Nah, stegadon as battleline wasn't even a good reason. You were taking groups of 10 skinks anyway for cheap battlefield control / screen / obj taker. The main value of Thunder Lizard was (and is) the stegadon chief, which is still our deadliest build. Plus double shooting with basti.
I can only agree with you in part on the solar engine bastiladons, and that's solely because it's reliant on the subfaction's command ability. Given how subfactions are going in 3.0, I highly doubt that will remain a thing, let alone whatever shenanigans one can do with a stegadon chief in TL (I've honestly seen that thing get mulched too many times to see it as a worthwhile investment in a given army).
Yeah I'm looking at bringing a Celestant Prime over a Skink Chief on the basis the Chief to an event unless you can convince me otherwise XD Also I only seem to find room for one Solar Basti right now as the second firing only once vs damage from say, 30 skinks or x2 Salamanders isn't as compelling on paper at least. @ChapterAquila92 I would be more surprised to see a sub-faction that doesn't have some neat tricks if we lose the x2 shooting, other armies like DOK still have shooting x2 with a unit aswell.
1 - basti. Yeah, totally agree, 1 is what we need. Moreso because shooting basties give away additional victory points 2 - Skink chief over Celestant prime. i will always bring a skink chief, for 2 main reasons: the first is strictly personal, as i like to field "pure" armies, with no allies. the second is that this model is our most consistent damage dealer, he's fast, hits hard, he's tough and can be equipped with an artefact. Up til now, i've never losed a game with him on the battlefield, and he was often my MVP. That said, Celestant Prime is amazing.
The new Trait for clawlords is pretty mental. Free command abilities for 3 or more clawlords and they flat out ignore the first 2 damage per phase. Nuts
The catch of course is that a 2000pt skaven army must invest at least half of its available leader slots on MASTERCLAN heroes ( i.e. GREY SEER units and one or two specific verminlords) in order to benefit from this battle trait. I won't argue that Masterclan shouldn't have the most universal battle trait out of all those available to Skaven, but it's worth bearing in mind the investment cost to obtain it, just as it will be for the other Great Clan battle traits.
Also keep in mind that the CA to have a unit run a guaranteed 6" does not work with this ability. Same as the FAQ recently that said that modifiers to run rolls don't work when you spend a CP to run 6", for instance a Bloodstoker + Khorne unit. It is either roll +3", or a flat 6" without increases. Now, I am not claiming this is 100% the case with this ability as well, but something tells me that a guaranteed 6" run is not viable to be given army wide.
Agreed. I'm fairly certain that this battle trait's rules are meant to be less of a "LOL Skaven can score an army-wide Turn 2 charge" gimmick and more of a semi-reliable fallback option in the event that you roll poorly for your other run or charge rolls, where the worst you can roll is based on the results for the first one made in that phase.
I just hope that Skaven are given the boost they need and the army is made less clunky in terms of what units you're allowed to include.
Rules for the new sylvaneth flyers. Anyone remember their pointcosts? This seems like rather nice rules in theory.
Seems very powerful. Definitely in line with the rules GW likes to reveal, showing the stronger stuff to get people hyped for the new book. Also, the trend of everything getting rend 1 or 2 continues. So far Sylvaneth look like they'll be pretty strong. But thankfully we haven't seen anything quite Stormcast Dragons or Nurgle level yet. With all the special rules they're looking more like Nighthaunt. I still think this bodes well for the future. Is it possible that GW is actually attempting to balance 3e books against each other rather than going the 40k codex creep route? Not sure, but I like that so far they're at least attempting to make each new book good. Hopefully they'll drop the lame "prime target" rules as they get more 3e books released.
Thinking on it, i'm "worried" about the interaction with Strike and Fade. I charge you, I kill you, I teleport away and I heal (if there's the need). How are you supposed to interact with this?