AoS New pod cast

this was made before the points changes so we didn't know about KO at that point. we will be doing a second ep this week addressing the points changes

 

a new episode this week? count me in

 

hey all we have another one sorry for the wait

 

Thank you both for the podcast

 

of coarse im glade you are enjoying it. yell if you have any questions.

 

Thanks for another great podcast!

This is just a random question, and definitely not one that needs to be answered in a podcast. But I'd genuinely like to hear your opinions on what GW thinks of our faction and why you think they've made the decisions they have made.

For example, in the latest podcast you talk about how they took away wary fighters for skinks but gave it to STD. Then there's also the fact that the only thing in our book that was actually slightly overpowered, that being salamanders, got nerfed extremely quickly while things like plague monks, Slaanesh, and Tzeentch took much longer for them to address.

I know it's impossible to accurately gauge their motives, but I would still be interested in your personal thoughts and opinions. To me personally, I think our new book is good, but not amazing. It seems that there was not very much thought put into it other than making a fairly average Army. It really seems like they wanted to make things good, but not too good. They gave us a lot of very situational or weak Buffs and abilities, especially for coalesced. They also gave us the only faction Terrain that is useless to us half of the time and can actually benefit the enemy. Our monsters are still weak, our heroes cannot fight anything in their weight class, and they seem to think that our summoning is still worth everything being very easy to kill, barring Bastiladons, despite being nerfed to near uselessness. The old phrase that I saw being kicked around a lot before was that GW did not know what to do with our army, and I do think that holds a lot of weight.

 

Reading this, it seem to be operating under the assumption that our army has suffered, when its actually quite the opposite. The seraphon book is currently one of strongest book in the game right now. Our best buffs are guaranteed (3d6 charge, mortal wounds on 6's to wound, command abilities) we have high movement, incredible damage across all three phases, incredible mages, and one of the single most powerful base abilities in the game in scaly skin. The book is incredibly deep and has competitive builds that lean into just about whatever you want.

I know i'm on this forum a lot tooting the books horn, but describing the book as "fairly average" couldn't be farther from the truth.

 

i have long held the belief (whether true or not) that GW hates lizard men in the same way that they hate Eldar. they made them at one point but they do not want to keep supporting them and the only reason they do is because they cost next to nothing to keep printing and still sell well.
the last sculpt we got for fantasy or sigmar was 5 years ago the star priest and the last time we got a new unit was 12 years ago. we have never gotten a book about us and the few times we have been mentioned where.... underwhelming or in the case of silver tower downright insulting. we are last to the table with rules warbands and near the end of the pack with underworlds and blood bowl. they have repeatedly striped us of our rules to give to other factions and over all have no idea how to support us.


ok rant over now im being (more) serious. i do think GW doesn't want to bother with us but not due to hatred. i think that they have a tendency to just want to crank out new armies i think their creative board is just itching to work on new stuff.and due to that they resent having to support legacy armies....so they don't

 

This. Everything about this post. We should pin this somewhere so everyone can read it.

I think there are certain armies that aren't as prevalent on TTS (fyreslayers/idk) that seraphon have particularly rough matchups in, but I don't think the meta will be drastically different than what we are seeing on TTS.

Would do you think about it is overselling it?

 

I actually agree, I should have been a bit more concise with my original statement. I don't think that Seraphon suffered with the new book, we definitely got better. There were quite a few things that made no sense that I really wish would have been done differently, though. I do think our book is good, just not amazing. They are somewhat above average in terms of tabletop play quality. I would contend that it's definitely average in terms of how it's written, though, for reasons I stated.

That's how it feels to me as well. I was never worried that we were going to get squatted, but I can definitely see the team being much more excited about new projects than updates. Our release was a perfect example of this. No hype, no exciting previews, just a meme list blatantly presented as a joke that wasn't expected to win games. While I love our dinosaurs, the fact that they straight up announced our new book by promoting a list that they stated wasn't expected to win doesn't show much enthusiasm on their part. While some updates have certainly fared better than others *cough*Tzeentch*cough*, ours in particular just had so many missed opportunities that it's hard to think that they went into writing the book with any actual enthusiasm for the faction, despite it being decent in terms of gameplay.

And yeah, the fact that our faction essentially has no place in the lore of the setting speaks volumes. We might as well be a Destruction faction, because all we do is pop up randomly here and there to fight stuff. I'm happy with the semi-retcon where the Seraphon were actually real the whole time and not Slann daydreams, but the fact that the only lore progression we got is that apparently there are now settlements in each of the mortal realms is quite disappointing. And of course, we still have no named characters other than Lord Kroak. If they really wanted to give the Seraphon some love in the setting without new models (since they clearly aren't planning on updating the model range any time soon), I think one of the best things they could do would be to bring back as many of our named heroes as could feasibly have survived the End Times. If all of a sudden legendary characters like Kroq-Gar, Gor-Rok, Tehenahuin, Oxyotl, etc. were to return and start leading the Seraphon as a unified faction once again that would be an amazing and realm-shaking event! I'd really like to see some named Slann appear as well, someone to take up the mantle of Mazdamundi perhaps and guide the Seraphon with a purpose. Right now all we do is... exist.

Very good points. I just wish that with that much planning and time to work on a book they would have put a little more effort and just, well, *love* into ours. We were the last army to get an update for 2nd edition. It *is* rather solid, as you put it, but in my personal opinion also reeks of them being overly cautious rather than wanting things to be both fun and powerful on the table. Maybe the playtesters they were listening too kept complaining that old Seraphon were just too annoying due to "flood their deployment zone with Skinks" being just about our only viable tactic, lol!

Totally agree that it would be nice to be able to tweak some of the setup of a list each round in a tournament rather than having to play the same exact list in every battle. That would make things more interesting and fair for everyone, not just our faction.

 

I think we are easily one of the best books in the game currently and I would comfortably place us in "S tier" among Tzeentch, CoS, KO and maybe Fyreslayers. Not sure where exactly LRL will land. The issue with making tiers though is that they hugely depend on what specific list/subfaction you are playing and honestly there doesnt seem to be a huge gap between "S tier" and "A tier".

I personally think saying our book is "somewhat above average" is underselling the book by miles. Do we have issues? Yeah, but so does everyone else. We have tons of options and it is a very flexible book. We can focus heavily on either magic, shooting or bonking people on the head. If either of those arent "according to the meta" you have the option of switching it up. Some armies are very much pigeonholed into one specific playstyle, and if their playstyle doesnt play well in the current meta it is just tough luck.

 

I do think that versatility is our biggest strength. It's nice that we can do a lot of things well. Hopefully they won't go overboard with the powercreep with the other factions, especially the new ones, lol!

 

Just wanted to clarify that your opponent can see when you're measuring things in TTS. It's absolutely easier (or less time consuming) to be precise, but you are certainly also showing intent when you measure things.

 

New art for talking about orks?
check out the artist https://twitter.com/Meltgar