I was having a discussion with a few friends about how fun you can make a Slaan using magical items or maybe the fact that hes a lvl 4 mage on a palaquin. Heres one we threw together just off the bat: Slaan Becalming Cogitation Focus of Mystery Focus of Rumination - Bane head - Feedback Scroll The idea of it was that it would take Life as a lore and throw out spells for a while until the enemy try to pull somthing off thats big and nasty. You then use the feedback scroll with bane head to kill one of their mages. It is a one off try but that being said, the average mage wont have a decent ward or more than 2 wounds so would die to a single 5+ on a dice. After this we were wondering how fun you could make a Slaan using the magical allowance. Does anyone have any ideas?
the problem with that combo is that you can't use the scroll against IF or failed spells. so the opponent actually has to throw a decent ammount of dice (5 for hero 6 for lord) to be able to kill him statistically and he'll probably throw that ammount of dices when trying to get something big off (skaven 13th spells, transformation of kadon, etc) wich means taht the cances of him succeding and not causing IF are quite low. you add becalming cogitation to that wich means his 6's don't count so he probably won't get to cast teh spell, making the scroll useless again. if you manage to actually wound him, a lot of casters have a ward save usually, either because of the screaming bell, palanquin, mark of tzeench for DOC and WOC or just teh 4+ ward save talisman so half the wounds you are unlikely to get off with that combo will be statistically ignored. admittedly, i tryed the combo, killed a lvl 4 tzeench wizard (WOC) with it but i used it when he threw 4 dices, and that meant i had to eat an infernal gateway on my TG
Yeah it isn't without its disadvantages, but you use it when they throw alot of dice yeah. The thing is, you don't need to worry if they have IF because theres jack all you could do against it anyway. Many a time as a slaan have I managed to get 21+ on 6 dice without getting 2x 6. The idea is that it is a cheap shot against someone's wizard. Also, if he fails the spell.. so what? lol he has just failed the spell. You only have to say you're using the scroll after he casts it and when its not IF. That being said, you did say you tried the combo and it hit your unit of TG. With a slaan on Life then you have the ability to recover from the spell. All it is, is a cheap shot against someone in an attempt to get rid of their nice wizard. Statistically speaking you're going to either fail doing it (rolling 5+) or fail in wounding him due to a high end talisman or somthing. But thats the risk you take when considering the fact that unless you take Death you aren't in an army that can readily assasinate someone's magic users. Short of blood statuette, but that isn't a sure fire way to kill someone either. There is no 100% certainties in warhammer, and if there is it normally comes with a large pricetag. The chances of gibbing a mage to give you better breathing room isn't spectacularily high but even if you don't use it you still have the slaan as a lvl4 throwing life out every magic phase. Besides that point, I posted mine not for criticism but for someone to see where I was coming from when asking the forum to say if anyone else had any slaan setups that were funny or interesting. Wasn't looking for a flawed argument as a response to a statement and not a question. Does anyone have any slaan setups that are interesting or funny to use? (quick edit: Also on the note you said about discarding 6s, thats for any one mage of my choice and some armies have more than one mage. That being said if you use that on an army that isn't high elves with that damned book of hoeth then you're almost guarrenteed to make that wizard never IF which means he has to throw lots of dice at a spice to get it to work. Also, the 24" rule for that can be a downside as not every mage wants to be close to the enemy.)
Focus of mystery The focused rumination Shield of the mirrored pool Sivejir's Hex Scroll Standard of discipline Probably not a great build, but still. Magic missiles aren't coming your way. Cheers!
I still prefer cupped hands/bane head combo for my slann. I've taken to using lore of death, with this combo I've not had an opposing lvl 4 wizard survive longer than turn 2.
i actually like to discuss viability of builds, since there are only a handfull of usefull builds out there. also, the odl cupped hands + bane head is quite usefull if you're not using lore of life, since you quite need the miscast protection. while lore of death and metal have character hunting spells, even the sheer ammount of dice you can throw with lore of fire could get to the enemy general or wizard to make bane head worth it. i think its an item worth keeping on any slann. also you still multiply wounds caused by miscasts (i think).
well the Slann can take a magic weapon... the reason he can't take magic armor is.... because he doesn't have the option to take mundane armor. I think some wizards get armor, like chaos wariors for instance.
the only wizards that can wear armour, to my knowledge, are the chaos sorceres and skaven warlock engineers, the latter can only wear warpstone armour
I'm with you on this. Most of the time people will have life, or possibly light on their slann. I also sometimes see bane head coupled with this. They are not great lores to take bane head with. Simply too many buff spells before you get to offensive spells. Death is simply the best for banehead. You can pick out the banehead character with it. The only problem with it is range.
I really don't see why people complain about the range of death spells. Only one of the three character hunter spells has a fixed low range (12"), the others can be buffed to 24" with only a small increase in casting value that I've not found to be a problem at all with the mighty slann. If enemy characters decide to stay more than 24" from your slann to avoid him killing them, they're probably not going to be doing anything worthwile anyway. Its a win/win imo.
Once people see you have Lore of Death, they can choose how to setup and deploy their characters. If a slann has death, he almost always has bane head. Clever players can avoid those spells for a few turns. That's what I meant by range being a downside.
I've taken Death before and it worked out brilliantly. Death is my personal favourate lore for the simple fact that they will want to put their best close combat characters into your temple guard ASAP to kill the slaan because once the slaan is dead then you've practically lost due to the points involved with him being the general and 480 or so points on average after upgrades. The enemy move in with their close combat heavy unit with their heros and lords and thats when you use the slaan to great benefit, IF you do not get charged then you can easily get off a few death spells that will snuff the average hero and hurt a lord before combat arrives and the best thing about the slaan is that once you are in combat, aslong as you are not in base contact with the enemy you can still use direct damage and missile spells. The problem I find with taking Death is that the rest of your army suffers as a response. Granted saurus don't tend to need backup or templeguard because of their toughness and strength, but that being said if you choose a skink army then you're seriously at a disadvantage because skink armies need some sort of magical backup to prevent them from being rolled (in my opinion). While you have the ability to gib just about any character you find within 24" or 12" with a Death Slaan you get the ability with a Light slaan or a life slaan to make one of your units near enough indestructable. Always striking first, I10, WS10 temple guard/saurus is insane or T8, 4+ regen is also kickass and it can be shared around the entire army instead of just the slaan. I suggest that if you haven't used a death slaan yet then you should do it just once to see the difference, you will lose some units but to be honest you're going to lose a few units anyway, thats just the way the cookie crumbles. That being said, a death slaan list would be for me: Slaan Focus of Mystery Focus of Rumination Becalming Cogitation Cupped Hands of the Old ones Bane Head Ironcurse Icon Battle Standard Bearer - Standard of Discipline This setup is meant to be the standard disciplines for a slaan, you get magical uberness but cannot fall back on Life when it comes to miscasts so cupped hands is a decent item to have, especially in combination with bane head. If you find someone who you don't like who is also a wizard then you're in for a fun game, just keep throwing 6 dice at somthing til a miscast happens. I normally make my slaan a BSB simply because my army will be based around it, so it is logical, and out of all the characters it is the most survivable due to the natural ward save, which can be made better through magic items. This makes your unit of temple guard stubborn ld10 with cold blooded. You are not running away. The Ironcurse Icon I just put on there because it is a great cheap item to put into a unit you want to stay alive when you don't have life to fall back on for the regen. A life slaan list for me: Slaan Focus of Mystery Focus of Rumination Higher state of consciousness Unfathomable Presence Divine Plaque of Protection Book of Ashur BsB: Sun Standard of Chotec You could swap out the Book of Ashur for somthing else but it is a nice item. Now this slaan is expensive but you have to take into account that your army is now based around whether or not your Slaan can dish out the life spells and stay alive. The slaan will have a standard ward that is easily made better from the use of magical items or the unfathomable presence. (I realise that hes only capable of being hurt via magic but some ranged items are counted as magic but don't give the magic resistance ability as a reponse.) You don't need to worry about miscasting because you'll get throne of vines down most turns if it isn't still in play from the last turn. The enemy will realise hes dealing with a Life based slaan and will try to either out-magic the slaan or kill the slaan to give him the win. While i'm here can someone tell me why the hell whenever I type a large reply into this damned thread box it keeps scrolling back up to the top everytime I press... ANYTHING? It isn't scroll lock and this isn't the first time it has happened to me, its annoying as hell. Had to type this reply in word and paste it in lol..
It's a bug some people experience. I do for example. It may be the browser though, I use Firefox and it has messed a bit with some sites before. Cheers!
same with IE really, i have the same problem, but i jsut ype and it usually comes out what i wanted to say also, why run a life slann solo? you lose the regen buff and the TG in doing so. if you don't run him solo higher state of counciousness is rather useless untill you're down to 3 TG wich can allways be revived.