8th Ed. Which set of rules to use?

the players are not unlike because they are playing against like minded people. These aren't local tournaments but the largest yearly tournaments in the country with 100+ players.

No one wins the SCGT without playing to win. Everyone at the top knows this and that's why they don't throw little temper tantrums when all the face is the hardest lists. That's all they face all the time because everyone in that position is playing the same way and using the same armies. And they aren't dicks so they still are enjoyable to play against and enjoy the fierce competition. They have fun playing, but at these tournaments they are certainly playing to win.


There's also very little a vast majority of armies can do to realistically compete with a host of the eternity king army. This has nothingin to do with my experience because ultimatEly that would be irrelevant and anecdotal anyways, and entirely to do with just looking at results of major tournaments that allow end times rules

 

Combined Elves and combined Chaos armies are definitely a couple of tough cookies.

 

Exactly. I mean, at the end of the day its basically taking a few of the strongest armies and making them even better. With no downsides.

Dark elves, WoC, and to a lesser extent DoC, HE, and WE, dont really need much help

 

Exactly, it's ONE (there are more ) of the reasons I really despise the end times. Army factions did not receive anywhere near the same level of treatment. All the bonuses seemed to go to the stronger armies, while the weaker armies received little to no attention.

 

To be fair beastmen and TK got a nice little boost, but i think your point still stands.

 

That is true and they both needed the help. The Tomb King boost was quite reasonable, but the combined Chaos force is a "bit" much (and I'm a WoC player).

 

Ok so both my brother and I will be making a Lizardmen list with no Slann and taking turns playing against the Dark Elf list and a WoC list as well. But as a very fast experiment in using core I played out a battle using only saurus warriors, to be exact I had the following army list

*Note - Some descriptions are brief and do not accurately describe the tactical decisions made and instead focus on end results, dice were random and helped in some key areas or hurt in others but did not swing in either armies favor decidedly. It was a fun match and I'm glad I had enough saurus to actually field this many

Core
3x Saurus Scar Veterans, LA, SH
20x Saurus FC, HWS
20x Saurus FC, HWS
20x Saurus FC, HWS
20x Saurus FC, HWS
20x Saurus FC, HWS
20x Saurus FC, HWS
20x Saurus FC, HWS
20x Saurus FC, HWS
20x Saurus FC, HWS
They were all arranged 8 wide for a unit structure of 8,8,4

We rolled for a straight up fight and had terrain pre-selected. One building and a marsh on the centerline, one wood and hill on each side, and 2 obstacles on the flanks.

Deployment
Dark Elves deployed two groups of riders to each flank, warlocks and big rider group to the center, RBTs had clear shooting channels from the back and since the lizardmen had no shooting the casters and dread lord on Pegasus were on their own with the dread lord on steed in the warlock unit, and the master with the big rider group. The idea was to shoot and use magic on the flank units of saurus and when maneuvering got too tight to charge in with the warlocks and riders to crush some center blocks to allow fast calvary to get behind the lizardmen.

Lizardmen deployed 8 units across the width of the board 1” off the 12” mark and keeping 1” between them and the table edges, and then one unit behind the first line. The idea was to see if I could weather 3-4 turns of shooting and magic before getting to charge everything on the board, not a very tactical idea but remember this was to see how long it would take a tournament army to deal with a 100% core army.

Turn 1
Dark Elves:
Movement: Riders all moved up to just within 12” range, as fast cavalry there was little risk in connecting a charge against them and they could easily rally and fire again next turn. The warlocks stayed back a bit at 16” away from the saurus.

Magic: Well as luck would have it they rolled a snake eyes on the winds of magic (Oh yeah, morathi had the doombolt, miasma, spirit leech and doom and darkness spells. Life caster had throne of vines, regen, regrowth and dwellers below). So with two dice morathi decided to cast spirit leech and caused one wound on a scar vet.

Shooting: Ok this is where I get awfully surprised and honestly a little shocked through the whole game, turns out saurus make very bad pin cushions. Probably could have been different with a boosted soulblight but that just didn’t take this game and so we have the following: All the riders needed 5’s to hit and 5’s to wound, each flank was focusing on one saurus block hoping to open up a lane (It was vitally important to allow the dark elves access around the lizardmen). But with roughly 28x shots per side they were only causing 1-3 wounds on each block per turn after saves, and the RBTs just didn’t have the ability to cause serious damage either, they had 3 total shots so one always missed, sometimes two, the ones that hit on average did 2 wounds. There was a maximum of 3 ranks but between rolling a 1 to wound on the one of the ranks it just was not impressive and I don’t think they even got their points worth in models killed. So honestly I’m going to gloss over this phase most of the time, run your own numbers if you want but the outcome was appalling for the dark elves tactically and in the end they did not open up any gaps in the lizardmen formation.

Combat: None

Lizardmen:
Movement: No charges, knowing that they could not catch the dark elves they decided to wait it out until they were close enough to the back of the board that fleeing would force the riders to go off the board so that charges could be made successfully.

Magic: none

Shooting: none

Combat: none

Turn 2
Dark Elves:
Movement: Being 4” away from saurus was not safe so they once again backed up, the riders and warlocks set up for charges on the next turn in case shooting once again failed (As I said it was shocking and not at all bad rolling, so they decided that Morathi was going to kill all the characters and using the warlocks and dark elf characters crush two units in the middle allowing that vital space for maneuvering). The whole game the casters were left alone and free to do whatever they wanted so I’m not really going to touch on them.

Magic: Well they made up for last round and rolled a 5,5 on winds of magic. Morathi cast spirit leech which killed the scar vet, warlocks tried casting boosted soulblight but that was dispelled barely, doom and darkness on a unit (Hoping to cause panic in shooting phase) and doombolt causing 2 wounds on a flank unit.

Shooting: didn’t cause a panic test, RBTs only hit once and caused 2 wounds, saurus saved really well on the wounds caused by riders. Not a big dice swing just kind of cementing for both players that saurus take the shooting phase really well.

Combat: none

Lizardmen:
Movement: Once again everyone moved up 8”, I should note that due to very clever placement of units the dark elves did not once suffer from any terrain, no dangerous terrain check, no shooting penalties, and no LoS issues. The saurus being infantry ignored most of these as well and just marched through the marsh losing 3 models on right most flank unit. Also units were angled to make flank charges on the off chance that anyone was able to take a charge and stay.

Magic: none

Shooting: none

Combat: none

Turn 3
Dark Elves:
Movement: It became very obvious at this point that if the lizardmen were able to make one more march move without having a gap in their line that every unit without a dread lord was going to be crushed. But that wasn’t going to happen, shooting is one thing and close combat is another with some tooled out characters and ASF units. So the warlocks charged in with their dreadlord, and the 8x riders unit charged in with their master along with the dread lord on Pegasus, they both hit a center block of 20x saurus, one of which had a scar vet. The other riders backed up enough so that charges could not be made against them, this made them long ranged but shooting was crap anyways and they couldn’t risk running off the board with a flee reaction (10” flee would have done it at a safe flee distance from saurus).

Magic: This was going to be good, the dark elves just needed that boosted soulblight, everything else was gravy, sadly the winds played fickle and they rolled a 2,1. So instead Morathi used 2 dice to kill another scar vet and life caster failed to put regen on the riders.

Shooting: Crap

Combat: Here is where things really get good, now I will say the dice played fairly well this game with no crazyiness for the most part, the winds of magic were oddly poor or great and a couple sets of rolls were awesome but usually balanced out with the next roll. So on to the meat of this phase, the dread lord and warlocks, the lord hit and wounded with all 4 attacks which was nice, and the saurus only saved 1 with parry, the warlocks waded into the party hitting with all attacks, only 1 poison though, and causing 8 wounds, of these 4 saved by armor and 1 by parry, horses did nothing. Saurus now down to 13 struck back at the warlocks with 23 attacks including PF causing 12 wounds of which 6 got through. CR was +9 for the dark elves and +8 for the saurus, they held easily (This combat surprised me, I have since played it out 3 more times and although some things change the saurus always are still there and one time won the round). The next fight was with the lord, master and 8x riders, the characters killed 4 saurus and the riders killed 1, again horses did nothing, peg killed 1. The saurus struck back with 14 left alive and reduced the riders down to four and doing no wounds on either character, the CR was dark elves +7 and saurus +6, the saurus stayed.

Lizardmen:
Movement: Well surprise, both units stayed so those flank charges happened, the other units all moved up in a graduated pattern so that the other rider units could not move outside of their flank sights but they were still well within charge range for next round, the one unit behind moved up to cover down on the dwindling saurus units in the front combat arc.

Magic: none

Shooting: none

Combat: Ok so a lot happened but the highlights are this, lord with warlocks killed 3 saurus and the warlocks themselves killed 1, the saurus took out 3 warlocks and wounded the lord (double 1 armor save) and saurus won combat but the elves stayed. In the other combat the lord and master killed 4 saurus (parry saves are amazing) and the riders killed nothing (5’s to wound with a 4+ AS stopped them easily) the saurus killed the remaining 4 riders, this left CR as such, dark elves +4 and saurus +8. The Elves fled and were run down by the saurus, all I can say to this is run your own numbers because it seems nuts but I played it out a couple times and this is the most likely scenario I found.

Turn 4
Dark Elves:
Movement: The Riders tried running around the sides of the saurus trying for as much distance as possible hoping for low charge rolls, also one unit almost charged the saurus in the flank fighting the warlock unit but they realized that they would only be adding to the saurus CR that way.

Magic: Rolled a 4,4 so on to the pain. Morathi killed the last scar vet, life caster got throne of vines and cast regrowth on warlocks getting 2 back, next spell dispelled.

Shooting: Utter crap (Again not because of dice, just wow are saurus resilient when they are not debuffed)

Combat: Remaining Lord caused 4 wounds 1 was saved by parry, the warlocks caused 1 unsaved wound. Saurus responded by killing 2 warlocks leaving 1 left. CR = dark elves +4 saurus +5, elves stay.

Lizardmen:
Movement: Charge everything! Only failed charge was against a RBT, everything else besides the two casters are now in combat. Rear unit charges dread lord and warlocks for the charge CR bonus.

Magic: none

Shooting: none

Combat: Long and very brutal phase ends with all warlocks dead, dread lord losing combat and failing break test, being run down by saurus, the same thing happens with every other rider unit except 1 and both RBTs. By the time this phase ends the only dark elf units left are morathi, lvl4 life, 3x dark riders and 1 RBT. The lizardmen have lost 3x scar vets and 0 units, 1 unit is down to 2 models and another is down to 7 models but everything else is 12+ and has reformed to kill the fleeing dark riders, remaining RBT and lvl4 life on steed (honestly with morathi flying I don’t think this army could corner her in 2 more turns but it was mute)

Turn 5
Unnecessary, it was a complete crushing victory for the lizardmen. I haven’t decided if this was just more of a rock/paper kind of thing or what but it was certainly fun and actually went against my forecasting (I thought this was going to be the 1st core army to lose). So my record with all core armies is still unbroken, feel free to Monday Quarterback any decisions, I’m sure there were things I could have done better as dark elves, it was turn 3 that really hinged this whole game and I felt that with the lack of magic and shooting opening up holes there was no other option but to try and force a breach, otherwise without combat the dark elves would have had no way to earn the VP back fast enough from having all their riders and RBTs destroyed turn 4. If I had a do over I would now know to focus on only one unit at a time with all my characters, even two is not enough to break saurus when you bring squishy CR into combat with them, heck even static CR is really hard to overcome with just 4 attacks. On average I will save 1 with a parry so 3 CR against 3 ranks (reformed after 1st round), flank, standard, charge = 6 CR means an average chance to fail, even worse if it lasted one more round with me getting a rear charge.

There was also a lot more that the lizardmen could have done with movement to force issues with the dark elves and set up things better, with 9x units I can even flee/redirect with saurus. But it was all about seeing how long it would take the dark elves to gain supremacy over a set army with a set tactic, having the tables turned was not really on the menu until after turn 3.

 

Thank you, protector, for taking the time and energy to play this battle. Also, well written!

Positive Notes:

Good job at keeping patient with charges and counters. Sometimes the hardest thing to do with a force such as this is to resist long charges and just keep marching ahead.
Well played in being willing/able to reform your units into the most advantageous formation. Many players will forgo this to keep with the pretty formation which they made a movement tray for! Its lazy to be that way!

On the game:

I think this is one of those situations where seeing will be believing. I believe that you honestly gave your best attempt at this game, but I will note that my own experience against that Dark Elf army has it being used a little different...

If you want to (and believe me, you don't have to prove anything to me) - try that match-up again. This time, utilize the Dark Elf army as the ultra-focused force that it is. ALL of the shooting an magic should be focused on 1 unit, 2 MAX (and that's only if the shots into the one unit have terrible modifiers).

As you've stated, for a list like this DE army in this match-up, the goal is to punch through the line. The best way to do this is through a concentration of force. The DE player I regularly play against would have spread his army in out deployment, then vanguard all to one side of his choosing (whichever would allow better focus). Then he would do everything he could to break through that point, whilst the Lizard infantry on the opposing flank would likely have to turn in, or continue onto the RBT's (or a little of both). Also, those units of 5 Dark Riders would specifically be used to block the Saurus Flankers from that combat that occurred in turn 3. The units of 5 would die, but they would preserve the warlocks and characters, and improve the chances that the assault group breaks through the line.

Of minor notes -

The Life mage didn't roll up Flesh to Stone - huge for this matchup, but that is definitely the kind of thing that can happen (out of curiosity, which spell did she drop for Regen?)
Predatory Fighter - Kinda looks like you used it in supporting ranks. Perfectly fine when in agreement with your opponent, but not true to the way it is played in any tournament. Not a biggy, but worth a mention.
Did the peg lord fly around behind the lines so that he could threaten a combo-charge with the front units to add more overwhelming force (and to take away parries)?
Against a list like this, I don't see the DE player ever wasting dice on Spirit Leech. The Scar Vet heroes can easily be taken out by any of the DE Fighting Characters - those dice would have been used to increase casting values on the hexes and unit damaging spells.
You talked a lot about successful Parry saves, which I have been a part of (on both sides). Was the Dark Elf player directing his attacks into Lizard models that were touching the character with the Other Trickster's Shard? My experience is that this item effectively cancels parry saves.

A strategic question:

What would this Lizard list do if there was 1 or more pieces of impassible terrain on the board which broke up your lines (and requires wheels to get around)? It is very common for such a piece (including a building) to exist in a tournament table.

Thanks again protector. I AM listening intently to your comments. I have always been a huge fan of blocks of infantry, but have personally found they don't hold up in this meta (but to be fair, I spend plenty of points on characters too!).

 

Excellent points and I would like to address them as most were already considered during the match

1) Targeting two units with magic/shooting, 1 per flank. The reason it was decided to go with way was due to a lack of knowledge on just how difficult it is to kill saurus with shooting, both players decided that the most effective use was to target the flanks allowing a gap where there was no back up (Remember the 20x saurus unit behind the middle groups). The main reason they did not all focus on 1 group was due to terrain and placing, there was no effective way to fire at one unit and not incure hard cover penalties which cemented the decision to split into two efforts, that being said the plan worked perfectly and not once did any model take a negative shooting penalty that could have been avoided.

2) The set up of saurus units prevented protecting each flank, in that after walking through action and reaction it was decided that the only benefit of that action would have been to delay flank charges 1 turn on one of the units. The rear saurus unit would have been able to flank charge the warlock unit regardless after the side unit move forward charging a rider unit. In the end it wouldn't have mattered as the characters even with 4 kills for the OTS lord and 3-2 for the other just are not enough to make the saurus flee. It really came down to the fact that warlocks don't have the S to go against saurus non debuffed (Probably would be able to better debuf with a do over but that was how it played out). Also by sacrificing most of the small rider units to only kill one saurus unit would have removed the reason to break through because you would be left with not enough fast cav units to take advantage, and the other 8 saurus units would be free to reform and box you out again.

3) Awakening the wood, 1st spell rolled and it sucks.

4) Nope only rolled for base to base attacks, some rounds rolled high amounts of 6's other didn't, also some supporting attack rolls had great rolls.

5) The rear unit would have charged him if he did unless he wanted to threaten a flank unit, due to the building in the middle during turn 3's charges there was not a better place for him to get a combo charge. Should have set it up better from the beginning, mistake due to lack of knowledge on how little characters plus warlocks can actually kill.

6) Yeah that was the trade off, on one side if you let the scar vets go then they cause a lot more CR against troops (Only one was in a charged unit and he wasn't in contact with an enemy character, the champion would have taken the challenge). Definitely would have tried for a lot more debuffing, but that is hindsight talking, it was easy to underestimate the lizardmen with no monsters, characters, spells, or fast attack models.

7) Yes, twice I rolled a double 6 but he effectively killed 3-4 every turn, without support though he needs to beat a static CR of 5, or 6 with a charge, with bad luck and only good parry that means he runs.

8) There was a building I had to move around but careful wheeling with a graduated pattern still covered all LoS angles, not difficult at all, if there was 3+ larger impassable terrain items that could have affected it more, but I found that my slow progress was less inconvenienced than his all over the board movement.

Personally I think this came down to overwhelming numbers, If I went with tooled out characters it would not have gone down this way. But we will see how the other battles go with more normal no Slann lists

 

Well done. Was there a reason the dark elf player didn't just go up one of your sides? Was this not possible?

how did he end up in combat so early?

 

No the Saurus spanned the entire board with only 1" between each unit or impassable terrain, which was their entire strategy and it was carried out very well.

Turn 3 had the dark elves charging in because it was determined that without breaking through a Saurus unit all the non flying units would be charged and dead by turn 5 unless space was made and taken advantage of on turn 4.

 

If that was the case than the DE player should have been able to easily destroy one side. If you were spread out on the whole board the units on the far side would never reach combat unless the DE player deployed centrally, but why would he do that.

What was the DE list? It seems extremely odd that the dark elf army could neither puncture a side or out maneuver movement 4 troops.

It's not exactly as if an army with 9 drops is something new to deal with.

 

The DE list is earlier in this thread, turns out they couldn't easily puncture anything. The single mistake that was made was thinking that the DE army could deal with more than one unit of 20x saurus. They should have sent all combat characters and war locks into one combat. Turns out you can't out maneuver an army that controls 6 feet of board space lol, after running more scenarios in confident that the lizardmen would win this fight 3 out of 5 times possibly more depending on terrain.

 

Question about the shooting: did the RBT use their volley or their single shot? I also play elves and if I am facing those kind of numbers I would volley instead of single bolts. I use bolts for monsters and high armor.

 

Maybe when you and you're brother play.




"Dark Elves deployed two groups of riders to each flank, warlocks and big rider groupto the center"

This is a major deployment error.

It's quite cool you took it upon yourself to play out the scenario and provide one example of How it could play out. However, I don't think it's even close to representative of the situation overall.



Also, why so much life leech? Seems like an odd use of magic.

Don't mean to sound to disparaging. It's just really hard for me to take anything of real value out of the battle report other than "that's kind of cool". It's interesting to see it in action, but I don't think it's fair to make any claims off of it.

Ill end with a question that I posed earlier. If this is so effective why isn't it used more often? If competitive dark elves, one of the strongest and most popular armies, are comfortably dismantled by 9 combat blocks of mediocre troops, why don't we see it more often?

 

@ lizard_sNow - Both, but due to saurus T volley fire does almost nothing as well. you hit with 3, wound with 1 or 2 and those could be saved.

@Putzfrau - You seem to have a massive infatuation for these fabled tournament players, let me break it down real world style. If fighting gorilla warfare is so darn effective then why didn't the British employ that style before the revolutionary war? Oh yeah, centuries of actual warfare and we still come up with better ways to "play" the game, and that is with real lives at stake. As someone who is personally invested in real combat and how a novel idea can be the difference of I'm safe in my uparmored HMMVE as opposed to getting molten copper rammed through my vehicle and my buddies, I'm letting you know that the status quo and group think is not always the best way to do things, and as such is an incredibly poor argument and will continue to hold no substance (Heck it's even worse than anecdotal evidence because at least that is first hand)

I'm not trying to educate anyone on better ways to play, it would be nice if some people would take the blinders off their eyes and recognize that there are different and very competitive ways to play. But at the end of the day I really enjoy warhammer and if only for novelty sake I provide match ups that others don't have the time/players/models to achieve.

But to your actual points, 1) we also played deploying everything to one side yesterday against a more normal list, still no slann, with two blocks of 30 saurus. Dark Elves suffered a crushing defeat, I'm not writing up a battle report for it because I feel that the lizards got too much luck at key points, and I don't like losing lol. 2) with the spells rolled what would have been your priorities? Morathi could kill a scar vet with life leech or 4 saurus with doombolt, which is more important, or would the life caster be the main focus? I've been trying different things with their magic but it just seems like too many spells and not enough dice. 3) again no claims are being made, other than saurus rock and your mediocre comment is probably fueled by your lack of experience in using saurus. Anyone with more experience than me feel free to chime in. 4) see above on group think and the "Well everyone else is doing it this way" argument. Also note that I have a larger DE army than I do lizardmen and they are my favorite to play with, probably have close to 16K points of dark elves right now.

@ Everyone else - if you are reading this then don't be too surprised in the outcome, the battle more shows a weakness if played right against the DE list and not an undefeatable lizardmen list. Ask yourself how the saurus would have fared against a blender vampire list or a heavily armored empire or WoC list? It shows one way of shutting down a style of play and using what most would see as the worst unit choice to do it, that then opens up options for lizardmen players to make strategies for taking on those types of list with a more balanced list, like noticing that the entire DE army has only one unit with at most two ranks, and you only need to kill 5 elves to reduce them to one rank. So why bother fielding units deeper than two ranks? Instead when my brother looked at the list he quickly deployed his two saurus units 16 wide, effectively controlling 3 feet of board space with only two units, which is I think the biggest take away, deployment and movement are the two best ways to win a game.

 

Not a huge fan of how you chose to address me. You make a lot of assumptions about my opinions and experience when i've said very little. You also didn't answer my question other than point out the status quo isn't always the best way to do things. This is obvious, not at all contradictory with what i said, and doesn't provide any of your own insight.

Just so we're clear I use saurus quite a bit. They are my favorite infantry warhammer model and I enjoy using them a lot. They are a ton of fun, and I really enjoy playing my saurus oriented list (carnosaur, scar vets, big combat blocks).

I don't feel like i should have to lay out my warhammer life story to anyone every time i want to have a discussion on this forum. It's possible i just feel differently.

As i said, thanks for the battle report, but I won't be furthering this conversation. cheers.

 

You're not the only one, I wish that the End Times would have ended with Nagash. It very much was downhill after that point. Personally I would have been much happier if the End Times never took place at all and they instead released army books for Bretonnia, Beastmen and Skaven.

I think Warhammer would have been better off without the End Times (though I was still okay with Nagash). Judging by the poll results the majority of people on this forum seem to agree.

 

I like the EOT adjustment, it's made my boring old lizards much more competitive. I have completely rebuilt my list to be an OB and Scar Vet swarm from hell.
I will say that while I (mostly) embrace the new rules, I don't pull the "all slanns all the spells" BS because I think it's pretty cheese ball.
Basically it's great for army composition and for characters.