8th Ed. Building a narrative into your army

Hello all,

I play orcs and Goblins as well as an empire army in addition to my lizardmen. My Lizardmen are the newest of the three and were built for several reasons, I like the models, I wanted a smaller force I could spend more time painting, I wanted to make a more competitive yet fun list.

So far the lizards have not let me down on any of the above scores, but as I use them more and more I find I want to weave a narrative around the army and the models in it. This is easy with my other armies as you can get into the pov of the army and very easily. I am struggling with the lizards though.

So how have people developed their narratives so I can shamelessly steal there methods. I mean be inspired.

Much Thanks

My girlfriend (who plays Wood Elves) and I play against each other a lot and we have a little lore going on where the WE and LM are fighting for a particular piece of magical jungle. Sometimes its the Tree of Life, sometimes its the Fountain of Youth, etc.

For myself, my lizards are from a small city north of Hexoatl near wear the jungle starts turning to desert (hey, right around where I live!), are colored like Gila Monsters. They are often called upon by Mazdamundi to engage threats north of Hexoatl and sometimes through the Mists to the Old World. They tend to not have a Slann with them due to their own being deep in contemplation, a coma, or dead, no on knows.

The best way to approach it is via Skinks, which is what Black Library authors tend to do. They are the unblinking eyes against chaos. They are all over the world and can have some cool themed lists. Mine have come out of the sea and are the survivors of Chupoytl, they're actually twisted by Chaos, and are fighting to destroy the Slann...

I know it's unlikely to happen, but hey, it's my hobby and it means I get to use the awesome Forgeworld Fimir models!

Lizardmen share a lot with the aztecks (sic?) and incas if your struggleing for a background for your army start there. I also kind of view them, phylosophy wise, as the Tau of the Warhammer world - they do some seriously devestating stuff to other races, but it's all for the greater good

Building some sceneary can help give you a kick start for your own army lore. I'm actually in the process of building a full temple city gaming board, complete with a MASSIVE temple to act as my deployment zone (seriously, the thing is bigger than the gaming board in terms of base size and nearly touches the roof) - if I ever get around to finishing it (It's been a work in progress for 3 years now) I'll post some photos up.

I also have a lot of other Lizardmen players so I have a lore built around my lizards having access to a glyph from the Old Ones themselves but they won't share it with the other lizards, what could they be hiding???

I can't speak for how others do their army lore/history/whatever you want to call it, but in my group we tend to advance the lore a little every 6 months by adding new stuff in, this keeps the army fresh and allows you the oppotunity to try out new stuff too.

These are just areas I've used to help build the lore of my army, hopefully they will help you with yours

I steal shamelessly from the Aztecs - i.e. the Mexica and the peoples they conquered - and the Mayans, and then 'triangulate' these backgrounds with those of the Warhammer world.

Playing in a campaign world - even one with just a rudimentary map and a bit of meta-chat - makes this much easier. Broadly speaking, the 'Old Ones' understood something which is beyond the comprehension of the Lesser Races and their - ahem - overlords the Lizardmen.

This is something like the Western (i.e. incorrect) conception of Voodoo but more closely connected to ancient natural essences, a bit like the animistic religious beliefs of the Amazon. I think Games Workshop does a pretty good job with the background to the Lizardmen.

When I was going through the codex I noticed that Saurus units all spawn from the same pool at the same time, that's why they work so well together. When a Saurus becomes an old vet he becomes a Scar Vet.


My unit is comprised of the space that falls between Saurus Unit and Scar Vet. What happens when a unit of Saurus loses 90% of their fighting force. They are two small to continue being a normal unit but to inexperenciend to be a Scar Vet. In comes the Unit of Misfit Saurii. I paint 3-4 Saurus the same color scheme then switch. It's basically a fighing force of left overs. Honestly I couldn't settle on a color scheme for my army at first so this was just a way to justify the different colors I had tired.

Thanks for all the inspiration guys. I will come up with a concept soon.

I was inspired by a wee blurb in our army book about lobotomized warriors in Tlaxtlan, and based my army around that. I implement that in my painting - my slann is very pale and his throne is black like the moon against the night.

Here's my army blurb for our wee gaming group:

The venerated Mage-Priest, Lord Chuqa-Xi the Ebullient, has always been considered eccentric by the standards of his peers. Lord Chuqa-Xi mainly shares the same concerns as those Slann who also call Tlaxtlan their home. Primarily this means the destruction or removal of the Chaos Moon – known as Morrslieb in the tongues of Man – so that the City of the Moon can once again regain its legendary talent for astromancy and prognostication.

Lord Chuq-Xi is not so single minded as his brethren of Tlaxtlan, however. He has convinced himself, over untold centuries of meditation and consideration, that the key to the plans of the Old Ones lay with the Younger Races. How not? Surely they were not created and nurtured for naught. Elsewise, in the great cleansing wars of the Saurus during the time of the Old Ones, all the smooth-skinned races would have been exterminated.

And so it was that when the first human travelers braved the fetid waters of the Piranha Swamps around the Amaxon delta they met with a grisly end, but not at the teeth of the region's voracious predators. A Lizardman army from the City of the Moon ambushed the raiders as they picked their way through the swamps, for Lord Chuqa-Xi had foreseen their coming. The Slann ordered the intruding warm-bloods captured rather then slain. They were brought to Tlaxtlan, and lobotomized in a bizarre ritual surgery. To this day, lobotomized humans serve in the armies of Tlaxtlan, drooling and incontinent, yet unflinchingly obedient to the will of Lord Chuqa-Xi.

Contact has also been made with the female denizens of the Amaxon, who are allowed to breed with the lobotomized warriors in Chuqa-Xi’s army. When a boy is born, he is indoctrinated into the armies of the City of the Moon, while girl children go to the fierce blonde warrior women.

As the armies of the world mobilize in this newest time of strife and war, so too do the cohorts of Tlaxtlan heft their weapons and march from their jungle homes. Lord Chuqa-Xi is determined that all must be learned from the Younger Races, that their place in the Great Plan may be known and their actions set to right – by any means necessary.

I've been playing lizards since about 6 months before 8th edition. I love the army, the lore, the models, etc. I always struggled as to what kind of narrative I would have for them until my local group started a Fantasy campaign.

One of the last Slann spawned into the Old World before the collapse and birthed under the suns peak. Mage-Priest Hohpn'Mahd( I honestly couldn't bring myself to name him something serious ) was said to be alittle more warm blooded than most. Having a taste for leading his troops himself rather than delegating it to the Skink Chiefs and Old Bloods. His domain nestled towards the North east of Lustria, always wary of Druchii raiders or the greed of men. Like most, he cared not if they took small trinkets or the abundant yellow metal but the poor soul who dared remove anything of the old ones would feel the jungle come to life around him. Saurus as tough as the stone the temples were built upon. The Intruders finding any number they cut down would rise again, he would accept no affront to his Gods.

And so time passed, Chaos was once again making itself known. The great communion of the Slann in constant flux with debate as to what course of action should be taken. Finding himsewlf drawn more and more to the Mage-Priest Mazdamundi, agreeing that action should be taken and it was soon decided. Points in the Geomantic Web needed reinforcing, newly found plaques were being interpreted and the children of the Old Ones made themselves ready for war. he himself volunteered his entire force to travel along the long closed paths of the Old Ones to reclaim and reinforce an ancient garrison and focal point of the Geomantic Web.



And that's how I find myself fighting dwarves, beastmen, skaven, empire, and brettonia

Right, I think I have a beginning.

The signs all pointed towards danger and death. The Slann of Axlotl realised that something significant was about to occur. They sen out the youngest of their kin Ho-Ping Mad to investigate. What he and his retinue discovered was a horde of daemons advancing through some ancient and forgotten spawning pools.

The lizardmen attacked as soon as the foul daemons were spotted and after several days of fierce fighting the daemons were sent back to the warp and the rent they had emerged from was sealed. Ho-Ping Mad was however, poisoned by some hitherto unknown poison, sending him into a rage filled meditation.

This was not the only problem that occured however, the spawning pools were filled with Daemon blood, and soon began to bubble, and the first spawnings of an age began to emerge. Their skin tainted red by the blood filled pools of their birth. The red skinks soon subdued larger beasts and began looking for interlopers to destroy. Eventually Ho-Ping Mad woke from his meditation ready to lead his army of rage filled monsters.

Ho-Ping Mad, huh? Well, I have a bit of an idea for mine:

They were both the shame and pride of Lustria. Following the great war against Warlord Nor-Tayst and his seemingly eternal horde, the Lustrians felt that they had a great victory. This was short-lived, however. The mad young Warlock Engineer Bang-Boom-Pow brought an enormous creature filled with warpstone through Lustria. When the beast was finally felled, its insides spilt over the spawning pools. Some time later, there was spawned an army of killers. Even the skinks, with eyes the colour of warpstone, were more bloodthirsty than a pack of starved Ghouls. The young irresponsible Slann Ka-Rik Ka-Rik led this army, as he believed that they could conquer the world. And they will. One battle at a time...

Just keep in mind, I'm 12, so my writing isn't fantastic... and i kind of stole from the blood thing. Sorry

Better than my stories were at 12, your writing skills are likely to go far if you keep at it. Your story is a nice twist on the usual story of tainted spawning pools becoming useless. One thing I would recommend is make your names exotic but relatively easy to pronounce. Putting in lots of hyphens or apostrophes is just distracting.

For example if you have your story set in the High Elf Citadel of Tia'rol'noret, anyone using your setting will call it "That Elf City"