Updated list and further battling. Characters Slann Mage-Priest w/ The Focused Rumination w/ Army Battle Standard w/ War Banner w/ Diadem of Power w/ 1x Scroll Core 20 Saurus Warriors w/ Spears w/ Banner+Music 20 Saurus Warriors w/ Spears w/ Banner+Music 11 skinks w/ Kroxigor 11 skinks w/ Kroxigor 13 skink skirmishers w/ blopipes Special 16 Temple Guard w/ F.C. w/ Jaguar Standard Stegadon 10 Chameleon skinks w/ Blowpipes 6 Cold one cavalry w/ Banner Rare 2 Salamander Packs w/ x-tra handlers I like the new changes and think they will help against armies like the VC and Tomb Kings. Just enough dispel to stop the important stuff. I really consider taking the becalming cogitation, just to shift the toad into being a magnum scroll caddy or a sort. Salamanders kicked ass and took names something fierce. 10 chameleon skinks were also very, very nice. The deployment of salamanders was also important. I waited a bit with them to avoid targeted elimination, and got close enough to throw the fire many many times. Because my army had such amazing flank dominance, my opponent was forced into a bunched up pattern in the middle of the field, which made them super effective. The chameleon skinks are really helped by large numbers, if 2 die then there's still no panic, and 20 dice thrown at knights allows for 3.3333 poison hits, which will in time, whittle them down, and will make their stand and shoot much more impressive, especially against detachments and fast cav. The blocks with one kroxigor are super sweet, their high speed makes them get to gun lines very swiftly, and the kroxigors high T score let's it tank for the skinks on occasion. (and it thumps peple) I've come to points in each of these games where having a banner/music would help me with these units, but I'm leery of the dreaded 100 points they would give up. (and it hasn't been super critical yet) Opinions? This game, the stegadon was not really played very well, and I think that except for the vital ability to terrorize mortal armies, a unit of Cold One Cavalry would be superior. I also discovered ground breaking ideas for empire that you can tell your friends who play dwarfs and empire. He uses byzantine formation tactics, and he uses flaggelants as his stern-guard. They are unbreakable, and therefore are immune to anything fleeing through them, so he keeps two units of 6-8 flaggelants behind his lines just to stop breakthroughs from getting out of hand/ beat on them. This time around he rear deployed a unit of 20 flaggelants, and they were in a prime position to beat on some cavalry pursuing off the board, but.... the game had been decided by then. My most inefficient deployment was using some saurus to take out a cannon, and they paniced from grapeshot. My opponent has decided that he's gonna start taking just units of 15 guys so he can deploy them wherever he wants, and have better tactical freedom, rather then planning out his formation ahead of time. He's also decided that heavens is the best lore in the game, since you can place it on a cannon or other siege weapon, and it means he's immune to bad luck. I, on the other hand, have decided that taking a few skink priests might not be so terrible after all, and further, I don't feel that I really need 2 blocks of saurus. I would rather have some more dispel dice (freeing toad to start wrecking the house with spells), and make the first unit of saurus 6 guys wide (for more pokes, and potential reform to regain ranks) I may even decide to break the saurus into 3 groups of 15, or 4 groups of 13. My next army will me broken into some wonky, wonky formations. 4 groups of 13 saurus sounds good to me.
I'm liking the updates, it is cool to see the concept evolve. The only concern I have is that playing Empire so much your list will tend to shift in a direction that is really effective against them but untested against other armies. Though it seems your regular foe will be Empire anyway.. Yeah, I've seen the rear guard idea on dwarf forums as well, usually used to back up gunlines. Longbeards are immune to panic in addition to Slayers (and any unit standing next to Longbeards gets Ld 9 rerollable panic, which is near immunity). Unfortunately Slayers have to be taken in groups of at least 10. Some have employed a lone hero level dragon slayer to good effect, a single model that can pin any sized unit as long as he is alive (which doesn't tend to be long with no armor). On the 11 skinks with krox units, I would say add a muso but no banners. Once you add the banner it becomes a unit worth going after for the extra VP, since it doubles the unit's value to the opponent. So the clever opponent will realize he can focus twice as much effort against the unit and not be wasting his time. In reality, the banner doesn't improve the unit enough that it can withstand twice the punishment. The muso may not add a massive amount of effectiveness... but for its tiny cost it is worth it for the tie-breaker and increased rally chance. And of course it won't substantially increase the value of the unit to the enemy either. Reading this has gotten me interested in reworking some of my own lists, especially with regards to dropping uber characters. Good stuff so far.
I had a post typed up for this thread and then my internet browser crashed along with my computer so I"ll do my best to reconstruct my thoughts in a shorter post. I can definitely see the struggle with giving the skink/Krox units command due to the fact that like Caneg said, the unit essentially doubles in value to the opponent, and there really isn't anything thats giving it more guts to take punishment. I would also think that your ability to get to the gun lines is partially because the opponent underestimates the unit's strength in combat given the numbers, ranks and potential wounds. This all comes together into a unit that isnt' worth charging to easily take out (especially if it's positioned correctly) but is really strong enough to handle the weaker infantry, gun lines and warmachine crews. I think I'd push for a musician and leave the SCR to ranks and numbers. If you're still not convinced either way, toss a standard in one of the units and see if your opponent changes his mind about wether or not he'll go after it. I did have a question about your sarus. Last line of your post, you are considering taking 4 units of 13. Why is this precisely?
New update, but addressed concerns first. (played chaos) 13 is a magic number in this game because it's enough to require 4 deaths for panic. Also, for saurus the plan was to make them 6 wide to maximize the number of spear attacks. (24 averages out to 8 dead halberdiers or 6 2/3 dead swordsmen.....which is disgusting considering they also get +1 CR for a rank. It's enough to hold out a serious block of humans without needing a banner. The actual army I went with was pretty different. I dropped the extra handlers, dropped 5 chameleon skinks, and dropped the magic banner for the temple guard. I got 4 extra saurus for each unit, and gave the skinks musicians, while dropping the musicians from the saurus units. I also took the becalming cogitation instead of the focused rumination. This army worked unimaginably well, and I think my deployment was a tactical masterstroke. I had arranged the terrain so that a pond was in the middle left area, forested hill to the middle right, and a long hedge between the pond and the left table area. I took the first turn and advanced the krox units into the pond and advanced the chameleons to shoot at the marauder horsemen (and do nothing) I was out of range for spells and didn't hit anything with the stegadon bow. He charged the krox with marauders, he failed fear. (lol) He charged the saurus with the dragon, etc. Highlights of the game. Kroxigor flank charged the knights and held. other kroxigor moved in front of the knights and later flank charged the block of chaos warriors and won (with the aid of the "your sword is now lead" spell from metal). The unit broke and was caught by the krox. The regular blowpipe skinks sexually molested the other marauders with pipes in a lucky pew round and the cold ones came around back. Slann cogitated his one wizard into failing a spell, and I then got off the ultimate spell from the lore of metal, killed 4 knights, and a lucky stegadon bolt killed 3 more (through the flank) The saurus still were tarpitting the dragon. Kroxigor2 fled from the flank of the knights when the marauders came, and he managed to escape, toad turned to them and transmuted their armor into magma, wiping the unit out. (his scroll caddy had already blown his scrolls, before dying to the lucky bolt) Eventually the dragon hit the temple guard and that's where the problem happened. My opponent had a grand total of two guys at one point in the game, and I had only lost a unit of saurus and chameleon skinks. Rather then quitting, he through his chaos fighter lord and his dragon into the toad, brought his BSB on a Juggernaught, and went to town. I flanked with the stegadon and... didn't hurt him. I gave them the debuff of lead, had the stegadon flanked, nothing helped. At one point in the game I brought in another unit of saurus to fill ranks, had a steg on the flank, and a krox unit and 2 sallies in the rear, and.... still lost combat. These guys killed like.... 11 guys that turn. Eventually, my whole army piled into that fight and died, and he scraped up enough points to win the game with a Mv. (he had last turn, and he dragon breathed some knights for points and a table quarter) My room mate, (who plays tomb kings), seemed fascinated by the outflanks and tactical maneuvering I had throughout that game, but then watched the fight with the two chaos heroes and could only say "HOW THE HELL IS ANYONE SUPPOSED TO BEAT THOSE GUYS?!!?11one". To a newbie having only played this game a few times, I really didn't have an answer. My opponent just said "avoid them". Granted, I probably could have pulled out a win just by running around the map with benny hill music playing and avoided those guys the whole game, but.... this is the first time I've seen such a retardedly powerful hero duo before and frankly it boggles me that totally surrounding them with literally half my army was not enough. I recall now that in the tournament I had an engine of the gods, and this allowed me to just sit nearby bombing things with burning alignment while the slann tarpitted. (which he definitely did, even against this crap) I think that, in my next list iteration, I will be replacing the diadem of power with a skink priest, and my regular stegadon with an engine. This pretty much sums up how the battle went
yeah it sucks to have 2 characters hold up that much of your army but you have to figure that those 2 characters were probally worth half of your army so taking them out would have pretty much won the game for you that is what tarpit units are for then you can surround and win with SCR
Sounds like a fantastic battle to me! You mentioned that your opponent had a dragon though. This is a point sink as far as army construction is concerned and if they roll well, its very difficult to kill them. I laughed when I read that you opponent simply said that you should avoid them (the enemy characters). Considering those were the only two things left on the board, it is difficult to just avoid them at that point. Considering that the one was mounted on a dragon. I don't the point of posting this? Honestly, why bother? Sounds to me like he did this at the end of the game and still lost. Of course, sometimes the dice are to blame for this. But when you're talking about close to ~1000pts of characters their attacks are going to be so powerfull that crashing 'the kitchen sink' into the flanks and rear will just cause the chaos player to target your weakest T models in order to try and negate that high SCR. You'd have to throw your toughest, highest armor save troops into a fight like that to make the choices as difficult as possible on what to sink your attacks into. Perhaps I have a bad memory, but you may try sending skirmishing skinks at the dragon to try and kill it with poison. Although I guess you might be hitting the character mounted there (which would essentially not do anything). Other than that, it sounds like you did everything you could.
Against the mortals was he issuing a challenge every turn? If he was, and your army has ANY unit champions, get them into the fight. Sure he will win the challenge and the combat, but you only lose one model rather than 5 or 6. It also limits the wounds to the combat the lord can get to 6, not great, but still a help. Just a heads up.
I darn near never take champions. Up until now challenging has only been a n issue if a hero is in the unit, so I can kill some guys. I've seen this crap before, just never really did much about it. The champ would likely have bought me quite a few turns, and I will heavily consider them. The problem is, if I DO have a champ take the combat, then he rolls on the eye of the gods and potentially gets EVEN WORSE.
Did you continue using The Rule of Burning Iron, Law of Lead and Law of Gold? All three of these are pretty destructive against Chaos Just something to keep in mind as all three of these can be cast into combat