So. i am playing a friendly game with one my friends and i am thinking of trying new type of hammer unit. Its 5 scar-vets on coldones with great weapons and light armor. 20 WS5 STR7 hits in the flank, costs 580 points though, could be a fun surprise. could go halbards and the not hit last last perhaps. i already have a slann with templeguard 2 units of saurus and 4 salamanders + some chameleons. What do you guys think? anyone tried something like this before?
i didnt think charcters could make up units entirely of characters? If they cant then abit risky if you roll rubbish on all their charges and you get just 1 in. nice idea though...just maybe take an engine for the 5+ward until they get to combat. all well and good saying that you might cast this spell or that to make sure they do...but if you get snake eyes for winds and they channel and you basically get nothing magic wise then its alot of points to prey thet dont get chot down...and armour saves can be ignored by alot of stuff
characters can indeed not form units on their own, but you could keep them separate and charge in with all at once. EDIT: Stonecutter is right, they CAN join other characters and for a unit. sorry for teh confusion i would probably go for a spear instead of a great weapon, just to get that 1+ save, but i guess that depends a bit on what your are facing. point for point they seems like a marginally stronger option than normal cold one cavalry, but against really tough stuff they should out preform them. problem is that cold one cavalry is fairly weak atm. also, it feels a bit... wrong. but i guess that if you arent going to use the hero points any other way you might as well do this as buying a big unit of CoC.
The prohibition on characters forming their own units has been lifted in 8th edition so the unit is actually now legal in the game (p. 97, 1st para under "What Units Can I Join?") whereas it wasn't before. The main problem with fielding an all character unit on cold ones is that a template attack will hit with no look out sir rolls so one flank cannon shot and the unit is gone!! For the points invested, it might be better to go with a couple of large skrox units (3 krox each). Another option would be only 3 heros and use the excess points to field a unit of cold ones. This would give them a banner, look out sir and the ability to negate enemy rank bonuses without giving up the active combat res that would result from skinks in a skrox unit.
If you're going to do that you might want to give them all cheap magic weapons (in case of ethereal) and take lore of beasts on your Slaan... Wildform + AOE Savage Beasts + AOE Pann's = 35 WS 5 S9 T9 AS 1+. That should pretty much mow through anything.
Is anyone aware of how these would compare stats-wise to a 5-man unit of Blood Knights and/or Chaos Knights? It would be interesting to see how a Unit of elite saurus (Scar-Vets) compared to those elite cavalry
Hard to compare in units of 5, since the scar vet unit would be much more expensive. Even after marks, full command, and a magic banner you could get 11 (10 with lances) Chaos Knights (the smart move would be mark them with Nurgle and give the the Banner of Rage) or 8 Blood Knights with the sword of might and the razor standard for the price of 5 basic scar vets. WS is the same across (unless the CK are marked Nurgle). Scar vets are tougher, stronger after the charge (even with the BK), more attacks per model, but have lower I and suffer from stupidity. They would also have to be individually targeted, which might let them live longer but they wouldn't have a command group.