I've got an escalation league starting soon, and we are starting out at just 250 pts! I am leaning Thunder Lizard because I can drop in a Bastiladon when we bump up to 500, but I still need to figure out my little scouting party. I'm considering either: Leader: Skink Priest Battleline: Skinks x20 (bolt/shield) or Leader: Skink Starpriest Battleline: Knights x5 (we like spears, right?)
A little update. Knights with a Starpriest at their back were extremely effective. Smashed through a Stormcast team and a Liege-Kavalos without taking a hit (Sotek cursed the OBR with snake eyes on a 3" charge). At 500, the OBR were quite a bit tougher. They added a Boneshaper, Mortek Guard, and the Nightmare Predator endless spell. Bastiladon held the line and zapped / whacky-thwacked everything that got near it. Now I'm looking at the jump to 750. I was going to add Scar Vet on Carno, but I'm wondering if I'm better off fishing for mortals. Got two options that I'm going back and forth with: Leaders: Scar-Vet on Carno (general) Skink Starpriest Battleline: Knights x5 (spear) Behemoths: Bastiladon or Leaders: Skink Priest (general) Skink Starpriest Battleline: Knights x5 (spear) Skinks x20 (boltspitter and shield) Behemoths: Bastiladon I guess the math suggests that buffing the daylights out of the carnosaur is going to give me consistently more damage. However, my skinks have been such an absolute wrecking crew in the past dishing out mortals, and it seems like mortals are the way to go against OBR, what with them ignoring the little rend we have and being able to reroll saves.
I would go with the second list. It is just magnitudes more versatile and consistant. Carnsaur damage is very swingy, even when buffed up. The skinks make a decent screen, can be buffed up to deal some alright damage at a range, and most importantly can be rallied to replenish the ranks. You could split them up to cover more of the board and possibly take an objective, but really you are relying on the power of the Bastiladon and are putting more wounds between it and anything that can bracket it down.
Thanks for the take. That list also gets me a Priest who can give the basti +1 to hit in addition to shooting twice, which will help with the mortal-fishing. On a related note, how much does Look Out, Sir! really impact shooting? The threat of that penalty deterred me from targeting their wizard first last time, but I think that was a mistake on my part (no more wizard, no more irritating endless spell).
No a lot really. It makes all out attack better actually. Pluses to hit and wound are capped at +1 or -1 once all bonuses from both sides are calculated, and herald of the old ones pops at the command phase, and all out attack pops in the specific combat phase so you can stack them both. This would normally just be capped as a +1 to hit, but we can use them both to together to keep our modifier to hit even, if not possitive, despite look out sir and terrain bonuses like garrisons. OBR has some strong similarities to seraphon, in that we both rely on tiny heroes to help buff and carry the faction. Take those heroes away and the army becomes more or less ineffectual. No Priest means no doubletapping and no herald, and that's a sad day for our basti. Take away OBR's wizards and it gets noticably easier to table them.
If I stack all-out-attack on the basti, I can't also have it shoot twice. But at least the Priest would negate Look Out.
Agreed, I was more thinking of the skinks on that one. Sorry about the confusion there. The Basti honestly has a strong enough base hit roll that you should get enough through without stacking +s to hit to that extent. You would also run out of heroes to dish out commands if you don't turtle up hard, thankfully skinks have an alpha built in.