8th Ed. What we fear...

I thought I would start a thread that would be helpful to all of us, combining out experiences. I would like to discuss/list all of the units/characters/items etc in other armies that pose a problem for us Lizardmen and possibly how to counter those.

To start:

Vampire Counts- the wraiths have always given me a little headache because I don't take many magical things to kill them. Usually I throw skirmishers around them to force a charge and pull them away from my critical units. The Grave Guard used to be a problem, but with dwellers and salamanders they are a bit more manageable.

Dark Elves- The hydras are a pain. I usually throw as many poison shots as I can, along with redirecting to take care of them. Lucky saves can be a problem. I know some people throw a flaming banner on the Temple Guard, but usually I prefer other banners, and it's hard for me to devote that to helping against one monster from only one army.

etc.

Any and all input would be great, and I think very useful to all of us devising tactics against the things that other armies hurt us with.

 

Just played Vampire Counts last night.

30 Grave Guard with the +1 to hit banner, Great Weapons, his lord using the helm to give WS 7, with Regeneration. Not cool. I had to sacrifice 3 units (skink skirmishers x10) to keep these guys away from by Temple Guard. Worked well. My buddy was pissed that he spent all of those points on that unit and didn't really get to use it to kill anything substantial.

By the way, the above gives them a 2+ to hit, 2+ to wound, with 5+ armor (4+ to my blowpipes), and 4+ regeneration. The salamanders helped a lot (6 of them), but I could never wipe the unit out in one turn, so on his turn, he brought all of them back. He still lost, but I had to focus a lot on keeping those guys away from my good stuff.

He played very well with using Vanhels Dance at the right times. Be careful facing this, it can cost you the game if you are not ready for it.

 

Pretty sure the GW on the GG replaces the shield so just a 5+ save vs shooting

Samuel

 

Vampire Counts: Grave Guard in horde formation. Avoid this unit at all cost, well almost. I would never "again" go up against this unit with my Temple Guard, or any expensive unit you can't afford to lose. It won't matter that you have 4+ armor, 4+ regeneration, Shield of thorns, +4 toughness, and every other spell you can think of. The amount of killing blow attacks is more destructive than any other unit I have come up against. By the way, the grave guard had the helm, +1 hit banner, regeneration banner, great weapons, and me thinking temple guard were an elite unit. This gives them 2+ hit, but only 6's to wound. Didn't matter though, with 30ish (maybe a little less) attacks he was rolling a lot of 6's. My opponent quickly learned that the +4 toughness was better than regeneration and dispelled it the next turn I tried to cast it. Wiped out in 2 turns. Try to avoid, or kill at range. Do not go toe to toe. Just my thoughts.

 

I've only come up against VC twice against my mate, and both times i won, oxytol was really awsome at killing his wizard, i actually outkill his block of unkillable's I had him on all flanks, and his hounds charged my ancinet stegadon blowpipes killed them outright. XD
I dont know if im just luky but I really strugle with chaos alot more, the only time ive won was when my slanny took Lore of Metal.

 

He must have had wonderfull roles in that case. 30 hits with 6+ to wound should equal 5 wounds on average. With a 4+ regen thats only 2.5 wounds. Should take him alot of time to chew through that unit and meanwhile you can wipe out most everything else that he has (not to mention charging the vampires bunker unit so that he cant use the helm on the GG. It is a powerfull unit but if I got of a couple of buffs I would not be worried about facing it, assuming that my opponent isnt extremely lucky.

As to what we fear I would say all sorts of initiative based spells (duh). However other than that we do not fear all that much. We can outshoot (Considdering skinks and teradons ability to take out shooters in combination with salamanders) outmagic and outfight most opponents. Things like double HPA or Hydras or Steamtanks i would say is the biggest problem since we dont have any S10 d6 wounds cannons. However we can usually grind those down as well with some helpfull magic.

 

regarding the GG horde of doom, beaten by:

(ancient) stegadon, in range of slann w/ BSB and lore of life for +2/4 toughness. No killing blow, and tbh hardly any attacks full stop because the steg only has a small frontage, then the steg can happily impact/regular/thunderstomp them to death, with optional flank/rear charge if they're just getting ressed. worked for me (well, just, but still! )

unfortunately i realised this was a good way to deal with them AFTER they'd demolished my 25 saurus with HWS in a single round (seriously, there were hardly any left alive to run!)


regarding the hydra, well the slann/TG can have a standard each, so i dont see an issue getting the flaming banner in there myself. if you really cant drop either of your current banners, the ruby ring of fire lets you get a cheeky fireball in to take his regen off.


what i struggle with myself, how on earth do you kill a Skaven screaming bell? given that my skinks are usually shooting down war machines/hellpits/doomwheels etc, and because of this are usually killed off pretty sharpish anyway, i tend to only have saurus/stegs left by the time i've cleared up the rest, which means i cant kill the thing, which means 0VPs for the seer+bell.... frustrating rather than a game-breaker, but still!

 

A good way to kill a grey seer on screaming bell, I think, would be to just challenge the grey seer; I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure the seer can't refuse if he's on a screaming bell.
As for killing the bell itself, The only sure fire way to do so in combat (that I know of) is to hit it with the Blade of Realities; since the screaming bell has no leadership characteristic, one hit with that weapon means it is automatically destroyed.

 

I would think Grave Guard and ghouls both would be problems for LM. Honestly I never played vs LM with my VC army. Also the suggested tactics wouldn't work as well vs the way I play (well, depends on the point values).

Anyhoo

When playing LM, I find WoC are the hardest to fight, both the Warriors and the Chosen. T4, 3+ armor and most of the time 3+ ward. As VC I depend on regen and Summon Undead Horde, how do LM pull it off?

Most Chosen have a 50% chance to start the game with a 3+ ward. Then barring that bring a warshrine or two just to make sure they get the ward.

The Warshrine is T5, 4+ armor, 4+ ward, 4 wounds, so can't count on killing that with skinks first turn. It will take 96 poisoned shots on average to kill it.

 

And don't forget, any smart WoC player will give the warshine mark of Tzeentch, so now really the only way to kill it is with either hordes of shots(not practical), a challenge(not probable, they are normally behind enemy lines), and an elite unit battering its way through the enemy then assaulting it(expensive and potentially fails). The last way is magic, which will be hard considering the 3+ ward save. All in all, either way they will tough as the chaos warriors that invariably follow it.

 

Not having all that much experience fighting chaos (only 2 or 3 games) i would say that the best way of fighting them is avoiding the fights. We can beat them in the magic phase and we can crush them in the shooting phase. Since they are not all that fast it shouldnt be too hard to move your troops to one side of the table, denying him the chanse of joint charges. While he is marching across the batlefield we can cause him serious damadge with 3 units of skinks, a couple of salamanders and a tooled-upp slann. I know that this tactic is dependant on us getting some shots and magic of but, since he should have fewer troops than us to begin with, whitling down his units a litle before combat should guarantee us a fair chanse.

Can someone with more experience in fighting CW tell me if I have forgot something important and in that case why this wouldnt work and what should work better.

Gustaf

 

i've only played the warshrine-chosen combo once, and i was lucky enough for him to not get the uber ward save before i killed his warshrine.

eitherways, i managed to slap most of them off the board with a decent dwellers (though sadly his mage lord and bsb which were in there both survived), game ended with them battering my pumped up TG, so basically nobody could hurt anyone, and nobody was running away either.


as with the screaming bell, the problem imo is not that they cause uber damage, rather that it's almost impossible to take any VPs for them.

@Chaq Mundi, yeah i thought about the blade of realities, sadly it requires an oldblood to carry, which pretty much rules it out at anything less than 3k as the slann takes all the lord %. yeah, challenge is a good way to get te seer, but sadly that doesnt get any VPs by itself.

 

Just to add on to Walachs comment on the old blood with blade of realities, the only 3k skaven army I saw had a seer with bell and two priests with furnaces. That means that you've got one helluva busy old blood.

What do I fear? To be honest the majority of the armies I face are high elves and the ones I find I have the most trouble against (excluding Teclis/Book of Hoeth) are armies with Phoenix Guard. That 4+ Ward save makes them an incredibly durable unit, if I take my regular slann set up with lore of Light/shadows I can deal with them in CC but even then they can grind out a fight better than Temple Guard add in a Prince with dragon armor great weapon talisman of preservation and some other stuff and it is a hammer and anvil on its own.

 

The problem with Vampire Counts Grave Guard is this. Once your opponent realizes that the only thing that slows them down is the +4 toughness spell, he will hold all of his dispel dice for it. This gives them, with the +1 to hit banner and the helm, a 2+ to hit and a 2+ to wound. Your temple guard get no saves because of strength 6, and killing blow doesn't let you use regeneration. With 30 attacks, your temple guard can be wiped out in one volley. I just try to avoid it.

However, the skink chief on the ancient stegadon with the war-spear in the flank, you charge of course, can kill them with combat res, but the regeneration banner on the bsb can ruin your plans.

 

Skaven: Remember that the bell or furnace is a large target. This means it can be picked out of the unit, not to mention the new rules with mixed units. For example, the bell is not infantry, so the guys pushing it can't look out, and you can target it directly. I have played against that nasty type of skaven list a few times, and have used a different each time.

1st: I tried to kill the bell/grey seer with magic and blowpipes. It took all game because of all the wounds and saves but finally died. I run a lot of skinks. Last edition was cool because of all the comets and lightning bolts you could throw. But it takes a long time with the toughness, randomizing and saves.

2nd: Kill the unit pushing it. I found this tactic to be a little better last eddition with multiple engines and lore of heavens. In this edition the salamanders to great at thinning the heard, leaving the bell in place. The down side is that you still have to deal with the wizard and the ringing, the upside is that you can forget about the combat capability of the unit, as it can't move anymore. This gives you the ability to focus your forces on the rest of his army. With dwellers, salamanders, and skinks you can wipe out the unit, getting the poinsts and not risk close combat.

The more guys he has pushing the bell or furnace protecting it the less he has to guard his flank and kill your units. The less guys he has pushing the easier is is to stop. However, I agree it is a pain in the but.

 

So it seems that the majority of us throw magic, salamanders, and poison shots, as best we can, into things we don't like before risking combat. However, even though I think we win the majority of our games and always place high in tournaments, we don't win every game and every tournament, I think... What has beaten us? I'm sure some games have been determined by poor rolls and bad luck, however, I'd like to look at tactics and combos that really hurt. What beat your army, why, and how would you combat this in the future?

Lets vow to never lose a game, unless you are running something fun or trying something out. But our A-lists should never lose again!

So far, it looks like the following are things to avoid, redirect, kill at range, etc.

Hydra
Steam Tank
HPA
Bell/Furnace
Killing Blow stuff
Units with multiple saves

P.S. The only danger of running our stegadons (especially chief with spear on ancient) is warmachines. It is a great unit, and if your opponent doesn't have any cannons or the like, the chief can almost win the game by himself. But if they do, hopefully they roll poor. Be aware...

 

i dont find PG that much of a problem there not great in combat

 

They're not great but they don't go anywhere and don't die easily, they have WS5 so our saurus are hitting on 5's wounding on 3's then they get a 6+ followed by 4+ save. Also they hit first every turn, hitting on 3's wounding on 4's then we get a 5+ save, followde by a 6+ if hand weapon shield.

I just can not grind them down fast enough and then soon I have some SM's coming down my side.

 

against ws 5 our saurus hit on 4+. A unit of saurus is pretty equal to PG in CC and since the saurus are cheaper I would say it is a good trade-off.

 

Don't forget the re-roll to hit. But yes, the saurus will be hitting on 4+. Your opponents WS must be more than double yours for you to need 5+. And yes, the ability of those guys to not die quickly leaves you open for a flank attack. Yuck.

Counter: Salamander the hell out them and maybe a few poison shots. Will definitely make the next close combat phase go in your favor. Or just redirect all game...