8th Ed. Am I doing something wrong or is the Bastiladon a beast?

So as some of you might've noticed I'm a complete noob. Just had my second game vs my friend (empire) and the Bastiladon have been a joy to use both time. Since both my friend and I are new there are times where we are somewhat uncertain of very specific rules that can be hard to look up. I also have a tendency to forget terror <.<

Anyway I've looked at the Bastiladon as a support unit and it is.. for the most part. It'll obviously be crushed when charged by anything remotely serious, but vs regular core units such as state troops (halbards/spears) it's eating through them no issue.

So my first time vs my friend I charged it against his halbard soldiers + warrior priest. Nothing else to help on either side. It ended up eating it's way through almost all of them without taking a single wound over several turns. I was rather surprised and didn't feel particularly lucky because we both had average rolls.

Today I had my second battle again my empire friend. The Bastiladon charged against his spear unit with level 4 mage in the 3th turn after having been lucky with 5 pistoliers and 5 regular knights (both of who I believe fled the field of battle after having lost combat and some unlucky rally tries).
It ended up killing the mage and had fun with his spearmen. No wound was given to the bastiladon.

So as I said - we're both noobs - and my friend could've been more lucky and placed his units better. Fair enough, but fact is that unless I'm doing something utterly wrong it can easily chew through troops like that. I realize they aren't good at all and that it might lose due to combat resolution, but as far as I'm concerned it has vastly outdone what I expected of it.

Last thing - last night I asked about the Ark of Sotek and people claimed it to be utter crap/useless, but it was agreed upon that it do in fact work while the Bastiladon is in combat (this is also specifically mentioned in the book). Overall I think the snakes killed roughly 8-10 out of 30 spearmen today. The first two times it didn't do much (a couple of kills if I'm not mistakening, however last time I got lucky and got off something like 9 S2 hits against the spearmen which resulted in quite a few death. I realize that against anything tougher it's rather useless, but in my world it's still pretty much free kill(s) whenever (IF!) it's succesful.




- Opinions?

 

I agree, but if I'm not mistakening they are the exception rather than the rule, right? We'll them and maybe dwarfs too. Skavens, elfs, britonnia infantry, both undead factions Will struggle with regular core units. It's not unkillabe, but for the points I find it too awesome to not include. At least so far lol

 

I suppose that depends on how you define terrible. Some people don't find it attractive to use bound spells or you might not necessarily get it off. Obviously the Ark isn't good-good, but the way I see it it's still there to grant a few extra kills at the cost of nothing - you said it yourself, we don't bring it for the Ark.

Now, while I like theory-crafting because it's a good indicator that is also all it is. For instance, I believe I got 5 kills off on my last attempt with it. Sometimes you can be lucky, other times it'll do absolutely nothing. Against most it'll be useless I agree, but I find it to be an alright ability that doesn't eat into your PD pool.

Maybe it's just me though, but I was surprised that it got something like 8 kills today due to that.

 

They are poisonous, it just doesn't matter. If you don't have to roll to hit you can't roll a "6"

And to add to the technicalities, a Bastiladon is not a beast, it's a Monster

 

Oh he was + none of ud are any good. The bastiladon was lucky wit. Its charge and ran through some pistoliers followed by a few regular knights and thus ended up close to the spearmen. But that time he had already tried to kill my steg with his cannon and killed off a cowboy with his stank due to horrible placement on my part. The inner circle knights where hoping to charge my saurus units and the gryphs apparently parked behind all of it to protect cannons or whatever.

I realize the bastiladon is no steg, but to the price I find it to be just fine. If it gets charged by something decent it'll cry and run to a corner, however it can do rather well againet S4 T3 units.. Depending on AS

 

How is the WP's hatred ability exactly? Because otherwise we're talking about the first round of combat where they have a reroll.

Anyway what I didn't realize until I read through some of the rules in the army book today is that; if you have a character in a unit he will aways be in combat since he'll move through the other units. The first time I used my bastiladon it should've been fightning against his WP as well, which is something I did not consider back then.

It makes quite a difference because I'm not currenly too scared by regular halbards, however, as you said so yourself - WPs with a great weapon will hurt it.

 

Tbh it's never my intention for it to be alone it have just happened twice now and it exceeded my expectations both times. Usually I try and get my saurus in as well. If it's within the slann leadership bubble it should,however, be able to dance around for a couple of rounds until support comes. The best thing about the bast is that it is relatively cheap and if you have high magic slann you can potentially heal a few wounds.