8th Ed. Heroic Saurus characters on foot

For anyone interested, here's my (almost) finished new Oldblood, Chopzalotl. He just needs some work done on the base, including adding some nice lush tufts of grass.






I'm still daydreaming about interesting magic item combos to equip him with, so let me know if you have any ideas. Some of my friends have been telling me compelling anecdotes about the Sword of Anti-Heroes! Could be pretty fun for only 30 points...

 

I always like the idea of a blender Saurus character. The concept worked amazingly for me back in 6th, using the scimitar of the sun/maiming shield combo. I still remember the traumatized look on this O&G player's face in a tournament I played in when I managed to hit and wound with all 8 attacks.

 

Yeah I loved that in 6th!! Don't forget her could have the blessed spawning of Sotek, for an extra attack on the charge!!

My Sword of Bloodshed 8 attack Oldblood had a nice recent outing in a little 1200 point game if you're interested in checking out my battle report. At a certain point he slaughters six Chaos Marauders in a single round!

https://www.lustria-online.com/threads/1200-points-vs-warriors-of-chaos-nice-photos.26760/

 

I've been dwelling on the concept of an Oldblood armed with the Fencer's Blades, mainly cause if I can get my brother back into playing Warhammer, he's likely to be playing as Legions of Chaos, Beastmen heavy with a Chaos Lord or Daemon Prince as general. I just can't get the idea of an Oldblood tooled up to meet a Chaos Lord or DP in a challenge out of my head. The load out for him on foot would be light armour, Fencer's Blades, Tal of Pres and Potion of Strength.

 

I run an oldblood building similar to yours, Itzlok, who is simple but highly effective. He only takes the sword of bloodshed and the stegadon helm, light armour and shield and will run either mounted on his carnosaur, or just ranked in a unit. If he's just in a unit I tend to not challenge and just try to get the best charge position on low/medium toughness units. Those 8A at WS6 S5 plus S5 D3 impact hits will usually hobble a unit, and his T6 make him almost impossible to wound, and if a wound gets through he's got a 1up armour save and a parry.

 

Unfortunately your character is not entitled to a parry save because he is armed with a magic weapon...

"A magic weapon cannot be used alongside a shield to gain a parry save." [BRB, page 501]

 

You, sir, are most correct!

 

That's a cool build. Perhaps the ultimate guy for bullying baseline troops!

I've always loved the toughness 6 the Stegadon Helm gives you. I use it for my other Oldblood with the Talisman of Preservation for a very defensive general.

 

Yeah he smashes through standard units. I like to run him as above and then my ScarVet with piranha blade in a unit of SW as a challenge maker/character killer. The D3 wounds is gnarly on anything with more than one wound. The two of them together do a solid job of clearing rank and file and characters, but are squishy against artillery and magic missiles etc. so the aim is to always get them into combat ASAP

 

If you love characters on foot, I have been looking at strats that are mostly utilised by ogres but I don’t see why it couldn’t work for lizards.

The basic principle is that you take a block of Saurus and load the second rank with characters equipped up to the eyeballs for killing.

You take a skink chief on terradon/ripperdactyl to flank them.

The idea being that you use the “make way” rule to ensure you win the combat on your opponents turn, use the skink chief to enable you to restrain pursuit on the Saurus, combat reform so you are in a position to charge another unit on your turn (which is next! again move the Saurus characters to the second rank) and use the skink chief to run down the now (hopefully) fleeing enemy units.

Rinse and repeat.

 

So today I actually tested my Fencer's Blades Oldblood build through a trio of challenges each vs Wulfrik the Wanderer, Crom the Conqueror and Undivided/unmarked Chaos Lord with Sword of Might, shield and Talisman of Preservation. 3 fights per opponent. Won against Wulfrik all 3 fights, only taking 1 wound from Wulfrik the second fight and my Oldblood was left on 1 wound the third fight. 2 wins and 1 loss vs Crom, though Crom was left on 1 wound during that loss. And lost 2/3 rounds vs the Chaos Lord, being left on 1 wound on that single win.

 

I guess I'm a little late to the party but I have an interesting build that I think might be OK.

Oldblood
Sword of anti-heroes, talisman of protection, enchanted shield, and potion of speed for magic items, then light armour. For 219ptsit is a pretty solid fighter with a 1+ 5+ and I 6 for one turn, with Sword of Anti-heroes giving a +1 strength and attack against a unit with even one character. But the best part of this build is when you manage to drive him into a unit with 2 or even 3 characters, (which I've actually seen more than you might expect) and see the look on your opponent face when your little lizard with a sword racks up 8 st 8 ( plus magic buffs) attacks. RIP.

 

Looks like a great anti-character build. The only potential weakness I could see is the slow movement of the model preventing you from getting into combat against units with opposing characters. Though if he is in an important enough of a unit, they may come to you (not knowing what awaits them!).

 

That is kinda the point, he is in a big TG bunker with a bunch of buffs and maybe a magic banner. That might help the speed since the slann can take a banner of swiftness. I want to keep this response solely on the character so I don't wanna get too much into the list, but the way I built it should make it hard to ignore. In THEORY.

 

I could see it working, like anything it probably has counters, but it seems solid. Maybe a Wood Elves avoidance list could be tricky or a really shooty army with templates hitting that big expensive unit.

How do you protect against the possible use of the Purple Sun spell?

 

That is a hard question against lizardmen in general, except mostly skink lists. The only thing that I can confidently say is dispel scroll, though bastiladons can give them I3 if their close enough. Not really the best option though.

 

It's definitely a tough one. Not that much we can do besides taking out the opposing wizard before they are in range.

 

What do you think about putting my anti-heroe oldblood in a horde like this: around 30 temple guard, slann with obsidian lodestone, soul of stone (so miscast doesn't anhialate the unit) and bsb with skavenpelt banner, razor standard on the unit standard.

The point of this would be to support my choppy choppy lizzy with essentially the God unit, horde formation, frenzy, st5 -3 armour, 4+ ward against magic. My oldblood (which I just named Tak'Chacoua) will be attacking with 6 attacks at st5 even with no characters due to frenzy, so with a character unit I have 7attacks st6 with a -4 armour, and I6 on turn one, making him fairly stacked for duels, and also infantry fighting. That is only with one character, and the point of this unit is to force the enemy to get a large unit with 2 characters in it.

So... what do you think, am I putting too many eggs in one basket so to speak? It is well over 1000pts and without the banner of swiftness you will be low movement, so you will likely get charged, which although I don't worry about the CR, might get them stuck in a quick moving tarpit, or basically any unit with a fast movement. I could revert to my old version with banner odlf swiftness... P.S. I have been dabbling with talisman of preservation for a 4+ save, or armour of destiny instead of the shield and just add a normal shield.

 

It's definitely an all your eggs in one basket approach. Over half your points in a single unit does create a potent unit, but it might be risky.

To flip the script, pretend that we're the opposition facing this unit... how do we deal with it? It will depend on what the opposing army has, but in general what are the counters?
-use chaff to divert the unit and keep it out of combat (and pick off the rest of the Lizard army)
-counter it with the aforementioned Purple Sun
-counter it with an even stronger deathstar
-tie it up with a tarpit or unkillable character
-template weapons

 

Am I missing something with this tarpit business? I know I myself said that it was a counter, but I honestly don't get how any tarpit can hold up this unit for long. I did the math and even if only half of my unit gets to strike, I should be able to rack up 11-12 wounds, plus ranks, plus standard, that means that I should be able to get combat res of 14, even with 5 ranks (after the slaughter), standard and bsb with L10 (skavenslave mega-tarpit) you still need snake eyes to avoid breaking, right? Same for characters, though with the small base size, they could hold up the unit most of the game.

Everything else is a very solid counter, especially diverting the unit with chaff since I have frenzy. I have to do some deep meditating in my star chamber to find a way to overcome these issues.