Lizardmen Giant Tortoise fluff needed

[Lucas]

Right for some time now I have had the idea to make a giant war tortoise for the lizardmen and have it as hard as nails but the back ground I need help with, they have never been mentioned in the army book. Lustria is a giant jungle full of all kinds or wierd and dangerous creatures from stegadons to cold ones and everything else. Who's to say in the depths of the jungle there is a race of giant tortoises who live for thousands of years and are bigger and mightier than stegadons, but not quite as huge and destructive as thunder lizards. I was thinking that every few hundred years a slann of epic power will take a journey to a place i will call the glad of the titans, in-between Axlotl, Oyxl and Chupayotl. When the slann arrives at the glade of the titans they sit and cast a spell for over 1 year in this time they are very week and if not for a horde of skinks scouting the area and the temple guard watching over the slann they would surely die. Once the spell is complete however a powerful tortoise (not thought of a suitable name yet) will walk right up to the slann and stand still for hours as it registers its new master. once the creature is brought back to the temple city the slann and skink priest will work spells of protection for the creature, after many weeks of chanting and belssings the beast will accept riders. The skinks of the city in the time of chanting will have begun working on the great construction that will go on the beast back it is ready for war.

now for the stats and spec rules

M WS BS S T W I A LD
4 4 0 10 10 10 1 4 8

4+ ward save
2+scaly skin save

spec rules:
cold-blooded
Aquatic
epic thunder stomp- 4 D6 stomp rule
Heroic killing blow
(also the creature is immune to the effects of multiple wounds and killing blow rules)
Immune to psychology
impact hits - 4
a week beat is a dangerous one - every time the tortoise takes a wound it adds +1 to its M A I values

the howdah has 2 giant blow pipes and has a crew of 12 skinks armed with blowpipes the howdah confers a 2+ save for the skinks that can not be improved a slann may also choose a giant tortoise as a mount

unit strength 20

what do people think I am going to start building the model in the next few weeks
and what kind of point cost would you give such a beast?(and sorry for the poor grammar)

[Lord Borak]

Is this a Storm of Magic beasty? It just seems a bit insane is all. Toughness 10, with 10 Wounds and then a 2+Save is nasty enough but a 4+ Ward on top of that is bit too much in my opinion. Drop some of those stats down to a more manageable (and unkillable) level. Why does he have Heroic killing blow as well?

Also, the weak beat is a bit mental. So, if he's down to 4 wounds he's Init 7 with 10 Attacks......... at str10. Maybe give him swift stride and frenzy if he gets down to half wounds if you want to represent him going a bit nuts when he's injured.

[strangejour]

Whoa!the reptile as you want it would have to cost about 1500 pts or more and still would be no fun to play against (propably even no fun to play with)!

i understand you build a custom super-monster and you want it to be extremly powerful but i 'think' you dont want it to be OVER-powerd which it clearly is.

statline itself is arguably better than the great fire dragon from the lore of beast, which in turn is far better than any armybook dragon.

first, there is no justification why the turtoise should be harder than the stone necrosphinxes (t, i would make him even T6, as meat isnt particularly resistant. his shell is already represented by almost the best saves possible (except for ((rerollable))1+/4++). (his Wounds on the other hand are fine, combined with additional 12 skink-wounds means it could take like 10 randomised wounds maintaining (almost) full combat capability).

second, strenght. compared to S10 cannonball, i imagine the turtoise to have much more M but significantly less C from the E=MC2. unfortunately squares are agaist us so i would drop it to S8 (max! maybe even 7) but add MULTIPLE WOUNDS D3. perhaps you could make one attack with heroic killing blow to represent his bite while remainig (say 5) attacks would be his limbs ((is tail a limb???)).


third. a week beat is a dangerous one - following what Lord Borak said, turtoise with one wound left would have Initiative of 10 (maximum) Movement 13, and 13 attacks which, while not limited to 10 are still more than ANYTHING in the game. im sure the poor 'ol turtle isnt THAT good especially when nearly dead personally i would make him sometking like losing strenght with lost wounds so the opposite, but lets just forget both for now..

fourth. special rules. i think 1d6+1 impact hits (he's not really fast) followed by 2d6 epic stomp are enough at S8/7. i think it should have an all-strider rule as turtoise isn gonna break his leg on rocks no matter what. just a type of animal invunerable to such misheaps.

and last thing: i imagine a slaan general full of items, with some kickass magic Battle standard mounted a top this beast with 18"radii for gen and bsb. again we have much more than a thousand points and again a overpowered model. make it only as a rare or a character itself (an Ancient Mechatechaquin, He Who Bears the World, Last of the Turtoise Lineage ). mounting figter characters on it is not required even after i took away half of its power. mounting a shaman, in my opinion, makes it a little bit too versatile (by 'too' i mean that its good for the game if units have some weak spots. makes you think more when you play it which in turn makes the game more interesting.).

After what i did, i would make it cost some 600-700 pts and would be equal to most powerfull characters in the game but not twice as good

Anyway, the more i think about it the more i like the idea. personally i would make the howdah to resemble teple-city-pyramid, as if the turtoise was carrying whole city good luck with the project

[Andy Davies]

Move 4 and attacks 4 seem way too much for a giant turtle. Movement 3 and maybe a special rule that it only can charge at 1d6 makes more sense. I don't know if you ever scene a turtle attack something but they rear with their mouths and snap really hard, but that rearing is really slow. I think 1 or two attacks for the turtle would be more in line. Also I think it should have stupidity as turtles are not really interested in anything that isn't food or protecting itself. I think there should be a chance that if it does take a wound that it hides in its shell for the remainder of the game. Maybe a Ld test for every wound or the turtle becomes an invulnerable piece of terrain. Just some ideas.

[Lucas]

right all very good points I got over zealous making the stat line hardcore so here it is

M=4 WS=3 BS=0 S=8 T=7 W=10 I=1 A=4 LD=8

right M 4 because it has really large legs

WS is droped its not hard to hit a HUGE target and not very fast so its harder for the tortasaurus (just an idea) to strike its foes
S is down a bit will still wound most core on a 2
T i cant bring my self to make it 6 its just too bulky
W sounds right to me with 10
I 1 is right its gona be slow
A 4 keeping it as well its legs are giant weapons
LD it isnt frighted of things easy

Immune to pych is obvious
D3 multi wounds
stubborn
heroic killing blow(must swap all attacks to make an attempt)
cold blooded
aquatic
D3+1 impact hits
epic stomp 2D6
TOO LARGE- heroic killing blows inflict D3 wounds instead
2+ scaly skin save
(no ward save)
magic resistance (2)
right a possible 5 or 6+ regen
same rules for the howdah

RARE choice 630 points

any thoughts and is the background sound??

[CaptainSarathai]

I would check out these rules for the old Chaos Warmammoth (not allowed to post the new Storm of Chaos rules) and bear in mind that this monster was not game-legal and required permission from your opponent before you could use it.

http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/Download.../w/mammoth.pdf
That thing had a reputation of being entirely too over the top, even for the cost. Also realize that this was back in the days before 25% rules, so the fact that it takes up 2 Rare choices meant that you couldn't use it in anything smaller than a 2000pt game, and it would take up your entire Rare Section until you hit 3k. So figure on it being about 700pt with that kind of adjustment. Plus the fact that you had to mount another 120pts of Marauders on it's back to be able to use it.

For your Taurosaur, I'd drop Immune to Psych and just keep it Cold Blooded (which is practically the same thing), and then get rid of the Heroic Killing Blow. Killing Blow is fine, I imagine that it could easily smash a human or cavalry sized opponent. But HKB means that it will be able to kill Dragons in a single hit... I don't really a see a giant turtle having any weapon capable of auto-popping a Dragon. What's it going to do, blink at it?

I'd also give it the 'Lumbering' rule that Mammoth has, so that it can't march. Yeah, it's M4 with long legs, but it's a turtle, they're not known for their sense of urgency. Give it D6+1 Impact hits, rather than just D3, or maybe even 2D6 Impact hits. A Stegadon or Chariot manages to get in D6 hits, why are your shorting such a huge monster? I would knock the Stomp down though, maybe just D6+1. 2D6 each turn is brutal, those are auto-hit attacks at S7, you're going to obliterate huge chunks of a unit in each turn.

Finally - why not just use your Tortoise model as a Stegadon? Making your own rules and units is all well and good, but people will hardly ever let you use them. They have a belief that (and your first attempt at writing rules for the Tortoise only proves this) that players will get carried away and make very unbalanced units/rules. My Nippon book has been in playtesting for over a year, and 90% of the people I meet won't let me use it because they think that it won't be fair. Even if I let them look through the book and show them that, if anything, it's underpowered, they still won't agree. It's just too easy to say "that's not official," it's much harder to take a risk against a project army. On the times that I did win the games where I used my Samurai army, all that I heard afterwards was that this or that was too powerful, that I wrote a cheesy armybook, and that the game "doesn't count." It's not even all that much fun to use the book anymore, just because people who play against it never say that it's a good book. If they win, the book is underpowered just like I said (and I hate losing) but if I win, then suddenly it's all because I brought an unofficial book.
The same will go for your Tortoise. People won't let you use it, and it will just turn into wasted shelf-space. If they do let you use it, you'd better not win, or you won't hear the end of it. It's better to make a model underpowered and over-priced, rather than try to make it fair, if you want to be able to use it in a game.

[Lucas]

good point, I will be using it when I fight my friends who collect. They have so far said they would love to fight it but, I have given them all ideas now(damn it) they are going to make awesome models now not a big deal but more than anything I just want to have the model so I can say I did that.
If people will let me use it, then oh god I will but more than the rules for the model I am more into getting the history down with it to make it a real part of lustria and the warhammer world.
Yes it still needs to be balanced a bit more, I will be working on it in the next few days but next week is when I start to build the model really cant wait.

any other ideas are always welcome.

[sendaf]

When I think of turtles i don't really think of close combat beasts; I really just see a Giant tortise winning by crushing everything with its massivebulk by crawling on top of regiments of troops. Maybe the Turtle should only have 1 attack, a heroic killing blow attack that represents the turtle taking a chomp. Then he gets 2d6 stomp attacks to represent the turtle slowly crawling through the enemy regiment.

This will put a greater focus on the riders of the turtle instead of the turtle itself, I like the idea of having 50 some skinks leaping off the turtle and forming up along side it for a flank charge. Lets face it, giant flippers should not be more destructive then a dragon's claws.