AoS Salamander Battleshock Tactic

It is absolutely not how "basic math" works. Basic math would be improving Skinks hit chance from a 5+ to a 4+, making half of their attacks hit instead of only 1/3. Lowering your drops by 1 is not basic math in any way and doesnt universally improve any odds and in many cases it would in fact have 0 effect because you either have fewer drops than your opponent (likely never the case), have the same amount (again, likely never the case) or have more (as argued, the case in the vast majority of cases). 1 drop less is not gonna improve your odds by "10%".

I assumed you wouldnt share your list, period. Unless you are at a master's level, I think you might be giving yourself a little bit too much credit in regards to if people are gonna go specifically after you and tailor their list to try and counter whatever you bring, especially if it is a larger event. I would argue 99% of Starborn Seraphon lists look almost identical anyways, so knowing the list or not is probably not that big of a deal unless you are going full hipster mode. But hey, if you want to keep it a secret it is honestly completely fine. I can post my list (I have done in a couple of versions on this forum on multiple occasions) but I dont really see how it is relevant to the discussion, since I have 10 drops and my arguement is that our drop count dont matter because we wont outdrop people anyways.

When we talk about splitting up Salamanders, I assume we are entirely talking about Dracothian's Tail, in which case I would argue the list below is like 99% of all Dracothian's Tail lists with Salamanders.



This is already 7 drops with 660 pts remaining to pick more units. You just cant make a DT list with fewer drops unless you replace Salamanders with Terradons and pick the Skink batallion, in which case I would argue your list is way worse, and you should go FoS anyways. Already at this point before spending another 660 pts, what are you outdropping? As it is, likely Idoneth Deepkin, Cities of Sigmar, Seraphon (mirror match) and maybe Gitz? I cant think of any other faction that is much more than 7 drops typically, and your remaining 660 pts is gonna push your drop count further up.

Is it really worth it to make your list worse against every single match up, just to "secure" the choice of going second against a few select armies? I would pretty comfortably say no. I would much rather have multiple Skink screens of 10s instead of making them 20. Sallies in units of 1 also ensure no battle shock, makes it more difficult for your opponent to kill since they need to split attacks/shooting/spells properly etc. The only case for not splitting Salamanders is Volley Fire and teleport.

 

I agree, dont see how 7-10 is a good target to have. 3 battleline and i would think 4 heroes would be in every list so you have 7 already.
All i can think of would be like kroak, slann, trog, astro, 2 max units of sallies then 3 battle line and endless spells. Thats still 9 and lacking skink heroes

 

After 1 to 3 drops the amount of drops follow a sortof normal distribution. To make it simple, a one drop gives you the highest odds of outdropping (~95%) and having 20 drops around ~0%. Each drop in between has its own odds, depending on the current meta. But okay, skip the math if it is beyond your comprehension.
Let my try it another way: do you really think the top 8 list on tournaments are really only low-drop armies? Quick tip: look at all the GT off past 2 years. With seraphon being in the range of 7-10 drops, where the bulk of the lists are, it certainly does matter. And going 10-10-20 on skinks or grouping 3 salamanders together certainly isnt making you list ‘worse’. Actually it almost always makes your list better besides lower drops. But I guess we see things differently. If you dont recognize the value of picking who goes first, deciding deployment strategy or even know how valuable the double turn initiative is, then I guess your arent a very competitive player