Dinosaurs: Not as Rad as Previously Thought

Science has lied to us about dinosaurs before. Between stuff like that and the realities of 8th edition fantasy, I'm a very sad Stegadon lover.

It turns out that not only are percentages a major part of army construction, but that there are a ton of other rules that make the Stegadon Herd fairly useless as well as impossible (at 2000 pts). Terror isn't as awesome as it was, template weapons will shark rape the skinks in the howdah and I can't squeeze 7 Stegadons into anything much less than 3000 points.

I've already had a bit of cry about this and I've already bitched and moaned about the percentages thing as well so I'll spare you the details.

Time to be positive.

As much as it pains me to let go of my Lizard dream, its for the better.

As far as I can tell from all the 7th edition battle reports and the opinions of some people who I go to for that sort of thing, Warhammer Fantasy was a little less fantastical than the players would like. From what I've been able to gather, the game felt too much like it did when I was still playing back in the 90's. Which was a problem.

By all accounts, 8th edition is almost an entirely new game and a fun one at that. So, I'll miss the idea of my 7 Stegadons playing in the yard and chasing down big blocks of infantry. I'll also miss the way the nuzzled me when it was feeding time and the way they didn't require me to paint 40 man units. However, I know that I can find good homes for my dino-buddies and I know that Warhammer Fantasy was a approaching teribad status before 8th.

Beyond all the begrudging respect I have for the 8th edition changes, there are further things that mitigate the kind of retro teen angst I was feeling about a month ago.

- The army is almost entirely assembled and still in original boxes, so I can still resell it at a good price and I didn't end up wasting much of my time

- I didn't spend much more than $45 bucks of my own cash on the army, so my financial loses are pretty tiny - though that means that a lot of Christmas gifts just became kind of a bummer.

- I hadn't had much time and interest to work on the army in the first place. Its freaking July and I only got as far as one test skink and a half assembled Stegadon. My Eldar and a bunch of side projects keep all of my painting time firmly rooted in 40k.

- I still have yet to buy the 8th edition rulebook. Now I'm not complaining about the price, but 75 bucks is a lot to spend in addition to all the models I'd need for a game I haven't played yet. Especially in the face of a massively overdue completed Eldar army.

- There are any number of other projects I want to work on, so the money I can raise from selling off the lizards will help out with whatever boondoggle I get involved with next.

The subtext here is that I'm selling off the Lizardmen rather than pressing on with them. It's like I said before, I'm just not interested in the Lizardmen beyond their capacity to have Stegadons. The rest of the model range just leaves me kind of cold (get it?! Because they're cold blooded! HA!!) and I'm not interested in watering down the dino-might experience with actual troops. The sheer ridiculousness of the whole army has been removed and, with it, my desire to play Lizardmen.

As it happens, I've still got the same Fantasy bug that everyone seems to have right now. I will be getting a fantasy army in the future - the question is really not a matter of if, but when and what army. Primarily, I'd like to learn how to play before I commit to a list.

With that - play me off, Ke$ha