8th Ed. Lore of Beasts Tactic

[MI_Tiger]

Although Life or Light are probably the best lores in most situations, I really want to try the other lores to see if they can be successful (or at least fun). So today, against a Skaven army, I took Lore of Beasts and built my Army List to take advantage of the Beast augment spells.

Since Beasts has several buffs for characters, I decided to max out my Hero allowance. I was able to fit 8 Skink Chiefs (playing 2500 points), each with light armour, shield, and blow pipes. They had almost no magic items - just a couple of items to give their units Magic Resistance. I took 2 fairly large Skink/Kroxigor units and put 4 Chiefs in each. The Slann (running solo) stayed in between the 2 skink units within 12" of each.

The plan was to cast the upgraded version of "The Savage Beast of Horros" which adds +3 Strength and +3 Attacks to each character within 12". If I had enough dice, I also hoped to cast "Pann's Impenetrable Pelt" which would add +3 Toughness. I knew relying on a certain spell was risky, but the potential was huge (24 Strength 7 attacks per unit from the chiefs alone).

Unfortunately the winds of magic were not kind to the lizards. When the spells got off, the units became absolute killing machines, but that didn't happen often. I only cast both spells successfullly once, and I got Savage Beast off one other time. Twice, I missed the casting roll by 1, ending my magic phase prematurely. I did manage to pull out a draw, but that was just because my Slann wasn't quite dead at the end - in reality, I lost badly.

The strategy was unconventional but it was a lot of fun. Give it a shot anytime you are tired of Life/Light.

 

[logalog]

You should have brought along a skink priest. I think that one of the great bonuses of the lore of beast is the amber spear turning any priest into a mobile bolt thrower. I don't know how scared everyone else is of having a bolt thrower on your flanks but I know the damage that has happened to me.

 

[Gojira]

Skink priests get lore of heavens only. The slann is the only one who gets to pick.

 

[Dubious_wolf]

yes a priest has heavens but a slann may cast magic missiles through priest.
I like this it's similar to something i ran back in 7th ed. I need to try it in the new edition with the spam chief idea.

 

[logalog]

Now this lore seems like the perfect lore for generals that want to create a fast army. Because you would get the best benefit from using tons of skink characters, kroxigors, stegadon, salamanders, razerdons, terradons, and COC. Most of our army selection is monstrous. Now the only thing that I see as a problem is that we only really have 2 choices for wizards that get this lore either slanns or Tehenhauin. Also the fact that they are both lords doesn't help the cituation considering the 25% point cap the only way that you are going to be playing these are in a high point game. Now I know that many have said that the lore of beast is a waste because the main spell can not be used by our slann but I think that in other threads it's shown that you have a really good chance of getting the spells that you want with a slann and the plaque of tepok. The only problem is that you don't get cupped hands but considering you will mostly be running your slann solo there are other disciplines that you will be having. I'd like to try and get a full write up and look at this lore as we have done with others I just have to find the time to do it or hope that someone else will beat me to it.

 

[SpaceToad]

Hi, first time poster on the forum, had an idea for a similar tactic a recently, thouh a bit modified.
The problems with this tactic are as youve noted, the reliance on one spell. I've thought about this and decided that the best way to get the spell off must be having the power scroll and then using 5-6 dice for the spell. The slann is probably still resilent enough to survive the miscast. Also, about the skink chiefs... why not use javelins instead of blowpipes, seeing as with the "savage beast of horros" spell the javelins has str 7!!!
That's 8 BS 5 Str 7 attacks with Poison! Who needs warmachines