8th Ed. Why new LM will Rock!

Can not take credit for this post, was stolen from my buddy Matt in San Diego CA. ~ Enjoy

Temple Guard dropped 2 points, and gained predatory hunters. A unit of 12 is just a hair over 160points, 18 S5 attacks, with more attacks from rolling 6's to hit!

Jungle Swarms give all your units in the same combat poison attacks.

Skaven Pelt banner gives a unit frenzy, which is the difference between a chaos warrior, and a chaos warrior of khorne.

Krox gained a point of strength, gained predatory hunter, and dropped 5 points. Iron Guts are great, and Kroxigor have better strength, better armor, and better leadership; and picked up a bonus attacks.

Ripperdactyles dish out a lot of pain on a charge, 4-6 killing blow attacks with a re-roll to hit, 1 S4 spear attack, and then S4 stomp. A unit of 4 does 16 to 24 killing blow attacks.

Magic:
Tetto Eko gives a massive boost to your magic phases. Re-roll all 1's to cast? Sign me up.
Channel 3 dice on a 5+. That's a bonus power and dispel die, every phase.

Re-roll first failed dispel every phase is great!
Walk between worlds is awesome for salamanders. +D3 to movement, initiative, and WS? How about +D3 to BS on Razordons?

What's even better is being able to cast through Skinks for direct damage and magic missiles.
I'm thinking you start with lore master high magic, and cycle out for death. The Ld10 from the Slaan (banner of discipline) makes spirit leech deadly, and you get another 24" of range from the Skink priest (mine will have the cloak of feathers for flight). Turn 2, I'll be sniping heroes.

What seems to be getting over-looked is the engine of the gods, now a rare choice!
You get a bubbled ward save vs. everything (6+), reduce the cast value of a lore, and have a 4D6" area of effect D6 S4 all units. In the past it was 1 ability, now you get all 3 every turn! Add to that, the engine can do D6+1 S6 impact hits doing D3 wounds each. Very solid choice.

As a totally different direction, you can take a boatload of 40 point Skink heroes and spam beast magic. A Skink Krox Deathstar could cheaply fill the front rank with characters with 4+ armor and parry.

Yeah, we didn't get skull crushers, but we do have plenty of good options.

 

I played skink chief spam with the last book backed up with loremaster beast slaan. It was not fun for me or my opponent. I blew up everything that the big skrox unit came into contact with. Most of the time I only rolled half of the skink chiefs attacks before the other unit was dead. Salamanders and chamo sinks blowing up other stuff. Now that chiefs are even cheaper you can squeeze in priests along with the slaan.

 

How do you get loremaster for High Magic?

 

It is a slann discipline.

 

I agree with your buddy then!

Lots of nice little combo's and synergy. No more auto-include party-slann (Thank you Kiwihammer for this term).
But a more balanced, and still potent, Slann.

I am already looking forward to my javelin skinks with Wyssand Wildform too...
BS boost on skinks is always fun!

Some units get shifted into a different role, which is new, and scary, and can be ugly the first few games. I still think
we have a powerfull army with lots of tools at its disposal.
In the end, we're fine. We may be not Skaven or WoC fine, but that's ok too.

I mean, who would want to have the most hated unit(s) in the game? (Cleverly not mentioning our old Slann and salamanders here..).

Also; I love a positive view on the new book. It's full of surprises still! Instead of: Oh, they nerfed the slann. And what is this unit supposed to do?


The Hunted

 

It's a discipline for the Slaan.

My biggest compliant is that TG and Saurus still need defensive buffs to be on par with other units that they will go up against. A Slaan is still required to do that imo.

 

I don't know. BSB Standard of Discipline, Soul of Stone, Harmonic Convergence, Focus of Mystery, Channeling Staff look pretty popular, and pretty Party Slann, to me.

 

Yes, but still not the party-slann we had.
With Focused Rumination, Focus of Mystery and Becalming.
Wam, Bam, my Slann is awesome.

Now, it is still very powerfull. But it requires some more work to get it going. I like the new one better, actually.
More elegant in it's design

The Hunted

 

when you only look to good side yeah its nice.
But when i take a look at dropped leadership of skinks, saurus mandatory pursue. that changes everything for me these downsides are huge. sure you can have a skink to guide stupid sauruses, but thats a price tag on saurus unit and its not cheap...
In games with 7ed my skinks fleed and were unable to march and now on LD5 its almost a 50/50 chance, not happy.

 

I appreciate this positive post. Good thing I have 6 Krox... now I need 6 more, they are fun to paint anyways.

 

Thank god for this thread, the constant whining was starting to infuriate me.

 

Skink Character in a block of Saurus will be in the front rank... If I'm sacraficing a unit to get you to pursue and get out of position I'll just focus all my attacks on the skink... kill it... then you'll win combat and I'll run. I find it odd that a Slaan can't force PF units to restrain.

 

Party Slann just means a Slann which has all the "toys" (ie, upgrades), and ergo has a party with said "toys." The build I posted still has a lot of upgrades, so could still count as a party Slann.

Incidentally, I agree that the Slann is about right now. Its probably the one thing the book got about right (ignoring the fact that there isn't a cheaper level 4 option).

I have to agree with Walgis, though, that this post seems to be only looking at the positives, and wilfully ignoring everything that's negative. I'll leave it at that, though.

 

Maybe with a cheap block of skinks to hide in.

 

The skink would clip onto the side (different base size), meaning they will max 1 file of attacks on him unless they are in horde and you are not. That's pretty good odds for the skink surviving.

 

I say keep them out of combat altogether. You're probably bringing a pair of Skink Priests to carry all of the items the Party Slann isn't bringing (and they're likely packing Wildform, which has a limited range), so you might as well keep them close by/in Skink Skirmshers.

All in all, I'm excited to brew up some new lists for Lizards, and maybe even grab some models and play them out. Should be fun.

 

Just a thought,
Our special character no longer suck.
(well not as much as they used to)
and they might actualy get to see some play.
I was looking thourgh their rules, and it looks
like they actually fixed a lot of their faults.

Kroak can no longer loose his only spell, and he can cast it trough skink priest.

Gor-rok got a lot tougher, and has reasons to take him over a scr-vet.

Tenehuan boost swarms effectiveness (no crumble) and can join swarm units again.

Oxyotl I think he now has longer range ? 12"

Gor-rok, about the same...?

Tetto'eko got even better

mazumundi, his standard actualy does something now, also now the only loremaster in the army.

tiktak toe- got a better weapon I think.

AND I believe they all got cheaper.

 

I agree with your assessment. I just don't understand what GW was thinking with their point cost for Mazdamundi. I desperately want to play him in an army but we can only take hime in a game of >= 3120 points. I don't know about you guys but that isn't a point level I am used to playing.

 

My son (Matt) played a test game with the new book Saturday night against a tough Daemon army. He was at a US Indy GT and placed 3rd general out of 88 (4-1, 86 battle points out of 100) running a Slann with lore of beasts (no loremaster, plaque of tepok for fifth spell, focused rumination and becalmning, no cupped hands; also runs a maxed out oldblood and large TgGand large saurus block with small blocks of ranked sknks, two sallies, cham skink unit and skink skirmisher uni).

Some basic conclusions from those of us watching and the two people playing the game:
1. Losing the free discipline, the increase in points cost, the change in becalming, and the loss of focused rumination really does hurt the Slann but the disciplines are mostly good and reasonably priced as discussed below.
2. The infantry gained some more potency with skinks having 6+ scaly skin saves and TG and saurus having predatory fighter special rule (and TG being 1/8th cheaper). It is surprising how often those few extra attacks from predatory fighter special rule can turn a close combat. The predatory fighter must pursue rull either was not a factor or was restrained by two lvl 1 skink priests, one with beasts and one with heavens and one with dispell scroll and one with cube.
3. Matt found High Magic loremaster was effective and a good lore for the Slann with the ability to swap out successfully cast High Magic spells for common lore spells. Also, the use of skink priests for range and line of sight/front arc for both MM and DD spells is extremely helpful both with High Magic and with swaps for the common lore signature spells. A Slann with the loremaster options knows 8 spells and use of skink priest's range and arc to get in range to use arcane unforging to potentially wound and also take a magic item from a character is a big advantage. The same is true for fiery convocation and soul quench from High Magic to take out larger mid T units, spirit leach to try to pick off a character, shem's burning gaze cast on units-esp on undead and daemons and regen models, searing doom to hit a unit or lone model with high armour saves, or a fireball cast at something with regen). You have the abllity to swap or get spells to deal with high armour saves and regen as needed. He went for spirit leach to go after the tome on the Tzeentch Greater Daemon.
4. It looks like soul of stone, becalming, harmonic convergence with a channelling staff, loremaster High Magic, and loremaster 8 common lore signature spellls are all good choices. Always take soul of stone because it cuts the risk of blowing up the slann in half and cuts the risk of the slann losing levels and spells in half as well. The reservoir of energy is iffy. (Matt used soul of stone and reservoir of energy and hihg magic loremaster and found the reservoir only modestly helpful at times but barely worth the points.)
5 Beasts is a good option for a skink priest (especially in an army focused on larger saurus and TG unit) but Heavens is good for a lvl 1 (iceshard is particularly important is dealing with shooting and reducing hits in combat). Matt took beasts on his Slann at Bayou and liked it a lot. It has great synergy with monsters, cav, war beasts, monstrous beasts and monstrous cav and chariots given the lore attribute and the signature spell Wyssan's is huge for saurus and TG units but even helpful for skinks and Skrox units (salamanders become really potent in combat with that spell) and ancient stegs become a tough and potent rock with S7 and T7 on the steg and with S4 skink crew (split profile now means you hit the steg, not the crew!).

Salmanders are now monstrous beasts which protects them from stomps and thunderstomps and gives the stomps and the loss of march and shoot appeared to be minor.

Matt ran his tournament list repointed for the new army book with the slann altered for the new rule book points cost and disciplines. I think he was able to add a couple more Tg or something else.

Basically, you lose the OP magic defense and offense you once had but gain more combat ability and casting flexibility.