AoS Theorycrafting Balance Changes

Agreed. That weapon is clearly a more specialized weapon.

However, i'm merely looking at this like 16% is a big deal, while others seem to be saying its not. It's just a matter of degrees, where is any individual drawing the line on what makes a weapon anti this or anti that. 16% matters to me, it might not matter to others.

That's not underwhelming because things can have balanced profiles. at 215 points, its a bundle of damage, defense, and keywords that doesnt have much that compares to it. In any army. Nothing you've described here changes that.

Again, this feels like a perception problem not a model problem.

In terms of "what does it bring that actually gives it a potential niche for itself?"
... it's all of those things. It brings a sturdy profile with good damage attacks that's also a monster and a hero. It's a flexible unit that provides flexibility to your battle plan. Things don't need to have some hyper specific niche to be useful.

Lets compare it to a stegadon. Unbuffed, it has more wounds, is faster, and does more damage. It's also a hero. It's also cheaper.

Your entire argument seems to be that it's underwhelming because it doesnt excel in any one thing... but its above average in everything. Is that not impressive in and of itself?

It holds up when compared to any similarly keyworded model at a similar cost.

Edit: i should point out, if that is your argument then thats totally fine. It can be an underwhelming scroll TO YOU because you think models without defined niche's underwhelming. Thats a perfectly acceptable opinion, but one that needs to be stated. Its important context missing from the conversation up until this point.

 

i think it's a bit of both. the carno is definitely our second weakest monster and it still has a habit of whiffing most of it's attacks. that leads people to the perception that it's rather pillow fisted.
for context a unbuffed carnasuar in coalesced (+1 bight) does 2-11 (3-13 with pinned down) damage . that is a HUGE swing with a lot of it focused in the lower range. AOA definitely helps(still 3-13 just better distribution) but thats just for one unit and often we have better targets. it's not hard to see why there is a perception problem with the T-rex doing poor damage. and that's before we get into AoD (1-8 and 1-11) or better saves.
can it do a lot of damage? yeees but you have to build for it. if he has AOA, great drake, coalesced bight, and +1 to wound from moment of glory he does 9-20 (5-15 if they all out defend) this is good still very swingy but good. or you could take 10 knights with clubs that have more health and the same save and do 11-18 (7-12 againsed all out defense)with only AoA ...huh.
thats where the perception problem comes from he is not bad but is constantly out performed by other stuff in our army that don't whiff as hard.

 

It's definitely a swingy unit, no argument from me there. I find if i'm getting him into combats i usually have a few buffs on him (minimum great drake and his own CA) if i need him to actually kill something.

But yes, will 100% admit it's damage is extremely swingy which is frustrating in its own right but i'd also argue is a slightly different argument. It's got an awkward attacking profile, but i just think this is the kind of stuff that deserves to be talked about in context. Carnosaurs are bad or underwhelming is a different conversation then Carnosaurs have too swingy of a damage profile. At least to me!

 

my point is they are underwhelming(and definitely up for debate on bad) because they are swingy.
what is the carnasuars job? i honestly don't know and you use him more then i do.

 

I don't think its job is that unique, I just think it's such an efficient profile I often find myself getting his points back, swingy damage or not. It's just all value. I use it to guard flanks, steal points, and go into stuff i dont necessarily want to commit my salamanders, basti, or skinks into. It provides a great "in addition" damage unit and theres always the off chance it spikes huge. Having 14 wounds and a 4+ (and usually mystical) it also takes a decent punch too, so you can sometimes pin stuff on both ends with it and your engine or something like that.

I honestly find its flexibility to be super enticing, especially in an army like seraphon where everything else can be so single minded. It gives you a piece you can hang back as a counter charge unit, push up aggressively on a flank, or simply try and score battle tactics with without feeling like you're just "throwing away" this crucial piece of your army.

Also, people often invest too many or too few resources into dealing with it. It creates a really interesting decision point for my opponent, and i've found its a decision point they usually aren't getting right haha.

 

Yeah, to most people, at most levels of play, 16%, of one attack out of 3, is not going to be that big of a deal.

Add onto that that you only have a handfull of bite-attacks, and aren't attacking every turn, let alone attacking the appropriate target every turn. And the difference is literally on the level of 1-2 extra hits per game at most. That's minor enough that most people won't even really notice. Not unless it's the crucial hit that happens to win you that particular game.

A generalist is pretty much the definition of underwhelming.

The first issue is that generalist often simply aren't that good. Especially in modern games that tend to reward specialisation by focusing on (hard)counters and maximizing specific angles of attack, and thus punish generalists because they "waste" part of their powerbudget on useless things (or at least, useless in that particular moment).

The second issue is that it leaves it in the awkward spot where it constantly gets outshined by "weaker" (or more accuratly cheaper) but more specialized alternatives.

Simply put why bring a 215 point generalist if a 180 point specialist gets the job done? Like @Erta Wanderer pointed out, why bother with a fully buffed carnosaur when you can take 10 knights with clubs or any of a myriad of other options and achieve more or less the same?

On top of that it is swingy Which means it fails at the one thing a generalist is supposed to be; being reliable. So it's not even that good of a generalist....

O, and lastly, generalist simply aren't that exciting. A specialist experiences highs and lows, depending on if it gets to be the MVP of that game or is completly useless that game, which makes the specialist memorable. It's why Kroak is still hated. Cuz it regularly was the MVP in a game. A generalist on the other hand always performs adequatly, no highs, no lows, just adequate. And thus the generalist is forgotten in the annals of history. Which is why you're finding so few people actually supporting the carnosaur, cuz at best it merely did its job. It rarely if ever really gets to rampage and be the MVP.

 

One small change I would like to see from all of our monsters, but particularly the Carnosaur, is an updated declining stat table. Many of the newer monsters take a little more to bracket, and I feel that would go towards helping the Carno. I think I'd like to see 4 steps instead of 5, with it's bite never getting below 2 damage.

 

this would help/ our monster decline remarkably badly

 

Oh? Okay. I didn't realize that.

 

Debatable. Underwhelming, pretty much by definition, means something doesnt perform the way you expect it to. A generalist is only ever underwhelming if you expect it to... not be a generalist. Or if it's doing its generalist job poorly.

In this specific example, a unit of 10 knights simply doesnt fulfill the same role. It's not a monster. It fulfills the same role from a damage perspective, but its never going to get you extra battle tactics for being a monster. It's not going to count as 5 on a point down to its very last wound. It's not going to be able to engage the corners of units. It can't be give command abilities. It can't use monstrous or heroic actions. It's just not the same.

If you're looking for just damage, sure. Take knights. But thats my point. It's not there just to do damage. I don't know how many more times this can be stated. It's about the totality of what it brings to the table.

It reliably does what i need it to do. It doesn't reliably deliver damage in the same way other units do. I never claimed it did. Thats simply not the end all be all of a unit, nor is reliable damage the mark of a good generalist. It's the mark of a good damage dealer. A good generalist, reliably plays a general, flexible role. Which it does.

The over infatuation with damage on this forum is something i'll never quite understand. Seraphon doesnt need any help killing things. I think it's just the easiest thing to theorycraft because people dump it into a calculator and are off to the races about how that empirically shows it is or isn't a shitty unit.

Not exciting isn't the same as underwhelming (unless you're expectation is to be overly whelmed) or bad.

I think so few people are supporting the carnosaur because very few people are using it appropiately. Or at all. Or they are expecting it to be something its not.

For what it's worth, carno was my MVP in my game against the fyreslayers and was a critical part of me winning both my games against giants and stormcast.

agreed. As erta mentioned, our monster profiles have a pretty steep drop off once they start taking damage.

 

@Erta Wanderer. Math is certainly not my strength, so I probably don't have the smarts to question. But, to clarify at least, in my mind I was basically just dropping off the final level of the current table. My proposed Carnosaur's table would go...

0-3: 10", 3+, 5
4-6: 9", 4+, 4
7-9: 8", 4+, 3
10+: 7", 5+, 2

Still worse than our current?

 

I can certainly try!

I think damage is one of the parts of this game thats easily easily calculable and thus often becomes the end all be all for what differentiates units. Arguments are often reduced to "my X points of this unit can't kill X points of that unit so its trash." Or "this unit only does X damage to a 4+ save. Its trash."

But its not the -only- thing thats important. There are reasons armies like zombie spam sbgl or legion or nurgle are able to win games without overwhelming damage. There's a reason Zach's list used an ark of sotek (primarily as a screen and objective holder) on his way to 5-0.

It's also something that's more relevant to a seraphon conversation than perhaps other armies. Seraphon armies absolutely ooze damage from every single scaly orifice. You don't need every unit in your army to be a damage dealer, so why is it seemingly the only argument when it comes to discussing relative value of any given model? My point isn't that damage isn't important... its that when we are having a pretty in-depth discussion about the relevance of a single unit "it does x, y, or z damage into whatever save" isn't necessarily an argument for or against that unit. Just the damage it can do.

If your list doesnt rely on that damage, its kind of irrelevant how much damage it is or isn't doing.

To circle back to this specific argument, a Carnosaur's unreliable damage seems to be the only thing that's making it "underwhelming" which is kind of missing the forest for the trees. Dealing damage isn't the way you win games. Scoring points is. Dealing damage often helps you score points, but it's not the only thing that does. The game is a lot more dynamic than "let me push my math problem of damage across the table into your math problem of damage and see who does more damage."

I think arguments around damage potential on units, and comparisons that happen solely based on damage done, reduce the player agency that goes into a game like this. It reduces the nuance of the strategic conversations that can happen. And ultimately, it provides a surface level understanding of why things are good, and why certain armies and units are winning.

I think that end result is less than desirable. I think it does players a disservice to think of the game that way, and i think it perpetuates this opinion that you can only win with this narrow list of units that have overpowered damage stats (skinks, salamanders, bastis, etc.)

 

no thats better then our current one. still worse then most.

 

That's fair. Yeah, I guess it's still not great by comparison. :/

 

I get what you're saying. I agree on a lot of it. One thing I find odd is no one really cares as much about wound count. Like hear me out. Hell everyone can ponder this. No point change. Just give our big dinos +5 hp and a reasonable bracket (except me I have a shitload of hp and a decent bracket give me +1 to hit thats all i ask and -3 or -4 rend jaws and my damn totem keyword)

 

i mean i always bring wound count up(see my knights comparison). it just doesn't have a lot of veriance to it so it takes up 1 line our of a bunch.
that and monsters DO NOT usually compare well in this aria. kinda why having a 4+ save on a monster is kinda bad

 

I'm finding everyone's responses very interesting and enlightening.

An interesting idea. +5 wounds and improved bracketing obviously increases the durability of all our monsters. If that were to happen, I think that Bastiladons become a bit OP due to how hard to kill they already are. Likewise, Stegadons as battleline with 15 wounds and their current stat profile and better bracketing are going to become rather oppressive. On the plus side, it would make Stegageddon a very interesting list again I think the Oldblood on Carno and Troglodon are improved a lot, probably becoming worth their points now. Especally the Trog with his regeneration he's going to be alive that much longer to get CCP and channel for Kroak. And the Scar-Vet moves from an average (imo) unit to a pretty OP unit due to having just one less wound than a Maw-Krusha and being around half the cost. I personally think that wouldn't be the best way to improve our monsters, because as @Erta Wanderer said there's not a lot of variance and it might cause more balance problems. I think we have to approach each unit individually and see what it needs, rather than apply such a broad buff.

I do agree that a lot of the arguments around whether the Carnosaur is a "good" unit or not are based on differences in perception. Obviously, different people can look at the same facts, such as the stats on the warscroll and the buffs we can apply, and come to very different conclusions about whether those facts equal up to a "good" unit or a "bad" unit.

@Putzfrau Correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like the obviously very basic gist of what you see the Carnosaur's role as is a distraction piece. Not something you expect to kill a lot or survive for long, but something you plan to use to try and bait your opponent with to either get them to throw more resources at killing it than they should, or to ignore it because you have bigger threats and punish them for not dealing with it properly.

@Canas, I'm assuming you see it as a generalist monster that doesn't fit well into our lists because while it can do several things just ok it can't do anything particularly well, and those points are usually better spent on a unit that does a specific thing very well.

I think it's pretty obvious that we all have pretty different preferred playstyles, and those preferences play a significant role in determining how you view what a "good" or "bad" unit is. This is where I think that @Putzfrau's comments have a lot of merit. As much as fans of Warhammer Fantasy may hate it, AoS is an objective game, and it's entirely possible to win by "losing" in the sense that you can get your army wiped but still have enough victory points at the end of the game to be declared the winner. (Although in 3e that's a *lot* less likely than it was in 2e, due to battle tactics being a thing now) So with that in mind, I am fully willing to acknowledge that damage is not the only thing worth considering when talking about a unit's value.

I also agree that defining the specific context of the argument for or against a specific unit is a good idea. Some people are saying that Carnosaurs are bad because they're not reliable, others are saying they actually are quite reliable. IMO, both sides of the argument have merit. If you build a list that needs a distraction Carnifex and you plan your playstyle around that, then a Carno might actually fit that role pretty well. So in that sense it would be a "good" unit. But if you don't want/don't need a distraction in your list, then if the only role a Carno slots into is distraction Carnifex it probably looks like a pretty "bad" unit. (Perhaps AoS should adopt "Distraction Carnosaur" instead of Carnifex, lol!)

But I also agree with @Killer Angel and @Canas that a unit needs to do something good in order to be considered a "good" unit to have in your army. And I do personally also think that most of the time AoS tends to favor specialized units over generalist units.

I think this is a very good guideline. I would add to that list "- have an appropriate point cost." Because if a unit does a lot of things well, but is massively over-costed, it's not going to be worth putting in your army because it's not going to get you enough value in a game to be worth it. On the other hand, units being massively *under-costed* is a problem too. For example, Skinks in 1e couldn't do anything except try to bog enemy movement with their dead bodies, but they were also *extremely* cheap and summonable on top of that. So they were played all the time because you could literally win by just flooding objectives with Skinks. They wouldn't kill anything, but they were just so cheap that you could field well over a hundred of them in a single game and just force your opponent to spend all their time mowing them down but never being able to move. (On a side note, since I started playing before our 2e book came out this extremely frustrating game design is a big part of the reason I dislike the "cheap horde" playstyle and would prefer if we had more elite options.)

Now, with these guidelines in mind, we definitely do have a few objectively bad units in our army.
- Rippers: Just bad all-around. There is no reason you would take these in your army unless you're a master player wanting to play on "hard mode."
- Razordons: Also can't do anything on that list well. It's stats make it seem like it wants to be a horde-killer and board-controller with it's overwatch rule, but it can't do damage and can't survive combat long enough to do either one well.
- Troglodon. No damage, not good survivability, no buffs. It does have a pretty useful and unique battlefield control role, but it's *massively* overcosted which unfortunately negates that advantage.
- Eternity Warden. It's meant to be a buffing/damage soaking unit, but it's totally outclassed by regular Guard in every way and thus isn't worth it.
- Oldblood on Carnosaur. Just massively over-costed. Also suffers even more from the lack of reliability that we've been talking about than the Scar-Vet. His gauntlet is worthless, his CA is just All-Out Attack but GW seems to think another CA for +1 to hit is crazy OP. His spear suffers from the same high damage, low quantity problem the jaws have.

Since this conversation started when I compared Carnosaurs to Stormdrakes, I'd like to circle back to that and say that when I said our dinos needed buffs, I did mean it, but I was thinking of that in terms of a future 3e battletome. Stormdrakes are from a 3e book and we're operating out of a 2e book. I do agree that if we just massively buffed the Carnosaur right now it would be too much, because we *can* still buff-stack on him. I do think that you can't buff-stack on him as well as other units in our army, and other units in our army perform better to the point where it's not usually worth taking a Carnosaur unless you're doing what @Putzfrau said and just using him as a distraction while your specialized units kill things. That's a perfectly valid way to play, though, so at this point I'm willing to take back any times I might have said that Carnos were a bad unit. (not the times I said that it needs improvement, but if ever said it was just a plain bad unit I was wrong) I still hold strongly to the idea that they don't do as well in pretty much any role as other units in our army, and that specialists are typically better than generalists in AoS. That doesn't make it a bad unit, but due to the specific problem of him being unreliable in terms of damage as well as fairly easy to kill I'd still classify him as a solidly "average" unit. But only the Scar-Vet, the Oldblood is just bad due to being both unreliable *and* over-costed.

So my question to everyone would be: What role do you think the Carnosaurs (both variants) *should* have when our 3e book comes out, and how would you personally accomplish that?

I'd also really like to hear your opinions on other under-utilized units in our army, such as the ones I mentioned above, Saurus Warriors, our other foot heroes, and even the Dread Saurian

I'll just say openly that I do wish the Carnosaur was more clearly in that "beatstick" slot when it comes to his role. To be very specific: For the Oldblood I would give him:

- 12" move
- 3+ save
- Change all attack profiles to 3s and 3s
- Rend -1 on claws, rend -2 on jaws. Or alternatively rend -2 on jaws *and* spear but no rend on claws
- Gauntlet either gets 6 attacks period or does d3 mortal wounds on a 3+
- Remove Pinned Down
- Remove Wrath of the Seraphon because apparently it's sooo OP (sarcasm)
- Add an ability to eat a model once per combat phase. D6 vs. wounds characteristic
- Add an ability (not a command ability) that lets him give run and charge to a nearby Seraphon unit. Or give him the Mighty Destroyers CA for Saurus only.
- Improve the brackets to 0-5, 6-7, 8-9, 10+

Everything I didn't mention I'm assuming stays the same. I have no idea what his point cost would be, because I really don't understand GWs point pricing philosophy. But I'm guessing this would make him a 320-350 point unit based on comparing him to other monsters.

For the Scar-Vet:

- 12" move
- 3+ save
- Rend -1 on the Warblade
- Rend -1 on claws, rend -2 on jaws
- Remove Pinned Down
- Add an ability to eat a model once per combat phase. D6 vs. wounds characteristic
- Improve the brackets to 0-5, 6-7, 8-9, 10+

I'm assuming this puts him somewhere around 250-270 points? Just spitballing on the point costs, really. Also, all of this is going off the premise that we lose a lot of buff-stacking in our 3e book, since that seems to be the way of things. If we end up keeping most of our buffs and synergies, great! The need for stat boosts is drastically reduced in that case. But I think it's quite likely that we lose most of, if not all of our re-rolls, our warscroll command abilities, and probably most of our sub-faction command abilities as well. Like it or not, that's going to mean we have to rely more on warscroll strength than we do now. We may keep some CAs, but it's pretty much guaranteed that each sub-faction only gets one bonus. So KK may be +1 to hit on the charge, TL will probably just be Stegadons as battleline, DT will get the reserve deployment and FoS will get the extra move for Skinks. *Maybe* FoS gets it's unique CA instead, but I rather doubt it. TL is definitely losing extra monster wounds and double-tapping CA. Also, a lot of warscroll abilities like the Starpriest's and Starseer's staff buffs could go to once per game. That seems to be a common thing on a lot of 3e warscrolls.

There's always the possibility that some of those lost abilities get put into allegiance abilities instead, which would be awesome. That would be another good topic of discussion.

But it's getting late for me, I'll post some specifics for other units tomorrow.

 

more in the 290-320 range depending on how GW feels that day.

 

Very well said.