AoS Season of war campaign - the opponents!

[Killer Angel]

You know it's going to start the mondial monthly campaign.

With the big rules update, many tactics are going to change: nerf to summoning and spells, new abilities... what we was used to know, is no more. Known armies could now be a totally different animal.

This thread wants to be a sort of container for advices about what we could face (and suggestions on how to win).

 

[Killer Angel]

Death.

To use ANY ability or spell which adds a new unit to your army, including those that might replace units that have been entirely removed, you must pay the points cost of that unit out of a pool of reserve points set aside from your army. Since this restriction applies to any ability which adds units to your army, it does apply to things like Neferata's blood kiss or Vlad's wight king spells.

Abilities that add models to existing units do not suffer this restriction, HOWEVER spells and abilities that add models to a unit cannot increase that unit to a larger size than its starting amount.

The real losers are the Flesh Eaters faction, as all of their courtier abilities are much, much weaker when they can't raise units above their starting size.


For fun, yesterday I’ve tried a list of Tomb Kings. 1000 points.

Tomb Kings - Death allegiance.

Battle Trait Deat: Deathless Minions: Death units within 10" of your general or another hero gain 6+ ward save

This can be a solid 5+ with Command Trait “Ruler of the night”.

You should see what’s coming, and be prepared to face lists based on a similar concept:


Royal warsphinx, with Ruler of the Night and Tomb Blade
Liche Priest
Tomb Herald
2 units of 20 skeleton warriors
1 unit of 3 Ushabti

facing an orc force (alliance O&G in the first match, and alliance Destruction in the second game), composed by:

Orc warboss, with boar, choppa, and shield (or was it Gorbad Ironclaw? don't recall)
Orc warboss w Great Banner
10 orcs
10 orc boar boyz
3 river trolls
1 Mangler Squigs



The skeletons are just a tarpit unit, but tnx to shield wall, if buffed by a shield spell, they can have a save 4+ (!) and then have a further ward save at 5+. With the banner that heals and the BSB, they easily replace the losses.

The priest can also replenish models lost by the ushabti (which can be furtherly cured by the Tomb Blade’s effect).

The warsphinx is basically immortal: it halves the damage, got a save 4+ and ward at 5+, the few unsaved wounds will be redirected to the Tomb Herald bodyguard, which will use his 5+ ward… and any wound inflicted to the sphinx can still be cured by the Tomb Blande or by the priest.


Now, this tests could be meaningless, as we played a battle with no objectives (and I'm really slow, playing with objectives could be a pain for me), BUT it was almost embarassing.

I won by 1000 pts to 0. Twice.


At 2000 pts, you could easily face a list with the "tomb king battallion": a further ward save at 6 (so: armor save, ward ad 5+, ward at 6), and a second artefact (which will be, at that point, the "ring of immortality", for the hierophant or even better the Tomb Herald)

 

[Killer Angel]

Suggestion for an all-comers seraphon list.

keep ALWAYS some points away as summoning pool. Some threats require specific answers, AoS is often a Rock-Paper-Scissor game, and we're a swiss army knife: we have a great number of tools at our disposal, so (even if nerfed) the ability to summon the right unit at the right moment is of great value.
At 2000 pts, something in the order of the 10% is not going to cripple your starting force, but can be very useful later.

with 180 pts you can
summon a trio of razordons; once summoned, they'll shoot at 12", hitting the desired target (re-rolling 1s tnx to the Slann's Great Drake). Assassin!
summon three kroxigor, if you need more hitting power or if your defensive line is crumbing.
replace a key unit that was just killed (Astrolith Bearer, Warden, Starseer), thus frustrating the effort of the enemy to ruin your army's strategy.


In the previous case, those razordons (possibly helped by a unit of chama skinks, that you should have anyway) could certainly assassinate the Tomb Herald, and with some luck also the liche priest.

 

[Phoedinn]

It's. Real shame they massively nerfed the rippers looking at how much I tend to hit and wound, 18 attacks on the beaks just won't be anougth the for what I used to use them for.

 

[Moc-Tzen]

Alright! today I will be going to my local shop to have some battles against Chaos Beasts, Probably Orcs, Ogres and Skavens!

I know for sure that I will be playing 500 pts for chaos beasts but for the others it will probably be larger games.
My tactic for 500 would be to use a Troglodon but since I dont have one I will have to go with a Scar Veteran and a Skink StarPriest.

Now that alone is 200, so I got 300 that I can invest on troops. In this instance I was thinking on saturating it with a unit of 20 skinks to max out the fire power and just fill the rest with salamanders and some handlers.

Problem is that them goathers charge rather fast, so having Saurus warriors instead would probably be a better idea.

So I want to try:
Saurus Scar Veteran w/ Cold one and quicksilver potion.
x20 Skinks w Blowpipes
x10 skinks w blowpipes
x2 Salamanders
x3 handlers.

hows that for a 500 battle list?

I will most surely be facing:

A herd of Gors, a shaman, a doombull, 3 minotaurs and blue horrors.

 

[Bowser]

Should be interesting, list looks good, I think there must be a bettet option, bit I can't think of it!

 

[dwarfepic]

Flesh eaters 1000 points

King on terrorghiest 400
20 crypt ghouls 200
3 crypt horrors 140
3 crypt horrors 140
crypt haunter courtier 120

have the crypt haunter courtier as the general, so you get the crypt horrors as battleline.
king on terrorghiest casts unholy vitality on ghouls.
command trait ruler of the night. put crypt ghouls in cover.
crypt ghouls now have a 5+, then a 5+, then another 5+ save, the first a normal one, the second and third against all wounds even mortals. now the crypt ghouls are tougher than varanguard.
king on terrorghiest can tank in melee and deal a lot of damage and mortal wounds. the crypt horrors will have a 5+ then a 5+, and regen wounds and re roll hit rolls with the king nearby.
I run this with my flesh eaters, and it works very well.

 

[Killer Angel]

Premise: probably the system doesn't work well with so few points. The lowest point of the bar has been set at 1000, and even the core sigmarines army in the starter box is around 800 pts.
Probably, under 1000 pts you can field only one battleline.

Problem is that them goathers charge rather fast, so having Saurus warriors instead would probably be a better idea.

So I want to try:
Saurus Scar Veteran w/ Cold one and quicksilver potion.
x20 Skinks w Blowpipes
x10 skinks w blowpipes
x2 Salamanders
x3 handlers.

hows that for a 500 battle list?

I don't know about saurus... you'd use slow units against fast ones, and that's not a good thing.
Sallies and skinks are good and fast. You can move and shoot, and this works well agains fast but close combat units.
Use the 10 skinks to take some obkective and as screen to sallies: if they charge you sallies blast.
The other 20 skinks shoot and run.
All in all, it could work... but i don't like the scarVet on CO. He's mostly melee, and i don't see him alone against beastmen units. Use a skink priest instead, with fly: move 14" and nice shooting, you'll have a hero (with save at 4+, possibly rerollable) that flies on objectives, shoots and it's really hard to catch.

As a last thing, I'm not so sold on the group of 20 skinks. Picking only 10 of them to have a third salamander, would mean 20 losed pts... but a third sally means also death for any target you shoot at.

 

[InfamousBeany]

Just to add to @Killer Angel 's points on death, in addition to the stacking of 'extra saves', there is the possibility of what I affectionally refer to as the Hammer Time strat, in which you can't touch them.

It centers around Neferata's command ability (-1 to hit on all enemies in a bubble up to 15" from her), Bat Swarms (-1 to hit in shotting phase when within 10" of them) and the Cursed Book Artefact (-1 to hit within 3" of the bearer). This generally means that you are almost always at -1 to hit against them either at range or in combat. The next step is to surround Neferata and the Artefact bearer (Usually a winged Vampire lord for efficiency) with Hexwraiths, and for neferata to cast her unique spell on herself. This then means that not only is everything targetting this blob at -1/-2 to hit, almost every unit ignores rend. And then they get their 6+ 'extra save' and heal every turn, all the while moving at ~12" a turn. Scary stuff.

Thankfully, this is only feasible in higher points costs, and mortal wounds are definitely the way to crack this open. Go Kroak or go home basically.

In addition, as a general rule against Death- always wipe the unit.

Even if it feels like you are using excessive resources, go the extra mile and ensure that a unit is completely destroyed, else the likes of all Flesh eaters courts units, Skellies, Zombies and a disturbing number of Tomb Kings units can just regen back up for free. If you remove the whole unit, they have to pay points to summon them back to the board and they lose their momentum.

And one last point- if you can't guarantee you can kill a big blob in the first turn, aim for the big ones. Get rid of their Heroes, and their 'extra saves' go out the window with them, and you can mow down the chump infantry at your leisure.

 

[Killer Angel]

5

In addition, as a general rule against Death- always wipe the unit.

(snip)

And one last point- if you can't guarantee you can kill a big blob in the first turn, aim for the big ones. Get rid of their Heroes, and their 'extra saves' go out the window with them, and you can mow down the chump infantry at your leisure.

Both the points are absolutely true.
@InfamousBeany is telling you words of wisdom, guys.

20 skellies? don't fear to use all your sallies, possibly backed up by additional shooting, but wipe away them, or force them to fail battleshock, killing 16-17 models on 20.
Because frankly, when I use skellies and my enemies don't go at full strenght against them, they're immortal. Especially when they don't run (and they don't) so they start from a save 5+ and they're protected by a ward 5+... without doing nothing. And trust me, when you inflict 12 wounds and I suffer just 5 dead, and then heal a d6+1 models, you are simply wasting your effort.

About Killing heroes... well, wise advice, but sometime easier to tell than to do. Especially if the general is a Royal Warsphinx (i have no words to say how much I love it), that halves all the damage, got a save at 4+, then a ward at 5+, can redirect wounds on the Herald, which got a ward 5+ too, and anyway can be healed by the tomb blade or by a liche priest... well it's not impossible to kill it, but you must know what you're doing, because it's a top tier task.

 

[Moc-Tzen]

Well we ended up playing 600 pts and that ruined my day cause my opponent put a behemoth creature and a khorne hero which... well. There is no way I can kill it that easely with 20 daily blowpipe hits.
His behemoth got lucky and caused 5 mortal wounds on my salamander and turned one into a chaos spawn. My skink priest proceeded to fail its incantations later on too and my skinks just couldnt kill proper stuff.

I failed that game, then again had I know it would had been 600 pts I would had fielded a troglodon isntead and things would had been much more different
All in all I think skinks with Javelins are not very good. Blowpipes with clubs are superior, just get them in cover.


I played then another game 1000 with a stormcast ally vs the same beastman and The big sorcerer rat from the skaven Tanquol. We got that game!
I fielded 20 saurus instead of skinks, used only one salamander and had a Scar vet w cold one and starpriest. The saurus warriors whooped out an entire unit of the beast men by charging into them after casting them starlight and with the abilities of the scar vet and the starpriest, well they cut them down, only left a bray shaman with one wound running away.

Then I went to support my ally which was in dire need "he chose 4 heroes and an elite unit, his elite unit and a guy with a banner "reliquiary mayebe" got killed by some minotaurs, but he managed to kill tanquol after some heavy wound and casualties, enough time for my saurus warriors to get there and kill the doombull and the minotaurs.

20 man wave of saurus is great! but I would rather use 30 because you can keep that extra hit and you just rain hammer blows.

Still I want a troglodon since we are mostly playing small games.

 

[InfamousBeany]

@Moc-Tzen Ahh dude thats rough, sounds like your opponent upped the points last minute to squeeze in what he wanted to play, uncool. Also worth noting for the future- he can only create a spawn if he has the right amount of summoning points left, as it is setting up a new unit on the table.

I'm glad the second game went better! I have to say, I think team games are really where AoS shines, so much fun to work alongside other armies.

A troglodon is a pretty cost effective unit, but be aware that its not great. Please don't let that dissuade you from using one, but its a bit of a jack of all trades, therefore not particularly exceptional at any one role. Possible choices for you to use in low points games would be the razordon and more sallies- really very good units, nice and cheap, and are superb for defensive or offensive respectively. If you want a big ol' killy behemoth, I would highly recommend a scar vet on carno- fairly priced, combat monster (especially with artefacts, good golly) and can buff those blobs of saurus warriors you enjoy. A noteworthy point about the scar-vet on carno- his command ability also works on ranged attacks, so your skinks can lut put a lot of shots with his help.

Looking forward to hearing more from your growing force!

 

[Moc-Tzen]

@Moc-Tzen Ahh dude thats rough, sounds like your opponent upped the points last minute to squeeze in what he wanted to play, uncool. Also worth noting for the future- he can only create a spawn if he has the right amount of summoning points left, as it is setting up a new unit on the table.

Wait what?! where could I find this specifc information? so that I can bring it up next time because my gaming group apparently has gone with the idea that you dont need point for command abilities that summon or "transform"

I see, well I wanted to use the troglodon because it seems like in small games it could really rock n roll and besides I have been looking for an excuse to build one, altought perhaps I should use my kit to build a Carnosaur instead?

 

[InfamousBeany]

Essentially, any ability that would create a new unit (Summoning spells, neferata's vampire conversion, Engine of the Gods, Flesh Eater Courts Ghoul King command abilities etc.) needs to be paid for from the "Summoning pool".

Anything that adds models to existing units (Death banners, courtiers, Tomb Kings Reanimation) does not cost any points, BUT you can never exceed the starting unit size (i.e. A unit of skeleton sthat started the game with 30 models may never exceed 30 models at any given point).

And on the Troglodon/Carnosaur dilemma:

Troglodon [200 points]

• Can unbind spells (Really key, as most of your casters will be chilling at the back, so to have a pretty tough, aggressive unit that can unbind is super useful)
• Half-decent ranged attack with surprisingly good range
  
• Can be used with Slann to extend range of spells
• Could be used in tandem with Saurus Warriors' banner to force battleshock failures
  
• Lack of rend really neuters how good this unit can be at breaking units
• No clear battlefield role- its 'ok' at shooting, 'ok' at combat, it has 'ok' mobility, no command ability
• Complete lack of impact- opponent can largely ignore it to focus on more key targets

Scar-Vet on Carnosaur [260 points]

• Really rather killy in combat
• Can be given artefacts
• Good, flexible command ability
• Bloodroar can annihilate elite units (Dracoth cav, Varanguard, Ogres etc)
• Incredible mobility after a jaw kill
• Ignoring -1 Rend makes it pretty tanky
• No ranged capability
• More expensive
• Very Fixed battlefield role- linebreaker/hero killer

All in all, I feel that for 60 points more, the scar vet on carno would be a wise addition. Granted, you lack the aggressive unbinding ability and a meh shooting attack, but it just such a threat (especially with a spear and the +1 Damage artefact from the Order Allegiance) that it's hard to pass up. Ultimately however, it is up to you and how you would like your list to play. Those 60 points you save on a Troglodon can go straight into another Sallie, but at that point are you not better off just taking 3 Sallies for 180 instead? Choose whether you would like flexibility but lack of impact, or high impact, high specialisation.

And of course in higher points games you can just take both

 

[Moc-Tzen]

Essentially, any ability that would create a new unit (Summoning spells, neferata's vampire conversion, Engine of the Gods, Flesh Eater Courts Ghoul King command abilities etc.) needs to be paid for from the "Summoning pool".

Anything that adds models to existing units (Death banners, courtiers, Tomb Kings Reanimation) does not cost any points, BUT you can never exceed the starting unit size (i.e. A unit of skeleton sthat started the game with 30 models may never exceed 30 models at any given point).

And what about the pink/blue horrors?
Do you know in which page is this? I am going to show them today in order to avoid future shenanigans "had he not spawned his spawn things would had gone much more different.

And you are right, that scar veteran on Carnosaur just sold me! I will build it as an oldblood but will use it as a scar vet because it rocks! and it's cheaper lol.

All in all that is a very good unit study, yes the troglodon seems to be quite useful if you are running a slann. In order to become a mayor annoyance rather than a threat to your opponent and ruin the day for a regiment or unit.

 

[InfamousBeany]

I'm not sure on the horrors question- Silver Tower models do not currently have points, so a definite answer at the moment is hard to come by, but as a general rule I would say you would have to pay for all additional horrors created.

 

[Killer Angel]

Horray! My General's Handbook has arrived!
...hopefully from now i will be able to answer in a better way to this kind of questions...

 

[Crowsfoot]

Horray! My General's Handbook has arrived!
...hopefully from now i will be able to answer in a better way to this kind of questions...

Mine has dispatched Monday still waiting.... Grrrrr

 

[Moc-Tzen]

Alright yesterday I played again vs the same chaos player, this time we did 1000 points.
A friend made up a list that sounded incredibly interesting but I had my doubts.
Basically it consisted on using lord Kroak, a Chakax, 5 Temple Guards and 20 saurus and I still had 20 pts to spare.

My opponent had 3 minotaurs, a doombull, 10 gors, 10 ungors, a bray shaman, a beastman banner, the big ass beastman from the silver tower and 10 horrors.

I entrenched myself on an Arcane terrian and basically just kept spamming mortal wounds to him, and ocassionally casting mystic shield on my saurus warriors.
I was a bit scared because he super outnumbered me but... it all whent according to plan.
Victory for the seraphon.
NOTE: Lord Kroak is BEAST!

 

[Wazz]

Im finally going to be able to play in the Season of War campaign and was thinking of bringing my Seraphon to play. It'll be a 1000 points game I'm sure. I think I'm going to use 1 Starpriest 2 units of 20 warriors 30 skinks and Scar vet on carno. Any thoughts folks? Possibly swapping some skinks out for salamanders?