Razordon
erians
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Salamanders 101
1.1 First impression
This is the second article I’ve written on this forum (produced from a combination of boredom and sickness), in which I will discuss salamanders and their uses. When I first opened the book and read about the rule changes for salamanders I pretty much discarded them, as I found them expensive and far less efficient than they used to be. Razordons where very similar to the old version, but their shooting efficiency is 50% of the old salamanders for about the same point costs. When I discussed it with some mates they made a note of that their minimum size is 1 sally pack , which could be a cheap “trash” unit that can cause some random panic tests.
At first I was very skeptic to their use as panic causers, as there are so many high LD armies and immune to psych armies out their now, but I completely overlooked their damage potential. It wasn’t until playing with and against the hydra I realized the damage potential of a breath weapon, and imo salamanders main role is a pure damage dealer.
1.2 The Panic Causers
A salamander can be a very efficient panic causer. 1 casualty results in a panic test which means 90% of any decent hits will cause panic. The Flame Template is also very wide and when aimed right it has the potential of hitting at least 2 units on most of your shots (depending on how packed your opponents units are). If your goal is to cause panic and not do damage you should always aim the flame in a direction where it has the highest chance of hitting multiple targets. Many armies are stuck at LD9 which means a 17% chance of panicking a unit (9% if they are at LD 10), if you hit 2 units per turn for 4 turns (range and misfire often prevents you from getting more shots off) you will cause 1.36 failed panic tests at LD 9, 0.72 at LD10 and 2.24 at LD8. When you play two salamanders flaming away for an entire game they should be causing between 1.44 and 4.48 panic tests, which in turn can cause more panic tests by running through units, which can be incredibly effective.
The Salamander packs have great synergy with Terradons. A failed panic test is often pretty harmless if they have musician as they will just rally in their turn, which isn’t a huge deal considering you most likely won’t cause more than 1 failed panic test per sallie per game. A failed panic test when 3+ terradons standing behind them kills them instantly, which is huge. Insta-gibbing 1 unit per sallie+terradon combo per game is pretty awesome. The thread of getting auto-destroyed can have a big impact on the game, when you flame your opponents 300+ point main unit with 1-2 characters in he is forced to spend a lot of fire power, magic and units which could have been devastating if it was directed against your other units.
When trying to use your salamanders for panic you got to adapt to what you are playing against. Here is a summary of when panic causing can be a good main role for salamanders, with the enemys highest possible LD in parenthesis:
Good Panic Targets: Beasts of Chaos (8, 9 with Doombull), Empire (9), Orcs And Goblins (9),
So-so Panic Targets: Dark Elves (10), High Elves (10), Bretonnia (9), Dwarves (10), Lizardmen (9), Skaven (7+3)
Very Bad / Useless Panic Targets: Daemons, Warriors of Chaos (9), Vampire Counts, Tomb Kings, Ogre Kingdoms (9), Wood Elves (10)
As you can clearly see most armies are very resilient to panic, either due to high LD, lots of ITP or units that has a good/decent chance of taking 0 wounds from a sallie flame. Panic causing should be a secondary bonus most of the time, not their primary use.
1.3 Wrecking havoc
Lizardmen has few units that can do damage at long range and Salamanders are no exception. Salamanders is the unit that has the longest possible range with 10” artillery dice + 8” template + 6” move, coming to a maximum possible range of 22”. Their efficient range however is around 14” (move included).
A good range for a salamander is around 6-8” from your target (unless the target huge, like 5x10 models, in which case you want to be closer). If you stand at 8” you will always hit at least a couple of models, often causing at least 1 casualty, no matter what the artillery dice shows (not counting misfire of course), and get a good hit on a roll of 2-8. Below you can see how many hits you score on a unit of 20x 20mm base models from 8” away from the side of the unit. Keep in mind that the exact position of the sallie effects the hits, so this isn’t whats gonna happened every time you shoot, this is just to give you a rough guideline of what to expect:
2: 4 hits, 8 partial hits
4: 9 hits, 11 partial hits
6: 4 hits, 12 partial hits
8: 10 partial hits
10: 6 partial hits
The average amount of hits is 8.1 hits, resulting in 4 casualties on average against T3, and a perfect hit (a roll of 4 in this case) should kill 7.25 T3 models. A single flame into a big block of elite infantry will earn the entire point cost for the salamander back. -3 armor save will negate almost every infantry unit to 0 (White Lions being the only exception I can think of) and most cav units to 4+.
Salamanders are 80pt models and with the possibility to marsh 12”. The low point cost of the salamander means that you can sacrifice it without losing many VPs. Cheap and fast units are perfect harassers. Unlike the razordons you can take flee as a charge reaction. If you park your salamander 1” from your opponent (see picture) he doesn’t have room to wheel or move, and charging means his center runs towards your salamanders centrum, leaving him with his flank open to counter charges.
Example: The salamanders place themselves 1” from a unit of 18 Executioners and some Cold One Cavalry are positioned themselves for a flank charge. The enemy has to choose between backing 2.5”, in which case you can just move the salamander 2.5” forward, stand still, in which case you can shoot them to bits or outmaneuver them with another unit, or charge your salamander, in which case you should look at the next picture.
http://i1014.photobucket.com/albums/af263/erians/1.jpg
The executioners charge the salamander, which flees. If you roll too low your salamander will die, but it is well worth it to make a 200+ pt unit show his flank. The Executioners move 4/8” forward and get flanked by the CoC. A 80 point salamander can force a 300 pts elite block to stand still and get shot to bits or at least be immobilized, or charge and die. Either way you win.
http://i1014.photobucket.com/albums/af263/erians/2.jpg
1.5 Salamanders vs Razordons
Salamanders are more popular and generally considered a far more competitive choice than the razordons. Both units have their strengths and weaknesses and I’ll try to do a fair comparison. They only really have one ability that they share; damage dealing. While the razordon does the same damage to all unit sized the salamander performs very differently against different base sizes and formations.
A razordon does 6 shots on average (not counting misfire as we didn’t count it for salamanders), scoring 3 hits on any non-skirmisher, 2 wounds on T3 and 0.67 save if they have 4+ save against ranged attacks. Against ranked 20mm T3 with 4+ save: Sallies = 4 kills
Razordons = 1.33 kills. That is however the ideal salamander target. If we compare it to T4 with no save (salamanders worst infantry target) Razordon scores 1.5 kills while salamanders does 2.7, still better. Against T3 skirmishers razordons score 1.33 kills, while a salamander should probably score around 4 partial hits resulting in 1 kill. Against fast cav with T3 and 5+ save the razordon scores 1.5 wounds, 1.25 kills. The salamander kills 0.75 guys from the front on average (average is 3 partial hits), and 1 kill if you shoot from the side (4 partial hits on avarage).
Here is a summary of Razordons vs Salamanders.
Razordons:
+ Doesn’t rely on its position as much, score the same average of hits either way
+ Gets a Stand and Shoot reaction, at twice efficiency
+ Doesn’t rely on the enemies base sizes
+ Longest reliable range in the Lizardmen army (12”+6”) and does the same damage at all ranges
- Cant flee as a charge reaction, and can therefore never be a decent harasser
- Has 33% of misfiring on its stand and shoot, which means 0 shots are fired
- Has to stand and shoot even if the enemy is too close to allow a stand and shoot reaction (which means the razordon is forced to hold
- Deals much less damage against infantry, and only slightly more against cav / skirmishers
- No save modifier which means most units gets a save roll
Salamander:
+ Almost always cause a panic test
+ Amazing damage dealer against infantry
+ Huge armor save modifier
+ Good harassing unit
+ Can flee as a charge
+ Very good synergy with terradons
+ High "threat factor", as rightly placed panic tests can completly decide a games outcome, even if the chance of panicking a unit is usually only 7-17% most generals will go out of their way to prevent it
- Damage relies on base sizes and positioning
- Random and unreliable fire if the salamander is positioned wrong, still very random even if positioned correctly (even tho it always scores a few partial hits)
- Short range (8”) if you want efficient shots
If anyone wants to add something or disagree with something that is written, just reply and I will include your perspective in the article. And if anyone knows how to make the pictures show in the thread, plz tell me, it keeps telling me that my pics are more than 1 pixel wide and cant be shown
1.1 First impression
This is the second article I’ve written on this forum (produced from a combination of boredom and sickness), in which I will discuss salamanders and their uses. When I first opened the book and read about the rule changes for salamanders I pretty much discarded them, as I found them expensive and far less efficient than they used to be. Razordons where very similar to the old version, but their shooting efficiency is 50% of the old salamanders for about the same point costs. When I discussed it with some mates they made a note of that their minimum size is 1 sally pack , which could be a cheap “trash” unit that can cause some random panic tests.
At first I was very skeptic to their use as panic causers, as there are so many high LD armies and immune to psych armies out their now, but I completely overlooked their damage potential. It wasn’t until playing with and against the hydra I realized the damage potential of a breath weapon, and imo salamanders main role is a pure damage dealer.
1.2 The Panic Causers
A salamander can be a very efficient panic causer. 1 casualty results in a panic test which means 90% of any decent hits will cause panic. The Flame Template is also very wide and when aimed right it has the potential of hitting at least 2 units on most of your shots (depending on how packed your opponents units are). If your goal is to cause panic and not do damage you should always aim the flame in a direction where it has the highest chance of hitting multiple targets. Many armies are stuck at LD9 which means a 17% chance of panicking a unit (9% if they are at LD 10), if you hit 2 units per turn for 4 turns (range and misfire often prevents you from getting more shots off) you will cause 1.36 failed panic tests at LD 9, 0.72 at LD10 and 2.24 at LD8. When you play two salamanders flaming away for an entire game they should be causing between 1.44 and 4.48 panic tests, which in turn can cause more panic tests by running through units, which can be incredibly effective.
The Salamander packs have great synergy with Terradons. A failed panic test is often pretty harmless if they have musician as they will just rally in their turn, which isn’t a huge deal considering you most likely won’t cause more than 1 failed panic test per sallie per game. A failed panic test when 3+ terradons standing behind them kills them instantly, which is huge. Insta-gibbing 1 unit per sallie+terradon combo per game is pretty awesome. The thread of getting auto-destroyed can have a big impact on the game, when you flame your opponents 300+ point main unit with 1-2 characters in he is forced to spend a lot of fire power, magic and units which could have been devastating if it was directed against your other units.
When trying to use your salamanders for panic you got to adapt to what you are playing against. Here is a summary of when panic causing can be a good main role for salamanders, with the enemys highest possible LD in parenthesis:
Good Panic Targets: Beasts of Chaos (8, 9 with Doombull), Empire (9), Orcs And Goblins (9),
So-so Panic Targets: Dark Elves (10), High Elves (10), Bretonnia (9), Dwarves (10), Lizardmen (9), Skaven (7+3)
Very Bad / Useless Panic Targets: Daemons, Warriors of Chaos (9), Vampire Counts, Tomb Kings, Ogre Kingdoms (9), Wood Elves (10)
As you can clearly see most armies are very resilient to panic, either due to high LD, lots of ITP or units that has a good/decent chance of taking 0 wounds from a sallie flame. Panic causing should be a secondary bonus most of the time, not their primary use.
1.3 Wrecking havoc
Lizardmen has few units that can do damage at long range and Salamanders are no exception. Salamanders is the unit that has the longest possible range with 10” artillery dice + 8” template + 6” move, coming to a maximum possible range of 22”. Their efficient range however is around 14” (move included).
A good range for a salamander is around 6-8” from your target (unless the target huge, like 5x10 models, in which case you want to be closer). If you stand at 8” you will always hit at least a couple of models, often causing at least 1 casualty, no matter what the artillery dice shows (not counting misfire of course), and get a good hit on a roll of 2-8. Below you can see how many hits you score on a unit of 20x 20mm base models from 8” away from the side of the unit. Keep in mind that the exact position of the sallie effects the hits, so this isn’t whats gonna happened every time you shoot, this is just to give you a rough guideline of what to expect:
2: 4 hits, 8 partial hits
4: 9 hits, 11 partial hits
6: 4 hits, 12 partial hits
8: 10 partial hits
10: 6 partial hits
The average amount of hits is 8.1 hits, resulting in 4 casualties on average against T3, and a perfect hit (a roll of 4 in this case) should kill 7.25 T3 models. A single flame into a big block of elite infantry will earn the entire point cost for the salamander back. -3 armor save will negate almost every infantry unit to 0 (White Lions being the only exception I can think of) and most cav units to 4+.
Salamanders are 80pt models and with the possibility to marsh 12”. The low point cost of the salamander means that you can sacrifice it without losing many VPs. Cheap and fast units are perfect harassers. Unlike the razordons you can take flee as a charge reaction. If you park your salamander 1” from your opponent (see picture) he doesn’t have room to wheel or move, and charging means his center runs towards your salamanders centrum, leaving him with his flank open to counter charges.
Example: The salamanders place themselves 1” from a unit of 18 Executioners and some Cold One Cavalry are positioned themselves for a flank charge. The enemy has to choose between backing 2.5”, in which case you can just move the salamander 2.5” forward, stand still, in which case you can shoot them to bits or outmaneuver them with another unit, or charge your salamander, in which case you should look at the next picture.
http://i1014.photobucket.com/albums/af263/erians/1.jpg
The executioners charge the salamander, which flees. If you roll too low your salamander will die, but it is well worth it to make a 200+ pt unit show his flank. The Executioners move 4/8” forward and get flanked by the CoC. A 80 point salamander can force a 300 pts elite block to stand still and get shot to bits or at least be immobilized, or charge and die. Either way you win.
http://i1014.photobucket.com/albums/af263/erians/2.jpg
1.5 Salamanders vs Razordons
Salamanders are more popular and generally considered a far more competitive choice than the razordons. Both units have their strengths and weaknesses and I’ll try to do a fair comparison. They only really have one ability that they share; damage dealing. While the razordon does the same damage to all unit sized the salamander performs very differently against different base sizes and formations.
A razordon does 6 shots on average (not counting misfire as we didn’t count it for salamanders), scoring 3 hits on any non-skirmisher, 2 wounds on T3 and 0.67 save if they have 4+ save against ranged attacks. Against ranked 20mm T3 with 4+ save: Sallies = 4 kills
Razordons = 1.33 kills. That is however the ideal salamander target. If we compare it to T4 with no save (salamanders worst infantry target) Razordon scores 1.5 kills while salamanders does 2.7, still better. Against T3 skirmishers razordons score 1.33 kills, while a salamander should probably score around 4 partial hits resulting in 1 kill. Against fast cav with T3 and 5+ save the razordon scores 1.5 wounds, 1.25 kills. The salamander kills 0.75 guys from the front on average (average is 3 partial hits), and 1 kill if you shoot from the side (4 partial hits on avarage).
Here is a summary of Razordons vs Salamanders.
Razordons:
+ Doesn’t rely on its position as much, score the same average of hits either way
+ Gets a Stand and Shoot reaction, at twice efficiency
+ Doesn’t rely on the enemies base sizes
+ Longest reliable range in the Lizardmen army (12”+6”) and does the same damage at all ranges
- Cant flee as a charge reaction, and can therefore never be a decent harasser
- Has 33% of misfiring on its stand and shoot, which means 0 shots are fired
- Has to stand and shoot even if the enemy is too close to allow a stand and shoot reaction (which means the razordon is forced to hold
- Deals much less damage against infantry, and only slightly more against cav / skirmishers
- No save modifier which means most units gets a save roll
Salamander:
+ Almost always cause a panic test
+ Amazing damage dealer against infantry
+ Huge armor save modifier
+ Good harassing unit
+ Can flee as a charge
+ Very good synergy with terradons
+ High "threat factor", as rightly placed panic tests can completly decide a games outcome, even if the chance of panicking a unit is usually only 7-17% most generals will go out of their way to prevent it
- Damage relies on base sizes and positioning
- Random and unreliable fire if the salamander is positioned wrong, still very random even if positioned correctly (even tho it always scores a few partial hits)
- Short range (8”) if you want efficient shots
If anyone wants to add something or disagree with something that is written, just reply and I will include your perspective in the article. And if anyone knows how to make the pictures show in the thread, plz tell me, it keeps telling me that my pics are more than 1 pixel wide and cant be shown
