AoS Fixing Serephon

what? no your comment didn't show that at all. when we compare them to parallel units the gors and ungors do well and are still cheaper by 20 and 10 points respectively.

 

Yup, ultimatly I'd expect heroes to generally be better stat-wise and if you're looking at it purely for that they should be the default pick. The main reason to not take heroes, besides limits the game imposes, is to get the needed bodycount for a functional army. And there's gonna be some niches that you can't necesarly fill with just heroes, for example an army who's heroes refuse to ride a mount could use some cavalry.

 

Also I think an example of a place where minor heroes are actually in a fairly good place is skirmish. There the differences with single models make them stand out enough that even a skink priest's statline is actually fairly decent and capable of holding their own. I think that AoS simply has scale issues in this sense, where some units seem to be based on different scales of warfare (ranging from individual squads skirmishing against eachother to fullscale pitched battles). if that makes any sense to you.

 

I mean that you have scale issues cuz you have two things designed for different scales which are then made to compete with eachother. Which inevitably makes things weird. Same reason why you don't really use titans in a regular 40K game, they're just for a different scale and by definition decimate anything.

on a sidenote, does anyone know why they moved away from heroes being inside units like in WHFB? Seems like a better way to deal with these minor heroes.

 

they where trying to move away from modeler pricing and closer to what you see is what you get. part of lowering complexity.

 

Well they could've stuck with a command squad or something like that. It'd still be "what you see is what you get" just that a skink priest comes with a bodyguard or attendant or two. It'd allow them to put on a few extra wounds and give them enough fighting power that they don't need to run from everything. So why have command squads dissappeared as well.

 

well the new bone lord is going to work like that so maby if he does well we might sees something slimier

 

I didn't mean the scale of the game pointwise, I meant the scale of warfare it's supposed to represent.

The LoTR one works on a relativly small scale, you're not regularly going to see a war mumak or balrog, let alone multiple in the same army. Most special units like heroes are barely all that different from the regular units. A hero like say Theoden or Aragorn isn't riding a big giant magical mount, like an AoS hero, and they aren't equiped in artificer armour with a special gun that's basicly a portable nuke like in 40K either. They're just fairly regular humans on a normal horse wearing normal, albeit high quality, armour with maybe a magic sword that glows when orcs get nearby. They'l reliably win a 1 on 1 duel, but they're not going to cut through 100's of orcs at the same time.

In contrast 40K plays on a much bigger scale with engines of war or giant daemons being quite common (just look at knights...) but it still works on account of stuff like relativly "minor" heroes like space marine captains being capable of ripping apart a tank or murdering entire battalions on their own when kitted out correctly. So relativly "minor" heroes can still achieve a lot on this scale. So a lone space marine captain can actually wander around the battlefield on his own and be relativly fine, despite having to put up with several tanks, a knight & god knows how many chaos space marines lurking around every corner.

And then you have AoS, which seems to have the scale of 40K, with giant beasts and engines of war being used in nearly every army alongside massive regiments of footsoldiers. But has the minor heroes of LoTR who aren't super special when compared to their normal troop counterparts.A skink priest really shouldn't be wandering around on his own on a battlefield when there's a keeper of secrets, a 100 or so daemonettes and god knows what else on the lose.

That's what I mean with it seems to be mixing up different scales.

 

The issue is that they are made to wander around on their own regardless of how stupid that is given the situation on the battlefield. It's not like we have the option to take 1 saurus warrior either, you get those in increments of 10 as any lower increment simply doesn't achieve much on a battlefield with greater daemons and near a 100 foot soldiers. So why do support heroes not come with a few attendants or bodyguards to ensure their safety? It's not like a skink priest suddenly would become capable of cutting through hordes of daemonettes if you'd give him an escort of 2 or 3 saurus warriors. Those warbands from nightvault show that it's more than doable to make a unit like that. And although it's not like those are super amazing units, at least they can contest the occasional objective and chase away the occasional opponent.

 

It's not terribly reliable in this capacity however. Unlike 8th Ed 40k, in which you cannot target heroes when there's a closer unit between him and the attacker (this has its own issues when taken on its own, mind you, like being unable to pick off the hero who is otherwise standing out in the open because of a single unit that's 15" closer in the hero's general direction), AoS more than easily allows you to snipe characters out of formations even with the -1 penalty to hit rolls, and all it takes is either a lot of shots with successful wound rolls or mortal wounds to do so.

But this thread is about fixing Seraphon specifically, not a core game mechanic.

 

Not really, especially not for ranged combat. The only rule keeping them safe there is look-out-sir. Which only affects shooting, and even then just throw in a big enough volume of shots or a good enough marksman and the protection is meaningless. But any other ranged ability and attack can still easily be used to pick off minor heroes.

As for keeping them safe for melee combat. This is slightly better I guess as at least you can protect him fairly easily by just putting other models in the way. However this essentially just means the hero simply avoids melee combat. Not that he and his attendants are vaguely capable of denfeding themselfs when forced to. I would expect a minor hero unit to be able to realisticly win a fight against a regular troop unit. So a skink priest (or skink priest command squad thingy if you want to fix it using attendants/bodyguards) should be able to put up a fight against 10 saurus warriors or equivalent and realisticly come out on top (especially if it just uses its sacrifices its support abilities on itself instead of supporting another unit). Something like a 40 man squad of warriors, or a squad of more elite troops, should still utterly decimate heroes like this. But right now they can't even stand up to something as minor as minimum sized basic battleline unless the unit has already been decimated.

So no I don't agree with it already being represented in the rules.

This tangent did start cuz we were talking about what to do with those minor support heroes, so still (slightly?) on topic I'd say

 

No they don't need to be immortal, but not falling over to a stiff breeze would be nice. Even a fairly basic unit like judicators alone has enough firepower to kill a skink priest potentially in a single turn. Get 2 or 3 of em and it's basicly a guarantee. Look-out-sir rule or not. Hell they don't even need their special bow for it, their regular bows are enough. And it's not like they're unique in this. Similarly even basic spells easily leave most minor heroes like this mortally. Get in 2 or 3 and they basicly guarantee a kill. And these are the only type of units that are killed this easily. Even fodder like skinks usually outlasts that unless you get particularly lucky when attacking them.

As for endless spells, those things generally get to move 8". You need to cover quite a large area to keep them from hitting a hero, especially the ones with smaller models...

Not really, as again, they fall over to a stiff breeze. Most of these support heroes cannot take more than a handfull of attacks. So unless you manage to limit it to only 1 model in range even minor units quickly become a threat. Which is going to be difficult as most support heroes are stuck with a 1" melee profile so it's not like they can at least attack from the relative safety of your backline.

 

LoS was such and effective buff that it nurffed shooting into the ground until the appearance of flesh eater courts and slanesh made it necessary again. and yes you should be able to take out support if we couldn't necromancers, spirit lures and death in general would get stooped again the waaaagh would never end. miner support heroes do to much to be that sturdy.

 

On the subject specifically, I am of the opinion that Look Out Sir should have a localized "HERO cannot be target of ranged attack if nearby friendly unit has models closer to attacker" phrase added to its current ruling. Barring that, I would want bodyguard units like temple guard to confer higher Look Out Sir penalties, either as a horde bonus analogue or as a capped difference between unit model count and maximum hero wounds like what I brought up earlier.