Hi, all. I'm a former Lizardmen player who was quite fond of Sallies for obvious reasons and have since played Tomb Kings and am now playing Ogres. With that in mind, I had a question about how to challenge a regular opponent's Salamander packs.

Since Sallies are skirmishers, the rules say that they have to put as many models as possible into BTB contact. When being charged by, say, 3 Ogres, that would mean it would look something like this:

OOO
SssssS

O=Ogre
S=Salamander
s=Skinks

In that case, the charging unit would often have a better chance at winning the combat with the opportunity to hit and wound more Skinks. Of course, it kind of belies the spirit of the unit, where one would think that the ravening beasts would jump forward to the fight and their delicate handlers would be happy to let them. However, is it possible that this weakness (like every other war machine in WH other than the Hellcannon) is what justifies the otherwise amazing versatility and power of the 65 point pack?

You have it correct. Salamanders are skrimishers and have to maximise their numbers in combat. If the first model you contact on a charge is a salamander then you opponent can get all three salamanders in the fight because the one you hit is in combat and the last two are placed on the corrners but all the rest of the space has to be taken up by handlers.

thus....all the fools who think killing the skinks will hurt the salamnders are dead wrong.

Uh, if you kill the skinks you get easy combat rez to break the salamanders. That putting skink handlers into combat rule is a down side of salamanders.