Ahh… the dreaded Reaper Bolt Thrower. Not much to be said about it other than this is another paint job from the beginning of the army but other than the metal areas I think it looks pretty good and looks great for a table-top piece. I had created a larger base for the unit but in never got passed to the primed black stage, perhaps when I finish it I will repost with the unit on the base.
Lizards, check… lizards prodding larger lizards into battle, check those same larger lizards can breath fire, CHECK! These are all the reasons to love the salamanders, well that and they are actually pretty darn good game wise too. The breath weapons just got a boost with 8th edition as well now that every thing is hit that touches the flame template, and with the increase in large units this could potentiality do monstrous damage! I almost always run the unit as a pair to get redundancy in shooting as well as close combat. Inevitably one of the salamanders will decide to get hungry at the wrong moment and eat a skink instead of frying up that nice, juicy enemy unit, but hopefully both won’t decide to do the same and some fire can still be thrown. I often spend the extra 10 points to add two more handlers as well since the pesky salamanders seem to take a liking to skink flesh. Fortunately it only takes 1 skink to keep both beasts in line so even if I lose the other 7 …
Some more old-school lizard goodness! Ranking as the hardest to-hold-together model, the OOP Stegadon displays the main of the issues with metal models: size = cost, higher cost = less margin, less margin = unhappy stock holders. Once I get around to buying the new plastic kit I’ll have to take a picture of them side-by-side but I am willing to guess that the old stegadon is at least half the size of the new one. Then you have the howdah, not only is it so small it is hard to fit even 5 skinks in there, but it connects to the stegadon at a very small point, causing it to break off time, and time again… which is part of the reason I hardly ever play with the model. Tactic wise I have had mixed results with the Stegadon in 7th edition and not sure how well it will work at all in 8th with the changes to many of the rules. The basic stegadon (which is the only one I’ve used) is simply …