I currently don't have any chameleon skinks in my army, but does anyone have any input as to their ups and downs? I know they can scout and are better shots then normal skinks, but is the 12 pts/model worth it?

They are fast, hard to hit, skirmish, shoot well, scout and have poison they are a bargin at their current price. Don't forget to march block with them.

I had the same issue. Don't think about the insane cost of 12 points a model, think about the hell cheap cost of 70 odd points a unit for something that scouts, has poison attacks, is fast, good for march blocking and hunting, very hard to shoot at... Well they are a good deal for the unit.

I often use 2 units of cammo skinks, sometimes even 3. As mentioned they have several roles in the army so they are very versatile and tacticaly flexible. The are great for scouting, shooting and harassing.

Pros:

Scouting: If you scout with them keep them small, 5-6 skinks per unit. This way they are still cheap and expendable and can often scout in a good position unlike big units. As a scouting unit they are good for taking out war machines, I usually spend 1-2 rounds of shooting at the crew until they are reduced to 1 crew member, then charge and kill them. As they have -2 to hit when shooting at them even RBTs will have trouble shooting back. Scouting is a good way of marsh blocking early in the game, especially if you don't have terradons.

Shooting: 6 Cammo skinks costs about the same as 10 regular skinks. As you will often be shooting at long range and while moving the skinks are stuck the regular skirmishing skinks are forced to use single shot (otherwise they hit at 7+ which can score poison hits) while the cammo skinks can move and shoot at longe range and still use their double shots, which means that 6 cammos will often shoot 12 shots vs the skinks 10 shots, so shooting wise they are very similar to regular skinks when it comes to shooting at non-large targets.

Harassing: They might be worse war machine and mage hunters than Terradons, and less mobile, but they are incredibly hard to catch. a unit of 5-6 cammo skinks are amazingly fast and are excellent for frenzy baiting, regular baiting, march blocking and diverting.

Cons:

They take up a special slot, which can be used for terradons, CoC and Stegadons, which are all very solid choices. They add shooting which can be covered by a core unit and harassing which can be covered by terradons (who are much better harassers and hunters). They are also very fragile against non-BS ranged attacks such as the Organ gun, Lifetaker, Anvil of Doom, direct damage spells etc. A unit also have very few wounds, 5-6 wounds on T2 will get wiped out by a single 2D6 S4 spell. Overall they are a good unit due to their felxibility and multiple roles, but their still inferior to some of the other special choices. Not a super competative choice imo.

I'm going to agree with all that's been posted above me. I've also found them useful for warmachine hunting. Obviously not a good as Terradons, IMO, but almost as good. I've had Empire players waste entire turns of shooting, trying to hit the Chameleons, only to have them duck into cover and later take down those bothersome cannons.

yes, they are fairly fragile, but frankly what war machine hunter/march blocker isnt? versus shooting i'd far rather have chameleons than terradons, and point for point they're probably about equal versus magic missles.

to me they're very table dependent, i.e. they're good if there's somewhere good for them to scout to.

And they are excelent if you can find a pond or river for them to scout in.


Ps. you don't score poison hits on a 7+

They also make tasty and nutritious snacks.

In the small games I've been playing I've been very happy with them as march blockers. Just don't expect them to actually kill much.

Table dependent sounds right to me. March blocking early is good as long as you can find a suitible place. Keep them away from harm (IE magic missiles) and they will probably do what they're supposed to do. I can't really justify the high cost in the smaller games that I play though.