I am personally rather disappointed by the salamanders. They do good damage but the bravery is low and since every skinks counts to the models who run away it can be very painful.
Or, just bring 12x Salamander hunting pack but don't bring the Skink Handlers. You are allowed to field a unit under population, you just have to pay the full points for it.
Just put the first 3 or 6 wounds on the Salamanders. If you fail battleshock you remove X amount of Skink Handlers. Edit: You will lose the Salamanders in the same way, but you will at least have extra bodies.
I don't think you can have a 12 salamander unit. Whilst you can field understrength units you would have had to buy a unit of 48 (12 salamanders and 36 handlers). Which you can't because your max unit size is 12? Also, I don't know if you could even field 3 salamanders on their own as the warscroll says 'one in 4 models must be a salamander', so if you field an understrength unit of, say, 8 only 2 of them could be salamanders. (I don't have the core book, only the 16 page core rules, so if understrength units are more fully explained please shoot this post down. I'd love it if we could be more versatile with hunting packs)
Pretty sure he meant a 12x Salamander Hunting pack. So, 3 Salamanders and 9 of the Handlers. Also, you can decided not to bring the handlers if you want. AoS allows you to bring under sized units. Notice how the unit description says that it consist of any number of models. Lastly, the wordining is that 1 in 4 must be, not that only 1 in 4 can be. To bring a unit of only 3 Slamanders you would still have to pay 240 MPP. There is potentially an argument that the unit must have at least 4 models. At which point you could simply bring 3 Slamanders and 1 Handler for 240MPP.
For battleshock wouldn't you be better off with the skinks there anyway? Scenario 1 1-2 Wounds, lose 2 skinks, on a roll of 4+ loose 1-3 more, still have all your salamanders vs have a wounded salamander but lose nothing. Scenario 2 3 wounds, lose 3 skinks, on a 1 lose nothing else, on a 6, lose 4 more skinks vs loose a salamander, on a 1 lose nothing else then on a 6 lose the rest of the unit. Scenario 3 6 wounds, lose 6 skinks, on a 1 lose 2 more, still have all your salamanders, on a 6 lose the unit vs lose 2 salamanders then lose the last guy on any battleshock role.
Yeah, I think I misunderstood and yes, it reads a unit of 12 of which 3 are salamanders. So much to unpick in understrength units (please note I am new to the game so there may be faqs or precedence set). In the core rules: If you don't have enough models to field a unit, you can field one unit of that type with as many models as you have available. This is known as an understrength unit. So, firstly it doesn't negate the rules on the warscroll, so if you have less than 4 models you can't even take a salamander surely (an understrength unit of 1, 2 or 3 models would just be handlers) Secondly you buy the models in a pack with 3 handles so you must have the handle models, and it states if you don't have enough models. Finally if you did field an understrength unit you couldn't have any other salamander units.
The only reason to not bring Skink Handlers is against abilities like horde spells that lets your opponent roll additional dice depending on the amount of models in the unit, but that is such a rare situation, and hes like better off using said ability on your 40 Skinks/Saurus Warriors etc. Otherwise it makes no sense even from a battleshock standpoint.
But after the 5th box... Kinda kidding, but I have 32 now so I’m probably going to buy one more SC box. It’s only my second though. I got 16 of them from SK boxes and 8 from an old Lizardmen box.