So, I took Lore of Fire on my Slann today... why don't I see this used more? Fireball is my new favorite spell, it's so versatile and does great damage. Also, Piercing Bots of burning is a wonderful spell vs hoards. I also got Flamestorm, but I don't like it as much. Anyone had luck with this lore?
It's not that it's a bad lore, it's more that it fills less gaps in the army than other lores. What kind of unit are you running your slaan in?
I run my Slann in a small temple guard unit. I probably love the lore because I don't use skinks much.
The problem I have with fire in a unit of templeguard is that you can't use burning head legally. It's a direct damage spell and has to hit one of your own guys. While fire does make up for the lack of skinks. Picking another lore and bringing skinks would be even better. I'm not saying that to be flippent, but more because we are talking about things being effective, not purely fluffy or fun or another similar reason. Edit: You mentioned burning head before, the refresh button seems to have taken it away. I'm guessing you realised it's not legal to be used in a TG unit, which is why I asked about the unit you run in. I've seen a few people running slaans in saurus units. It opens up one of the better spells in fire to be used, and you can get out of dodge if you there is a dwellers or purple sun coming up. Fire just isn't for me I'm afraid. I'm using 40 skinks skirmishers currently, which I might up a bit after seeing how effective the skink skirmish army of doom was at the warington warlord GT.
Why put him in a unit of expensive saurus (who you probably don't want to place into close combat) when you can just toss him into a unit of skink skirmishers and give him -1 to be shot at and a look out sir roll It also give him less models to blow up if he miscasts.
Interesting idea on the skirmishers. I never really thought a slann should be in anything but a TG unit, and I agree that there are other lores that fill the gaps in my army better. I was contemplating this though, since the Lore of fire now gets easier to cast on a unit for each previoius success, how viable could it be to have two slanns with extra power dice throwing as many fire spells as possible each turn?
Putting a slaan in a unit of saurus means you can still play defensive with a naturally defensive unit. Putting him into a unit of skinks means holding back an aggressive unit with more flexbility. Pulling a slaan out of unit to hide him behind a building is better than -1 and can't be achieved with a TG unit. Personally I run with TG, but the more games I play the more I see why people would prefer the flexibility.
If you put him with saurus he can be attacked directly, unlike TG. The point of tossing him with cheap skinks was to protect him from shooting and template attacks in the event you didn't want to pay for TG, and were planning on keeping him away from the enemy anyways. Its not an ideal plan, but it is an option since they made him infantry. Being infantry, he can be Killing Blow'd, against some armies you would never want him in CC in the front rank.