alright im building up my battle force, and i dont know what weapons to give my lizards. blow pipes for the skinks? spears for the saurus or hand weapons? Could I give the first rank hand weapons and the second rank get spears? I need some help.
Sadly, you can't mix weapons in a unit (unless you have special rules like the Beastmen). The saurus already get two attacks each, and they are very strong with a sword and board armor save; I take them hand weapon and shield. For skinks, its blowpipes all the way. They are cheap, so if they die, they die; shields won't save them. Plus, javelin's range is sad, but if you get 20 or so skinks doing double round with darts and poison on sixes, you soon see their uses. Blowpipes for skinks, hand weapons for saurus.
I definitely use spears for saurus. In this edition, they got an improved scaly skin save so their save in combat is already pretty good, the spears allow a unit 5x4 to get a very impressive 21 s4 attacks. This puts them right up there with the best infantry in the game, and the spears are only a point. If you find yourself facing a unit that hits harder, you can easily choose to use the hand weapons if you want to. If you take just hand weapons, you cannot choose. As to skinks, I haven't tried them yet. The blow pipes seem good, but multiple shots means -1 to hit. I think they are going to be very innacurate. Both are probably viable options.