Tutorial Fire Slann in the New Book

Fire Slann Tactica


Lore Attribute: Kindleflame isn’t the most exciting lore attribute in the world, but it makes casting spells slightly easier which is good for us now that the new army book makes it harder to get the mountains of extra power dice we are used to.


Spell Overview


Now that Fire lore mastery is pretty much off the table you need to think about what spells you want and which ones you don’t.

Fireball: A nice signature spell. You probably always want to swap something for this. It’s customizable with three levels so you could decide how much tonnage you want to shoot based on how strong your target is and how many power dice you have.

Cascading Fire Cloak: If you are running your Slann in a bunker this is a great spell. It’s cheap to cast and inflicts decent hits (though it won’t help your CR). It’s cheap and a Remains in Play spell too which is nice. If your Slann is running without a bunker, you don’t want to hang on to this spell since a lone Slann should generally avoid base to base contact with the enemy, though once I charged an ethereal Slann with this spell up into a unit of trolls with pleasing results, that was before ethereal Slann were Unstable so that strategy is a little risky now.

Flaming Sword of Rhuin: A great combat buff,, in my opinion the second best Fire spell for us. A +1 bonus to wounding is great in just about all circumstances. You can use it for shooting attacks in your early rounds than switch to your close combat units. The flaming attacks is great if you are fighting Flammable enemies, Regenerating enemies, or enemies in a building. It’s a good way to put the hurting on ethereals though if your opponent is really counting on their ethereals, they will prioritize dispelling this spell like no other. This spell becomes truly spectacular when you are assaulting buildings.

The Burning Head: This is would be the spell I’d most want to drop from a Slann. It’s hard to get a good line up on the enemy that will hit more enemies than a Fireball would. The auto-trigger Panic test isn’t that impressive to us because Salamanders do basically the same thing, generally hitting more enemies and not costing us any power dice.

Piercing Bolts of Burning: This spell inflicts more wounds the larger the unit is. That sounds great on paper but it goes by ranks, not models. The most deadly large units are usually in horde formation. A unit with lots of ranks is usually made of cheap units so your opponent won’t be crying much if you get this spell yet (but they do tend to be low toughness which is good). To really thin out a unit, you need to hit it with this spell two rounds in a row or bombard it with Kindleflame letting you spam a unit. Normally it’s not a good idea to use your whole magic phase on one unit though.

Fulminating Flame Cage: This is the best spell of the lore. You got two things you can do with this. You can put it on a unit to pin it down by making it too afraid to move. You can hit every model if you put it on a unit that must move. If you have a Skink Priest with Wind Blast you can even force a Caged unit to move (about the only case where I’d want to use Wind Blast). Any spell that hits every model in an enemy unit is good in my book.

Flame Storm: This spell stands out amongst template spells for being cheap to cast. Even the large template is fairly cheap to cast though the double scatter makes it less accurate. This is an especially good spell to use when you are playing against an army with lots of weak troops like Goblins or Skaven since with all the units it’s very hard to miss. If you cast this spell first and manage to hit several units, you can open the way for more uses of the Kindleflame attribute. If your enemies aren’t packed together though, this spell is less efficient than a boosted Fireball.


Ruby Ring of Ruin


This magic item is a pretty cheap way to cast a few extra Fireballs. As an added bonus any character can wield it since it’s an Enchanted Item. The few times I’ve taken Fire Slann in the past I’ve given someone the Ring as well for some extra Kindleflame to get an extra damaging spell. Since Lore Mastery is harder to come by in the new book, I think Ruby Rings are even better now than before.


Army Synergy


The problem with Fire is that the hits are only S4. If you want to take a Fire Slann, you should probably make sure your list includes plenty of things to take out of the big stuff. Ancient Stegadons with Sharpened Horns and Kroxigor are probably your best bet for taking down the enemy heavies though Temple Guard will get the job done too. A two Slann army with Fire providing damage and Life/Shadow/High Magic/Light providing battlefield control would be a potent combo but your power dice would be stretched thin.

One thing Fire doesn’t generally suffer from is range problems. A Skink Priest is less vital for targeting purposes with a Fire Slann than most other Lores, especially if the Slann is running solo. Don’t roll a spell from the Fire lore if you wouldn’t be at least satisfied with a magic missile though you should be open to others if you get them, especially Flame Cage.


High Magic and WD Slann


Fireball stand out among the other signature magic missiles by being adjustable. If you want to take lots of hits out of single unit, a WD Slann pretty much has to use Fireball.

In most situations, a High Magic Slann should dip into other lores besides Fire when switching spells though I decided I wanted some Fire in a game with lots of trolls. If you find your High Slann dealing with building bound foes, then perhaps it’s time to start swapping spells for Fire.


Storm of Magic


Fire is a straightforward lore. Straightforward doesn’t mean bad and it doesn’t mean boring. Kindleflame and lots of power dice means you really obliterate even the nastiest units. With the extra power dice and relatively low casting cost of the Fire spells, a Fire Slann can throw down spell after spell. If you are the type to have lot of skink priests occupying your fulcrums and flittering around the board with Cloak of Feathers or Skink Skirmisher escorts, the multiple skinks you can channel magic missiles from your Slann through means very few enemies will be outside your wrath. Also, I believe arcane fulcrums still count as buildings which means flaming attacks can reroll to wound. Also, a lot of the nastier monsters out there have Regeneration. Lore of Fire is a much hotter pick (pun intended) in Storm of Magic than regular games.

Lore of Fire may seem vanilla because it has few spells not tying into damaging things, but the simplicity frees you up to be more creative with the rest of your army. If you want to experiment with Unit X, target your fire spells at whatever enemy units COUNTER Unit X. You are building an equation on the battlefield. Use the Lore of Fire to remove any variables from the equation you think can cause you problems and you are free to experiment with unorthodox strategies with relative ease. Thus the most straightforward lore because surprising versatile if you tie it to your army theme. As an added bonus, a typical Storm of Magic list has LOTS of big monsters for you to call on so the limitation of Fire being low strength is not a huge problem.

Fireball Barrage: The Presence spell is mighty. Few units like taking 6d6 S4 hits. Even with the 3+ ward save from an arcane fulcrum, the sheer number of hits will roast all but the mightiest or luckiest enemy wizards (assuming they don’t have an anti-fire item). Chances are a Fireball Barrage at an enemy wizard will draw out the enemy dispel dice. Use this to your advantage and cast this spell early to make the rest of your magic phase to run smoother.

Withering Heat: The Equilibrium spell is probably the best Cataclysm spell for Fire. It makes all other fire spells better. Making a priority target flammable before hitting again and again with flaming attacks is nice. It’s also helps Lizardmen gain or maintain a mobility advantage by slowing down enemy charges, pursuits and flees letting you dictate the pace of the battle. It’s also a hex, which is something the Lore of Fire is otherwise lacking. It’s not just for making your magic missiles and vortexes wound more often. This spell gives you something to cast when most of the units on the table are engaged in close combat. The hex well improve the effectiveness of Cascading Firecloak and the Flaming Sword of Ruin, so it’s very versatile. It’s also a Remains in Play which is always nice.

Magma Storm: I’m not a big fan of Vortexes in general since I fear misfires greatly. In this case, I believe the risks of using Magma Storm are worth it. It’s good for knocking high AS high Toughness enemies down a peg with S10 hits or washing over horde style armies with a sheer volume of hits. That’s a nice change of pace since the Lore of Fire otherwise lacks high Strength damaging spell. The problem is, much of the time, if you’ve achieved dominance your forces are probably mixing it up with the enemy, so the risk for hitting your own men is high even without rolling a misfire. On the upside, 25+ is fairly cheap for this many kilotons of destruction. If you can use the Wizards Duel cantrip to gain temporary dominance early on, you’ll get at least one turn to cast Magma Storm before your forces get locked in melee.

 

Shameless Self Promotion Powers: Activate!

I already did the other Lores a while ago (or archived other people's Tacticas), I just decided to repost the Fire Slann thread since it seemed to be easier to rewrite it then to edit the old Fire Slann post. All nine Lores and the WD Slann are under the Slann entry in the Tactica index, conveniently linked in my signature and also stickied on the Tactics forum.