First game was against Wood Elves and I did get some bad dice for most of the game (it started to get ridiculous actually!) but good lessons were:
- Since we lost the good magic items like venom, I took the Trickster's Helm on a Scar Vet on foot for 2+ armour save, reroll those killing blows and 6+ parry. Gave him AHW for 5 attacks and he didnt go down all game. Could work just as well with a great weapon.
- I dont rate the bastiladon with either option. Did get a few swarms up but like was suggested earlier, it's probably best to have 2x 2+ units of swarms, I only had 1. Solar engine never got a chance to do any damage, it was either dispelled or I used the dice on more important casts.
- Need to swap out lore spells straight away if possible, I often didn't get another chance to get a spell off.
- 2x lvl 1's is great for scroll caddies and good for vassal. Got a couple of direct damage spells off through them and they make the short range lore weakness a bit less annoying.
- Beasts is definitely a lore for a lvl 4 caster, not lvl 1's. Skink priests would 3-dice wildform (admittedly I never failed it) while Slann was only 2 dice. Wildform is really good for our lizards. Opponents tend to stay away from S5, T5 Saurus

. Also kept the Slann alive for a solid round of combat.
- Large monsters still aren't competitive, even when there aren't war machines. They are fun and cool though. I'm switching to a unit of 6 Cold Ones with a Scar Vet (1+AS and talisman of preservation) to make them more killy.
- Need something to beef up Slann's unit as it went down quick in both games - more than in previous edition. Switching to life earlier would have been good for this or even getting wildform for Slann's spells. Heavens works better for me with skink priests. -1 to hit FTW.
- Sallies are still good against infantry including skirmishers. They still 'soften up' those hordes

. I havent tried against Cav yet... that's for tomorrow's game.
So I lost first game. Second game was against VC. I won this one but only just. It came down to his BSB and General vs my Slann and I happened to save all 3 wounds on the Slann's 4+ ward in the final turn. Could have easily gone the other way.
Please keep posting. I'm keen to see things that are working and things that can be improved.