AoS Lizardmen and summoning (lets keep discussion civil)

For what it's worth, which admittedly might not be much, my group has settled on you can summon something even if that scroll is not already in use.

Also, going by the fluff, where the Lizardmen apparently just show up to kick some Chaos teeth in whenever and wherever, it certainly seems like something the Slann should be able to do.

 

@Andrinor Thats pretty much what my local group agreed on aswell

 

I came back from a long hiatus to agree that it shouldnt matter if it is on the board or not in fact it fixes teh chaxax problem.

Either A) You can summon as many chaxax clones as you want as long as there is a seed model on the board.
or B) You can only have one, but you can summon him when he is needed.
occam's razor which is more likely.

 

B sounds simpler?

 

Even if you go with B, why can you only have one?

 

I truly don't understand how anyone can believe that you can just summon whatever you like from our "army book" even if it is not part of your "army".

If you field a spellcasting character there is a section on the warscroll under the heading Magic.
This section tells you what magical rules apply to the model in the same way that the Abilities heading lists out the abilities of the model.

You can't use those abilities or powers regardless of what heading they are under if that model is not on the board to use them.
That model being on the board is what allows the rules on it's warscroll to be used.
In the case of summoning the warscroll grants an ability to a different model, but apart from that there is no difference.

So you can only summon models that you have on the board in the same way you can't cast spells from a spellcaster who is not on the board.

Also you can duplicate special characters if they have a summoning spell.
We all think this is dumb because they are supposed to be specific individuals. If you feel strongly about it then you might have a gentleman's agreement with your opponent limiting it to one version of a special character on the board at a time, and that's fine but it's not what the rules allow.

Can anyone explain to me why they think that a Slaan for instance has access to the summoning spells on warscrolls which are not present on the board?

 

I am going with: because Slaan are thousands of years old, are familiar with hundreds of Lustrian species, have already summoned every summon-able type of Lizard DOZENS of times, both for practice and in battle situations. And super-intelligent beings that they are THEY DON'T FORGET HOW.

 

Hi Pendrake,

I was actually more after a rules reason rather than a fluff reason.

Fluffwise of course you are right.

My post refers to the fact that I just don't see how from the game rules it could be presumed that any unit not part of that game could have any affect on the game, simply because it happens to be in our "armybook" if you will.

Please don't take this personally, I'm just trying to understand other people's point of view.

 

You're stuck in WFB thinking. There is no army book. Warscrolls do not equal units. I deploy a Slann on the table. I use a warscroll to define how I can use that Slann. Another warscroll, say Skink Warriors, has a section that ammends the abilities of my Slann. I don't need a unit of Skinks to be able to summon skinks. I need a slann on the table to be able to summon skinks. If the text was something like "If a unit of skink warriors are in play then all Slann get the spell Summon Skinks" then I'd agree with your interpretation.

What they have done by structuring things this way is that they have made 1) the slann warscroll shorter because it doesn't have to list all those spells and their effects (imagine poor Undead casters yikes!), and 2) made the system more robust so they can add things later. Lets say that they start releasing new Seraphon units such as a Sun Blood (instead of Gor Rok). Now they just need to add a bit to the Sun Blood warscroll to ammend the Slann warscroll. They don't have to go back and edit the Slann. It can also let them do funky stuff if they want. New Unit:

Shyish Seraphon (Death, Seraphon, Deathrattle, Celestial)
Nagash used his death magic to bind the souls of defeated Seraphon into reanimated statues or corpses creating deadly new troops to use against Chaos.
<Bunch of abilities> Summon Shyish Seraphon: All Slann Wizards and Death Wizards know the Summon Shyish Seraphon spell.

BAM! New unit for the Grand Alliance of Death and for the Seraphon (but not Order). If you deploy them on the table as a Seraphon player you count as having 2 Grand Alliances. But if you summon them later you get a Death unit while still only counting as an Order army. Aren't tags wonderful!

 

Fluff wise of course it makes sense to summon in whatever you want from your army, however I think for the sake of game balance (specifically sudden death related) needing the unit on the board already makes more sense.

That aside, the actual wording issue for me is that it specifically states in the rules that wizards know the spell listed on their warscrolls in addition to the two static spells. The spell to summon a unit is on the units Warscroll, which to me means that it needs to be in play to use it.

Now I understand the argument against this, but I propose to you this scenario.

If a wizard could automatically summon any specific unit from its army then why would they not do this:

Slann Warscroll;

Spell: Summon Seraphon
Slann have the ability to summon in a host of Seraphon to aid them in battle. Slann may summon any unit containing both Keywords: SERAPHON, & SUMMONABLE. See individual warscrolls for casting values.

This definitively proves it can summon any unit without cluttering up its own warscroll, plus it uses this new fancy keyword system perfectly.

This could be an over site but seems like a purposeful method to curb the abuse of summoning.

 

Yeah I could get behind that. The only thing I don't like is that it isn't as robust as it could be. For instance it doesn't let you ever summon anything but Seraphon. What if some day they wanted to make a unit of say Amazons who identify with the Seraphon but aren't Seraphon (or Pygmies!)? Suddenly you need to add the Amazon keyword to the Slann. And you wouldn't want to tag the Amazons as Seraphon because then they might unintentionally get buffs they aren't supposed to (see for instance the difference between Saurus and Skinks). Doing it your way locks you into doing things a certain way.

The way AoS is currently set up is amazingly agile and flexible compared to WFB. Putting summoning spells on the warscrolls of the models that can be summoned is a part of that flexibility. This way instead of having to manage warscrolls they just have to manage tags.

 

Well I proposed a basic solution that would make sense it the context of current material. Like you said, AoS is incredibly flexible and the way they have done Warscrolls means that they are incredibly easy to update and edit, and could be mass distributed through their website the same day the changes were made. They could also put special rules in for new units to indicate they do not receive certain keyword bonuses (although this could get confusing).

However I see your point. Using Seraphon & Summonable was just a way to utilize existing keywords while only adding one (Summonable) that could be applied to Choas and Death units as well (and whatever else they decide to invent).

However another easy solution is to just invent a new keyword for each faction (Seraphon Summonable [single keyword], death summonable… etc.). This keyword does not interact with any other synergies, and could be added to any new unit (Seraphon or not). Some units could also have multiple summon keywords, indicating that they can be utilized by several Factions. Maybe Dryads are summonable by Sylvaneth & Wanderers [Wood Elves] in the future, or your own example of Undead Seraphon useable by Seraphon and Death armies.

 

They are two sides of the same coin. I have no problem with your proposed methods. The only objection is the fact that old warscrolls need to be reviewed and we all know by now how much GW hates spending time/money on FAQs and Errata.

 

Hi!
Been reading this thread for some time before I singed in and I think it's quite an interesting question.
From my point of view it's sure that the slann can summon any unit that has this ability. I've read the rules in English and German several times to get behind this and for me it seems like it depends on how you define a warscroll.

For me it is clear that warscrolls have nothing to do with the units on the board but telling you what you can do with them. Otherwise one would have to say I'm taking like 5 warscrolls of saurus warriors to play 5 units of them. The point would be that if you agreed to limit the number of warscrolls (and so the number of Different(!) units you use in the game) and you have for example decided not to take razordons you should not be able to summon razordons. But as I see it that would be more like a house rule, due to the fact that there is no point system or something like that in AoS.
Or did I get something wrong in the unit-warscroll-relationship?

Greetings and good night for today!

 

Hi guys,

I've had a discussion with some of the staff at a local GW store for their take and we managed to work out an implied rules solution.

Basically I've been looking at this from the perspective that your army - ie the units you play the game with, are the only ones which can have an effect on that game.
However in the basic rules you deploy your army from your collection of miniatures.
Anything not deployed counts as being in reserve and stays there "unless fate lends a hand".

So really your entire collection of minis are in reserve the entire time.

Whilst the various summon spells do not state that they are summoning units from reserve, this is effectively what they are doing.
Fate is lending a hand as it were.

So I've changed my mind with this revelation and I now believe that Slaan wizards do have access to the summon spells for warscrolls which are not in your army.

 

I think this may very well be what they meant, but it's not clear by any means.

 

I quess they did it better in the balewind vortex scenery scroll... "if you own a model of the balewind vortex..."

 

I would agree in theory with what your saying, however the Laws of War (which you can see in another thread) specifically state taking duplicate Warscrolls is a source of power (meaning that it counts towards your overall power, which dictates how strong your army is compared to your opponent). Now I don't know if these have been officially published, and thus might hold no authority, but this clearly indicates that each unit is intended to have its own Warscroll, and that Warscrolls are intended to be a restricting factor (GW stated that these rules were best suited for games using 3-10 Warscrolls) in the types and quantity of units you can field. So yes, to use 5 units of Saurus you would need 5 Warscrolls.

I had considered that position as well, but I still found it to be worded too incorrectly for me to agree to it. There are other methods in which these reserves can come into play through non-traditional summoning (Chaos Lord ability special ruleset for summoning daemons, and scenario specific rules). And this could still apply if you needed a unit on the table, as several more units might be "in reserve".

It just seems to me that this system is too vague to have been intended that you could summon any unit from your theoretical army. Especially since bringing your whole army is intended for deployment purposes (you are are suppose to react to what your opponent brings, one unit at a time, instead of making a predetermined list). This also protects from sudden death abuse (1 Slann start, summon whole army later).

If they wanted you to summon whatever you wanted there were much simpler and clearer ways of doing so (such as the keyword system I mentioned in an early post in this thread)

However I fully admit that I could be completely wrong. This is GW after all, and their official response will likely be like "use whatever interpretation you and your opponent can agree upon, and roll if you cannot".

 

Laws of War has been debunked by Warseer. Just some random dude (posting as Laws of War) and his random comp.

 

I'm not seeing the issue with summoning or with the number of spells a slann(or any other wizard for that matter).

none of the summon spells list a restriction to how the slann knows the spell just that they know it along with whatever else they happen to know so i say you can summon whatever you happen to have in terms of models on you at the time.

the whole 3 spell thing is quite clear as well the warscroll states "a slann can ATTEMPT to cast up to 3 spells" and "the slann knows blah, blah, and blah" not seeing any of the usual key words restricting him to those three its the same as saying you know john, joe, and daisy, in no way does that mean you know only those three people chances are you know a lot more people than that.

also rules and fluff seem to be one in the same in aos i mean what are scenarios if not fluff dictated rules