AoS What has been your experience with Saurus only lists in AoS 2

I was a big Bloodclaw proponent in AoS but I have not gotten a game of AoS2 in yet. Everyone seems to start lists with Slanns now and I was curious what success people have had running Saurus only lists.

 

I've run Saurus lists since I started playing back in January, either as a Sunclaw Starhost or Bloodclaw. Overall I've fared pretty well, though only at a casual level. I don't play in tournaments and the one time I went up against a tough list (Iodneth tournament list) I got utterly smashed. Mind you, I don't see how having a Slann would have changed the outcome of that one.

Probably the biggest change for Saurus lists is Command Points. We can get an extra CP each turn on a 5+ with the Mighty War Leader warlord trait, and the Bloodclaw gives us an extra D3 at the start of the game. Thanks to some Command Abilities stacking, we can get some serious damage. For example, the Scar Vet on Cold One gives all Cold Ones nearby an extra bite attack. Well, you can use that as many times as you like, providing you have the CP. In a game last week I brought 2000 points to a 2500 game by accident, so I just gave myself 10 extra CP. I then charged 15 Saurus Knights into my opponents having used my Scar Vet's command ability 12 times, giving each Cold One 14 bite attacks. It was hilarious and pretty effective too.

Another great choice is using the Scar Vet on Carnosaur since it also stacks. This means if you used it say, 4 times on a big unit of Saurus Warriors, each time they rolled a 6 to hit they'd get 4 extra attacks. Combine with an Astrolith bearer for insane amounts of attacks.

Chromatic Cogs buffs a Saurus army nicely thanks to +2 movement across the board, and you can cast it with a Starpriest.

I did up a battle report for a Saurus list in this thread here: http://www.lustria-online.com/threads/2k-saurus-list-no-summoning.21546/#post-244674 Just scroll down for the report.

 

It's doable. I like having the Slann in the list to make it a bit more reliable, provide spells/summoning, and to have magic defense, but saurus lists have one of the best (if not the best) alpha strikes in the game, and can farm more CP than any other army without skipping out on units, with some excellent command abilities (that stack) to make use of those CPs.

Once they FAQ Bloodclaw (presumably to give +d3 command points like the mega battalion, because the abilities have the same name), all saurus lists will have a few more directions to go into while remaining competitive.

 

Not that much, when you stack Scar Veteran's ability 4-5 times.

 

Honestly, I haven't had a lot of luck with Saurus lists lately. Both Sunclaw and Bloodclaw sound really appealing to me on paper, but when put into practice I find that my opponent will inevitably have the tools to rip through an entire warrior horde before they can even fight - whether this is by getting the jump on them first with ultra quick and killy dracolines, or showering them with ballistas, or using Tzeentch magic shenanigans to erase half of them and make the rest run away.

All of the above strategies are easy to do. Maneuvering large quantities of Saurus into battle is not. Generally, you have to make a LoSaT roll and a charge, and if your opponent is sensible he will deploy in a fashion that makes it hard for you to maximize front line contact with your models. Any one of those variables goes wrong, and one of your bread-and-butter units is either a sitting duck or making a lackluster impact.

Considering they are supposed to be the dedicated close-combat fighters of our army, Saurus just don't have the resilience to take a counter attack, and they arguably don't even pack enough wallop without lumping on a significant amount of buffs (Serpent staff, Scar-Vet on Carno CA, Sunclaw, Scent of Weakness to name a few). This means that to make them viable we must use additional point reserves to invest in other units or battalions. Looking at the newer armies (which are increasingly prevalent in my playing circle), there are many units that perform superbly on their own or with minimal external support - Evocators of the Stormcast, Morsarr of the Deepkin and Witch Aevles of DoK, for example.

I really want to love Saurus, but they are fading into obsolescence in the face of power creep. Having a Slann as backup to summon reinforcements helps, but competitively you are better off sticking with Thunderquake Starhost or Engine of the Gods spam.

 

Well, I didn't mean that Knights are better than Rippers in SS. I just wanted to point out, that they can strike hard when they get into melee. DT, IMO, is more about taking positions turn 1, that actually making an alpha strike (as a Grey Knights player, I know, that 9" is not a thing you can rely on). Knights may be weaker than other Seraphon units or equivalent units from other faction. But whenever I field them, they do their job (unless I fail to maintain auras). 15-20 models is optimal number now - they don't even really need firelance. But they really need a scar vet. Taking more than 20 will inevitably attract needless attention. 280 points combo can easily unleash 60 3/4+ attacks by turn 2 which is no joke. Knights may be not optimal choice and hard to use, but they are definitely not garbage.

It was said in the first 2nd edition's Seraphon FAQ, that staking SVoC's command ability will lead to generating several bonus attacks at once, e.g. if ability was used twice, one 6 will generate 2 bonus attacks.

 

Saurus only lists suffer from 3 major issues:

- No ranged attacks
- Squishy
- Heavily reliant on syngery

This makes it fairly simple to defeat a saurus-only list as all you really need to do is prevent the initial souped up charge, which can be done by sniping the character providing synergy, throwing some fodder in the way to absorb the souped up unit of doom at the appropriate time, or by simply murdering enough of them before they get to attack. None of which are too difficult... unless we get significantly better stats, or saurus get some alternative tools to work with (e.g. a saurus unit that can provide cover fire for the others) I doubt that pure saurus lists will become all that viable.

 

I personally don't think a pure, Saurus only list is a great idea. Summoning is simply too strong to leave behind. Most of my games would have been major losses (instead of major wins) without summoning.

However, I do think a "Saurus majority" list can be great. Specifically a beefy Sunclaw (40, 40, 10 warriors) inside a fangs of sotek... but you will still be summoning skinks to screen and claim late game objectives.

 

Saurus Knights have been meh for so long that they can easily be underestimated. A single unit fully buffed up can be surprisingly nasty and all you need to sacrifice is that one unit of Knights - which are cheap and you have more units anyway. If you can get a couple of your units into the enemy while buffed then you can do as much damage as a unit of Rippers would, which is a surprise to many opponents.

It is hardly the most broken thing in the game but it does have teeth - which is a definite uptick for a unit that was toothless up till now. On the other hand it is very CP intensive so it may only be a trick you can pull of once or twice per game so you need to get a decent swing of the game out of it.

I would not build anything but the smallest lists around it but it does add an additional trick to a list that your opponent has to defend against - which has them making more decisions and the more you make them do that the better the odds that they make a wrong decision at some point. Its not bad for a cheap battleline unit in my opinion.

 

I've found that you can still blow the command points and then flub the charge (even with the reroll 1 or reroll charge command ability). Every time I try to make the saurus knight bomb work, it severely disappoints me. There's just so many points of failure, I've found it to be very frustrating.

 

They are not a great unit; but nor are they a bad unit any more in my opinion. They are cheap battalion-filler that happens to have a bit of bite to them. The thing is that if even my cheap scoring battleline chaff carry a bit of a threat then my opponent has more things to think about and worry about and therefore more opportunities to make mistakes. Threat overload is a viable approach to list building and having a respectable threat from my filler unit really helps with that. Underestimating Saurus Knights by comparison with some EoTG (for example) is not even unreasonable, yet it is still a mistake that might get punished.

Getting back on track a bit the issue I would have with pure Saurus lists is that almost all of it is highly dependent on specific heroes and a sufficient supply of CP. If an opponent can snipe out a hero they may well neutralise the threat from a significant part of your list. Saurus lists do not bother your opponent in the hero or shooting phases and that is just too much of the game to give up IMO. Essentially they are vulnerable to hero sniping while themselves having no ability to hero snipe opposing armies that desperately require it; the same goes for magic.

A majority saurus list on the other hand can bring nice synergies from other parts of our battletome and units which can let you get work done in every phase of the game. While a pure Saurus list could be quite good I do think that mixing in a few non-Saurus units would almost always result in a more balanced list that is generally more effective.