AoS NEW *rumor*

[Putzfrau]

you'd probably start seeing more mixed armies. Skinks would probably still be dominant (especially if you count our monsters as "skinks). But at least you'd start seeing vastly more lists were people use saurus as screens/objective grabbers/general supporting units.


And how representative do you think that one win is for the playerbase at large?

This is kind of the issue with using the tournament scene as a gauge of the health of a game. Top level players can make very strange things work, simply because they're very skilled. Plus the different meta & playstyles can allow very different units to be "good" compared to lower level play. Not to mention the fact that the focus of high level players is often very different (e.g. competitive mindset v.s. a more casual fluffy type player mindset), which can again change what is considered a "good" unit. It's basicly two different worlds, and when it comes down to it, the competitive scene will always be, relativly speaking, the smaller world that fewer people identify with.

And that's probably why you see so much complaining about saurus. A large chunk of the playerbase simply does not care, and will never care, about who wins those big tournaments. They will complain cuz unit X isn't true to the fluff, or spamming unit Y is boring, or unit Z has a convoluted clunky ability. Even when top level players are winning tournaments with those same units.

I think there just isn't a lot of conversation around how to actually play your game so things like "saurus being bad at the tippy top of competitive play" sort of get distilled down into them being bad all the time. And you have casual players who don't wanna get rolled just assuming they can't play with saurus cause they want to "at least stand a chance."

It shouldn't be harder with some lists than others to win, but it is. I'm not saying that isn't true. I'm just saying people can get better results in their games by actually being better at the game so why don't we talk about that more? Instead it just seems like the conversation is inevitably steered towards "dump saurus spam salamander."

My favorite seraphon list has 30 warriors and 2 carnosaurs in it. It's an absolute monster to play into and I've beaten some good players and good lists with it. I'm not gonna bring it to a tournament because I generally have delusions of trying to do well at tournaments, but I think it's an easy 3-2 list for sure.

Basically I think stuff is a lot more fluid and down to player agency then the conversation generally let's on and we should at least have that in the back of our minds.

If koatls or slaanesh can go 5-0 and beast of Chaos and dread saurian lists can go 4-1 in tournaments, I imagine they'll do just fine at pick up games.

 

[Putzfrau]

i totally agree that you shouldn't be negative all the time. It sucks and it brings down the mood. I appreciate your generally optimistic outlook, but I do think that sometimes it comes across as you being just determined to never say anything negative. Any time someone says something negative about anything (example, my pointing out that the buffs for Fyreslayers were worse than the Idoneth), it sometimes seems like you automatically defend every decision GW makes. Please don't take that as me being hostile! I just think it would be nice if you could try and look at the viewpoint of the people who say negative things sometimes.

I appreciate the honesty! I definitely don't want to come across that way because I think GW is deeply flawed in... just so much that they do.

I'll keep that in mind and try to have a better approach in my posts. Super appreciate you pointing that out and can definitely see truth in what you say.

 

[Kilvakar]

I'll keep that in mind and try to have a better approach in my posts. Super appreciate you pointing that out and can definitely see truth in what you say.

Thanks!

I think there just isn't a lot of conversation around how to actually play your game so things like "saurus being bad at the tippy top of competitive play" sort of get distilled down into them being bad all the time. And you have casual players who don't wanna get rolled just assuming they can't play with saurus cause they want to "at least stand a chance."

It shouldn't be harder with some lists than others to win, but it is. I'm not saying that isn't true. I'm just saying people can get better results in their games by actually being better at the game so why don't we talk about that more? Instead it just seems like the conversation is inevitably steered towards "dump saurus spam salamander."

This is a very good point. I think this sort of conversation is how most listbuilding discussions go in AoS, no matter what the army, since most listbuilding tends to be done with a heavily competitive mindset. But it's especially more apparent with armies that have certain units that are drastically better than others. One common thing I've seen constantly in AoS is that if unit A is even a little bit better than unit B, then unit B is garbage and not worth taking under any circumstances. Unfortunately, when there's as big a difference between units as there is between Skinks and Saurus in terms of sheer efficiency and performance, or when you only have one unit capable of performing a certain role well (Salamanders), it's hard not to fall back to just recommending using the "better" unit.

Basically I think stuff is a lot more fluid and down to player agency then the conversation generally let's on and we should at least have that in the back of our minds.

Definitely true. Listbuilding is only half of the picture. As you've pointed out, skilled players can make even bad lists work, and poor players won't be guaranteed to win even if they're playing the strongest meta list. An example of my own is when I tried the Salamander spam list in 2e against a Bonesplitterz army. Got charged turn 1 and nearly wiped because I deployed poorly. Despite having the "better" list, my opponent was better than I was and knew his army better.

Just theorizing...
What would happen if Saurus Warriors were made more viable, but nothing else in Seraphon changed? For sake of argument, what if they had similar stats to Liberators or Ardboyz? (maybe those aren't good, but they're easy for me to visualize since I have friends who play SCE & Ironjawz)
What would that do to our army?

Well, according to the art in the Orruk Warclans book they should be closer in size to Brutes:

But I'd still rather have them stay at a 10-man unit size and get 2 wounds. (I'd also really like to see our flyers become useable again, but that's another conversation).

But if this were to happen, you'd see more Saurus in play, simple as that. Koatl's Claw would become much better, and you'd probably start seeing Saurus infantry in some Thunder Lizard lists.

 

[Just A Skink]

But I'd still rather have them stay at a 10-man unit size and get 2 wounds. (I'd also really like to see our flyers become useable again, but that's another conversation).

But if this were to happen, you'd see more Saurus in play, simple as that. Koatl's Claw would become much better, and you'd probably start seeing Saurus infantry in some Thunder Lizard lists.

That’s fair.
Part of what I wonder is if it would push Seraphon “over the top” (I use that loosely)? I was talking to someone who thought that if saurus got good (ie we got more solid infantry) on top of good casting, good monsters and decent shooting then we might be too powerful. I thought it was an interesting point. IDK, I’m just sort of spitballing here.

 

[Kilvakar]

Part of what I wonder is if it would push Seraphon “over the top” (I use that loosely)? I was talking to someone who thought that if saurus got good (ie we got more solid infantry) on top of good casting, good monsters and decent shooting then we might be too powerful. I thought it was an interesting point. IDK, I’m just sort of spitballing here.

I don't think we would be over the top. It would just mean we have more "good" lists, but that doesn't mean playing against us would become any worse than it already is. After all, we're considered strong for a few things, namely mobility, shooting and magic. Getting good melee infantry isn't going to make us an OP army. If anything, given the powercreep that is inevitable with the 3e book releases and Malekith's Elves coming out at some point, at that point we'd probably be a solid low A or high B-tier "jack of all trades" army. You can't field enough units in 3e to be awesome at every aspect of the game, so it's not like all of a sudden our meta lists are going to be great at magic, shooting, and melee.

I think that's the problem with armies that have a big model range like we do. A lot of AoS armies are specifically built to be the master of one playstyle. For example, Ironjawz at melee, KO at shooting, etc. But these armies tend to have few models, given the hyper-focused playstyle of the army. Then you have armies like Seraphon, Cities, Stormcast, Skaven and Lumineth that have a lot of models and options for every playstyle. For Lumineth and new Stormcast they clearly put a lot of thought into making sure they were able to be good at everything without being the absolute best at everything (although you could definitely argue that Lumineth are the best at shooting and magic, thanks to being highly over-designed). But for Skaven, Cities and of course Seraphon they seem to have a hard time doing the same. Maybe it has to do with them being older armies? But at least the way things have been going recently gives me some hope that they're getting to the point where they're more willing to improve existing armies over constantly trying to hype new faction releases.

 

[Just A Skink]

I don't think we would be over the top. It would just mean we have more "good" lists, but that doesn't mean playing against us would become any worse than it already is. After all, we're considered strong for a few things, namely mobility, shooting and magic. Getting good melee infantry isn't going to make us an OP army. If anything, given the powercreep that is inevitable with the 3e book releases and Malekith's Elves coming out at some point, at that point we'd probably be a solid low A or high B-tier "jack of all trades" army. You can't field enough units in 3e to be awesome at every aspect of the game, so it's not like all of a sudden our meta lists are going to be great at magic, shooting, and melee.

I think that's the problem with armies that have a big model range like we do. A lot of AoS armies are specifically built to be the master of one playstyle. For example, Ironjawz at melee, KO at shooting, etc. But these armies tend to have few models, given the hyper-focused playstyle of the army. Then you have armies like Seraphon, Cities, Stormcast, Skaven and Lumineth that have a lot of models and options for every playstyle. For Lumineth and new Stormcast they clearly put a lot of thought into making sure they were able to be good at everything without being the absolute best at everything (although you could definitely argue that Lumineth are the best at shooting and magic, thanks to being highly over-designed). But for Skaven, Cities and of course Seraphon they seem to have a hard time doing the same. Maybe it has to do with them being older armies? But at least the way things have been going recently gives me some hope that they're getting to the point where they're more willing to improve existing armies over constantly trying to hype new faction releases.

Good points. I’d like to think it wouldn’t push us over the top either. Thanks @Kilvakar!

 

[Canas]

It shouldn't be harder with some lists than others to win, but it is. I'm not saying that isn't true. I'm just saying people can get better results in their games by actually being better at the game so why don't we talk about that more? Instead it just seems like the conversation is inevitably steered towards "dump saurus spam salamander."

Unfortunatly there's 2 issues there.
1) A lot of people have simply reached their maximum potential and aren't going to get significantly better anymore. You can tell them they're bad at postioning a million times, but they simply won't improve much. Which makes that discussion a bit pointless.

Admittadly at a certain point you'l have to accept that the player in question is simply bad. But I'd also argue that the various Saurus units shouldn't exactly require a lot of skill to use. It's not like they're specialist units with complicated skills, simply smashing them into your opponent should achieve some reasonable succes.

and

2) The biggest issue is that Saurus aren't just "slightly" worse than skink/salamander spam, they're magnitudes worse. To the point even beginners can quickly tell they're handicapping themselves by focusing on them.

And seeing your saurus get killed without doing much for the 10th time by an equivalent melee battleline unit from an opposing faction, while on the other side of the battlefield your salamanders are earning back their points three times over, eventually gets annoying, no matter how casually you play.

I don't think we would be over the top.

See I think as far as GW is concerned we might then be over the top, and that this is the ultimate issue causing all the underlying problems we constantly complain about.

Basicly, I think that whenever they do give us actually decent melee units while testing/designing something new the playtesters/designers think that it is over the top thanks to our large unit range.

Either because you get a situation where if a tournament has both a Skink & Saurus list one of the two nearly always does well, because what one is weak to the other is strong against. Resulting in Seraphon as a whole having "too high" a winrate, regardles of the meta. Even if individually both subfactions perform normally (and ignoring for the moment that winrate is a fairly terrible measure regardless)

Or because you start seeing some mixed lists that are deemed "unfun" because they managed to fit in the best of both worlds, resulting in both a strong melee & ranged aspects, and it's deemed "unfun" because we now have say both Kroak teleporting around nuking stuff & actually decent melee units supporting him efficiently, and having both of those is then deemed too "unfun" or complicated to play against.

So the designers/playtesters conclude that giving us both would be unfair/unfun/etc. so instead we get a massive unitrange of which a good chunk is simply never all that good.

 

[ChapterAquila92]

This is a very good point. I think this sort of conversation is how most listbuilding discussions go in AoS, no matter what the army, since most listbuilding tends to be done with a heavily competitive mindset. But it's especially more apparent with armies that have certain units that are drastically better than others. One common thing I've seen constantly in AoS is that if unit A is even a little bit better than unit B, then unit B is garbage and not worth taking under any circumstances. Unfortunately, when there's as big a difference between units as there is between Skinks and Saurus in terms of sheer efficiency and performance, or when you only have one unit capable of performing a certain role well (Salamanders), it's hard not to fall back to just recommending using the "better" unit.

This sums up a very similar problem in other games as well. Necromunda immediately comes to mind where, despite being really fluffy and cool-sounding, some equipment options and skills just aren't worth taking at all in skirmish or campaign play. This is generally because either better options exist at roughly the same credit cost (i.e. rad gun < plasma gun for Van Saar), the rules don't jive with the model's stats (i.e. template weapons by their very nature are significantly less valuable for gang members with good BS than for those who otherwise couldn't hit the broad side of a barn), or (in the case of many skills) the benefit can be more easily obtained with credits by purchasing equipment that does the same thing (thus sparing that gang member a skill slot to use elsewhere).

 

[Putzfrau]

Unfortunatly there's 2 issues there.
1) A lot of people have simply reached their maximum potential and aren't going to get significantly better anymore. You can tell them they're bad at postioning a million times, but they simply won't improve much. Which makes that discussion a bit pointless.

Admittadly at a certain point you'l have to accept that the player in question is simply bad. But I'd also argue that the various Saurus units shouldn't exactly require a lot of skill to use. It's not like they're specialist units with complicated skills, simply smashing them into your opponent should achieve some reasonable succes.

and

2) The biggest issue is that Saurus aren't just "slightly" worse than skink/salamander spam, they're magnitudes worse. To the point even beginners can quickly tell they're handicapping themselves by focusing on them.

And seeing your saurus get killed without doing much for the 10th time by an equivalent melee battleline unit from an opposing faction, while on the other side of the battlefield your salamanders are earning back their points three times over, eventually gets annoying, no matter how casually you play.

Respect the opinion but also respectfully disagree. Maybe this is where my stubborn optimism comes in but I don't think there are very many people 'capped out' for lack of a better term. I just don't think there are very many resources or avenues to help them improve.

I think your comment on suboptimal choices makes sense, but again I think you're able to exaggerate the situation just enough to make it seem a little worse than it is. Saurus are simply not so bad that they are getting ripped apart by equivalent choices from other people's list. I've had them tank everything from vhordrai to the khorne dragon for a few turns.

But you're right, if people only want to play with optimal choices saurus aren't that. I don't have an answer to the "I want to play the best thing and saurus and compromise no where" problem. Like I've said, I genuinely wish saurus were better... but I think we also have to acknowledge for everyone not playing the army cause of saurus there's someone that is playing the army because they like how it functions right now. Think that dips into your other argument a bit about GW being reluctant to give us powerful and efficient melee on top of our shooting and magic. We can't simply say "what I'd saurus were better" in a game where it seems like no buff is free.

 

[Kilvakar]

On another note, apparently the Fury of the Deep box also comes with rules changes for all the units it contains:

 

[xoid]

Hey, look at that, a rumor type thing in the rumor thread!

 

[Canas]

Hey, look at that, a rumor type thing in the rumor thread!

Blasphemy!

On another note, apparently the Fury of the Deep box also comes with rules changes for all the units it contains:

Their battletome update is coming soon I guess then.

Also, the split of the fyreslayer's warscroll seems like a good thing. Hopefully we'll see that for more units where the loadout options have 1 specific superiour option.

 

[Just A Skink]

On another note, apparently the Fury of the Deep box also comes with rules changes for all the units it contains:

The changes sound a little better for the Idoneth, but I don’t know either army very well.

 

[Kilvakar]

The changes sound a little better for the Idoneth, but I don’t know either army very well.

I don't know Fyreslayers, so I can't speak to them. But the Flamekeeper is as cheap as our Skink Priest so at least he'll be easy to fit into their lists.

But for Idoneth it seems decent. Icon bearer buffs are gone, but the overall profile for Thralls and Reavers have improved quite a bit. Sharks have gone up in price a lot, but at the same time are 10 wounds, have a slightly better damage profile, have the Stormcast flyer coherency upgrade and if you bring them in a unit of 2 one can be an alpha with +1 to hit with melee weapons.

All-around at the very least it seems like it makes infantry lists at least playable now. Sharks are better but at the same time a lot more expensive and still aren't monsters so GW continuing to increase prices to force smaller armies I guess. I think you'll still see people doing mostly eel spam unfortunately, just because they haven't had their point costs hiked up (yet).

To give perspective: Thralls went up 10 points (not bad). Reavers went up by 55 points! (yikes!) And sharks went up by 40 points. To me, only the Thralls seem like they'd be worth playing at this point cost. But as he says in the video, a new book is probably coming soon and that will definitely change things up.

 

[PabloTho]

To give perspective: Thralls went up 10 points (not bad). Reavers went up by 55 points! (yikes!) And sharks went up by 40 points. To me, only the Thralls seem like they'd be worth playing at this point cost. But as he says in the video, a new book is probably coming soon and that will definitely change things up.

I think Reavers could be a sleeper threat. Provided the buffs from the Leviadon and Aspect of the Storm stay the same then a big brick of Reavers throwing out 40-60 shots on 2s to hit/wound could be pretty scary. Super intimidating charge deterrent with Unleash Hell too.

I love the models too much to write them off just yet.

 

[Canas]

The next few battletomes.

Obviously DoK & Nighthaunt, given the recent announcements. Honestly feels soon for both of em, though at least the nighthaunt need it.

Also an order and chaos tome are coming after those. Any bets for which factions those will be?

 

[Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl]

The next few battletomes.

Obviously DoK & Nighthaunt, given the recent announcements. Honestly feels soon for both of em, though at least the nighthaunt need it.

Also an order and chaos tome are coming after those. Any bets for which factions those will be?

No new units for Fyreslayers or Idoneth I see after all . The only decent thing is that Fyreslayers are not getting souped, which is wonderful and quashes all the silly rumours about a Dwarf soup for at least another edition.

And they didn't even bother giving Fyreslayers or Nighthaunt new cover art, yet of course Elves do

There are a fair few rumours circulating about Beastmen being due for an update soon, so perhaps they're the Chaos tome?

The Order faction could be any of Kharadron, Cities or Sylvaneth. No current clues as to which.

 

[xoid]

One rumor I've seen for the Chaos tome is a Beastman and Slaves to Darkness joint tome.

 

[Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl]

One rumor I've seen for the Chaos tome is a Beastman and Slaves to Darkness joint tome.

I've seen that too, and I certainly don't want that to be true. Both factions deserve to be separate.

 

[Killer Angel]

And they didn't even bother giving Fyreslayers or Nighthaunt new cover art, yet of course Elves do

Laziness and double standard at their finest.