(Rare photo of a young Fire Elemental)
When I described the Fire Elemental unit, I called them a crutch, mostly due to the shambling mechanic as a whole, but also because I feel its a unit that fluff wise fits, but gameplay and list wise is a poor unit.
Going over the basic statline, it's the fastest infantry unit in the salamander list beyond gekkotahs, they hit on 4's like every unit in the list except ancients, they have defense 5 like every unit in the list except unblooded and kaisenors, and they have the same number of attacks as kaisenors. It has the highest crushing strength, tying with Tyrants or great weapon primes/ancients, and is the only big unit with pathfinder other than primes. Its only weakness is in its nerve, which is still the same as ancients, and suffers from large infantry hordeitis. To top of the proverbial unit cake, these guys are unlocking and have the shambling special rule, as well as being smaller than an infantry regiment, and less than half the size of a salamander horde.
(When I say unit, I mean mainline unlocking ones, not heroes and monsters)
TLDR form
Speed: Second Best (Behind ghekkotahs)
Melee: Second Best (Behind Ancients)
De: Tied for Best
Att: Same as Kaisenor, worse than horde of Primes
Ne: Similar to Ancients, worse than horde of Primes
Pts: About right for a large infantry horde, very comparable to ogre warrior hordes, although shambling probably takes them over the top in the comparison
Special: CS 2 is best in class (tied with Tyrants), Pathfinder puts them in a competitive role with Primes, Base Size is smallest in the list for impact.
Given there haven't been many tournaments using the CoK 17 pack, this analysis might change or be outdated, but the few lists I've seen at events that placed well featured this unit as their focus, and for good reason. It's simply better than the other options, and prior to adding vicious to kaisenors, was the only reasonable unlocking choice other than a horde of primes. My distaste for this unit isn't because it's simply better than just about anything else in the list for the points, but rather that I think there was a big missed opportunity in adding this to Salamanders.
Fluff wise the Salamanders get super heated in a volcano and then slowly die when they go out to fight, part of why ancients don't have pathfinder but hit on 3's because they are close to that dying part, so Fire elementals fit as this is the fire faction apart from forces of Abyss. However since the whole special thing with Salamanders is their army hits hard with innate CS1, giving them an unlocking large infantry horde that has CS2 is both redundant and skews list building. It's simply hard to ignore fire elementals during list creation.
I have the same distaste for earth elementals in Dwarves, however I have no play experience using them (only against) so I won't include them in the discussion outside of saying they do a similar thing to the Dwarf list in the dwarves are a hard to move, high def army, and was given a horde that is unwaverable, and has higher def. Fluff wise it fits, but in the gameplay and list building they just stick out as doing what the dwarves would already want to do, but overall better.
Rather than adding the FoN Fire elemental line to Salamanders, I would've much rather seen something like the air elementals, perhaps with the innate cs1 (and a points bump naturally, something around 235), to give the army a much needed flying support unit, while also opening up options like the Tyrants to be competitively playable. This would be a unit that could perform similarly to Water elementals do in the Brotherhood list, something that fits the list building and gameplay by offering something different from the usual list and not being an elephant in the room when you look at designing a list.
This would also carry over to the Greater Elemental, who could have been a great winged chimera equivalent rather than being almost straight better than a Fire Drake, where the Greater Fire elemental sits now. But that's skipping ahead to the next review article, which should be out by March 16th :P
Hopefully you find this at least somewhat insightful to why I view the elementals the way I do, and don't just go buy 20 reaper elementals to build a salamander list :P
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