TOW Is a Slaan a must take?

[jasonpb]

I am currently building my rebaseing my lizards. I have been playing with my vampires in the meantime. Magic has really underwhelmed me. Is a slann a must take for lizards or can we get away with not using one?

 

[RipperDerek]

The Slann is not a must take.

 

[discomute]

I am currently building my rebaseing my lizards. I have been playing with my vampires in the meantime. Magic has really underwhelmed me. Is a slann a must take for lizards or can we get away with not using one?

I have hard quite a few well known competitive YouTubers talk about how great magic is. I don't see it, nor do many on these forums. Slann are very expensive for a pure "cast and run away" type character, at least compared to TOW.

I absolutely think they are not necessary from a competitive aspect. From a "fun" aspect it's all up to you but it's hard to imagine riding to battle without our great frog.

In fact I'd say the leadership of 9 is one of the things you'll miss out on the most.

 

[jasonpb]

I think being a 40 year veteran of warhammer ( 1st edition as a 13 year old, I am old) will take a Slann because they were always the quintessential lizard man character and my late cousin always rocked one. Mazdamundi and Kroak were his favourites. So in honour of his memory I will take one but not all the time.
Do find the skink conduit is a trap because you just spend more points on the ability of the Slann?

 

[discomute]

I think being a 40 year veteran of warhammer ( 1st edition as a 13 year old, I am old) will take a Slann because they were always the quintessential lizard man character and my late cousin always rocked one. Mazdamundi and Kroak were his favourites. So in honour of his memory I will take one but not all the time.
Do find the skink conduit is a trap because you just spend more points on the ability of the Slann?

I agree about Slann being quintessential although I never liked special character Slann as I would name my Slann and imagine the lore around the army. Oxyotyl might be present though.

It is a good question about spending excess on casters when magic is underwhelming. I am not planning on taking any priests but I'll be interested to see what people think. That said I'm a huge fan of the Troglodon lore and model (it is quite underwhelming for its points, but I think not badly enough for casual use) so I hope to get an idea of arcane Vassel shortly

 

[BeardedLizard]

I'm definitely aboard the magic-is-awesome train. Whenever I play without the slann I feel like there's a giant chunk of the game missing. I wish we had cheaper options but he's what we have. Most important aspect is the defence he provides. Some armies can bring 2xlvl4 wizards with just 320 points and 1xfated dispel is just not going to cut it VS that.

Slann allows a lot of trickery, especially since you can abuse the dispel ranges with Arcane Vassal rule. Here's my favourites for Slann and priests:
Illusion is my top choice with Crystal column and Miasmic Mirage being awesome control spells, chucking a stegadon chief accross the map with Shimmering Dragon is also hilarious.
High Magic is great if you have a skink priest in a unit of saurus of temple guard, you can boost their movement and give them ethreal with Walk Between the worlds, Fury of Khaine and Shield of Saphery are great buffs. Tempest is the best answer to nightgoblin fanatics.
Elementalism Plague of Rust and 50+ Skinks
Battle Magic has my favourite conveyance spell Arcane Urgency is great for many things like dropping surprise rocks with terradons (40" move). Best vortex spell Pillar of Fire and Hammerhands as signature spell, which is great for Skink priests on Stegadons.
Necromancy I haven't played around with yet, but stacking leadership debuffs with our terror causing monsters seems potent.

Of our signature spells Monsoon is a great LOS blocker and really shines against shooting heavy armies and Apotheosis is a fun way to give unit terror if you have something like a Cold One Scarvet in your Saurus/Temple guard unit.

All this being said, if you want to play without the Slann you can certainly play without the Slann even in competitive enviroments. I just have more fun when I get to take part in the magic phase.

 

[Gothmog Lord of Balrogs]

I'm definitely aboard the magic-is-awesome train. Whenever I play without the slann I feel like there's a giant chunk of the game missing. I wish we had cheaper options but he's what we have. Most important aspect is the defence he provides. Some armies can bring 2xlvl4 wizards with just 320 points and 1xfated dispel is just not going to cut it VS that.

Slann allows a lot of trickery, especially since you can abuse the dispel ranges with Arcane Vassal rule. Here's my favourites for Slann and priests:
Illusion is my top choice with Crystal column and Miasmic Mirage being awesome control spells, chucking a stegadon chief accross the map with Shimmering Dragon is also hilarious.
High Magic is great if you have a skink priest in a unit of saurus of temple guard, you can boost their movement and give them ethreal with Walk Between the worlds, Fury of Khaine and Shield of Saphery are great buffs. Tempest is the best answer to nightgoblin fanatics.
Elementalism Plague of Rust and 50+ Skinks
Battle Magic has my favourite conveyance spell Arcane Urgency is great for many things like dropping surprise rocks with terradons (40" move). Best vortex spell Pillar of Fire and Hammerhands as signature spell, which is great for Skink priests on Stegadons.
Necromancy I haven't played around with yet, but stacking leadership debuffs with our terror causing monsters seems potent.

Of our signature spells Monsoon is a great LOS blocker and really shines against shooting heavy armies and Apotheosis is a fun way to give unit terror if you have something like a Cold One Scarvet in your Saurus/Temple guard unit.

All this being said, if you want to play without the Slann you can certainly play without the Slann even in competitive enviroments. I just have more fun when I get to take part in the magic phase.

Do you lore familiar your slann? And do you do any disciplines? HSoM, Becalming and Soul Stone seem to be the go to ones, with Becalming being my favorite, but soul stone being the option when points tight.

 

[BeardedLizard]

From the disciples I like running Becalming Cogitation/Soul of Stone, I think ethreal is quite useless.

Magic items items are usually Lore Familiar/Earthing Rod.

Most of my recent builds are just Slann with Earthing Rod so I can pump more points to other character slots.

/Edit. FAQ pretty much killed the Slann. Ethreal now very important unless you take Temple Guard.

 

[PlasmaDavid]

Ran Slann for the first time today (750pts game, a level 4 wizard!) and was very impressed with High Magic. +1 A on Saurus, a 9 inch bubble of difficult terrain for disrupting enemy ranks and ethereal/reserve move, all very useful spells. Even monsoon was great. I guess in higher point games with enemy wizards contesting you then remains-in-play like vortexes are less useful?

 

[DoubleSkulls]

I think the Slann is significantly over-costed for what is an average L4 caster. Tzeentch can get up to +6 casting, and shut you down with Infernal Puppet, High Elves get a free reroll on casting, Necromancers can sit on Mortis Engines and get +1. Orcs & Goblins have lots of magic items which buff their casters to be superior and L4 goblin shaman are unlimited and comparatively cheap.

At the moment I don't want to run without a L4 to protect and give some offensive capacity, so I haven't tried other options yet. But 400+ points is a lot.
Has anyone tried multiple L2 skinks with dispel scrolls for anti-magic? Then the saving can go elsewhere.

 

[Gothmog Lord of Balrogs]

I think the Slann is significantly over-costed for what is an average L4 caster. Tzeentch can get up to +6 casting, and shut you down with Infernal Puppet, High Elves get a free reroll on casting, Necromancers can sit on Mortis Engines and get +1. Orcs & Goblins have lots of magic items which buff their casters to be superior and L4 goblin shaman are unlimited and comparatively cheap.

At the moment I don't want to run without a L4 to protect and give some offensive capacity, so I haven't tried other options yet. But 400+ points is a lot.
Has anyone tried multiple L2 skinks with dispel scrolls for anti-magic? Then the saving can go elsewhere.

Problem is our level 2 directly competes with the old blood as is 0-1 per 1k. So in an average game all you have is 2 of them. And then you can't have a combat lord if you do that. No other army has this problem that I'm aware of.

 

[Kalisto]

I think the Slann is significantly over-costed for what is an average L4 caster. Tzeentch can get up to +6 casting, and shut you down with Infernal Puppet, High Elves get a free reroll on casting, Necromancers can sit on Mortis Engines and get +1. Orcs & Goblins have lots of magic items which buff their casters to be superior and L4 goblin shaman are unlimited and comparatively cheap.

At the moment I don't want to run without a L4 to protect and give some offensive capacity, so I haven't tried other options yet. But 400+ points is a lot.
Has anyone tried multiple L2 skinks with dispel scrolls for anti-magic? Then the saving can go elsewhere.

The most problem in that (if we don't think about the 0-1 limitation) is that you have only 18" spell range. This is a BIG difference since the most good casters launch magic missile at more than that...
I have thought to play it in the middle of battlefield on stegadon and rush forward to come into dispel range but you have a -3 compared to a level 4 to dispel their spell. This is a quite huge debuff. Even against bound spells (mostly lv 2 or 3) you have penalities.
If you use a dispel scroll you pay 20 points to have 50% chance to just remove that debuff, not to dispel. Maybe you roll really bad or maybe you hare out of casting range

The only good thing i can see a skink priest is with a cube of darkness. But the problem is much or less the same, on a stegadon you want to give him a ward save, if on foot you will be often more than 18" away from your opponent.

 

[DoubleSkulls]

If I didn't take a Slann I think I'd have to take a Priest (meaning one less Oldblood) just to have something that has a chance of stopping Bound items and enemy casting. A 'naked' L2 reduces a L4s casting success from about 93% to 74% for a 8+ spell. That's about 4 spells per game which feels reasonably cost efficient - if you can get in range. I'm not sure I'd pick Cube of Darkness over a pair of Dispel Scrolls. Maybe the Ancient with a Glyph of Warding?

 

[Kalisto]

Do you have a table with all statistics? It would be interesting...
Another thing, are you sure table are updated to oldworld? Now you need +1 than casting level to dispel a spell, before wasn't so.
Well i prefer a cube of darkness with 100% dispel chance plus remain in play spell (even if not in range) than two chances of what? 70% in the best cases?

 

[DoubleSkulls]

I'm running simulations using something I knocked up in the past few days using TOW rules, so trying 10,000 casts for the different combinations, rather than trying to work out the maths - miscast on both sides really makes that quite fiddly. There is a picture here, for ease of reading, and the data pasted from Excel below.




Caster Dispeller Target % Cast
L4 none 7 98.7%
L4 none 8 93.2%
L4 none 9 84.6%
L4 none 10 73.5%
L4 none 11 58.0%
L4 L2 7 75.0%
L4 L2 8 73.5%
L4 L2 9 70.1%
L4 L2 10 63.9%
L4 L2 11 55.3%
L4 L4 7 55.5%
L4 L4 8 55.3%
L4 L4 9 53.9%
L4 L4 10 50.1%
L4 L4 11 45.5%

 

[DoubleSkulls]

a cube of darkness

Once per game... its just overpriced for me.

 

[Kalisto]

Once per game... its just overpriced for me.

Maybe, but you can dispel even more spells at the same time. In the other version of the game the cost is always have been between 40 and 50.

I like your table but it didnt consider the level 4 rolls, only the casting value. For example rolling a 7 (middle value) with level 4 give a value of 11, you need 12 to dispel that means 10 with level 2. But if the level 4 player roll a 9 or more you need always a double 6 to dispel.

 

[NatielSanti]

It depends on the game size. For games smaller than 2000 points, the Slann is overpriced. For games larger than 2000 points, the Slann becomes necessary because Skink Priests are too weak for that format.

However, in general, the Slann is not an efficient mage in OW. He doesn’t have enough options to justify his cost.

 

[airjamy]

I think you do need a Slann for the LD9 and his leadership bubble. LD8 without Cold Blood is pretty bad. I usually run him with Higher State of Mind to keep him safe. It is expensive, but those are also points your opponent basically never scores in a close game. Elementalism casting synnergizes well with our army (Rust for Skinks, TMP for Bastiladons), so i think it is a strong enough pick. Very much a neccesary evil.