Hi! I was thinking if anyone could give me a hand with this new edition armylist designing..? I'm so confused and don't quite know how and what new beasts I should use and for what. I'm going to play against OnG, and I was planning to do maybe a monster heavy list, without Slann and an Oldblood on Carnosaur as my general. I was thinking to put few Skink Priests (lv 2) or maybe Tetto'eko to spice up the magic side of the game. I have also thought of using two Bastis with Solar Engine to speed up my Saurus blocks.. AND because I'm obsessed with my new favorite model Troglodon, I would like to get one or two sweeties on field too I think I'm going to get at least one Skrox block with three Krox in it.. And maybe Skink Chief BSB. Please tell me would something like this never work and give me some advice so I can do a competitive list :> !
The Bastilladon initiative buff does basically nothing for Saurus. It doesn't stack and initiative 2 still almost always goes last. It also doesn't work with Kroxigor, who have the Always Strikes Last special rule. It's pretty worthless. However, the beam is pretty good ranged support, and the Bastilladon is a good flanker. It's tough to kill without a lot of attacks coming at it, and it gets thunderstomps, so it's still pretty good support for a Saurus block. The skink priests can further support the infantry blocks with Wysan's, which will also work out great. Honestly, the problems you are likely to run into are these: 1) Skroxigor are terrible. Your opponent gets tons of free combat res from the squishy skinks, and the Kroxigors are nerfed by being in the second row (no stomps and no predatory fighter). 2) Troglodons are also pretty bad. They don't hold up well in combat, their shooting is terrible, and their buff is pretty lame. It doesn't affect most of your army (skinks, skroxigor, slann, rippers, teras, carnosaur, bastilladons, razordons, salamanders...none actually have PF). It basically only affects itself and the first row of your Saurus block. You'll also run into some slight problems with movement speed - the trogs and skrox and carnos are very fast, but the saurus and bastilladons are very slow.
On the first point about the initiative buff: It's huge vs OnG. Most units in the OnG army is I2, so the +1 initiative on saurus means striking at the same time instead of striking second. The other 2 points are pretty accurate. Skrox are going to be bad vs OnG, and Troglodons are just bad in general (they might do ok vs goblins, but everything else will just kill them)
I think Troglodons would do better against O&G then most things if you kept them around Goblins but to get the full use out of a Troglodon you need lots of Saurus (so the predatory fighter buff matters) and you probably want a Slann (so you can shoot magic through it). My first game with the new book was against O&G. The Solar Engine was very potent. The Initiative boost helped a little putting my Saurus on the same footing as the Orcs and the bound spell on the Solar Engine was great at roasting trolls.