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8th Ed. Playing Without Salamanders

Sleboda
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Sleboda

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Is anyone having any success running lists without Salamanders, especially against Dark Elves?
I'm not, and it stinks. I don't want to be like everyone else, but it seems the monster mash list is a miserable failure, and Salamanders appear to be the answer. :(
 
It sure is possible.

Question is what your and hes fielding?

For example:
Most DE field the Witchelf Horde with couldron atm (at least in my meta). To counter that i build myself some nasty Oldblood with CO, Glittering Scales, Dawnstone, Sword of striking and Egg of Quango. As long as he gets the charge he can deal with the horde all alone, killing a bunch of them every round never taking any dmg.
The witchelf horde mostly doenst contain any killy characters which is important.

I than face his executioners with a block of saurus against which their killing blows are wasted and I can grind them down point efficiant.
My TG faces his CO-Knights or Black Gueard.

The chaff wars around that are not much different to any other opponant.
 
I post all my battles on this thread: http://www.lustria-online.com/threads/the-path-to-awesome-tracking-every-game-ever.13333/

You can see my thoughts on what I am taking over there.

I think your idea is a great one (the oldblood) but I would have to give up the carnosaur.
In fact, there are lots of solutions, but they all involve ditching monsters, and the _whole_ reason I am into this army is to put as many monsters on the table as I can. :(


Question though - How do you prevent yourself from breaking?

Turn 1 he challenges with the champ. With 6 Attacks you get 4 hits. You then do 3 wounds and she wards one of those. You ave a 2. They have 3 ranks and a banner. You lose by 2.
 
I know your thread very well and really enjoy reading it ;)

You can still run your Carnosaur with a ScarVet. I too like Monsters and usually always bring at least 1 Bastilladon and 1 Ancient Steg. Normally I can fit them in my list quite well. Also 6-8 Kroxigors are seen in my lists ^^

I really like that Oldblood. I build him especially do deal with Witchelves/Cauldron-horde coz it's so dangerous. He probably deals just es well with any other S3 infantry. Against S4 he should still be fine with 2+ rerollable but hes wounded on 5s not 6s anymore which might be dangerous.
 
Don't forget the +1 from the charge. Either way, coldblooded 6 with a reroll has a 90% chance of staying.

That said, I don't recommend trying to kill the entire unit with the oldblood. He will lose most rounds by 1 or 2 and eventually he will break. But he's pretty good for parking the unit while you line something up in the flank.

Also, Hellebron will kill him outright if she's in the unit.
 
Perhaps more stegadons, the impact hits will go before ASF, and they should do a ton of damage against squishy elves.
 
Hellebron will, thats true.

But if there is no character in the horde (somehow most DE tend to run their characters somewhere else). he can deal with it really well.
It's also not true that he will lose most rounds, run the numbers. He's actually winning.
But to be safe I try to keep him in the BSB bubble.

Usually I field the Oldblood with the TG and the Slann (who is my general and BSB), charge him out of the unit and into the WE while the Slann and the TG deal with another unit beside, keeping the Oldblood inside the bubble. The other flank is guarded by my Saurus block.
 
I have run the numbers.

5 * (7/6) * (4/6) * (5/6) * (4/6) = 2.1 wounds (2.7 w/sword of striking)
2 * (3/6) * (4/6) * (4/6) = 0.4 wounds

Total = 2.5 wounds vs 4 static combat res + musician (3.1 vs 4 + musician with SoS)
 
Well, he HAS Sword of Striking.

Also don't forget the Egg of Quango and the charge. The first rank of the WE will usually melt in the first round of combat, after that you'r ahead.
 
My Ancient Stegadon absolutely massacres Elves. Tbh it's about the only thing in my army that consistently performs although that's more down to the general I suspect (against HEs and DEs)! I played my mate's Dark Elves in my last battle and despite being massacred in the middle of the game (every 50/50 went his way!!) I nearly won with a valiant last stand from my last unit ... Stephanie my ancient stegadon. She charged and routed his Executioners and cauldron with Madusa, charged his Assassin (squashing him flat), charged his crossbowmen who fled (but not far enough squashing them flat). She shot up his his Hydra and chariot but failed the leadership test to redirect a charge away from the Hydra into his chariot. She was eventually downed by the chariot charge but very nearly survived! At least I finished the game with some dignity but now that I know something about those tricksy DEs (it was my first game against them) I'm looking forward to squashing some more next game with Christmas reinforcements!!! :rage:

FYI I don't play with Salamanders as yet as I don't have the models yet. Ripperdactyls terrified my opponent and were decent at hunting down his light cavalry. They weren't so good at frenzy charging his crossbowmen :jawdrop:
 
n810 said:
Perhaps more stegadons, the impact hits will go before ASF, and they should do a ton of damage against squishy elves.
Click to expand...


Ah, the Stegadon. I won't go into it too much here (details will be in the battle report when I post that in my collected thread later today), but man have I learned some lessons with him. Giant Blowpipes are really, really bad. I was thinking about going to an Engine instead, but it's too expensive. I wish you could buy him naked and save points on the pipes.



Now, for some math and thoughts on the Egg Build (had time in the shower to give it some thought).

It seems to me that you need to wait to use the egg until both the unit champ and the Hag are dead. Otherwise you will be in a challenge and the Egg's potential will be wasted. That means you have to survive two rounds of combat (maybe even three) before using it.

Assuming you live (don't run, more likely) long enough, here's the math:

First Round With Egg
17 Witch Attacks with Poison = 3 sixes for poison, 3 fives for hits. 11 misses now become 2 more sixes for poison and 2 more fives for hits. So, that's 5 poison and 5 other hits. Those 5 hits = 1 wound, then the re-rolls could be one more wound, but we'll round down in this case and say no.

At this point, we have 6 wounds that have gone through. 1+ armor save = 1 failed. Re-roll is almost certain to pass, so that's zero wounds from 17 witch attacks. Very nice!

Now we attack back and unleash the Egg (yeah, had to be used at the start of the phase, I know). It's got a 50% shot to roll a 4+ and then generate 7 S5 hits. I'm sure there's a fancy formula to account for lower rolls, but I'm going to stay positive here. 7 hits will get 6 wounds (again, rounding up positively), of which 2 will be warded. 4 wounds so far.

No the oldblood swings 6 times. One six is rolled for an additional Attack. Three other Attacks hit. The PF Attack also hits in our uber-positive scenario. 5 hits. Let's temper the rounding up with a round down here and get 3 wounds. One is warded away. 2 total at the end.

This round we have done 6 wounds, including the Egg. He still has 3 ranks and a banner, so we win by 2. He has two shots at an 8 to stay. He will stay.

Now the Egg is used up and you will only kill 2 witches per turn. It will take at least 2 turns to drop a rank from him.

Good luck not running.
 
So like I said, just use the oldblood to park them, and then maneuver something killy into the flank. He's quite likely to last for a good while.

My strategy is pretty straight forward:

Plan A: Fiery Convocation
Plan B: Scar-Vet w/1+ Re-rollable parks them, then either my bus, my unit of 6 ripperdactyls, or my Skroxigor go into the flank, depending on the situation and how many ranks they have left.
Plan C: They're frenzied. Redirect them enough, and you may never have to fight them at all.
 
You'r not taking everything into account.. as I said, as soon as you get rid of one rank, your winning. Thats 6 dead witches; easy enough with the egg. If your getting challanged you safe the egg, overkill with 3 +charge, so your fine too.

Like I said before, I run him with my Slann General/BSB nearby. Even if you lose the Oldblood is not going to run.
 
You're not winning after getting rid of 1 one rank. Your build averages 3 wounds, they have 3 combat res and a musician. You lose by 1.

More importantly, they can / often do have more than 4 ranks.
 
Well, true enough.

I haven't seen more than 4 ranks though. Why should they put more points into the unit when 4 ranks is enough to kill mostly everything?

Also, don't forget that the 3.1 wounds you do every round are average. You can easily do 4, you can easily do 2. The combat res of the WE is fixed. So, with your General/BSB nearby your highly unlikely to run, if you lose a round, but you can just as well win.

Anyways, this is all beside the point: the Oldblood is not there to kill the entire unit (he would but it takes more than 6 turns, lol), but he can take them on his own. So he either locks them up for the entire game or, if you can, you run whatever you have into the flank and finish them of.
 
Note for those who are interested, the Battle Report is now up.
 
You're lucky you don't face an assassin in that death star.
Extra hand weapon, black dragon egg, +1 to wound, killing blow. It's 4 or 5 attacks (depending on witches brew).
Hit's on 4+ with re-rolls, wounds on 4+ with re-roll. 6's are killing blow.
The dragon egg does 2D6 S2 hits no save, and I think it gets the +1 to wound, along with the re-rolls to wound.

If so, the dragon egg alone will kill the old blood. (7 hits average, 5+ to wound with re-roll, no armor).

On the round you charge, the assassin jumps out, but the unit champ challenges (which takes your cold one, init 2, out of the fight). 5 PF attacks hitting on 2+, wounding on 2+, saving on 5+. = 2.7 wounds, +1 for charging.
You're up against a static 4, and lose ties.


You can play without Salamanders, but shooting witch elves, or just redirecting them the whole game, is the only solution. OR, pummel them with magic. But melee is a bad idea.

-Matt
 
As a Dark Elf player, I actually don't like the witch elf horde with or without cauldron match up with a monster mash LM army with stegs and bastis unless I have AP (which is expensive) on the unit and maybe obsidian blade on the death hag to take challenges and cut through high AS monsters and such. It is simply too easy to chaff and redirect them and shoot them up with cheap skinks even with a 5+ ward save from the cauldron. The big high AS monsters will take a lot of hits and some autowounds with poison and some lucky rolls of 6 to wound but the more narrow frontage will limit the number of attacks to 5 witches wide or less most of the time and the high AS reduces the unsaved wounds. It is the re-roll to hit with poison from the ASF that I suspect does the most damage. The thunderstomp often does quite a bit of damage to the witches.

It is the executioners against LM that is the bad match for LM up due to the execs hitting both LM units and cutting through armour and killing multiwound infantry models with KB. But they die to skink shooting and magic a lot. as well with only 5+ AS and T3 so they need to be screened.

The more I think about it though, the biggest reason I don't like the matchup is due to salamanders hosing down my execs and core T3 infantry. and fiery convocation wrecks a T3 5+ AS or 5+ ward save blocks of infantry.

A lot of dark elf players are running small witch elf units at most to clear chaff and deal with high T but poor AS units; they are also effective in reducing larger units to soften them up for the bigger special units . Dark elves would rather spend most of core on supporiing units or a bloc of corsairs because witch elves are not good for non-khainite characters (they attack them half the time) and the investment in witch elves with cauldron takes up too many points in the core and hero slots. They would rather have an automatic 4+ AS of corsiairs to screen their exec units (not having to worry about frenzy baiting) and the shooting of RXBs (with 5+ AS) and dark riders (with 4+ AS and fast cav).

Also the master with lance on peg with the cloak of twilight (enchanted item) that gives him a 3+ ward to shooting and spells plus killing blow and D3 multiple wounds on the charge (S6 with lance) or first round of combat is so effective that they'd rather take that model than spend hero points on a death hag + cauldron. The master gains +1 wound, immunity to KB, and +1 T from the peg mount in additon to the peg given him 2 WS3 S4 attacks (+1 S on the charge), immunity to fear, and a stomp. He also can get to a 1+ AS (cloak+2, HA+2, mount +1, shield+10. S6 on the charge plus D3 wounds threatens the big monstersand exposed characters and monstrous beasts anfd the 40mm wide footprint limits the attacks back. He can charge at long ranges with impunity skink units because he gets to 2+ AS and 3+ ward to stand and shoot wounds.

To iillustrate, suppose a master with lance on peg charges a unit of 3 sallies (240 points). The master costs 188 points all in and will do, with ASF, an average of 3.7 wounds on the charge with multiple wounds on sallies (2.96 on sallies and .74 on skinks). You are down 1 sally and almost one skink before striking back. Even if you strkie back, you will be lucky to get a wound in (0.69 with 3 sallies and 8 skinks and 0.46 with 2 sallies and 8 skinks). His peg gets S5 on charge and does another 0.67 wounds. That means that the dark elf wins CR on average by 4.8 on average and at least 3 reliably. You will break and flee on a 2 most of the time and maybe 3 LD test if very lucky unless in range of the general. Even if you don't break, he gets 1.5 wounds on average to your getting less than 0.5 in the second round of combat and prevents the sallies from shooting.

The cauldron and death hag are both vulnernable to certain spells, template hits, cannons and stone thrower hits (even with the ward save, the odds are the hag or the cauldron takes wounds). If a cannon hits the hag/cauldron model, which it does a lot due to the footprint, both the cauldron and the hag are separately hit and the hag will die 5/9th of time when hit by a cannon ball. The hag + cauldron eats up most of the hero points when the master on peg, BSB master, and lvl 2 sorceress scroll caddy or dark wizard on horse (now fast cav and can run with dark riders ior warlocks) are common viable models in that slot that fill needed roles.
 
Good thoughts, oldplayer. Thanks.


Here's my takeaway, if I were to put words in your mouth :) -

"Hey Joe,
My armies are afraid of things you can't or don't bring. With the way you build your army, there's no reason for your foe to not take the Witch Brigade."

Sound about right? :)


I don't have those "certain spells" or template attacks.
I don't use Salamanders.
I don't have enough shooting to whittle down the witches.
My monsters are dead before they get to thunderstomp.

Basically, I offer him no threat.
 
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