Yeah, that sounds about right. Really Starborne and Coalesced should have different point costs, but that will probably never happen. I do very much like that our units have actually decent baseline stats now for sure. I just hope that they do something to better internally balance the army at some point. Coalesced would be awesome to play if your opponent wasn't bringing 20%-30% more troops just because of the summoning tax
They updated endless spells. Cogs changed big time. They no longer let you reroll casts and now let you cast mystic shield and arcane bolt without using as cast. Maybe that will be strong in a summoning list. A Slann can cast 5 times for 10 CCP. A Kroak Slann summoning lists can be make a lot of CCP a turn, 11 from Slan 5 from Kroak 1 from astrolith 3 from starseer 2 from Trog Total 22 CCP a turn That level of summoning is actually pretty scary. Another change to endless spells is aethervoid pendulum is now D6 mortal wounds. With teleports, triple endless spells casting range and vassal casting we can easily line up a couple units to be hit by the pendulum. I have not seen any points yet but if they are still 30 pts this seems like an insanely good spell for us.
Looks good for Starborne at face value, but bear in mind the list leana on Cogs quite a bit for miscast insurance. With the amount of magic we're putting out, a miscast is statistically likely and probably game-ending when it happens at the wrong time. The change to cogs makes this far more likely. This is actually a good thing for game balance as the trog bomb was quite problematic and sort of an auto-win against some armies.
I am very aware that cogs is a critical piece in the Trog Bomb combo. I mostly just don't wanna sound doom and gloom and instead focus on how the changes may positively effect things. I think the extra CCP is worst than just rerolls but I still have to point out that 4 CCP a turn would cost us around 220-300 points.
O neat, finally a way for minor casters to do more than use literally 1 spellcast per turn and then hide the rest of the turn. Shame it's connected to an endless spell, but maybe they'll end up liking it and incorperating the mechanic more broadly.
There is also a once per battle enhancement that can bump miscasts to include double 2s and 3s as well a 33% chance each to dispell every endless spell on the board (roll for each spell on board) to help slow down caster lists. So just keep that in mind.
Completely agree. Trog bomb was going to get nerfed some time anyways, and I am looking forward to plumbing through our book for the next list!
So cities get a manticore: Not exactly something that's usually associated with "good" factions, also, makes me wonder what'll happen with the gripphons.
The new Cogs also grant wizards nearby a defensive -1 to be hit by missile weapons, which is a nice add on.
I'm really not sure Trog Bomb would get nerfed. My prediction is that players will learn to deal with it by zoning their troops in deployment so that the Troglodon can't get in range of their fragile buff pieces. That is, make sure the units they want to protect are over 11" from the outside edge of their deployed army. That will make the Trog Bomb less impactful. Then they will need to focus on killing the casters (especially the Troglodon) to eliminate our cast points, cosmic nodes and CPP generation. Trog Bomb lists aren't well balanced, so it's difficult to defend them if things go wrong. In response to opponents learning to counter the Trog Bomb, Starborne players will start diverting points from extreme casting to great casting, but with more screens and other utility pieces.
The latest pitched battle profile is up, most of it just fixes everything so there's no more 5 point intervals but we got pretty subsantiative drops in points across the board for reasons I don't fully get while some other stuff remains untouched (poor engine of the gods). Skinks, Saurus Guard, Kroak and the Scar-Vet on carnosaur are the only ones that went up, and they barely changed so most lists using them will make up the points easy with the drops elsewhere. Big standouts: Stegadon 260 (-40), Ark of Sotek 180 (-20), Saurus Warriors 180 (-20) and Hunters w/ Bolas 80 (-10). https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/zSu5qozncWRFFNpO.pdf Also the July battlescroll update, it changes coherency rules (6< model units are freer than >6 model units) and integrates changes to Look Out Sir! that we’ve seen in the last couple generals handbooks, making all 10 wound or less foot heroes immune to missiles from further than 12” when near units and giving them a universal -1 when they’re closer. Notably doesn’t exclude Unique units like last time, though obviously Kroak has too many wounds and the Starblood Stalkers dont really matter (I guess it’s easier to get the once-per-game ability off if Kixi-Taka can’t be shot off the board before getting onto an objective?) https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/BCxlvN2KmjF04AG6.pdf
In general there seem to be an absurd amount of point drops. And quite a lot of big ones. Maybe GW just wants to force people to buy more models to get to 2000 points? Took them way too long to implement that to help minor support heroes survive for more than half a turn.
Now it's nerfed, I am totally okay with that, I am just glad we also have cheaper artillery pieces again.
Lol. These are hefty point drops. It makes me think GW practically assigned the points arbitrarily. After the book was published, they said “This is WAY off… oh well.”
Yes, poor EotG. Man, GW really didn’t like Seraphon running that so much. Lol. I know Skinks and Guard barely changed, but I don’t know that they needed to go up. I think Skinks should have gone down to 80. This feels like an attempt to limit certain kinds of Starborne lists. Personally, the current Carno point changes seem to nerf the Scar-Vet. “Maim and Tear” is okay, but the Oldblood is arguably more useful. I don’t know if the points will help most other units. Up 10 down 10 is kind of a wash. Basically if you wanted Skinks plus (insert unit) before, you still can.