I am currently building my rebaseing my lizards. I have been playing with my vampires in the meantime. Magic has really underwhelmed me. Is a slann a must take for lizards or can we get away with not using one?
I have hard quite a few well known competitive YouTubers talk about how great magic is. I don't see it, nor do many on these forums. Slann are very expensive for a pure "cast and run away" type character, at least compared to TOW. I absolutely think they are not necessary from a competitive aspect. From a "fun" aspect it's all up to you but it's hard to imagine riding to battle without our great frog. In fact I'd say the leadership of 9 is one of the things you'll miss out on the most.
I think being a 40 year veteran of warhammer ( 1st edition as a 13 year old, I am old) will take a Slann because they were always the quintessential lizard man character and my late cousin always rocked one. Mazdamundi and Kroak were his favourites. So in honour of his memory I will take one but not all the time. Do find the skink conduit is a trap because you just spend more points on the ability of the Slann?
I agree about Slann being quintessential although I never liked special character Slann as I would name my Slann and imagine the lore around the army. Oxyotyl might be present though. It is a good question about spending excess on casters when magic is underwhelming. I am not planning on taking any priests but I'll be interested to see what people think. That said I'm a huge fan of the Troglodon lore and model (it is quite underwhelming for its points, but I think not badly enough for casual use) so I hope to get an idea of arcane Vassel shortly
I'm definitely aboard the magic-is-awesome train. Whenever I play without the slann I feel like there's a giant chunk of the game missing. I wish we had cheaper options but he's what we have. Most important aspect is the defence he provides. Some armies can bring 2xlvl4 wizards with just 320 points and 1xfated dispel is just not going to cut it VS that. Slann allows a lot of trickery, especially since you can abuse the dispel ranges with Arcane Vassal rule. Here's my favourites for Slann and priests: Illusion is my top choice with Crystal column and Miasmic Mirage being awesome control spells, chucking a stegadon chief accross the map with Shimmering Dragon is also hilarious. High Magic is great if you have a skink priest in a unit of saurus of temple guard, you can boost their movement and give them ethreal with Walk Between the worlds, Fury of Khaine and Shield of Saphery are great buffs. Tempest is the best answer to nightgoblin fanatics. Elementalism Plague of Rust and 50+ Skinks Battle Magic has my favourite conveyance spell Arcane Urgency is great for many things like dropping surprise rocks with terradons (40" move). Best vortex spell Pillar of Fire and Hammerhands as signature spell, which is great for Skink priests on Stegadons. Necromancy I haven't played around with yet, but stacking leadership debuffs with our terror causing monsters seems potent. Of our signature spells Monsoon is a great LOS blocker and really shines against shooting heavy armies and Apotheosis is a fun way to give unit terror if you have something like a Cold One Scarvet in your Saurus/Temple guard unit. All this being said, if you want to play without the Slann you can certainly play without the Slann even in competitive enviroments. I just have more fun when I get to take part in the magic phase.
Do you lore familiar your slann? And do you do any disciplines? HSoM, Becalming and Soul Stone seem to be the go to ones, with Becalming being my favorite, but soul stone being the option when points tight.
From the disciples I like running Becalming Cogitation/Soul of Stone, I think ethreal is quite useless. Magic items items are usually Lore Familiar/Earthing Rod. Most of my recent builds are just Slann with Earthing Rod so I can pump more points to other character slots.
Ran Slann for the first time today (750pts game, a level 4 wizard!) and was very impressed with High Magic. +1 A on Saurus, a 9 inch bubble of difficult terrain for disrupting enemy ranks and ethereal/reserve move, all very useful spells. Even monsoon was great. I guess in higher point games with enemy wizards contesting you then remains-in-play like vortexes are less useful?