Carnasaur
Kilvakar
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I agree. Points balances are the "band-aid" approach to attempt to force people to take less of a powerful unit and more of a weaker unit. But as has been pointed out already, points changes often don't mean much a lot of the time. People will still bring what's good whether it costs more or not, and they won't bring what's bad even if it's a bit cheaper now.
The Ark of Sotek Bastiladon is still crap. Yes, it's hard to kill, but not really. Anything and everything has mortal wound output in AoS these days. Heck, in my last Path to Glory game my Bastiladon lost half his HP just from a single prayer and use of the banner artifact from a Khorne Slaughterpriest. And this is one support model. If anything decent tries to fight a Bastiladon, it's going to die. If you throw it at a chaff unit, it might stick around but it doesn't even have the damage output to clear a 10-man, 1-wound, 5+ save chaff unit in a single turn. It needs a warscroll re-write to make it useful, unless GW dropped his points down to maybe 100 and you could take several of them just to tie up enemies and be board control annoyances, but that's not going to happen.
Salamanders are still good. I agree that they aren't the only good unit in the army, but they're one of only 2 units in our entire book (aside from the Dread Saurian, which was also nerfed to make sure it wasn't competitive) with -2 rend, and it's the only one with a shooting attack with that level of rend. And as a lot of people are pointing out, AoS 3 is all about range and rend. Everything you want to kill is going to be on a 3+ or 2+ save, so our old "swamp them with volume of attacks" strategy doesn't matter nearly as much as it did in 2e. Our only source of mortal wound output on our basic units comes from a hero who is super-easy to kill, and it applies on wound rolls. Multiple other armies have either warscrolls or allegiance abilities that do this on hit rolls for their entire army. So a Salamander unit is the most reliable source of damage we have. If you need something killed, you are relying on Salamanders to do it. So people would still take them even if they were 200 points each.
Consistency is the key. *if* you roll really well and your opponent rolls really bad, it's possible for a buffed-up Carnosaur to one-shot a Maw-Krusha. But it's very, very unlikely. The problem with trying to kill tough units with things other than salamanders is that it often takes your entire army to bring one thing down. And that's not efficient. And "just run away" isn't nearly as viable an option anymore with the smaller board sizes and the existence of many units that will either always be able to shoot you or always be able to catch you. Plus, if you're running away, you're not taking objectives or scoring battle tactics. So people will continue to take Salamanders just because they're the best at killing those 2+ save targets that nothing else in the army can deal with efficiently.
The Ark of Sotek Bastiladon is still crap. Yes, it's hard to kill, but not really. Anything and everything has mortal wound output in AoS these days. Heck, in my last Path to Glory game my Bastiladon lost half his HP just from a single prayer and use of the banner artifact from a Khorne Slaughterpriest. And this is one support model. If anything decent tries to fight a Bastiladon, it's going to die. If you throw it at a chaff unit, it might stick around but it doesn't even have the damage output to clear a 10-man, 1-wound, 5+ save chaff unit in a single turn. It needs a warscroll re-write to make it useful, unless GW dropped his points down to maybe 100 and you could take several of them just to tie up enemies and be board control annoyances, but that's not going to happen.
Salamanders are still good. I agree that they aren't the only good unit in the army, but they're one of only 2 units in our entire book (aside from the Dread Saurian, which was also nerfed to make sure it wasn't competitive) with -2 rend, and it's the only one with a shooting attack with that level of rend. And as a lot of people are pointing out, AoS 3 is all about range and rend. Everything you want to kill is going to be on a 3+ or 2+ save, so our old "swamp them with volume of attacks" strategy doesn't matter nearly as much as it did in 2e. Our only source of mortal wound output on our basic units comes from a hero who is super-easy to kill, and it applies on wound rolls. Multiple other armies have either warscrolls or allegiance abilities that do this on hit rolls for their entire army. So a Salamander unit is the most reliable source of damage we have. If you need something killed, you are relying on Salamanders to do it. So people would still take them even if they were 200 points each.
Consistency is the key. *if* you roll really well and your opponent rolls really bad, it's possible for a buffed-up Carnosaur to one-shot a Maw-Krusha. But it's very, very unlikely. The problem with trying to kill tough units with things other than salamanders is that it often takes your entire army to bring one thing down. And that's not efficient. And "just run away" isn't nearly as viable an option anymore with the smaller board sizes and the existence of many units that will either always be able to shoot you or always be able to catch you. Plus, if you're running away, you're not taking objectives or scoring battle tactics. So people will continue to take Salamanders just because they're the best at killing those 2+ save targets that nothing else in the army can deal with efficiently.
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If we got a new book now, it would be a major nerf and we'd be in a terrible place because of how much people still hate Seraphon for the Kroak, Skink and Salamander shenanigans that were dominating at the end of 2e.
I am stoked 
