Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Dinosaurs Are Super Fucking Rad

Project Future Boys is coming along nicely (the end is in sight AND the time line is short) and a bunch of my distant friends are planning and building Warhammer Fantasy Armies. Due to my random reading of a YTTH post on Lizardmen, an idea clicked into place:

Build a Stegadon heavy army once the Eldar are done!

I thought about it and then asked for and got some more sagely advice from Stelek et al. Looked solid. So was the cost analysis. Hell, the septuple stegadon list shares are lot of the same units as the Razordon list that first spawned this crazy train of thought.

Overall, I'm really pumped about dinosaurs.

I had a ton of fun posting this on a forum one of my buds is starting up, so I thought I'd post it here as well. Enjoy!

Oh, and all the complaints about game abuses stem from the 5th edition rules. Herohammer can kiss my white ass.

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I know some of you are building up fantasy armies in your secret caves, waiting for the right time to leave your hidey holes and march upon the fields of the old world.

Thought I might do some of the same.

I should have the Eldar done around X-mas or there abouts. By about that time, I'll be needin' a project to work on. Space Marines will probably be put back in the rotation, but I know I'll need something else to break it up to keep it from becoming drudgery again. And starting ANOTHER 40k army seems silly.

But first:

Sit down keeds, eets story time.

I haven't played fantasy since you could take beastmen, chaos warriors and blood letters all in the same army. Twas good times.

Kind of.

Unfortunately, the people I played with were rules lawyers and often wrong and a bit cheaty. Except Colin (also Paul), he was (and is) always fun to play against. I'm sure he has some fun horror stories about the fucked-up cat-shit some of our other buddies would pull.

My two favorite were one of our buddies pulling a dragon out and generally tailoring to beat me in a 1500 point game when I was testing some undead BEFORE I HAD EVEN BOUGHT THE ARMY. There was also the guy who managed to convince us that if the unit you were charging chose to flee as a charge reaction you didn't get to move your complete charge distance to try and catch them. He owns a game store now. Fun times.

These guys are on of the reasons I have a tendency to be a bit rules crazy in terms of accuracy and following them.

On top of that, I was playing Chaos and, as I found out, the rules for the Warriors of Chaos were (and still are) kind of sucky. Something to do with rank bonuses being very important and Chaos warriors costing so very much. Oh, and a complete lack of meaningful shooting.

Fast forward to today. The main rules are better and magic item abuse isn't as rampant as it once was.

50% of your army on characters with no limit to the number you could take or how much you could tool them up. Bah!

Vlad von Carstien (and his damn ring) with a hydra blade, the stupid amulet of reflect wounds and possibly some str increasing bullshit was the worst. Not too much fun to run into a hero (over and over again.) who can deliver 6 x D6 high strength hits a turn and is basically unkillable.

Oh and 25% of your force as allies, don't get me started. Hmm, the undead don't have any shooting worht a damn, so I'll just take nothing but dark elf crossbowmen as allies. FUCK. YOU.

BRB, gotta pop some prozac with a beer back.

Moving on, the other problem I've had with fantasy is the sheer size of your army. 100ish dudes is a lot of dudes to paint. ...and then move around and keep in perfect formations.


With the general improvement of the fantasy rules & models and a little luck, I think I've found the army I'm going to try my hand at.

I've decided to build some lizardmans.* But not in the traditional block-hammer way. I've already run this by Colin, so some of the fun has already been had.

Here goes:

Skink Priest Riding an Ancient Stegadon

3x units of 10 Skinks

4x Regular Stegadons

2x Ancient Stegadons


YES! That's 7 freaking Stegadons in a 2000 point list. In your face, world!

This little gem was burried in some throwaway lizardmen post on YTTH. No surprise that I got a list from Stelek, I guess.

I'm totally stoked about 7 damn dinosaurs. It almost totally solves my problem of having to paint a ton of dudes - though there still are like 60 plus skinks including crew. But who cares, skinks are small! It does completely solve the problem of having to move a bunch of large blocks of troops around. One triceratops is way easier to move than 20 dudes with spears. Again, in you face, world!

Stubborn, terror causing toughness 6 monsters is sweeeeeeeet! Throw in d6+1 impact hits, skink palanquins, ranged weapons and a rockin' model and the icing on the cake just got jizzed on. BAM!

I cannot be more pumped about this than I already am. Wait! Okay NOW I'm the most pumped. It's CRAZY!

As a super duper double secret bonus, this army can be built for dirt cheap. With 20 percent discounts and including the army book its just about 300 wing-wangs to buy it. Ungh! With X-mas coming up, I can load up on Stegadons FOR FREE thanks to Jesus. He does indeed save.

OK, you know when I said things we're crazy before? I was wrong. NOW its crazy.

This is me RIGHT NOW, if I was a cartoon Dinosaur, and a girl:

user posted image

I had also considered Skaven at one point. But the only thing I would have wanted to build was a Skaven SAD army. But lets face it, Skaven = lots of dudes and SAD (shooty army of death) isn't too fun to play against. So, paying a lot of money to be a dick to people was out. For the time being.

7 Stegadons is too awesome to pass up anyway.

Now, I'm sure there are some flaws here. I imagine that once people get wise to my dino-herd ways, list tailoring can be a problem. Being outmaneuvered by fast armies is probably also something to worry about... IF YOU WEREN'T RIDING A DINOSAUR!** Well, are you!?

I'm sure there are other things too. Here's a pre-emptive 'fuck you' to cannons:

FUCK YOU CANNONS!

Also, can Dinosaurs fight Steam tanks and win? What about lots of shooting? What about movement denial spells? What about the Stegadons changing gender because of frog DNA and reproducing out of control and trying to kill Jeff Goldblum?! What about Nagash, LORD OF THE FREAKING UNDEAD!!?

I DON'T KNOW! STOP ASKING ME! JEEZ!!!!

Confession time, I was lying when I said things were crazy that second time. Its really, really the craziest its been....

NOW.

Anyway, that's the plan. Lets share and compare here.


-Foot Notes-------------------------------------

*Not to be confused with Lizardmen. Or Eddie Izzard. [not to self]:, name a Skink Hero Eddie.
**I don't know if that's actually true. Its probably just the dino-buzz talking

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