AoS NEW *rumor*

[Skained]

In my opinion, Bounty Hunters is OP, and I think it will be the next neft. Yesterday, with 30 saurus i killed 9 brutes only with the clubs attack, then 10 ardboyz

 

[Tilorn91]

30 Warriors will do WORK if they get to swing on time without dying. I always struggle to connect with them before they die from shooting or something gets to them with their weak 5" move.

In other news, the new realm spell, Gaze of Ghur, doesn't have a duration. It also doesn't say anything about stacking. That means... Repetative casts on the same unit will permanently reduce their objective holding capacity. Thoughts?

 

[Kilvakar]

Yeah, overall not a big nerf. I still think Scaly Skin should be a ward save when our new book comes out, but not losing it entirely made sense as it's a core allegiance ability so taking it away without a replacement would have been way to harsh.

I'm more curious about how the new infantry rules will affect us. I'm still not sold on the idea of Saurus Warriors. Even hitting in 2 ranks they'll still melt to whatever attacks them. And TL in particular will have a very hard time keeping objectives now that I'm guessing you're going to be up against a lot of people running max size hordes that count as 90-180 models! Even if they can't kill our dinos that easily, TL still has to essentially wipe the enemy to win. This is a big buff to any army that likes hordes but especially tanky armies like Stormcast, Orruks, Nurgle, Fyreslayers, etc. Because at least until people come up with counter-play tactics the new meta is just going to be "move a horde onto an objective and sit there."

 

[Nart]

Even hitting in 2 ranks they'll still melt to whatever attacks them.

This is a big buff to any army that likes hordes

So do hordes melt or it is a huge buff to them? Make your mind.

 

[Canas]

So do hordes melt or it is a huge buff to them? Make your mind.

I mean, being able to fight in 2 ranks doesn't solve the fact that saurus warriors are relativly easy to kill, aren't particularly fast & don't have any gimmicks like strike-first to ensure they actually get to do their damage.

It can be both a buff and still not enough to solve the fact that saurus are too easy to kill off before they do their thing

 

[Putzfrau]

In other news, the new realm spell, Gaze of Ghur, doesn't have a duration. It also doesn't say anything about stacking. That means... Repetative casts on the same unit will permanently reduce their objective holding capacity. Thoughts?

I think it'll be faq'd.

 

[Tyranitar]

Are saurus warriors really that fragile? 4+ base save is solid and we have access to great magic to ensure mystic shield if we want it, as well as the AB giving a 6+ ward. I think most things would have a hard-ish time chewing through 30 wounds on 4+/6++ that still reduce damage by 1 from bigger things and ignore the benefit of the +1 dmg Battalion entirely. Coalesced might have some of the best Gallet Vets around since we don't have to worry about bounty hunters much at all and can still use GV's for the benefits they provide.

Honestly not sure because I've never used saurus warriors in AoS other than summons from an engine so I can't directly speak to their durability, but on paper they seem ok. We also have an asterism and a starseer ability to help get them stuck in a turn or so earlier than they otherwise would

Side note, we have lots of horde clearing potential in our book (2 spells, steg with flamethrower, weight of dice in attacks, saurus knights as bounty hunters to name some) so I don't think handling enemy hordes in the "counts as 3" Battalion will be too worrisome, or at least we have the tools to tweak lists to handle it if necessary.

 

[ChapterAquila92]

I mean, being able to fight in 2 ranks doesn't solve the fact that saurus warriors are relativly easy to kill, aren't particularly fast & don't have any gimmicks like strike-first to ensure they actually get to do their damage.

It can be both a buff and still not enough to solve the fact that saurus are too easy to kill off before they do their thing

Indeed. It's kind of the curse of being fielded on 32mm bases with a stat-line that's more at home on a 25mm base.

 

[ChapterAquila92]

Are saurus warriors really that fragile? 4+ base save is solid and we have access to great magic to ensure mystic shield if we want it, as well as the AB giving a 6+ ward. I think most things would have a hard-ish time chewing through 30 wounds on 4+/6++ that still reduce damage by 1 from bigger things and ignore the benefit of the +1 dmg Battalion entirely. Coalesced might have some of the best Gallet Vets around since we don't have to worry about bounty hunters much at all and can still use GV's for the benefits they provide.

Honestly not sure because I've never used saurus warriors in AoS other than summons from an engine so I can't directly speak to their durability, but on paper they seem ok. We also have an asterism and a starseer ability to help get them stuck in a turn or so earlier than they otherwise would.

Saurus are fragile in the sense that their 4+ either gets bypassed, rended, or overwhelmed with far more inbound attacks from an opposing unit very often, and the -1 damage modifier from Coalesced doesn't apply when facing down a horde of goblins with stabbas. In fact, the only units they have a better time dealing with are often elite units whose entire means of dealing lots of damage is dependent on being able to land a few hits that deal 2-3 damage per unsaved wound.

Scaly Skin alone makes Coalesced a hard counter to Ironjawz for this reason, while at the same time being of little to no use against cheap horde armies.

 

[Kilvakar]

I mean, being able to fight in 2 ranks doesn't solve the fact that saurus warriors are relativly easy to kill, aren't particularly fast & don't have any gimmicks like strike-first to ensure they actually get to do their damage.

It can be both a buff and still not enough to solve the fact that saurus are too easy to kill off before they do their thing

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My thoughts exactly. Also, add onto that the fact that our hordes essentially "bracket" after taking a certain amount of damage, while the majority of other horde units keep their full damage potential even in MSU. (other units do have bracketing mechanics, but not usually their number of attacks) This is why 10-man and 20-man Saurus units have never been very viable in 2nd and 3rd Edition. Because you either start with no damage potential or you get your damage potential halved after taking 6 damage.

 

[Canas]

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My thoughts exactly. Also, add onto that the fact that our hordes essentially "bracket" after taking a certain amount of damage, while the majority of other horde units keep their full damage potential even in MSU. (other units do have bracketing mechanics, but not usually their number of attacks) This is why 10-man and 20-man Saurus units have never been very viable in 2nd and 3rd Edition. Because you either start with no damage potential or you get your damage potential halved after taking 6 damage.

Yeah that too. Even in the situations where they should perform well defensively thanks to scaly skin, the AB etc. you still run into the issue that you simply don't really need to kill that many of them to gimp their damage output since they're dependent on that horde bonus. Sure, you might not easily kill all 30, but when it comes to damage output, the unit doesn't really matter once you're below 15, so you only really care about those first 16 kills. Which is a whole lot easier to achieve.

 

[Nart]

It can be both a buff and still not enough to solve the fact that saurus are too easy to kill off before they do their thing

My point was - sarus maybe not the most durable guys out there, but neither they are squishiest. -1 damage (basically ignore bounty hunters, if the initial damage was 1 on their weapons), 4+ save and easy way to give +2 more (command ability + shield), not much problem at providing 6+ ward (mystic terrain everywhere). If they melt to other stuff, other hordes should melt too, therefore, hordes are not a problem as they are.

Block of 30 saurus is great with triple model count, imo, You can grab center with them and your opponent will have to concentrate damage upon them to remove. This means, the rest of our army will be free to do their stuff.

I don't really look at them as a hammer, unless you want to use stuff like Soulscream bridge to alpha-strike them (which may be a viable strategy with a certain set-up), but they are great anvil.

 

[ChapterAquila92]

4+ save and easy way to give +2 more (command ability + shield)

I was fairly certain that you can't stack buffs to saves, save for the purposes of countering Rend. With that said, it's relatively pointless to counter a Rend value greater than -1 since Mortal Wounds are more efficient to come by in AoS than Rend -2 or more, and on of the off-chance you do have to counter such Rend values it's often at the expense of a command point that your opponent is coercing you to use up in the first place, or a spell whose sole outcome is to make all of one of your units an unappealing target for a turn.

 

[Canas]

My point was - sarus maybe not the most durable guys out there, but neither they are squishiest. -1 damage (basically ignore bounty hunters, if the initial damage was 1 on their weapons), 4+ save and easy way to give +2 more (command ability + shield), not much problem at providing 6+ ward (mystic terrain everywhere). If they melt to other stuff, other hordes should melt too, therefore, hordes are not a problem as they are.

Block of 30 saurus is great with triple model count, imo, You can grab center with them and your opponent will have to concentrate damage upon them to remove. This means, the rest of our army will be free to do their stuff.

I don't really look at them as a hammer, unless you want to use stuff like Soulscream bridge to alpha-strike them (which may be a viable strategy with a certain set-up), but they are great anvil.

I mean, fair enough, if you only want your saurus warriors to be bodies to be thrown into the meatgrinder for an objective they're probably decent enough with the triple model count nonsense, especially as skinks no longer get scaly skin.

However, if that's the case you basicly have the same problem that MSU skinks have. Namely you're solely using this unit because it's a cost-effective way to flood the board with bodies, and you're not expecting it to do anything else whatsoever. Which, imho, makes for a painfully boring unit.

Also, if all you're going to do is dump them on an objective you should probably go for multiple MSU instead of one block of 30. Then you can spend the reinforcement points elsewhere since that's still a thing.

As an aside, anyone have any ideas why mounted troops can't be veterans? Since it's limited to models with less than 4 wounds it's not like elite cavalry can be veterans, so why is stuff like the saurus knights excluded?

 

[Kilvakar]

However, if that's the case you basicly have the same problem that MSU skinks have. Namely you're solely using this unit because it's a cost-effective way to flood the board with bodies, and you're not expecting it to do anything else whatsoever. Which, imho, makes for a painfully boring unit.

Yeah. This is what people hated about Skinks in 1e, and seems like it's why GW decided to push the game *away* from hordes in the first place.

Also, if all you're going to do is dump them on an objective you should probably go for multiple MSU instead of one block of 30. Then you can spend the reinforcement points elsewhere since that's still a thing.

I could be wrong, but the Goonhammer review said that the new battalions could only be taken once, correct? Which means that putting 3 MSU Saurus Warriors into that battalion would be kind of a waste, since they'll still each die to one round of shooting and/or combat. However, I could see Seraphon specifically putting Saurus Knights or Kroxigors into the Bounty Hunters battalion and going for a strategy of just trying to wipe the enemy hordes instead of relying on hordes ourselves...

As an aside, anyone have any ideas why mounted troops can't be veterans? Since it's limited to models with less than 4 wounds it's not like elite cavalry can be veterans, so why is stuff like the saurus knights excluded?

Probably mostly because they wanted to specifically flavor it to foot troops only. I can't think of a balance reason since 2 and 3-wound cavalry isn't exactly all that strong right now.

On the one hand, I'm actually impressed that GW seems to be making choices based purely on flavor rather than pushing the newest armies and units like they seem to have done in the past. But on the other hand, these constant rules changes are still very clunky, overly-complicated and annoying to keep up with in my opinion. I'd still like it if they kept the focus on balancing the core rules and battletomes against each other, and kept the "Seasons of War" stuff as optional, or even made it like the old Realms rules where you could choose which one your army came from. Like, you could say your army is from the 2021 Ghur place (IDK if it was ever named) and use all the monster rules, and your opponent could say their army is from Gallet and use the special rules from that GHB. Just keep the point changes and warscroll updates separate and you would be adding a lot more variety to the game without constantly forcing meta-shifts and invalidating people's favorite army builds.

 

[Nart]

I am also not sold on saurus/starborne lists everyone started trying. I think that kroak was hit by scaly skin changes harder then anyone. With Hunt scroll going away and new purple sun tricks, I think that laser basties are more worth their price then ever. Salamanders are still the only thing which can reliably cut through heavy armor/nurgle.

I really want to sea how meta ends up being. Will it be indeed GV domintation or everyone will try to take bare minimum to deny points and concentrate on quick wipe of enemy army? For one thing I am sure - Nighthaunt will enjoy all the changes.

 

[Kilvakar]

For one thing I am sure - Nighthaunt will enjoy all the changes.

Yeah, almost sounds like they knew they were making an infantry-focused GHB while they were designing Nighthaunt

But I don't think this is really going to be a nerf to Seraphon. We have so many horde-clearing options that if people do focus on taking hordes any 1-wound, 4+ or 5+ save units are still going to be easy to clear within a turn or two. We have so many built-in horde-clearing options, plus the new Gnashing Maw and Gravetide spell to include.

The armies coming out of this the best will be of course Nighthaunt, (which as Caleb Hastings pointed out in a video is kind of a counter to Seraphon now), but also Stormcast, Orruks, and anyone else who has multi-wound horde units. We'll still have a hard time dealing with Nurgle and Stormcast with their multi-wound units with high saves and ward saves on top of it. But a lot of the horde units people will bring will actually be pretty easy to clear out.

 

[Canas]

I could be wrong, but the Goonhammer review said that the new battalions could only be taken once, correct? Which means that putting 3 MSU Saurus Warriors into that battalion would be kind of a waste, since they'll still each die to one round of shooting and/or combat. However, I could see Seraphon specifically putting Saurus Knights or Kroxigors into the Bounty Hunters battalion and going for a strategy of just trying to wipe the enemy hordes instead of relying on hordes ourselves...

Ah, thought it was just part of the baseline veteran nonsense. In that case nevermind

Probably mostly because they wanted to specifically flavor it to foot troops only. I can't think of a balance reason since 2 and 3-wound cavalry isn't exactly all that strong right now.

The thing that confuses me is flavour-wise it doesn't make a whole lot of sense either. The fluff is literally just "these guys are veterans of a campaign". Why can't saurus knights be veterans? They're pretty much the same guys as saurus warriors, just on a mount. (And idem for other examples, like freeguild outriders & guard).

I can understand limiting it to the "regular" troops, and thus excluding stuff like say dracoths, or demigryphs who are supposed to be some super elite formations. But that's not what they've done.

So it feels weird.

On the one hand, I'm actually impressed that GW seems to be making choices based purely on flavor rather than pushing the newest armies and units like they seem to have done in the past. But on the other hand, these constant rules changes are still very clunky, overly-complicated and annoying to keep up with in my opinion. I'd still like it if they kept the focus on balancing the core rules and battletomes against each other, and kept the "Seasons of War" stuff as optional, or even made it like the old Realms rules where you could choose which one your army came from. Like, you could say your army is from the 2021 Ghur place (IDK if it was ever named) and use all the monster rules, and your opponent could say their army is from Gallet and use the special rules from that GHB. Just keep the point changes and warscroll updates separate and you would be adding a lot more variety to the game without constantly forcing meta-shifts and invalidating people's favorite army builds.

Yeah, the whole "seasons" thing doesn't feel great for a board game... I'd like some stability for my toysoldiers. If only because by the time I've finally painted a few cool new units the season will largely have passed.

Which also makes me question this as a tactic to push sales. I can't imagine the average player is going to paint enough models to keep up with sweeping changes like this in the meta. And especially new players might just immeadiatly leave out of frustration.

Yeah, almost sounds like they knew they were making an infantry-focused GHB while they were designing Nighthaunt

Given the amount of times they've released rules which were promptly invalidated by a new GHB/edition/etc. within a couple months you never know with GW

Though it does seem to fit with GW's general favoritism. Undeath in AoS seem to generally be treated quite well in their updates.

 

[Kilvakar]

The thing that confuses me is flavour-wise it doesn't make a whole lot of sense either. The fluff is literally just "these guys are veterans of a campaign". Why can't saurus knights be veterans? They're pretty much the same guys as saurus warriors, just on a mount. (And idem for other examples, like freeguild outriders & guard).

I can understand limiting it to the "regular" troops, and thus excluding stuff like say dracoths, or demigryphs who are supposed to be some super elite formations. But that's not what they've done.

So it feels weird.

From what I understand this campaign is specifically fighting in tight quarters in underground tunnel networks. So I guess that's the narrative reason for foot soldiers being the ones to get the buffs.

 

[Erta Wanderer]

From what I understand this campaign is specifically fighting in tight quarters in underground tunnel networks. So I guess that's the narrative reason for foot soldiers being the ones to get the buffs.

this. the campaign is all under ground were horses and large foot troops can't go.