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Wow, these guys are powerful. They should rename us Wizardmen OR change the name "Slann Mage-Priest" to "Freaking Awesome Dinosaur That Shoots Lasers Out Of Its Eyes". And with dispel scrolls only costing 25 pts for Lizardmen, Plaque of Domination, and The Becalming Cogitation, we are even good against other magic-heavy armies! *gurgle gurgle gurgle* Pretty great core. *gurgle gurgle gurgle* Cold-blooded. *gurgle gurgle gurgle* YEAH!

Yeah, they're tough. But they also tend to take up a lot of points. You're going to have a Temple Guard and magic items and disciplines and such. And while they are magic power houses, they are useless at anything else (like fighting).

So you could end up with one unit being your general and the largest bulk of your points. Be a bad place for a miscast or Dwellers/Purple Sun/etc to land.

They are powerful to be sure.

I tend to field my Slann with Focused Rumination, Higher State of Consciousness, Becalming Cogitation and Focus of Mystery. Stick a cupped hands on him, and make him a BSB and you have a really solid caster. That being said, you get what you pay for. It costs alot to get all that.

Cogitation protects him against from IF on spells like Purple Sun and Dwellers. Consciousness means he can stand against most non magical units. Toss in the BSB and if in Temple Guard, means you have a stubborn unit that tests on LD 9 with Cold Blooded and a reroll. You should never break from combat. Rumination and Mystery go without saying.

Just be wary of sticking him in that unit of TG. If you stick him in a you really gotta be careful of anyone with Dwellers or nasty WoC wizards with Third Eye of Tzeentch. They can get within 24" of the temple guard but stay out of range of Cogitation. That means an IF dwellers will nuke him out of existence.

I'm surprised that you would take Higher State and then put him in Temple Guard, that seems like unnecessarily doubling up. In Temple Guard he shouldn't be getting attacked (if he is you already lost....) so there isn't much point. Outside of TG its amazing though. I also generally don't bother with Cupped Hands if I'm not with Temple Guard, with them its basically mandatory to stop yourself blow up half the unit when you eventually miscast, but outside it floating around by yourself you can't do too much damage to anything short of falling down a hole.

I've run into that exact same issue with Cognition except it was against Gateway and it caused me all sorts of headaches (probably payback for my WS10 I10 ASF +1 attack Temple Guard eating his Chosen in a single round of combat the game before). Its a very useful ability but I definitely think its more helpful in Lifestar lists which just push into the enemies face regardless or on solo Ethernal Slann.

I'm currently playing around with some alternative builds for Slann since comp/hard caps are a fairly major factor over here (many combos are banned or otherwise made largely worthless). The current one I want to try out is the Beasts combat Slann. You give him the Fencers Blade, BSB, Plague of Tepok and Higher State. I take the Stubborn Helm as well in the tournaments which don't ban it together with Higher State, otherwise you try and stand in a Forest, and you can add Becalming and/or Terror on top of this.
This combo means you can charge most units with no fear of being hit in return, anything which can hit you probably needs 5's and then has to get through a 4+ ward. On static res you lose by 2 at the worst (BSB, charge vs 3 ranks, Standard), you can get kills to possibly win combat but either way Cold Blooded Ld7 with a re-roll is still over a 90% pass rate. Plague of Tepok guarantees you get the spells you want (since you can't use Transformation so will always swap it), Fencers Blade means you hit on 3's against pretty much everything and adds an attack so casting the Savage Beast on yourself turns you into a wrecking ball. Higher State keeps you safe from missiles and strangely enough you are also pretty fast as well. Most people don't realise it because they are usually hidden away in Temple Guard blocks but Slann are actually M10 (just can't march) with Swiftstride, so you can pick your fights pretty well and avoid nasty magic weapons. Its probably not as effective as a more standard Light or Life Slann, but it has quite a few things going for it and if nothing else has a large potential for hilarious situations (yes my bloated giant Frog did just break your entire combat block....).

Higher State of Consciousness is there to protect him from cannons and stone throwers. If they aren't magical, they can land on his head all they want. If you do not have it, then 1 failed LoS roll could result in your Slann being dead. Not exactly something I want to risk on a 500 point character. Sure its not that likely to happen to begin with as its a 16% you fail your LoS, then follow that up with a 50% you fail your ward, finally followed by a 33% chance your opponent rolls 5 or 6 wounds on the multiple wounds roll. Thats only a 2% chance each cannon shot that hits him, kills him outright. Over the course of a game though, every warmachine that is across the field will be firing at him in that unit of TG. They may not kill him outright with 1 hit, but 2-3 hits could very well do it.

As far as Cupped Hands goes, I put it on there not as protection but as an offensive weapon. Move the unit near an enemy caster, toss 6 dice at every spell and HOPE for double sixes. The miscast hitting an enemy wizard, especially one with Purple Sun, or Dwellers, is great.

Your combat Slann is hilarious, and definately something worth trying out. Personally, I like being able to dominate the magic phase with a Slann, and once you cupped hands their level 4, its in the bag.

Yeah I can see the use for it in a block, but failed LoS defence is basically the only one and 50pts is a big investment even on a valuable character. You also have to factor in that most Dwarf and Skaven war machines would bypass it anyway. I guess it partially depends on which Lore you are running on your Slann. I almost always run Light, which gives me another layer of defence against war machines (2 spells which can shut them down), if you run a lore which is mostly offensive based then it becomes more attractive. The thing is that 50 points is almost another unit of Chameleons or half a unit of Terradons, which can both be used to shut down war machines permanently and in general give you more tactical options.

Agreed, and part of it is the fact that I tend to play against Empire and WoC alot.

Empire War Machines are easily handled by Terradons. The Hellcannon, which I come up against all the time, is not. Even my camo skinks have trouble taking it out, but they are the only thing that can get the job done.