AoS If you could update the warscrolls, what would you change?

But back in the old days we had named characters with special mounts, such as Krok-gar with Grimlock, and the difference between Ancient Stegadon (wich was much better than the "young" one, and costed more) was that it was way tougher and powerful. Right now it's the same stegadon with different builds and the same carnosaur with different riders.

I'd love them to be different, but right now, fluff-wise, they are the same, but their stats aren't; and actually, the carnosaur for the old-blood is worse than the one for the scar-vet, old-blood's hitting on 4+ (but dealing 3 damage), and scar-vet's dealing on 3+ (dealing D3), and the rest is just the same. Fluff-wise, it should be the other way around: the old carnosaur, who has seen many battles, has more experience and then has more "tricks" up his sleeve to bite the opponent, while the younger one has a harder time knowing what to do in combat, and then having a bigger chance to miss his attacks.

Same goes with the Stegadon and the Engine: the ancient one should be more experienced, tougher and stronger, and therefore knowing what to do in battle (that's what it was in the old days of Warhammer Fantasy), making the younger one inexperinced and much more prone to be killed. Let's remember that in the old lore, the older a dino or a warrior got, the thicker his scales, the stronger and the more experienced they were, and that was represented in their point-cost, stats and battlefield role. Stats for Engine of the Gods are way different than the stegadon: horns for the steg goes 3 attacks, hitting and wounding on 3+, rend -3 and 2 damage, while the engine gets 1 more attack but -1 rend; you could argue that their horns are more fractured due to old age, but that is totally different from the way you say it was "in the old days", and the crushing stomps, the old steg wounds on 4+ and the "young" on 3+, which according to the old days, should be the opposite. The rest of the stats are the same.

The problem with all of this is that i'm sure GW wanted them to be different, but they didn't make them different enough, either lore or stats, but costing the same there is no way that you'll go for the bow steg instead of the engine, at least in a competitive enviroment. And even if you only play friendly games and have never gone to a tournament, the competitive enviroment is what shapes the rules and game, so you are still affected by it:you go in a forum to ask whether a list is good, or if a combo can work, or if a miniature from a different company would fit in the army.

And it all revolves around the same. When you play friendly games with your friends or family, you field what you want, play a thematic army, go for strange tactics, field those sweet models you recently bought because they are so freaking cool... but it's the competitive enviroment that shape the way GW see the game and the way we all build our lists. When you go to a tournament of 20 people at your local game store, you normally see 2 or 3 people playing Seraphon, and all the lists look the same: slann + skinks + engines, maybe add a shadowstrike or a thunderquake for the extra rules, and all the Seraphon armies play the same tactical game. And that is because the rest of our army is not competitive enough to deal with the rest of the armies that are played. And even in friendly games you want to win every now and then.

I've seen in tournaments (specially in 40k, which i play much more than aoS at the moment) that different kinds of players tend to run different types of armies: the ultra-competitive normally goes for the newest and greatest toy (i.e. Imperial Knights + Astra, Thors + custodes + Astra, Flyrants, Eldar soup, Imperial soup...), changing armies as they please, the non-competitive one goes for armies that tend to have a theme they like (full death guard, full chapter marines, non-soup Imperium lists, grey knights, Necrons, sisters of battle...), normally having them beautifully painted, and then there are the ones that choose an army and want to be competitive, but want to do it with the army of their choice because they like it (Taus, Orks...). But every single one of them hate to lose (don't we all?), and we'd all like to field an army that can at least have a small chance of winning and not being tabled turn 2-3 every single time.

Seraphon players, i think, are the third type: we want to play our army, but we want to be competitive. That doesn't mean we want to win every single time, that means we want to have a chance, we want to play a friendly game with a full-saurus army without magic and stand a chance to win. We will surely lose, but we want to be able to fight. We want to field Kroxigors in a flank and charge thinking we stand a chance, we want to field 2 units of 20 saurus each with an old-blood in a flank and think i'll stand a chance of stopping the hordes of Orks that are coming my way. I want to play a tactical game, damn it. I don't want to have to field 2 engines, 2 bastiladons and a slann to have a chance of winning, because the first 2 times is awesome seeing all the dinos, but the third game you play with them, is actually kinda boring. We want a balanced army.

We don't want to be the best, we don't want 5 point saurus, we don't want a cavalry that can destroy a greater daemon in 1 turn. We just want to have a chance to play with all of our models, because they look freaking awesome, and not lose every single time. We even want some of our models go up in points because they are way too good for their cost.

Age of Sigmar is a different game, with different rules, different lore, different backstory... Summoning is just one of the new lore addition. We are playing a different game, so summoning has to stay; I don't like it either, i'd rather we were thinking beasts with big dinosaurs than the celestial daemons (so, angels?) we are now, but that's the game we are playing. Old Warhammer Fantasy world was literally destroyed, and this is what we now have.

P.S.: Sorry for the long post and the rambling. Congrats (and thanks) if you've made it this far

 

Points wise I think some units are overcosted, but not the Rippers. So first thing is a points check throughout the battletome.

Second, either add attacks to our units or add rend to our weapons. But we cannot go about with one attack per model and no rend. that makes our units bad.

Third, our dinos all need to rend harder. Rend -1 or 0 on a giant carnivore lizard is just Disney level dino.

Fourth, our skink heroes need to be heroes and not support units or worse, page fillers.

Fiffth. Slaan magic, saurus magic and skink magic.

 

No, I meant the Skink Priest. The Skink Starpriest is VERY useful. I bring him in just about every list. His summon starlight spell is the best spell seraphon has.

The Skink Priest on the other hand.... Is useless. I only use his ability when I take it as a command trait on a starpriest.

 

ok because you were talking about the spell you are using via vast intellect but he doesnt even has one. maybe you should look up his buff he usually wins me every single game, its just so op to not bring him in every game. 3 types of rerolls for a little 4+. Makes our units nearly unkillable, makes even more units even more viable and Bastiladons oh yeah,... buff 2 Bastiladons with snakes up and teleport them up in front of your enemy. Wacth him cry while you deal 24 MW in every combat phase while you are rerolling their 3+ safes ;D

 

I would be okay with this if it weren't for the fact that Saurus are meant to be dumb as rocks in most aspects except combat and combat strategy.

Maybe they would have to subtract from their casting rolls, but make up for it with some really good Saurus-based support spells, like adding 1 to attack characteristics or +1 to hit/wound.

I personally want the 'blooded' spawning that is referenced in the Seraphon malign portents short to be fleshed out. Give me some 3 wound Saurus berserkers that are brutal in combat, akin to Stormcast paladins. Or even some hyper-aggresive elite Skinks that are both fast and killy, like Namarti or Witch Aelves.

 

trust me, you should try it out ^^

 

I think this is an honest and valid criticism of what we're doing here; its incredibly hard to talk about your faction without some sort of bias. And, that is definately showing up in this thread.

That said, I feel like the enitre range needs a rules clean up. There's a strong sense that the Seraphon were written as very basic translations of the Lizardmen of old and that it was done by an inconsistent team of writers. Combine that with the "beer'n pretzels" outlook of launch AoS and it really feels like a big after thought mess. That ideology would also explain how the faction was accidentally the strongest block running for a while.

For inconsistency, think of the Oldblood on foot's Command Ability. Why is it a CA? Why not a basic ability like the Skink Alpha on the Stegadon? Why not the same ability the mounted Oldblood has? Why even name the on foot variant "Oldblood" when it has more in common with the Scar Veterans? Also, the three different distances you need to keep track of the make an Eternal Starhost run at its peak. Why make it 5", 8", and 10" separately? Why not just flatten it out to 8" across the board? The people writing this stuff should have an idea of what's going to be used with what. You could say that they did it purposefully, but I doubt it, given that they gave a 32mm base size horde unit multiple weak 1" range weapons.

The beer'n pretzels philosophy shows up in our army's little minigames. For minigames, think the old Starseer ability or the Kroxigors' mortal wounds. These things were, and are, down right insufferable to me because there was a very good chance that you suffer for even attempting them. We're not Skaven, we're not Chaos or some other faction defined by our hubris or shortcomings.

Punishment is not something that jives with our theming in any setting.

One last thing: AoE abilities and effects should not be effective on singular models in a unit. Instead, they should benefit the unit as a whole. Think of the Oldblood's Wrath of the Seraphon or the Kroxigors' bites.

In summary, more than anything Seraphon could use a tune up before we get anything else in the way of buffs. But, GW doesn't want to do that and it makes me sad.

 

Make basic saurus warriors less dependent on the horde bonus; the 5+ save would be fine if either horde bonus was innate. Give them the extra attack base, and make the +1 to hit the bonus, or give them +1 to hit, then make the extra attack a 20+ horde bonus. I'd expect the Scar vet command ability to become natural 6s to hit if/when Seraphon get an updated battletome.
Or they could be 80/320 points instead of 100/360. Chainrasps are better (Same damage, ignore rend, faster movement, fly, and smaller bases) in min sized units that cost 80 points.

The oldblood on foot has the same weapons as the scar vet on carnosaur, and should have the same number of attacks, instead of 1-2 less; it's the same model for most of them anyway. Also... the range on the Wrath of the Seraphon ability is only 5", and it affects models in range instead of units, which makes it practically worthless. I'd like to see the range on it go up to 12" or something so it's actually relevant.

 

I would like to see the Terradon ability changed so it doesn't proc on a 4+. It feels to random now for me, which means I will stick to my ugly rippers.
The starseer needs a complete overhaul.. totally useless now (sadly, lovely model).

 

Here are my thoughts, and be aware I mostly run Saurus so have little input on skinks.

Stardrake shield-a flat +1 to armor save instead of ignoring rend.

Warriors-get did of the horde bonuses but give them two base attacks with their main weapon.

Knights-mortal wounds on a hit roll of 6 and 8” move.

Guard-two wounds to mark them as elite. With the flat +1 from their shield now the armor save buff in the eternal starhost is redundant so change it to a 5+ feel no pain roll.

Carnosaurs-give massive jaws a -2 rend and make them hit on 3s with flat 3 damage. This is our behemoth killer it should reflect that. To justify the different prices give the oldblood a rule where taking him grants an additional 2 command points. He’s supposed to be the overall commander of the army and should bring greater strategic value.

Skink Priest-honestly is say eliminate it and just make it an alternate model for the star priest, that or make it a lore of beast version of the star priest with his own unique offensive buffing spell.

Bloodclaw-generate an extra command point each turn instead of receiving one at the beginning.

 

Oh and in addition to our warscrolls our battalions could use a change. The Saurus battalions shouldn’t require three of their designated Saurus unit, it’s an unnecessary tax that greatly inflates their cost.

 

i can only agree. we really should have 2 wound models. how is it possible, that a saurus warrior or even a saurus guard has as many wounds as a small fucking free people handgunner or a skink? these guys are two times the size and combined with armor and natural hard skin.
i mean come on! i step a dagger in a small human and he dies? acceptable. i step a dagger in a dinosaur and he dies? what am i? Hulk?

 

With the removal of strength and toughness stars the Saurus lack one of the key attributes that set them apart from lesser infantry. Since additional wounds seem to be how they demonstrate toughness in other models it only makes sense to up the wound count for our Saurus.

 

Hmm tough one.
Either add two wounds to a carnosaur as well as 3+ save OR
1 additional wound on the warriors as well as rend in their clubs and spears.

 

I'm absolutely feeling @Itza'qu here: our faction seems to be at odds with its identity: our whole core infantry and hero selection (Saurus) seems to be made of tissue paper. We've got some great special stuff around it but as it stands our front-liners are just bad, it's a far cry from when Saurus were basically like the Roman legionaries of Warhammer: slow, tough, and nigh-unbreakable.

 

I agree that they feel rather lightweight at times. I recently played a skirmish game, and used too many skinks to fill points. They did very little actual damage and only slightly tied up the enemy by making the occasional save. The saurus didn't fair much better, but that was more from poor placement and me playing them. The Oldblood, on the other hand, did actual damage and concerned my opponent.

But, when I was toying around with "updating" saurus warriors, I came to believe that Seraphon are more related to Undead (and a bit Chaos) in gameplay/rules; low wound core units with tough accents. Since the Seraphon are now dreamed up from the memories of a slann, if they die you just summon more, similar to resurrecting more undead (or rebuilding a unit). I especially noticed this with the newer nighthaunt units. Almost all of them have only one wound, no matter how tough they are in combat. I think, thematically and from a gameplay view, Seraphon core units have low wounds b/c they're meant to "die" and come back, "die" and come back during a game. They sort of ARE chaff (some are chaff with a bit of bite).

IF GW decides to return Seraphon to being real creatures (in the scope of the game) with future updates, then I think we could see an end to summoning and the change to tougher units. Maybe they'll give us both, I don't know.