Hey guys, this is a 2000 point army list I cam up with which i think should be competative and flexible. I'm in the process of building up this list but any advice atall is welcomed including changes, things which are good, things which are bad or any tactics I could look to use with this list e.g. which magic lores to take etc (and how to deploy it). Cheers guys! Lord Slann Mage Priest 275 Focus of Mystery 0 The Focused Rumination 50 Cupped Hands of the Old Ones 45 Divine Plaque of Protection 30 Soul of Stone 50 Hero Saurus Scar-Veteran 85 Spear 4 Shield 3 Light Armour 5 Cold One 20 Sword of Striking 25 Skink Priest 65 Level 2 Upgrade 35 Dispell Scroll 20 Skink Priest 65 Level 2 Upgrade 35 Dispell Scroll 20 Core 18 Saurus Warriors 198 Musician 6 Standard 12 Spears 18 10 Skink Skirmishers 70 10 Skink Skirmishers 70 Special 5 Cold One Riders 175 Standard 20 Musician 10 20 Temple Guard 320 Full Command 35 Stegadon 235 Total 2001
Still looking for any tips/advice people have. Not sure whether it would be advisable to try to include sally's/terradons/razadons/chameleons and remove something else or possibly engine of the gods for one of the priests and no other steg? Any replies would be great!
Hey Charlie. Overall a pretty good setup. Couple notes on points: Scar Vet can only use his magic weapon if he takes one, so dont waste points on the Spear. Dispel Scrolls are 25 points not 20. No real need for a Champion in the Temple Guard unless you have a very specific purpose for him. I actually consider him something of a liability. If your opponent brings a Character Killer in and Challenges your Champion, then proceeds to wipe the floor with him and get lots of Overkill (easy to do on a 1 Wound Champion), you have taken a big Combat Resolution hit. I noticed you are taking 20 Temple Guard... does this mean you are doing 6 wide by 4 deep? Lets see: 10 Power Dice 6 Dispel Dice 2 Dispel Scrolls Looks good. Should suffice for most 2000 point lists.
Ok Thanks for the advice, reorganised my list just to make those changes (dispel scrolls etc). Yeah i wondered about the scar-vet, does he have to take his magic weapon all the time or can he use the spear to charge for the strength bonus, and then sword in subsequent rounds of combat? And didn't really think the champion through on the Temple Guard so thanks for that, its a very good point. Yeah I was looking at 6 wide 4 deep (with the slann in the middle). Felt with the points I was putting on the Slann it was important I gave his enough protection. One thing though, can a challenge be made against the Slann? (My guess was no) or is it only characters in the front rank? Also do you not think i might lack some shooting or do you think the magic/combat will make up for that? Another questions; would you recommend I put one of my priests on an EotG and lose the other stegadon (and re-jig the rest of the army to fit it in), or keep it as it is? Finally for my priests on foot, would you recommend I put them in Skink units or will that risk them panicing too much and are they better of going solo? Sorry about all the questions, you just seem to know what your talking about and this is my first 2000 point list! Thanks again!
I'll start by answering your question about the Scar Veteran first. I don't have my rulebook in front of me at the moment but Snow is absolutely right. If a character has a magic weapon they are obligated to use it, until it is destroyed (rarely happens). Rules for weapon selection are no different for a unit than they are for a character. If you choose to use spears at the beginning of a combat, you may not switch weapons during. On top of this, the above rule about a character and his usage of magic items prevents him from ever using the equipped spear. In short, if you have a magic weapon, you must use it. You may never switch weapons during combat (between rounds). As far as wether or not you lack in the shooting department, I'd offer that 2 units of Skink Skirmishers is probably adequate. Considering you are bringing 10 power dice to the table, I think that your strength in the magic phase will be what will win games for you (along with proper use of all the elements in your army). I wouldn't worry too much about shooting since you're fielding 3 casters (1 of which is arguably the best in the game). As far as the EotG is concerned, I would say that since you're list leans strongly towards the magic phase, taking an engine would probably be the extra kick that will make you consistently dominate in magic (barring a select few other magic heavy lists). If offers some protection for your skink priest and also can do wonders when facing a SAD (shooty army of death). The terror would be nice for low leadership (of course) and since you already have a Steg in the list, putting a priest on it with the engine is a solid move. I'd say with a Slann, foot priest and engine, it could be construed as boarderline cheesy although it does seem like LM still lends itself well to a strong magic phase. If you decided to add another engine, I know that the folks at my gaming group would struggle with that. Where you put your priests, is 100% dependent on the opponent and his list. This is why placing characters last is so advantagous. One thing is for certian, I would absolutely not recommend placing either priest in a unit of skink skirmishers. You mentioned panic as one of the potential problems, but there are a few others that I see. Consider that your skink skirmishers are going to want to be up close to the enemy to maximize on blowpipe shots. This can and will (at times) draw a charge. You don't want to toss a big magical asset into a unit thats worth 70 points that ends up fleeing from a charge and getting caught in it. Also, should you place a priest in one of the skirmisher units, your opponent will see an easy way to kill one of your characters (he's protected by T2 skinks) and divert some of his resources to grind that unit of skinks up. Wether its shooting, flyers, fast cav or something else, a skirmisher unit is generally an easy target for these types of tactics. Couple their terrible close combat skills with a lower leadership value makes for a tantalizing package. I'd suggest keeping the priests in either the Sarus or TG units that you have. You can run them out on their own if there's cover around, but once again, this is very situational dependent on your opponents army and list. That about covers my suggestions for you list. You've got some good choices and combinations here with a definite foundation for a magically dominant. If you play it correctly, you'll see a fair share of victory.
When you enter combat, you have to choose the weapon you are going to use for the entire combat. If you choose a Spear instead of Hand Weapon (for example), you use the Spear until that combat is resolved (one side or the other is dead or has run). If you have a magic weapon, however, you may *only* choose the magic weapon. [There is a special rule for Brettonians allowing them to charge with a lance and switch to other weapons, but that is an exception.] Temple Guard numbers are kind of a matter of personal choice. I see lots of people with 16 Temple Guard (giving you a 5x4 for max ranks) but not many with 20 Temple Guard (giving you 6x4). I think this is due to a couple things. First, the Temple Guard is really, really defensible and will almost never run. Second, your Temple Guard + Slann unit usually isnt going to need or even want a large front (most of the time). A larger front makes it harder to move and increases the number of enemy that can be brought to bear. In general, you want the Temple Guard to keep the Slann safe and to provide a very steadfast anvil, then you bring something into the flanks as the hammer. A 16 strong Temple Guard will usually manage that for you. Again, the number of Temple Guard is personal choice. I'd cut it to 16 and invest the points elsewhere, especially since you have a large block (6x3) of Saurus Warriors on the board as well. You'll be able to use them to help minimize risk to your Slann. And no, your Slann cannot be challenged unless he is in the front row. If that happens, things have already gone very, very poorly. Lizardmen are fairly weak in Shooting. We arent as terrible as some *cough*WOC*cough*, but we dont have very strong options. Our Skink Skirmishers are handy here and of course we have some ranged firepower on our Stegadons. Salamanders are pretty darn handy for Shooting. The panic tests are just icing on the cake. Razordons also fall in the Shooting category, but I'm of the opinion you can get better results from a unit of Skink Skirmishers and for less points (there's a lot of debate on this point, you can check out some other threads for more viewpoints). Even little units of 10 ranked Skinks can toss out their 8" poisoned javelins for a little harassment while they are helping control movement on the board. In general, if you are wanting ranged, I'd go strong magic with maybe a couple Salamanders for support. Our behemoth Magic phases, along with the unlimited range of Lore of Heavens damage (from our Skink Priests) provide the bulk of our ranged attacks. Skirmishers are extremely useful against anything with bad Armor Saves (Toughness doesnt matter thanks to Poison). So, in summary: Lizardmen arent really strong at Shooting, but we can have very powerful ranged if you focus on Magic. In general, you will either want to use protection against ranged to get your close combat troops into battle or heavily focus on magic and supplement with our moderate ranged abilities. Engine of the Gods is a tough choice. Looking at your particular list, I'd be tempted to stick with the normal Stegadon or maybe even an Ancient Stegadon. You have great Magic as is, and the Engine of the Gods changes the way you will play your Stegadon. As your list stands now, your two hammer units are the Cold One Riders (which I assume are going to be off taking care of enemy support units) and the Stegadon. If you are using the Engine of the Gods, you may be less apt to charge into battle because the Skink Priest is just so damn squishy. Once he is gone, the Engine basically becomes an Ancient Stegadon without Giant Blowpipes. For your list, I'd keep the normal Stegadon. This one is, again, very much a personal choice thing. Edit: Haha, looks like Barotok beat me too it. Forgive the repetition.
Cheers for the advice guys, really very helpful! I'll take into account everything you've said and probably end up changing the list a little (not too much as I quite like the general theme of it) Also thanks for clearing up the rule on using weapons (For some reason I had in my head that the rule Bretonian's have was a general one for all armies and that you could switch between spear/lance and hand weapon between rounds of combat ) I think my next step needs to be to get to know all the tactics of using lizardmen, particularly 'redirecting charges' which i still don't really understand (if anyone could shed some light on this it would be great!) Also what do you mean by 'enemy support units', is that effectively the enemies 'hammer'? If you guys have any other ideas/tips you could think of that would be fantastic! Thanks again guys!
Wow Snow, I beat you by 1 minute according to the board clocks. I'd like to recant my statement about the EotG as far as recommendation of it to going into the list. While it is an excellent tool that lends itself well to the magic phase, your list does need to have adequate hammer units as well. As Snow mentioned, using the normal Stegadon allows you to use it as a hammer (I will talk about hammer units in a minute) without fear of having an expensive magic user riding it, with a giant target painted on his back. While I could be convinced either way to take the engine, or not take it at all, Snow brings up excellent points in regards to the army's composition in terms of tactical roles (IE you need to keep at least two good hammers). You were asking about all the tactics of the lizardmen. While I can't hope to cover that completely in a single post, I'd like to direct you to a website that I recently found which explains general WH tactics from a LM perspective. There's a lot of great information here and while you will need to filter out many 6th edition rules that are referenced on the site, the general concepts and ideas provide some great background for newer players to build from. Quatzemelen: (Safe for work, as far as I can tell) http://www.geocities.com/med70085/ I'll quickly answer the other shorter questions in your last post now by starting with the redirecting one. Charge redirection can be handled by skink skirmishers, but most typically it is handled by rank and file skink cohorts. For a mere 50pts, you get a cheap 'throw away' unit that you can toss in front of a dangerous enemy unit. If you place the cohorts directly in front of the enemy you want to redirect (or so they have no other charge option) at an angle away from you main block of troops, the enemy is forced to either charge the skinks or stand and do nothing while you're parked in front of him. Thats the general idea of redirecting in a nutshell, although numerous tactics are used and for various different reasons. The main thing is to distract a unit away from the main part of the combat, until you can bring your forces to bear on it, thus wiping it out. Once again, there are many ways to do it and I'm sure others will be able to offer some great ideas on this subject as well. Your question about a hammer unit and what particularly that it is is much more general. Different army lists will have different amounts of hammer style troops. When someone is using the term, they are generally referring to a unit that can generate a high amount of damage over a small frontage (IE base sizes added together). Cold One riders are a great example of this as you can see in the charts above that they are a damage powerhouse due to their strength and number of attacks. Another great example of a hammer unit in the LM army is the stegadon. A steg has a small frontage (chariot base) but along with its impact hits, it is capable of an incredible amount of damage on the charge. Othe great examples include Chaos Knights, chariots (most of the time), some Khorne based infantry, High Elf Dragon Princes, large monsters and characters (mounted or not). All these types of units can produce devastating results on the charge and are thereby referred to as hammers. A generalized tactic (of lots of types of warfare) is to tie the enemy up with infantry units that they are unable to kill fast enough (due to numbers or armor) only to sweep in on the flank with a hammer style unit to ultimately destroy the enemy. I'd classify support units into a category seperate from hammer units. Support units typically don't have the close combat prowress that hammer units have but can serve other purposes in the army. Small, fast infantry goes well in this category (skink cohorts), while units of flyers (terradons) and warmachines will also fall into this category. Their role is to support the main block of fighting troops in some way. They either provide fire support, chase down enemy scouts or other support units, take out enemy artillery and other lighter jobs. Good examples of support units in the LM army are Salamanders, Skink Cohorts, Terradons and perhaps Skink Cohort/Kroxigor mixed units. I hope all of this is understandable to you, if not feel free to ask.
Oh thanks for clearing all those questions up Barotok, really has been alot of help. I think im just going to mess around with my list a bit and make a few different versions with and without EotG and other small changes just to see how they work and decide from there which one/ones I prefer. Two more quick questions, firstly do you think I should try and make my Slann my BSB? Just wondering what you think of that and whether its necessary, also if I was to give either my Cold Ones Riders or TG the banner which affects shooting -1 over 12" or -12 under 12" directed at the unit (Sun Standard of Chotec) which do you think would benefit most from it? Finally a slightly unrealted question, why are alot of the lists on this forum for 2250 points, Its just I thought games are generally 1000, 1500 or 2000. Thanks again!
Having your Slann as the BSB is a great idea from my point of view. He will most likely be the central anchor your units deploy around and as your general, will centralize command to a single location. I know that some prefer to take a seperate BSB but I think its a great idea because the likelyhood of another character who is your BSB (skink or Sarus) can be targeted and will die much easier than a Slann. As far as the Sun Standard is concerned, I really feel that is much more situational. It will be hard to give you a concrete answer since its dependent on what you think your opponent will be targeting more (your TG or COC). Personally, I think that I'd give my sun standard to the cavalry in situations where you'll be facing heavy shooting. The TG can take the hits, just like COC but there are more of them in the unit and not as expensive. Loosing one rider equates to 35pts. I'm sure there are others who would rather give the standard to the TG. Weight your options and make the call based on what you feel will save you the most loss of points. 2250 army lists are created for tournaments. Many tournaments run at 2250 point value.
First, I highly recommend making the Slann your BSB. If you are placing him in the Temple Guard (which you should), then the Battle Standard will be in a good location anyway. As for the Sun Standard, they are far more useful to protect your Cold One Cav from bolt throwers and hand gunners. Think of it this way... is your opponent going to be firing his bolt throwers at your big block or the quickly approaching and high cost per model cav? Not to mention the real block busting artillery tend to be template weapons, which don't even use Ballistic Skill. Finally, you'll see 2250 as the most common point value for most battles, it is just a generally accepted point value that allows a lord choice.
Ok thanks both of you, yeah I was thinking the same thing, its likely a unit of CoC with a Scar Vet is going to be drawing the majority of the fire, with the main dangers being handgunners, bolt throwers and other BS based range attacks with high str/AP as you said, so i'd be better of giving to to them. I'll try and post a couple of possible revised lists tommorrow and see what you guys think of them. Cheers!
Here is one revised army list i've come up with, you'll notice there are minimal changes, those being the removal of the TG champion and reduction in number to 16 (to free up points for the next changes), removing the scar-vet's spear, giving the CoC the Sun Standard of Chotec and making the Slann my BSB. I also included a brave in one of my units due to extra points (which I might aswell spend). Lord Slann Mage Priest 275 Focus of Mystery 0 The Focused Rumination 50 Cupped Hands of the Old Ones 45 Divine Plaque of Protection 30 Soul of Stone 50 Battle Standard Bearer 25 Hero Saurus Scar-Veteran 85 Shield 3 Light Armour 5 Cold One 20 Sword of Striking 25 Skink Priest 65 Level 2 Upgrade 35 Dispell Scroll 25 Skink Priest 65 Level 2 Upgrade 35 Dispell Scroll 25 Core 18 Saurus Warriors 198 Musician 6 Standard 12 Spears 18 10 Skink Skirmishers 70 10 Skink Skirmishers 70 Brave 6 Special 5 Cold One Riders 175 Standard 20 Musician 10 Sun Standard of Chotec 40 16 Temple Guard 256 Standard 14 Musician 7 Stegadon 235 Total 2000 Just wanted to check, do you think 16 TG will be enough to protect my Slann fully? Again any tips of changes that I could possibly make would be great! Thanks for all the help so far! Cheers guys!