I'm thinking Krox hitting with Str 6, but what other ideas do people have, assuming a 1400 pt. army with very limited access to magic (only 1 level 2 Skink Priest)?
This is strictly theoryhammer, but... Salamanders look promising with -3 to armour. If you're talking about armoured infantry, Stegs bring lots of high S auto-hits to the table. Ancient ones have higher strength, but compete with Salamanders, and the poisoned bolt thrower on the vanilla one might hit something. Too bad the EotG is out of your price range. Krox, like you say, are good at slapping tin cans around, particularly if you augment their WS. Temple Guard have multiple attacks at S5. Death by a thousand cuts might work - try fielding large numbers of skinks. They're cheap and you're bound to kill something. So killy stuff in every slot...I'd almost say you're spoiled for choice!
Yeah, at my points range I think I am limited to skinks just shooting en masse and hoping for lucky dice, or the Salamander (although if I get a hit with that against mounted knights my opponent has definitely made a mistake). I've thought about Temple Guard at this point value and it only works if one likes to gamble with having fewer units than the other guy. That is not an advantage I would ever give up lightly. I'd rather take my chances that his knights will fail to do enough wounds to break my steadfast SKrox before I can adjust and react with another unit.
Scar Vets with great weaons are another great way to deal with armour and you can keep them cheap and they remain effective.
So is a great weapon, the only reason to take the BooC is for its ability to inflict flaming wounds at higher init than the rest of your warriors.
Those all sound like good solutions and I think its the best we got. I played two WoC armies this weekend and man it was annoying. 3+ warrior and 1+ knights. The -1 from the saurus just doesn't cut it. And even the Krox hits don't swing that many times. Makes me yearn for a cheap mage that can take metal.
Also remember the TG with razor standard. It will have lots of attacks and give -3 to armour. This means a 1+ chaos knight suddenly only have a 50% chance of making his armour save. With 6 models wide and a slann in it that means 16 attacks a turn with 8 of them hitting and a litle over 5 wounding. And if you take down 3 knights a round you will not have to worry about them for much longer.
Then there is always Lore of Shadows 6th spell.. strength 8 saurus can get through armor well enough! Requires a Shadow Slann of course.
Good topic everyone. My situation is a very small (1400 point) army, so TG with a razor standard is probably going to break the bank, and CoC to match my opponent's Cavalry seems like an overly simple and also very expensive way to go. I can't take Steg's yet in this league, and frankly I am not a fan of anything that can be killed outright by a few cannon balls when for the points I can field a decent sized Saurus or Skrox unit. I think the Salamander is my best bet, but I am worried about keeping it alive against massed HE shooting and trying to get it close enough to heavy cav without it getting charged will be tricky. The problem is that I'm used to running Skaven who have so many lovely toys that ignore armor. Nothing like that at our disposal AFAIK... Oh well, back to painting skinks...
are you worried about armoured infantry (chaos warriors) or armoured cavalry (knights)?, cause the solution is not the same. As mentioned already salamanders are superb against armoured infantry. Against knights... i wouldnt worry. Saurus warriors may not kill many knights a turn, but the enemy will run out of knights before you run out of saurus. as soon as you have him in CC, he wont go anywhere (unless it is fleeing with you chasing after, lol)
MoK Knights. 6 of them. 19 Attacks. ~13 hits, ~9 wounds, ~8 dead Saurus. 12 Horse attacks, ~(presuming WS3, becuase I can't remember their WS) 6 hits, 3 wounds 2 more dead Saurus. That's already 10 dead Saurus. Now, in a unit of 30 (because that seems the norm, with spears) Sure they kill 1 (24 As, 12 hits, 6 wounds,1 dead) But that only dros the death toll by ~1 Saurus so you'll actually be out of Saurus really quickly. Heaven forbid they have MoN and the Banner of Rage, then you'd only kill an astounding 0 (well, like, 0.6 re-occuring chance, but still). Saurus tarpits really don't work against 'real' chaos knights.
Agreed, I don't see the Saurus working well as a tarpit unit. And at this point size, I am never likely to field more than a unit of 25. Once you go to 30 you start losing too much flexibility in the rest of your list, IMO. BTW, in this case I am worried about HE heavy Cavalry, running around and taking out unit after unit of Skink javelin and eliminating my supporting units. Right now the plan is just to play hard to get, and rely on the SKrox holding steadfast if it gets hit...we shall see how that works out