Made a mistake in the first post by adding the costs, sorry about that. I've only played 8th edition once, a 1k army for fun. Hopefully this will be a bit more effective. Would love some feedback on the list and my strategy. lords: Slann, lvl 4. 3 diciplines. folding fortress, Banner of Eternal Flame. Lore of Life. Focus of Mastery, The Focused Ruimination, Soul of Stone heroes: Skink Priest, lvl 2, Cupped hands of the old ones, engine of the gods. Skink Priest, lvl 1. core: Saurus Warriorsx20,cmnd grp Skink Skirmisherx10 Skink Skirmisherx10 Skink Skirmisherx10 Skink Skirmisherx10 special units: Stegadon rare units: salamanders x3 total 1990(guess ill throw inn a skink champion or something) My main strategy will be to deploy the tower with Slann and his saurus buddies inside, protected by the two stegadons and salamanders. The skinks will run around chasing low armor save units, and hopefully being able to disrupt some warmachines as well. Magic is the main focus of this army, so the magic phase will be cruical. Using the Slann dicipline, Skink with cupped hands and Throne of Vines to protect from misscasts. Will start phase by casting vines, then a boosted comet of cassadora, then continue with whatever i can damage with. In following rounds I will use Life spells to help keep the Stegadon/Salamanders/Skink priests around the tower alive, the ward save aura from Engine will always be up against ranged armies. I'm guessing strong melee generals with a powerful regiment might be my biggest trouble, hopefully im able to wear them down with magic. Warmachine heavy armies can also be able to break my ranged protection/kill stegas before I get the chance to heal, hoping to either kill them with Comets or send skinks after them. When something approaches my tower the Flame attacks from salamanders and Saurus + Terror from stegadons will hopefully send some running as well. Any input?
Well first off, it's weird to see Fozzrik's Folding fortress. It tends to banned in tournament play due to it's effect on game balance (due to the weakness of the building rules and no set size on how big it should be). In a word you're concept of taking a fortress and casting magic out of it will be pretty damn effective. Your actual execution with this list will be a bit mixed. First off your Slann, I'd swap the flaming banner for the leadership banner. You're going to be hanging out in the building with no intention to leave so you want to make sure that the odds of you failing a panic/stubborn break test go from highly unlikely (re-roll ld. 9) to more likely to get eaten by rabid squirrels (re-roll ld. 10). As for choice of lore, I'm guessing your plan is to make the Saurus so hard to kill that you never get out of the building. That'll probably work, but your offensive power is down to just Dweller's, which is a fantastic spell, but it doesn't tend to finish units super effectively. I'd look at something like Metal or Death, you can use it to snipe people's toys off and wreck units, Metal also has the magic missiles which wreck expensive, heavily armoured units completely. The thing is you're going to be bleeding points through the skinks with a good player without collecting too much of your own. Most of your ability to collect points currently comes from Dwellers against characters. Your Heroes: No reason to have a L2 Skink Priest as your Slann should be using every die you generate. EOTG could be good here in terms of giving the tower a 5+ against shooting and you can just hide behind the tower. Try to get a scroll on the Level 1. Troops: Fine, but consider dropping the champ on the Saurus. Because of building rules (and you'll always want to be defending your fortress) there's not a lot of point. Special: If you want to harass and slow down an opponent than Terradons and Camo Skinks are far more use than a stegaond. Rare: Break it into a unit of 2 and a unit of 1. 2 units is better than 1. General Advice: Master the building rules. In order to beat you an opponent will have to kill your Slann most of the time. Even if you don't double flee against him he won't be able to declare a charge until turn 3: Wear those 2 turns of combat the best you can until the next turn you'll have less than 10 Saurus to send out (opponent's T5), then you just get out of the building on the opposite side of his combat blocks and are safe from combat for the rest of the game. Buildings are an absolute pain for ranked troops and you should never lose your Slann in combat by knowing when to get out, when to stay and ensuring you have a safe walk out of the tower.
I don't like the concept of the list first off. And if I were facing it, unless I have a really good army for assaulting buildings, I would just refuse to come within 24" of the fortress (Dweller's range). I would not engage on your terms and we would probably end up with a draw. Smart players would probably play for a draw against you, but some others will go ahead and try to win, probably get smoked, and then curse you as a cheesemeister, either openly or behind your back. You aren't going to make any friends taking the fortress as it makes it very difficult for you to lose (although lots of artillery could tear you a new one). I see ways to make the list nastier, but am not sure I want to point them out ...
Yeah this sums up how I'd play against it. I'd sit 25" away and shoot off your units for a small win. You're a newer player so I don't think you realise just how much fozzrik's folding fortress is frowned upon. I'd like to think I play pretty competitively with a very very hard list and enjoy out of the book warhammer, but I would never consider allowing anyone to use a folding fortress at an event I ran. Not even the greatest advocates of zero comp war hammer think the folding fortress belongs in an actual game.
The major damage will come from the Skinks. The priests will throw out Comets and Chain Lightning, while the skinks hunt down whatever they can. The Stegadon will provide a long range alternative + a double stegadon charge should be able to tear a new one to whatever regiment that decides a tower assault is a good idea. The main focus is point denying and spelldamage. With so much points tied up around that tower, his only plan can be to either try to assault the tower or to snipe skinks/stegadons. That is where the Lore of Life comes in to play, Slann will be there mainly to just keep the army alive. Lore of Shadow and some others provide a lot more offensive force, but I dont want to risk too much in my magic phase with misscasts etc. If he decides to hunt skinks they can just retreat to the tower. The tournament allowes the tower, but must be deployed as a GW watchtower. Also using the ETC line of sight rules.
Assuming they get those spells, they will usually be dispelled. If your only threat is a level 2 caster with one spell, it isn't much of a threat. Plus those spells really aren't that good unless your dice are rolling hot. But it isn't that good at points denial. You have plenty of points outside the tower that can be taken by various means.