Hi all, long time lurker and new poster here. Can I ask what have been the experience of others in using the skink cloud army with the new book? It was brutal to play against in the old one, what about now? Does the lowering of skink leadership affects the army style significantly? Or the loss of the slaan's magic dominance? The lack of marching and shutting for salamanders? Do the new units bring anything for this type of build, in particularly the ripperdactyls? And what type of slaan build will be best for such an army? The channelling slaan hiding at the back in a unit of skinks? Or has anyone tried the solo slaan hanging out alone? (With ethereal, MR discipline, and dragon bane gem to protect it from most shooting and ranged magic). Haven't tried it out with the new book, would be very interested in what everyone thinks of the ol' skink cloud army now. Many thanks in advance!
how many skinks are we talking about? I use 4 units and feel like more than that you kinda get in to diminishing returnsville
I ran it with 3x skirmishs, 4x small cohorts (10 to 12 models) and a 16+krox bunker. Backed it up with 3 terradons, 3 ripperdactyles, 3x6 chameleons, 2x2 salamanders, 2x1 razordons, and 4 chiefs (2 on rippers, 2 on terradons). Characters were Tetto Eko, chief BSB on foot, and an Oldblood general. It worked well, until I started taking terror and panic tests, then the whole army fell apart. I think it would have actually worked if I took a lot more ripperdactyles (4 characters on rippers and 2 or 3 units of rippers). Having some units Immune to Psychology really helps out. -Matt
Having never tried a list like that, how is that setup actually supposed to kill anything? skinks are awesome and all that but they get knocked out by a mild breeze
It hits enemy support units and avoids/flees from the rest. If the salamanders get some good hits, then the rippers and characters charge in to finish it off. It's a pure mobility army, and it plays a lot of my dark elves did. With 17 units on the table, it easily wins the chaff war. It's just a question then of is the chaff you kill worth more than the chaff you give up. -Matt
In the old book, only 2 army builds give me problems when I play the skink cloud. One is the massed infantry hordes for which your only real answer are the salamanders. If they misbehave or are neutralized early there's no way to get a big win. The other is the massed 1+ save army. My scar vets are good at cracking armor, but they can't be everywhere at once and with only 2 wounds each they can go down quickly with unlucky dice. The skink cloud tend to dominate against most other army builds. Especially when as time passes, chaff becomes more and more prevalent and model counts tend to go down, both of which benefits skink cloud armies. Skink clouds from the old book can definitely win. I'm just wondering if their effectiveness has changed much with the new book.
I think the list still works but needs more combat power now, I reckon instead of the double skrox units i'd go one skrox and one Temple guard with razor banner. That really helps with the 1+ armor and loremaster high is a solid solution to deal with the big blocks that cover the board, as well as allowing some tailoring which the list really benefits from. I often found death or metal to be useless in some matchups previously and the tailoring really adds to the list.
I think skink clouds did as well as they did because opponents didn't recognize the threat. When people leave their infantry ranked up 3 to 5 deep when they face off against an avoidance shooting army (wood elves and dark elves do this well too), they find they are out moved and shot to pieces. When you take your guys out of the tray, and go 1 or 2 deep, and very wide (cover the whole table), then suddenly you don't have the sweet spot for the salamanders to hit, and the skinks can't get around you. I've successfully taken out clouds multiple times by just removing movement trays during deployment and going extremely wide. It's not the auto-win, but it sure makes it a hell of a lot easier when you're forcing 2 flees a turn per unit and putting the pressure on the lizardmen to round up and rally all those skinks. -Matt