Greetings all! I'm relatively new to the board and the army in general so I had a couple questions. I'm mostly interested in running a Steg heavy list with a Chief and couple of Priests. My question is this... is a Slann pretty much auto-include in such lists? Because if I remember the points correctly, you could do 5 Stegs with 2 of them being Rares and the other 3 as character ones. Is the slann a good tradeoff versus some rare Stegs? I can't do the Steg/Slan character because my local group bans the use of all Warhammer characters from their games.
Depending on how Steg-heavy you want to go, you may be better without a Slann. He soaks up lots of points and instead you could have yet another Steg-character. 2 EotG's w/ skink priest, 1 chief with ancient and war-spear, and 1 normal steg with chief would be a good start.
To Slann or not to Slann is really a matter of what you want to do with your magic. If you want a lot of magic and some good offensive magic, take a Slann. Otherwise stick with one or two priests on engines and keep them tended toward defence, though if you are going to have 2 then definitely make sure they get a bit of magic out because they are a lot of points (more than a Slann!). You might consider taking just one priest on engine and taking a carnosaur, you can still get a couple more stegs in. Also remember that much more than 3 stegs is quite a powerful list against most things, only a few warmachine heavy armies will be able to deal with them all and you may find games get less interesting. For maximum stegs, ignore saurus completely and just have some skink units. Then I think you can legally field 7 or 8 in a 2k list. There is a line that you must place between max stegs and gae balance as well as having support units, how far you decide to go is really up to what kind of army you want. It is certainly not essential to have a Slann unless you want magic heavy.