Skink are possiby our most cost-effective battleline. But they still have several issues. For starters there's the fact that horde bonusses are included in the cost, but you don't necesary get the actual bonus. Which makes them a tad more expensive than they should be. Second issue is that without those bonusses they're nothing more than chaff. They might be able to contest objectives cuz they're fast. But they're not going to win any actual fights over the objectives with anything. And lastly, even in a full blown horde they're still mostly supporting troops and need help holding the line. Especially this last aspect makesthem a bit weird as battleline troops.
yeah, under the best conditions (with chief and shadowstrike), a horde of 40 skinks will be able to force on average 13 saves with shooting. It's not bad, but by themselves, they cannot win the battles. They are a support battleline
I think it is actually 16 on average if you have a chief buffing them. Either way, I also consider them support. Their low range is what makes them mediocre. If it was 20" I'd say they are worth it. Or if the boltspitters' hit or wound was just one point better.
Nah they'd need the following: In general for hordes: Make them have a scaling cost for the horde bonus. E.g. the first 10 cost 40 points, then a unit of 20 cost a 100 in total, a unit of 30 a 180, and a unit of 40 280. This makes them much more accuratly priced and should be applied to everything that has a horde mechanic. Make the horde bonusses easier to get and maintain. 20 is a high for a cut-off point & because it's all or nothing it's annoying to maintain. This is double bad because horde units are weak to begin with, so once the horde bonus is removed you're just left with fodder. Specificly for skinks: Make the melee variant not useless. Improve their numbers a bit, a bit more range, a bit more reliability in their hits/wounds and preferably even poisoned wounds on 6+ hit/wounds. Nothing amazing, but just enough to make them stand on their own as battleline instead of being purely supportive. Alternativly give them more supporting power. More mechanics like their interactions with kroxigor or how skink handlers benefit salamders and razordons. If interweaving skinks with other seraphon results in increadible synergies they'd feel much better as a "battleline". Despite them still being supportive it'd make it logical to field vast amounts of them and interweave them through every formation.
16 is too much. In the best case scenario (chief buffing them, so they hit at 2+, rerolling 1s for shadowstrike) you'll have 39-40 successful hits. wounding on 5+, it's one third, so 13. 16" is not that bad, they have a good move, so they basically threaten 24". But yeah. That would be cool, and they would become dangerous if spported by a skink chief. I agree with the sentiment, but I really doubt GW will introduce this kind of scaling cost.
The issue with 16" is that virtually anything outranges it. It'd be fine if there were others of comparable or shorter range. But in between them not being terribly powerfull and short-ranged they just quickly get blasted to smithereens. Alternativly, make the horde bonus kick in at 1 model and scale. Instead of being a hard cut-off. There's more than one way around this weird horde/not a horde issue these mechanics have.
Also, a relic of the past is returning...Triumph and Treachery! I missed out on the Fantasy book so perhaps I could use the AoS incarnation with my Fantasy stuff!
By the way, does anyone know of a release date? I want to order a bunch of stuff, might as well do it all together.
I would also guess September for the release. So people will settle after a while (who's army got most hit with the nerf bat) and people will adopt (= buy) according to the new rules/points. It's Christmas time soon by then...
Well, Ben Curry has said hes using it at Blood and Glory, which is early November, and GW will be in attendance at that. Id say we'll see it in late August or early sept depending on where it can fit into the 40k release cycle. Death guard are coming late in the year and im unsure we will see any 40k model releases between the main primaris release and then. Id say we see path to glory with the new sc sets first then ghb2. But I did just pull all of that out of my ass so your guess is as good as mine.