Lately I have been using 88 skinks and 4 Krocs in a huge skrox unit. I find it horribly effective. My opponet ether directs all of his shooting towards it or dedicates huge amounts of troops towards it. It is an amazing tar pit as long as the bsb is close by. just wanted to put that out there real quick to get your guys thoughts and reflections
Yeah that would certainly be a very hard unit to remove. Massive hordes like that are basically impossible to move unless you can flank charge, and that would be this units biggest weakness. I do have to wonder if it is really as efficient as it could be for the points you are spending. If you split it into two units of 50 with two krox each you now have 2 units that are extremely hard to move, in a 6 turn game I honestly don't think there are moany situations where 100 would serve you better than 50. Secondly, if you are going to go for a big death star unit that can't be moved, would you not be better off with a huge unit of saurus, maybe with a scar vet or two? That would be even tougher and harder to remove, would arguably hit harder, and would benefit from augments more. Having said that, if its working really well for you anyway... No point changing.
It is just fun to see your opponents face when you drop a massive unit of Skinks. Other thing you have to watch out for is Dwellers, taking 100+ Skinks Strength tests is no fun.
That seems to be the main benefit, amusing shock value. It's highly tempting to try it but my most frequent opponent usually has hordes of gw troops in most of his armies. I think offering a ten wide frontage against a high WS horde is just a way to lose CR by a wide maring until steadfast is lost.
We had a member at our LGS that used to use 80 - 100 strong blocks of slaves and clanrats. The fact that they're cheap and half decent made them difficult to fight against (until the slaves started exploding instead of running - and that can hurt too with 10 ranks) Then people starting taking things like mortars, dwellers, flames of the phoenix, curse of ages, warp lightning cannons. Anything with a template really. 100+ tests at 50% fail rate (flames of the phoenix on round 1) = a lot of dead rats. Now he doesn't take the big units anymore. But it was always fun to get to roll that many dice every so often.
i guess the question we all should ask here is: is that unit a better tarpit than 60 sauruses? It all depends on what you are fighting, but i am not fully convinced. T2 instead of T4, and 6+/6+ save instead of 4+/6+. i am not convinced that you will survive longer. The kroxigors will kill more things than the sauruses if you are fighting elites, but if you just want a tarpit, that isnt too important i guess. Also, you are spending almost 700 points on a unit to keep an enemy unit busy... it better be a very expensive unit... Another question worth asking is: an oldblood on cold one with stubborn, 1+ AS with reroll and 5+ ward (and a life slann replenishing any odd wounds suffered) can lock down any unit a good while. he costs under 300 points. that is a fully kitted extra slann you could include if you used that instead. As for your enemy shooting at the unit, that isnt really a plus for the unit. it is more a minus for your opponent. i am not a huge fan of strategies that are based on your opponent making bad decisions. i always assume my opponent is at least as smart as i am.
I would agree that splitting it into two smaller units would be better for a variety of reasons. More deployments, more maneuverability, etc etc. I put together something like this for my dual slann all skink army at 2500 pts. Take light and shadow on your slann and get the right augments off and all of the sudden the little skinks go on a killing rampage. Throw in a skink priest to cast iceshard on something. Then boost the skinks ws to 10 and get melkoths off on the enemy and most things are now hitting on 6's. Of course if you roll a crap magic phase you are going to lose 10+ skinks a turn.
My list has two large blocks of just skinks. Two smaller units that have a single krox in each. An ancient steg, salamanders, two slann some chameleons and thats about it. Its not particularly effective if you have a bad magic phase but it is very very fast moving and alot of fun.
Part of the reason and purpose of my lizardmen force is to field a large horde of skinks. I currently have 50 and 50 saurus. I am planning on using both hordes to mess with opponents in the middle and flank with Calvary and hang back with my priest. I'm new to lizardmen so it is going to be fun.