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I going to guess that 90% of you are going to say Life, and the rest will say Light. But I still thought I should ask in poll form. More neat than p starting a topic. But if you have a convincing argument for one feel free to post something.

A Slann cannot take the wrong lore; nor can he take the right one. He takes precisely the lore he needs too.

Seriously though, I've tried almost all of them out with a Slann and they're all pretty awesome... because the Slann himself is pretty awesome. Life and Light compliment Lizardmen the best in an all-comers situation, but they're all fun. If you try Beasts though I wouldn't pay the 50 points for loremaster since you can't use Transformation anyways... just get the Plaque of Tepok.

My answer is, try them all and see which one works best with how you play the army.

The lore you think is the coolest, fluffwise.
I voted Beasts because I think Beasts would be the coolest lore for Lizardmen, but for me it's truly a personal choice.

Doom and Darkness + salamanders is my lore of choice

To be honest it depends on your playstyle and the role you have in mind for the Slann.

If you've got TG then it's pretty much Life hands-down. You could get away with something else and Cupped Hands but the problem is that Miscats tend to cause casualties and the Slann has a pretty big base bubble - touching 12 models. That's a potential 12 dead models per wrong miscast and that can kill the unit off. Life however has Throne of Vines which is amazing for what it does. Sure, your enemy will go all out to stop it...but if you get it out you're golden and fairly safe with a 2+ save against Miscasts.

Solo? Recommend the immune to non-magical attacks discipline, otherwise consider the 2+ ward save vs. ranged discipline. Feel free to take any lore solo.

Life seriously compliments the strongest aspects of the Lizardmen (their resilience - Flesh to Stone on Saurus is brutal). In addition the lore attribute is fantastic with the amounts of monsters that can be running about!

Light seriously covers the weakest aspects of Lizardmen with 2 spells - their low initiative. Giving a bubble I10 or ASF is very, very useful! Stack them both and your opponent can find himself dealing with I10 Kroxigor attacks!

Shadow is in general a great lore - in addition if your Slann is a solo Slann then the attribute is fantastic, letting you swap with skinks or if threatened, with Scar Veterans to ruin the enemy's day.

Beasts is fantastic with a Saurus hero heavy army - the potential for S9/S10, 7-8 attack heroes in a bubble is fantastic. It eats a sphinx heavy TK army and worries an Ogre army something fierce.

Death is a good character killer - in addition Doom and Darkness meshes disgustingly well with Salamanders, as said. Plus, Slann being powerhouses with Focused Rumination (for free casting dice) - it can be even more disgusting with the lore attribute.

The rest of the Lores are situational or generally generic in what they do. Fire is just damage, damage, damage. Metal is very situational and can be largely useless against some armies that have no real heavy armour.

The only one I'd probably deter you from is Heavens - simply because you can get all the Heavens you want from your Skink Priests. And a lot of the time your opponents will ignore them as the powerhouse frog is the real threat. That is until you stack 2 or 3 of the Heavens' signature on their pride and joy unit in combat.

Beasts, toughness boost on already tough units.

Hmm more helpful than I thought you guys would be, lol. Thanks. I thought 80% of the comments would just be completely ridiculous, turned out to be a bit less than that.

Shadow or heavens just for the hexes and augments. Also if you take skink priests and a heaven loremaster you can turn lizards into a bizarre quasi gunline with comets

Heavens are great for stampede lists, iceshard blizzard>warmachines and can be backed up on with skinks, and then there's the joy of making the enemy re-roll those 6s he needs to wound your steg, and oh looky my steg rolled a 1 to wound with his cajillion automatic hits no problem re-roll

Life, Throne of Thorns, Lurker's below on that fancy dancy unit that thinks to threaten your slann, Flesh to Stone. Oh god why is your lizardman army now tearing my chaos warrios in half in combat?

Interesting.

Bolly.Bolly?BOLLY! wrote:Life, Throne of Thorns, Lurker's below on that fancy dancy unit that thinks to threaten your slann, Flesh to Stone. Oh god why is your lizardman army now tearing my chaos warrios in half in combat?

So the plan is to charge the saurus into something hitty and then hope to get lucky on a buff?
Life seems to support such a solid game-plan! I never understood it though.

The saurus are going to end up in combat one way or another. But with a toughness buff or regen they can grind down a chaos warriors block just fine. Said block may have taken a dwellers or two along the way as well.

Though I'm sure your sarcasm and clearly insightful response is very appreciated.

Hey hey, to each his own.

If that is your general game plan then I think there are some holes in it. But dont worry, I am a minority when it comes to thinking like that so you might be doing something right.

Lizardmen can get a ridiculous amount of chaff on the field, no reason to put your saurus into combat if you dont want it. So in that sense your point is moot.

Our resident Lizardmen player runs Heavens on his Slann and it's working pretty fine for him. Between the lowish casting requirements of the lore, it's excellent signature spell (meaning your Skink Priests can do something meaningful) and Rumination, you can get off quite a bit of spells, forcing your opponent to really think about what he or she wants to dispell.

Depends who your against. if their weak fire, if undead light, but it all depends on how you play to in games.

old ones champion wrote:Depends who your against. if their weak fire, if undead light, but it all depends on how you play to in games.

Fire seems to work best with multiple casters more so than 1 really good one. Being able to spam fireball, scale it up to match power dice on hand, and really take advantage of the lore attribute is what fire is all about. My dark elves love it; +1 power die, sac dagger, and 2 level 2's (one with ruby ring), gives me an awesome magic phase, even when I roll low for dice.

-Matt

I put Life because that tends to be the best all-comers Lore for a balanced army with a core of Saurus, but frankly it depends on your playstyle and the rest of the army. One particular variant I quite enjoy is the following build:

Ethereal
Loremaster (Fire)
+1 PD per spell
BSB
Fozzrik's Folding Fortress

Basically, you put the Fortress in the centre of your deployment zone (or the flank if you're running that way, enemy depending) and treat it as three or four war machines rolled into one, which is immune to the vast majority of normal anti-war-machine units. Being Ethereal, it's near guaranteed to be immune to a lot of enemies, being in the fortress expands LOS and General / BSB effect, and it'll basically take a magic-weapon-weilding Lord or a pretty dedicated blaster caster to shift it.