AoS Double Shadowstrike

[Magic_karl]

Hi!

I think the premise for this is self explanatory... I love skinks, I love flying armies. Here is how I plan to go all out.

Skink Priest general
-Feathers
-Artefact

Shadowstrike
Skink Starpriest
-Artefact
10x Skinks
10x Skinks
6x Ripperdactyls

Shadowstrike
Skink Starpriest
-Artefact
10x Skinks
10x Skinks
6x Terradons

3x Ripperdactyls
Bastiladon
-Solar Beam
Stegadon
-Sky Atta..streak Bow

Not sure which artefacts will work best here. Two battalions is a lot, but I feel like this army will at least give a good game.

Let me know if I’m mad!

Mike

 

[Aginor]

Yeah... you're mad.

Ok now honestly... I don't know.
I already prepared a post telling you you dont have many wounds and no serious damage potential except your flyers...
...but it may actually work if you can do decent damage with your Rippers in your first round.

Problem might be that with a five drop list you probably won't get the first turn and the preventing your enemy from sniping your heroes might be difficult. Doable though if you deploy right.

Good choice having both Terradons and Rippers. Rippers are so squishy that you have to activate them first in combat. When attacking with two units of Rippers that doesn't work but the way you have it the Terradons can stay a bit back and shoot...

The second, smaller Ripper unit is to have the toad on the table I guess? That works.

And then two big Dinosaurs and a Skink screen to cover your priests and claim objectives... yeah. Might work...

Really hard to tell.

 

[Magic_karl]

Thanks!

I’ve always preferred the glass cannon style of play; great opening turn, all downhill from here.

Not planning on winning any tournaments with it but my local scene is mostly 2 tournament veterans and some 40k converts, so the aim is to have a fun, unconventional list.

3 Rippers are just to drop a toad, but had considered Stegadon alpha granting them extra movement to either threaten or remove chaff. Fair point about activating them first though, maybe rethink or hold them back first turn.

 

[Paul Beenis]

Some would say the shadowstrike really benefits skinks too, but here you can't really take advabtage of that. Those 10 skink units are either lots of cannon fodder or objective holders. The way I've always seen battalions working is when you get the most value out of each one... that's not happening here unfortunately. What if you ran an even larger unit of rippers (9-12) in a single shadowstrike with two 40 skink units? Food for thought.

 

[Aginor]

Good point by @Paul Beenis !
There is no big advantage of having two Shadowstrikes except if you want to play both Terradons and Rippers in the Shadowstrike, which is what you want to do obviously, but I agree that's kind of diminishing returns there..
Also yeah units of 40 Skinks have actually quite decent shooting when buffed with the Shadowstrike and you save points by using their horde bonus.

You also might have the option to take a Slann, and Slann are just awesome because of their global unbind and so on. IMO almost a must take for a 2k list.

Let's see.... those are 15 flyers. The maximum number of flyers in one unit is 12.
Rippers are more expensive than Terradons but if you can omit one bataillon you could maybe get most of that stuff into a list with one Shadowstrike...
I know that's not what you are asking for but you would still get a lot of flyers.

 

[Paul Beenis]

Agreed! Pre ghb17 I barely considered using a Slann. Post ghb17 he legit is an auto include, unless you're taking kroak instead.

Remember this, Seraphon needs synergies to perform in any function.

Slann gives:
- 10" bubble fly
- 10" bubble re-roll saves
- 3 spells
- ^ option for those spells to include skink spells
- option for double teleport
- army wide constellation that are very nice
- 3 global unbinds
- great synergies with battalions

Cost: 260 points (best 260 you've ever spent )

 

[Canas]

Also, if you're going for 2 shadowstrikes, you might wanne swap out some skinks for chameleons to up the annoyance factor.

And why are you using 2 starpriests and then a priest as general? Seems a bit many priests (especially considering how weak they are apart from their 1 supporting trick).

Other than that, the idea of 2 shadowstrikes could quite easily work. The flyers are your fighters, skinks as your fodder & a 40 man unit is actually effective. Get some chameleons to further threaten and annoy key-targets.

Let's see, an example list:

Shadowstrike 120
Skink Starpriest/priest 80
-Artefact
40x Skinks 200
40x Skinks 200
3x Ripperdactyls 140

Shadowstrike 120
Skink Starpriest/priest 80
-Artefact
10x Chameleons Skinks 240
40x Skinks 200
3x Terradons 120

Comes to exactly 1500 points.

You have a crapton of wounds with the amount of skinks, chameleons can jump around annoying the hell out of enemies. Also, with a 120 skinks you can now put out a 120 attacks, at 3+/5+/-/1 re-rolling 1's to wound and to hit resulting in eh, 32 wounds if you'd make em all hit the designated target by your pries/starpriest. If your enemy isn't using something ridiculously sturdy you might be quite succesfull using ranged attacks and weary fighter.

I would say that the 3 times 40 skinks are basicly mandatory for this setup. They're extremely cheap, actually put out a decent amount of attacks, fullfill your battleline requirements, provide you with the wounds required to not just be swept away after 1 turn. And the psychological effect of a 120 of the buggers runningaround probably helps as well.

The last unit of skinks is up for debate. You can either bring some chameleons, another block of 40 skinks to get to a whopping 160 models. Or simply take 10 skinks to spend points somwhere else.

As for terradons & ripperdactyls. Personally I'd guess that terradons might be a tad more succesfull in this particular setup. They have some extra ranged attacks which makes them a tad more reliable. And they don't have as much of a bullseye painted on them. If your opponent fears rippers enough he'l just unload on them immeadiatly and ignore your skinks. If he doesn't fear terradons that much he might get triggered by the massive amount of skinks more easily, allowing your terradons an extra round or two of unloading their stuff which ultimatly might be better.

Now at 1500 this'l mostly just be a silly list. However, at 2000 or 2500 points this might actually start to get good. Fill those remaining 500-1000 points with some behemoths and an actual decent general and it looks like a very decent list. The sheer amount of skinks makes for a nice core functioning as both fodder and to just bury your opponent in attacks, the priest/starpriest provide decent support. The flyers can dish out a reasonable amount of damage while not being terribly squishy themselfs. Get in a behemoth or two and you have a functional army.

 

[Paul Beenis]

Good call but how do you plan to take down anything with good saves? No rend could be a real downfall.

 

[Killer Angel]

Good call but how do you plan to take down anything with good saves? No rend could be a real downfall.

the tactic works if you land a large number of successful attacks. Even a save 3+ will save only one third of wounds, and if you force 30 saves, that's something.
What must be avoided at all cost is to go against guys with rerollable saves.

 

[Canas]

Good call but how do you plan to take down anything with good saves? No rend could be a real downfall.

As @Killer Angel says, good saves shouldn't be an issue if you bury them in attacks. Even a 2+ save will still average 5 wounds getting through each turn. Rerollable saves are a much greater issue though. Anyway, that was part of the reason why I said that it really comes into its own at 2000-2500 points where you can throw in some behemoths and the like.

In a 1500 point game I wouldn't field 2 times the same battalion as you'l end up too specialised. The only exceptions being ridiculously OP stuff and stuff like the ironjawz that have 5 models total, so not like there's much variation to begin with.

 

[Paul Beenis]

@Killer Angel @Canas fair point made! Swarms of attacks can be really effective. You'd want to use the big blocks of skinks to snipe single heroes as you might struggle fitting many ripper bases into contact especially in tighter formations could also be worth taking the prysm artefact for some arcane bolt + prism sniping and finishing off.