I've been really trying to find a way to fit the Troglodon into a Coalesced list for that -1 to hit. It would really make a big difference when defending a block of Saurus Warriors or Aggradons...
And don't forget Primordial Mire. In Koatl's Claw, if they can't charge you, you can charge them and get your +1 to wound. Or just not fight and waste their units' round.
This is also a really good spell. My personal issue is that the main army I play against is Khorne, which ignores most of your magic. The other army I play against pretty frequently is Orks, and this spell wrecks them, lol!
The extra range boost from the Coalesced rampage is wonderful, even if there is a small chance it doesn't work. I've found it helps to keep the Trog out of combat turn 1, so you have more flexibility in where you want to commit the bubble. It's awesome when you can get your opponent's back-line ranged units with it.
I feel like the Trog's points is the main thing holding it back... again. It is a neat hero, and it's more versatile than it was in our previous book. But it's not quite as useful outside of Starborne and possibly even a little less useful with the change to Arcane Vassal.
I agree. With the Arcane Vassal change, I think it could use a small point reduction. Games Workshop isn't always good about reducing the cost of unit A after they change a rule on unit B that nerfs A a bit.
I don't see Trog getting a point drop any time soon because many starborne lists still use him. Even with the nerf he is our toughest arcane vassal and cosmic node. Between his built in heal, the stegadon helm, -1 to hit, etc he is surprisingly hard to kill. And nothing is better than him getting swarmed only to cleans the realm.
Honestly, with the arcane vessel change all of our skink wizards & the Slann itself actually need some changes. Possibly more than a simple point-change. It's a rather major change to a core mechanic for these units to make on its own in a F.A.Q. Unfortunatly GW has a tendency of making blanket changes to mechanics.
Arcane Vassal has worked like it did previously for a pretty long while. It seems like if GW was going to change it, that should have been in the battletome, not in the following FAQ. With that pretty important rule change and the significant point changes, I find myself joking (like some others have in the past) that the Seraphon feels like it wasn't proofed well or playtested enough.
Honestly, the amount of modern games that have weird stuff that feels unplaytested is depressing. Maybe it's the obsession with releasing multiple things a year, but it's a weird pattern.
So even with the emergency nerf we received seraphon has been doing great in tournaments. There is an article on woehammer right now about the top preforming seraphon lists https://woehammer.com/2023/07/26/seraphon-top-performing-lists-breakdown-23rd-july-2023/?amp=1 Looks like fangs is the most played but DT has the highest win rate at 68.2% which is very high. Meanwhile KC has a 39.4% win rate and is doing worst than even thunder lizards! Now a low win rate should always be taken with a grain of salt because often times it is casual players who bring it down but still sub 40% is bad. What does KC need or is something just missing from puzzle? Is it a matter of needing a point drop or are agrodons just not worth it?
The issue with KC is that it's a melee army with only two special abilities and one of those abilities isn't even useful against the majority of armies. Our units have decent stats now, but unlike other armies built around a coherent theme Coalesced is still a bit of an afterthought compared to the blatantly better written rules for Starborne. Plus, mobility is king and being able to put units exactly where you need them plus being able to consistently summon more is going to have a big advantage over -1 damage that doesn't apply to mortal wounds and +1 to wound if you charged that round. I don't think Coalesced is bad, but the new book still suffers from being two armies in one book where one army has clearly better rules for the way AoS is played. Other armies that are just melee are built around being good at melee. Coalesced has a good foundation due to our unit upgrades, but our units, primarily because they're split between two armies, still lack the built-in special abilities that the majority of other armies have. Coalesced vs. Khorne is a good example of this. Our points got dropped to be relatively in line with them, but just look at all the Khorne units with special, useful, powerful and free built-in abilities, whereas our heroes have one special ability typically, and a lot of them are once-per-battle.
I think it’s also that Coalesced just has less tools than Starborne, where basically everything is impacted by the core space-y mechanics and skinks are made better via subfactions and artifacts for the heroes. Coalesced only interacts with monsters and saurus (and saurus more than anything else) making them better at what they do but not fundamentally giving them new tools to do it with. Some of the monsterous rampages hit the mark in that department, like the troglodon one (though the trog is a hard sell in coalesced, from what I can see), but they’re otherwise mostly just flavored boosted Stomps that do MWs in standard ways. Then you’re kind of left not using a big chunk of the book’s units because they don’t really interact with your mechanics as coalesced and they’re pointed+built to have some interaction with something you’re doing.
Coalesced isn't terrible. They really benefit from the new coherency rules. But a lot of people really want to use Coalesced as a melee army, but it isn't as strong, fast or efficient as the strongest melee armies. Seraphon have powerful casters, but the Coalesced Slann Spell Lore leaves a lot to be desired. If it could give Coalesced more buffs and mobility (like Telepathic Summons did before the nerf), they would look a lot better. That said, I'd like to see a version of them that isn't dependant on strong magic, too. And I personally like the Troglodon in Coalesced. But it is hard to fork out 270 points for it.
I wish they would bring back an updated bloodclaw as the melee focused starhost. Real blender army. Plus 4 carnos was a fun army back in the day.
would be super sweet. The thought alone to have a shredder army makes me smile. The only thing that could top that is our own endless spells. Mostly because of i am jealous about the other factions.
I just don't understand how seraphon is the faction with the most control over endless spells but we lack our own unique ones. Maybe they could have one rule for starborne and one rule for coalesced. Or they be named after the factions like fangs of sotek the endless spells would be like the snake DoK has and thunder lizards the endless spells could be a 3 part spell like skavens with lizards that are electric.... Just saying they could have so much fun giving us endless spells but they don't.
New vanguard boxes. It's basicly the box we have now, but with knights swapped for kroxigor. Can't say it's particularly exciting, would've prefered something with a bit more explicit synergy.
These units do have some synergy in a Coalesced army, KC specifically. It's very similar to our previous box, as you pointed out. 10 Warriors and 5 Raptadons might have been a better combo just because of how useful they are to the various subfactions. Although those units would have less synergy with each other. What would you have preferred?