protect your heroes, not even when taken as part of an Eternal Starhost where they're once again absolutely reliant on a relatively squishy and sniper-prone hero within range to provide them with a 2+ save. Ideally, saurus guard should be able to discourage the enemy from simply assassinating your characters, say for instance by conferring a -1 penalty to hit a nearby friendly SERAPHON HERO for every saurus in the closest guard unit that exceeds that hero's maximum wounds, up to a maximum penalty of -3 (can come up with better wording here, of course).

Speaking of warscroll battalions, I would like for Seraphon to have less of a requirement to rely on warscroll synergies in general just to be competitive.

 

ya a lot of over all game changes have hurt us. im not familiar with tuffnes how did it work?

 

In the previous game system, and still in use in 8th Edition 40k, a unit's Toughness is the defensive counter to an opposing unit's Strength when it comes to determining what you need to roll to wound a target.

8th Edition 40k gives a pretty straightforward flowchart for this compared to the wound roll tables we had in previous editions:

• Is attack's Strength equal to target's Toughness?
  • If yes, 4+ to wound
  • If no, is attack's Strength higher than target's Toughness?
    • If yes, is attack's Strength at least double target's Toughness?
      • If yes, 2+ to wound
      • If no, 3+ to wound
    • If no, is target's Toughness at least double attack's Strength?
      • If yes, 6+ to wound
      • If no, 5+ to wound

There are occasions in which modifiers are applied to this roll, but usually those are the result of one special rule or another.

As a pretty basic example from before the End Times, and without getting in the way of talking about other attributes, say a standard human swordsman hits an orc warrior with an attack. Humans have 3 Strength and 3 Toughness. Orcs are a bit stronger with 4 Strength, but not much tougher with 3 Toughness as well. Thus, the swordsman would need to roll a 4+ to wound the orc. Conversely, if the orc managed to land a hit on the swordsman, it'll have an easier time wounding the swordsman with its higher Strength, so it'll need a 3+ to wound.

Let's now change out the orc for a saurus warrior, which had 4 Strength AND 4 Toughness in those days. The saurus warrior's higher Toughness makes it harder for the swordsman to hurt it, so he'll need to roll a 5+ to wound it instead.

 

oh. why did they get rid of that that's a great rule for balancing. it means i could give a unit a strong weapon and not worry about them killing heroes in one go. as to your temple guard idea i'm worried about making our heroes to hard to kill with a army as hero focused as ours the opponent needs a counter to our buff engine making them practically immune to range seems like a bit much. i think a better idea is they can take wounds instead like with the warden that way it's more like they are dying for their charges instead of completely denying damage.
maby something along the line of
if a hero within 3" takes a wound you can chose to transfer it to a temple guard unit roll a die on a 5+ the damage is doubled. this makes them pull damage away from your heroes but they arnt as good at it as the warden and it wound make 27 wound slann

 

That depends on how strong the weapon is, mind you. On the plus side, it's not as severe as it was several editions ago when double-toughness Strength also meant instant death on a failed save, regardless of how many wounds you had.

The problem I have with this is that it makes the Eternity Warden redundant as a model.

Don't get me wrong, the temple guard still act as ablative wounds for your heroes with the idea I proposed, but in a more tactical light: it forces your opponent to focus on whittling down the bodyguard in order to get at those squishy heroes in their midst, and chances are that whatever your opponent throws at them is going to have high rend anyway, if not the ability to deal mortal wounds.

 

right but we are going to hit the warden to he is saposed to be a guard but better he is the leader of them and the most experienced so the idea is he does it better. my idea is that on top of taking wounds for your heroes he also gets a free pile in for every unit that attacks a hero neer him. coming down on them like lightning like that story from the old world about the daemon prince.

(quote)It was during the year of the Jade Star Sea that the largest Daemon incursion since the Great Catastrophe came to Lustria. Its leader was Slaa'Ulaan, a Daemon referred to in ancient stone tablets as ‘the nether-thing of the second moon’. Slaa'Ulaan was amongst the most destructive and vile of fiends during the Great Catastrophe and had been responsible for the capture of many Mage-Priests, all of whom were sacrificed in obscene rituals. It was the great Lord Huinitenuchli of Pahuax who had finally banished the foul Daemon at Xuhua Lake all those years ago.[1d]

When Slaa'Ulaan returned to Lustria many thousands of years later, Lord Huinitenuchli, who had relocated to Xlanhuapec, could not be roused. Only Lord Tenuchli, subordinate Mage-Priest to the great Lord Huinitenuchli, could be awakened. Accompanied by Chakax, the Prime Guardian of the City of Mists, Lord Tenuchli led an expedition to the Pillars of Unseen Constellations and there found the full might of Chaos assembled. The battle that ensued was a one-sided massacre, for the Saurus warriors were made sluggish by the arcane energies that flowed forth from the corrupted site. Slaa'Ulaan led the slaughter-filled charge and strode amongst the Lizardmen, snipping off heads and striking down whole ranks at a time, while the Saurus struggled to raise their weapons, so sapped were they of strength. In scant moments, only Lord Tenuchli remained, with Chakax immobile by his side.[1d]

Slaa'Ulaan charged the Prime Guardian, believing him incapacitated by magic, but Chakax was able to shrug off the disorienting spells and was only static because as of yet there was no direct threat to himself or the Mage-Priest he guarded. As Slaa'Ulaan neared, Chakax exploded into violent motion, pulping the Daemon into a steaming mass of bubbling daemonic ichor. Yet even in its death throes, the great Daemon directed its last energies into an arcane blast aimed at Lord Tenuchli. Chakax saved the Slann from instant death by stepping in front of part of the blast, yet Lord Tenuchli was badly wounded, his throne crashing to the ground. With Slaa'Ulaan’s death, the daemonic host dissipated, leaving only Chakax and the wounded Lord Tenuchli alive. With orders to stay by his Mage-Priest’s side, Chakax could only stand immobile, unable to seek help. A cycle of the moon passed before a patrol found them and escorted the unconscious Slann back to the City of Mists, the faithful Eternity Warden keeping pace every step of the way(end quote)

 

That would be more of a re-work of the Eternity Warden IMO, as their entire role in Age of Sigmar right now is to be the underling who shoves their leader out of harm's way and takes the hit himself, not the wall of interlocking shields preventing assailants from directly attacking said leader.

 

well he would do both chakax was saposed to slow time and beat the hell out of the people trying to kill his slann and this is a little of both.

 

Imho the removal of strnegth/thoughness also has had a severe effect on heroes & other special units. It was an easy way to make someone stand out from the crowd of regular footsoldiers as giving +1 thoughness or +1 strength could be a surprisingly potent advantage.

Also they got rid of it as it was deemed too complex given that it requires you to read a (basic) table. The lord of the rings game used to have a 10 by 10 table that told you the required wound roll for each matchup of strength vs thoughness (not sure if it still does). And it is indeed not the most userfriendly thing.

@Erta Wanderer I didn't see you improved his re-roll wound ability? What did you try to improve?

As for runs & charges. Movement is great, but I think that should not be the main strength a saurus hero brings. So no matter how strong you'd make a movement based ability, the saurus hero needs something besides that to be a proper saurus. It fits more with a backline or skirmishing hero which for us are our skinks. Saurus are relativly slow frontline soldiers and their support should be focused more into that. In that sense the current command ability is great, it allows you to reform ranks quickly in response to a flanking attempt. I'd imagine it's similar to how Alexander drilled his pikeman to turn instantly giving the normally super inflexible phalanx the ability to respond to flanking charges.

 

yup i think its a shame to.

i didn't the improvements are elsewhere

except flanking doesn't do anything any more it's a hold over from a time in the game when it did mater letting them run and charge or just letting them move when they shouldn't does the same thing without the weird pivot rule.

 

Flanking is still viable. It's just that it's solely a feature of model placement rather than their facing these days. Even in Age of Sigmar, you want to maximize the amount of damage you can inflict vs the amount of damage you receive in a given combat, and the easiest way to do that is to deny your opponent as many retaliation attacks against an attacking unit as possible, preferably by exploiting the narrowest front available to you.

 

The loss of a front has significantly reduced the value of flanking though. Especially with how hordes and attack range work. Minimizing the amount of counterattacks is rather difficult when you have 40 dudes who need to get into range to punch 5 opponents...

Then how did you get to "re-roll half the failed wound rolls"?

 

on a 3 to would which is what most of our killy troops have on there primary weapon you only miss on a 2 and a 1 if you re-roll 1s that's half of them

 

Right like that.

Re-rolling 1's is just as effective when having a 3+ base succes, or a 6+ base succes. Either way you improve the succesrate by ~16% compared to not having the re-roll (assuming no weird mechanics like exloding dice). So "re-rolling half of failed rolls" isn't really important. It's merely a ~16% increase to their output which is exactly fairly underwhelming on even our killier stuff unless you have put every single buff we have on em.

Overall re-rolling 1's is generally underwhelming cuz of this as it's just not a particularly big increase only really becoming interesting when you are already at a 2+ as it then might as well say "re-roll all failed rolls". It's still only a 16% increase but a 2+ re-rolling gives you a 97% succesrate or something absurd like that which is just amazing. Otherwise basicly any other buff you can get is better, +1 to the roll, exploding dice, mortal wounds, whatever.

I'd be surprised if you can consistently get a horde of 40 to fight a unit like say 5 liberators without allowing all the liberators to retalliate unless your opponent is activly helping you. And with horde units as common as they are it's a bit underwhelming. But yeah, for non-horde units it's definitly doable.

And yeah, I can imagine it leads to an absolute mess of a rulebook. I do wish they'd had kept something more of it though. Conga-line formations are weird... Not sure how they should've done it though.

 

no re-rolling 1s with a 3+ is 4 times better then with a 6+ any given dice role has a 1 in 6 chance of roling a 1 and a 1 in 6 chance of that role being a 6 or a 1 in 36 chance wile a 3+ has a 1 in 6 of rolling a 1 and a 2 in 3 chance of a 3+ or a one in 9 chance

 

or a reroll 1s with 3+ gives you a 11.2% improved chance of success over not having it and on 6+ it's only 2.8%