AoS Seraphon Battletome WIP

[Carnikang]

Champions of the Old ones:

The Seraphon trace their heritage back to Lustria, where they were created by the Old ones to fulfill a granted purpose with impressive efficiency, Those Seraphon who are part of the Seraphon Allegiance are able to tap back into their ancient origins, and regain the gifts that the Old ones granted them.


Scaly Skin: Whenever a Seraphon unit suffers a wound, it may roll a dice. On a roll of 5 or more the wound is ignored.

Ancient Purpose: All Seraphon were created with a certain purpose by the Old ones, and as such they gain boons

I think Scaly Skin is perfect. As for Ancient Purpose, I think it seems overly book-keepy and needs to be simplifid.
How about making it a flat buff to fighting Chaos or Chaos Demons? They were vry effective at striking at the corrupted ones after all. Or Rename it t Predatory Instincts and have all to hit rolls of 6 (before modifiers) generate another attack, regardless of unit.

Wrath of the Seraphon:

Whenever you completely slay an enemy unit you may add 50 points to your summoning reserve pool. This amount is increased by an additional 50 points for each of the following types that the slain enemy unit had: Monster, Hero, named hero, Chaos and Demon (requires both). If you lose as many units equal to the number of units you started with, you lose the game.

The concept has merit, but cutting away the lose condition and awarding only half points for a FULL unit being destroyed by your units, or one of your own unia being destroyed, could make it more manageable.

Command: Wrath of the Old Ones
All Seraphon heroes within the Seraphon Allegiance have access to the “Wrath of the Old ones” command: Seraphon units within 10” of your general, and those blessed by your Skink Priests, receive a +1 on hit rolls.

This could use some adjustment. Making it a flat 12"-18" range would make it a great offensive ability, which i assune you were going for. Id also remove the additional bullet about skink blessing. It might turn out too good baseline that way.

Thats all i chewed through on my phone, but i like what im reading

 

[Canas]

@Carnikang in my little bit of fluf they'd still be aloof and commanding, they're still far beyond the comprehension of (most) of the aztecs, with the exception of the legendary hero types like the particular wizard that established the Alliance who understand a tiny part of the great plan and can thus understand a tiny tiny part of the slann. But even then it's like a child trying to understand a physics professor explaining the details of gravity.

Basicly to a slann the difference would be as follows:

• A sigmarite is a tool to be used when appropriate, we should be carefull with our tools but they themselfs are not of any real importance and can be discarded when broken. No slann cares if every sigmarite dies or not. He just cares about that 1 sigmarite that is going to go on a trip and accidently do something beneficial for the greater plan next week. Once he has done that he can go jump in a fire for all the slann cares.

• The Aztecs are the first bit of the great plan coming together. If the great plan is to grow a forest the Aztecs are the first saplings to sprout in vast wastelands. They should be protected & nurished at all cost for they are the very foundation upon which the next phase is build.

They'd still be aloof, even greatest of Aztecs aren't even childeren compared to their great minds, and they certainly won't hesitate about sending entire armies to their deaths if it serves the great plan. But they won't ever allow any serious harm to come to the civilisation as a whole. They try their best to nurture & teach this young fledgling race. The Aztecs put them on a pedestal for the wise creatures they are, but they realise that the slann are merely wise and not gods. Similarly, the slann are aloof & commanding, but they do care, in their own way, about the wellbeing of this peculiar race and don't view them as mere tools.

Also, the lesser seraphon like skinks & saurus have a less aloof relationship with the humans. Admittadly seeing as the seraphon are beings of cold logic they won't ever have the same relationships as humans amongst themselfs. But they do view the humans with some form of respect & caring.

@Nielspeterdejong I've added a variation of your rule to my own magic rules as I feel like it's a nice bonus.

 

[Nielspeterdejong]

@Nielspeterdejong That's why I said make it dependent on the worth of the thing you slay. Preferably on the individual models. E.g. if you slay 5 saurus warriors you get 50 points, if you slay 10 you get a 100, if you slay a starpriest you get a 100 etc. That way you avoid the issue of having certain units be worth way less or way more than they should.

For clarity, I just used the points they are currently worth, if you're going to do this obviously it'd be better to gain say 50% of what they're worth, not the full 100%.

As for it being a "small" bonus. I'd like it as a small bonus, especially in combination with somthing like what I made up with my own rules for magic (might include it) but with that being the only real source of points it's insignificant. Yeah of course that small bonus can turn a fight in your favor, But so could having a good roll for a attack. It's too insignificant to be noticable outside of that 1 match where your summoned sunblood proceeded to slaughter half the opposing army cuz his dicerolls where amazing.

Also, the extra lose-condition makes it too easy to lose to some bad-luck, especially with squishier troops or more damaging opponents. A better solution might be to make it so that losing your entire Original army causes you to lose. That'd allow you to summon cannonfodder for tarpit purposes, but without the risk of losing because of it. Also it'd add an extra strategic layer. If you just need to lose X troops your opponent will simply focus on killing whatever gets into range really. However, if he has to kill specific troops he actually has to work for it.

Well in thait case, how about something that is a bridge in between? I could add that if you slay a unit that originally had more then 10 models you get an additional 50 points (75 with the command trait).

And what did you think about my other points?

 

[Nielspeterdejong]

I think Scaly Skin is perfect. As for Ancient Purpose, I think it seems overly book-keepy and needs to be simplifid.
How about making it a flat buff to fighting Chaos or Chaos Demons? They were vry effective at striking at the corrupted ones after all. Or Rename it t Predatory Instincts and have all to hit rolls of 6 (before modifiers) generate another attack, regardless of unit.



The concept has merit, but cutting away the lose condition and awarding only half points for a FULL unit being destroyed by your units, or one of your own unia being destroyed, could make it more manageable.


This could use some adjustment. Making it a flat 12"-18" range would make it a great offensive ability, which i assune you were going for. Id also remove the additional bullet about skink blessing. It might turn out too good baseline that way.

Thats all i chewed through on my phone, but i like what im reading

I'm happy you like most of it And I went for Ancient purpose because I liked how each type of Lizardmen had their own role to fulfill, and in this way each type will have their own bonus and feel, all contributing to the great plan. The extra attack for the Saurus is based on the "predatory strikes" from 8th edition, the automatically wound is from the poison attacks that the Skinks used to have, and the bonus to the kroxigor is to make them more tanky as in 8th edition they had a great Scaly skin bonus. The Slann their aura is based on the strong wards they had in 8th edition, and here you can see it as an anti magic field. The "Other" bonus is meant to help Salamanders/Razordon, as well as any units that don't fall into those previous types.

The "bonus on natural 6 rolls" for Saurus and Skinks is meant to make it a good buff, but not too strong. All in all the idea is that each type fulfills their own purpose, and it motivates people to think about the build more, which makes making an army more fun.

I intend to keep the bonus from Skink priests, since that way the Feathercloak will have more uses in competetive plays, and also your Skink Priests overall will be vital parts of your army.

 

[Canas]

Well in thait case, how about something that is a bridge in between? I could add that if you slay a unit that originally had more then 10 models you get an additional 50 points (75 with the command trait).

And what did you think about my other points?

I think that if you want to link it to troops dying you have to link it directly to their pointcost. As long as you're keeping a flat amount it'l end up being unbalanced. Either being too weak against units of one type or too powerfull against others. Rules like "it it has keyword Y add X points" or "if it starts at size Y add Z points" will Always run into issues simply because the keywords are far too limited to actually distinguish al of the possible situations. I had a similar issue when trying to distinguish various wizards for my magic rules

As for the other points, I like the allegiance traits. Apart from the summoning one (obviously ) and the the bonus that "other" get. Mostly cuz the "other" bonus is fairly boring and doesn't have much logic to it other than "well everyone else has something so they need something". In comparison the skinks wounding on 6 cuz they have poison makes some sense.

The spells don't solve the underlying issues that magic has, but are good enough if you work with the basic rules I suppose.

The artifacts are reasonable-ish, though the helm of command seems fairly useless though.

The command traits are fine, though I would possibly make the summoning of the jungle swarms just a spell all seraphon wizards know, possibly even without pointcost. But that depends on how weak the swarm is.

Starvenom host bonus to non-seraphon units seems odd, and probably a tad bit overpowered. To be honest I don't like the grand allegiances, they screw too much with how various armies "work" and can too easily be used to make a army that's good at everything or has no particular weakness. Personally I'd like them to change something around for that so that mono-armies are more encouraged as mono-armies are considerably easier to balance & to give them an identity as opposed to "this grand allegiance can do everything cuz it has a subject faction that's cavalry heavy and a magic heavy faction and a infantry heavy faction etc."

The bonus for cover near big units is interesting, though it should probably come with the drawback of the kroxigor being hit instead. Otherwise it doesn't make much sense.

 

[Nielspeterdejong]

I think that if you want to link it to troops dying you have to link it directly to their pointcost. As long as you're keeping a flat amount it'l end up being unbalanced. Either being too weak against units of one type or too powerfull against others. Rules like "it it has keyword Y add X points" or "if it starts at size Y add Z points" will Always run into issues simply because the keywords are far too limited to actually distinguish al of the possible situations. I had a similar issue when trying to distinguish various wizards for my magic rules

As for the other points, I like the allegiance traits. Apart from the summoning one (obviously ) and the the bonus that "other" get. Mostly cuz the "other" bonus is fairly boring and doesn't have much logic to it other than "well everyone else has something so they need something". In comparison the skinks wounding on 6 cuz they have poison makes some sense.

The spells don't solve the underlying issues that magic has, but are good enough if you work with the basic rules I suppose.

The artifacts are reasonable-ish, though the helm of command seems fairly useless though.

The command traits are fine, though I would possibly make the summoning of the jungle swarms just a spell all seraphon wizards know, possibly even without pointcost. But that depends on how weak the swarm is.

Starvenom host bonus to non-seraphon units seems odd, and probably a tad bit overpowered. To be honest I don't like the grand allegiances, they screw too much with how various armies "work" and can too easily be used to make a army that's good at everything or has no particular weakness. Personally I'd like them to change something around for that so that mono-armies are more encouraged as mono-armies are considerably easier to balance & to give them an identity as opposed to "this grand allegiance can do everything cuz it has a subject faction that's cavalry heavy and a magic heavy faction and a infantry heavy faction etc."

The bonus for cover near big units is interesting, though it should probably come with the drawback of the kroxigor being hit instead. Otherwise it doesn't make much sense.

Actually I think the Helm of command is one of the most usefull items The reason I made it was to allow a similar effect to what the Zombies of the VC have: You can combine units like Skinks and Saurus Warriors to gain their Cohort buffs, and you only have to target them as one unit with spell buffs like Mythic shield. Plus even if you lose models, you won't lose the original Cohort bonusses. In that regard you can make one big strong unit, as opposed to several more flexible ones.

The idea behind the summoning is to allow non wizard Skink units to be a general as well. Being able to take the "wrath of the Seraphon" command, and being able to summon despite not knowing magic. Thus allowing for more flexible yet good builds

I could make the Wrath so that it will give you 1/2 of the original point cost, but that would be a lot of "searching through books and finding the point cost", so a bit of a hastle. I made it so with types so that people can more easily look it up based on the Warscrolls that players always have available. Thus while it isn't perfect in every situation, it is close enough. And as I said, it's just a nice extra

Maybe I should increase the "Champion of the Astral Dragon" trait from 25 bonus points to 50?

 

[Jason839]

If you want to fix summoning I don't know if you need to go through all that. I think If you just add a rule that summoned units cost 50% less and give a way to re-roll failed summon rolls it would be enough.

 

[Carnikang]

A lot of what your doing seems very flavorful, but I fear that it all of these abilities and effects together would create something extremely hard to counter.
Just taking into account the Priest with a 3+for Rites for an 8" bubble. Coupled with lots of our stuff a.) ignoring rend of 1, b) usally having a decent 4+ save, rerollable with rites and c) by your design having a 5+ save after, which is rerollable due to the Rites making them almost as tough as some nurgle cheese. AND suddenly being able to replenish our ranks with models that we essentially did not have before, along with lots of other changes listed that only s eem beneficial, i think this needs some toning back.

 

[Canas]

O I see the uses for the helm, but it being a 1-time use thing kinda reduces its effects too much. Outside of some cheese tactics like fielding 2 units of 20 saurus to fullfill the requiremets for a constelation and then immeadiatly merging them into 1 big unit to gain the benefits of the horde I don't see it really doing what you'd want it to do.

Am I misreading it, I read it as f you get Champions of the Old ones, Wrath of the Seraphon & Celestine Ascension? Not as if you had to make a choice. Which one is correct? Cuz this bit is confusing me.

Spoiler

The idea behind the summoning is to allow non wizard Skink units to be a general as well. Being able to take the "wrath of the Seraphon" command, and being able to summon despite not knowing magic. Thus allowing for more flexible yet good builds

As for forcing people to search for the point cost of the model killed, if you care enough to work with point costs for summoning you'l also have constructed your army with pointcosts. I'd assume you'd have written down what everything cost while building to keep track of everything. So that shouldn't be that much of an issue

@Jason839 halfing the cost would go some way towards making summoning viable. But that'd still require far too large a reserve pool for it to be the intended unending horde kind of mechanic. Plus, if you have to put X% of your starting points into a reserve you always run the risk of the summoner dying and taking the entire reserve with him... at least for other key-units you just lose that unit and not a massive reserve. Without some way to generate extra points it'l Always fall flat.

@carnikanq You're probably right that it needs some limitations, But especially the Champions of the Old ones allegiance traits dón't seem that overpowering. Though I would probably suggest not having that second ward save be rerollable by the priest.

 

[Nielspeterdejong]

O I see the uses for the helm, but it being a 1-time use thing kinda reduces its effects too much. Outside of some cheese tactics like fielding 2 units of 20 saurus to fullfill the requiremets for a constelation and then immeadiatly merging them into 1 big unit to gain the benefits of the horde I don't see it really doing what you'd want it to do.

Am I misreading it, I read it as f you get Champions of the Old ones, Wrath of the Seraphon & Celestine Ascension? Not as if you had to make a choice. Which one is correct? Cuz this bit is confusing me.


As for forcing people to search for the point cost of the model killed, if you care enough to work with point costs for summoning you'l also have constructed your army with pointcosts. I'd assume you'd have written down what everything cost while building to keep track of everything. So that shouldn't be that much of an issue

@Jason839 halfing the cost would go some way towards making summoning viable. But that'd still require far too large a reserve pool for it to be the intended unending horde kind of mechanic. Plus, if you have to put X% of your starting points into a reserve you always run the risk of the summoner dying and taking the entire reserve with him... at least for other key-units you just lose that unit and not a massive reserve. Without some way to generate extra points it'l Always fall flat.

@carnikanq You're probably right that it needs some limitations, But especially the Champions of the Old ones allegiance traits dón't seem that overpowering. Though I would probably suggest not having that second ward save be rerollable by the priest.

You get all the bonusses that are listed there. Hence why you only get 50 reserve summoning points per kill along with per type/above 10 models. It's spread along those 4 traits

 

[Canas]

You get all the bonusses that are listed there. Hence why you only get 50 reserve summoning points per kill along with per type/above 10 models. It's spread along those 4 traits

Right, started to get confused. Anyways as a bonus its nice enough, though the actual effectiveness varies far too much depending on what you're facing for it to be balanced or reliable. And as it isn't reliable/meaningfull/balanced it doesn't actually fix summoning. Basicly as a fix for making summoning balanced it's not good enough, as a small bonus it's either fairly insignificant (and mostly fine) or considerably too powerfull depending on what sort of enemies you end up facing.

 

[Nielspeterdejong]

Right, started to get confused. Anyways as a bonus its nice enough, though the actual effectiveness varies far too much depending on what you're facing for it to be balanced or reliable. And as it isn't reliable/meaningfull/balanced it doesn't actually fix summoning. Basicly as a fix for making summoning balanced it's not good enough, as a small bonus it's either fairly insignificant (and mostly fine) or considerably too powerfull depending on what sort of enemies you end up facing.

Well seeing as some armies are meant to be better at certain enemies then others, I suppose that would be a good trade off. Sort of like the rock paper cissors, but still with the matching ending up deciding how good you are able to take advantage of your strengths, and how well the enemy is able to destroy your key units.

 

[Bowser]

For the Mortal Seraphon Worshippers, I do like the classic amazon idea, but I wonder, do they have to be human. Could they be humanoid insects, or any number of new species. I like the insect idea as I think Tyranid wiped out the slann in 40K lore, so just that kind of unexpected twist. Plus bugs are awesome. But could be an excuse to bring back the Fimir. A GW created and owned race, could come back in a slightly evolved and more civilized form. Or maybe not, worshipping power, still savage. There are a lot of opportunities to mix the races of worshippers too. Some more scholarly worshipping the magic mastery, some more rough worshipping the raw power of dinosaurs. Duardin, aelves, humans, fimir. A lot you could do with that. I mean I doubt mixed race worshippers would get picked up, as most want uniformity to their armies. But I think you really need to start with model visuals before anything else.

 

[Canas]

Well seeing as some armies are meant to be better at certain enemies then others, I suppose that would be a good trade off. Sort of like the rock paper cissors, but still with the matching ending up deciding how good you are able to take advantage of your strengths, and how well the enemy is able to destroy your key units.

Issue is that this specific bonus differs far too much between it's best case & worst case, and there isn't much, if any, underlying logic to which armies are weak to it. The mechanic is most effective when you can focus fire on a unit and kill it quickly, then move on to the next. This mostly relies on luck (does your focus fire hit..) and the stupidity of your opponent (does he present you with easy targets to nuke to kingdom come?). Furthermore, since it relies on the entire unit being wiped out it'l mostly come too late. Speaking from my own experience it's rare to have units be wiped out in their entirity in a given turn, especially at the start, and this only really starts happening once the game has progressed & is already more or less decided. The only exception to this being the use of (suicidal) assasins quickly taking out 1 key target in the first turn. Basicly, getting 50 points in turn 1 is probably usefull. Gaining 50 points in turn 5 probably won't change the outcome of the battle anymore.


@Bowser they definitly don't have to be human, but for the slann to care in the slightest about their mortal followers & to actually have them ally in an army they need to be more equal then mere worshippers and a god. The lesser race needs to, somehow, be aware of (a part of) the great plan and realize their relative place in that compared to the slann. Preferably in such a way that this lesser race is somehow the next step. This would give the slann reason to actually join forces with them. If you don't do this you'l end up with the relation the stormforged have with the seraphon as explained in the fortress of ember scenario in our battletome. They'l fight the same enemy whenever they both happen to be on the same battlefield. But that'd be it.

 

[Nielspeterdejong]

Well like I said, it's more meant as a small extra, as they already have good traits. It's meant to be able to pull in more supportive units/spell casters to help with the late game since it will likely become a grind thanks to the Seraphon greater tankyness.

Remember, they are meant to be the most powerfull spellcasters, but also be very tanky. With the Scaly Skin and Slann's Ancient Purpose traits they can be pretty tanky. Right now the Seraphon are in a bad spot since they got screwed over with the nerf to Summoning (the most out of all the races), and they are neither really tanky (aside from a few units), and they are very weak against mortal wounds while not dealing the most amount of damage.

Here they are more tanky, have better spellcasting, and they have a small chance to deal a bit more damage. Meaning that while they will never do the most damage, aside from their monsters, they will still have that powerfull magic and tankyness they were known for.

The extra summoning trait is meant to help summon small support units (like the newly designed Skink Chief in the Update/changes section) or if you play really well reward you by allowing you to summon a powerful monster (at that point in the game you will probably win as well, or it will help tip the scale if the opponent has a few strong gimmicks/units left).

And personally I would love to have all the Amazons still be gorgeous human girls, but that they'd have special units they ride and are able to field. Maybe also some special Lizardmen that have allied with them?

 

[Canas]

Meh, let's agree to disagree the rest is fine though.

As for amazons, gorgeous human girls are fun and al, but not like you're going to see much in 2-3" tall miniatures anyway for fluff it might make more sense to have an alternative race than humans.

 

[Carnikang]

No doubt there could be multiple races that take to the Old Ones and the Seraphon. Tjats one of the Great things aout the Mortal realms and AoS. The span of the worlds can go on near infinitely.

 

[Canas]

There's a countdown for the expansion for the total war warhammer game. It shows a jungle with a lizardmen temple in the distance. Given that the total war game occasionally takes some liberties with the warhammer IP it might be of some inspiration for coming up with new units for us.

Also, it might maybe encourage GW to release some new seraphon stuff simultaniously with the new expansion. There's little doubt that the total war game has made at least some people interested in playing the tabletop game, so maybe just maybe someone at the marketing department of GW has the genius idea to use the buzz a new expansion creates to sell some more models

 

[PhoenixTheCat]

I have created another warscroll! This time, it isn't a character, but basically the Seraphon equivalent of Gryph-hounds.
They also have the Seraphon keyword.

 

[Aginor]

It has to be a Sotek CAT!!!!