Good point about the toad. That is sort of a bummer. What exactly do you mean by "Seconds it appears to be the only way to get more than 10 skinks in a unit'?
Also I am very excited to try Vast Intellect on my Slann. I was so in love with double tp, but Vast Intellect seems even better after the nerf to the 2 basic spells. With the changes to LoST and the EoTG, the Skink Starseer's rerolls seem so much better. I wonder if we can make both work together. Once you put both in a list and add in a battalion you are already at 600ish points!!!! I can see a very aggressive list that includes a Slann and a Starseer and goes all in for double charges from tp.
You can get re-rolls from the starseer ability where both players conceal a die at the start of a turn, and if it's not a tie, you get as many re-rolls as shown on the die you concealed.
No I meant how do you tell any-dice it has to use re-rolls (and how to use em given that you're only going to use em in the case of "failed" rolls not in all cases)
A re-roll on a single die is the same as adding an extra die to the roll, so you put highest 3 of 5d6, 6d6, etc... instead of highest 3 of 4d6
Hey I just noticed that anydice has a nice little programming language behind it. With a few conditions you could do all kinds of stuff with it, including chances on rerolling only ones and such stuff... Hard to do on my mobile though, I have to try that on my PC.
Not that I can see on the leaks, 12 has saurus etc but no skinks. Weird that we can get 20 saurus for 18 but not 20 Skinks without the eotg
Been thinking about summoning a lot. Chromatic cogs and balewind are obvious helps as I expect we can covert the extra spell into celestial points. Cogs are even better since they fix one of the issues with summoning by adding to charge distance. We can reliably get 26 points by movement phase t2 by having a skink cast cogs for the Slann, or by taking kroak. Slann plus astrolith is another obvious candidate and can make the 24 turn to on average, rolling 1 on the d3 either time will prevent this though. Going full on summoning with slann, cogs, balewind and astrolith can get you up to 19 points a turn by t3. Not sure that's any good though since your summoned units can't move until next turn and 20 saurus in turns 3,4 and 5 aren't likely to be game winning if you've sunk several hundred points into the combo anyway. Personally, I'll probably go middle ground, get some skinks out, save for some terradons and cast spells in the meantime..
I think your right, bring skinks in to block or grab objectives and cast spells otherwise your sinking points into summoning and that stops one of our most powerful Hero's doing what they do best.
why cant they show till next turn? you sacrifice spells in the hero phase and summon in the movement phase now.
Honestly, summoning cogs and controlling it will be super important. I think a lot of melee/horde armies will be trying to use their own Cogs. It can be game changing and because of its design, it can be harder to dispell if it is hidden behind LOS block terrain. Although the healing spell is 60 points, I wonder if it is small enough to hide behind our beasties? If you can block LOS with Basti or EoTG, it could be pretty dang good. I also think teleporting a Skink Starpriest in for Aethervoid Pendulum/Prism of Amynotk nuke is legit. Pretty pumped that a lot of the new things in this edition fit with Seraphon's strengths.
They can show but they can't move so might not be doing much. Either summon ranged units or play the usual 9" charge game. I was really thinking in terms of the carno, the game is well under way by turn 3 so he might have limited impact
get the cogs spell endless spell, extra inches on the charge, and if you have vast intellect you can add one to one of the charge dice to get him in.. only need 6" at that point... and if you also summon an old one on foot its 4" I think.
Old blood on foot fixates one model in the unit and the rest reforms around that one. So not very useful for single model units like Carnosaur.
I think one of our unsung heroes for summoning might be Razordons; remember what they do to enemy units that finish a charge within 3" of them, and that by that wording the enemy doesn't need to be charging them... For only six points, that's going to be a reasonable amount of hurt to dissuade people from charging your squishier troops. I'm toying with the idea of running two Astroliths as forward summoning positions, and insurance in case one dies. A Razordon by each of them would worry any melee attackers who've fought through the summons, and pair that Razordon with the Astrolith letting him reroll misses...