Hey all! I've found that my play style of a support heavy lizardmen army works well at low points (1500) but suffers at 2000+ points. This combined with my noob status means that there are too many things for me to keep track of once you hit the bigger point values. I've also noticed that if I kill my opponent's LVL 4 early, I win much more often. Like, every time. So what I need now is a unit to go forth and take out the LVL 4 by turn 2-3. This is what I have. 2500 points Slann Mage-Priest Channeling Staff, Harmonic Convergence Saurus Oldblood Cold One, Light Armor, GW 4x Saurus Scar-vet Cold One, Hand Weapon, Light Armor, Shield Skink Priest Dispel Scroll 8x 10 Skink Skirmishers 11 Skink Cohort Musician 10 Cold One Riders Full Command 2x Bastiladons 2x Salamanders Plow forward with the CO Bus and smash apart the LVL 4 and it's unit. Thoughts?
If mage-hunting is your goal you could try a unit or two of Ripperdactyls. Maybe replace 1 Bastiladon with 4 Rippers as a backup plan/target saturation for a mage killer. 3 Rippers single handedly defeated a Tomb Kings army for me!
For the lore I was thinking about Heavens. At 2600 points I can fit in tetto and really spam out the buffs! I own 9 ripper dactyls and I can't seem to make them work in 3 groups of 3. I tried 2 groups of 4 and that still didn't work very well. Maybe if I made a big unit of 6-8 I could do this same thing cheaper? The only thing I worry about is that rippers can't fight in combat very well. My units of 4 were often destroyed in combat by dark riders/warlocks.
The only thing I would possibly change would be the builds on the OB/SV and include some magic armour/items to give ward saves and/or re-rolls etc. You'd probably have to lose one SV though. I've got a game against a VC player on Monday. Played him twice and we've had virtually perfect draws each game. Last time I pipped him by a few points. I'm going with either a CO Bus list with Tetto for something different or a Bus with a Slann. The latter does mean the army is smaller in figures though. Never used the CO Bus before so doing so with a little trepidation - Just need to remember to support it and get it in asap I guess.
Just want to point out that some of your Scar-Vets will have to be in the back of the bus, depending on how wide you run your unit. Command models have to be up front so Characters will get pushed back. Running the unit 5-wide puts 3 Scar-Vets in the 2nd row. Kinda hurts their effectiveness. I'd consider dropping the command and getting a BSB on one of the Vets plus some magic armor.
With Killing Blow and Frenzy they should perform well against most light enemy units. You happened to run into one of the exceptions. Warlocks in particular are even better against other light units because they strike first, reroll to hit, have S4 and Poison, and reroll 1s to Wound, and so they do tear up Rippers.
They have to remain in the second rank until they reach combat at which point they can make way to the front rank. Common trick used by Ogres mainly. It benefits you though as you can make way into base contact how you prefer, send the oldblood at the mage hiding in the corner or the most defensive character at the decked out chaos lord.