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7th Ed. Skink Priest Survivability

aclaflin
Skink

aclaflin

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I'm starting a Game Mastered campaign here, and am playing against two pretty hard armies, Skaven and Bretonnia. In the recent games I've played, my skink priests on eotg have done pretty well, the problem being that when they get into combat (it's inevitable against bretts) all attacks are targeted against my priest, and he is bound to fail and armor save. Also, shooting is bound to randomize to the priest, and he wil inevitably fail that ward save. In this campaign, to lose a character is bad, because it costs three times as many points to bring him back. Any suggestions to increase the survivability of the skinks priest? He is always the priority target in any battle, making him very vulnerable.

Here are the options as i see them.

1. hiding him behind terrain (not always possible, and then the army won't always benefit from the ward save)

2. not taking him, and spending those points somewhere else (but I cede the magic phase to a very magic heavy skaven army)

3 ??

Suggestions?
 
Well, a tactic that has worked well for me is to give him a really good pep talk before the battle. Encourage him to duck when arrows are flying towards him and reassure him that there is no shame in fleeing a charge. I find that with a little positive encouragement, each of my soldiers perform a little better.... well except for my cold ones because they are too stupid and thick skinned to understand what I'm saying. Also, spend some time each day with your stegadon. He can be so damn stubborn but all he needs is some quality time with daddy to feel loved and eventually you will break through that armor of his. Remember, a happy stegadon is a safer skink priest.

- from the diary of a psychopath
 
not always going to work, but for combat, let the impact hits take care of the rank-and-file, and then direct all the skink attacks at the champion/character that's trying to snipe your priest. wont always work, but it sure annoyed the DE player with the S6 weapon (crimson death?) on his black guard champion :P

personally i havent found shooting to be a problem, aside from one occasion where a bolt thrower shot randomized onto him in turn 1 before i had my ward save up... ouch.


the only other alternative is to drop the stegadon and have him on foot - he's much easier to hide then! :P
 
Honestly, having the priest on the Engine is a liability only heightened by the penalty you pay to bring him back in your campaign.

On the Steg he can be challenged. He can simply be targetted. And as you said, shooting will at times get through. My question to you is are you getting to use the Engine much and if so, does it justify the 290 point upgrade cost?

Personally, a Priest on foot with the Cloak of Feathers might be a better option for you. He is extremely mobile and so hard to catch. He has 360 degree line of sight for his spells and for a Slann who channels a magic missile. He can join a unit if for some reason you decided he needed to. He is easy to park behind your enemies front, out of their line of sight and free to blast away with magic.

I'd seriously consider how well the EotG has worked out in total and weigh that versus the extremely mobile and adaptable flying priest.

Quick question: When you say it costs three times as many points to bring him back are you paying for just the priest or is the engine costing 3 times as much as well?
 
I think we decided that it's the total cost of the character, including items and mount. Which makes him a huge liability. I'll have to do some serious soul searching.... and give my priest a heart to heart. And maybe play a bit of frisbee with the steg.
 
well against brets its easy to avoid getting charged, and when you do it wil probably be on your terms. also always challenge with the priest. the brets don't want to lose their ward save so they will accept in most cases and so you only have 1 knight hitting you instead of 3 + 2 (usually). also you can try to protect your EotG with saurus screens and just spam burning alignment, uranon's thunderbolt and the rod of storm on them to make them fail.
against skaven.... well he shouldn't be cough in combat and its easy to avoid skaven shooting. ratling guns are kinda crap, warpfire throwers are salamanders that are move OR fire (range wise), 2 guess range weapons (1 of wich, the catapult can kill your priest with 2 lucky shots since its S2 no armor, but nobody uses that) and excluding the random doomwheel you have the jezzails wich are no longer skirmishers so you can evade their line of sight. you don't even need to hide, also spam forked lightning or uranon's thunderbolt on the weapon teams that bug you
 
aclaflin said:
I think we decided that it's the total cost of the character, including items and mount. Which makes him a huge liability. I'll have to do some serious soul searching.... and give my priest a heart to heart. And maybe play a bit of frisbee with the steg.
Click to expand...
Yeah, drop it. At that points cost, points denial is necessary. For what you are paying to bring him back you could get a fully tooled up Slann, TG unit and Level 2 Priest with Cloak of Feathers. All of these play in better for points denial and still give you a huge magic phase.
 
Actually, I WOULDN'T challenge with my skink priest against Bretts. I say this from personal experience, 'cause when his Paladin challenged against my priest, I accepted, thinking it would be easy to just kill him with my Steg, right? WRONG. He went first, and killing-blowed my steg with this wacky Brettonian virtue that allows you to Killing Blow Large Targets. I now know not to do THAT again....
 
I wouldn't challenge anything with my Skink Priest. Stegadon has Initiative 1. Your Priest has WS2 and T2 and only one attack and two wounds. Sure, a +2 save but high strength from a character or even worse, character with a magic weapon is going to make that save worse. If you get hit 4 times with just a 4+ save you are statistically dead before the Stegadon gets to attack. Bye bye Engine, bye bye extra magic dice, bye bye 1-3 spells (if you had the plaque), bye bye Dispel Scroll if he had one, bye bye War Drum if you had it and bye bye extra eyes for the Slann to channel magic missiles through. :(

I do my best to keep my Skink Priest on Engine out of charge arcs and away from characters. A flank charge is terrific. He's a hammer, not an anvil. Really, with the Engine of the Gods, burning alignment makes him pretty viable even outside of combat.
 
i was talking about the situation where you are charged. just going for CC to charge with a caster that has T2 is insane, but otherwise it grants the most survivability. also you can not refuse a charge with he priest unless he is in a unit, if he is alone he must accept.
i was just giving hints on how to help him survive, not on general EotG tacics, the thread isn't about that
 
Played another game against Skaven. Another dead Skink Priest on Engine. This time to a rat swarm. A Rat Swarm!!! how humiliating. But with 15 attacks all on a priest, there are bound to have a few slip through. So, I have the model all painted up, I want to use it because it seems like it should be so good, but it has given me nothing but disappointment. Templeguard and Slann however... now that's a unit. Killed 30 plague monks to a man, gray seer, and plague priest on furnace and managed to bring my loss to a draw. I brought a skink priest with feathers to play too, and he got caught out in the open by the storm banner and got shot to ribbons by a ratling gun.

So as a follow up question. If this guy is going to die every game, are there other alternatives besides engine and cloak. I don't doubt that the slann is a magic genius, but he can't hold an entire skaven magic phase at bay. I could take more cavalry, but the stupidity.... can't bring myself to do it in a campaign. So where does that leave me? using those points for more saurus warrior? These guys are solid and that's an option, but their just too slow.

What about just a regular steg or ancient steg? still 275 points, but it's not going to die that easily (unless crack's call goes off) but that still does't answer the problem of my magic defense and offense.

I know, I ramble. But unemployment brings warhammer to the top of my priority list.

Thoughts?
 
how do you currently have your slann set up? if you're looking to cut the skink priest, but want to keep the magic (certainly defensively) you can compensate quite a lot with giving the slann magic items/disciplines. though this has the drawback that it's even MORE points all in one place for the slann/TG unit.

for the skink priest, you could always just have him on foot, hiding in a corner with a couple of scrolls. other than that i can only suggest you're more careful with where you deploy/move him to, as there isn't really any reason for the ancient to be in combat with rat swarms.
 
Slann Mage-Priest 510
General; Battle Standard Bearer
The Focused Rumination
Becalming Cogitation
Focus of Mystery
Cupped Hands of the Old Ones
Warbanner
Dispel Scroll
Bane Head

Part if it was my fault for letting him get into combat, but he has so many units on the board, and I have so few, if one unit that this that expensive isn't using it's impact hits, and isn't threatening the charge, and isn't pulling it's weight, it has to be cut. This type of unit can't stay in the back, but it can't stay in the front either. And because this is all for a campaign, it's important for every unit to be tight and useful in every battle.
 
Just bring saurus and TG, CoR and SKINKS!! .. Then you litterally have a brickwall army, perfect against brets and skaven. Just play some msu style, have your TG as an anvil - not even brets will break a ld 8 stubborn coldblodded unit with BSB, (you have a 98.9% chance of holding that! - http://www.avianon.net/calculations/calc_leadership.php). Saurus and skinks work together are the best units against skaven and brets again. Run with screens and cohorts. Should he charge you, hold if the overrun will bring him in a bad position, flee if this brings him in a bad position... Like, let him charge you skinks, he wins combat and overruns into your saurus, in you turn you flankcharge with you other saurus unit, and the combat will be fought in your turn. But now you negate his ranks, possibly outnumber and have a flank. That ensures you a lot of static combat by negating a lof of his! Plus one of you units might have a standard and a rank, this adds up and your winning before combat even started. His lances wont matter, since a lot of the attacks will fail, plus you will stille have a 5+/6+ AS depending on your style. This works agains skaven and brets. Also, saurus cav are really good against skaven, they can chew up one unit from the front, Just take 5-6 with/without a standard, thats 175-230 pts, depending on how much you want to spend, again they also do brilliant against brets. If you worry about stupidity, you will fail, if you dont give it any attention, you will morelikely succes! :D
Cheap expendable units, either ranked or skirmish, combined with the insanely good saurus will win you the battle. Whatever you do, always have a flankcharge ready, use terrain to deal with his army in portions. Even the darn doomwheel will fail against 10/12 saurus warriors, 10 saurus will hold up any unit of skaven, eventually breaking them.
 
Would you go for 4 units of 10 Saurus? or 1 unit of 18 w/ spears for that 2nd anvil and 2 units of 10 with HW? I only have 40 saurus to work with unfortunately. Add a unit of TG, 5 SCOR, 3 units of sk Skinks, 2 salamanders, 3 terradons, slann, priest with Cloak of Feathers & diadem and a scar vet. I'm starting to like the look of this. I've never ran MSU saurus before. This skink ought to be able to avoid touble for at least 5/6 rounds (storm banner) and from Bretts he can avoid trouble entirely.
 
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