8th Ed. Tehenuhain -How to use him effectively

[LogantheBard]

Tehenuhain is my favorite model in the book. But I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to find a way to
field him effectively. I'm looking at trying these options:

Tehenuhain + jungle swarms:
Put him next to a Ark Bastilodon and between a couple of block of spear saurus as the ultimate support block. This doesn't give him a look out sir, but he does give a nice bonus to swarms. Are swarms good enough with this boost, though?

Tehenuhain +skrox unit:
Gives him a look out sir, lots of static combat res. A 6x5 block with 2 krox, tehenuhain, and 18 skinks can be pretty smashy.

Tehenuhain + 8 kroxigor:
This is really expensive, really smashy, and relatively durable. Tehenuhain is not the best fighter, but I think he could hold his own.

 

[Gringold]

Tehenuhain + jungle swarms:
Put him next to a Ark Bastilodon and between a couple of block of spear saurus as the ultimate support block. This doesn't give him a look out sir, but he does give a nice bonus to swarms. Are swarms good enough with this boost, though?

If you put Tehenhauin in a unit with 5+ Jungle Swarms, I see no reason why he wouldn't get "look out, sir" rolls.

This choice makes the most sense to me. Good synergy between Tehenhauin, Jungle Swarms, and Ark of Sotek, while providing the potential for poisoned attacks to the Saurus Warriors.

 

[LogantheBard]

Look out sir is based on unit type, not base size. Even though he's on a 40mm, he's still infantry. He can't get a LoS from swarms or kroxigor, only skinks or saurus.

 

[Gringold]

I stand corrected!

I still think its worth exploring the Tehenhauin-Jungle Swarm-Ark of Sotek interaction, but the lack of look out sirs makes it a dicey proposition.

Perhaps start with a unit of Skinks for ranged protection, then switch to the Jungle Swarm unit before close combat occurs.

 

[rantapanda]

Tenenhauin is an expensive lvl 3 mage who is littered with crappy special rules.
He is supposedly/kind-of a melee character but sucks at it and is very squishy.
Swarms are garbage.
Avoid

 

[Skinquisitor]

If you want to use him effectively, chage him with some static electricity and let him collect dust... he has poor rules. The only way i can imagine him, is a stegaddon list, where you field 5-6 stegadons, just for fun.

 

[Juhaaha]

Tehenuhain doesnt get Look Out Sir! rolls if in mixed skrox unit, cause its not infantry, its mixed.

 

[rantapanda]

Tehenuhain doesnt get Look Out Sir! rolls if in mixed skrox unit, cause its not infantry, its mixed.

You mean unique right? But I fail to see the FAQ parts of unique units anymore. Is there anything about this in the rulebook?

 

[VampTeddy]

Considering a 5+ ward costs 17.5 slaves, and a lvl increase to lvl 2 costs 35 pts, he at least has a value of 85 slaves.

He also packs and additional wound to a skink priest and +1 toughness. There are other increcements but those are combat oriented, and will probably not see much use.

Being tied to beasts ofcourse is a downside, but hey, not too big considering normal skink priests. If you see him as an all-around caster - you're bound to be dissapointed, because he is not.

On the positive side, i don't think he's as useless as some makes him, he's just less useful than practically any other lord we can field.

If i were to field him, i'd go with a scar vet bus. Simple becuse it goes so well with beats, and hide my tehenhuain in a skink cohort with kroxigor because he fits in the base size, and in that unit he can actually use his combat prowess and so can the rest of the unit.

 

[Tecuani]

Personally, I've found Tehenhauin a useful character, as long as you don't think of him as a fighter. Rather, he's a level 3 caster with a few secondary abilities, much like a slann is a level 4 caster with a lot of secondary abilities. He pays less for his extras than a slann, and at a much lower overall points cost isn't nearly as much of a liability. He's a caster you can afford to take risks with, and that won't leave you at the mercy of the myriad of random factors that can ruin a magic phase and render a slann a big points handicap.

As a level three caster, he works well in combination with a level 2 priest, giving you two copies of Wildform and three other spells. His combat skills are pretty mediocre by themselves, but they're enough to be usefully complemented by Savage Beast or Wildform, and Transformation of Kadon is, while hard to use, a game-winning option.

Regarding what unit to put him in, I've found the 'make swarms unbreakable rule' to be something of a red herring-even unbreakable, swarms are just too terrible to be useful in combat. If you take them, it's either as a redirector or to gie everyone else poison, and they don't need Tehenhauin to do either. Also, they only stay unbreakable until he dies, and he only stays unbreakable until they die. This is a nice option background wise, but just no practical.

Tehenhauin+Kroxigor doesn't feel like such a good idea either. Like the swarms, he gives up Look out Sir, and where kroxigor want to use their S7 against tough targets, Tehenhauin will usually want to avoid those same units in combat. Also, his attacks are weaker than the kroxigor he would displace from the front rank.

Tehenhauin+Krink is a decent option, since like Tehenhauin himself this is a unit that wants to pick its melee fights carefully, and a lot of those fights are ones where he may make a difference. Something of a drawback is taking four javelins out of the shooting ranks, which hurts the flexibility of a unit whose strength lies in its versatility.

My favourite option is actually Tehenhauin+saurus/temple guard. These are often the units I want to cast wildform on, so it's useful to have him close to them, and the edge-of-the-unit formation keeps him on the edges of combat often minimizing attacks against him. It also minimizes damage from miscasts, with only two models vulnerable to base contact or small blasts.

 

[Sleboda]

Tehenuhain doesnt get Look Out Sir! rolls if in mixed skrox unit, cause its not infantry, its mixed.

You mean unique right? But I fail to see the FAQ parts of unique units anymore. Is there anything about this in the rulebook?

=> It actually doens't matter if the old FAQ stuff is missing. This is a ruling that can be followed by reading the rules that are present.

Look Out Sir works when you have a unit of the character's type in play. It's not ex*clusive - it's inclusive.

(* In other words, it doesn't say "you get LoS as long as the Type isn't one of the following...blah blah blah" it says you get LoS when the Type is the same as the character.)


The rules are Warhammer have failed to tell us what the Unit Type for a mixed Cohort is. This stinks, of course, but does not prevent us from answering this particular rules issue.

Is the mixed Cohort unit an Infantry Unit? No, it is not.
Is the mixed Cohort unit a Monstrous Infantry Unit? No, it is not.

The unit contains models of both types, clearly, but the unit is not either Infantry or Monstrous Infantry. It's...something else, something undefined. That's all we need to know here.

We don't know what the unit is but we do know what it isn't - it isn't and Infantry Unit and thus no Look Out Sir is allowed for our poor little angry skink.



EDIT: Just to answer the usual argument ahead of time -
Yes, the Cohort contains Infantry models, but LoS does not care about models, it cares about units. If you had a box with 7 chocolate chip cookies in it and 3 sugar cookies in it, you would not be able to call it "a box of chocolate chip cookies." You could say it's "a box with chocolate chip cookies in it" as, while not complete information it is accurate information. You are leaving out that the box also contains sugar cookies, but you have not used terminology that indicates that only chocolate chip cookies are present.

Just imagine the situation. You are allergic to sugar cookies so you ask your friend for "a box of chocolate chip cookies." He hands you a box that has CC and Sugar in it. You can tell him "Dude, I said I need a box of chocolate chip cookies. This box has other stuff in it too."

On the other hand, you say to him "Hey, can you hand me a box that has chocolate chip cookies in it, please?" He hands you our CC+Sugar box. He's met your request.

 

[SilverFaith]

Not sure I understand the problem here, because if you just read up on the spawn kin rule, it specifically states "If a mixed unit of 5 or more models is hit by a bolt thrower, the shot always hits the closest NON-CHARACTER model to the bolt thrower".

Hence, you don't get look-out sir, because you somehow don't get to shoot at characters at all. I thought that sounded stupid as all hell, but the local "rules judge" took the rule-as-written, and basically said that the spawn kin USR grants the same benefit to all characters that the TGs Guardian rule does, though only against bolt throwers.

Other than that, the unit type is infantry, and nowhere does it say that taking kroxigor changes the unit TYPE, only that it is now a mixed unit. Since it is an upgrade to an infantry unit, then it is still an infantry unit unless otherwise specified.

If we go by the logic that a mixed unit cannot grant LoS, then it also shouldn't be possible to stomp them, which it is.

 

[Sleboda]

Not sure I understand the problem here, because if you just read up on the spawn kin rule, it specifically states "If a mixed unit of 5 or more models is hit by a bolt thrower, the shot always hits the closest NON-CHARACTER model to the bolt thrower".

Other than that, the unit type is infantry, and nowhere does it say that taking kroxigor changes the unit TYPE, only that it is now a mixed unit. Since it is an upgrade to an infantry unit, then it is still an infantry unit unless otherwise specified.

If we go by the logic that a mixed unit cannot grant LoS, then it also shouldn't be possible to stomp them, which it is.

1) Bolt throwers never grant LoS in units anyway. Templates, including cannons, do. The rule about bolt throwers has no bearing at all on this rule.

2) The unit type is not Infantry, which is the entire point here. We don't know what the unit type is. It's not a unit of Infantry, because it has some MI in it, it's not an MI unit, because it has some Infantry unit. We can call it a mixed unit, a pleebooleeboo unit, or whatever else we may want, but we cannot call it an Infantry unit...because it's got non-Infantry models in it!

3) Stomp is covered in the the Cohort rules as an exception. The rules for Stomps are not related to Los, so an exception for one has no bearing on the other.


Again, it is important to note the distinction between 'models' and 'units.' Skinks are Infantry models. When you put 10 together, you get an Infantry unit. A Kroxigor is a Monstrous Infantry model. When you put 10 together, you get a Monstrous Infantry unit. When you put 1 Krox together with 9 skinks, you get a unit...but the rules for what UNIT type this is do not exist.

Look out sir is based on the UNIT you are in, what what types of models are in the unit.