Recently Fantasy has basically risen from the dead and we have a lot of players back in the mix, new and old. They have been getting in a few games, and a lot of them have been itching to take on my Dinos. So I got in two games recently, and man, did the Old Ones make us strong or what? Most of this is from memory, but I do have one great shot to add. The list against OnG: Slann, BSB, Warbanner, Cupped Hands, 2 Scrolls, Full Lore, Free PD 16 Temple Guard FC EotG w/ Scroll, Diadem 20 Saurus, Spear, FC 20 Saurus Spear FC 12 Skinks 13 Skinks 3 Terradons This is basically my standard list for 2250, but I dropped my Ancient and added in a few skinks to fill the gaps. He had something like: Choppy Blorc Lord (something like 6 attacks) Orc BSB Gobbo Shaman Orc Shaman 20 NG Archers w/2 Fanatics 20 NG Archers w/2 Fanatics (Shaman) 10 Arrer Boyz 25 Orcs w/ 2HW 28 Orcs w/ HW+Sh (Lord and BSB here) 20 Orcs w/ HW+Sh 6 Boar Boyz 2 Bolt Throwers Giant 3 Trolls We deployed and I got first turn thanks to Scouts. I had my TG/Slann as my center, with my EotG to its left, and the two saurus blocks on either side. The Terradons were behind some rocks, one unit of skinks deployed on the flank to pressure a bolt thrower, and the other unit scouted up the center. Basically the entire game was a massacre. The 2nd unit of skinks marchblocked the lord unit and the other HW/Sh unit, the Terradons poisoned and rocked the Giant to death, my Engine kept Portent of Far on the Slann, and the Slann tossed out Uranon's Thunderbolt, Forked Lightning, and Comet every turn, generally getting two of the three off. I nuked both bolt throwers without much effort, Uranon'd the Boar Boyz and panicked them off the table, peppered the NG's with poison darts, and killed the trolls and the HW/SH orc unit with repeated Comet detonations. He had one unit make it across the board, that being his Lord unit, and it was summarily charged on ALL FOUR SIDES by my terradons, a unit of 10 Saurus (they had lost a few fighting the Lord unit for a few rounds, but kept rallying and coming back), the Engine, and the Temple Guard. Absolute massacre. He destroyed one skink unit, one terradon, three Temple Guard, and half of one Saurus unit. I killed every single model on the board and picked up a few banners along the way, including the BSB. It was an absolute massacre. He had some poor animosity rolls, but there wasn't much those units would have done anyway. I still had 20 Saurus begging to get into a scrap, and my Temple Guard were still almost at full. Even though this player was fresh off a victory with this army against VC, he has pretty much decided to shelve them for a while. OnG are just too erratic, and they don't really have a lot of oomph. He's been collecting some Dark Elves, but he wanted to give the OnG one last chance. This game pretty much pushed him full DE, lol. Oh, and here is a pick of his "just reward" for being a trooper and trekking all the way across the board under a horrendous beating - That's his unit in the center, and his hand giving the ubiquitous thumbs up he does in every pic we take during games. This guy is a great opponent, and he plays tactically, but the OnG list just has epileptic fits for a few turns then craps the bed and dies. You can't make any kind of cohesive plan with the list. I can't wait till he gets his DE and we get some real nail-biters going. The other game was against another friend's Slayer army. I can't really call him a newbie to the game, but I wouldn't call him experienced either. Yet he owns one of the most expensive all metal armies in the game, go figure. Obviously this was something of a special situation, and all of us tailor to some extent because we know ahead of time who we are playing. The list was only changed in the following ways - Cupped Hands was changed for Soul of Stone Dispell scrolls, Diadem, and Saurus champs were dropped and a unit of 13 Skinks was added in. A lot more firepower in this list to deal with naked stunties. The stunties, again from memory - Demon Slayer which could have 10 attacks when not in a challenge BSB that had MR2 aura Hero-level Slayer that could ALSO generate 10 attacks when not in a challenge, albeit at S4 instead of S5 20 Slayers w/ 2HW (Hero) 10 Slayers w/ GW 24 Slayers w/ GW (BSB) 10 Long Drong's Pirates 4 Doomseekers Goblin Hewer There was a smattering of Giant Slayer's throughout. Now I'm going to be honest, I had no idea what to expect going into this game. I had heard a lot about Slayer brokenness in SoC, read much griping online and all that. I knew the list was 6 years old, but I had always heard Doomseekers and Goblin Hewers would make you cry blood. Yeah, not so much in 7th thanks to the new targeting rules. Basically, his army got its free move forward, and while his two beefy blocks trudged towards my lines (I set up a full three to four inches back, I was not riding out to meet a bunch of Unbreakable Dawi with GW's and Heroes with 10 attacks), my three skink units took him apart. The Goblin Hewer killed 4 Temple Guard. That's it, two turns of shooting. It really averages out to be about what you would expect from any other army's shooting. The Skinks were S+Shooting him to death, or defending obstacles and making his life miserable. Only 1 Doomseeker actually made it into combat (2 died to an EotG pulse, 1 died to skink shooting), and it killed 3 skinks. Then they ran and rallied, while another Skink unit peppered him to death. Long Drong's actually tried to get into a shooting match with my skinks, which ended horribly for them (they killed maybe 2). My Terradons and the third skink unit wiped the Hewer out with Rocks and poisoned darts by turn 3. My magic was suprisingly mediocre. There were at least 2 whole turns where the Slann essentially did nothing, either from failures or from dispells. However, I told him before the match "You want to put your Lord in a unit", I even explained to him how 7th targeting worked because he made a comment that it was close enough to the blocks to not be able to be hit. I threw javelins at him at one point, and made the comment AGAIN that his Lord needed to be in a unit because T5 was cute, but 3 wounds and no save of any kind was madness, he would die. I guess he was trying to keep the Lord seperate in hopes of going for the EotG, because he could rack up major points for killing a target with S/T 5 or 6. But on Turn 3, guess what spell went off right in the middle of his army? One of the only spells my Slann cast all game? Comet. Yeah, his Lord just popped. He took like 8 hits, and 4 or 5 of them wounded. Poof. By Turn 4, he had gotten both 20ish blocks all the way across the table, and then I charged the Hero block with a Saurus block, and charged the larger BSB block with my TG and other Saurus. The Engine scooted over and gave all three units Gungan shield, while my skinks and terradons all moved in to get flank and rear charges on my next turn. But after combat on my turn and the combat on his turn, we just called it. He was never striking back with anything except his heroes because I kept murdering everything else (T4 is a terrible defense when that's all you have). Even his 10 attack hero was only tossing around S4, so he killed a whopping total of 3 Saurus in 2 rounds of combat. The final tally? Dwarfs wiped out to a (half)man. I lost 16 models. 9 Skinks across the three units, 4 Temple Guard from Turn 1 and 2 shooting from the Hewer, and 3 Saurus from the one Hero. He literally scored 38 VPs total, because he reduced the one skink unit to half strength. Complete and utter massacre. I've got to hand it to him, he kept a great demeanor throughout the game - if I had lost that bad, I know I would have been waaaaaaay grumpier about it (I tend to be a good loser, but I know myself, I would not have taken that well). Since Doomseekers are fair game in 7th, even with the -1 to hit from being single models skinks eat them for breakfast, and Engine pulses practically beg for Doomseekers to be running around. The Hewer is mediocre, barely worth the skinks and Terras I sent after it. I was not all that impressed by the Slayers, but poison is the bane of that list. Even in retrospect though, I kicked the crap out of him in every fight because they don't have the slayer axes rule. He was either striking AFTER 20 S4 attacks, and dying before he swung, or he was striking at the same time as them with 10 S3 attacks. All in all, I love the Lizards. For the Old Ones!
Ok. One thing I must say. Slayers are not, and never have been overpowered. They are march/charge 6 and have no armor save. They are terrible.
Slayers = great skink skirmisher targets. Blowpipes > Slayers, GG KKthxbai! Whenever I face dwarves, I save a unit of skinks to face off against them and just sit next to their stubby little flanks and pepper them with poison darts. They only thing that gets slain, is the slayers. (sorry I couldn't resist)
I personally never called them broken, just saying that's what I have heard for years. Yeah, they were total skink fodder.