Or, "Why Moving Skinks to Special Does Not Destroy the Character of the Saurian Ancients"... ...but bluntly, I'm arguing that those of you who are considering the 9th Age, but are discouraged by the seeming destruction of the very fabric of Lizardmen heritage, should still consider it and give it a go. I'm not going to argue that it's the best decision, only that it's not the game-breaker it first appears to be. So I'm going to start by laying out some of the problems that led to moving Skink Hunters/Skink Skirmishers to Special, then go through some of the implications of this move, and finally identify some future directions for changes and fixes. Here goes. Since the middle of 8th edition or so, the Skink Cloud has been the greatest balance problem with the Lizardmen, both internally and externally. This has continued in the 9th Age, which has a goal of making all units playable, nothing over-powered, and maintaining a diversity of builds for each army. The fact that Skinks so clearly won out over Saurus for Core points meant they were always taken; the fact that Skink Clouds performed so well at tournaments, over and over, meant that they were an overperforming build. The problem, though, is the core place in the army that Skinks have. Sure, some people maxed out their Skink options, but even people who bring a CC-oriented, Saurus-based list need to bring some Skinks to help control the flow of battle and deal with Monsters. So the central question became, "how do you nerf the Skink Cloud without penalizing players who only bring a few units as part of a diverse army list?" This question led to a lot of different suggestions, addressing both internal and external balance. Points cost, minimum unit size, and maximum unit size were all used to answer the question. Externally, players identified a) the sheer number of wounds and units that Skinks could bring to bear; and b) the sheer volume of poison shooting that such an army brought. Internally, the failure of Saurus to either survive or create high damage output meant that Skinks were almost universally seen as a better choice, even in combat. So consistently, competitive Saurian Ancients players brought as many small units of Skinks as possible, and did very well. The changes to unit size weren't enough to change that, and any drastic increase in points hurt the players who only take 1-2 units. We needed a solution that limited the amount of poisoned shooting and the number units, without increasing the cost of a few units. So when someone first suggested moving Skink Hunters to Special, I thought it was absurd - they are our Core troops! Nevermind the fact that when people talk about nerfing Skinks, my kneejerk reaction is "are you really getting beaten by units with a Toughness of 2, whose only strength is shooting and only have a 12" range?" As I thought about it more, I didn't hate the idea any less, but started seeing how it would fix some problems. I still hate the idea, because my ideal fix is that Saurus are made better, not that Skinks are penalized. But here are some of the implications of this decision that I see: 1. There is a lower limit on the maximum number of Skink Hunters - 3 duplicate choices in Special, rather than 4 in Core. This does indeed limit those who would take lots of Skinks, without making the units more expensive, thus not penalizing those who take fewer units. This is biggest argument in favor of this move: it definitely limits the number of Skink Hunter units played, without making them more expensive. 2. Obviously, now we need to fill our Core with other stuff. This directly makes Saurus more competitive (albeit only by reducing options, which sucks), but also makes us look to the Braves for their new, non-poisonous-shooting skirmishers. So what are the roles of Skink skirmishers? The ones I can see are shooting (anti-monster and anti-warmachine, particularly), and battlefield control through movement. We throw them in the way of enemy heavies, we feed them to blender characters, we make enemies waste their charges by fleeing, or by taking their charges at funny angles. Skirmishing Braves can do all those latter parts just as well without poisoned shooting. It's only the monster hunting and threat of poisoned stand-and-shoot that they don't have. So we now can't fill the monster-hunting role with Core troops, but the all-important battlefield control is still there. We can still take 4 of those highly mobile units, or 3 with a Skink combat block. In other words, I think moving Hunters to Special hasn't changed that part of our gameplay very much; it only reduces the ability to field large numbers of skirmishers with poison shooting, while having a much smaller impact when you only wanted one or two to begin with. Again, it answers the central question. 3. Finally, character. This is the big one, right? Little flurries of Skinks scattered around the battlefield, lobbing their javelins or shooting their blowpipes to take down high-Toughness targets or harass enemy formations are just a fixture of the Lizardmen army. I'm using "Lizardmen" here, rather than "Saurian Ancients", because most of you are Lizardmen players who want a better kind of Warhammer, not a completely different game, and because the character of our army has been defined by Warhammer's Lizardmen for as long as any of us have been playing. So the immediate question is indeed about the character of the Saurian Ancients, but it must come back to the question of Lizardmen character. It seems, then, like a cold-hearted (to put it mildly) ripping apart of the fabric of Lizardmen heritage to put these Skinks, so absolutely necessary in both story and strategy, into the "Special" section of the army - a section which, by very definition, says that they are non-essential. But all this is to say that they are iconic of the Lizardmen, and I have to ask whether they must be in the Core section in order to be iconic. Consider the Temple Guard and the Stegadon. I think of both of those as iconic of the Lizardmen army. They are not quite ubiquitous, but they've been around for as long as the "Lizardmen" have been an army, and they are expressions of different Lizardmen approaches to battle. Between the two of them, Stegs and TG have had their turns in Core, Special and Rare, but always been iconic. Skinks are the same: expressions of Lizardmen character, iconic on the battlefield - so do they need to be in Core? Now I look back over what I've written and see an essay, so I'll be brief in identifying persistent problems. I've argued for Skinks in Special, but even if you accept that conclusion, there are still many issues with both gameplay and character to work out. First, we have less variety in Core than we did before. We need a more flexible, sensible and characterful selection of Core troops. Personally, I'd argue that we should not look at diversifying Skink units in Core, because Saurian Warriors are supposed to be our killing machines. I'd like to see more extreme totems, more equipment options, or actual new Saurian units make it into the Core. Second, some of our merged units need to be either split, or reworked. Chameleons and Hunters should not be the same unit choice. Third, Saurian Warriors are consistently identified as the most disappointing unit in the book. We need to get creative with how we play them, but we also need them to just be a more effective option. Fourth, When the 1.0 is released, and with it the background stories of the T9A world, we need to come up with ways to have units whose rules are both streamlined, yet unique and expressive of their character. Now, I hope I've made a convincing argument for why moving our skirmishing Skinks to Special isn't as bad a decision as it looks. But more than that, I hope that you'll go beyond "taking a look" at the 1.0, and play a couple of games, no matter how the rules look to you. Things have been changed all over the board, and it can be difficult to predict how those changes will interact. I know the thing many people focus on in the Ninth Age is its pursuit of "balance", but every game I've played so far has been more fun than I've had playing Warhammer in a long time. That's my defense, I hope you'll consider it.
Skink units should exist in all three categories: CORE, SPECIAL, & RARE. Anything less is a fail. Sorry. But it is a FAIL.
Personally I kind of prefer RnF Skinks to the Skirmish equivalent, so it's not that huge of a deal (losing poisoned shooting I find a bit tough to stomach), however according to what you just said you wanted Saurus to become a more competitive choice over Skink Skirmishers in core. Why not just reduce the cost of Saurus and increase the cost of Skinks then? Those who only take 2-3 units still have around the same price in core whereas Skink Clouds now get to bring less and all Saurus Cores get a small buff they probably needed. Furion had that as his solution, having Saurus cost 10, Cohorts cost 6.5 (though poisoned attacks in melee got cheaper, to 0.5) and Skirmishers cost a deserved 8.5.
My problems with moving them to special are: My core choices are now almost entirely decided for me due to me disliking one customisation (adding krox to skinks). I feel that I have no choice but to take a big unit of saurus and fill up the remaining points with small skink units. I don't think disliking a single customisation is so restrictive in any other army because it's no fun if that's the case. By tournament metrics this may mean that all available units are taken more often but it makes me really sad about the direction the whole project is taking. It feels like lizards got buffed and buffed until 0.99 when everything was drastically changed and random stuff got drastically nerfed. Externally it's now reasonably balanced at the cost of internal balance and fun. That and the way it was done makes me sad about the whole project. Lizards for me are all about having two very different units fulfilling two very useful purposes. Now it's all about saurus hitting stuff and using skinks as chaff. Fine for some people but I find this style really boring and would have started a different army a long time ago if that had been the GW fluff/playstyle. The problem with trying to discuss this in a thread like this is that there are so many reasons that people want skinks in core (unit variety in core, iconic status of the unit, tradition, playstyle or the models and equipment that people have painted) that it's impossible to address all the issues in a single thread. Really you've got to either: Address all those points in the army book (not realistically going to happen) Put poison skirmishers back in core (ruled out by rules team) Tell people to like it or lump it, which has the disadvantage of being what GW did and were disliked for. This seems to be what's happening and means I'm not quite sure what the point of these threads are.
I agree that moving skinks to special was not the end of he world, and there are a lot of reasons I wouldn't mind them staying there. my main issue is that after removing the poison shooting from core they did not replace it with anything or adjust points accurately either, the entire move was very poorly thought out, and only ended up compounding our armies actual underlying problems.
Exactly. If they had provided a proper alternative, all would have been reasonably well (in the Core section that is). But they left us with pretty crappy choices and letting us just choose the best out of a bad Core selection. But have no fear, I personally find that the upcoming changes to the Core selection are an improvement (no spoilers!). It is not huge, but it is better.