my question goes to wich stegadon to use. EotG or a war-spear chief with an ancient steg? there is a difference of 10 points for the war spear plus a little extra becasue i usually run plaque of tepok on the priest. while the eotg and the priest sure are nice with burning alignment and the 5+ ward his utility as a mage has diminished greatly since most of the dice in the ppol are used by the slann to get his spells off wich more often than not are quite needed after the 1st turn (maybe 2nd, rarely). with the new edition however the war-spear becomes that much better since it removes more models at the start of combat, porentially diminishing the attacks you get in return, wich is allways nice since we don't want too many attacks back. to counter this the eotg has the burning aligment, potentially hitting more than 1 unit and ignoring armor saves, but its only S4 (rarely 5). the war spear also has the giant blowpipes that can help when meeting monsters, or montrous infantry usually but thats only if he's not in combat and has not faild a charge. whats your opinion on this? wich is better in 8th edition?
Up until now, I've always used the EoTG, although 2D6+1 Strength 6 Impact Hits really is quite tempting. The reason why I'd keep my EoTG is mainly for the Burning Alignment, but also for the Skink Priest. The Lore of Heavens has gotten considerably better in 8th Edition, with great spells such as Chain Lightning, Wind Blast, Comet of Casandora etc. So, in my opinion, I'd keep the EoTG. My Slann is taking the Lore of Life to augment and restore my troops, so I want some offensive spells in the form of the Lore of Heavens. Is there a Slann in your army? What Lore is he taking? If he's taking an offensive Lore(Fire, Death), than I think you could forgo the EoTG and just go for the Ancient Stegadon. But, if he's taking a defensive Lore, I'd definitely keep the Engine. Hope this has been helpful
Both units are mandatory depending upon which style of army I choose; magic or close combat. For magic I believe the EotG is an absolute nessesity. On occasion the dice rolls are so horrible that your slann simply can not get a spell off and it can't cast any more spells that phase. Instead of reverting to a lesser mage to try and salvage the magic phase we can turn to a level 3 mage and can be reasonably sure to continoue a nice magic phase. We also can not discount the EotG effect which lowers the casting value of all spells for a choosen lore. If I'm going close combat oriented the A. stegadon with war spear combination is a must. 3D6+1 hits at strength 6 before swing are taken (impact hits and stomp attacks) are absolutely devistating. Unless your facing HE spearmen or some heavily armoured dwarves you've almost got the nessisary number of wounds to ensure no attacks back happen. Not to mention in the event you fail a charge and are now threatened to be charged you have the wonderful 4D6 poisoned shots for a stand a shoot reaction AND 1D6 stomp attacks before swings. Truely threatening.
the problem with thunderstomp is that the attacks have the allways strike last rule, so even great weapons would hit at teh same time. alltough the skinks + steg have another 6 S6 attacks wich generally wound on a 4+ so it would be 2d6+4 statistically, wich is about 11 hits? on a 2+ you can safely say you can take out half a resonable sized unit. also, while heavens is nice, its also very circumstantial. chain lightning has a high casting value and you migh find taht there are no more units within 6" of your target, or that you can only get units in 6" by targeting a les dangerous unit and its friends wich is not worth it. to cast comet on 24+ you more or less need IF and then it becomes awesome but you might get a blast over your steg or even get the steg sucked into chaos wich is never nice. a slann has much more miscast prevention with either cupped hands or throne of vines, both being sure things. giving a skink cupped hands makes him lose 1 spell and cost a few points more and you could end up with 2 spells wich you don't really feel the need to cast on more than 2 dice making miscasts a rare occurence. the war spear is safer the way i see it but the only thing that still holds the balance in my mind is that the burning alignemtn can hit quite a few units, and against dwarves or WOC thats quite a lot even with S4. allmost all the units are so expensive that even killing a few can reduce the number of attacks you recieve and increase your chance of being steadfast, and all of this out of combat. the downside of this toug, is that when you charge with the setg and get challenged, your WS 2 T2 model will probably die if the champion ha a decent strenght. 3 atacks that hit on 3's and wound on 2's will leave you with 4+ saves, and when the priest is gone so is the engine, while if you lose a chief and teh spear you still get your blowpiepes in addition the the non-functioning EotG
Don't forget also that if you increase your priest's level to two then you have three spells to choose from. But I agree that I usually try to take the plaque of tepok with him and try to get some ward save for him too since it'll go to the rest of the unit. You really shouldn't get your EotG into close combat unless it's against a piddly unit that you can easily defeat. Just because it's an ancient steg doesn't mean it can crush anything.
the problem is that with a decent magic phase the slann will use up all power dice or most of them, giving the skink little to do and getting him close for burning alignment is also dangerous since he can be charged. ofcourse he can be charged even if you charge with hi, but that way you get your impact hits. otherwise it really seems like a waste of points to keep a steg there for show. and i don't really have any way of dealing with knights since GW decided that urnaon's allows armor saves now. ofcourse he doesn't charge units with great weapon or any tipe of elite infantry (unless its chaos, they're all elite) bu its quite a nice boost to the saurus
well in this new edition, i started to use the EotG with the Oldblood and the chief with warspear with the slann. the warspear helps the slann out when it comes to combat and the eotg helps the oldblood with magic and providing a 5+WS. its the best of both worlds for me.
I started out in 8th edition with an EOTG, mainly because it performed so well in 7th. Like most people have already said, it's not very often you find yourself with spare dice to use with the skink priest, and to be honest I'd prefer to use these extra dice to make the slann's spells even more difficult to dispel. So for the last few games I've been running the stegodon as it is, no hero, no war spear, and it's done excellently, even managed to get a few kills per game with the mounted bolt thrower. It's almost half the points of a geared EOTG, and those points are better spent on 2 extra salamanders in 8th, which in my experience do a crap load more damage than burning alignment, and will often see an opponent going off plan just because of their brutalness.
Through out this thread I've never seen a mention of portent of warding is the ward save just not that much of a factor? because that seems to me to be a major point is protecting your army from war machines and trying to get your saurus safe into combat.
LazyLizard mentioned the ward save because he uses EotG in conjunction with his OB (and Steg War Sp with his Slann). I've found the ward save to be usefull if I'm going against Dwarves or Empire or Elves (of any kind). It's truely amazing how many times you can make that 5+ WS...just ask a Bretonnian player! Though usually I think most people will prefer to use Burning Alignment or Arcane Configuration for their Slann's lore. Usually for me it's subjective whichever effect I want.
you can get a magic item with 6+ ward against war machines for 5 pts if a character joins a unit with it, works for the whole unit
But with the 350+ points you save you can bring another big unit of Saurus that don't have to worry about getting 1-shot by a cannon.
This may be a little late but I agree with Lazylizard. I usually run an OB and EOTG and swap with the Chief/spear and the Slann. I've had a lot of luck with it but again, it's whatever works for you. I think the EOTG with a skink priest can still do considerable damage and the 5+ ward save is nothing to sneeze at... Just my 2 cents... Iggy Koopa