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I just bought a steagadon to support my burgeoning lizardmen army, but I have no idea how to
A: Build it
B: Use it once built

I know that it can be assembled as a regular steg with the Bow, an ancient with two blow pipes, or an ancient with the Engine of the Gods.
Past that... I know pretty much nothing.
Can anyone offer me a little insight?
Much appreciated!

EOTG are a pain to fight and probably the best build IMO

The Great Bow is pretty worthless. BS 3 single shot from a moving target is just crappy. It is only usable as a charging monstrosity (more on that later).

The blow pipes a really mean. They have really short range, so you only get a good shot just before you charge (or get charged). As it is, the potential 24 poisoned machine guns are good at cutting down just about anything, due to significant numbers of poisoned wounds.

The Engine is very handy. One thing to remember (I tend to forget) is to ACTUALLY ALIGN THE DAMN THING SO IT DOES SOMETHING. The bonus to casting is nice, and the alignment I use the most. The FREEM ability is short ranged, but can do a couple wounds on some things. I never use the ranged protection because I never fight anybody with much ranged weapons.

The downside with using the Great Bow or Blowpipes is that you CANNOT use a Skink Chief's BS on it. Why, I have no idea, but the FAQ gave us a nice nerfing on that. It would be really useful for the Great Bow.

What the Stegadon does is generate a big head of steam and RUN gak THE HELL OVER. Between Impact Hits, crew attacks, Steggie attacks, and Thunder Stomp, you can do a ton of damage. But never use it to take on large or really hard units by itself. It works pretty well as a flanker and can help pile up wounds with support. Individually, it can be overwhelmed pretty easily, because no one aims for the crew when they fight it, just kill the steggie.

Hope this helps!

As for building it, it's not that hard. It just looks really intimidating. Just go slowly, stay patient, and take your time.

If you wait a bit, I'll eventually post pictures of how I magnetized my Stegadon so I can use it as Ancient, Normal, and Extra Crispy (read: Engine of the Gods), and also magnetized the crew so I can field the Stegadon with an ordinary skink crew, a skink crew including a priest, or a skink crew including a warchief, AND remove them as they are killed (or use them as wound markers once the Stegadon's rules are updated to resemble those of the Way Huge Spider the goblins ride).

All the steg options have their use as kill generators, just charge them in a locked combat or together with a ranked unit and squish away.

Regular: Actually quite cheap for a monster with stubborn (many of the new beasties don't have that and tend to run away far easier), and the bow isn't as bad as it sounds as it still is affected by jungle poisons, never rely on it to hit stuff but if you aren't rushing forward full speed just take the potshot you'll get lucky eventually (like when i took 3 wounds off a stank on the 1st turn last game).

Ancien't: IMO the best the better streinght and armour are nice enough but when you throw in the pipes it really gets awesome.

Engine: No whis requires a bit of practice but boy can it pay off, as with many wizard ridden monsters it seems to suffer from the charge/don't charge dillema untill you realise it gives the skink on top 2+ armor and stuborn, i personally tend to take the dawnstone charge into a S4- enemy unit and switch on the high beams (burning alignment), depending on what shooting the enemy has i'll either have it shield the army on it's way in or boost my casting.

Chief mount: This option seems the most lackluster, you pretty much pay points for the ability to get magic items on a steg, for more points. Can be usefull and is cheaper than an engine but takes even more carefull planning to keep safe. Funny things to do with it is to give it the warspear for a brutal charge and/or have a shadow slaan nearby ready to cast steed of shadows on it for a flying stegadon (that's allways good for a laugh).

Thanks guys it's all great advice! I would love to see those pictures of the magnetized steg by the way, I only put the body of mine together so far.
I'm fairly new to fantasy, and I've never used any sort of monster in it before period. I have a lot of skirmishers in my list though, so I feel like the blowpipe steg would be somewhat redundant. Does that make sense?

If you have trouble with hellpit aboms or hydras, try this build: Skink chief BSB, flaming banner, giant blowpipes. Flaming poison makes the hellpit cry

And cannons smirk at the easy VP's

Malleus wrote:If you have trouble with hellpit aboms or hydras, try this build: Skink chief BSB, flaming banner, giant blowpipes. Flaming poison makes the hellpit cry

Eeeww. I might have to throw that at my Skaven opponent some time just to see him purely hate me.

I realy like the EotG, as it a has a nice magic abbility, and when needed can do some damage in CC.
Otherwise the ancient with 2 blowpipes, or with a skink hero and warspear, nice for support, but never on its own!
And you can be certain that its gonna attract lots of shots.
Be carefull with cannonballs, as these can destroy you steg in 1 go. So give you priest/hero an iron curse icon, enchanted shield only works for the bearer and not the mount.

Imo stegs are useless. The guy at the club who uses stegs never gets a chance to use them because I usually cannon it in the face with a great cannon or stank cannon and it dies instantly

And he is not running godly amounts of coma skinks?

Jayo'r wrote:Imo stegs are useless. The guy at the club who uses stegs never gets a chance to use them because I usually cannon it in the face with a great cannon or stank cannon and it dies instantly

The only way it would die instantly is you roll a 6 for the wounds. I highly doubt that happens every time.

Not to mention a Life Slann can heal it with each spell cast and/or make it T10!

And Engines of the gods hand out ranged wardsaves like they're candy

Johnny-Crass wrote:And Engines of the gods hand out ranged wardsaves like they're candy

At 3k i run a stampede very much like that
Frog+Carno+Engine+two stegs+ancient a sea of skinks and 60-70 saurus in two units (also 2 or more scar vets sometimes on foot sometimes on a cold one).

The best way to run a steg is to run two, plus a lord on carno.

You don't need a slann.

Speaking of no slaan, if the enemy army has no cannons the stampede list tends to stomp all over it quite easy.

HoverBoy wrote:Speaking of no slaan, if the enemy army has no cannons the stampede list tends to stomp all over it quite easy.

Even if the opponent brings warmachines, it can be rough on them. A big part of this is target saturation. 3 monsters to shoot at with a unit of terradons and two units of cham skinks bearing down on the warmachines. Not to mention, a couple of sallies. The list is fast and will be on top of the opponent quickly. This puts an enormous amount of pressure on the opponent, creating the opportunity for poor decisions.

Add to this that with the ridden monsters, both the character and monster have to die for points, a 5+ ward, and the need to inflict a fair number of wounds, cannons are not the easy answer they seem to be.

The last tourney season, I took the Carno-lord, two steg list to 4 tournys. Recived Best Overalls at Alamo and So Cal Slaughter, Best General at the Grand Waagh, and Second Best Overall at SAWS. Pretty good showing.

However, I have yet to go 5-0. Given some of the inherit weakness of the list, this may be very difficult to do.

Hinge

Mattlov wrote:

Jayo'r wrote:Imo stegs are useless. The guy at the club who uses stegs never gets a chance to use them because I usually cannon it in the face with a great cannon or stank cannon and it dies instantly

The only way it would die instantly is you roll a 6 for the wounds. I highly doubt that happens every time.

The last four games iv played against him iv rolled three 6's. The one time I didn't get a 6 I got a 2, the stank then shot at it and I rolled a 5. I'm incredibly lucky with warmachines. I killed a thundertusk and the orge cannon with one shot

Jayo'r wrote:

Mattlov wrote:

Jayo'r wrote:Imo stegs are useless. The guy at the club who uses stegs never gets a chance to use them because I usually cannon it in the face with a great cannon or stank cannon and it dies instantly

The only way it would die instantly is you roll a 6 for the wounds. I highly doubt that happens every time.

The last four games iv played against him iv rolled three 6's. The one time I didn't get a 6 I got a 2, the stank then shot at it and I rolled a 5. I'm incredibly lucky with warmachines. I killed a thundertusk and the orge cannon with one shot

Well done.... but this doesn't make Stegs useless. The only point you are making is "If I roll 6's all the time I win". That is unhelpful.