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The seraphon player here has dropped in 2 bastilladons and a unit of skinks on average.

The main tactic is to hit an initial charge, wear down the enemy and then summon in more stuff to fnish that enemy off while dropping in free units on objectives if an objective game is being played.

Sounds about right if you go in as heavy as I was saying. That's in just 4 turns....

I play seraphon and I feel a bit bad. It's definitely not coming out outside of individual practice and at GT's. Or if a local needs a humbling. Otherwise Mixed Order or Night Haunt for local tournaments and SCE/FEC/Destruction heavily featuring Ironjawz for general play or new player play.

So update tonight, seraphon player goes 5-0 defeating one of the death players that also was undefeated at this point.

Game was close until Turn 3. Double turn followed by ... you guessed it... summoning ... tilted the game severely in the favor of the seraphon player who ended up offing the undead general and shutting down the undead summoning.

Without being able to recycle units in return, the undead player folded and ended up losing by a landslide in objective points because seraphon player just had to draw breath at that point to win as he won the summoning game. One of the tourney stormcast players wants to try to play him with four bolt throwers and hoping for good rolls on the terrain chart. If that doens't work he is also ebaying his list for a seraphon or nighthaunt army so he can get in practice for LVO and Adepticon with it.

To be fair, quite a few of the tools and interactions that Stormcast could have used to combat summoning got nerfed and they didn't get a price break on those units that were hammered by the nerfed interactions.

Poor destruction, they just have zero chance at competing. We're essentially at the upper level going to see;

-Seraphon
-Maggotkin
-Tzeentch is still workable by playing missions
-Legion of Nagash
-Night Haunt
-Sylvaneth
-Maybe mixed order
-Daughters of Khaine

How many of those don't summon in some capacity? Other than Daughters of Khain none, because mixed order will likely only be there if sylvaneth woods can still be taken by anyone and they can take those and a branchwraith. And DoK are only on there because of sheer damage output keeping them up with other armies that summon.

I mean, at least there are options but it's still severely limited overall given all the battle tomes out and the fact that an entire grand alliance is pretty much completely out.

 Marmatag wrote:
Most of it seems fine to me.

Don't kill all 40 skeleton warriors. Boom, negated that entire ability.

The one that seems broken is Tzeentch. They get free units by you and them casting spells. Turn 4, here comes my free lord of change.

This is always super annoying because it's so blatantly wrong that there's no possible way it could be a useful part of the discussion.

'Don't kill all 40 skeletons' is roughly as useful as 'don't play someone who can summon!' There are SOOO many ways the death player still wins even if you don't kill all the skeletons: Force your opponent to retreat, take complete board control, resurrect 15 skeletons with gravesites+DI, force your opponent to kill off small units of skeletons or lose board control. Sacrifice them to your own Endless spells/Friendly fire abilities, just kill their units with skeletons over time.

Tzeentch also have one of the most restrictive overall summoning systems. In 4 turns they can generate a 380 point model, every other summoning army can do that in 2 turns.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Hulksmash wrote:
To be fair, quite a few of the tools and interactions that Stormcast could have used to combat summoning got nerfed and they didn't get a price break on those units that were hammered by the nerfed interactions.

Poor destruction, they just have zero chance at competing. We're essentially at the upper level going to see;

-Seraphon
-Maggotkin
-Tzeentch is still workable by playing missions
-Legion of Nagash
-Night Haunt
-Sylvaneth
-Maybe mixed order
-Daughters of Khaine

How many of those don't summon in some capacity? Other than Daughters of Khain none, because mixed order will likely only be there if sylvaneth woods can still be taken by anyone and they can take those and a branchwraith. And DoK are only on there because of sheer damage output keeping them up with other armies that summon.

I mean, at least there are options but it's still severely limited overall given all the battle tomes out and the fact that an entire grand alliance is pretty much completely out.

Mixed order gunlines are actually going to be incredibly brutal with the Lord Ordinator+Ballista+Hurricanum core...until palisade becomes a staple choice in response.

Personally, I also don't see pure Nighthaunt being in the top tier. They'll be in almost every LoN army, but I don't know if they have the regeneration necessary to take advantage of their 'shave them away by inches' playstyle'.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

auticus wrote:
So update tonight, seraphon player goes 5-0 defeating one of the death players that also was undefeated at this point.

Game was close until Turn 3. Double turn followed by ... you guessed it... summoning ... tilted the game severely in the favor of the seraphon player who ended up offing the undead general and shutting down the undead summoning.

Without being able to recycle units in return, the undead player folded and ended up losing by a landslide in objective points because seraphon player just had to draw breath at that point to win as he won the summoning game. One of the tourney stormcast players wants to try to play him with four bolt throwers and hoping for good rolls on the terrain chart. If that doens't work he is also ebaying his list for a seraphon or nighthaunt army so he can get in practice for LVO and Adepticon with it.

That guy sounds really dumb. We have 2 FAQs and months of meta development between now and those tournaments, he might as well throw darts at the GHB and hope for the best at this point.

I know most of these anecdotes are supposed to be taken as 'man, these systems are super broken' but they pretty much all boil down to 'man, these guys have no idea if they're even comin or goin do they?'

Auticus out of interest where does the seraphon player usual plop his slann? If it's really far back line I can see mixed order or certain order armies taking tree revenants to try and ki him off their teleport. Maybe force it to deploy in Los

The slaan is always in the back, surrounded by screens, preferably behind something that blocks Line of Sight for the most part.

auticus wrote:
The slaan is always in the back, surrounded by screens, preferably behind something that blocks Line of Sight for the most part.

As mentioned, nothing can block LOS to him with regards to shooting. Citadel Woods explicitly state that if one of the models has Fly, it cannot be obscured.

Yeah, I’d be curious what units you have with large enough models to block a Slann.

You know... theres more LOS blocking terrain, not just Citadel Woods. Like, terrain that actually blocks line of sight, physically

So on average how many points are being summoned vs the cost of what it's taking these super summoning armies to setup?

The cost for Seraphon is just not casting--you were taking a Slann general anyways, an Astrolith Bearer anyways, and cogs anyways. There isn't a literal point cost because all of those things would be in the list even if summoning wasn't being used at all. There isn't a cost in allegiance abilities since the summoning is a free bonus to an already strong allegiance. Legions of Nagash is pretty much the same. Tzeentch would be if they didn't get their point costs increased across the board to compensate. Sucks if you were allying them in or running mixed chaos, but ultimately a plus for game balance.

The slan is just sitting there not casting, are the cogs or bearer doing anything?

 usernamesareannoying wrote:
The slan is just sitting there not casting, are the cogs or bearer doing anything?

I rarely agree with Ninth but everything used for summoning is normally there anyway. I didn't run the astrolith but I kept reseve points in case I needed that or something else. So the points are already there. And if I'd take a slaan pretty much for dispels and 2 teleports and he was worth it then summoning is just an insane free bonus. So the way I look at it I'm spending between 60 and 140 pts to summon (if I Cogs and starpriest) and um getting back that back literally in a turn. So take that turn out and everything beyond is free.

Seraphon were pretty awesome pre-2.0. They are plain sick if built right for 2.0.

I wonder why they chose not to make it a spell and made it more like an ability?
If it was a spell at least there'd be a chance to dispel it.

 Kanluwen wrote:

auticus wrote:
The slaan is always in the back, surrounded by screens, preferably behind something that blocks Line of Sight for the most part.

As mentioned, nothing can block LOS to him with regards to shooting. Citadel Woods explicitly state that if one of the models has Fly, it cannot be obscured.

I'm not talking about citadel woods. I'm talking about bringing other large terrain pieces that block line of sight. I know woods say if you fly you cannot be obscured, but I didn't see that if you can fly that you can never be hidden from everything. The manse with the telescope is one, and is GW-store legal and have now appeared on our tables. The azyrite ruins stacked up three levels are another GW-store legal piece that can block line of sight (that have also appeared on our tables).

We have a FLGS now catering to AOS as well. That is a new thing but people are bringing in stuff to there as well.

Its not 100% blocked off from LOS, just saying that that is one of the "tactics". The stormcast player with 4 bolt throwers is fairly confident he'll be able to draw line of sight everywhere regardless.

 usernamesareannoying wrote:
I wonder why they chose not to make it a spell and made it more like an ability?
If it was a spell at least there'd be a chance to dispel it.

I'm guessing that's why, since Unbind is now 30".


With that bit noted, Gryph-Hounds got a bit more interesting. I know, I know..."stop trying to make Gryph-Hounds a thing Kan!". It is no longer "roll 2D6" for the range of units reacting, rather it is any Stormcast Eternals units wholly within 9" of the Gryph-Hounds that can do that...but they cannot use this ability to attack another reserve unit in the same phase.
Vanguard stuff with Astral Compasses can deploy wholly within 6" of any edge of the battlefield more than 7" from the enemy. It only applies when using Scions of the Storm battle trait though. It's interesting how much <keyword> stuff there is in the book.

I will be very interested to see how future summoning battletomes are handled.

Can gryph hounds still be taken in units of 1 for 40 pts? The 10'' is somewhat meaningless here; just having a 40 points high-movement model to do basic area denial is worth more than anything the hound actually does. You're better off having him 15+ inches away from your other units to maximize area denial. Yes they will kill it, but they could have done that anyways.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Can gryph hounds still be taken in units of 1 for 40 pts?

No, but Lord-Castellants and Lord-Veritants get to deploy a single one for free.

The 10'' is somewhat meaningless here; just having a 40 points high-movement model to do basic area denial is worth more than anything the hound actually does. You're better off having him 15+ inches away from your other units to maximize area denial. Yes they will kill it, but they could have done that anyways.

140 pts for 6 of them, with every third being an Alpha.

Bleh. Rock those cestellants & veritants then!