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
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
I would be happy to discuss my speculations of GW's process for updating battletomes. I think the idea that GW does anything with a degree of laziness or disregard is inaccurate. Pretty much any battletome is roughly 18 months of planning from my understanding. I certainly have some gripes with our new book, but overall it is rather solid. One thing to keep in mind as well is just how close the actual meta of the game is. The difference between S-Tier and A tier is pretty small. The difference between A and B is even smaller. I know GW has been listening to their play testers more and more through the 2nd edition of AoS. And I think sometimes there might be over corrections on their part. From a marketing perspective, I think GW is very aware that the tournament scene is their most public-facing market, but not their largest. A lot of the decisions that don't make sense to me as a tournament player are things that the more casual players I know really like. For instance, a lot of AoS players who use match play and don't play at tournaments are much more flexible in their list. They will build a list on the spot with the app at the time of their game. And both players will tailor a bit to each other. Suddenly all those niche artefacts, command traits, spells, ect are a lot more usable. The game as a whole has a lot of room for user end balancing. When the goal is an interesting game and not 5 wins then a lot more options feel natural. Part of me wishes organized play was more open to some aspects of this. I would love to pick my spells, artefacts, traits, ect at the start of the match's round instead of before the event.
We indeed got a strong book. I think TTS is certainly over selling our ability, but you are correct to say we are much better than average.
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?
There are a few reasons I am skeptical of TTS tournaments. One, is the lack of highly renowned players making consistent showings. Two is the lack of overall army diversity. The other is a bit more related to the interfacing advantages. TTS makes it significantly easier to play an informed and low error game. The ability to perfectly premeasure everything in shot time without showing your intent to your opponent is HUGE. On the inverse, the ability to misdirect an opponent in regards to your intent through body language is also removed. I am not of the opinion that TTS tournaments are worthless in terms of data production. However, I am aware that there is a lot that goes into successful in-person tournament play that TTS does not address.
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.
My thoughts on Tier ratings is pretty much this: S-Tier: Highly effective with little to no viable weaknesses. A-Tier: High effective with some exploitable weaknesses. B-Tier: Effective army with a few major weaknesses. C-Tier: Able to win, but lack some serious ability to deal with major players in the tiers above. I am not honestly as concerned with army win rates. I have been winning events with outlier armies for a while in a very competitive meta that houses some of the top ranked players in S-Tier and A-Tier factions. Due to some glaring weaknesses in our heroes being very snipeable, I put Seraphon in A-Tier. Dot. LRL, KO, and Seraphon can all snip crucial buffing heroes with relative easy. Getting below 9 drops with competitive skinks is incredible rough and costly. I think if our book were low drops we would easily be the S-Tier army.
Our books does have great longevity though. Our army should stay relevant for a while due to the sheer volume and variation of units present. Which is right where I wanted us to be. Sure, HoS were THE top dog for 3 months. However, their army had one shtick. And once the meta moved past their wheel house they drastically fell out of S-Tier.
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.