Let me try. 140 points for a unit with 8 move, 4+ save, and very decent damage, if near a skink unit, such as even steg or basti, you get +1 to hit. With that, their damage without counting moonhammer but just 3 regular weapons is around 10 vs a 4+ save, which is on the level necropolis stalkers, kurnoths with scythes and ironguts. In short they hit very hard for their points cost, decent surviveability and speed, terrifying in a Thunderquake.
Hm wow, with terrain rules as they currently stand (GHB 2019 + Errata), our terrain isn't even useable. It's supposed to be placed first, before placing regular terrain, which on its own is great to avoid problems with not being able to place faction terrain at all. These rules are newer then the GHB2019 rules, so general faction terrain rules don't apply for our piece. Then the regular terrain gets placed, and then you roll off to see who choses sides... and the Realmshaper Engine lacks the Seraphon keyword, so if it ends up in the enemies deployment zone, they can just use it. Or if you placed it somewhere in the middle and your opponent gets first turn. It also has to be placed outside of 6" of objectives, so it has no use for that either. Might have been a bit oppressive anyways. But the placement/useability problem needs an errata mighty quick. Can anybody confirm that I got the sequence right?
Thunderquake Templehost (TQT) gives them either run&charge (great with +1 run and +1 charge constellation) or +1 attack in melee and Coalesced gives them another Jaws attack. Keep them near any SKINK unit to give them +1 hit. Spend a command point to make them reroll hit1 That means each model has a whopping 8 attacks at 3+/3+/-1 doing either 2 damage (2" maul) or mortal wounds (bite). I think a block of 9 is definitely viable, and a large block of them is a good target for Control Fate +1 save and Mystic Shield on top of taking 1 less damage from every attack. Like all Seraphon units, they can get a 3d6 charge from a Starseer, with +1 from a constellation. Yeah Im thinking Kroxigors are just fine for a 140p unit. Or run Starborn and teleport them into a 3d6+1 charge Other random thoughts so far: TQT is by far my favourite battalion in the book Slann are good but not required. It may be better to bring multiple small wizards so you can cast more endless spells per turn. We really lack accuracy buffs, like the ogors Burning Head is actually a good inclusion to let your army reroll hit1, since its bound it can never backfire Kroak is really good for 320p. A 4+ ignore is much better than his old ability. Give him 5-10 guard to soak wounds and he'll be nearly impossible to kill, especially if you play Coalesced. Being able to vassal cast means he can murder the enemy army from a safe distance. Kroaknado is definitely back. Stegadon Helm is the best artefact in the book. The Engine of the Gods stegadon is the Hero, the crew is the mount, so you get +1 to save rolls and +1 to all attacks. Combine that with the Nimble command trait for another +1 save, the Engines natural +1 save against one unit in combat, and the Priest's Star-stone Staff for another +1 save... yeah this is one durable unit. Even tougher than a Bastiladon. Then you make it super killy with TQT giving it even more attacks. Fangs of Sotek double shooting Skinks & Chameleon Skinks are really interesting. 2 squads of 40 with Serpent Staff is a lot of shots to proc mortal wounds. Knights are a really good battleline option, especially in Coalesced where both of their Jaws attacks get boosted. Their 1" reach makes them awkward in big squads, but I could definitely see lists with 10 knights and a few command points for +1 hit/wound and exploding hit6 suddenly doing loads of damage.
Ok, so let me see if I get the math right. 30 skinks with javelins means 60 rolls to hit at 8” range. Combined with a skink priest (+1to hit) means we hit 50% or 30 hits. 4+ to wound (again 50%) means 15 wounds, plus on average 5 (6 on a wound roll with star priest) ME. A 4+ save means 12 get thru. Did I do that right? If I did, I’m having a hard time seeing why some are saying skinks suck. Attribute it to my n00bness, but that sounds respectable.
Another thought: Carnosaurs are really really REALLY good now. Especially the Scar Veteran on Carnosaur. Pinned Down was changed to give +1 hit against targets with 7 wounds or less, which is most things in the game. You get 3 Massive Jaw attacks at 4+/3+ for 5 damage each. You get +1 Jaw attack from Coalesced. You get +1 to all melee attacks if you use the Great Drake constellation. This guy hits like freaking Durthu, and we can easily get enough command points for accuracy boosts (+1 hit/wound, reroll hit1, exploding hit6). With NO artifacts and NO command traits that's already amazing for ONLY 210p!! If you take him in Thunder Lizard he has +2 wounds and can be your general to give the mount another Attack with each mount weapon. Stack hit buffs and give him a Sword of Judgement and stack hit buffs and watch heroes melt, or give him a Rend-3 artefact on his Warspear for Rend-3/2 damage attacks on the charge.
You did it right, but we need to go higher /edit: Forgot a piece of the puzzle, for math see a few posts below.
Ok, I'm not to far off, it's starting to come together. Why only 1/3 hits? Skink priest adds 1 to hit, making it a 50/50, so don't the numbers skew higher?
Making special rules for the sake of having special rules serves no purpose. In the case of shields, none of those units have the choice to not wear shields. So making a seperate rule for them isn't necesary, you can just say "it's a guy with a shield, so he has to have a decent save" (which is partly how GW designs rules incidently.) Also, our old warscrolls were clutered with way too many rules. Take our old saurus warriors we had: 2 horde bonusses Shields A banner Drums That's 5! special effects that you need to remember and work around on a basic battleline unit. Taking away the shield and just incorperating it's effect into the baseline save value of the unit cleans up the warscroll. the more that's revealed about the terrain the weirder it gets.. what exactly were they attempting to create here?
It's great to see some positivity about our new book. Thank you to everyone working out combos, mathhammer etc. Exciting times ahead!
Ok a bit of cheesehammer here: Skink Chief on Stegadon: Thunder lizard general with +1 attack to mount weapons. Stegadon helmet (taken from battalion) +1 save and +1 dmg on charges. Take thunderquake and go savage, go drake constellation, use his command ability. That is +4 attacks to the stegadons weapons each and +1 dmg to them on the charge! Now take a deep breath and consider this, assuming the stegaon charges and I wont even bother counting his little spear: 2+4 horn attacks: 3/3/-1/5dmg 2+5 grinding jawz (+5 due to jaws) 3/3/-1/3dmg 5+4 stomps 3/3/-1/3dmg Now what is the average of this? against a 4+ save that is over 23 damage and not even hard to pull of. This will just mulch anything it charges. Bonus is that it will have a 3+ save, can potentially get 2+ in combat too against 5 models or less. If you charge something big and it does not die for some reason, you will still have a 12 wound monster with 2+ save and ignoring 1 dmg from scaly skin. This fellow here makes the oldblood on his carno look like a complete and utter wimp.
Holy hell. Information overload, totally forgot the Skink Priest command ability. 40 Skinks with Boltspitters, one round of attacks: 80 attacks 40 hits 13.34 wounds, 6.67 MW 13.34 damage vs 4+ save (6.67 + 6.67) Same again if we activate the ability. So 1 CP to deal around 13 damage plus the 50% chance to deny the enemy the chance to deal damage in melee. And we get to reposition. Very impressive. Can further boost the numbers by using the Skink spell for RR1 to hit. 80 attacks 40 hits + 6.67 from RR1 15.56 wounds, 7.78 MW 15.56 damage vs 4+ save (7.78 + 7.78) Times two. So 40 Skinks deal 31 damage against 4+ save in one turn, lol. This will catch people off guard, lol. Going to edit my older post. /edit: And addendum to this post, the FoS command ability does not require the enemy to have charged your unit, which makes it simply crazy. Not sure this is going to survive the first FAQ. /edit2: Starpriest Serpent Staff ability always works, mixed it up with the Skin Priest prayer which is not strictly needed when looking at offensive output.