Hi all, I’ve been messing around with ideas for a 1000pt Slann-nado summoning spam list for casual play at my local store which is usually random battle plans from the rulebook/GHB2018 on 4’x4’ tables: Allegiance: Seraphon Slann Starmaster (General) 260 - Great Rememberer - Incandescent Retrices Engine of the Gods 220 Astrology Bearer 160 Skinks x10 blowpipes/shields 60 Skinks x10 blowpipes/shields 60 Ripperdactyls x3 140 Balewind Vortex 40 Total 940 Plan is to turtle up around the Slann as close to my table edge as possible, get the Balewind up and then start churning out summoning - 10+d3 points turn one and 13+d3 turn two onwards - the idea is that I can avoid anything terrible turn one due to deploying deep/zone screening with skinks, and by the time the enemy gets to me I have effectively turned it into a 4 (or even 3) turn game where I have a 300 points-ish advantage. Any objective based scenarios I can teleport skinks around the place/summon chamos as required, anything kill points based I will summon ripperdactyls for days (this is why the list starts with rippers, so there is a toad on the table). Obviously this list is vulnerable to alpha strike, but any other thoughts?
The list looks good. You might get more consistant summoning out of a Skink Starpriest who cast cogs for your Slann than from an EotG. You would also gain access to Summon Starlight and could fill in with Razordons. I think either the EotGs or the Skink Starpriest and Razordons are pretty even in power though. You have 60 points left over in your list as it stands. You could just bring cogs and have you Slann set them up turn one. If you aren't worried about using LoSaT twince you could even take Vast Intellect for Summon Starlight and Curse of Fate, but you would lose out on Celestial Conjuration points.
Interesting list man. I was thinking of running something similar but still trying to wrap my head around the rules. I was going to run Allegiance: Seraphon Slann Starmaster (General) - Incandescent Retrices Bastilidon Astrology Bearer Skinks x20 blowpipes/shields Skinks x20 blowpipes/shields Cogs What is the survive-ability of the steg like? That's the one thing I worry about fielding it from the start.
Thanks for the thoughts above! I’ve thought about doing cogs and balewind, but I don’t have Malign Sorcery and in all honesty won’t be buying it for one spell! Also, I think perhaps for the amount it will gain me (15 summoning points over a 5 turn game in exchange for 60pts for cogs and 80pts for skink starpriest), I’m not sure it’s worth sacrificing the EotG. I take the point that the EotG isn’t guaranteed summoning, but that’s not the end of the world - pumping out a few mortal wounds here and there are never a bad thing! In terms of starting with EotG and keeping it alive, Vast Intellect might be good - summon starlight is then an option on EotG if I think it’s going to take a bashing at any stage. Also, given how easy it is to get cheap bodies in with summoning, it makes more sense to me to start with the big stuff on the table and then quickly make up for the lack of bodies turn one/two rather than start with loads of bodies and bring an EotG in turn three/four. Whether I’m right or not remains to be seen!
For the Cogs you might just build your own! Just take a 40mm base (or was it 50? Either way no problem) and put something on it to use as Cogs. If you want to be close to the original you can get some cheap cogs for decoration purposes and assemble them together in some way. Edit: like these: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=deco+cogs&ref=is_s
Unfortunately the only place I have to play locally is under the yoke of the evil overlords in a GW store, so no proxies/scratchbuilds allowed; if I could I’d be proxying razordons and dread saurians all day!
@IronLizard I used your list last night without the balewind vortex (salamander instead as I’m waiting for my malign sorcery to be delivered) and holly crap was it awesome! I was teleporting units across the map and summoning rippers left and right. It was nuts in 1000pnts! Teleported a summoned group of salamanders near the enemy general and murdered him in a turn. I’ll play test it next weekend at a tourney but it went well What do you think of dropping the bagel wind and picking up a Saurus scar vet on cold one. You could summon in some knights and smash face pretty quick I recon.
I’m glad it went well! I haven’t had a chance to play it yet, but from what you’ve said it at least sounds viable. What were you playing against? I definitely have salamanders/razordons on my ‘to get’ list, as I think they’ll be pretty awesome in this type of list; they’re so expensive though. In my experience Saurus Knights are only good in their batallion where you get two mortal wounds on 6’s to hit. Even then, I find I have to have a skink starpriest follow them around to get extra damage on the cold one bites for them to be effective. They have been reduced in points though, so maybe the bang for the buck ratio is better now? In any case, I think summoning in a unit of knights in the right situation (maybe you need something nearly as fast as skinks but a bit tougher to get to and hold an objective?) is good, but I wouldn’t put the scar vet in my list with the specific intention of summoning knights.
Played this 1k list and added Chronomantic Cogs endless spell to round out. Felt like this was a bit cheesy playing against Kharadron Overlords. Getting first turn helped, plus won roll offs for turn 2 and turn 3. The concept of turtlng the first turn worked well and got endless spells fired off. Was nice I had a 14 on the EotG and brought in a second set of rippers. Held on summoning to get max points total for turn 2. His two fliers took me down to death and had Incandescent Rectrices and came back with 4 wounds. Turn 2 brought up summoning with a Troglodon and 2 units of skinks. Took out one of his flyers and in his turn, he could not take out the Slann. More summoning turn 3 and he called it. Rippers were tearing everything up, not to mention the EotG with the mortal wound lazers to his other flyer. Troglodon survived and was not overly useful, except as a target to soak his firing lines. Overall, my opponent called it because with the Slann still alive, I just kept summoning stuff and he could not keep up the pace of killing everything. Not to mention we were playing Border War battleplan and I could just teleport 2 units of skinks to a objective location and get the points for usually 3 of the objectives. Granted nice to win a game...so how cheesy is this loadout for summoning? I basically had a 1420 point army against a 1000 point army
That's what makes summoning strong, especially in low point games. Granted, Kharadron Overlords aren't very strong right now to begin with, but if you block them you can pretty much neutralize them, and that works with some other armies as well. I admit it feels a bit on the cheesy side, but it is our core game mechanic so we should use it. We don't have working alternatives except alpha strikes, which are cheesy as well. And it's not like Seraphon are the dominating tournament army right now, so it seems the good armies can cope with it.