8th Ed. elves in the jurassik park...

[pendrell]

hi fellow jurassik parkers,
First post here! I m fairly new to warhammer and have pondered a while about what army to choose. When I realized that there was an army where dinosaurs were riding dinosaurs and the army captain was a giant toad I was completely sold to lizardmen.

I love strong magic, shooting and redirectors so I seem to have found a lovely army. My play group is infested with high elves and dark elves so I really want to have a solid army against those. I am particularly concerned about high elves since their magic is so strong and the frost phoenix feels unbeatable

with these thoughts in mind I have come to the following list for 1500 points:

LORD
1 slann (focus of mystery, dispell scroll) - general

HEROS
1 tetto'eko
1 saurus scar veteran (BSB, cold one, dawnstone, Light armour, great weapon, dragonhelm)

CORE
4x10 skirk skirmisher (javelin + shied)
1x16 skink cohort (here tetto'eko, musician, standard)

SPECIAL
1 stegadon
1x12 template guards (here slann, musician, standard)

TOTAL 1498


Thoughts behind this list:
I wanted strong magic and I wanted to limit high elves magic as much as possible. I wanted to include a level 4 mage so there is the slann. Tetto'eko seems so strong to pass out. His magic items/special rules seem just insane and for less than 200 points that sounds very good to me. However, having slann + Tetto'eko eating tons of power dice I chose to avoid including innate bound spells in the army.
My strategy is to delay close combat as much as possible with skirmishers that are there for redirecting and chew up some models with their shooing. Meanwhile I want to spam comet of cassandora over my opponent army as well as some high magic. My hope is that by the point we reach combat his army is severely weakened by my superior magic phase. The temple guard unit adsorbs a charge and stegadon/scarvet flank-crush them.

I am looking for a competitive list so I would very much appreciate feedbacks in this direction. I am wondering whether the skink cohort unit should just be another skink skirmisher unit featuring tetto'eko. I hope that some of you could help out . Keep in mind that I would like to beat elves

Thank you in advance!


PS: I am having serious problems dealing with the frost phoenix. Is there a spell that can be fetched with the high magic lore attribute to crush high Toughness monsters?

 

[Qupakoco]

Welcome to the forum!!! Double dinos are indeed pretty cool. Good choice.

Your army list looks.... not so competitive. I would pick either the Slann OR Tetto at this point. The Slann is solid all around, so that's where I would lean. If you're really bent on the Comet though, Tetto is the way to go. Nothing hurts like Comet spam.

After that I would really look into upping the body count on your TG. Elves can chew through 12 models pretty fast. Heck, you can lose 10 in a miscast pretty easily. 20 would be better.

PS: I am having serious problems dealing with the frost phoenix. Is there a spell that can be fetched with the high magic lore attribute to crush high Toughness monsters?

Check out the Lore of Death... (or shoot it with Skinks)

 

[pendrell]

Thank you Qupakoco for the reply!
I played 2 games against wood elves yesterday. I upped the TG unit to 20 models as you suggested. I also added a unit of 20 saurus warriors to have two solid blocks of fighters. Furthermore, I added a unit of 8 chamaleon skinks. To free points up I removed the stegadon, skink cohort and 2 blocks of 10 skink skirmishers.

This was what I ended up with:

LORD
1 slann (focus of mystery, dispell scroll) - general

HEROS
1 tetto'eko
1 saurus scar veteran (BSB, cold one, dawnstone, Light armour, great weapon, dragonhelm)

CORE
2x10 skirk skirmisher (here tetto'eko, javelin + shied)
1x20 saurus warriors (musician, standard)

SPECIAL
1x20 template guards (here slann, musician, standard)
1x8 chameleon skinks


First game:
I was on the winning spot, all was good untill I casted a 2 dice spell with slann, got double 6's and rolled 4 on the miscast table. The TG unit was completely nuked, slann was gone and I did not have enough power to carry on, I conceded.

Second game: I played with slann out of the TG unit. I got a miscast with tetto'eko but that just killed few skinks. I controlled the board well and won pretty easily.


Things I liked:
-chamaleons were ambushing all day long. Annhilated archers and distracted the focus from the core of my army. Totally worth their points.
- Favorable combat due to high number of buffs/debuffs that loremaster in high magic and loremaster in heavens can lead to. Heavens gives you 3 spells in that sense and high magic gives you 1 spell. Every time you are about to be on combat it is great to have access to 4 cheap such spells. The opponent will not be able to dispell all of them turning combat on our side.

Things I didn't like:
- It was so frustrating losing the first game due to miscast. I am not sue that slann in TG unit is the way to go. TG unit featuring slann is also more akward to lead into cambat.
- too few power dice.... having two loremaster let me have so many possibilities magic-wise that it felt like it was a bit of a waste of points since I could not cast many of them.


Things to consider next:
-What is the general consensus of TG without slann versus saurus warriors? Are the extra point worth?
- I guess I should probably get rid of either slann or tetto'eko which could allow me to get a skink priest with the cube and few extra free points. But is it really worth it?
If you get rid of tetto'eko you can get a beast skink priest lev2. But you need to throw like 3 dice to reliably cast the signature spell... And then you don't really have enough dice for the slann. Lore of haevens already has combat friendly spells (although not as strong). Tetto'eko has also so many strong ability.
If you get rid of the slann you lack a wizard at level 4... That might be too though because you loose the +2 to dispell. I have to do a lot of thinking about this.

@Qupakoco: what spell would you throw at the frost phoenix with lore of death? Phoenix has leadership 9

 

[Qupakoco]

Yeah, miscasts stink. Lol. It has to happen every once in awhile to keep us LM generals in check. Your next rite of passage is losing a Steggy to a cannonball on turn 1...

-What is the general consensus of TG without slann versus saurus warriors? Are the extra point worth?

TG by themselves are very expensive for what the do. You'll almost always be better off with a unit of Saurus in terms of point cost. TG shine when they can pull out all those special rules afforded by the Slann in their unit.

- I guess I should probably get rid of either slann or tetto'eko which could allow me to get a skink priest with the cube and few extra free points. But is it really worth it?
If you get rid of tetto'eko you can get a beast skink priest lev2. But you need to throw like 3 dice to reliably cast the signature spell... And then you don't really have enough dice for the slann. Lore of haevens already has combat friendly spells (although not as strong). Tetto'eko has also so many strong ability.
If you get rid of the slann you lack a wizard at level 4... That might be too though because you loose the +2 to dispell. I have to do a lot of thinking about this.

Yeah, depends on your taste. I personally stick with one powerful caster with a scroll caddy as my default. Take a Slann and a Skink Priest with the D-Scroll/Cube. Typically the Slann takes up enough dice that the lowly Priest just kind of hangs out and waits until the Scroll/Cube is needed. The big problem with taking Tetto and a Slann is that you'll feel like it's a waste of points. Not to say that it wont work, but it will be hard to use them both effectively since the magic phase is restricted to a dice roll, as you experienced.

@Qupakoco: what spell would you throw at the frost phoenix with lore of death? Phoenix has leadership 9

Well... The Slann is LD 9 too... Makes for a 50-50 on causing a wound. Better odds than some other things. And remember for each wound caused by Lore of Death you'll gain a power dice. IIRC, Spirit Leach isn't too spendy when it comes to casting.

Honestly I haven't faced a Phoenix yet. But I'm confident the old tried and true non-magical Lizardmen techniques for downing monsters will pull through. Shoot it with Skinks or dispatch a Scar-Vet Cowboy to take it out.