How necessary do you find the first 2 skink units in your fire lance/shadowstrike Dracothion tail lists? I’m wondering if maybe it will be worth it to take 2 units of 5 chameleons over the two units of skinks in the shadowstrike list. This will allow me to drop them in and snipe lords of change or arch regeants, maybe even tie up OBR catapults a turn so they can’t snipe me. I’m planning on summoning skinks turn 1 anyway. What do you think?
I rather like Chameleon Skinks. For Shadowstrike they are pretty easy to fit. However, I find that when running Dracothion's Tail with Shadowstrike that I would rather have Razordons in place of the points. Especially since deploying them into Ambush competes with the DT battalions abilities that. My advice, try them out. See how much you like it. Chameleon Skinks have merit.
Question; what kind of role do chameleon skinks do? I’ve never seen the, on the table top, and I’ve rarely seen them online battle reports.
I use them to annoy enemy wizards with their shooting and to ambush them onto objectives. They can also be used to tie up shooting units. If you can get into cover with the Chameleon Skinks they have a good chance at surviving combat with most shooting units melee profiles. In some cases they can ambush into combat against tall walls to tie up enemy units that are able to reach them. This will force the enemy unit to retreat in their next movement phase or remain entangled.
mostly character assasinations for me. Being 25mm and the ability to ambush anywhere really makes it hard for people to hide their important 5 wound heroes. They also do a good job taking objectives like LizardWizard said. You can really steal a game with their ability to jump on objectives even with enemy units near.
Could you not put your ckinks on the board, Disappear from Sight in the hero phase, then pop in in the movement phase? The wording on DfS and the Ambush allow them to basically do it turn 1.
You can, but inside of DT there is not a real reason to pay the points for Chameleon imo. I would rather just DS Razordons for those points. If you really want a massive presence to be teleporting into enemy territory than Chameleon Skinks would be the route to go though.
Side note: Anytime I have nothing I want to summon turn one and I have the points I summon Chameleon Skinks. Opponents often forget about them by turn 5 and they can be crucial to stealing a win.
I could see an argument for them in a DT if you have a heavy Chaos Deamon meta. But I mostly agree. If you're already just summoning Skinks, then having the better, "faster" and more damaging kind running around might do you well. I might try it out a little another time.