Hi, I'm looking for a little advice on this list I plan on running for a small competitive tournament between my friends. Leaders -Slann, Great Rememberer and Incandescent Retrices (260) -Engine of the Gods (220) Battleline -10 Skink, Boltspitters and Bucklers (60) -10 Skink, Boltspitters and Bucklers (60) -2 Salamanders (80) Behemoths Bastiladon, Solar Engine (280) Endless Spells Balewind Vortex (40) 1000pts 51 wounds Ideally I'm hoping to get the Balewind off turn one, failing that I'll put my remaining two spells into summoning and bring in some skink handlers turn one to buff the salamanders. Turn 2 the salamanders and handlers will be teleporting near the enemies backline, with any luck, to snipe a character off the board. The skink are there to screen and stop any turn one rushes or to be teleported onto objectives and apply pressure. EotG will be there to buff and support skink with extra troops if needed. Bastiladon will be fire support to hopefully deal damage to any larger enemies or just to thin hordes Advice, opinions, criticism all welcome, it's quite a competitive group I play with so any and all help is appreciated.
Welcome to Lustria Online! I haven't had much success with 1k Slann lists. Your army has a strong core though. My advice is to be possitionally aggressive with your Bastiladon unless your opponent has something which can kill it outright (aka Skarbrand ect). What Armies will your friends be bringing to your Tournament?
I'm expecting to go up against flesh eater courts (potentially two terrorgheists), beastclaw raiders, goblins, stormcast, nighthaunt and sylvaneth.
Swap the sallys for razodons. Razors don't need handlers to be good, and they are amazing protection against a turn one alpha melee rush. If you find you need mortals later on you can summon in the sallys. also at 10 models your skinks are a speed bump. best speedbump is spears and clubs. they actually hit relatively well, and without the +1/+2 to hit from the horde bonus the spitters aren't worth it. Similar to S. Warriors... in groups of 20 or less the clubs are better than the spears, over that the spears are better for the second rank getting in attacks.
I think, bastiladon is not that great for his points, unless you build a list around it. It's shooting is poor without astrolith/thunderquake rerolls, because of randomness and 4+ to-hit. Without save rerolls, he can go down very fast from large number of attacks from horde units, or just from several unlucky saves. Only 8 wounds is it's main weakness. Slann's CA can protect it from shooting, but for close combat it has to be under Mystic Shield at least, which means -3 conjuration points per turn. I wouldn't take it unless I'd built a list around it. Both Terrorgeists and Thundertusks can make short work of Basti. More skinks for the same points could serve you better. Oldblood Carno with defensive artifact is a better self-sustaining behemoth choice for small point games.
If I had the Razordons I would certainly swap them in for the Salamanders, currently though I'm looking at potential conversions for Razors since I begrudge paying those prices for the number I'll want. We tend to play models as seen, so I could drop the bastiladon and a salamander for javelin/shield skink, 20 boltspitters as opposed to 10 and an Old Blood on Carno, and lose retrices for a coronal shield on the carno. Realistically, by turn 3 I could be looking at enough points to summon my carno back in, or the bastiladon, if needed.
I have to say I disagree about the Carno being better. the Basti has a 3+ save that you can summon a skink priest in cheaply if you are worried about the re rolls, and it has a 4+ mortal wound save. the 4 wounds more that the Carnosuar has in no way shape or form makes it better against the terrorgiest or thundertusks. if you use the 10 man skink as a one turn speed bump and focus shooting on the giest/tusk over two turns you should be fine. for tusks the Ice breath has a range of 18" and the solar ray is 20", so if you can be careful about your distance manipulation you can get 1-2 rounds of shooting on him to reduce the mortal wounds of the breath attack. with each shot doing 2 damage and forcing the thundertusk to a 5+ save, and at minimum 2 attacks (rolling snake eyes on the 2d6) you can easily get the tusk off the 6 mortal wound profile to the D6 or lower. 3 hits and it only does D3 mortal wounds. the terror giest is far...far FAR more dangerous. 14 wounds 4+ save and on unmodified 6's (three attacks!) it deals 6 mortal wounds. the shriek has a decent chance to do zero damage even at full health due to seraphons across the board bravery of 10, at at 50% health it CANNOT shoot the basti.(the mechanic is D6 plus table value, full health is +6) in melee is where id be worried, especially since it can fly and has 14" move. your best bet is to measure out the distance on placement so that you either just barely move into range if you are going to go first, or so that you can lure it to charge something else giving you a turn to bring it down. good news is the shriek is only 10". bad news is the maw (which does the mortals on 6's) is 3" so you cant even hide behind something and try to swipe at it. it has a large base... screen the basti and shoot the shit out of it. the ray still forces 5+ saves with the rend, and still does 2 damage each hit. and it still has a 50/50 shance to save the mortals, where as the carno would be on 6+ saves and no mortal wound protection. additionally because the carno has more than 10 wounds it has a table... and the first hit from the giest is going to take it down at least 3 profiles if even one attack hits on a 6.
I've played my Old Blood on Carno against thundertusks before and it performed well, with support from cavalry, however later in the game it didn't quite continue that momentum without the cavalry. And I'm fairly confident that the Carno will get focussed heavily no matter who I go up against, so having the Bastiladon, being as resilient as it is felt like the better choice. Provided I can hold my own long enough against whoever I'm playing and my skink provide enough of a speed bump, I could try bring the Carno in turn 3 to tidy up, giving me 2 turns of shooting with the Basti and potentially my EotG.
Yes, bastiladon may stay a bit longer, especially if 3+ rolls going good. But without rerolls solar engine is very unreliable as damage platform. On average, you roll 7 shots, 3-4 of them hit, than 2-3 wound, opponent will, probably, save 1 with 5+, resulting in 4 damage on average. Save-after-saves will reduce this even futher. Gryphfeather charm is also popular nowdays on heroes with mounts, bringing bastiladon to 5+ to-hit. You can roll below average, you can roll above, both 2d6 and 4+ are very random. So you cannot say, if you reliably deal with target, which has, say 5-6 wounds left. In terms of durability: terrorgeist with double activation and full reroll to-hit on jaws should roll at least one 6. With so many additional attacks it can easily eat a basti in two combat phases. I'm not saying, that carno is strictly better, but, at least, his number of attacks is fixed, With artefacts he can have traits similar to bastiladon (etherial amulet and ignax's scales) and with a single suicidal charge, it can take down something big, before going down itself. Proper screening with skinks and careful positioning are mandatory here, however. If you are determined to take bastiladon, I recomend you to ditch salamanders for starpiest, or summon one turn 1. With Mystic Shield and Summon Starlight bastiladon will be reliably survivable. In general, if you are aware of opponents relying on behemoths, bringing skinks are always better idea than our behemoths. With correct positioning they deny a lot of area, since behemoth's bases are so large, and will grab objectives. If they dies, slann simply summons more.
With regards to the terrorgheists, unless I can guarantee getting that charge first with my Carno, it will last just as long as my Bastiladon. I guess that no matter what I take, I will have to screen it well with skink to prevent the terrorgheist from charging in first, however with the Basti, I can at least chip away at its wound pool from range first rather before it wipes the skink screen off the board. With any luck the salamanders could contribute to that damage and take the terrorgheist off the board before it gets to my ranged units.
Played the list against Nighthaunts last night, overall the list worked, however dice weren't on my side and I have to say that battalions are the way to go. The game was scorched earth, here's the play by play. Turn 1 Ascendant constellation was the Great Drake. Nighthaunt player had two drops so took his turn first, moved everything forward and got all his debuff spells off, I couldn't quite get my deny rolls. My turn, EotG brought in a few ripperdactyl riders, deployed 9 inches from his front line and dropped the blot toad in front of his line. Didn't get Vortex first turn as my opponent dispelled it channelled my other two spells into summoning. Daisy chained my skink to hold my two outer objectives and screen my flanks with the bastiladon moving into shooting range, EotG held the middle objective and my salamanders pushed up in front of the ripperdactyls. Shooting was poor, Basti got a good few shots, even with reroll 1s, but all the wounds that went through were saved, Salamanders hit but didn't wound and the skink shooting didn't have any effect. Ripperdactyls failed their charge. Turn 1 ended 3 points each. Turn 2 Nighthaunts first again, couldn't dispel any of his casters again and he dealt some mortal wounds to my skink, the bulk of his force charged my skink, Salamanders and ripperdactyls in the middle of the board, with his smaller force engaging the skink on the right, leaving his three objectives. All his charges were successful and he killed 8 skink on my right flank with his charge ability and left me with 3 in the centre after his round of combat. Took 5 wounds on the rippers and lost one salamander before my attacks back, fell back with both squads of my skink to try and hold my left objective, he pushed me off the right side. Unfortunately he'd moved far enough away from the toad that my rippers only made one attack each with their beaks. Both skink squads were off the board after battleshock, leaving him on my right objective. My turn, I got the vortex off, EotG did 4 wounds to Lady Olynder with it's laser, used LoSaT twice to get my rippers out of combat to his left objective and my slann to his right. My bastiladon moved to my left objective whilst the EotG held my middle, once again my rippers failed their charge, but I didn't mind as they were on an objective. Turn 2 ended 7 points to me, 4 points to my opponent. Turn 3 Again I failed the roll off and he began moving towards my ripperdactyls again with his blob and Olynder bringing him back in range of his middle objective, thankfully he failed his charge roll so my ripperdactyls could sit comfortable, he did wipe my EotG off the board with a hard hitting charge and burned one of my objectives with a lucky roll netting him 3 points plus an additional for killing my EotG and having a model just in range of the objective. This turn I channelled 3 spells into summoning with one for a magic missile that was denied, thankfully I had enough to bring in a Stegadon with sunfire throwers to deal with his hordes a bit better which managed to make the charge this turn. My rippers moved forward to better guarantee the charge with my blot toad near his unit and Olynder and my bastiladon held my remaining objective. Ripperdactyls went first and managed to do a fair amount of wounds, however they didn't survive the return attacks and my Stegadon suffered two wounds as well but dealt a reasonable amount of damage back out. I burned his right objective with my Slann for a single point. Turn 3 ended 9 points each Turn 4 I won the roll off so I tried to capitalise on this opportunity as best as I could. I used LoSaT twice on my Slann to get him over to my opponents left objective and put four spells into summoning. With my summoning points I brought in another squad of ripperdactyls but wasn't able to make the charge to Olynder and her squad. The Stegadon had a great shooting phase and combat phase and depleted Olynder's squad quite drastically meaning the return attack wasn't so devastating. I opted to burn his left objective giving me 3 more points before round 5. His turn he managed to resurrect half the models I'd removed in my turn in Olynder's squad and made sure my Stegadon didn't see turn 5. He burned my middle objective for 3 points meaning we were still tied going into turn 5. End of turn 4, 13 points each Turn 5 I took the first turn again and used LoSaT to take my slann away from his main force back down to my remaining objective to prevent him from taking it and burning it for a win, as well as generating enough points to summon two squads of skink. Positioned my Bastiladon so that he couldn't walk over to my objective and brought my rippers down to engage his unit in my territory to lock them into combat and ended my turn gaining one more point. He didn't bother with his turn as the combat had locked his closest unit down and his furthest unit wouldn't have been able to make the distance up, so he sat on his objective and ended his turn resulting in a tie in points. End of turn 5, 14 points each He won overall though as he killed more points than me, but overall it was a good game and I enjoyed it. Some better rolls and I could have won but I think I needed the benefits having a battalion brings. Edit: Formatting