So I have a tournament next month and this is what I am thinking about taking. It is a variation of the list I took to the last two tourney’s and have done well with an 8-2 record. The losses were: A total butt kicking by a Hex Wraith heavy VC list and a narrow loss v. highly mobile DE list that would have been a win if we had finished. Slann, channeling staff, harmonic, Focus of Mystery- I love the versatility of High Magic. Old Blood, CO, LA, GW, ToP, OTS- I love this guy, hard as nails and hits like a ton of bricks. Skink Priest, Heavens, scroll Scar Vet, CO, BSB, Armor of Destiny, GW Scar Vet, CO, LA, DragonHelm, Biting Blade, Dawnstone, IC Icon- Magic weapon for ethereal units!, Momma Hinge did not raise a fool Skink Chief, Terradon, LA, Relic Sword, Charmed Shield, DB Gem, Egg. This guy has been hit or miss, but when he is good, he has been very good. 20 Saurus Warriors, FC 3 x 10 skink srimishers, champ- Champ is for scenarios 2x10 Skink Cohort, Mus, Std – same as above. Plus another place to park the cowboys if need be. 2x5 cham skinks 3 Terradons 2x1 Salamanders 6 Cold One Riders, std, mus- Very disappointing unit. I have thought about switching out for steg but the unit is one of my best painted! 2 Jungle swarms- ran out of skinks! Have not workedas any thing but chaff and should plow points into Suaurus block. Though one more chaff unit is always handy! Fortitude of 7 gives me the buffer for when my Slann sucks himself into the warp. Cowboys are generally split between the Saurus and CO unit. Slann sits in back with one of the skink units (either cohort or skirmish depending on opponent). Spray out chaff, change out a spell or two depending on threat (usually beasts), break enemy crutch… errrr… magic item of extreme importance, charge in cowboys to score points. Opinions? Hinge
Slann, channeling staff, harmonic, Focus of Mystery- I love the versatility of High Magic. No complaints here. I assume he will run with Skink Skirmishers when in need of Look Out Sir! Since you have no Temple Guard, I think it's the right thing to put the BSB on a Scar Vet to add breaking power to a combat unit and to make sure the BSB is always in a spot to reroll at least one stupidity test (his own). Old Blood, CO, LA, GW, ToP, OTS- I love this guy, hard as nails and hits like a ton of bricks. I use the same kit but put Dawnstone on him. I suspect you are too tight on Lord points though. Skink Priest, Heavens, scroll Why Heavens? I think Beasts is the better call here. You only get one spell and the guaranteed spell for Beasts can be a game-changer on either the Saurus or the Cold Ones. Iceshard Blizzard is just so-so to me. Scar Vet, CO, BSB, Armor of Destiny, GW Solid. Scar Vet, CO, LA, DragonHelm, Biting Blade, Dawnstone, IC Icon- Magic weapon for ethereal units!, Momma Hinge did not raise a fool I would rather go Enchanted Shield, Sword of Might, Dawnstone. The +1 Strength is makes a big difference. Skink Chief, Terradon, LA, Relic Sword, Charmed Shield, DB Gem, Egg. This guy has been hit or miss, but when he is good, he has been very good. Egg Chief has sucked balls for me. Just continuous bad luck on the Egg itself. The little utility I have gotten out of mine is because he carries a spear. Strength 5 on the charge makes him more reliable against low-T chaff. You already have the Egg if you come up against something like Hexwraiths and the Slann has plenty of MM and Direct Damage, so you could drop the sword. I think you are over-planning for Ethereals. 20 Saurus Warriors, FC 3 x 10 skink srimishers, champ- Champ is for scenarios 2x10 Skink Cohort, Mus, Std – same as above. Plus another place to park the cowboys if need be. 2x5 cham skinks I find 1 unit is enough. I would consider dropping 1 to boost the model count on the Saurus unit and make them more durable. 3 Terradons 2x1 Salamanders 6 Cold One Riders, std, mus- Very disappointing unit. I have thought about switching out for steg but the unit is one of my best painted! Cold Ones have performed really well for me. I have been leaving Stegs out of my lists because they have a habit of dying to the first cannonball I see. 2 Jungle swarms- ran out of skinks! Have not worked as any thing but chaff and should plow points into Suaurus block. Though one more chaff unit is always handy! If you can pull the trick of taking a charge with the Saurus then bringing the Swarms in it can be pretty awesome. Don't be too aggressive with the Swarms.
CAnt really give you advise as i am new to lizzies, but i have a few questions. 1. Why would you wanna park the cowboys....you wont get a look out sir by puting them with the skinks. And if you go into combat with the skinks the skinks will only give the enemy extra combat resolution. 2. What is the OTS on your Oldblood? dont have the magic items list at hand atm. (edit: Other trickster shard, right?) 3. How would you deal with Death star units or heavy arty lists.
1. While I do not get a LOS from cannons and templates, BS based shooting can not target him out until the unit falls below 5 RnF models. Dark and High Elves are very common in todays meta, so RBTs are an issue. I gain protection from them. The same applies to Doom Divers. The cohort’s advantage over Suarus is speed. Skinks move 6 v. the Suarus 4. The cohorts are the delivery mechanism for the cowboys. I expect them to get close then charge out. If I get charged with the cowboy in a cohort, I have likely made a mistake or been charged by something that can fly. The cowboys can handle most flyers. With three cowboys spread out among three units (a cohort, the Suaurus, and the CO) and with the amount of skinks I bring, an opponent will have a very difficult time redirecting all 3. Btw, in a recent game, the Terradon chief hoped from one cohort to another to protect against a heavy BS shooting army. Something my opponent did not expect. 2. Indeed, Other Tricksters Shard. Enemy characters have to think very hard before tangling with this guy. 3. Death Stars: First is magic. Fiery Convo is made to kill death stars and will cripple their magic phase. Arcane Unforging can be used to kill any MR on the unit. Next is maneuver and board control. Some one with a big deathstar has a huge amount of points sunk in to it. I will out chaff and out deploy him. I can either avoid and kill the rest of the army or maneuver until I can multi charge in flanks/rear. A unit engaged on two fronts can not combat reform. This will cut much of the power out from the deathstar and likely lead to won combats. Steadfast can still be problematic. The BSB will be a target of the cowboys. If there is a combat character in the unit to scary for the cowboys, it gets a high priority on Arcane Unforging to take out whatever items make it scary. The important thing is I am engaging the Deathstar on my terms. His heavy investment in the Death Star is trumped by my investment in chaff when it comes to movement and board control. Artillery: I do have 4 excellent WM hunters. 2 scout units and 2 flying units with vanguard. This will put a lot of pressure on my opponent. The Cowboys can also be hidden in the CO unit for some LoS protection, at least temporarily. Finally, I can choose not to play. If my opponent chooses to castle, I can deploy in the other corner leaving him out or at extreme range, hide cowboys behind buildings/impassable, etc. Skrimishers/magic can be used to perhaps scrape up enough points for a small win. Once again I have magic. I will have one Iceshard Blizzard (perhaps a comet) and quickly get a second (again, with a shot at comet). Not to mention a lowly skink unit with Hand of Glory on it tends to surprise opponents who think there Warmachines are well bunkered with hardcover. I feel I have a lot of options when faced with artillery. The one I choose to pursue depends on matchup, terrain, and opponent’s deployment.
I would agree with most suggestions already made with the following exceptions: 1) SV Cowboy for ethereals - The express purpose of this bad boy is ethereals (hex wraiths in particular) first and everything else second. I was having the same problem with hexwraiths and went with sword of striking instead. This means you are hitting on 2's and wounding on 2's vs ethereals, which makes the odds of killing an entire unit on the charge quite high (3 wounds + charge on average means the unit must be 8+ in size to survive at all and that is assuming no PF bonus attacks were rolled). Far too often, the dice gods spite you with a whiffle but hitting on 2' can dramatically decrease the odds of this happening. This also makes him very good at going after war machines, missile troops, etc. so that he can either wipe out the former or tie up the latter without having to worry about static CR causing him to have a skink moment 2) Heavens vs Beasts - Iceshard is far easier to cast and even a 1st level scroll caddy can 1 dice it. Wyssans would require 3 dice minimum to cast and I suspect the slaan will not want to share that many dice (they are kind of greedy in that regard!). As for utility, odds are that your opponent will stop wyssans but will let iceshard go through. Cutting the to hit of an opponent by 1 can make a huge different in combat results. Toss in a 2nd iceshard from the slaan (after swapping out) and there is great potential to really nerf an opposing unit and make their break check occur at -2. As an added bonus, iceshard can reduce the BS and template shooting out to 48", thereby helping keep the unit alive and well as it marches across the board.
thx for the explanation! It actually makes perfect sense never considered puting mounted characters in infantry units like that. And can imagine that not many ppl expect the trick with the terradon hoping from cohort to cohort.
Really like your list and your game plans. It is similar to mine, I am just a bit more aggressive with Tetto and more scarvets and oldbloods. I do sacrifice some magic capability for it but I believe close combat and shooting are more reliable. Your miles may vary... As for heavens vs beasts... As said before, on a lvl1, iceshard blizzard or the chance of getting harmonic convergence is better. Harmonic convergence on CoC with characters is awesome! All in all though, I like it. Will be checking out your blog for more for sure...
Thanks for the comments guys. In one week, we will see how it goes. I did get a match in against Swordmaster of Hoeth and his MSU HE this week. Can be found: http://www.ulthuan.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=67171 Hinge
Very good batrep by Swordmaster. It was very informative and I enjoyed reading it a lot. Congrats on your win
Hi Hinge, I still dont fully understand where the real power of this list is (like i said, am new to lizzies), but imho the best learning experiences come from trying to make things work that you dont fully understand. So....if you dont mind....i am going to use your list this afternoon in my first 8th edition with lizzies. Will be playing vs Orcs & Goblins. (another reason for taking your list is that i have the models as my temple guard and steg still need assembly ) Made few changes though....left out the champs on the skirmishers and bulked the saures with the points, gave the scarvet the Initiative 10 sword instead of the biting blade (may not be the best option against O&G but I think it might be usefull vs some other armies out there), and swapped the 2 jungle swarms for an extra unit of skirmishers.
It's the oldblood and scarvets that would do the majority of heavy hitting. Supported by the slann and the sallies that soften up targets and skinks being annoying but still can't be ignored. I regularly run my oldblood into hordes of savage orc big'uns and they have yet to die. Send in an oldblood + scarvet and the savages will break in 2-3 turns.
yeah, I understand better now. Yesterdays game was a narrow loss (roughly 780 vs 1028 points) but the point difference was mainly caused by the Slann being sucked into the warp by a miscast. I actually deployed pretty well, except for my Cold one cavalry + scar vet, being too far away from the Slann to properly support them with magic. And i overestimated them a bit, and that costed me, as they ended up puked on by his trolls. And this was the scar vet without ward save, so he really did not like the puke. Anyway, the terradons, terradon chief, and chamo skinks indeed managed to put a lot of pressure on his warmachines. And the only success of his artillery was to kill the terradon chief, but only after he managed to totally disrupt his movements with his main units in turn 1 and 2. Skinks quite quickly managed to destroy most enemy chaff. But after the chaff was destroyed i strugled a bit on what to do with the skinks. I made a huge mistake in my haste to get a rallied skink unit back to the action and i did not notice i created a perfect path for a mangler squig to go through 4 units. I actually counted on the mangler to die in my shooting phase but 10 shots from skinks and a hit from a sally did not manage to get that last wound of him. So the mangler went through 4 units (3x skink and saurus) and although not destroying anything it severely damaged all 3 skink units, rendering them virtually useless. If this had not happened i could have put some real pressure on his savage orc unit who could not move because both his night goblins and trolls needed his leadership for break test and the slightest move would have ment one of them was out of range for inspiring presense/bsb reroll. Magic was largely non existant from my side (winds of magic 1:1, 5:1 in second and third turn and without good channel results. And in my first strong magic phase (12 dice vs 7) I miscasted on the first spell and got sucked into the warp. The first turn we also had a discussioin about arcane unforging....wether it needed to wound or not to destroy an item. Because it was a friendly game i decided to cast something else and check it later. I also strugled to find targets for the cowboyz, as i did not dare to run them into the savage orc horde (which had the bsb, general, lvl 4 and lvl 2 orc shaman). And to be honest i really dont understand how you manage to break an savage orc horde with just an old blood and scarvet. Both the general and BSB have the power to get in at least one wound and at strenght 5 the regular orc will probably get a wound in as well. Anyway, my scar vet and oldblood did not manage to break a unit of (50) night goblins (although winning combat big time each round). In hindsight i should have run a scarvet into the savage orcs to assasinate the shamans (and get rid of the ward save and MR3). And i could have done the same with the terradon chief (who would strike first and then die). Would Magic resistance work against the hits from the egg of quanco? Anyway, In general i struggled to properly support my units and to soften up the enemy. And was quite indesisive on what to do about the savage orc horde. So i did neither attack them properly and neither did i ignore them. But it sure was a good learning experience and i really enjoyed this list.
The trick is to challenge with the oldblood, he refuses then you send the BSB or general to the back. If he accepts then you are only going to take one guys attacks and you kill him. Challenge every round. If there are no cold one cav in my units and only characters then I rarely even take wounds. Eventually you will kill enough or he will fail his panic test. If this doesn't happen then maybe you should rethink your characters' load outs. Trolls on the other hand is O&G's hard counter to our cavalry. Puke ignores armour and that kills us. I would suggest only a flank or rear charge and with a character that has some kind of ward save. If there are 4 or less Trolls then I would charge in with the Piranha blade Oldblood even in the front. Pop the potion of strength and you have 5 S8 d3 wound attacks hitting on 3's, wounding on 2's. That's 7.4 wounds before they get to puke back.
thx, yeah i am getting the picture. Allready thought of roughly a hundred things that i should/could have done differently. But this type of list is totally new for me, so you cant expect it to go perfect on the first try. Looking back, it should have been a win for me (easy talking...i know) cause i actually had him by the balls, but let him slip because i had too much respect for his savage horde.
Hey all- Sorry it has been a while since I checked in. @Borkbork. Glad to hear you are giving the list a try. I think it is almost worth stepping on the mangler with a skink unit just to make sure it goes away. And indeed, keep those trolls away from you! I do think a good O&G list is a tough match up for mine. Doom Divers are the other hard counter to be ready for. As far as Crossroads, I came in 9th. Top ten in a 100+ person tournament is always the goal so I am happy. I do have to admit that my soft scores carried me as I ended up with 2 large wins (Nurgle wall DoC and Light Council Empire), a small loss (Dark elf Fast Cav), and 2 draws (dark elf fast cav and Lizzardmen). I was set up the first day for a good run but I got bit in the butt by a couple of poor roles. My Slann sucked himself into the warp on the final turn of rd 4 to swing 1000 points to my opponent. My Slann failed a terror test followed by a -1 break test on the final turn to give his points away on the last game. I am a little frustrated with myself on the last game as despite being in a bad spot due to the failed terror test, I had a solution that would have avoided the break test that I did not see until after wards. The champs in the skirmish units actually did pretty well (though I always forgot their better BS). Allows for some conga line shenanigans, which was a bit of a theme for the tournament. They may stay. Next up is Alamo. I plan on replacing the skink priest and the chief with Tetto. Hinge
Well brought the list (with a change) to The Alamo in Texas last weekend. I dropped the skink priest and skink chief in favor of Tetto. I ended up coming in second and receiving Best General. So very close to a Best Overall. Game 1-shooty avoidance wood elves with DeathWeaver, massed trueflight, big block of WildRiders, 19 waystalkers. Maneuver intensive game that saw me take a minor win. I kept Hand of Glory up on the Suarus block and gave no spots for the DeathWeaver to get a good P Sun off. Game 2-Lizardmen with Beast Slann and Tetto. I used my chameleons to control his vanguards so got the better of them. He had a huge block of Saurus but Fiery Convo really cut them down to size. So I could take them. I was generally more chaffy and took advantage of that to control movement until I was ready to engage. Big Win Game 3 – Dwarves warmachines and blocks. Each player got a free giant. The CO unit and all three characters vanguarded up behind a wall for cover from Organ guns and cannon. I put intense pressure on his warmachines immediately and got a turn 2 charge at his general’s hammerers with the CO. a timely Iceshard Blizzard gave me the edge and the unit broke and was run down. Cowboys in the back field was bad news and I earned a big win. I made a mistake in calculating my objective points and shorted myself 2. Given how close I was, this cost me Best Overall. On the other hand, it would have changed my round 4 opponent and who knows how that would have turned out. Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda. Ah well. Game 4- O&G Fairly standard list except squig herds instead of trolls. This was an objective based scenario allowing me to expend my cheap units at will to control movement with out consequence. I grabbed the objectives and played catch me if you can. The Scenario heavily favored my list and style of play and the O&G player had an up hill fight. Game 5- Table 1 Lord on jug, Nurgle DP, unkillable BSB, L1 scroll caddy, Throgg, chariot, hounds, 2 x 8 trolls, 5 SC, hellcannon. Super Agro list. Lots of double flees and redirecting in hopes of getting a good magic phase. Despite my best efforts and killing the scroll caddy before he could use the scroll, magic was not working. I was laying out lots of bait for counters but he was not biting. By turn 3, my opponent had eaten up 450 points of chaff while only losing the caddy. He decided to back off since he had a 5 point lead on my in Battle for the tourney prior to the match and the only one other player was close to our scores and it was clear he was losing on table 2. He hid the DP. I was able to break the 3+ ward with Arcane Unforging and eventually take the BSB off to pull into a draw. I also took 3 of the objectives. I would draw 11-8 but was not enough to close the gap (our paint and sports scores were identical). I think in the end I played too conservatively in this game and did not give myself the opportunity to push when I needed to. As usual Alamo was fun and I had 5 awesome opponents. I will be putting the Lizards away for a little bit so this is a bit of a post mortem on the list. It performed very well over 4 GT’s with a 8th, 4th, 9th, and 2nd place finishes. It ended with 14-3-3 record in tourney play). Dark Elves seemed to be its weakness with a combined 0-2-1 record against them. They were all very minor losses however. The only big loss was to Hexwraith VC list. In 3 of the 4 tournaments I was in position to win Best Overall. I have fallen in love with Loremaster High. There are no real game winning spells but it has proven to be an effective tool box. Soul Quench, Hand, Walk, Arcane, and Fiery have all contributed to wins at some point. The ability to exchange a spell has also been important in many of the matches. However, the addition of Tetto changed the dynamic of the Magic phase. The list becomes very power dice starved and wasting a couple of PD on a spell just to exchange became rare. On the other hand, Heavens is a rock solid lore. The two combined lores give me 2 Hexes, 2 Buffs, 2 MM, a couple of big damage spells that have different uses. The only spells of the 15 I never attempted to cast was wind blast and chain lightening. The ability to re-roll 1’s on casting really makes Lore of High better with some of its low casting costs. The power of the list remains the Cowboys. In the end, if these guys did damage and collected points, I won. If they did not, I lost. The survival of the Slann rarely determined a win or loss, though certainly surviving makes things easier. It is a list I will come back to. Hinge.