I do hope this goes here? So here's the deal. Yesterday i had my first ever AoS battle. And safe to say i dit not fare very well. Other then some kills from Comet's Call and Saurus on foot my saurus had absolutely no chance against, especially, Kurnoth Hunters (9 of them). So, i had no prior knowledge, didnt use any buffs or coalsced thingymajiggy, and only after the game found out about command traits. Safe to say i did not play the Seraphon to their capabillity. I have rematch plannend in 2 weeks and was hoping to get some help in how to set up and play, especially against Kurnoth Hunters that prettt much ripped through my Bastilladon in 2 turns. I had, on the field; 1x bastilladon Solar Engine build 1x Oracle on Troglodon 1× oldblood on foot 2x saurus warriors ( 2 units of 10) 1x saurus knights 1x skinks 1x salamander I have 4 units of guards, a Slann, an astrolith bearer, ripperdactyls and terradons, an oldblood or vet on carnosaur, an extra skink unit, 3x starpriests and 3 extra units at the the ready. Unfortunatly no stegadons, starseers, Kroxigors, eternity wardens or chameleon skinks or Lord Kroak as they are all unavailable. Suggestions? Any help or tips would be nice. Regards, Damian
mostly you just have to beef up you units our foot troops are best when in blocks of 30+. it would also help pick a lane to go down (saurus or skinks) and stick to it the 2 halves of our army need to many heroes to take both. if you want to run skinks look into bringing starpriests and normal priests to buff then and a slann to generate CP if you want to run saurus try to get a sunblood(or a proxy for him) and a slann to generate CP
I think having Slann instead of the oracle would be better as they are the same points but you get 3 casts and unbinds instead of only 1 with skink oracle, also you can generate more command points. make sure to remember that all coalesced units receive -1 damage from each attack(to a minimum of 1) so each attack from the kurnoth hunters will be 1 damage less to your whole army.
It is a bit complicated to deal with such deathstar with units you have, because our units are funcional in numbers. But out of what you have I suggest taking a carnosaur. You can go thunder lizard, so it gainst +2 wounds and +1 attacks on jaws and make him a warlord for another +1 attack on jaws. It has poor rend, unfortunately, but if you get lucky, you can deal a lot of damage. Alternatively, you can go for koatl's claw and take eviscerating blade artefact, so you have a chance for mortal wounds and you can have a warlord trait to return spent CP on 4+. I suggest replacing troglodon with slann too. Slann can give units FLY, so you can ignore LoS block of Wyldwoods. If you go thunder lizard, you could also shoot twice with bastiladon for CP. Salamander is good, even if you have only one. You should ditch saurus and knights for now - they are ineffictive in small units. Take skinks to fill battleline and guard to protect slann. You may try something like this: Allegiance: Seraphon - Constellation: Koatl's Claw Leaders Slann Starmaster (260) - Spell: Celestial Apotheosis Saurus Oldblood on Carnosaur (250) - General - Command Trait: Dominant Predator - Artefact: Eviscerating Blade Battleline 10 x Skinks (60) - Boltspitters Celestite Daggers & Star Bucklers 5 x Saurus Guard (100) Units 4 x Salamander Hunting Pack (80) Behemoths Bastiladon (220) - Weapon: Solar Engine Total: 970 / 1000 Extra Command Points: 0 Allies: 0 / 200 Wounds: 55
Were the kurnoth hunters with bows or outfitted for melee? Cuz at only a 1000 points we have very little that can deal with the ranged onslaught, but at least the melee variant we should be able to deal with. Also what else was he fielding? The kurnoths are 600 points already so he doesn't have much room left. What else did he bring?
Kurnoths are devastating at low point battles for sure. had a guy that was gloating for the first two weeks of an escalation league cuz he was undefeated at 500 and 1k. (this was old seraphon BT) then 1500 and 2k he won like 2 games total. fell out of prize placing (top 5) and became saltier than the dead sea lol
6 were equipped with Scythes, this was also one whole unit, and 3 with swords. The unit with 3 had a "captain" I believe he had 1 arch revenant and 1 branchwraith, and 2 units of spite revenants, though these were only 3 to 4 models. I think he also had 1 unit of dryads or tree revenants, or a combination of mentioned units. No more than 10 models other than the Kurnoths. I could be mistaken, since i am not all that familiar with Sylvaneth units.i
Right well Arch revenant Branchwraith 2x 5 spite revenants 1x 10 Dryads and 9 Kurnoth adds up to exactly a 1000 points so that works Now thank god they're melee, this way we can actually do something about it in such a small game. Now given what you have i'd do the following: 1) I wouldn't bother with a slann. You don't need the dispells against his army, you don't have any endless spells, you don't have the models needed to summon. And the slann specific spells aren't super usefull in this context. So for now I wouldn't bother. 4 casts are nice, but the troglodon can easily eat some of the lesser opponents while the slann will struggle to defeat anything in here in actual combat. And without endless spells, or being Kroak, our magic simply isn't that impressive against these opponents. 2) General strategy would be to take out his leaders then kill or stall the Kurnoth. So with the stuff you have I'd go for the following. In both cases pick whatever general trait & artifacts you prefer. They're not hugely important to the strategies Option 1) Coalesced, thunderlizard Monster-jam: 1x Troglodon 1x Oldblood on carno 1x 20 Skinks 1x 10 skinks (or 3x 10 skinks if you prefer) 1x bastiladon 1000 points. Use your ranged attacks & spell to try and snipe the heroes early on, try to send your troglodon & carno into combats that they can quickly win without much risk (they should annihilate the revenants & heroes fairly easily). Avoid actually fighting the kurnoths if possible, use your skinks as sacrifical fodder to block them if needed. Option 2) Coalesced, thunderlizard Shadowstrike: 1x troglodon 1x Starpriest 2x 10 Skinks As big a unit of terradons or rippers you can field (preferably 6+) Shadowstrike templehost 900 points with 6 rippers, 920 with 6 terradons. Try to get the appropriate chief in there with the leftover points, more rippers/teradons is of course also good Use your spells and ranged attacks to hunt for the heroes. Have the troglodon hunt for easy targets again. Buff up your unit of rippers/terradons as much as you can and crash those into the kurnoth. Hopefully you'l manage to take out enough of them in one swoop. Since he has no ranged troops it shouldn't be too difficult to get the full unit into position so shouldn't be too troublesome. Skinks are again sacrificial fodder and for the occasional objective.
Regardless of list the first few games will always be rough especially if you play against opponents that arent super new to the hobby. It is a tactical board game after all. My first 10 games or so were all losses because I had no idea what I was doing and I felt awful and thought the game was unbalanced. I kept at it however and tried to learn constantly and ask my opponent for their view and what I could have done better, I would suggest to make a semi decent list and stick to it, no matter if you lose or win. Keep practicing your army rules, but also the general rules for AoS. Maybe the best tactic isnt always to just max move everything forward against your opponent every turn etc.