Admittedly I never leave home without a BSB, but for a Flying unit who wants to be roaming the enemy lines looking for targets of oppertunity or their Bloat Toads, unless you have a Terradon BSB who is keeping close (and, consequently, not covering the rest of your lines), you won't be in the re-roll bubble much.
Presumably there's potential that the Slann is a large target in this book? Even if not, it's not impossible to keep them within 12" until they want to charge. Also, if i'm reading their entry correctly, it's altogether possible they will do some serious damage to whatever they charge anyway! Does seem to preclude taking more than 3-4 in a unit though. Sadly agree with carnosaur remaining fairly useless, unless there's a magic item to make him harder. Even if the EotG stays as is, he dies too bad in combat anyway. New rumour on warseer stating Slann retains access to loremaster. If that's true, some insane combos with the lore attribute from high!
Totaly agree with you, its like fliping a coin to se who gets the victory points! All the other rules sound really cool though!
SWEET! Loremaster Slan again! What do you mean by restricted? If you choose one of them thats all you can get? Or how does it work?
He probably just means that you can not have certain combinations, like maybe you can't have loremaster and becalming cogitations but you can have loremaster and MR3. Seems like a kind of stupid way for them to de-power the slann and I wonder if any thought will be put in to the fluff as to why this is. Perhaps they will come up with a ranking system for disciplines where you can take a rank 1 with a rank 4 or 5 but not with a rank 2, or some crap. Thats besides the point though, I think they will just restrict certain combos, or so is my guess.
Yeah, holding them back as a reserve seems to be the soundest bet. I wouldn't be too optimistic about the damage out put. Bare in mind they are W3, T3, I3 and 4+ AS. It will take approximately 16 WS2-3 S3 attacks to kill one Ripper, 10 WS2-3 S4 attacks, and a mere 7 WS4+ S4 attacks. Bare in mind that most stuff out there is I3 or better, and you need 3 MC models to deny Steadfast. How do they do on the attack? Well, against WS3-5, T3, 5+ infantry (most Core) you still need about 3 attacks (not including re-rolls). Against WS3-5, T4, 4+ (Dwarfs, Chaos Warriors, some elites) its closer to 4 . Then it gets its face smashed in. With re-rolls you do a little better: its closer to 2 and 3 attacks, respectively. If you add all those numbers up and 4 of them get their maximum Frenzy attacks, they kill 12 non-elite Core or 9 elites, which sounds good - I mean, 9 dead Chaos Warriors right? Except remember that that's assuming above average Frenzy rolling and not losing any models first (unlikely, given the above). On an average roll they only kill 10 and 8; and on below average its 8 and 6. Take away the re-rolls and additional Frenzy, and those numbers are much, much lower. It seems to me that a Ripper's ideal target is probably catching a unit of Knights on the charge. With your Killing Blow you can make the most of those 6s to ignore armour save; you've got Armour Peircing anyway and a bucket load of attacks so some of them will go through even if they aren't KB, the Knights (At least the non-Warriors variety) won't have their extra deadly charge bonus attacks, and due to their large base size you can bring a lot to bare on the flank whilst being relatively protected. You do sacrifice the ability to stomp, though. Are cavalry all that much of a problem at the moment? No, not really. This isn't actually a tool that Lizardmen particularly need. You could try them at hunting Monstrous Cav, but Skullcrushers will kill them just as easily on the charge as being charged, and against everything else you are losing your Stomps and Killing Blow potential. Same with Monsters and Chariots, except both also usually have higher Toughness. Monstrous Infantry might be easier to wound and usually have Great Weapons to strike last or low Initiative, but you still aren't making anything of Stomps or Killing Blow, and any MI you don't kill will smash the Rippers into little peices. Going on the above numbers, 4 Rippers might kill 2 MI if they are lucky; that still leaves 4 out of a usual unit size. You can probably cut through poor Core infantry, if you go in a flank or rear and have enough models in a unit (4+) to take a wound or two and still deny Steadfast. But do Lizardmen really struggle with killing poor Core infantry? No - its actually the one thing our Saurus are good at killing. They could go chaff or wizard hunting, I suppose. But so can Chameleons, Skirmishers and Terradons - without the unreliability of LD5 Frenzy (which would be an issue if you are hunting, because you are roaming far from the BSB and General). You might get some mileage out of hunting flying characters, like the infamous Pegasus Pendant masters or Third Eye Disco Exalted... except they are immune to Killing Blow, thanks to the latest GW FAQ on monstrous mounts. You could try assassinating models on foot... except they'll likely be hiding in a block, in which case, a single Skink Chief on a Ripper with some magic items, for much less cost, is probably a better investment. If you're going to do it, I agree that 4 minimum is the way to go. I'd maybe consider two units of 4 or a big unit of 6, but those are some pricey numbers (if they are the same base cost as the Skink Chief mount, which isn't unreasonable, you're looking at 320 for two units of 4 or 240 for the bigger unit). I just don't see what sort of role they are supposed to fill or what they are meant to bring to the table :/ Edit: Based solely on BRB items, as we don't know what the rulebook ones are, the build I'd use for the Ripper Chief would be something like light armour, shield, spear, Other Trickster's Shard, Dragonhelm and Opal Amulet for 126 points. No offensive items, because the damage is all going to come from the Ripper: he has a 2+ armour save and 4+ ward against the first wound, to ensure the Ripper gets a chance, and the OTS helps any Ripper KBs beat ward saves. This build is the exact same cost as 3 Rippers with a marked improvement in viability (tougher, more reliable thanks to better Ld, can challenge out rather than facing whole unit, etc).
I think people are too caught up on Ld5 and Frenzy. As a vampire player, the Vargeists fail Frenzy about as often as the cold blooded skinks will. The key is to stay within the generals bubble for 1 turn (testing on Ld9/Ld10), marching out to face several enemies, and charging the next turn. Frenzy forcing you to charge the closest only kicks in if you do not declare a charge. With flying, you can charge over units you don't want to hit, or could even declare a very, very, long charge if you don't want to go into combat and you find yourself outside of the Ld bubble. As for the crying about the carnisaur, you have to look at it in context of the army as a whole. With the potential for 4 or 5 other monsters in the army, the Carnisaur becomes survivable via saturation. Or, the other 4-5 monsters gain better survival via saturation. Do you fire on the Carnisaur, or the stubborn steggadons? -Matt
Pure guess but I think it may identifity enemy magic items and do something to them, perhaps destroy one at random.
Costs 15pts, so it wont destroy magic items. Maybe reveals hidden units & magic items, or gives some casting bonuses against units within X" of Trolololdon.
rather unlikely to be destroying magic items for 15pts surely? Regarding rippers, given that they fly, I would think getting them in the flank of enemies is a good idea? Massively cuts down on return attacks if nothing else. Probably best used in a combo fight. Did anyone else notice in one of the preview pics the options for the BSB? Mentions Mazdamundi, so hopefully he'll be some use this time around!
Most tournaments and friendly games, at least locally, are open list, so i really hope it doesnt reveal hidden stuff in a unit. At 15 points though I can't imagine it doing much more.
"I just don't see what sort of role they are supposed to fill or what they are meant to bring to the table :/" Assassination is their primary role. They are almost always going to be a sacrificial unit, where you send them in to hopefully do more damage than they are worth. I say 3 for 120 is a deal, considering they will do 12-16 rerollable KB attacks against their intended target, plus a few more stomps and skink attacks. The other benefit of them is psychological, where the opponent might move characters to places he otherwise wouldn't once you have targeted the unit he was planning for his bunker. Probability states that your unit of rippers will more than likely fail to kill the vampire lord from the unit he was planning on bunkering in. But at the same time you can't rely on the rippers 100%, your opponent is probably not willing to accept even a 10% chance of losing the linchpin of his army. So maybe he jumps his characters to other units he wasn't planning on using? Now, without the rippers even lifting a finger, they have caused the enemy to alter his plans. The rippers have already pulled their weight on the field, as just their threat was enough to cause the opponent to alter his strategy. The game is risk minimization. Sun Tzu said something about the best warfare strategy being to attack the enemy's plans... if you force the enemy to respond to a threat by moving his characters away from his planned unit, you are attacking his plans.
My best case scenario for the divining rod would be something like this (for 15 points) "One use only. During any friendly magic phase, if an enemy model within 18 inches is subject to the Arcane Unforging spell from the Lore of High Magic, the casting player may use the Divining Rod's power to select the item to be destroyed, instead of the item being randomly determined as normal." OR You could drop the "one use" aspect and instead of selecting the destroyed item you could allow a reroll when determining which item is destroyed by the spell.
What if the enemies plan is to let you think you are altering his plans? Dun dun dun... All in all, the Ld 5 issue is going to be rough no matter what. If you run the Skink Chief BSB on a Terradon tactic, you're still relying on Ld 5. I'd much rather have that Chief in the unit to grant Ld 6, because he more than likely will never be your general. Ld 5 --> 52.3% Ld 6 --> 68.0% Ld 5 + BSB --> 77.2% Ld 6 + BSB --> 89.7% At least they're not subject to Stupidity, like their faces suggest.
Maybe its just me but when I heard divining rod, my mind jumped to dousing rod. Something like place a small water feature on the board at the start of the game.