They have made it clear the Aelves are somehow attuned to the Earth, so it isnt strange at all to me. There is obviously lore, which we havent seen yet, that explains it all. There is also the whole Hashnut theory.
Making aelves attuned to the earth is fine.
Making aelves attuned to the light is fine.
Making aelves attuned to both is thematicly weird & confusing and thus not fine as they're (usually) conflicting themes and symbolism.
Don't get me wrong, they might be able to pull it off. But the initial reaction to such a mismatch will always be a bit hesitant and so far they haven't really given a good explenation of how these two are thematicly connected.
You have seen zero statlines (from what I recall) beyond Light of Eltharion. None of the rules are oppressive like fight first/last/multiple times/unit moves 3 times out of sequence/fights out of sequence/returns to life on Death etc etc. The closest thing is picking 2 units to activate at a time, but that doesnt seem to be baseline for everything/permament feature.
Things that look on the overpowered side:
- fighting 2 units at a time.
- The leaked spells in that battlereport (there was some seriously amazing stuff in there)
- 1 of their units taking on like 4 different chaos units on their own with barely any losses in that same report
- Teclis having guaranteed casts (again, see report).
- Mortal wounds on a 6+/5+ on every. single. battleline unit (and so far, also on every non-battleline we've seen). For clarity, the issue here would be that it seems to be on every single unit. If it were limited to 1-2 units it'd be nothing special.
- There's a weirdly high amount of powerfull defensive stuff (eltharion only suffering half damage, shining company, enduring as a rock, teclis' wardsave bubble, hammer-dudes specificly being sold as sturdy, endless spell that gives a +1 to save and a -1 to hit)
Things that've been shown that look weak:
- nothing really
Things that've been shown that look normal-ish:
- the rest that's been shown so far.
Shining Comany seems like an awful rule. You have to worry so much about how you position them and you lose the ability when they move or lose too many models. Stabbas are just better in every regard.
The issue isn't that it's necesarly overpowered or anything, it's about it being a rule that thematicly fits increadibly well with other factions as well. So it ends up turning some eyes.
My point about our book is because multiple posts here make it sound like people feel cheated, as if Seraphon is lacking cool features in the new book, which just isnt true. We have so much cool shit, but people seem quick to forget and just move onto the next new thing.
In all honesty, we don't have much particularly cool rules. We have decently effective rules. But we don't seem to have much cool thematic rules like shining company, might makes right, trampling charge, deprevity points etc. Our models tie together great thematicly, everything is an aztec dinosaur riding another dinosaur. Imho they should've gone all in on either starborne or coalesced, instead of this weird halfway point where starborne units don't do much with their star-based identity & coalsced don't really get to be savage due to the need of balancing both, very different, subfactions based on the same core.
The effectiveness of rules is mostly fine, with a few noticeable flaws. But thematicly it's messier than our old tome which at least went all in on the whole "magic space lizards that teleport down from the skies". The current book is decently effective, but relativly boring & only loosely connected to most of our themes, with some random savagery here and a reference to stars there, but never really commiting one way or another.
Yes but we still havent seen the actual stats of any units beside Eltharion. If they all have 1 wound, bad saves, low amount of attacks etc. etc. then the snippets of rules you have seen dont really matter. Many of them could be constricted to subfactions just like our abilities. The whole "the sky is falling" when you only see a couple of snippets is kinda silly. We need the bigger picture before you can make claims like "damn powercreep GW!!!". If you were presented with Scaly Skin but no statlines either, you would right away imagine it being incredible OP since it shaves many armies' damage output in half.
And that's why it's called speculation.
Also, I'd blame that on GW, they tend to focus on the advantages a new faction has, completly leaving out any potential drawbacks to build up hype. And if those advantages then don't come with obvious disadvantages this is a fairly natural reaction. They should do more to show the weaknesses of a new release as well. They don't even need to focus on it, but simply adding in sentences like "They're fast, but very squisy with only a 5+ save" is already more than enough.
Im really not sure what else you need or demand from the tome?
Stuff that allows us to field thematic & fun lists which are at least semi-viable. Stegaggedon is a great example of a fun thematic list, but the lack of a "might makes right" rule makes it completly unviable. Similarly it's impossible to make a guard based list. A list based around our flyers, especially with rippers, as a core doesn't really work. On the other hand, salamander spam might be effective, but it isn't exactly thematic. And then we have some odd lists like a "summoning" list where most of the heavy lifting is done by comet call and endless spells and the actual summoning seems more of an afterthought that's only relevant to get some skinks onto the objectives you just nuked with comets. The only ones that do decently thematicly are skink & saurus warrior/knight lists, though those lists don't do a whole lot with them being magic space dinosaurs and focus more on it just being a skirmisher or cavalry based list.
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