8th Ed. thoughts/ideas/experiences with templeguards

You don't have to keep him in the unit all the time. There is flexibility now. In some battles having him in the TG the best option, in others it isn't.

 

Temple guard remind me a lot of black guard in that they are "almost awesome", that they are one step away from being your opponents worse nightmare. Unfortunately for both of them, that step is magic, which you can never rely on.
We still a MF SLAAN thought and can get that one buff they need most of the time.

 

Making a unit stubborn cold blooded and ITP is not dumb even with the risk of miscasts blowing up some TG. Consider soul of stone (maybe even eathblood) and put the slann on one end of the second rank (preferrably a side protected by something like a saurus unit).

The is where Soul of stone pays for itself many times over. It reduces the risk of blowing up the slann (and much of the unit) in half and the risk of losing levels and spells on the slann in half, and it allows you to push a miscast roll of 4 (large template) to 5 (small template only hits 8 TG if slann is on a flank) and roll of 7 (hits all models in base contact) to 8 (all wizards take S6 hit).

Without cupped hands and without the old disciplines (focus of mystery and rumination), I expect a lore of life slann will see less hate in GTs with the new army book and receive more sympathy and the options of throne of vines and earthblood will both reduce the miscast risk and damage quite a bit and regrowth comes in handy in keeping up the numbers. Flesh to stone and earthblood on TG are both huge and the lore attibute is great if you have a scar vet or oldblood nearby or even a skink priest that might take a wound. Most of the lore of life spells can be reasonably cast with only two dice, except regrowth and dwellers and dwellers is so powerful that the miscast risk is worth it, especially with soul of stone. Since I want to run a decent oldblood anyway, a BSB slann with soul of stone, channeling staff and harmonic convergence, is good for me at 2500 and with lore of life and a lvl 2 skink priest scroll caddy I'm set in the magic phases offensively and defensively most of the time and I can use the lore of life attrbute most of the time to keep the oldblood and slann alive indefinitely (assuming no killing blow). Alternatively, I like running harmonic convergence or cube with soul of stone on the slann to keep it even cheaper and better optimize the oldblood. Harmonic is underrated. With lore of death daemon princes in WoC armies, purple sun can potentially wreck a LM army. The re-roll of the dispel dice combined with the absence of a limit can almost guarantee stopping the spell absent it being cast with IF (26% of the time on 6 dice but risking blowing up the wizard or losing spells and levels).

 

Soul of stone is good miscast protection for a lone slann, but by itself not nearly enough to make it safe to put one in a temple guard unit, espescially not if you have skink priests to be hurt by the 'hit all wizards' result.

For me, their big problem as a unit is much the same as saurus-in 8th edition, their opponents often amass terrifying quantities of S5/6 attacks, and T4, 4+ save simply isn't all that resilient anymore. This means that they actually don't feel like a very effective bodyguard for the slann, since a lot of units can cut through them. Also, there are lots of template weapons and spells which are very good at breaking down large hordes of infantry. They used to be good at protecting the slann when there was less attacks, weaker templates, and mostly sensible magic, and they had the option of turtling up behind their shields, but the game has changed since then and they haven't, except for being unable to restrain pursuit which is a particularly dire drawback for a unit supposedly acting as bodyguard.

Personally, I've found that in 8th they are better employed as shock troops, using their S5 halberds to inflict heavy damage on enemy units and accepting that they will pay for that damage with heavy attrition. Now that skink priests have wildform as a signature spell, I don't need a slann to get access to powerful buffs, and they also synergise well with saurus fighting characters, which are also designed to be killing things up close.

 

Because TG are superior to saurus in most ways, and while they might lose many matchups, they lose them less than saurus does.

In fact i'm experimenting with a block of 30 and an etheral slann. Yes, i do know he can't join them

+1 str, +1 ws, +1 I (useful with a basti), and +3 vs. shooting for 3 pts? - hit me.

Now as you mentioned there IS indeed a lot of contest in special, and thus you might scrape it off for regular saurus to get something differentier (Trademark), but a unit of 30 will "only" cost you around 250 slaves - that's less than half your special. Let me ask you, do you ever fill up your special?

Now i better get to reading the rets of this thread :i

 

*raises hand as if in AA meeting* "Hi I'm Kroxigor01 and I often fill up my special."

Nah I tell a lie, going over max special would be impossible. You need 25% core and at least 15% for a Slann. Would you really squeeze that extra 15% remainder into Special if it were legal? Salamanders, Ancient Stegs or Cowboys will always come first.

 

Exactly, there's always wiggle space left, and always some since you bought rare, maxed core (25%), anf got both heroes and lords.

I find i spend on on average some 900ish pts on special - recently i moved it up to near cap though because i included a big TG block!

unless we're talking large krox blocks or several baby stegs - our special isn't too darn expensive per my experience, reason we complain about it so much is because there are so many choices, but truth told, do we ever cap Special so much there's a valid reason to complain?

just my 2 cents.

 

point taken.. which actually brings me around thinking ..I need more pts in general.
as the 600pts core + 8Kroxigors in special takes most of the army points

 

Alot of people see swordmasters as a bigger threat than they are too. They have 2 attacks each, but that only applies to one rank and they die very easily. You just have to get some form of buff off for your unit or a hex off on them and thay really makes it annoyingly difficult for them. In the last army book they were much better, having ASF regardless of having great weapons, not so much now - I only use them as small units for "speed bumps" or flank chargers because I expect them to die.

 

I can see that you don't like temple guard, but lets put them into perspective:

Temple guard have access to magic banners, namely, the armor piercing and +1 movement banners.

Strenth 5 means that even if what they are fighting has a 1+ armor save they can punch through it twice as much as regular saurus (or 3x as much if they take the armor piercing banner), or if they are fighting something with Toughness 6, they can wound it twice as often as regular saurus and reduce the armor saves by a larger margin.

This means that they are significantly better vs heavy Cavalry, monsters, chariots, etc. With the armor piercing banner and a str 7 old blood in the unit, they will kill a steam tank in 2 rounds; without the OB, they will still manage to kill a stank in 3-4 rounds, while Saurus will sit there flailing against it for the entire game.

They are stubborn with cold blooded: They are as close to unbreakable as you can get without the unbreakable rule.

They are ITP; this gives them immunity to certain spells and effects.

Vs Elite infantry, such as white lions, they will lose without buffs, but unlike regular saurus, they will win if they do get buffs, and other armies do not have nearly as much access to buffs as Lizardmen, due to the High magic lore attribute allowing you to take Miasma, Wyssan's, Iceshard Blizzard, and Earth blood automatically, while already having Hand of Glory from high magic.

A few weeks ago I had a depleted unit of ~20 temple guard take on a unit of 36 or so Bestigors. For the second round I reformed to 12 wide and killed off so much of his unit that he didn't do enough damage, despite his great weapons, Strength 6, and re-rolls to hit, so the bestigors fled and were run down.

And again on sunday I had a unit of 35 Temple guard take on a unit of 43 White lions (I had killed 15 with Fiery convocation and 2 with some Saurus that had PF charged into the unit), with an Annointed, lvl 4, and BSB in it. After getting off Miasma and Earth blood for the second round, the temple guard were able to kill off the entire white lion unit despite completely fluffing the first round (he fluffed the second to balance it out, though the first round is arguably more detrimental). After killing off his wizard in the second round (before he could cast spells to buff his ward save), the combat was a straight win for the Temple guard. Once the White lions lost too many models, they completely lost combat effectiveness and were wiped out.

If you get 1-2 spells off (which is highly likely), then Temple guard will actually go toe to toe with White lions and grind them down.

Comparing Temple guard to white lions isn't really a fair comparison:
Temple guard are Toughness 4 and have a better armor save: This makes them more resilient to both magic and shooting. Sure, they are marginally less effective in combat, but they still take less damage in the majority of instances.

Temple guard have 2 attacks apiece, which means they get a larger benefit from running wider than their opponent, and they do not begin to lose attacks as early in a fight, which means they retain combat effectiveness longer (WL lose combat effectiveness once they are brought down to 1-2 ranks, while Temple guard retain combat effectiveness with at least 1 rank)

White lions must be taken in relatively large units because they fight in an extra rank; you can't horde them without taking at least 50, or you lose attacks/combat effectiveness too early, whereas temple guard can be an effective horde with as few as 36, or even slightly smaller, since the Slaan takes up 4 spots. Granted, he also causes a loss of 4 attacks, but that isn't a big deal in the grand scheme of things, as most of the attacks are in the front rank.

Temple guard give protection to the Slann, which is still the best wizard in the game, something that no other unit in any army can do to the same effectiveness.

Seeing people pointing out that Special is hotly contested: By what? Bastiladons aren't particularly effective. Terradons aren't great; baby stegs are vastly inferior to ancients, Rippers are generally not worth running, Kroxigors are decent, but temple guard are better... The only other unit that is really always worth taking in special is Chameleons, and if you are running more than 10 or 15 you are probably taking too many.

For rare there are Ancient stegs and Salamanders, and Stegadons have the problem of being cannonball magnets if you don't have enough target saturation with Carnosaurs or other stegadons.


The only time I wouldn't go temple guard is in a monster mash, because they are far superior to regular saurus in the current book. At 8ss in the old book they were a bit too pricey, but now they are almost too good.

With soul of stone, and the ability to put the Slaan on the edge of the unit (so only 8 TG are in b2b rather than 12), and the Slaans 50mm base, miscasts really aren't that dangerous. The 5-6(4-6 with SoS) is the same for the Temple guard as the 7 (ignored with SoS), while 8-9(7-10 with SoS) has almost no effect. 10-12 (11-12 with SoS) isn't nearly as bad when you can swap out your spells for better ones, and the chance of rolling a 2-4(2-3 with SoS) is cut in half.
I didn't run cupped hands with the old book and took 36 temple guard and various lores of magic (generally light). All of which proved to be effective. The only miscast results that ever really hurt me THAT badly were the 2-4 and 10-12, because the loss of a crucial spell or the slann and/or 10+ temple guard was game breaking, though I still managed to pull out wins after one of those results happened on turn 1 a number of times.