8th Ed. Fire Slann

[Dog On Todd]

I was looking at the lores again, and I'm still not sold on Death. It looks like Shadow, Light, and Life are the clear winners.

However, I still think death and fire could be fun and playable? (unlike beasts, and arguably heavens)

Strewart already has an excellent death thread going, so I was hoping to get some ideas for fire?

I'm mostly imagining hitting low toughness elite troops with lots and lots of fire spams before they smack into saurus blocks.

This can also be achieved with Salamanders and Terradons/skinks, but Fire might be fun just to play around with? Also allows for more Saurus

Could be good against elves? Flaming head unfortunately would hit one of your TG, and the panic test is kind of irrelevant, but you are going to toast some elves!

Lots of magic missiles also means you can channel through skink priests, so it gives you HUGE range of the battlefield. You may even be able to run a solo slann/tiny bodyguard with him at the front at the very back of your line and just decimate low toughness troops through your priests?

Just thought I'd throw this out there for brainstorming. The sheer amount of spells you could throw would mean its difficult for your opponent to dispel everything, and I'm looking to try some alternate lores.

 

[Gor-rok]

I've used fire a few times, and it was incredibly fun, though nowhere near the sickening powerhouse that is Lore of Shadows. But Fun>Win in my book, so I say go for it.

Unsurprisingly, my best luck came when I could get the Slann and friends into a somewhat centrally located building. You kill them with fire, they charge in and the Temple guard hold... Next turn you can blast them again. Of course, keeping flame cage on their enormous horde unit the entire game makes for big, big laughs (for you).

And, as you say, this Slann makes the best use of the flying skink priest buddy- there's nowhere to hide from the fireball of justice.

Folding Fortress might be in order if you wanted to get nasty about things, but it makes this awfully expensive- you'll most likely want Soul of Stone in the absence of ToV or cupped hands, in addition to the usual disciplines.

Light, Life, and Shadows are getting real old, real quick. Think I'll play around with this for a while and see what happens.

 

[Bish]

Hi

I love lore of fire. I play against HE and VC mostly. Direct damage eats through white lions.

Was even thinking off painting up one of my slann like he was on fire but that's another topic altogether.


Samuel

 

[Dog On Todd]

Flame Cage is what kinda caught my eye in this Lore, haha!

What do people do with burning head? I figured I could put Slann in the back with regular Saurus so he goes in the front, of maybe give my TG champ a dragonbane gem and just smack him with burning heads all game?

Panic test seems minimal. I'm thinking of this more as a salamander shot without the -2 AS

 

[Ejpok]

Hello,
The fire Slann is great for Team tournaments (When you have for example 5 man teams and you don't make tourney all commers lists, but you make specialized armylists. And a Vietcong List (About 100 Skink shoots +fireballas and maybe Chainlighting) i a great counter againts some chessy opponents
Other than that, I would suggest leaving fire, because there are some Heavy armies that laugh at fireball or other Spells from the lore of fire. And to worse things up, the number 6 spell is Rubbish

 

[Scalenex]

I would say if you do use the Fire Slann, don't take Lore Mastery and save yourself 50 points. Most of the spells are along the same lines so you don't need all seven. If you take a Slann in a Temple Guard bunker you aren't allowed to cast the burning head (since you can't cast a spell that hits friendly troops in that matter). If you have a Slann flying solo, Cascading Fire Cloak won't help you much. Since a Fire Slann is likely to focus on quantity of spells rather than casting 15+ to 18+ ueberspells, you don't need to use as many dice per spell and MAYBE can consider leaving Cupped Hands behind to save another 45 points.

I'm (slowly) working on building a walled fortress for Warhammer siege games. It occurred to me that in a game with lots of building assaults the Lore of Fire would become far more powerful than it is in a more typical game.

 

[strewart]

I am not a fan of fire because it is mostly offensive spells, and they don't do a lot these days. A horde will let you kill 5 of them without caring, a monster will shrug off most of the damage.

However, great to see some more unique and different LM armies! Would be interesting to see how it goes in practice.

 

[Dog On Todd]

I would say if you do use the Fire Slann, don't take Lore Mastery and save yourself 50 points. Most of the spells are along the same lines so you don't need all seven. If you take a Slann in a Temple Guard bunker you aren't allowed to cast the burning head (since you can't cast a spell that hits friendly troops in that matter). If you have a Slann flying solo, Cascading Fire Cloak won't help you much. Since a Fire Slann is likely to focus on quantity of spells rather than casting 15+ to 18+ ueberspells, you don't need to use as many dice per spell and MAYBE can consider leaving Cupped Hands behind to save another 45 points.

I'm (slowly) working on building a walled fortress for Warhammer siege games. It occurred to me that in a game with lots of building assaults the Lore of Fire would become far more powerful than it is in a more typical game.

Still getting use to the 8th edition rules, so I wasn't sure if you could cast burning head or not. A further question: why are fire slann better in castle games? Put them in the tower? Or shoot at towers?

And I agree Strewart! Just wanted to try something new. I think I'm going to use it against HE. Basically shoot them with a bunch of stuff (including Slann), and with mediocre rolls they should be reduced to barely anything by the time they hit my Saurus?

That's the plan anyways. I could fail to roll any 6's with my skinks, and he could counter all my magic, then get into combat with my weaker Saurus blocks (due to sacrificing points and spells to focus on shooting) just to lawnmower through them.

Will post results!

 

[Scalenex]

I'm (slowly) working on building a walled fortress for Warhammer siege games. It occurred to me that in a game with lots of building assaults the Lore of Fire would become far more powerful than it is in a more typical game.

Still getting use to the 8th edition rules, so I wasn't sure if you could cast burning head or not. A further question: why are fire slann better in castle games? Put them in the tower? Or shoot at towers?


[/quote]

Flaming attacks reroll dice to wound on targets inside buildings, so fire magic theoretically becomes twice as powerful if all your foes are in buildings.

 

[Scalenex]

Lore of Fire:http://paint-hammer.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/lore-of-fire-party-slann-2012-slann.html

Let me know your thoughts, im going to post each update on here and will finally collate all of the info into one UBER post/essay

Hope its of some use!

Here's the second of Espace excellent blog posts. I thought I'd put it here with the Fire Slann tactica.

 

[Dog On Todd]

Thanks scalenex!

That was a good read

 

[Scalenex]

Storm of Magic Addendum

Fire is a straightforward lore. Straightforward doesn’t meant bad and it doesn’t mean boring. Kindleflame and lots of power dice means you really obliterate even the nastiest units. With the extra power dice and relatively low casting cost of the Fire spells, a Fire Slann can throw down spell after spell. If you are the type to have lot of skink priests occupying your fulcrums and flittering around the board with Cloak of Feathers or Skink Skirmisher escorts, the multiple skinks you can channel magic missiles from your Slann through means very few enemies will be outside your wrath. Also, I believe arcane fulcrums still count as buildings which means flaming attacks can reroll to wound. Also, a lot of the nastier monsters out there have Regeneration. Lore of Fire is a much hotter pick (pun intended) in Storm of Magic than regular games.

Lore of Fire may seem vanilla because it has few spells not tying into damaging things, but the simplicity frees you up to be more creative with the rest of your army. If you want to experiment with Unit X, target your fire spells at whatever enemy units COUNTER Unit X. You are building an equation on the battlefield. Use the Lore of Fire to remove any variables from the equation you think can cause you problems and you are free to experiment with unorthodox strategies with relative ease. Thus the most straightforward lore because surprising versatile if you tie it to your army theme.

Fireball Barrage: The Presence spell is mighty. Few units like taking 6d6 S4 hits. Even with the 3+ ward save from an arcane fulcrum, the sheer number of hits will roast all but the mightiest or luckiest enemy wizards (assuming they don’t have an anti-fire item). Chances are a Fireball Barrage at an enemy wizard will draw out the enemy dispel dice. Use this to your advantage and cast this spell early to make the rest of your spell casting run smoother.

Withering Heat: The Equilibrium spell is probably the best Cataclysm spell for Fire. I’d almost go as far as to call this Throne of Vines of Fire since it makes all other fire spells better. Making a priority target flammable before hitting again and again with flaming attacks is nice. It’s also helps Lizardmen gain or maintain a mobility advantage by slowing down enemy charges, pursuits and flees letting you dictate the pace of the battle. It’s also a hex, which is something the Lore of Fire is otherwise lacking. It’s not just for making your magic missiles and vortexes wound more often. This spell gives you something to cast when most of the units on the table are engaged in close combat. The hex well improve the effectiveness of Cascading Firecloak and the Flaming Sword of Ruin, so it’s very versatile. It’s also a Remains in Play which is nice.

Magma Storm: I’m not a big fan of Vortexes in general since I fear misfires greatly. The risk for Magma Storm is probably worth it. It’s good for knocking high AS high Toughness enemies down a peg with S10 hits or washing over horde style armies with a sheer volume of hits. The problem is, much of the time, if you’ve achieved dominance your forces are probably mixing it up with the enemy, so the risk for hitting your own men is high even without rolling a misfire. On the upside, 25+ is fairly cheap for this many kilotons of destruction.