8th Ed. Newish player seeking advice on 2500 point list.

[Oldblood89]

Hello everyone.

I have recently gotten into Warhammer and have done a few games. The circle I play with are all good players and the victories are always close and they suggested I start going to some tournies at the gaming place we goto. So I was wondering if you guys could critique my army and be as mean as you can please.

Lords- 578
Slaan- Power dice, and becalming disicplines, cupped hands. (Not sure which Lore to take)
Oldblood- Halberd, Armor of Destiny, Venom of the Firefly Frog

Heroes-260
Skink Priest- Lv 1, Dispel Scroll
Skink Chief- Dagger of Sotek
Skink Chief- Staff of the Lost Sun

Core-671
24 Saurus Full Cmd
24 skinks Full Cmd with 3 Krox
10 skink skrimishers

Special-425
20 Temple Guard Full Cmd
5 chameleon skinks
5 chameleon skinks

Rare-515
Salamander x3 with extra handler
Ancient Stegadon

I was thinking about putting the skink chief with the dagger in the skrox unit incase some hero/lord comes and hope for a killing blow. Then putting the other skink chief with either the skirmishers or in the ancient stegadon. I have 51 points left over. I was thinking about either making the slaan a BSB or giving him loremaster. Or giving my saurus oldblood the crown of command.

 

[Stonecutter]

I would recommend you drop the old blood down to being a scar vet and then use the points to give your slaan focus of mystery and BSB with the +1 LD banner. Inside the TG, this will give a unit that is stubborn 10 with a re-roll and also grant LD 10 with a re-roll for any units inside the command bubble. For your lore, I would recommend life or light until you have more experience since both are very strong lores with comparatively low casting values that work extremely well with lizzies.

In addition, the skink chiefs are the least effective unit in the army. I think the list would be better off taking the points for those two heroes to field another unit of skirmishers and beefing up the TG and/or saurus.

 

[Oldblood89]

Thanks Stonecutter, the reason I have the skink chiefs is because the group I run with loves to have ethereal troops, and in the last game I lost my flank because of it. Also, do you know if Banshees get to scream as a stand and shoot? I found that a little ridiculous.

 

[Stonecutter]

If the group you are in has a lot of ethereals then I would recommend going with two scar vets and giving one the piranha blade to chew up the banshees/spirit hosts in a flash. The SVs can be placed anywhere in the TG or Saurus units and if the unit is flanked, they simply make way to get into contact.[They can't do this in a skrox unit since the base size doesn't fit] WRT the stand & shoot, undead can only hold. Refer the vamp players to page 26 of their book, 3rd para, last sentence: "Lastly, when a unit with the Undead special rule is charged, it can only elect to hold"

If there are a fair number of vamp players, then lore of light is definitely a good lore to take since the two MM each get an extra d6 hits and can reach out to 48". Also, giving all your troops WS10/I10 and -1 to be hit in combat will really ruin your opponent's day.

 

[Rhodium]

If the group you are in has a lot of ethereals then I would recommend going with two scar vets and giving one the piranha blade to chew up the banshees/spirit hosts in a flash. The SVs can be placed anywhere in the TG or Saurus units and if the unit is flanked, they simply make way to get into contact.[They can't do this in a skrox unit since the base size doesn't fit] WRT the stand & shoot, undead can only hold. Refer the vamp players to page 26 of their book, 3rd para, last sentence: "Lastly, when a unit with the Undead special rule is charged, it can only elect to hold"

If there are a fair number of vamp players, then lore of light is definitely a good lore to take since the two MM each get an extra d6 hits and can reach out to 48". Also, giving all your troops WS10/I10 and -1 to be hit in combat will really ruin your opponent's day.

To the OP, you can't put the chief on the stegadon unless you take the steg as his mount and he comes out of the hero point allowance.

Other than that, everything stonecutter says is bang on, chiefs are not good, swap the old blood for a scar vet and make the slann a BSB (this is a must) and lore master (this is a should) .
When it comes to ethereal, give the temple guard champ a magic weapon, give the scar vet a magic weapon and put him in the saurus block. Also with lore of light you have two amazing magic missiles that will destroy ethereal units before they get to you.

 

[NexS]

I normally buff the heck out of my Slann (though I don't actually own a model... YET!). 4 disciplines, Cupped Hands, BSB, Banner of Something (495 points before adding the banner value).

I also recommend droppping the Steg from your Rare units and Putting your Skink Priest on it.

Good luck with the battles to come!

 

[Asamu]

I would suggest putting a Dawnstone on that Oldblood for a 2+rerollable armor save along with the 4+ ward. It makes it practically inpervious to anything str 5 or lower. Also, make the Slann the BSB; with the BSB allowing rerolls for all leadership tests instead of just break tests in 8th edition, a BSB is almost mandatory. Since you can't afford to do both of these, it would be best to make the slann the BSB with the standard of discipline and swap the halberd on the Oldblood for a great weapon. Fully kitting the slann isn't necessary, and really it's just a waste of points that could be used elsewhere. Cupped hands is nice, but it isn't a required element, and more spells tends to be beneficial. With 5 spells using the plaque of Tepok, you have a 90% chance to roll doubles and pick the spell that you find most important, so it is worth spending just the 15 points on it as opposed to the 50 for loremaster; saving those points on the slann makes any sort of miscast less of a detriment to the army because more points are spent on the combat units themselves.

I have come to prefer the Oldblood to Scar Vets because it is less likely to give up points, and in some cases can take out units by itself. It is one of the best answers in the army to things like knights and monsters, that are otherwise hard to deal with.

I currently run a Slann BSB with Becalming, Rumination, Plaque of Tepok, and standard of discipline, an OB with armor of destiny, dawnstone, venom of the firefly frog, and a great weapon, and a lvl 1 skink priest as a scroll caddie. Too many characters just takes away from the mass of an army, which is more important in
8th edition due to the "step up" rule.

You might want to think about just dropping the skink chiefs for more models in the units, particularly the temple guard, which is rather small right now. If that gets into combat, it won't last long unless it is in the flank, or if you have lore of life and are getting spells off.

If the comp allows it, you should split the salamanders into two units. Having more drops is good for deployment control, which can be very important in some games.

If you have the models, drop the skrox unit and use the skinks for units of 10 ranked or skirmish skinks, then add more saurus, which are better with this kind of list. Skrox units are highly specialized, so they won't do you any good in many of your games(they are only really good vs Monsters, cavalry, and to support multi-monster charges).