Kasper

Not sure how much it will really affect things. I mean 10% is ok for people in the UK (no idea about Aussies or USA), but for most other people in the EU, it is still a significantly better deal to order off stuff like Elementgames due to exchange rates. At least until they leave the trade union in 2021. Most locals around here offer a 10-15% discount anyways, so it really makes no difference for me. I have no reason to ever buy directly off GW.

I agree with this. On one hand it is kinda unique about Death that is it pretty much unified under Nagash' banner, on the other hand it is very boring to me. He seems way too strong compared to any other character within the faction and it seems like nobody can really question his rule or commands. All the factions follow his lead. It makes for a very boring and monotone grand alliance for me personally. Destruction is also kinda just.. There. I guess it doesn't help that almost all lore/story seem to be fixated upon Chaos (esp Archaon), Stormcast/Sigmar and Nagash. They started to tease Gordrakk and his ram made partly of a godbeast, but not too much so far.

So my question is: How does deploying a unit inside a faction terrain that you can garrison, upon the start of the battle, actually work? It seems really hard to find any clarification on this, but it is also extremely rare - KO got almost similar rules, but they garrison a model/unit, not faction terrain, so obviously said model must be within the deployment zone as per usual. I have personally never played with a garrison situation before. According to the core rules for garrison: The rules above specifically say that you can set up a unit inside a terrain feature at the start of the battle, if it is wholly within the territory. No where does it state that the terrain feature must be wholly within the player's deployment zone. On many battleplans, half the table is one player's territory - See below. If the green is player A's deployment zone and red is player B's deployment zone, you have the middle which is each player's territory. What is preventing me from putting my (player A) faction terrain where the blue oval is located, and per the core rules above - Deploying a unit straight inside, which would be outside the deployment zone? If the typical deployment rules for this overrules the core rules above, the rules for garrison seems kinda redundant.

I would always get the english version of the book to prevent mistakes like these. You really only have Brutal Beast Spirits for +1 to hit and then the Maniak Weirdnob warscroll spell Bone Spirit, gives them exploding hits on 6s. To be honest I'm really not fond of the Arrowboyz and would prefer the Stikkas any day of the week. The damage just seems lackluster from range and would prefer to beef the Stikkas up to a 3+ save etc.

It is from the Designers' Commentary to the AoS Core Rules:

I mean sure, it is a viable list you can run. You are very limited as to what you can actually do with the list - You will likely just launch stuff forward in every game and get in your opponents face turn 1. What happens when your opponent wont just fall over and die to that? You have no real way of changing your gameplan. The question is also how much fun the list will be to play - and play against. The games will be short and likely determined by the double turn.

To be frank they are not decent at anything at all. Granted I haven't played with one, but as I see it, their only purpose is being a moving spell portal for stuff like Kroaks CD spam while he sits back. 260 pts is way too much for the model on its own. Unbuffed 1 Trog will do an average of 3,5 damage against a 4+ save. This is without any buffs, but I doubt you will ever find yourself in a situation piling buffs onto this piece over something more killy. I mean by all means go for it, but I think you will get run over fast. The only threat you have in the list is Gotrek and he is super slow without any buffs. If the opponent avoids him/gives up whatever objective he runs towards, I dont see how you would ever cap the other objectives. In general I think your list lacks synergies/buffs. Seraphon warscrolls are pretty poor and rely on buffs/command abilities being stacked ontop of each other to really shine. Units on their own are just really not gonna do anything.

@Aleister What is the purpose of the 2 Trogs? I don't see the value in 1 let alone 2. You can't cast Endless Spells through him, so I guess the only point is the healing spell from the Slann? Personally I would go for Kroak to at least be able to spam Celestial Deliverance from the Trog and use it offensively.

For reroll 1s to hit I would probably rather invest 40 pts into a Bound Burning Head, at least for shooting. Maybe the Azyros for heavy melee/Saurus lists? Since you don't want the enemy to benefit from the Burning Head aura. I think Knight-Incantor with Everblaze Comet can be very interesting. It is a 240 pts combo, but potent coupled with the Comet's Call spell from the Slann/Kroak. The Knight-Incantor can auto unbind 1 spell a game. Could see it useful in some matchups. Normally it can be an issue that the Comet is thrown down outside of dispell radius, but with a Slann/Kroak you have boardwide dispells, so you can always dispell it the turn after it has been cast to benefit from the 10" radius.

I think the Everblaze Comet is really underrated, especially considering Slann/Kroak got boardwide dispell, so you can dispell it no matter how far away you dumped it the previous turn and keep getting maximum benefit from the aoe. That and Comet’s Call from Slann/Kroak is alot of almost boardwide damage to important key units/support heroes, especially if they are within 10” of each other. Picking off stuff like Warchanters/Weirdnob from Orruk Warclans is massive. Plently of other armies rely on buffs and synergies. I think the better list would be Starborne - Fangs of Sotek and focus on more bodies, some bound Endless spells like Geminids + Purple Shy, maybe even a unit of 20 Camo Skinks to deepstrike wounded characters or other stuff like OBR catapults.

Pretty disappointed with the release of this tome tbh. I mean it is great for those who already got plently of models, but kinds awful for those that wanted to get into the faction with the new release. Talked with my local as he had tried to order some more stuff with the new tome and new sc box. He said GW support had told him that they were massively behind on the production. Like around 40k boxes behind on the Stegadon model alone. Half the range is pretty much out of stock and has been for a while. It is really beyond me they are so unprepared for a new release. Stuff like getting a Slann shouldnt be almost impossible at this stage.

You only get to charge. It is actually the strongest effect if used correctly. The MD charge - retreat - pile-in trick has been explained a number of times a couple of Pages back. I wonder if we should make a stickied FAQ at this point.

I mean... Basing your opinion off 1 dice game alone is kind of worthless tbh. Did you trash the old Bastiladon when it rolled 2 attacks on 2D6 too? I did the math a couple of pages back.

Generally everything stacks, unless it specifically says it doesnt, like on a command ability. So yeah it would bounce back 2 MW.

Big blobs of Chameleon Skinks look pretty awesome too. Sure they cost 50% more than normal Skinks, but being so reliant on buffs you will likely have to focus on 1-2 units anyways. But even if you dont intend on using them for damage in FoS, having 20 guys in a reserve for when your opponent forgets to screen every part of his backend of the board, capture an objective later on etc. seems pretty awesome. They look quite good even without any buffs.

What makes you think Bastiladons are trash now? They do almost the same damage as before with double rerolls, but it is much more reliable now. In Coalesced they can have 2 extra wounds and reduce damage taken by 1. Thats insane against factions that deal 2+ damage a hit like Ironjawz.

I believe Seraphon can ally with both Sylvaneth and Stormcast. I think Sylvaneth is largely useless outside of maybe creating a forest to ping with the terrain piece. All their buffs are "Sylvaneth". I'm not super familiar with Stormcast warscrolls, but some of their heroes got auras/buffs that just say "friendly units" and not keyworded to Stormcast specifically. Maybe theres some in there. For Seraphon specific Im fairly certain there is nothing for non-Saurus from listening to a couple of battletome reviews/looking at warscrolls.

I'm new to Seraphon (been waiting for the tome for a while) and I'm really inclined to try this type of playstyle. I just can't help but to feel a bit hestitant to buy and build towards this list prior to the FAQ due to how strong the Serpent Staff ability is on Skinks. Do you think there is any chance it might be FAQ'd to melee damage only?

3x Celestial Deliverance + Comet's Call + Terrain feature = Very much dead support heroes. Doesn't have to be a turn 1 move. I think at least a unit of 3 sallies is gonna be huge in every list. -2 rend both on the shooting and in melee is pretty big vs Mortek Guard etc.

Think it was a very successful podcast and I found it really interesting to hear from people that have tested and played with the army prior to the release. Would certainly like to listen to more in the future.

The artefacts being meh doesnt look like that big of a deal since you will usually have the subfaction specific ones and for a second slot I think Aetherquartz Brooch would be amazing with the amount of CAs between the various heroes. Even the standard reroll 1s to X/Y/Z wont be too bad. Im really bummed about Saurus Guard - They look much better than Warriors due to the extra armor, but I agree they seem kinda meh. The Eternity Warden was a perfect hero to beef up the Guard, but no. Slaan used to be a requirement in every army, but I could see armies skip out on him now, especially coalesced with a focus on Saurus. If you build for magic the Slaan can be good I think. You can get up to +3 casting and rerolling casts, which is honestly quite powerful. The Slaan spell lore looks weak, but the true power comes from a couple of bound Endless Spells. Between the terrain piece, Comet's Call and some endless spells you really have some options to chip away at important lower wound support heroes. In general most warscrolls look really weak on their own, and they heavily rely on being juiced up with a combination of buffs. I think the army looks great, but you are gonna lose if you just push everything across the table while focusing buffs on 1 unit and letting the opponent pick his fights with non-buffed stuff.

Yep that's totally a fair point. I personally don't fight vs armies with stuff that can specifcally remove a single model very often - In fact I can't remember the last time I did. OBR usually wont shoot against my 10 man Ardboyz. But if you experience it, you can totally go with 2 banners. In regards to our talk about Mighty Destroyers, I found the FAQ confirming that you can run in the hero phase. MD says "... That unit must make a normal move.." hence you can use it on a unit of Ardboyz or whatever in the hero phase and declare that you run, and you can obviously run again in the following movement phase. Makes us a lot better at grabbing objectives. Running in the hero phase will obviously prevent you from charging though.

Yes, you can move Aetherwings into combat with a unit that is about to charge, effectively shutting it down as they will now be in combat and cant charge. Depending on how the opponent has placed his unit, you can put an Aetherwing behind the unit and force him to pile-in away from your dudes, assuming the movement allows it. As the FAQ says, any "normal move" means you need to respect the 3" away from enemy heroes. As soon as it is a random D6 move, you don't have to respect the 3" and can put the units into combat. Aetherwings are really insane against combat focused armies and super undervalued by many SC players.

So personally I always liked the idea of Thunderquake and wanted to run something similar in the new book. I was curious what the new shooting will be like for the bigger dinos and the razordon vs salamandar. From what I can tell, the only ways to buff shooting is through the Skink Priest CA that gives +1 to hit for a SKINK unit. If you take the Thunder Lizard host you can spend a CP to shoot twice with a Bastilladon, which would effectively just double the damage output. The Skink Starpriest has a passive ability where you pick a unit and on unmodified 6s to wound you deal 1 MW in addition to any damage. It is really minor for the bigger stuff and it is best used on big groups of Skinks tbh. With Bastilladon from the old book and for the Razordon I have assumed 7 average attacks from 2D6 profiles. The Salamandars are looking really awesome, although they only have 12" range compared to the 18" from Razordons. The Bastilladon is also holding up fairly reasonable compared to the old book considering you can potentially shoot twice, though it now degrades, it shouldnt be that big of a deal the first couple of rounds if they arent in the front. 40 skinks seem rather insane, especially in the starborne fang of sotek host where you get a CA to use at the end of the opponent's charge phase, which allows you to shoot and then on a 4+ make a retreat move, effectively shooting twice per battleround.

It has been out of stock for a couple of weeks though, if not at least a month. I honestly doubt Seraphon will receive a battleforce - They had one like 2 years ago. I'd guess they rotate between armies.