Hello, I was the shameless chap that ran the 18 salamanders. It was genuinely a meme list but turns out it can do pretty ok. Not sure how viable it would be practically speaking in real life but this is what TTS is for
My match ups were:
Ossiarch Bonereapers with double Crawler;
Cities of Sigmar with Soulscream Bridge; and
Nurgle with Blightking spam (you can find this game on Twitch and YouTube).
I certainly don’t think magic is always going to be a hard counter to my list. The hero support is nice but the list doesn’t fall apart without the Priests in case they get MW sniped. Stellar Tempest is largely neutered due to running more MSU. You could even put one unit of Salamanders out as bait and still have so many teleporting threats on the board that put out insane damage unbuffed and do not bracket. Handlers also provide excellent bodies and conga line objective grabbing.
It’s 150+ wounds on the table with a majority being 4+ save (going up to 3+). It’s insanely fast turn one and the teleporting means you can, somewhat unexpectedly for a list like this, play a cagey conservative game if required and take your opponent into deep waters and strike at the opportune moment.
Next time around a Stegadon or Terradon meme list could be fun.