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Tutorial A Guide to Seraphon Battalions - GHB2017
- Thread starter Killer Angel
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Slann
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Probably, regardless a F.A.Q. would be nice
. though I'm wondering why they intended to keep the unit together that much given that it's a starhost consisting of behemoths.. not exactly one where I'd expect to keep em together.
Stegadon
Seraphage
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Probably, regardless a F.A.Q. would be nice
Let them FAQ Dracothions Tail first
Slann
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What's the confusion with that one about?Let them FAQ Dracothions Tail first
Slann
Aginor
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It is about a few things
- does the Slann count as a named character because of the fluff text giving him a name?
- do the special summon spells count towards the Slann's spell limit?
- by using those spells can the Slann summon a unit like on the warscroll (max 20 Warriors) or full units of 40?
- does the Slann count as a named character because of the fluff text giving him a name?
- do the special summon spells count towards the Slann's spell limit?
- by using those spells can the Slann summon a unit like on the warscroll (max 20 Warriors) or full units of 40?
Slann
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Just guessing but
- no, cuz that'd be rather lame.
- no, that'd basicly make it impossible to use. Either your slann doesn't get to slann or your starhost doesn't get to starhost in that case.
- A full unit, just like how deepstrike would work or the from the skies for a shadowstrike host I'd assume.
Slann
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That's exactly how I see it as well, everything else would make it pretty useless. I reckon that's also how the rules were interpreted by tournament organizers but I still agree the rules are worded poorly and should be FAQed. They cause a lot of confusion for many players.
Jungle Swarm
tekinalp
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Hi Everyone,
Being a newbie, I have lots of questions to ask, but mostly someone had been already asked the questions so I mostly get my answers from the forum already, but couldnt find details or suggestions for Fangs of Sotek Batallion.
According to the GHB2017;
"If a Fangs of Sotek battalion contains the maximum number of battalions, it gains the Strategic Mastery ability from the Starbeast Constellation warscroll battalion in Battletome: Seraphon."
And it also reads that :
"0-4 warscroll battalions chosen in any combination
from the following list:
- Sunclaw Starhost - Firelance Starhost
- Eternal Starhost - Thunderquake Starhost".
So my question is this; in order to use the Strategic Masters ability, do I have to use all 4 battallions listed above?
If so then the army points would easily exceed the point limit. In this case using bloodclaw batallion with a slann mage seems much more reasonable.
Any ideas?
Being a newbie, I have lots of questions to ask, but mostly someone had been already asked the questions so I mostly get my answers from the forum already, but couldnt find details or suggestions for Fangs of Sotek Batallion.
According to the GHB2017;
"If a Fangs of Sotek battalion contains the maximum number of battalions, it gains the Strategic Mastery ability from the Starbeast Constellation warscroll battalion in Battletome: Seraphon."
And it also reads that :
"0-4 warscroll battalions chosen in any combination
from the following list:
- Sunclaw Starhost - Firelance Starhost
- Eternal Starhost - Thunderquake Starhost".
So my question is this; in order to use the Strategic Masters ability, do I have to use all 4 battallions listed above?
If so then the army points would easily exceed the point limit. In this case using bloodclaw batallion with a slann mage seems much more reasonable.
Any ideas?
Slann
Aginor
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Here's how I read it:
You need five bataillons:
- The mandatory Firelance
- 4 other bataillons, which can be any combination of the four mentioned (Sunclaw, Eternal, Firelance, Shadowstrike). So yeah if you are not playing at least a 3k game it is impossible.
I did some rough math and I think the bare minimum (minimum Draco's tail and four minimum Shadowstrikes) is 2790 points. Also it is a really useless list that will be beaten by most 2k lists I guess.
You need five bataillons:
- The mandatory Firelance
- 4 other bataillons, which can be any combination of the four mentioned (Sunclaw, Eternal, Firelance, Shadowstrike). So yeah if you are not playing at least a 3k game it is impossible.
I did some rough math and I think the bare minimum (minimum Draco's tail and four minimum Shadowstrikes) is 2790 points. Also it is a really useless list that will be beaten by most 2k lists I guess.
Slann
Killer Angel
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HEAVENSWATCH STARHOST
UNITS REQUIRED:
1 Skink Starseer
2 heroes from: skink starpriest, skink priest, troglodon
3-6 units from: skinks, terradons, ripperdactyls, Bastiladon, Stegadon, EotG, kroxigors, hunting packs (salamanders or razordons w handlers)
As for Bloodclaw, you can have a so great variety of units that you cannot really list a size cost.
However, the heroes alone will cost something between 360 pts and 460 pts. The Starhost itself costs 200 pts
The Starhost gives:
- the trap is sprung. The Starseer select a unit, all of your Starhost's units will reroll 1s (to hit and to wound) against that target
- Celestial surge: each monster heals one wound in your hero phase
This probably wants to be the definitive Starhost, when it comes to skinks (a surprise that chama skinks weren't included) and it's a solid option for all skink-based armies.
the abilities are nothing new or unique, but it's a sort of selection taken from Shadowstrike and Thunderquake, which is not bad.
Considering its cost, my advice is to maximize the number of unit, thus play it at 2000 pts.
Now i will try to briefly analyze the single units.
Starseer: your leader. Curse of fate and dice rerolls. Our strongest generic caster, after the Slann.
Starpriest: your second main caster. shield or starlight, pick it!
Priest: useful for reroll saves, it depends on your strategy. With rerolls, even his shooting works.
Troglodon: this one is interesting because (even without a Slann so no arcan vassal) can act as "assault support" that heals: 180 pts thing that you can "risk" because the trog is not the key unit it is in the Thunderquake.
Skinks: one of the best battleline units for all Order. If you plan to field skinks in goups of 10, consider to take them outside the formations: to give rerolls of 1s to 10 skinks is a vaste of a slot, so insert them if you pick a horde.
Terradons: they fly fast, harass the enemy, pick objectives. Solid unit.
Rippers: imo not so great in this starhost, as they already rerolls to hit and to wound, so "the trap is sprung" is wasted
Bastiladon: I don't need to talk about it, right? With this starhost, it heals. 'nuff said.
Stegadon: the starseer will give it curse of fate, so great to teleport and charge, rerolling all 1s. Devastating. Plus, shooting at a target rerolling all 1s is nasty
EotG: if you don't play also a Slann, it can suffer the limited amount of dices rolled
Kroxigors: could be handy agains hordes, that you don't want to grind with your dinosaurs.
Razordons: the handlers could be wasted, as you don't need to reroll 1s, but it's always a good support unit
Salamanders: with handlers they shoot at 12, rerolling 1s. It's something I would consider.
HOW TO MAKE IT WORK
The possibility to pick the combinations of troops you want, gives you an enormous flexibility in the composition of the army itself.
A good army should have movement, melee, ranged shooting and magical support.
Movement: skinks are fast and you can choose also flyiers, so that's covered. Teleport helps further our cause.
Magic: your heroes will give you a solid magical support. If you don't field a Slann, you won't have the double teleport, but you can still count on a couple of casters, with dices rerolls and covering a large portion of the battlefield with unbinds. And can pick a command trait for skinks, which are not bad.
Along with the Starseer, I consider mandatory the Starpriest and then you can choose between the priest or the troglodon.
You can pick up to 6 other units, so let's see the other "roles".
Melee: You can count on rippers but, most of all, you have stegadon and bastiladon. That heal themselves. Consider to take a couple of dinosaurs.
And Kroxigors are a nice alternative.
Shooting: the dinos will already give some shooting, so with a unit of sallies or razordons you should be fine.
In the end, this starhost gives you what can be considered a full-fledged army, that stands by its own, without requirement of external support, and this is not a small thing.
EXAMPLE (2000 pts)
Starhost (200)
Starseer (200)
Starpriest (80)
skink priest (80)
1 x 40 skinks (200)
6 x Kroxy (320)
Stegadon (240)
2 x Bastiladon (560)
---
2 x 10 skinks (120)
this one is just an example to show how this starhost let you field a full functional army, with different tactical approaches even with this single example.
EVALUATION:
Power level: mid-high / high.
It's a fully fledged army, that gives you a large flexibility, covers all roles and supports itself with bonuses and automatic healing.
You can lose, but the starhost gives you anything you need... the only possible downside is that you are locked with 3 heroes that are just for support.
And last but not least, another thing that makes this Starhost so great, is that if you are planning to field an army with also sauri and a general on carno, you can cut down the units of this one, and use it as super-strong support. The possibilities are truly numerous.
EDIT: in the following post, @Canas has developed further considerations about the Starhost, which are all on spot. If someone is interested in playing the Starhost, i suggest to read also it.
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Slann
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I think a very important thing to note for this starhost is that nearly everything in it has some form of ranged attack. The only ones that don't are the rippers, kroxigor & the skink handlers (but frankly these last ones don't really count anyway). Everyone else has ranged attacks, the shortest of which being the terradons sunleech at 5". This opens up a host of tactical hilarity, especially considering we're also packing quite an amount of melee firepower as well with our dinosaurs. Shoot them if they stay at range, maul them if they get close and if they send a screening force just shoot over them at their general.
A downside is that only the properly big dinosaurs count as monsters. This means the razordons, slamanders, kroxigors, terradons & rippers won't heal. Which is somewhat of a shame. It'd make them a whole lot stronger as those have fairly mediocre saves. Hence the focus point of this list really should be the monsters. Everything else is "support" by comparison.
Another downside is the mandatory heroes. None of them are bad, but there's simply a lot of them. You're going to spend somewhere from 360-560 on heroes alone on top of the cost for the starhost itself. This means a good 560-760 points and 3 hero slots of your list are already decided upon before you even started to choose. On top of that, all of the heroes are supporting heroes, which does mean they might get a bit in each others way. Especially with respect to magic, the rule of one is quite limiting here.
Also, skink heroes aren't particularly amazing commanders due to the lack of a command ability. On that note, the master of rituals trait, does that give you the variation that of the ritual that targets 1 unit or the one that targets everything within 8"?
Overal it is a very solid host, though a bit costly and somewhat in need of an external commander. Also, using it as a alternative to the thunderquake to get some healing monsters in alongside some supporting heroes is quite a good option.
Slann
Killer Angel
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Very good points, i think i agree with all of them.
I'm not particularly scared by the Rule of One on spell, though... we have 2 casters that can cast 2 spells, having a selection of 4 possible spells. It shouldn't be an issue, unless you're taking also a Slann.
Regarding the master of rituals, I think it affects just a unit
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Slann
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The issue with the rule of one is mostly that every so often you're going to run into a situation where you want both of them to do the same thing. Yea they're Always going to be able to do something "usefull". But you're going to run into moments where you'd wish you could cast arcane bolt twice so the big bad monster was dead, or mystic shield twice so both bastilidons are shielded and your opponent doesn't just focus the other one. That sorta stuff. It's more a nuisance than a genuine weakness
And what I think is more important about it is that all the heroes, excluding the troglodon but that one unfortunatly competes with the bastillidon and stegadons for a slot, are supporting heroes. Which makes this list very heavy on support, while having no assasin, or melee powerhouse, or commander, or sniper. Looking at the old warscrolls from warhammer-aos-lizardmen-en.pdf you'd want a skink prophet, a chief or a chameleon stalker to be an option so that the 3 heroes actually fullfill different roles instead of all supporting. Especially given how much we spend on them it'd be nice if they fullfilled more roles. On that note, why are battelion costs so steep if they already force specific army builds. Being forced to bring a certain selection of units should already be limitation/cost enough really...
And the master of rituals is rather dissapointing then... hell all the skink traits kind of are as they don't fit all that well with the skink heroes that actually exist (we seriously need those 3 I mentioned before back...)
Stegadon
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The cost is due to the drop limit. I' ve lost many games purely because my opponent got to choose who goes first and then the disadvantage was too big to recover. The cost is totally right. They had to fix that. You want such a huge advantage ? Pay for it.
*this year I take part in a tournament that runs every 2 weeks for the whole year and I got to see just how important and game changing it is. Had a list with no batallion, 13 drops and never picked who goes first. It is a HUGE disadvantage indeed.
I agree for the command traits except Nimble. I do understand that seems it is not that great, but +1 save and +1 movement does make a difference. Especially when the whole batallion relies on it.
They just need to stop slacking and make some Command Traits. At least for Starseer, that also makes sense lorewise
Slann
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Drop limit? Explain.
Also that sounds more like a generic "any battalion has this" than a "this is specific for this battalion" so at most that'd explain that having all battalion cost say a 100 points, not why battalion A is a 100, B is 200 and C is 180.
As for nimble it isn't awefull. But all of the unmounted skink heroes are already going to be as far out of harms way as they can possibly get as they're borderline useless in melee (and not much better in a ranged fight...). So you now have an improved save on a character that really shouldn't be getting attacked in the first place. Plus, they're such awefull fighters that it's not going to help them win a fair fight anyway. Anyways tl;dr an improved save an some extra movement is Always nice, but it doesn't particularly help them fullfill their purpose and they already shouldn't be getting attacked frequently anyway so a tad meh...
On the other hand if we had a model with similar stats to say a skaven warlord then this one and cunning would be quite good. Hell, even the ritual would be briljant if you used it to buff the model itself (bonus points if it has the 8" aura, or even a smaller aura)
Slann
Killer Angel
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Yes, any battalion has this.
@Seraphage was pointing to the fact that you can field all the units of the battalion at once, so if you have a battalion with 7 units, you can place them with a single drop, thus gaining the edge when it comes to "who chooses the first turn"
Slann
Canas
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Right, usefull as that may be it doesn't entirely anwser my question. Plus, given that this has essentially nothing to do with the battalions themselfs, I'd say that the way we choose who goes first probably needs changing more so than that battalions should have a cost. And anyway, at most that explains giving all batallions a fixed cost. But it still doesn't explain why we have battalions ranging from 60 to 220 points.
Stegadon
Seraphage
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Well the way it is right now, batallions have everything to do with who goes first
Another thing to be in mind is the fact that they give an extra artefact. While ours are important, there are armies like Sylvaneth that are game changing. Yes Tree Lord Ancient with 2+ in woods, rerollable save from batallion AND IGNORE -1 Rend from Artefact I am looking at you. A great example of the importance of artefacts.
Can't be entirely sure, but as a player going to tournaments, I can say this for Seraphon Batallions :
The cost is related with what the batallion offers.
For example, some batallions give some really strong buffs and the chance for a really low drop rate *HeavensWatch, Bloodclaw
Thunderquake gives a really strong buff, but definitely "Forces" you to go for a 7 - 9 drop something which means that there will be quite enough competitive lists being ahead of you at drops.
Others can even give 1- Drop lists but force you to make combinations that vary from "Hardly makes sense" to "Good combination but probably not as good as a competitive opponent army" and also the buff isn't that great. Fang of Sotek and Dracothions Tail are in this category.
If they were more expensive than now, everybody would just read the scroll and then tear apart the page
Jokes aside though, unless some warscrolls that are contained in these 2 get changed, they definitely don't worth more than that imho.