Hey there, myself and my friends are running our own miniature tournament and right now the two big contenders I'll be facing are Ogre Kingdoms, and Orcs and Goblins. I am wracking my brain with trying to create a list that will be able to handle both and this is what I have so far. Slaan Focused Rumination, Plaque of Tepok, BSB Saurus Scar-Vet Great Weapon Light Armor Saurus Warriors: 24 Musician and Standard Bearer Temple Guard: 18 Musician, Standard, Banner of Eternal Flame Skinks: 16 - Kroxigor: 2 Standard Skink Skirmishers: 10 Skink Skirmishers: 10 Skink Skirmishers: 10 Salamander Hunting Pack: 1 Extra Handler Total: 1500 pts. The basic idea is simply saurus anvil unit with a skrox hammer. Salamander to deal with orcs and goblins notoriously huge units and skink skirmishers to deal with ogres and war machines depending upon need. Thoughts? Suggestions? Also, I can't decide if I want the Scar-Vet in the anvil unit to give it some killing power, or with the temple guard to turn that unit into a secondary hammer.
Oh, also, suggestions on Lores versus those two armies would be excellent. I was thinking life versus ogres and death versus orcs and goblins (for shaman sniping)
Any help at all would be most helpful.. even just a "That looks good" or "Skrox suck at low points" or something. I haven't played Lizardmen in ages and taking into account the tactica articles I've read this should be a decent build, SHOULD being the main word there. Anyone have any suggestions for tweaking at all?
I would drop a unit of skirmishers in favor of either of two options. Option 1 would be add in a unit of 6 chameleons. Warmachine hunters extrodinare. Option 2 would be to take those points and add more cohorts to the skrox unit. You will need those numbers if you get into any lasting combat with them. I always put my scar-vet/old blood in my temple guard. This is for two reasons. The first is that the extra protection that it affords my slann is worth it. Let me give you an example. You are in combat with some hero or lord that has items that forces the acceptance of a challenge. The first round, you take the challenge with your TG champ. That way, the scar-vet/old blood can work toward combat rez. Second round, the scar-vet/old blood can take the challenge and keep your slann safe. If you do not have that extra protection, your slann is forced into combat witha hero/lord potentially capable of killing the slann in one round of combat (after failed ward saves anyway). As far as lores goes, you always come out fairly well with the lore of Life. Death is a pretty good choice against Ogres and O&G. I would focus on sniping the slaughtermaster and butchers out of the Ogre army. If there is a tyrant or BSB, they should go next. I would not use the purple sun spell though (it always rolls back over my slann and kills him). I just do not like that spell for that reason. Shadow can be pretty effective as well.
Thanks for the reply and the tactical call of putting the scar-vet in with the temple guard, hadn't even considered challenges. As for the skinks the math gets a little wonky here so ditching one 10 skink unit and taking on 6 chameleons means dropping 2 more points somewhere along the way. I see where you're coming from but this is gonna take some math hammering to get it to function properly. Thanks very much for the help.
Ok, here is the revised list. Had to do a little juggling, gained an extra saurus and made him a champion (do answer and issue challenges to hopefully keep the saurus block alive longer) but lost a temple guard and the magic banner.. but the O&G player doesn't have any trolls and we don't have undead players so the necessity of the banner drops steeply. Slaan Focused Rumination, Plaque of Tepok, BSB Saurus Scar-Vet Great Weapon Light Armor Saurus Warriors: 25 Full Command Temple Guard: 17 Musician and Standard Skinks: 16 - Kroxigor: 2 Standard Skink Skirmishers: 10 Skink Skirmishers: 10 Chameleon Skins: 6 Salamander Hunting Pack: 1 Extra Handler Total: 1499 pts.
If I were you (which I am not) I would drop one Chameleon and give your Scar-Vet the Venom of the Firefly Frog. Being S7 is awesome though, so you can justify not taking it. I also like to see more skinks in my Skrox units. Like 10 per Kroxigor at least. That way they aren't too soft by the time combat starts and you can stick around a few back'n'forths.
I hesitate to take more skinks in the skrox unit because if are meant as a flank charging hammer unit. If they DO get caught up in head to head combat the two above mentioned armies with shred the skinks and take me on combat res pretty easily. I mean, with ogres I'm facing down potential impact hits, 3 str:4 attacks, then 3+ stomps. Then with O&G just a unit of orc boyz is gonna be minimum str:4 first round of combat (choppas) and this person is prone to taking a fat unit of bigguns which bumps it to str:5. 4 more skinks, in my opinion, would do little more than feed them more victory points. Besides, the skrox unit is most likely going to be nestled behind one or two skink skirmishing units so they will eat ranged fire first (not to mention the ogres player HATES skin skirmishers and will intentionally aim to gun them down asap.) We plan on playing a few friendly games this weekend so I'll work up an alternate list with more skinks and give it a go if I find that skrox unit is struggling to make back it's points.
So, took on the ogres and the orcs with a modified list, as follows. Slaan Focused Rumination, Becalming Cogitation, Plaque of Tepok, BSB Saurus Scar-Vet Great Weapon Light Armor Saurus Warriors: 25 Full Command Temple Guard: 18 Musician and Standard Skinks: 19 - Kroxigor: 2 Standard Skink Skirmishers: 10 Skink Skirmishers: 10 Chameleon Skins: 6 Now I know some people might be confused by me dropping the salamanders but to be honest they just aren't worth their points against ogres and though they are great against orcs and goblins I had to field the same army list against both so went a more reliable route. This list trounced the Ogres twice, and the Orcs and Goblins once with zero losses on my end. The first time facing the ogres I took lore of life and turned that block of saurus warriors into the tarpit from hell by giving them +4 toughness. Once his iron guts were locked in my skrox struck from the flank and I nickel and dimed his unit until it broke from combat and got run down. It was a fairly good fight though.. lots of skink losses though my Chameleon skinks succeeded in taking down his ironblaster (and with a 4+ armor save that was tough to do.) He dispelled my throne of vines (during my magic phase) and hit me with hellheart which on an unfortunate roll of 7 on miscast popped about 9 of my temple guard.. which truly hurt. This was a very fun and exciting fight.. unlike our second fight. The second fight with the ogres was a short lived one because I took lore of death. On second turn I landed the improved purple sun and ran it straight across his two big units of iron guts and regular ogres, killing 5 of his 6 iron guts with one spell. With only his tyrant and one iron gut left in the unit my positioned unit of skinks then opened first and burned down his last iron gut and leaving his tyrant standing out in the open all by his lonesome. On his turn he charged my skinks, which I fled reacted with, stayed ahead of him and put him smack infront of my Skrox unit. He gave up after that and refers to Purple Sun as basically cheating against his army. With those two wins I took on Orcs and Goblins next and went back to Lore of Life (this player being a little more flighty than the ogres player and even he was pretty livid.) This time, but saurus block tarpitted again but this time with the 4+ regen save spell making it so even though they had two units of orc boyz chewing up their flanks and a unit of black orcs facing of head to head I only lost the first round of combat by 1 and had my slaan with BSB well within range so passed with no issues. The turn after that a unit of my skinks boldly charged against her orc boyz to the rear and my skrox hit her on the flank and I took combat resolution but the end of that tangled mess by a whopping 11 points. They broke, fled, and were basically run down. The combination of consistantly getting my 4+ regen saves out, and regrowing the Saurus block made things almost impossible for my opponent to deal with. I had a unit of skinks engage her Arachnarok and kept it tied up with a ranged battle for most of the game, when she finally did come at me with it it failed a dangerous terrain test during a charge and ate 5 wounds from skink shooting so only had 2 wounds remaining.. which my temple guard took from her without much effort. Special note.. Goblin Fanatics and their insane attacks are nothing against a unit of saurus warriors with 4+ regen and regrowths to back it up. Popped all three of them in one movement and only lost 4 saurus then got them back with one regrowth spell. MVP of both of these fights was (or course) Slaan, and that meaty saurus warrior block. In every fight it was underestimated then proved to be their undoing. The skrox unit wasn't that great, to be honest. Though it did add in the benefit of some stronger hits it also gave them softer skinks to swing against and land some extra wounds for combat resolution. The 6 inch move gets them on the flank fast and easy which is their only true benefit. Becalming Cogitation never once prevented a spell from being cast.. but is psyched them out into throwing more dice than necessary which nerfed their magic phased.. WELL worth the points to keep them off kilter.
Nicely done in all games. Yeah the 6th spell of many lists can be pretty game changing. My only thought is that the regen save from life can only be cast on the caster and his unit. So it can only be used on the TG.