AoS Warhammer Weekly: Seraphon OP?

[Kilvakar]

I was just listening to Warhammer Weekly's broadcast where they're revisiting Seraphon. I don't know all their names but Vince Venturella was basically really enthusiastically saying "I like Seraphon, but I also hate them, they're too strong. Nerf Kroak and everything Skink-related, double the point cost of bound endless spells."

He also said that Lord Kroak was "out of bounds" in terms of balance, wants another 10-point increase on Salamanders despite the other people on the show saying they're not being spammed anymore, etc. He says that he's trying to approach it just from a game balance perspective, but also said that he hates Kroak and think's he's stupid, should be dead, hates the model and hates the fact that a "little dead frog" can compete with Teclis and Nagash when accompanied by his usual entourage. He says bound endless spells should not have even been considered as a possibility, that's how broken they supposedly are, and that they will definitely be removed in the next rulebook.

He did admit that Saurus are weaker than they should be, especially Carnosaurs, and says that they should still receive minor buffs.

I know I rushed and posted this right away, and I'm definitely posting in the "heat of the moment," so to speak. But I was honestly a little miffed with how enthusiastically he was advocating nerfing everything we have that's performing well. What do you guys think? Are Seraphon really *that* problematic for game balance right now? Do you think that anything we have actually needs a nerf from a purely balance perspective, not just as fans of the army who want it to be strong? Rather than discussing what needs to be better, I'd love to hear if you think we have anything that actually is overpowered, objectively speaking.

 

[xoid]

I do not walk in the realms of players good enough to judge if Seraphon are OP, but somebody needs to point out to him that Kroak isn't dead, he's just un-alive.

 

[LordBaconBane]

He also said that Lord Kroak was "out of bounds" in terms of balance, wants another 10-point increase on Salamanders despite the other people on the show saying they're not being spammed anymore, etc. He says that he's trying to approach it just from a game balance perspective, but also said that he hates Kroak and think's he's stupid, should be dead, hates the model and hates the fact that a "little dead frog" can compete with Teclis and Nagash when accompanied by his usual entourage. He says bound endless spells should not have even been considered as a possibility, that's how broken they supposedly are, and that they will definitely be removed in the next rulebook.

I'm going to watch this myself now. If what he said is how you describe it, he sounds whiney more than anything.

In terms of Seraphon OP, I don't really know. We are certainly A tier and Kroak will likely get a nerf in the future. I could see some bound spells get a small point increase, but I think this guy is maybe a bit mad.

 

[Dread Saurian]

I was just listening to Warhammer Weekly's broadcast where they're revisiting Seraphon. I don't know all their names but Vince Venturella was basically really enthusiastically saying "I like Seraphon, but I also hate them, they're too strong. Nerf Kroak and everything Skink-related, double the point cost of bound endless spells."

He also said that Lord Kroak was "out of bounds" in terms of balance, wants another 10-point increase on Salamanders despite the other people on the show saying they're not being spammed anymore, etc. He says that he's trying to approach it just from a game balance perspective, but also said that he hates Kroak and think's he's stupid, should be dead, hates the model and hates the fact that a "little dead frog" can compete with Teclis and Nagash when accompanied by his usual entourage. He says bound endless spells should not have even been considered as a possibility, that's how broken they supposedly are, and that they will definitely be removed in the next rulebook.

He did admit that Saurus are weaker than they should be, especially Carnosaurs, and says that they should still receive minor buffs.

I know I rushed and posted this right away, and I'm definitely posting in the "heat of the moment," so to speak. But I was honestly a little miffed with how enthusiastically he was advocating nerfing everything we have that's performing well. What do you guys think? Are Seraphon really *that* problematic for game balance right now? Do you think that anything we have actually needs a nerf from a purely balance perspective, not just as fans of the army who want it to be strong? Rather than discussing what needs to be better, I'd love to hear if you think we have anything that actually is overpowered, objectively speaking.

Little dead frog shouldn't be able to compete with gods? Somebody tell that guy that kroak mastered everything arcane wise (minus necromancy) before teclis and nagash were even born. Hes too much of a crunch observer and shouldn't be taken seriously on said matter without including fluff to support it. Like for instance
Say kroak wants to unbind a spell by nagash. I'd say nagash could make it so kroak has to reroll his unbinding and take the lower number since no one in the warhammer universe sans the chaos gods are as good at bringing beings back from the dead as old bonedaddy. Teclis well he's SOL and I hardly see a reason lorewise as to if he could ever compete with kroak. But to be fair I missed a couple aelves books recently. Yes bold statement i know

 

[Kilvakar]

He sounded like was at least trying to be objective, but I also admittedly was definitely biased due to loving the army in it's current form and by how enthusiastically he talked about nerfing Kroak and Skinks. He did say that he wanted all the top armies (Seraphon, KO, Tzeentch, etc.) brought in line with the armies right under them in metawatch like Fyreslayers, OBR, Cities, Stormcast, Orruks, etc, and that they've talked about that in their other videos. So it sounds like he just really wants all the top armies to be brought down to the level of the mid-tier ones.

 

[Erta Wanderer]

Kroak is to strong but if we did all that it would more then cripple our army. when kroak gets nurfed we will drop right out of the top tree into the middle of the pack(he is that good) if we also then hit skinks AND endless spells it would put us right at the bottom again. even saurus require skink heroes to function properly
i also don't trust GW to nurf us responsibly. they hit salamanders WAY to hard and now they are almost useless
the thing is we don't actually do anything better then any one else out side of magic. our shooting is worse then tzeench cities and KO our melee is worse then IJ cities and fyreslayers our monsters are worse then FEC we have middling cav option and we have no tanks to speak of. nobody is complaining about those armies we are just the new flavor of the week and we are massively popular

 

[Putzfrau]

Kroak is to strong but if we did all that it would more then cripple our army. when kroak gets nurfed we will drop right out of the top tree into the middle of the pack(he is that good) if we also then hit skinks AND endless spells it would put us right at the bottom again. even saurus require skink heroes to function properly
i also don't trust GW to nurf us responsibly. they hit salamanders WAY to hard and now they are almost useless
the thing is we don't actually do anything better then any one else out side of magic. our shooting is worse then tzeench cities and KO our melee is worse then IJ cities and fyreslayers our monsters are worse then FEC we have middling cav option and we have no tanks to speak of. nobody is complaining about those armies we are just the new flavor of the week and we are massively popular

I also hope they don't go too heavy on the nerf, but I think Kroak is actually a bit of a smokescreen. He's so strong it focuses everyone's attention, but I think the rest of our book is going to be just fine without him.

Only time will tell, but I think people will be surprised how strong seraphon is even without kroak. So much of the army is super cheap, its wild how much stuff you can fit in there and without the 500+ points of kroak we'll get to fit even more goodies in. I still like salamanders, but that's just me. The amount of damage they do is still just kind of insane. I think "almost useless" is a little extreme, personally.

Also agree on us being a bit flavor of the week. Everyone loves the lizardmen aesthetic and they are strong so we're seeing them out and about a lot. I don't necessarily expect that trend to continue as more broken realm books come out.

IMO kroak and skink priests should go up in cost. Skinks too, but thats a little more arguable IMO. I wouldn't be surprised if Kroak costs over 400 points after the winter faq. I'd rather they just remove balewind from the game, he's really not that bad without those extra 6 inches.

 

[rychek]

While I wouldn't say we are overpowered (but definitely an above average army right now), I did make the intentional choice to not use them against my son as he learns how to play AoS. Then again, he chose Nighthaunt as his army of choice (even after playing Seraphon himself), so I tried to choose an army that wouldn't walk all over him (playing SCE against him at this point).

 

[Kilvakar]

I agree that we are above average as a whole, but I strongly disagree that we are anywhere near as broken as this guy was claiming in his video. Calling for point increases on all skinks and Kroak, as well as basically removing bound endless spells from the game is way too extreme.

We do have strong options other than Kroak, but he's our only way of dealing with Nagash and Teclis. And while Saurus aren't bad, they don't measure up to other good melee units. Knights put out a lot of damage, but require a Skink hero to buff them and die to a stiff breeze.

I personally hope they don't Nerf anything, especially Lord kroak. If they do however, then they absolutely must buff things like carnosaurs and the rest of our saurus side of the book. Thunder lizards are actually really good, and if they were to Nerf the kroak and side of things I think we'd see thunder lizard become the main constellation.

 

[Putzfrau]

I agree that we are above average as a whole, but I strongly disagree that we are anywhere near as broken as this guy was claiming in his video. Calling for point increases on all skinks and Kroak, as well as basically removing bound endless spells from the game is way too extreme.

We do have strong options other than Kroak, but he's our only way of dealing with Nagash and Teclis. And while Saurus aren't bad, they don't measure up to other good melee units. Knights put out a lot of damage, but require a Skink hero to buff them and die to a stiff breeze.

I personally hope they don't Nerf anything, especially Lord kroak. If they do however, then they absolutely must buff things like carnosaurs and the rest of our saurus side of the book. Thunder lizards are actually really good, and if they were to Nerf the kroak and side of things I think we'd see thunder lizard become the main constellation.

You certainly don't need Kroak to deal with Nagash or Teclis. I agree that nerfing all those things at once would be extreme, but we aren't going to fall apart with a point increase on kroak. Carnosaurs are also pretty cheap for what you get.

I think we should just avoid these type of black and white statements (and that includes the extreme examples Vince outlines). Like most things, I think it's a pretty nuanced conversation. Upping the points on bound spells, kroak, and all skink heroes is excessive, but depending on the level of those nerfs we could certainly survive with all of them.

I like to compare the seraphon book to the 2.0 skaven book. Kroak (like verminlords) is pretty insanely undercoasted, but outside of that it's just kind of this general "everything is too cheap" vibe. You can just cram so much stuff into a list. It's super easy to have a list with 4-6 significant threats the opponent needs to deal with, and that's pretty unusual in the grand scheme.

edit: i didn't even realize Vince makes the same argument. I agree largely with the "the book doesn't need to make compromises" point, but do think its a little more nuanced than he's letting on.

 

[xoid]

I agree they need to remove Balewind Vortex from the game, and I kind of think they know it and that's why they've quit selling it.

 

[Tyranitar]

I watched the stream live, I think part of the issue is there isn't much data to go off of. Our tome was released right as covid was getting out of control and things were shutting down, and there just hasn't been an opportunity for people to learn how to play against it. Another issue is that our army is composed of mediocre to bad warscrolls (other than salamanders) that rely on stacking buffs from extremely fragile heroes, which creates a situation where the opposing army either has the tools to pick it apart or they don't. I mentioned in the stream chat that Teclis is arguably stronger than Kroak with his full entourage (guard, astrolith, bwv, geminids) and they cost about the same, but that was met with "Teclis isn't even close to Kroak in power level" ...not sure about that one. I'd prefer 4 auto casts at value 10 any day, removing variance from a dice game is invaluable. Honestly though, if Kroak gets outrageously nerfed, anything over a 40 point increase or so, we can just switch to a normal Slann.
I do think skinks are undercosted, I can see them going to 70 points. The skink heroes are so fragile that anything over 10-20 point nerfs will be brutal. It would be nice to see decreases on saurus and saurus foot heroes though.
I do think 10 flat points for bound versions of endless spells is not correct. The cost should vary depending on the spell. I'm not sure they should be doubled as they suggested on the stream, but bound geminids should maybe cost 100 or so for instance.
Lastly, I just hope that if we do get hit hard, KO, Tzeentch, and LRL do as well or we will find ourselves at the bottom.

 

[Kilvakar]

I mentioned in the stream chat that Teclis is arguably stronger than Kroak with his full entourage (guard, astrolith, bwv, geminids) and they cost about the same, but that was met with "Teclis isn't even close to Kroak in power level"

So that was your comment, lol! Yeah, he really went off on Kroak for sure. Some of the comments on the video are literally people saying they were waiting for him to rant about Kroak. I agree, Teclis is stronger overall. Kroak has the potential to spike higher, but also lower. And Teclis has several things that you just can't do anything about. Kroak also can't bounce back mortal wounds on you for casting spells in his direction. Honestly, if they felt that they needed to "fix" Kroak they should just go with the actual lore and make him a super-expensive god-tier unit along the lines of Teclis and Nagash and load all his power onto his warscroll instead of synergies. I like him the way he is, though. Because you don't *have* to invest in all that stuff to be able to use him. You can take just Kroak in a Thunder Lizard list, for example, just to generate CP and buff Engine rolls.

I don't think 70-point Skinks would be devastating, but the across-the-board point increases he wanted for all Skinks is, to use his words, "out of bounds."

Bound Endless Spells are hard. On the one hand, they're extremely nice and I'm glad that we got them since we didn't get any faction endless spells. On the other hand, I definitely agree that they're strong. But we really should have *something* better than other factions when it comes to magic, and that something needs to be more than just one really powerful wizard unit. Also, GW seems to think that the Malign Sorcery was a mistake, seeing as how they took the rules out in the 2020 GHB, and as pointed out in that stream, they stopped selling the Balewind Vortex already. I could definitely see them scrapping Endless Spells altogether in the future. I hope they don't, but I wouldn't be surprised.

 

[Erta Wanderer]

Lastly, I just hope that if we do get hit hard, KO, Tzeentch, and LRL do as well or we will find ourselves at the bottom.

not the bottom but definitely hurting

 

[Tyranitar]

I mean, ultimately we're *slightly* stronger than the next tier down. It's not like lizardmen are the only army winning events. So are we OP? Maybe, but not by much. It also depends on what GW's intended power level is. It seems like a lot of the newer stuff they're putting out recently is very powerful as well. I would submit that the gap between us and KO is larger than the gap between us and something like OBR or Fyreslayers.

 

[Putzfrau]

I mean, ultimately we're *slightly* stronger than the next tier down. It's not like lizardmen are the only army winning events. So are we OP? Maybe, but not by much. It also depends on what GW's intended power level is. It seems like a lot of the newer stuff they're putting out recently is very powerful as well. I would submit that the gap between us and KO is larger than the gap between us and something like OBR or Fyreslayers.

I think the balance in AoS is actually pretty great. There's not a whole lot of "hopeless" matchups, and IMO that top band is all pretty similar and really not a whole lot stronger than the band beneath it, etc.

Regardless, because our strength is in our pure efficiency I think you could still raise the cost on some of our most undercoasted things and nothing would change from a tier perspective.

 

[Galen]

My biggest issue with Kroak is that he more or less invalidates taking a standard Slaan (outside of double-Slaan lists). For just 60 points more you get an extra spell/dispel, extra die for CP, 4+ FNP, a 3-per-turn damage spell and all you give up is being able to take Itlx Grubs. I just wish there was an actual choice there.

Whether he's too strong or not, I have no idea. I run a Sunclaw Templehost Coalesed list with zero Skinks, so I can't speak as to whether Kroak needs to be toned down or not.

 

[Dread Saurian]

My biggest issue with Kroak is that he more or less invalidates taking a standard Slaan (outside of double-Slaan lists). For just 60 points more you get an extra spell/dispel, extra die for CP, 4+ FNP, a 3-per-turn damage spell and all you give up is being able to take Itlx Grubs. I just wish there was an actual choice there.

Whether he's too strong or not, I have no idea. I run a Sunclaw Templehost Coalesed list with zero Skinks, so I can't speak as to whether Kroak needs to be toned down or not.

Don't worry too much about kroak. Heaven forbid the greatest of the race that literally taught the fucking elves how to bend the winds of magic are capable of outdoing them in the magic department

Personally I don't use him because I don't have the extra points for him to be in my lineup and my slann does just fine without him.

 

[Jason839]

Eh I don't agree with Vince a lot of the time and this is one of them. Kroak is fine, salamanders need to be 300 for 3. Skink spam is a result of saurus sucking. Saurus need buffs in a big way. Buff saurus so they can actually survive a combat and you will see skinks less. Buff the monster mash thunder quake as well.

 

[Canas]

I like to compare the seraphon book to the 2.0 skaven book. Kroak (like verminlords) is pretty insanely undercoasted, but outside of that it's just kind of this general "everything is too cheap" vibe. You can just cram so much stuff into a list. It's super easy to have a list with 4-6 significant threats the opponent needs to deal with, and that's pretty unusual in the grand scheme.

I think the main issue is that we might be bringing a lot of different stuff, but it's also relativly easy to pick apart any individual threat. It's not too difficult to hamstring one of our threats by simply killing 1 or 2 key support models. So while we might start out with 4-5 significant threats we very quickly go down to 2-3. If you make our stuff more expensive, and thus force us to start with 2-3 threats you might end up creating a situation where we lose those threats too quickly because most of our units die to a stiff breeze.

In short; if they want to reduce the amount of threats we bring they're going to have to make up for that by making each individual threat more powerfull, especially defensivly, and a little less reliant on stacking buffs. Because otherwise we'l just be too easy to pick apart. And I'm sceptical GW will do that correctly on the first try, they have the nasty tendency to nerf things far too heavily.