Okay, so I was looking through my models, and after a horrendously annoying lore of death moment past week, I find myself working up from an angle previously denied. I am trying to find a way to get a combat-heavy list against Ogres. My main concern with the ogres aren't the cannons, and not the deathstars, but those bloody Lore of Death wizards of theirs! So Basically I wanted to go completely bonkers against them, and put the meanest beasty in my army against them; my carnosaur. Seeing as it's WS is equal to that of their wizards, and Carnosaurs are killers of large things... (seriously, I've seen a single carnosaur bite the living crap out of 2 dragons!) now, I know full well that trying to take Ogres head on is suicide, so I had to get around that, and that's where My Slann comes in. Seeing as it is a Storm of Magic game, I can have both my Slann and my Carnosaur(without rider) on the field. I'd take a few other nasty beasties against Ogres such as Razordons and Terradons , and load as many of my special slots full of Cham-skinks, normal skinks and Kroxes. any points left would go to some jungle swarms, because those tend to wreak havoc amongst my enemies. But now I want to know your opinion; could this list work, and what perks should I give my slann? also: what would you do if you know that everytime this ogre player comes up against you, and decides to in the last minute change his preferred lore to Death when he sees you unloading Lizardmen on the field instead of High Elves? And is there a propper way of wrecking the same havoc on them?
As an Ogre player (who does not change lore at the site of the army I will face), I alway take lore of Death on my slaughtermaster. He will probably have the Greedy Fist, Armor of Destiny (yes, it is cheesy so if he changes lore like that, he will have it). You need to deny him 6s. Take Becalming Cogitation. You should also take 2 skink priests. One with the dispell scroll and one with the cube. They will get you close enough to deny his 6s. On the plus side, for him to target the carnisaur or the slann he will have to be within 24 inches of them. My .02 cents.
what exactly does Greedy Fist and Armour of Destiny(isn't that the 4+ wardsave armour? o.0) do? ... and wouldn't getting in range of becalming get my slann in range of his deadly spells? I mean, losing a slann in a serious risk, especially when you've got a I of 1....and you don't want to be run over by a big purple bowling ball of death with that kind of obvious weakness. Even with Chakax, Lore of Life and a darn good defence with Temple Guards, you still have to worry of innitiative-bombs T^T...I mean, you've got 2 turns max to take out his mages... And ogre-mages are tough T^T the best I can do is throw it a bone with Dwellers and hope he messes up his saves...
Greedy fist allows the slaughtermaster to steal a level and a spell with each HIT (not wound) against another caster. This includes the death spells that cause hits. The newest Ogre FAQ clarifies that it does work that way. It is a nasty combination. I used it over the weekend to drop a DE sorceress to lvl0 on 4 hits. The Armor of Destiny gives an AS of 4+ (with ironfist) and a ward save of 4+. This is mentioned in the FAQ as well. It is also mentioned in the FAQ that it could be considered Cheesy! The greedy fist also will turn any magical weapon in CC into a mundane weapon if the slaughtermaster makes a ward save against the slaughtermaster. The key is to not allow him to get those spells off. Denying 6s will allow you to dispell those, even if he uses a power scroll (halves cost of spell you are casting). Any butchers that he takes should not be too much trouble. What I would do in a 2k+ game is to have those two skink priest. On his first turn, use cube of darkness and try to end his phase. Then use the scroll on the second turn. By the third turn, you will be able to use becalming cogitation to nerf his Death caster. The only other thing to worry about is the Hellheart. The Hellheart is used at the start of your magic phase. The Ogre player rolls 2d6 and multiplies that by 5. That is the range on the hellheart. It then causes any caster in range to roll on the miscast table (without casting a spell). Then, for every caster 'hit,' the Ogre player gets 1 dispell dice for the turn.
yes.. I understand it so far, but that still leaves the question on how I can kill him as quickly, Lizardmen aren't exactly known for their shooting-phases. and getting on close combat is a death-sentence for Saurus Warriors, since Ogres have a +1 innitiave compared to our I1... Sure, TG have I2 but that only equals out, and CoC too, but even they can't last against that. That's where the Carnosaur in my idea came to, to have it charge the flank, and use it's terror to lower the Ogre's WS to 1.
Lore of light would help with this. Speed of light will allow you to attack first. If you happen to get Birona's timewarp off as well, you turn your saurus into killing machines! Add Pha's protection for the -1 to attack and you have much better protection. That is the only way that I know of to offset that. Poison does not work against Slaughtermasters or Butchers. The only other option would be to use shadow (Pit of Shades) or Death (Purple Sun). Myself, I would probably go with Lore of Light as I count it as my favorite lore anyway.
Lore of Light?... hmm, I always ranked it as one of the lesser lores, especially when compared to the lore of Life. I mean, the prospect of a regenerating T8 A2 S5 block of Templeguards that are stubborn is something to be feared by even ogres. I've often ran that group in to the middle of the enemy line, and just hammer anything in my path... and while Dwellers is only S3, it still has a track record of destroying 1/3 in a group of Ogres. Awakening the woods also tends to work very well, despite having litterally almost no forests on the field since my opponents fear cham-skinks and even skink skirmishers in those woods too much. As a result of them crying unfair each time either water or wood comes on the table, we hardly use those terrain-options. I mean, Water is a plus for skinks since they are hardly affected by it, and forests are a great spot to shoot from with Cham-skinks. Lore of light, in the light of your arguments(OwO see what I did there?) does not seem as weak as I measured it to be. I wonder how my opinion will be affected once I've tested it out on the field...Is there any specific trick I can aim for to hit them as revenge for treading my jungles and binding my hands by restricting the board-setup with a maximum of 1 pond of less that 5 inches broad/wide and a maximum of 2 Citadel forests.
I like casting Birona's timewarp in my first turn. My oponent may let it through, not thinking about the charges on my 2nd turn (after his movement into range). That will give your skrox unit a base movement of 10 (rang of around 17 inches on a 2d6 roll of 7 average). Get it on Cavalry and you get 3d6 + 10. Saurus (and TG) that have base movement of 8 (plus if you take hanuichi's banner for the extra dice added to a charge). One time I got that off and made 2 charges into some Brettonians. It was amazingly effective. It will work with Ogres as they will not be getting their impact hits because you get to them first. Then follow that up with another Birona's (this is more of a decoy for them to waste dice on). Then cast speed of light on them. WS 10 I10 Saurus (or TG) for the win. If you are really lucky, you can get Pha's protection as well. That would mean that rank and file troops only hit on 6s (Tyrant and Bruiser will still hit on 5 with pha's up, their WS is 5). Make sure to take cupped hands if you use the lore of light though.
I think I can guess why; Light doesn't have a fail-safe against miscasts... thanks ^_^, I think I can take it from here ^_^ I'll post once more in here when the game has been fought next friday. ^w^ to let you know how it went.