8th Ed. Regular Stegadon

[Didymus]

In most lists I see people prefer going with the Ancient instead of the regular Stegadon. Do people still use the regular Stegadon? I'm assuming most go with the ancient for the blowpipes: I can count the times the bolt thrower did something impressive on one hand (hmm, dark rider sate).
I'm about to paint the howdah on the old stegadon model, so I need to know if I need to make some modifications first

 

[Tecuani]

Personally, I take stegadons as pure melee fighters, and view anything they might achieve at range as an unexpected bonus-the giant bow rarely hits at all, and both blowpipes between them average two wounds at short range.

That said, a S6 ancient is a lot stronger in melee than S5 for the weaker versions, and with damage dominated by impact hits and thunderstomp the extra one attack is a much smaller factor-the better armour save is useful as well. I used to often take an ordinary stegadon to save points, but with the margin between them half what it was that feels hard to justify anymore, on top of which the multiple wound impact hits upgrade is the same cost for both, but more effective on an ancient. So really, I'd say the only case an ordinary stegadon was a better case anymore would be if the rare points limitations made it impossible to take an ancient.

 

[lizardmek]

Well I think it depends on the targets toughness.against toughness 3 s5 impact hit \ attacks \thunderstomps wound on 2+ but on T4 its only 3+ which reduces the effectiveness of its attacks
So i would go the Asteg for strength 6 against a toughness 4 or high for

Imo

 

[thedanman13]

i have an OOP stegadon coming in the post next week and i wanted to use it as an ancient w/blowpipes but since the EOTG is next to useless then my blowpipe bitz will be used up on my current stegadon once i convert the EOTG later this week.

basically? does anyone think it will be difficult to mould some blowpipes from greenstuff? (i have never used it before!)

 

[Didymus]

Making the blowpipes from scratch would be quite time consuming. Better start with a plastic rod or something like that, and sculpt things onto it.

 

[Dreadgrass]

Only reason a regular steg makes it into my lists is generally points constraints. I like Razordons to screen my steggies and they share rare points with the ancient.

Alternately, in the 1/1'000'000 chance that an errata will allow a skink chief to fire howdah weapons this edition, then the bolt thrower becomes a lot more viable.

 

[T`hinker`er]

As it stands right now the Cheif added to a steg crew replaces one of the crewmen, so there is no reason to believe that you cannot use his BS, as you would always use the highest BS of the crewmen under the basic rules.

 

[RipperDerek]

The unclear bit is where it says he "Replaces" one of the Skink Crew. Does that he mean he becomes part of the Crew? "Replace" can be interpreted either way.

However, it was explicitly not allowed in earlier editions, and this edition does not clearly overturn that, which gives some weight to the idea that is not intended to work.

 

[Soteks Prophet]

I try take 2 steggies - they're basically big terror causing uber chariots. The ancient is good but eats into sally points!

 

[Reddogfish]

why not use a few straws trim them to size and then give them a heavy coating of paint or a little plaster to give them some heft.

I cant imagine modelling straight pipes that look straight and sturdy without there being much crying and nashing of teeth.

 

[Scalenex]

My instinct is to run with Stegadons for naked dinos (use them almost exclusively for infantry bashing) and Ancient Stegadons for Sharpened Horns and Unstoppable Stampede (and hope to soften up some monsters)

 

[Noveltyboy]

I try take 2 steggies - they're basically big terror causing uber chariots. The ancient is good but eats into sally points!

For less points the bastiladon does this too and comes with neat abilities not a useless bolt thrower

 

[Enkill3]

The bastiadon has few attacks, low S and no impact hits.
He wants to shoot things, the Stegs want to trample things.

 

[Vukodlak]

I usually use one ancient with EOTG and sharpened horns and a regular stegadon with botrh upgrades, they come at 300 and 245 points respectively. I still like the engine, for 2 reasons: the 6++ is a life saver for my saurus warriors, since they usually have to fight pretty nasty stuff (chaos warrios, grave guard) and I had also multiple sitations in which the arcane configuration just gave methe edge to cast a spell.

The regular steg as described above, killed 3 skull crushers in my last game, wounded 2 more, and eventually overun them. By sacrificing 10er units of skink cohorts you can quite reliably set up a situation in which you can charge them.

In my last game the Stegs Bow and that spear chukker spell from beast lore together killed a chaos chariot and a chimera.

Also since I usually use the lore master high magic app for my slann, I used the hand of glory spell in the first turn to boost the stegs BS, so he could hit the chariot. Generally I agree the giant bow is rather rarely useful, because also the lousy strength makes it impossible to klill significant amounts of unit models