I am new. I have yet to play a game and I am still assembling my army. I come from Warmachine, where the ability to move through terrain is huge. Is the Huanchi Spawning as huge of an advantage as I think it is? As I read it, I can't see why one wouldn't put it on at least one Saurus unit.
I am not familiar with Warmachine so I don't really know how much terrain is generally used for that. In FB the usual way to play is to go for less terrain rather than more. More terrain can restrict movement of blocks etc. This is less important in 40k as all the units are skirmishers, in fact they recommend about 25% board coverage, which would be way too much in FB. Having said that though, the spawning you're speaking of does have a great surprise effect. The ability to have a unit of saurus suddenly shoot through a wood adds lots of tactical advantages. I think perhaps the reason we don't see it played more is the perception that the other spawnings may have a greater advantage. An extra dispel dice or +1 armour save does seem more enticing as the benefits of it are there on paper. I agree that it's a great spawning though, and I should probably test it out more than I have (which is once )
now proberly alot of people see this as cowardly but i find the best use for the mark is moving away from enemy units your saurus cant handle, i like baiting a unit of blood knights toward my saurus for exaple i then run as fast as my saurus can turn tail with is usually a turn and a 6 move through woods, this allows you to cut of hard enemy units that i then let my skinks pick of, enough wounds caused and even a 2+ armour save will fail you
except blood knights can be raised back after that poison. Generally though I have found that the Huanchi blessing does not work terribly well for the Saurus if they simply act as bait. You are already paying a 150 pt base investment for the unit, and if you want your opponent actually to care about the unit it will probably raise in price to around 250. A baiting unit might as well be cheaper, and a 60 pt unit of skinks redirecting a charge arc of a unit of knights (conversely a 60 pt swarm) will get the job done and mean that you havnt also wasted your Saurus unit for 2 turns simply to take out a unit of knights. This is especially true with blood knights/khorne knights/daemon cav, as frenzy makes it easy to distract the unit without actually having to sacrifice the bait unit