8th Ed. Salamander monstrous reaction

Hey everyone, I wasn't quite sure how I go about salamanders and monstrous reactions.

Firstly: if I have a unit made up of two packs, do I spread handler casualties (say from shooting or magic) across both packs, or focus the casualties on one set of handlers?

which leads to...

Secondly: Do I have to take a monstrous reaction test if one salamander has lost all its handlers but some still remain with the second one? Given that the test results apply to the whole unit it seems strange that my second salamander should, say, suffer from stupidity for the rest of the game as it still has handlers available to keep it in check...

Apologies if this has been covered, or if the BRB has it written out clear as day and I missed it!

Thanks

 

From my understanding, it works like this:
Unit's Handlers = 3Y handlers where Y is the number of monsters in the unit.
So a unit with 3 salamanders has 9 handlers, and would only do a reaction test when all 9 handlers are gone.

edit:
To add to this, you can take 3 units of 1 salamander, and they can't join together (which is where you almost ALWAYS want an extra handler) so 3 units of 1 salamander would do a test once 3 (or 4 if you take an extra handler) have died.

 

Great, that's what I thought!

Thanks a lot

 

You can't take three units of one salamander. As a rare choice, limit is two units of same. So would have to be one unit of two sallies, and a unit of one.

Only reason I know this is because someone else pointed it out to me on this forum!

Cheers,

 

Oh, it was more to illustrate the point. But it's probably worth noting that too!

 

S=SALAMANDER
H=HANDLER

SSS-HHHHHH <- NO TEST
SSS-H <- NO TEST
SSS <- TEST

 

A related question I guess, if a unit of more than one sallie misfires, is the D3 per salamander in the unit or just a D3 for misfiring?
(Sorry don't have the list book handy)

 

Each misfire rolled takes away d3 handlers. So 2 misfires in one unit's shooting round means 2d3 lost.