AoS The new Battletome: A Discussion

Seraphon has been doing rather well on the TTS lately. Basically bound endless spells are bent (as predicted, the design is not good) and shooting (especially in Fangs of Sotek) is uninteractive. I have zero interest in Saurus/Carno and my focus is largely on Skink keyworded units, so this is somewhat what I feared when I started theorycrafting lists. Many of my lists are focusing on shooting and spells, which to be fair is the least interactive elements in AoS (especially when your caster is +4 to cast), so it probably by default creates a kinda negative player experience for your opponent to play against such a list.

It is not really about fitting a list to your opponents skill level imo. Most of my friends/opponents are of somewhat similar skill level to me, but when core mechanics like Locus of Diversion and the depravity generation system for Slaanesh were super frustrating mechanics to play against, the army as a whole creates a negative player experience. I could obviously just not bring any Keeper of Secrets at all, but what is the point? At the end of the day we like to win and compete. I dont want to play an army purposely "wrong" (and not getting any experience with a "real list" for tournaments) - Im OK with not bringing top notch netlists to scale down the power, but creating an awful list on purpose isnt fun IMO. With practice it was possible to play around Locus of Diversion, but there were armies that simply couldnt really do anything about the mechanics and almost lost by default. Hermdar Fyreslayers or double frenzy'd Plague Monks are pretty much the same - Super terrible to play against for armies that are largely melee focused like Ironjawz, Saurus lists etc.

 

TTS?

As for us being overpowered; we can get some decent combo's going, but they all have fairly obvious weak links as they're dependent on multiple buffs. Similarly we usually are going to have 1-2 obvious threats, instead of an army full of big scary units. Which again makes it fairly obvious who they should focus down, or at least occupy with fodder. On top of that, we don't really have any extremely sturdy stuff. So an opponent doesn't need to bring his own broken stuff just to get through our defenses. And lastly we got nothing that truly screams overpowered, hell we barely got any units that are the best at X, we're not the toughest, not the fastests, not the strongest etc. The only aspect in which we seem to be on top would be magic. But even there we're reasonably limited by the rule of one, lack of spell variety (especially if you play without realm spells) our reliance on endless spells and our limited variance in wizard archetypes; we only have support wizards, no monstrous wizards like the great unclean one, no heroes that can actually defend themselves like vampires and no wizards on powerfull mounts like a lord arcanum. The troglodon is the only exception here, but this is also our single worst wizard & it's a fairly underwhelming monster.

All of which makes it fairly obvious what should be done to take us down, or at least minimize the damage we can do.

Imho, it seems to be one of the more balanced tomes to come out lately.

 

TTS = Tabletop Simulator. Online game with a Age of Sigmar plugin where people currently have done multiple tournaments since the corona virus.
https://tabletop.to/tts-2nd-may - As an example. I have no clue how they did signups though, could be experienced players vs first timers. Im sure player experience with TTS also plays a huge part in the outcome of the game.

It just feels bad people branding our faction before I have even had a single physical game with my mates. I guess a new release always suffer somewhat from people being inexperienced against the army. Just look at OBR, Slaanesh etc.

Was just wondering if anyone had similar feeling.

 

they are un-interactive in the same way that alpha strikes that take half your army, fight first doom blocks and immortal anvils are un-interactive. gosh i hate that term it's what bad players use to justify a lack of skill( i know that sounds harsh and this isn't targeted at you just face book complainers).
shooting is not un-interactive there are many many many ways to counter and play against it. is it harder to defend against then melee? yes but it is also weaker then melee is (unless your name is tzeench). same with spells less defense but also much weaker over all and a good amount of ways to play around them.
even if you ignore that every thing we can do others do better. do we have strong magic? no our spells suck but that aside nagash and cities do it waaaay better and no one is complaining about them any more. de we have good shooting? yes but with a caviut that it is buff dependant and every thing is fragile. and even then cities tzeench ko and a few others are better.
so as for your original question i do not ignore it i realize they are wrong and wait for them to start complaining about the next thing they don't know how to play against

 

i feel you it does hurt. if we are as broken as they say(we aren't) then they will nerf us just like FEC and slanesh, but if we aren't we just have to weather the storm things will get better. don't listen to the face book people they have no idea what they are talking about heck they complain about bastiladons. send them my way ill kick their butts with something that is actually broken and they can complain about that

 

I wouldn't say we are "broken" but Seraphon seems to clearly be top tier alongside OBR and Tzeentch. i wouldn't be surprised if there were some point increases down the line for at least kroak and salamanders. I've played a lot of games on TTS with a star borne list and it does seem almost unfair unless i play a sort of silly list.

 

Just like our Summoning was "broken" the last edition? It didn't matter that we went from middle to bottom of tournament tables in 1.5 years, but Seraphon "FEELS OP" therefore, has to be nerfed. Seraphon literally won one single major with a lot of luck, but I stopped counting posts on their OP-ness.

Really, people just keep making stupid decisions and fall to obvious traps and complain, how OP are Seraphon. I understand, that the army is OP, if you know what to do, but don't have ways to pull it off. But which up to date army don't have an ability to snipe 4/5W hero with 5+ save? This is literally how you beat fangs of Sotek. No, people keep focusing that bastiladons, before doing any mortals to it, in hope that it somehow fails 2+ rerollable and get frustrated when it doesn't and claim, how OP it is.

We are not nearly as good as tzeentch, OBR or Fyreslayers.

 

like i said ignore the face book guys they have no idea what they are talking about(they call shoot cast broken) and blame their lack of skill on a army being OP. if seraphon take the tournament seen by storm THEN we can start calling them OP

 

I mean I dont really value the Seraphon results off TTS too much, since it is honestly a lot different playing AoS online than actually playing on a physical table, but they do give some kind of indication of Seraphon certainly not being terrible.

 

Meh, our summoning was problematic as it relied on a freely teleporting Slann and had 0 interaction with how points where generated. So you end up with a summoner that's a pain to catch and who you can't interupt in any way besides flat out killing him. That's definitly a very frustrating mechanic to play against. By no means were we OP, but I can definitly understand people being annoyed at it. Especially if a mediocre or bad player has to face someone who's great at positioning his Slann as that makes it very likely the Slann ends up effectivly untouchable for the opponent. Which makes for a very frustrating experience... On top of that this was literally the crutch holding the entire army together. So yeah, whenever someone did lose to a seraphon player it was probably due to that damn teleporting summoner.

Basicly everything about our old summoning was problematic

 

I think that the internal balance of the new battletome is overall quite good given that the model range is wide, despite of course some minor let downs. That means in my opinion that both internal and external balance can easily be fixed with minor point adjustments. Even adjusting a little bit down the max size of some units like terradons or chamelons (if they become spam in FoS as I see in the list from that TTS tournament) can in a way limit the spamming of a specific ability without nerfing the unit itself.

If Salamander deep-strike spam is going to win tournaments and every single tournament list is going to include Kroak, then a point increase in those units is going to happen sooner than later, maybe also affects too terradons, since they are somehow potentially "spammy". I just hope it come along with a point decrease for units such as Rypperdactils, Razordons, Troglodon or Eternity Warden, to see them on the tabletop. I see no reason either for why a Bastilladon with Ark of Sotek shoudn't cost less than another one with Solar engine. And wolud be happy if we would see more saurus guard on the tabletop by giving them a horde disconunt and a lower max size (270 points for maxed sized unit of 15 models) along with a cheaper Eternity Warden.

 

All these teir comments.

Turn up have a few pints with your buddies and play a fun story driven game, dont worry about all that tourney stuff. Those players spoil any shiny for the rest of us by spamming it

 

Let's have a discussion about the three lists taken. Seraphon placed first, second and 18th. So while we are strong and can place high, but it's not an auto win.

All three lists had:
Lord kroak
Astrolith bearer
Skink priest
Skink starpriest
10 skinks
Bound geminid

These I think will be in just about every competitive list.

The first place list spammed lots of salamanders, which are one of our best units. Between Kroak and celestant prime you can nuke just about any small hero off the table turn 1. Small unit of salamanders can deep strike boxing an army in and picking off any smaller units. The big unit of salamanders can be buffed by the priest and Lord of time and space into any unit to cause massive damage. Kroak also has 10 Saurus guard to protect him if you don't get first turn. Pretty gross list.

2nd place list is strange as it has two full units of 20 chameleon Skinks. This is not a unit that has gotten much talk so I am really curious how it went. It is actually really good to know that chameleon Skinks can preform well. Perhaps worth re-evaluating. Two big blocks of 40 skinks but only one starpriest is interesting as I feel they would be fighting for the starpriests power with the chameleons.

The 18th place list looks like lists we see a lot in the list section. It has two starpriests for two 40 lizard units of skinks. A full unit of salamanders which seems normal. The second slann is something that I am not sold on. I understand why it is good but I dont see it doing enough if you already have kroak doing the heavy lifting.

I think if we continue to see lists like the first place list we will be called OP and no fun to play against. It has just so much damage that the opponent has nothing they can do against.

 

Yep. Pretty much as predicted. With our traits, artefacts and batallions (for Skinks anyways) being so terrible, Slann is really no alternative to Kroak. Whenever someone takes a Slann, it will be a support piece for Kroak, or a flat out bad list.

I dont think Balewind will be in every list - Just an Astrolith might be enough extra range to Kroak's spells ontop of Arcane Vassal, and +1 to cast is really good. If you dont plan to sacrifice the first spell for CCP and dont have a ton of bound endless spells, "just" 4 spell casts is alright for Kroak.

This is pretty much "that guy"-list, and I doubt you will see it much on the actual tables, if anything due to the amount of Salamanders. Celestant-Prime is really interesting, and I think he is arguably better than our big monsters. You keep him in the sky until turn 3 and pretty much auto charge whatever you want with 7 attacks, tons of rend and damage. This is probably our "alpha strike" list.

I dont think this is strange at all. I did the math on Chameleon Skinks a while ago, and they are incredible. Fully buffed normal Skinks are superior output wise, but at some point you run into the issue of not having enough buffs, and at this point Chameleon Skinks are amazing. They do extremely well without a single buff on them, plus they can deepstrike with their own ability which is really strong with only 1 teleport. Chameleon Skinks basically dont need a babysitter unlike ordinary Skinks.

Again, I doubt you will see this kind of list often on the actual tables, since 40 Chameleon Skinks is kinda pricy - Unless people convert normal Skinks into them.

Im surprised it didnt do better, but again experience is kinda everything. Could be someones first game and pretty much just copypasted a list from our list section. I think double frog lists have a lot of potential, but it might be that you simply need more frontloaded damage output for turn 1 and 2, where as the extra Slanns value takes multiple turns.

The two first lists are all about front loaded damage, where as the third is a kinda slower damage grinder list imo.

 

meh, to be honest I'd expect the starborne to recieve a nerf of some sort as most of the problematic stuff seems to rely on LoSaT + X. Whereas a lot of those combo's don't really work in coalesced.

For example, Salamanders in coalesced are already a bit weird due to their lack of bravery & without LoSaT you won't be able to just dump a unit on a priority target anyway, making them much more manageable. If they're going to nerf Salamanders because of how they perform in starborne I'd expect them to basicly end up far too weak in coalesced.

To be honest, given how different coalesced are from starborne thanks to summoning + teleport I'm kind of surprised they don't have different costs. It's not like starborne is necesarly "better", but their abilities have far more potential for abuse than the coalesced's extra bite & damage protection.

 

scaly skin is especially weird. It seems great at first glance. But thanks to all the conditions; no mortal wounds, only multi-wound attacks. It becomes surprisingly limited. If it had less conditions I could at least see how it'd stack up. Especially the limit to just "attacks" is weird as spells and abilities are the most common sources of D3 wounds... I'm really curious what exactly the idea behind all the limitations is.