I feel like I need a little bit of help when it comes to fighting against my friend's various Warriors of Chaos list. I seem do to fine early game but then around turns 3+ is when I start seeing my models slowly get wiped from the table unit by unit. Here's what I've got for models (I know I don't have a Slann but one has been ordered online and will be arriving this week), does anyone have any suggestions I could run for a 2000 point list and stand victorious against these guys? So far the best I've done is having a Saurus Old Blood on Cold One take out 3 Skull Crushers in close combat, and caused his Gore Beast Chariot to flee (and get caught ;] ) 40x Saurus Warriors 20x Temple Guard 1x Slann Mage Priest 24x Skinks (I run them as Skirmishers with Javelin and Shield) 16x Cold One Cavalry (Normally I just run one as a Scar Vet BSB and one as an Old Blood on Cold One with Armor of Destiny & Ogre Blade) 1x Stegadon (points permitting what I take on it, modeled with all options) 1x Carnosaur (points permitting what I take on it, modeled as Old Blood on Carnosaur) 1x Skink Priest on foot 1x Gor-Rok 1x Terradon Rider unit of 3 Terradons Thanks for your help, I'm assuming the addition of the Slann mage will help me immensely in the long run by giving me a much stronger magic phase. **EDIT** Here's a list I came up with earlier today that I think could give me the edge over his warriors. Please let me know what you think! Lords: Saurus Old Blood on Cold One - Armor of Destiny - Ogre Blade - Luckstone Slann Mage Priest -Lore of High Magic, Wizard Lv. 4 - Disciplines of the Old Ones: Becalming Cogitation & The Harrowing Scrutiny - Cube of Darkness Heroes: Skink Priest on Ancient Stegadon - Lore of Undeath, Wizard Lv. 2 Ancient Stegadon: 4x Crew, Engine of the Gods, Sharpened Horns, Unstoppable Stampede Skink Priest (on foot) -Lore of Beasts, Wizard Lv. 2 Core: 1 Unit of 27x Saurus Warriors - Full Command (Champion, Musician & Standard Bearer) - Hand Weapon & Shield 2 Units of 12x Skink Skirmishers - Each unit with a Champion - Lustrian Javelin and shields Special: 1 Unit of 20x Temple Guard (Slann Mage Priest will be part of this unit) - Full Command - Halberds
Your army looks pretty "ctrl+C; ctrl+V" if you catch my drift. It is very traditional and reliable, but really lacks a good hammer unit. From your comments I can see that your Old Blood is kicking some butt, so why not consider adding in a Scar-Vet to help him out? You can find the points for him if you get rid of some of the stuff on your Skink Priests, like Lvl 2 and the Stegadon. Anyway, generally I see two things that you could do to help tailor your list to WoC. 1. Lore of Metal on your Slann. The spells in there are mostly custom built for taking out those high-armor troops that are all too common in WoC armies. High Magic is does give you the ability to swap out to Metal during gameplay however, so you can keep that in mind as well. 2. Use your Cold One Cavalry! The Stegadon is a great investment allover, but I would consider dropping him from the Heroes slot and using his points value to add in some Cavalry. They are surprisingly good at taking on most things in the game due to their high armor saves and plentiful attacks. Particularly when lead by an Oldblood or a Scar-Vet, or both! Next time you have a go at him, try to make a battle report for us. We have plenty of seasoned generals lying around the place. They'll give you lots of constructive feedback and tricks you might want to try for the next time, plus it'll give them something to do besides eating all my Ixti Grubs.
Cool, thanks for the info. From what I've been told by my other friends I play Warhammer with (including the one who plays WoC) is that running a unit of Cold one Cavalry isn't so great because they're very unreliable when it comes to the Stupidity rule before they're able to move. In that list would I want to run that Old Blood I've mentioned before on his own or should I put him in a unit with some other Cold Ones?
Oh the deception of Chaos... Lizardmen, Saurus in particular, are pretty stinking reliable when it comes to passing a Stupidity check. Remember that we have that sweet Cold-Blooded ability on our side! And at Leadership 8! This means a unit of Saurus is 89.3% likely to pass any unmodified leadership test. Pretty good odds. In reality you may find that you will fail the check once every other game or so. But then again, you certainly could fail the check every single turn... It is a game of dice after all. If you are really concerned about failing the check, take a Scar-Vet Battle Standard Bearer with the unit. The BSB lets you re-roll a failed check! That bumps the odds of success all the way up to... 98.8%!! Woooo doggy!! It's hard to be more reliable than that. As to the build for your Oldblood, the one you have is pretty good. You can definitely optimize it more if you'd like, but it sounds like he rips some stuff up pretty well already, lol. Check out the Tactica Index in the Tactics section of the forum. @Scalenex has done a great job compiling everything you might want to know about our Lizards and how to build or use them. For where to place him, that's your call as well. I think he will serve his purpose best if he's in the unit of Cavalry. That's my preference for taking on units of troops. If you're going Monster hunting, by all means send him out on his own. Our Saurus Characters are very good in nearly any role they are given thanks to their rocking stat-lines and abilities. PS: Stupidity makes you Immune to Psychology... Terror what?
Oh yeah, he does. Using that build with Armor of Destiny and an Ogre Blade, my Old Blood on Cold One managed to fight off a unit of 6 Wild Riders and kill them all without taking a single wound. Needless to say my friend who was playing the Wood Elves didn't find it as funny as I did haha. "I'll have my Wild Riders charge Old Blood on Cold One" and I was all "LOL OK!" I'll have to go see what happens and probably run him in a unit of 8 Cavalry (the other 8 aren't built yet) with a Scar Vet or two and see what happens.
I agree, Scar-Vets and Oldbloods are amongst the best tools available to us. An additional Scar-Vet or two would really give the list some extra punch! Lore of metal is fantastic against Warriors of Chaos, but depending on what type of list your buddy runs, I would seriously consider taking Focus of Mystery instead. The best character build that warriors can pump out is a 1+ armour save, 3+ ward save (re-rolling 1's) lord or hero on a daemonic mount or a disc of Tzeentch. Arcane Unforging will be your absolute best friend against this guy, you have to knock out that ward save, or you will never kill that guy (especially if he is running the crown of command as well). Also, as Qupakoco mentioned, you can easily swap out your high magic spells for lore of metal spells (especially Searing Doom).
I'll have free up some points by taking out that Stegadon and adding in some Scar Vets Cowboys off on their own and give them some good stuff. I don't have a model for it but I've heard an Old Blood on foot with Armor of Destiny and Fencer's Blades is REALLY powerful. Maybe I can use my Gor-Rok model as a substitution for the time being. My friends and I are fine with using one model to sub in for another if it's not part of your collection. I know he usually runs a really tooled up, hard to kill BSB on a Daemonic Mount and a Daemon Prince in his 2000 point lists, but aside from those two, 3x Skull Crushers, and two units of dogs I think that's all he takes besides his block of Chaos Warriors. Sometimes he runs Knights as well, but I'm unsure of what his exact list consists of until I see it that game. I'll have to have him let me look at the entire list.
Solid list, well balanced. I especially like that you have 12 model strong units of Skirmishers. Add in a Priest and you get 13 which is a lucky number for Skirmishers since they need to lose four members to magic or shooting. I do have nitpicks since Qupakoco "summoned" me here. Becalming Cognition is awesome against any opponent save Dwarves. You have 8 wizard levels and a bound spell. That's a lot of magic for an average winds of magic roll of 7 + 0.5 channels. I would advise you either cut out a Skink priest and/or you give your Slann either the Channeling Staff paired with Harmonic Convergence or give your Slann the Forbidden Rod. The Channeling Staff combo will give you on average one power die and one dispel die per phase. The Forbidden Rod only works once, but it can turn a poor winds of magic roll into a good phase (because the poor winds roll means your opponent will have few dispel dice). A High Magic Slann can use Apothesis or swapped Life spells to heal the damage back really easily, assuming you take any noticeable damage with a five wound profile and 4+ Ward Save. In my opinion, Harrowing Scrutiny is not worth the points. You'd be better off with Soul of Stone or Focus of Mystery or more Temple Guard. If you decide to keep the Stegadon I recommend you give your Saurus Warriors spears in lieu of hand weapons. If you keep the Steggy close they get a 6+ Ward save which would otherwise be redundant with a sword and board Saurus Warrior's parry save. In my opinion, 20 is the bare minimum of Temple Guard. Most opponents should be okay with you padding the back ranks with ordinary Sauri. I would consider dropping one Skink Priest and giving the remaining Skink Priest a magic item. If you decide to keep the Lore of Beast Skink, I'd give him a Dispel Scroll or Cube of Darkness. If you decide to keep the Undeath Skink, I'd give him a power stone to help him get a surprise summoning off when you are low on power dice (and your opponent used up mos t of his dispels.) You could get away with dropping your Beast Priest to level one (the other spells are nice, but you only really need Wyssans) In my experience, you need at least a level two on Undeath. Assuming models are not a constraint, you want your Skink to have Khizzar and any summoning spell or any two summoning spells. If you take a level two you are ALMOST guaranteed to have this (don't roll a 1 AND 2, then you are stuck with Ryze and a near worthless spell). Just out of curiosity, with your model constraints, what were you planning to use for summoned troops with your Lore of Undeath? Warriors of Chaos, are in my opinion, the hardest army for Lizardmen to fight. We need magic, especially buffs and hexes to beat them. You need to either give your Slann the Focus of Mystery or Wandering Deliberations for an eight spell toolbox, or you need to take Metal, Light, Shadow or Life. Metal has buffs and hexes and lets you soften up enemies from a distance before hand. Light has great augments to let your Sauri match or surpass Chaos troops. Shadow hexes Chaos down to your level. Life gives you staying power.
That is a very powerful combination. The Armour of Destiny + Dawnstone is also amazing! Personally I like Cowboys better than their infantry counterparts, but models on foot are great at adding that extra punch to your Saurus or Temple Guard while benefiting from a LOS roll. There are many great builds for Oldbloods and Scar-Vets, this thread might be of some interest: http://www.lustria-online.com/threads/a-cowboy-for-all.12879/ That's the guy you need Arcane Unforging for!
Arcane Unforging, the Blade of Realities, or divine intervention are the only ways to really beat that combo.
Honestly I didn't think too much about what I would be using for the summoned troops with the Lore of Undeath wizard, but I was most likely going to end up borrowing models from someone who wasn't playing. Usually when I play Warhammer it's with my two friends (who happen to be brothers) so unless one of them ends up playing a game against someone else where we go, usually one of us will end up watching and would be willing to lend some proxy models. I'll make some edits to this list and run it by you guys later on. We won't be playing for about another week or two so I'll have some time to make changes before the next battle takes place. Also I'll be writing up a battle report to let you guys know what happened.
One of the few circumstances where the Blade of Realities comes in handy. It is still a coin toss though: Oldblood: hitting on 4's, wounding on 4's Chaos Lord (assuming great weapon as is common): hitting on 3's, wounding on 2's, 5+ armour save
From what I can remember he usually goes with Nurgle something or other which makes me have to roll higher to make hits or wounds. Most of the time I have to roll at least 5 or 6 to hit or wound when fighting that guy, provided he doesn't make his armor or ward saves which I think are on 4 or higher.
Mark of Nurgle makes him -1 to hit in close combat. In conjunction with his superior weapon skill, you're looking at 5's to hit with your Oldbloods and Scar-Vets.
What a brilliant idea, i never even considered the Blade of Realities, but i guess it could maybe work? The problem is that your Oldblood will be killed before he is able to do his thing, as he is a lot slower then the Prince and 5's into 4's is not really something to write home about, but it is better then most other alternatives. I will play this sometime soon against a regular Prince player soon, maybe if i ping of some wounds on his Prince with a Stegadon Great Bow it could actually work if he does not target my Oldblood..?
I know folks have linked you to the Cowboy build tactica, but very specific to what you're trying to do: Saurus Old Blood on Cold One - Armor of Destiny - Ogre Blade - Luckstone Switch this guy to: Saurus Old Blood on Cold One - Ogre Blade - Shield - Talisman of Preservation - Other Trickster's Shard For the loss of 1 armor save re-roll, you maintain your Strength 7, and 1+/4++ and gain the ability to force your opponents to re-roll Ward saves. I can't stress enough how valuable this is! For your next Old Blood or Scar Vet - keep him on a Cold One! You need to be able to help dictate where the fights will occur, and putting a powerful fighter on foot doesn't help that. Give the Scar Vet BSB the Armor of Destiny, its a very efficient setup for him.
On another note, even though the Blade of Realities might not be strong enough to kill the Prince, it will be good enough to kill the unkillable BSB. Really nice.
Focus of Mystery is helpful agains WOC, I feel. Arcane unforging being the biggest help you can have against that stupid ward save (seriously +3 is understandable, but adding the re-roll just makes it over the top to me) But being able to drop for spells from metal and shadow is invaluable. Shadow is amazing as it can lower their strength so you can go toe to toe, drop a pit of shades on chimeras or hellcannons, and then there's mindrazor! Enough str 10 attacks will get through and devastate whatever is attacking you. Oh yeah, let's not forget miasma which is one of the best signatures in the game! Oh the plus, plus side to ALL of that if youre slann is in trouble just get a shadow spell off and trade places with the skink priest on foot! This can even get him out of combat. You can be extremely tricky with this. I'd rather fight the DP then an unkillable lord, personally. Remember, that DP wants to get into combat ASAP even against non-warmachine army! Otherwise he's going to sit there be subjected to spells and poison shots (sometimes they sneak through). If he charges into a unit alone, that's perfect! Position your ancient stegadon for a flank charge as templeguard/saurus will be steadfast and tie the DP down. Stegadons make very short work of monsters when they charge. Skullcrushers aren't an issue with a 1+ OB/SV especially if you get the charge off, which you should with skink re-directors. You have a better magic phase and a more mobile army, his only bread and butter is the combat phase and if you set up things well, he won't have the ability to break you. Definitely drop harrowing scrutiny for soul of stone and spend the remaining points elsewhere. Your army is good, but I don't understand the skinkpriest on the stegadon. I've never used it so take my criticism with a grain of salt. But the skink is just going to die in combat. Lore of undeath is interesting, I'd like to hear how it treats you but I'm pessimistic of it as a simple ryze spell on a level 2 isn't reliable with 2 dice and you're going to be struggling with having another two wizards. I'd rather just drop that priest and grab an ancient from the rare allowance.
QFT. This is dead on, the unkillable lord is far more versatile. His opponent could very easily create a WoC army list that outshines Lizardmen in terms of movement.