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AoS Skinks seem pretty viable in melee.

Stormscales
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Stormscales

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Does anyone have firsthand experience in using our current Skinks in melee? They now have 4+/4+ to hit and to wound with moonstone clubs, they get +1 attack in large groups, and there are just so many ways to buff them. With a Starpriest, a Priest and a Skink Chief on Stegadon giving them their respective buffs, your Skinks now get 3 attacks each, hitting on 3+, and mortal-wounding on a wound roll of 6.
 
Stormscales said:
Does anyone have firsthand experience in using our current Skinks in melee? They now have 4+/4+ to hit and to wound with moonstone clubs, they get +1 attack in large groups, and there are just so many ways to buff them. With a Starpriest, a Priest and a Skink Chief on Stegadon giving them their respective buffs, your Skinks now get 3 attacks each, hitting on 3+, and mortal-wounding on a wound roll of 6.
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Skinks under full buff are good. With shooting you can expect a round 6-7 mws in my experience. This will normally amount to around 13 damage from shooting. Then in melee you get about 11 MW's. Which totals to around 22 total damage. In short, you will get more done in melee now than you will with shooting if you bring equip the Boltspitter & Moonstone Clubs.
 
so what I decided was to declare the javs on my skinks that are built with javs and clubs (cuz im stupid like that) is that they are actually the blow guns with the knife on it like a bayonet lol
 
imho, they're too squishy. A blob of 40 skinks without shields is stupidly easy to decimate. And it's also super obvious what you're planning on doing. So I'm guessing any capable player is just going to shoot them off the table immeadiatly.

Admittadly, this might allow them to work as a distraction, buying your actual important stuff some time, or as a back-up option in case your opponent chooses to kill your behemoths instead. But I wouldn't count on melee skinks being very effective as the main threat in your army.
 
Canas said:
imho, they're too squishy. A blob of 40 skinks without shields is stupidly easy to decimate. And it's also super obvious what you're planning on doing. So I'm guessing any capable player is just going to shoot them off the table immeadiatly.

Admittadly, this might allow them to work as a distraction, buying your actual important stuff some time, or as a back-up option in case your opponent chooses to kill your behemoths instead. But I wouldn't count on melee skinks being very effective as the main threat in your army.
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Same can be said for Plague Monks, yet they still win games.
 
LizardWizard said:
Same can be said for Plague Monks, yet they still win games.
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yes, they share the same weakness of being squishy & making it fairly obvious what youré going to do. But plague monks don't need a boatload of buffs from easily snipeable support heroes (some of their buffing heroes are big scary things instead of minor support stuff..). Synergize nicely with plague furnaces (and are protected to an extend by them from battleshock). Also, dying is part of a plague monks purpose as it'l trigger some free damage. Seems a lot better and easier to use than melee skinks.

I mean, obviously you can probably make melee skinks work to a certain extend. It's not the worst idea ever. But it doesn't seem like the most effective either by a long shot.
 
Big blobs of Skinks are going to be a thing. And they should be pretty effective.

DoT will nuke them, but DoT is too strong in general. Some matches are just a loss.
 
Melee skinks losing their ranged weapon melee attack real kills the viability imho. Shooting buffed skink blobs twice is where its at, the extra save just keeps your lizards healthy. I played my first game with the new book against a DoT Change host and thanks to the extra save (and some anemic shooting on my opponents part) was able to have way more staying power than expected.
 
I think if you want Skirmishers and units to soak up table space then Jav's and Shields are very tempting. If you want a murder blob then Boltspitterz and Moonstone clubs are pretty amazing. I don't see myself building clubs and shields anytime soon though.
 
LizardWizard said:
I think if you want Skirmishers and units to soak up table space then Jav's and Shields are very tempting. If you want a murder blob then Boltspitterz and Moonstone clubs are pretty amazing. I don't see myself building clubs and shields anytime soon though.
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What if you went javs and clubs?
 
I made some handlers with javs and clubs, because why not? That explains why they are fighting better.
 
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Canas said:
with jaws?
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I mistyped "W" instead of "V". Fixed!

By the way, why skinks have Celestite Daggers as their basic weapons? Daggers don't have any in-game representation. Why didn't they called it something like "Skink CCW" or "Improvised Weapons" or "Small Bites" (so it is not a jaw attack) or "Star-Drake Buckler".

I now can't help, but imagine dagger made of starlight materialize for a moment in their arms and then dissolve again.
 
meh it makes more sense than trying to slam an opponent over the head with your blowpipe.

Plus I guess it's just there to ensure the blowpipes & javalins have the same statline. Instead of the previous one where they had the same stats but with the hit and wound value swapped.
 
I wouldn't plan a blob of melee skinks.
As said, it's obvious what you're planning and skinks with save 6+ will die in spades.
I much prefer the option of ranged weapon + shield, with dagger for close combat: with a minimal buff your skinks will have a save 4+ and a good survavibility. After all, you deal damage with MWs, so i get that a +1 to hit in melee is nice, but you are going to deal anyway MWs on your 6s to wound.

This (of course) works greatly in a FoS army: once your blob of skinks has been buffed (which you are going to do anyway) to deal MWs, the opponent knows that he will take free shots if charges them and then, the skinks will escape OR the skinks will fight dealing other MWs.
This works because you are going to buff your skinks anyway, but with the clubs you threat a minimal increase of MWs, while losing a solid defensive buff.
 
But you can still give BP+Club skinks up to 4+ save and up to 3+ against shooting. The largest difference is, of course, 6+ vs 5+. I still trust in shields more - they saved about 10 skinks against mortek crawler's skulls attack. This is the critical difference between shields and blowpipes.
 
Nart said:
But you can still give BP+Club skinks up to 4+ save and up to 3+ against shooting. The largest difference is, of course, 6+ vs 5+. I still trust in shields more - they saved about 10 skinks against mortek crawler's skulls attack. This is the critical difference between shields and blowpipes.
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BP and Club is ideal for a 40x glass hammer.
 
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