A much needed update!

So first off apologies for taking so long to get a new post up. It's been over a month now since my last post which is pretty disgraceful really. The problem, as always, has been time. Anyone who regularly keeps up to date with my blog will know I like long posts (well that's how they all seem to end up anyway). As you can imagine these posts can therefore take a while to write 2 to 3 hours usually, and while I enjoy writing them, it can feel a bit too much like procrastination writing them. As the deadline for the Weymouth Waaagh approached it dawned on me just how much painting I had yet to do. So it seemed to me to be a much better use of my time to spend that 2 to 3 hours I would have spent writing posts to paint instead. At the time of my last post I still had 20 Saurus, 10 Temple Guard, a Salamander, 2 Scar Vets and possibly some Skinks left to paint. Plus I still had to buy a Slann and some Chameleon Skinks to finish my army and get them painted as well.

Well in case you hadn't figured it out, the fact that I'm writing this now means that yes, I have got my entire army fully painted, complete with movement trays and all fully magnetised. The Weymouth Waaagh Tournament is this weekend so I wanted to get a post done before then to bring everyone up to date, do an overview of my army and how I've found it plays after my practice games. Then I can do another post next week reviewing how I did in the tournament from a blank slate. I'm going to skip the Battle Breakdowns, I've played 13 games since my last post, going through them one at a time is far too much of an uphill struggle. Instead I'm going to go through each of my units one at a time, show some pictures, talk about how they've performed and perhaps throw in some anecdotes . At the end I'll talk about my overall record and perhaps make some predictions for this weekend's tournament. At the least I'll talk about the goals I'm setting myself, being my first tournament I'm obviously not going to win, so instead I'm going to redefine winning, that way I can better judge my success or failure.

So without further delay here is my full and complete 2400pt army:

The Scar-Vet/Old Blood on foot, the Skink priest and one of the Cold One riders don't appear in my Tournament army but I've included them here for the sake of completion.

I'll start with the core, 2 units of 20 Saurus with full command and 2 units of 10 Skink Skirmishers.

Not much different to what you've seen before but now there twice as much. Was a little worried, particularly painting the 2^nd Saurus unit, that I wouldn't get them painted the same. If I look closely at them I can notice the difference but I don't generally and I think unless you're specifically looking for differences no one would notice them. The Skinks have largely been muddled up, so I don't notice any difference. I did go back after painting the 2^nd unit of each of these and dot the eyes. Originally I didn't bother, but after doing it on the first two characters I thought it really brought the models to life. I have to admit that the eyes aren't great on all the models but it doesn't matter in the units particularly, I've always said I'm only really aiming for a good table top standard, but I think dotting the eyes does make a difference.

As far as in game goes, I'm kinda regretting taking spears on my Saurus, I don't have to lose many models before they come irrelevant and they cost 40pts between the two units which is massive when you're doing that final tweaking, and trying to squeeze as much into the army as you can. There have been times when I wished I had the 6+ ward, I still don't think the parry save is that great but every little helps. If the spears didn't cost any extra points I don't think it would be an issue. At the end of the day though I've modelled the Saurus with spears now so there's no going back. Plus I think the models look cooler with spears anyway.

I have toyed with combining the Saurus units into on bigger unit. I like the idea of having 28, 4 ranks of 7, I don't think there's much point in going as far as a horde, plus with spears anyway this unit will be getting 29 attacks. At this point its fairly mute anyway, I wouldn't meet my core requirements if I did this, when I get a Skink/Krox unit then I may make my Saurus unit bigger, but at the moment 2 units of 20 give me a lot of flexibility, I just have to, as always, be careful when picking my targets and generally I have to multi-charge with them where possible.

The Skinks do fairly well, they aren't quite as good as in the smaller games where the large amount of table space meant it was easier to manoeuvre around the opposing enemy. I don't seem to have huge amounts of luck with their poisoned attacks, rarely do I seem to get the average three 6's you'd expect from 20 shots, plus a lot of the time I seem to face armies without ideal targets for their poisoned attacks. Still, you can't underestimate their usefulness, when all else fails they make nice charge blockers, if anything I probably don't have enough of them and I plan to get another 2 units of 10, although due to the comp for this particular tournament I could only include another 9 because of the restriction on the number of shots you can take.

Onto Specials, although I'll leave the Temple Guard until I talk about the Slann. First the Cold One cavalry:

OK so you've seen these before, nothing new to see here. I still only take 7, although for a while I was taking 6, the extra 35pts saved giving me freedom to play around with magic items, but now I've got over that phase I'm back up to 7. I've played around with their banner a bit, I've dropped the gleaming pennant, instead I deploy them near my Slann and get them into combat quickly, meaning stupidity isn't really an issue, although there is still the occasional failure and I do get jittery when they are over in my opponents half, away from the Slann.

I did toy with giving the flaming banner, strength 5 on the charge would make them good monster hunters. Instead, however, I've given them Huanchi's Blessed Totem, which is one use only and gives them an extra D6'' onto their charge range. This item is gold. This item gives them a potential charge range of 25'' and a pretty reliable range of about 20''ish. Often people will place their units within 19'', which is their normal maximum charge, in order to tempt you into attempting a charge. I've not used it in too many games yet, but when I have its worked perfectly and in some of those I'd have to say they've won me the game.

Playing against Tomb Kings my opponent had a unit of 3 Chariots sat between 2 War Sphinx on his deployment line. The range was 19” and I managed it rolling two 6's with just swift stride, so technically I didn't need the banner in this instance, but having the banner gave me the confidence to make the attempt. The Cold Ones easily swept through the chariots taking my opponent completely off guard, they ran amok behind his lines, taking out a catapult, finishing off a large unit of archers, a unit of carrion and finally finishing off a second unit of archers with his Heirophant in it.

In a game against Wood Elves with a river running across the centre of the board, my Cold Ones were getting a beat, sat opposite two units of archers, a smaller one and a larger one with about 20 models and the general with a bow giving him 4 shots with no armour saves. It was that magic bow that really did the damage. With only 3 Cold Ones left I had to act. 22'' (maybe 23'') away from the smaller unit which was slightly further away, but I was worried about the stand and shoot from the lord (waiting a turn wouldn't have helped much as I still had to get across the river which you can't march across). Basically if I didn't try it they would have been dead. So I got two 6's on the basic charge and managed the extra with the help of the banner. Its worth noting if he had any idea that I could charge that distance, he still had a couple of inches he could have moved back. Again he didn't see it coming. The Cold Ones managed to kill the first unit of bowmen in a perfect two rounds, allowing them to reform and charge almost immediately into the second larger unit with the Lord. Against that many I didn't expect to win particularly but hoped they would hold them up long enough for the rest of my army to get there. As it turns out I managed to cause them to flee and my cavalry easily ran them down. Now this didn't win me the game as such, the rest of my army was doing a good enough job of that on its own, but I wouldn't have won by such a comfortable margin if the Cold Ones hadn't made the charge. For a start the Cold Ones would have died giving him another 300 odd points plus there was a unit of Saurus also suffering under fire from those two units which would have likely been destroyed and the rest of my army was too far away to get to these units without suffering massive casualties themselves.

So yeah my Cold Ones have definitely proven their worth. Admittedly there are just as many games when the unit seems to get taken off easily enough, but I don't rely on them, its just nice when they work. They are expensive however, and I still think they will probably be one of the first things I drop if I get new units as like I say they aren't essential. I had toyed with swapping them out for a Steg as they are similar points, but money and time won that argument, although I will be adding some at some point.

Next are some Chameleon Skinks:

I'm not sure if I like how I've painted these, I have to admit that I wasn't sure how I wanted to paint them. I decided to go for a more natural tone, as my army as a whole is pretty bright. They also have a lot more little lizards tied to their body. Presumably this is where they get their poisons from. So I started painting these different colours and for a while I seemed to find more and more of these things. It started to look a little silly as I had painted them pretty bright and with about 4 or 5 different colours. In the end I dulled down the colours of them so it didn't look so bad. Like I say I'm not so happy with them over all, but not so much that I can be bothered to re-do them. We'll see what I feel like if I get another unit of them, then I may strip them and paint both units together.

As far as how they do in battle goes, well I need more practice with them I think, particularly when it comes to deployment with their scout special rule. Again I feel like I need more to get them to work as one unit is too easy to deal with. Luckily they are a low cost unit so its not so much of a loss if I lose them. Those rare times an opponent leaves an opening behind his lines for me to deploy them in they become handy as a distraction if nothing else as your opponent diverts a unit to deal with them. Obviously this is better against some armies than others, against the Tomb Kings they only diverted a unit of 5 horse archers (as a side note my Chameleons caused 5 wounds and a catapult but still couldn't kill it as the wounds kept getting magicked back) but in another game they diverted a small unit of marauders with a Chaos Sorcerer in, which I thought was a little over kill, but then I guess if I fled and rallied from him he could have used magic missiles on me.

But yeah the distraction seems the best use, they've not really taken much out themselves, but like I say this is one unit I could use more practice with, especially as they tend to die pretty early so I don't get much use out of them.

Rares. Two units of Single Salamanders with an extra handler in each:

You've already seen one of these and to be honest the second isn't all that different painting wise. I do have to admit I didn't paint the second one until after I had painted the second block of Saurus, at which point I had already brought the rest of the models for my army. So much of not buying new models till the old ones are painted. I got panicked a little by the approaching deadline of the tournament and realised I needed to practice with the full army. But I guess that's a lot of excuses really.

These guys are still gold. Unfortunately a lot of opponents know this and do what they can to deal with them quickly. Also they suffer from the same problem as my Skinks in this size game as there isn't as much room to manoeuvre and run rings around the enemy like I did in the smaller games. But then I guess they are just better against some armies than others, and I suppose I have to hope my opponent doesn't realise quite how much of a threat they are. I have to admit that I can be a little gun-ho with them, they ideally need to range ahead of the main army to get some shots in before lines meet. I guess they do better when I'm taking a more aggressive stance, if they advance with the rest of my army the opponent has more threats to deal with, if I'm being more defensive advancing these alone can leave them exposed. Still by keeping them in units of one its not a massive loss when I do lose them.

On to Characters. Heroes First:

I wont talk about the Scar vet on foot or priest as I've not used them in my 2400pt games. But the two mounted Scar Vets are solid additions to the list:

Both of these are awesome. When I first included them I have to admit I wasn't sure how to use them or what purpose they would serve. But with the internets and podcasts like HeelanHammer raving about them I thought I'd give them a go, and I've not looked back. They both have 1+ armour saves, one is re-roll-able, one has 5+ ward, with T5 they can take a lot of damage. One is armed with a great weapon with Venom of firefly frog making his attacks magical and poisoned and the other has the Burning blade of Chotec, giving him flaming attacks and an extra -2 to armour saves.

The beauty of these two is their versatility. They can tank small units pretty well by themselves, do decent damage to large targets, add extra punch to a unit. Sometimes I have them running around by themselves, or in Saurus units or the Cold Ones. Together they've decimated a unit of 6 Treekin, one tanked and finally destroyed a Hellcannon, one took out a unit of Tomb King Chariots by himself, they make good war machine hunters should the opportunity present itself.

Their biggest weakness is that they only have 2 wounds, so you don't need to get many attacks past their defences to finish them off. The beauty of it is though they are only 160pts so its not the end of the world if you lose them. You may have noticed that I've said that a lot, but that's what I like about this army, there's nothing in my army so expensive or fundamental that in isolation I don't mind losing.

That is until we get to my final unit:

Yep this is the big one. 1070 victory points up for grabs in this unit alone. 490 for the Slann, plus 100 for being the General, 100 for being the Battle Standard Bearer and 380pts for the Temple Guard including capturing their standard as well. This has taken some getting use to. Before getting a Slann I didn't think any part of my army was too important to lose. In my first game I was far too aggressive with this unit and got massacred as a result. It's quite annoying actually that the Slann has to go into the Temple Guard unit, sure it makes the unit stubborn and immune to psychology, and the Slann can hide in the second rank, but the Temple Guard are my best combat unit but often I have to hold them at the back to protect the Slann. Ah well not much use grumbling about what I can't control.

But yeah its amazing how important this unit is. In a game against warriors last week I was winning up until turn six when his block of warriors managed to get the charge against my Slann's Unit (I had tried everything I could to prevent this and so nearly succeed and have since thought of ways I could have prevented it) this turned what could have been a 13-7 into a 13-7 lose. In the game against High elves a last turn Purple Sun turned a 20-0 massacre into an 18-2 win. OK that last one isn't too much to cry about but was annoying as I had only lost one unit at that point and had very much dominated the game.

I've learnt a lot on how to best use the Slann in the magic phase. At first I was attempting to cast a lot of big spells but I've since discovered its more prudent to cast lots of smaller spells. You get the most our of focused rumination that and you're more likely to get a decent number of spells off. I take lore of Light and have started taking lore master for him, it just opens his options so much. When I was just taking the 4 spells I would find only 2 of the spells might be worth casting at any one time, taking all spells really does let me take advantage of having generally a lot of power dice. I did take Sole of Stone for a while for miscast protection but with Cupped hands allowing me to ignore one on a 2+ I've not found that I've needed it much as I don't miscast much and half the miscast results aren't that bad. I take Becalming Cogitation as well for some magic defence forcing one caster within 24'' to discard 6's when casting. This one become less useful as a knowledgeable opponent will keep his important casters out range and its still possible to be within 24'' of the unit put not 24'' of the Slann (which I discovered against Skaven when half my unit got taken off by the 13^th spell turn 1)

I'm enjoying Light magic, it has a nice range of spells and you can get some pretty tasty combos off. A Warsphinx managed to charge my Temple Guard. I managed to get Speed of Light off giving me WS and I 10. Most units will be hitting me on 5's with this spell but I also got Pha's protection off meaning I was being hit on 6's. This combination of spells allowed me to survive long enough to get the 6's I needed to kill the beast. Speed of Light is easily the best spell in my book as it has both offensive and defensive qualities, you hit the enemy easier and its harder for them to hit you. Also the high initiative is the best defence for the Lizards against spells such as Purple Sun which require an Initiative test. Time Warp is nice, Always strike first, +1 A and double movement, and it tends to be the one people are worried about most but I think Speed of Light is better especially when its only a 16+ to cast it on all units within 12.

When this Tournament is over I think I may have a play and try out some other laws just to see what they are like seeing as the Slann has access to all of them.

I'm pretty please about how I've painted my Slann, again I wasn't sure how I'd paint him and there was quite a bit of making it up as I went but I'm happy with how it turned out. I think he's easily my best painted model, which he should be being such a centrepiece to the army. Again I was worried about getting the second half of the Temple Guard painted the same but I'm happy with how they've gone. I need to go back and do the eyes, it was a time issue why I didn't go back over them. You don't notice on the table top though so its not so bad..

Well that's everything, and well it should be as this post is already at 3500 words long. So I just want to end on some final thoughts over all going into this tournament. My record with this army isn't so great. I've played 27 games and only won 11 with one draw. Just taking my last 11 games which are the games at 2400pts and using basically the same army I'm taking to the tournament I've only won 3. However, using the 20-0 system in these games out of a possible 220 points I've gained 95 which is a little under half. I think if I get a little under half the points available at the tournament I'll be happy. If I get less than 15 out of a possible 100 I think I'll be disappointed, and I'll probably be disappointed if I lose all my games. Like I said earlier on there's no chance of me winning but I really hope I'm not bottom. Somewhere near the middle will suite me fine.

Not a hundred percent sure on how the painting scores work. I think every gets 5 points standard, the better armies get 8, with those being considered for best painted a 10. I think you only get less than 5 if you don't meet the required standard. I hope I get an 8, its difficult to say when I'm not sure how its judged, there's only 26 players as far as I'm aware as well so I guess its quite possible not many have put the effort in but who knows.

Next week I'll post a tournament review with a breakdown of my games and what not.

So this post is 4000 words now, so congratulations if you've made it to the end and I've not bored you too much, but then it is quite a milestone for me and it has been a long time since my last post.

Anyway. Till next time.