Composition: Lord: Fifth Gen Slann W/Battle Standard Bearer and War Banner Heroes: 3x Scar Vets With Sacred Spawning of Itzl and Quetzl. Hand Weapons, Shields, Light Armor, and Halberds. One is equipped with a Sword of Might and an Enchanted Shield instead of a halberd and shield. One is lacking a shield. Core: 10 Skinks w/ pipes and hand weapons 10 Skinks w/ pipes and hand weapons 10 Skinks w/ javelins, shields, and hand weapons 10 Skinks w/ javelins, shields, and hand weapons 14 Temple Guard w/ Full command w/ Banner of Huanchi w/ Shields Special: 13 Saurus Warriors w/ Sacred spawning of Quetzl w/ musician w/ banner 13 Saurus Warriors w/ Sacred spawning of Quetzl w/ musician w/ banner Rare: 1 Stegadon 1 Stegadon Now I realize this may seem very strange at first, and certainly flies in the face of the local paradigm of "what's good", but allow me to explain how this works. First, the queer numbers of Saurus and Guard, they are meant to have the Scar Vets join within the ranks, riding their cold ones. The Scar Vet with all the magic equipment typically joins the slann's group. The Scar vets are the real workhorses of this army, since they will grant immunity to fear as long as they are alive, and further, will occasionally scare off other units. In addition, their armor save is incredibly high, at a 0+ when not using your halberd. Even lacking a full rank, the scar vet can usually beat anything he duels with, and if not dueling he can reliably slap around even chaos knights, and makes a mockery of just about anything else he touches. In a pinch, they can also jump out of the unit and fight something by themselves to try and get victory points, or just to stall someone with poor static combat resolution. Second, Stegadons? Most people on this site seem to have a poor opinion of the stegadon, but.... consider this formation. ******skinks******* ******* skinks***** ______ ______ ___ |Temps| ___ _____ | Saur | |stg| | | |stg| |Saur | This flying W formation has the stegs a bit recessed from the saurus blocks, and it's all within twelve of the slann. You deploy in a corner facing the center and roll out, or let them come to you, depending on their deployment. The intention is that heavy chargers like Bretonians or Chaos knights will have to plow into the skinks first, you receive the charge and then die, if they don't kill every skink then use the skinks leadership instead of the slann's and deliberately get cut down, this puts them pursuing forward into the saurus blocks and counting as charging on your turn. Though you are still being charged, you can then COUNTER charge with the stegadon, causing impact hits, as well as gaining the flank and making up for your lack of a rank for outnumbering purposes, also, the stegadon will auto break just about anything, kill tons of guys, laugh off most retributive attempts to gain combat resolution, and two units pursue better than one. Third, 5th gen Slann? what the %&! It's not a raw deal, since he is already largely immune to miscasts. If you don't buy magic items for the slann just roll on Metal, Fire, Light, and Death and if you don't get something super amazing then just one them all out and cast with one dice, it's still 50/50 and it's largely immune to scroll spamming. I consider the Slann's ability to cast almost secondary to his amazing leadership and his banner holding abilities, being the general and the banner bearer makes the phalanx possible, and consider it a down payment for the temple guard. The slann's math also kind of shows how much gravy he gets. A level 4 Wizard lord with a staff of Dispel and a Grey Rod is still.... about 325. And every other wizard lord doesn't hold a banner, lead at 9 on 3 dice, have 6 Hp, a 4+ invuln or 5 toughness, you get all that for FREE! As I like to think of it, you instead buy all that and get the wizard for free. In cases where I am expecting a charge by something truly hideous, like a chaos lord with some crazy weapon that might have killing blow, I will put the slann in the front rank and challenge with him. He won't do anything, but he'll take less damage then the guard, and preserve numbers for combat resolution, while also allowing the Scar vet to beat some stuff up and get more Combat Rez. The banner of Huanchi is a surprisingly good item for the temple guard, because it let's you one up most other foot blocks and charge with halberds, and even when your enemy is obviously in range, it allows you to charge in the magic phase, letting the Slann target that unit before the charge, and soften them up when he would otherwise be unable to target what he just finished charging. Plus, if they break and flee then you don't need to use the banner anyway, or could potentially even catch a unit that rolled something pitiful on it's flee distance. It sounds unlikely, but if one of the spells you took was Mistress of the marsh, even a 1d6 pursuit can catch something that ate one too many fireballs. The piper skinks are just harassment, flank protectors and tasked with fighting dogs, glade riders, and other fairly frail harassment units.
Not a bad list. I think the formation will work well but maybe put it like this. __steg__ temple Guard ___steg___ The formation ( WHich looks crappy up there is a slanted line. With the Stegadon taking the charges it allows you to counter charge with the better unit. Its like a V formation Stegadons go on the tips then get the rest close enough for the counter charge. I find though that your army is lacking heavy killers. I would recommend Great Weapons and a boot on one of the Cold Ones. Your army is a footslogger and getting to ahead of yourself will probably get them suicide. To me they just look like stallers. Instead equip him with a Great Weapn. That is some heavy hitting you need. But I don't think this would work well against Dwarves, Orcs and Vampire Counts.
Most interresting list... Will have to think about it. To late for that now(when will I learn to get early into bed and maybe get some sleep?...)
Letting the stegadon receive the charge is typically a bad idea, as it is honestly really bad at fighting without impact hits. The Temple guard typically produces less actual hits then the stegadon on the charge since on average, a stegadon will produce 6.5 str 5 hits on the charge (plus skinks) whereas temple guard with a champion will produce 5.5 hits on the charge. With your set up I also wouldn't get the flank, which is very important. Dropping a cold one rider is kind of counterproductive, since at str 6 they pretty much ARE the heavy hitters, rather than for example, a formation of kroxigors, I choose to have these vastly more durable Scar vets peppered around so there is really no way to simply avoid my heavies. More importantly is that to kick out a cold one rider would force me to buy 2 extra men, and possibly a banner of prophecy to make up for it. The cold one rider surmounts the need for a 75 point item, and 24 points worth of foot sloggers, so I get all that beat down for around 36 points. (unrealistic to be sure but worth noting). The fact that it makes all my troops stupid has never slowed me down, since I tend to not be the one charging anyway. The cold one riders also help me conserve cash because I don't feel the need for that extra rank of saurus, the main reason I take the extra rank to get to 20 -25 guys is simply to avoid being outnumbered by fear causers. Saurus are strong and will beat most other foot troops, and can even ward of cavalry on occasion. In order to get enough saurus to ensure that I outnumber for fear I would have to pay 120 points, which makes the cold one rider seem..... almost free. I don't take the salamanders because... the slann can chunk out enough flaming shots on his own, and stegadons are vastly more amazing than a lot of people give them credit for. Stegadons are great bullies, and arrows and light infantry basically won't hurt them at all, and I can count on the steg to harpoon at least one knight during the course of the game, or break a rank of foot sloggers and make up for the 15 man strong groups I run.
Whos enough of a dumbass to use Light Infantry against a Dinosaur. Lets see what can take down a Stegadon. I can't find my codex so I'll just estimate saying it is Toughness 5. That means. 1 Lance Charge Most Daemons Pimped Hero W Great Weapon Some Elit of forces Wizards Cannon and that is all I can think of off the top of my head. The light infantry is not to kill it. It is just to stall it from doing harm to the other units. Though that is me. Anyways right now seems that Daemons of Choas, Brettonia, Orcs, vampire Counts,, Wood Elves are the type you shouldn't mess with.
Erm... the temple guard is more expensive, by a factor of about 1.4:1. The Stegadon is also a monster and doesn't have to wheel, it just turns and goes,and can even get a free turn during a charge if it goes straight forward also it's 50% faster on top of those already impressive movement advantages. If I'm worried about fighting a demon prince, or as is more common in my play group, a dragon or even a tree man, I use skinks. Most of those fat monstrous creatures only have an armor save or around 3+, with possibly a meager ward save as well. If I shoot them with enough blowpipes I can get about 2 wounds in before it gets to my line, more if it doesn't fly. Further, the stegadons also help against these guys because of their bolt throwers, most of these creatures are toughness 6, so the steg needs 5's to wound, but ignores armor and cause on average 2 wounds. Add the two together against a large target with toughness 6 and you have 2*2/3*1/3*2 for a total of 8/9, you can expect the stegs to accomplish about .89 wounds per turn against a dragon, not counting the ability to hit the rider. Stegs further help against such ridiculords because they cause terror and can keep units from auto breaking when they fight such beasts, since you can screen with skinks to prevent from being charged WITHOUT a stegadon in the battle. Steg bolt throwers are also very effective against chariots. The slann can also handle a lot of these creatures, the first spell of the lore of light is strength 6 against demon princes, causes double damage against tree men, and is str 6 against the most common chariot, I.E. tomb kings. For a first level spell it's just very efficient. If the creature doesn't fly then mistress of the marsh will ruin it's day, and keep it shot at by skinks for 2-3 turns. As for the stegadon's relation to light infantry, it is in fact toughness 6, meaning that even str 4 infantry are wounding it on 6's, or giving the skink crew a 3+ save, str 3 troops are pretty much gonna do nothing to it, which is the range of most infantry ranged attacks that are long enough range to threaten a stegadon early in the game. The thing about the steggy is that it is fast enough to make most light infantry seriously consider not fleeing because they might get caught by it anyway, and to ward off counter charges with terror. I'm not worried about a lance, because they'll have to get through a skink screen first, and that puts them slamming into the steg with at least one saurus block coming to meet their flank, and charging saurus, especially with halberd heroes or temple guard, can make brettonians very sad. The biggest threat that I currently face is the threat of cannon, which can snipe the slann, or blow stegadon's up. Thankfully, only the empire great cannon's cause d6 wounds, the d3 wounds from dwarves is much less intimidating, and bolt throwers still fail half the time against stegs, and worthlessly hit the skinks 1/3 of the time, cannons can still hit the skinks, and can still fail to wound. The army I'm most scared of is 4 great cannons with 4 engineers manning them, and 2 hellblasters on top of that. This army is decent against warriors of chaos, but can have problems with a Tzeench list because of it's low magic output. I can switch out the banner of Huanchi for a diadem and upgrading the central scar vet to a BBOC.
Well first srry bout my original response. Can't get that quote to work properly. Well srry about the temple Guard thing. really though if the Temple Guard is worth more points won't it be smarter to use the Steg. or even better Skinks. Play group? I usually do it by Tourney look of view so I match it against almost every army. My group is very colourful. I know you like the Steg but I still find it ineffective for what it does. I would rather use a Slave Giant anyday. Though I did use to this with them. _ _ _ ( Srry bout crappy look.) I find that alot of heroes have a Ward save these days or Regeneration. Thats the way they play over here. ( Also don't all Daemons prrty much hve a Ward?) True. But I find when a good shooty army attacking Skinks die alot faster. Yeah this army need's a little anit shooting ways. Maybe a FSOD? Anyways what i think the army needs is maybe Kroxigor and FSOD and 1 Great Weapon. But I really don't know how well the army would do... But deployed 3 of them in a slanted line. So when one was charged the other two were able to counter charge. There isn't much that can live from 3 Giants excpecially when they are blocks of 5 in a row.