8th Ed. 8th Ed Lizardmen Rumor Army Breakdown (updated)

FTFY Really, that many attacks gives you maybe 3 poisoned hits if in a 5-6 wide formation. A smart opponent would direct all his attacks against the Swarms to kill them first, accepting the fact he's not going to break 30 Saurus in one round of combat (which is a fairly logical assumption). It gets him a huge CR bonus and strips the poison, too.

 

Though at initiative 1 you'd probably need two bases anyway to ensure one of them survives long enough to grant melee poison to your other unit. Also kinda sucks that the Ark of Sotek can't bring swarm units up beyond their starting number of bases.

I'll have to mathhammer out just how much of an upgrade it would be for a big saurus spear unit to gain poison. Let's say you are rolling 24 attacks, from a 6 wide saurus spear block...

Vs T4, assuming 4+ to hit, including PF
No Poison
14 hits = 7 wounds

With poison
9.333 regular hits = 4.667 wounds + 4.667 poison hits = 9.333 wounds

33.3% more wounds


Vs T5, assuming 4+ to hit, including PF
No Poison
14 hits = 4.667 wounds

With poison
9.333 regular hits = 3.111 wounds + 4.667 poison hits = 7.778 wounds

66.6% more wounds


Not a bad boost, even against infantry or other things that aren't being brought down by your chamos/other skinks. It also doesn't rely on a spell to happen, which is always nice.


Lots of poison, predatory fighter, EotG 6+ ward, ripperdons' killing blow, yeesh, time to get good at rolling 6's!

 

Wait wait wait...

You're telling me krox in skrox can be hit? And my saurus can now be kited? And I have no other options for core?

Are we absolutely sure that krox in skrox units can be hit in CC now, and that PF means always pursue? Because holy hell, our army just became a hell of a lot worse. As in bottom tier worse.

 

Krox in Skrox can definitely be hit, there's been a lot of talk about the pros and cons of this earlier in the thread I think. I'm not going to weigh in because I hardly ever use it. PF however is only on pursue not overun and can be negated by having a skink character within 6". Also in most cases of a pursue you either redirect or you actually want to chase them down so you go for it anyway.

 

As someone else mentioned earlier I can imagine the better tactics for using these units will include taking saurus with spears and not charging with them... have them backed up by stegs and basts or troglodons...

When enemy impacts saurus you will get a round of fighting with 3 ranks or 4 in horde...

In your turn you will use swarms to hit a flank giving poison and charge in a steg for impact hits.

Trogs roar could then be used or in the next round if needed...

Against standard troops 1/3 of all your hitting attacks will auto wound and grant an additional attack which will then also auto wound on a 6.

So 6 wide sar with spears and at least 3 ranks will have 24 attacks.

with 12 hitting and 4 auto wounding and granting an additional 4 attacks of which another 1 may auto wound and another hitting...

So 9 S4 hits and 5 S4 wounds, plus impact hits from S6 should win especially when character and steg attacks are added... this should crush most elite infantry barring ward save heavy phoniex and chosen. But chosen are not usually taken in units greater than 20 any way... so every wound they take is felt that much worse...

Of course you could use this tactic with your temple guard in the from instead with AP banner to basically paste any unit they contact...

 

Your avatar seems rather appropriate at the moment "I'll be in the angry dome!"

Yes a number of people have said PF means you cannot restrain pursuit unless there is a skin character (specifically a skin hero or priest, but not an oracle) within 6.
Ok so skink chiefs are 40 points each, but that almost guarantees you need one for each large block of saurus.


I find it rather hilarious that a slann cannot stop his temple guard unit from running forwards towards the enemy, but a lowly skink chief can.

 

I got a chance to read a lot of the new book yesterday.

Skinks did not change in points cost (for either Cohort or Skirmisher) but skirmishers can go to Jav/Shields for free.

Slann can take 100 points in magic items and 150 points in disciplines. The disciplines range from 20-60 points. Also, Slann got back their old "swap spell with another slann rule". Also, skink priests can be used to "channel" direct damage in addition to magic missiles (but take a S3 hit if the Slann miscasts).

The discipline that gives you the signature spells will replace your rolling spells, not as an addition.

 

Some good news on the skinks, Skirmishers with 5+AS should come in handy, even if they need to keep close to the general to stop them runnin away.

The sig spells discipline is really quite bad, I'm slightly surprised its not a free swap with your normal spell generation, a choice between having the weakest spell in every lore or 4 rolls on one lore and 30 extra points to spend seems a bit of a no brainer to me. Sure its great on a HE loremaster, but a Slann is 300pts and can't do anything except cast spells.

 

About a month ago I played against a high elves player which used a wizard who knew all the signature spells.. and I learned some awesome tactics. Melkoth's mystifying miasma (-D3 WS) on a unit and -1 to hit from iceshard blizzard, boost your unit with +1 strength and toughness from wyssan's wildform. With bad luck you make your enemy hitting on a 4 instead of a 3, if you are lucky, you make your enemy hitting on a 6... And i've seen it could work!

Another usefull spell is spirit leech, use it on a low LD unit, for example an O&G Mangler squig.. LD 5 vs LD 9 and for every wound caused by this spell roll a dice, for every 5+ you gain a free power dice..

When playing against armoured armies, use the lore of metal spell to defeat units like knights..


Maybe another idea for a slann is giving your slann a channeling staff and give him the 3D6 channel discipline, when calculating with mathammer, at least one channel in each magic phase!

Bastilladon's beam of chotec is ok, but easy to dispell... unfortunately

 

[quote="Spiney NormanThe sig spells discipline is really quite bad, I'm slightly surprised its not a free swap with your normal spell generation, a choice between having the weakest spell in every lore or 4 rolls on one lore and 30 extra points to spend seems a bit of a no brainer to me. Sure its great on a HE loremaster, but a Slann is 300pts and can't do anything except cast spells.[/quote]


HE would take the loremaster LVL 4 everytime! I provides so much flexability whilst allowing you to keep the advantage of a lvl 4. However my tough choices are between that discipline or the loremaster high.

 

It's good to remember, that even a lvl 4 wizard will need to throw at least 3 to dispel it. You could try an early throw at it, and if he tries to dispel it with his lvl 4 mage and fails then he won't be able to dispel anything else.

So tactically, you would sacrafice one dice to roll 3+, then the other player must let it through, take a risk and dispel with one dice or play safe and use 2 dice.

 

As for the Blastadon, I kind of like the fact that it's random. In a magic phase with 3 channels on a 5+ and possibly 2 other channels from Skink Priests (to control the damn saurus) I can see having 1-2 extra dice at the end of a phase to use on it. It's the "What if?" reminiscent of flickering fire (now blue fire) that gets in people's heads.

 

Between the 3 channels on a 5+ and the 2 on a 6; along with the keep a die thing, we should have end up with an extra two dice over the natural 2 die advantage average.

With 8 signatures replacing his normal 4 spells, I think I'm going to go with loremaster high magic, and sub spells out via lore attribute.
Of course, it is tempting to spam 40 point chiefs and beast magic.