8th Ed. Help vs Warriors of Chaos

what lore are the priest running ?

 

My experience is that its better if the units within the army can keep up with each other. If you look at your list, half of them are fast, rest is slow. Exeption to my suggestion when you try to execute tricks from blitzkrieg or something from alexander the great. Ill get back here a bit later.
So, army building basics:
1. general: you must have one character at least, who can be the general. youll want him to be tough as he can be, doing dmg becomes secondary objective. we, lizards are lucky enough, our oldbloods can fit both role at the same time: from magic items you build up its resilience, and a mundane great weapon makes him s7, meaning your hits will wound on 2+ almost every time.
2. wizard, scrollbearer. youll want 99% of the times have a spell caster, and have a dispell scroll(this can save lifes) buffing, dealing damage, or hexing opponent is always helpfull. high magic, heavens and beasts worsk very well with lizzies. for now, just stick with heavens and beasts, high is trickier. try to preserve your casters. slann has built in 4+ ward, wich is nice, but skinks are no match in close combat, they are fragile. putting skink priest into skirmishers is wise, they can outmanuever almost anything, exept flyers. not being in cc is healthy for skinks, and skirmish gives them -1 to hit vs shooting attacks. if possible, move them into water areas for an additional -1 to hit penalty. if skinks are in water, most of the shooting attacks will hit them on 6+
3. bsb! if there is enough points for a bsb, take one! it is always good to reroll failed ld tests. skinks like it the most, but everyone will benefit. dont forget that your oldblood is mounted on cold one, wich has stupidity! btw, the same rules apply to bsb as the general.

So, back to tactics. Im trying to use the units ive seen in your lists before.
list a:
- saurus oldblood on cold one, equipped with great weapon, sacred stegadon helm of itza, talisman of preservation.
he is tanky as hell, does dmg. d3 impact hits with s5 is good, dont forget it. 1-2 extra wounds in a combat can turn the whole outcome! this guy is the general
- saurus scar-veteran on cold one, with great weapon, armor of destiny, bsb. i saved armor of destiny for him, since it gives an extra point of armor, wich would be useless for the old blood, but giving it to the scar-vet, he can equip great weapon, have 1+ armor save and 4+ armor save. he does well in cc, he is more likely to die of static cr then be killed. dont forget, if he looses a combat, and fails both ld checks, he wont flee, but dismount, lay down his weapons in his shame and commit seppuku. bsb never flee, they die. applies to all standard bearer in every unit, but please correct me if im wrong
- skink priest with dispell scroll, lvl2. both beast signature and heavens signature is good. both lore offers good spells with 1-2 poor choices. read magic tactica, this will depend on personal taste. my opinion: id choose heavens. harmonic convergence cast on the cold one riders with the characters will be devastating. signature spell can silence warmachines, or if your units are engaged in combat, -1 to hit will save lives. dont forget -1 ld, our cold ones cause fear, and if the fear test is failed, your unit will hit on 3+ and will be hit on 6+ with this spell on! if you roll wind blast or spell no. 3, swap to sig without hesitation. 4-5-6 spells do damage. if you are playing against a dwarven army, try to get spell no 5, comet of cassandora. the dwarf will most likely occupy one of the corners, and guard his warachines everything he has. if you succesfully call down a comet, it will destroy almost his entire army.
- core units: 20 saurus warrior, champ, standard. this unit will be your anvil, form them up in 5 wide formation with 4 rows, to have longer rank bonus of 3. note to 10 man tg you suggested! the initiative of our sauruses are one of the lowest in the entire whfb. this means most of their enemies will hit before them. if you bring 10, half of them will be dead when your time comes to strike. as a basic rule, youll always want to hit with the maximum numbers you can, in other words: youll always want to have a 2nd rank for support attacks, 3 rows if you are in horde formation(10 man wide(
- 2x10 skirmisher with javelin and shield. use these to hunt down chaff. poison is their secret. if you are about to preform a charge, dont fear to use them as baits, the skinks are expendables move into the face of your opponent to prevent him from moving, and if you place your cold ones 12,1" behind them, he wont reach your riders from overrun, but youll be in a good distance to charge next turn.
special:
- 6x cold one riders with standard bearer and musician (no champ now, point reasons. for them swift reform is more important then having a champ) these guys will be the bodyguards of your characters. while they are at least 5, they provide look out sir! rule to them, saves them from being shot down by cannons, spells, etc. dont expect them to do many harm to the opponent, your characters will be responsible for that. dont forget, they have stupidity, and cause fear.
- 3x terradon riders: if your opponent has warmachines, take it out with these guys, they are expert in this task. they can clear chaff, use their drop rocks ability on fast cavalry or skirmishing units. if they are done with warmachines, use them to hunt down chaff, fast moving small units, or you can use these guys as baits, redirectors. they are expendables if need to be.

How to use this army
You will want to move up your sauruses as your anvil unit, while the riders march up on the sides. Go for the costy units. Youll want your sauruses to preform a frontal attack, and your riders to charge them from the side. This is called flanking. The riders will deny the opponents block rank bonus, if they are at least 5 strong. It is likely youll break your opponent, since your sauruses will provide you rank bonus of 3 hopefully. If you dont want to get involved in a fight, use your skinks to avoid combat, or you can position them such angle,that the next turn youll be able to preform a flank charge. Otherwise, try to keep them alive, and shoot high toughness monsters, to hit rolls of 6-es will autowound them. Terradons are covered above, like spriest.

If you accept a last hint: buy a stegadon, and field him. Youll fell in love asap with that bastard. An ancient stegaddon with sharpened horns will bring terror even to woc players heart. They have s6 t6 with 5 wounds, 3+ armor save,and are stubborn. That moster can shoot 18" far 4d6 poisoned s3 shots. Even if you take it, and is out of combat, does 3 wounds on average before saves, wich is nice. What makes him deadly is its impact hits, all things that have more than one wound will try to escape it, since d6+1 s6 hits with multiwound d3 is pure death. Charriots are almost autokills, as monsters, and even those bastard woc characters will flee in 1+ armor and 3+ ward save, since 1 unsaved wound can be their undoing. Also, this beast does terror. If you can cast an iceshard blizzard on an enemy unit wich isnt immune to psyho, it will likely flee, if you are lucky, they even flee of the table. Very very nasty,the stegadon is. Disturbance in the force, he does. If you make the purchase(please do), youll have to adjust your list to fit in the steg: remove riders, switch the skirmishers to cohorts with musicians, and remove terradons. You can have your characters in the cohorts if your opponent has bolt throwers, or anything that prevents armor saves to be made against it. Note, cohort wont provide safety against template things, sadly.

I hope I could help, if you dont know a rule I mentioned, just look up of feel free to ask. Also, anybody is welcome to argue ^^
Ps.: I want my old blood to ride an ancient steg!!!

 

Thanks for input. I'm making the most of what I own at the moment. I have 2 Skink priests, a carnisuar, 8 cold one riders, 32 skinks, 30 saurus warriors, 10 Temple guard and 3 ripperdactels. This is all I own and I'm not buying anymore until I know I'm going to enjoy the army. This is the third time I've got an army cause is looks nice but then I hate the rules and tactics of said army. Gw ready should do a try before you buy game in store but I know this will never happen.

 

In this case, why didnt you just visit your club, and started to watch games? You can check all the models on gw site, and the rulebooks can be accesed before making a purchase. If you seen enough, then you can make your choice, wich will be less likely to fail you. If you are looking for an army, wich can be easily played, and allows you to do mistakes, yet powerfull and wins a lot, then warriors of chaos is your army.

 

While I do like the look of other armies, at my local GW store, I'm not allowed to look through the books unless I'm going to buy it. It's a thing all GW stores do (I'm told). That and I hate using anything that someone else has. I want to be unique, not just another one jumping on the ban-wagon. So yes, I admit that I'm the the that has dung my own hole, but I asking is. With my current tools (models), do I keep digging (playing)? If so, how can I best utilize what I have. Or am I better off starting again?

I have noticed that my second choice of army suffers from the same problems as Lizards, low Int.

 

There are buffs/debuffs that can compensate low ini: if you are strong enough(toughness), wont matter if you strike second. Beast lore signature spell provides +1S +1T, making even the saurus warriors an ultimate weapon of destruction.
Heaven signature spells helps in tanking too. -1 hit to penalty will result being hit on 4+, and if you lucky enough(or you choose their opponent carefully) it will become 5+. Being not hit is pretty good, yet I find beast signature superior to this, but this spell is more likely to be cast succesfully.
These 2 spells can be provided to you by skink priest, in most of the cases youll want a spriest as a scrollbearer anyway, depending your army setup, choose either, youll be fine.
On the other hand, a slann-mage priest can take high magic, with hand of glory wich gives you d3 ws and i, wich stats needs the boost the most. If you want to make sure you have this spell, go for being loremaster of high magic, this will bring a lots of benefits, since high magic has the most uniqe spells wich can turn the tide of a battle(my favourites are arcane unforging, walk between worlds, and drain magic, hand of glory are great spells too. on damaging spells, soul quench can help you dealing with skirmishers, and fiery convocation is able to clear off big blocks, especially usefull on goblins, skavens, zombies, but any t3 unit will hate it if they are not so armored(elves, human infantry). once, this spell won my opponent the game, he managed to cast this on my savage orc big'uns, i wasnt able to dispell it, and the next 2 rounds i couldnt remove it due to low roll for winds of magic, meaning my main unit was completely decimated. im not fan of tempest, if you cast it once in a while, id suggest it swapping asap to another spell next round. yeah, we arrived to the essence of high magic: the lore attribute allows us to generate a spell from a different lore, if we cast succesfully a spell from high magic (this spell is lost then,but can be regained). This means, if you are in need of a specific spell during the game, you can swap spells from high magic. if you need a signature, its 100% granted, if its not, you have to roll as normal, and pray to the old ones to roll the spell you need.
Lastly, lore of light can grant you ws10+i10, even to every unit within 12", and it can give you always strike first (this can affect all unit withing 12" aswell).

Aaaand, I almost forgot, but we have a great monster, called bastiladon, wich can be equipped with solar engine. The engine gives +1I to your sauruses, and has a very potent bound spell, wich is great to burn the opponents pd, if you roll with one dice a 3+.

 

30 Temple guards at 1250 points is 36% of your army. If you add a magic banner or magic weapon, things become more expensive.

That's a huge pointsink for a massive target that will be shot to death before it hits anything, and it is very unlikely to stand a chance against anything close to its own point value.

30 is a good number, but only in higher point games. Not at 1250.

 

Thanks for all the input, guys. Just had a game with a friend and his dwarfs, ended up as a draw as the VP was only 80 difference (1250p game). I am looking at peoples lists and suggestions and using them to tweak and alter my lists.

I had a PM asking why i wanted to only use the models i've listed. Now, not naming any names but try being in my shoes. Would you pour more money into an army you've not enjoying as much as you hoped? While yes, i but there are some models out there that would help me out loads, i'm not pouring more money into Lizards until i'm used to their tactics and quirks.

 

It's easy to make stand ins, especially for certain units.

temple guards are basically just saurus with lots of bling.

Chameleons are basically just skinks painted red. That is pretty much the extent of my own chamo conversion (with blowpipes, obviously), because I really dislike the Chameleon model.

Saurus Cowboys can easily be made as cold ones with temple guard heads, and tons of additional bling.

Buying more when you are still testing the waters is a bad idea. I would urge you to stick to that thought for now, because it really is the best choice. Throwing more money at the army wont make you like it more.

Conversions are fairly easy to make for a lot of the lizardmen units, however, so it's not too difficult to place units you don't actually have.

Unless you play at GWs stores, though, they have a tendency to be pretty anal about only using the specified official model.

 

I agree with this. Just confirm with your friend or opponent before the game if it is ok to use stand ins or proxies or whatever they you like to call them. Even just bases should do for a beginner. I've played lots of games with my friends with this method. I once even fought an army consisting against nothing but cardboard squares which was fine against a friend as long as you both know what is representing what.

This should be acceptable for everyone to test out new units, tactics and even armies as this hobby is as mentioned expensive and it just blows to buy models that tend to be left out of the lists constantly because you didn't realize it at the time of the purchase.


BR
Agrem

 

This is a much better looking list, IMHO. With it, you probably want to take a hammer and anvil approach. Basically, use the Saurus Warriors as an anvil with teeth. The enemy hits them and is held in place. Your Priests are there to keep them from hareing off due to Predatory Fighter and to buff them up.

Where I'd probably change the list (and I'm trying to keep in mind what you said you had and the fact that you don't want to invest more) is as follows:

Oldblood- Play around with the magic item load out. First, if you really want the 1+/4+ you probably get more functionality out of a Charmed Shield and Talisman of Preservation combo. You lose the Fencers Blades, but can swap in the ASF sword or the sword of striking. Alternatively, keeping the FBs, what about putting Glittering Scales on him? You lose the ward save, but if you give him the Dawn Stone, you get a reroll. And the FB/GS combo is nasty against most basic troops which can only hit you on a six. Again, just play with the load out and see what works for you.

Skink Priests: Find points to fit a Dispel Scroll and Cube of Darkness into the list. Others have touched on what lores to take, but any of the three possible choices is fine. (I.e. 2 Beast, 2 Heavens, or one of each.)

25 Saurus Warriors- Great choice. At 1250 points, they should go through most other units like poop through a goose.

10 Skink Skirmishers- Great unit. Use as a redirector. I might see if I can find points for a second unit. These can double as bunkers for your priests.

Temple Guard- Their numbers are really too small for what you get, so as others have advised, I'd probably drop them for now.

Cold One Riders- Another great choice. Use these as the hammer to your Saurus' anvil. Also, run your Oldblood with them.

I hope this helps. I'll let you work out the points, but you can probably drop the Temple Guard, add in your Rippers, and still have points for the Cube and Scroll. Overall, it looks to be a pretty strong list. It's actually quite close to what I'd probably run at 1250 pts.

Padre

 

As somewhat indicated in the previous posts, i feel lizardmen are quite a low tier army.
We have a slann, saurus characters and skinks which are good. Terradons are nice. Rippers, salamanders and krox are situational. Rest is crap.
Slann can be a huge point sink if magic is not flowing. Saurus characters are good, but there are tougher characters out there which i sem to be facing regulary (woc for example, green knight).
I for one am having motivations issues with lizzies.. Lose streak which im having isnt helping either Especially now since the ETC comp is just crazy towards lizardmen right now (In my area we only play etc comp).

 

Lizardmen just have a steeper learning curve than a lot of the other races. You can perform REALLY well with the right list, if you know what you are doing. That's a pretty big IF, because the skink cloud type of lists are really damn powerful, but if you don't know how to use it, it will seem like the worst kind of list ever.

It's like Ogres, in that regard. If you suck at positioning, and never get off charges, your army is basically a more expensive saurus army, which generally means the army will feel really weak. If you are good at this, however... Even elves will stuggle to make up for their losses before they even get to strike.

Well, when you play using houserules, you end up in a situation where the army can be really weak, despite being perfectly fine, because someone decided to nerf them for no apparent reason.

People seem to think that saurus cowboys are so broken, when in reality, it's basically the only punch our army has. So things like ETC tends to overdo the restrictions far more than necessary. Similar to how Vampires are restricted, despite vampires pretty much being the only thing really packing a punch in their army.

 

Well...i tried, and got smashed aside again, two games, one against WOC and another against Ogres and...got tabled before i could make a SINGLE attack. Really fuming now. Gets worse when my foes say thats just way their armies do. Oh, so GW makes armies that just win...thats fair.

Sorry, dinos are cool, but i hate the rules, i hate the low armour, i hate the good models that i should use i need three and they are £40 each. Now i need to find someone to buy this junk off me.

Really, soo f***ing mad right now. Everyone said lizardmen are tough as nails. Then just wipes out everything i have on one turn, including 2 blocks of 30 saurus warrior with what? 15 WOC warriors and 10 bloodthirsters.

Soz guys, no offence and i bet if i had the cash to throw at the army they are nice to use but i don't.

 

Tried to warn you : p

 

I wouldnt expect to beat Raffael Nadal on my 5th ever tennis match, even if my 'gear' is in pair with his. I hope you understand what I mean.

Btw, if you give me a list what you got, I might buy it. Pm me the list.