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7th Ed. Lizardmen vs. Dwarves, War Journal

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Yesterday I played my first game of Warhammer Fantasy, I was a little disspointed in myself for making three rookie mistakes, beyond that things were ok. The game tied in a Draw.

1250 points

Dwarves ( Doing this from Memory)

1 Thane with Gear (I never found out what)
---20 Long Beards with Thane

20 Man Long Beard Regiment

20 Man Iron Breaker Regiment

10 Man Thunderer Unit

10 Man Thunderer Unit

2 Bolt Throwers

1 Organ Gun

Lizardmen

1 Scar Veteran with Great Weapon, Spawning of Sotek and Aura of Quetzl
----16 Man Saurus Warrior Regiment with Scar Vet.

16 Man Regiment of Sauarus Warriors

1 Skink Priest with 2 Power stones and level upgrade
----12 Man Skink Screen for Saurus Regiment with Scar Vet

1 Skink Priest with two Power Stones and level upgrade
-----12 Man Skink Screen for Saurus Regiment

4 Saurus Calvary (ultimately a waste, Rookie Mistake to field them but I needed the points....)

9 Chameleon Skinks ( Would have been amazing if I hadn't screwed up by making a stupid mistake)

This was the first game of Fantasy either one of us had ever played. With my opponent the game began with scenery, we cleared a board and started placing our respective pieces. We ended up with five pieces of Scenery. A large part of his strategy is to clear the board before each game and make damn sure some hills go down so he can put his artillery one them and fire over my skink screens. I bit the bullet on this one and let it go back and forth for a few turns so the board wasn't so boring. Needless to say what we ended up with was one side with two tiny hills on either board edge with a forest in the middle. The other side had this huge flat plateu with a big forest next to it. I won the roll of for deployment so I claimed the side with the huge flat plateu hoping he wouldn't be able to fit all his artillary on one hill. It ended up paying off. I suspect that our games will eventually be watered down to two piece of scenery which will probably be a hill with a forest next to it every damn game, or if I go first then a hill with a forest on one side and a forest on the other.

Deployment ended up with my forces on one edge of the table, with the exception of my calvary which I through on the opposite side to throw him off and by some slick hand gestures on my part (maybe). He ended up with 10 Thudnrers and a Long Beard Squad on the wrong side of his deployment zone, 2 Bolt Throwers and 10 Tunderers on a hill, and the rest in front of that hill. 10 Thunderers and 20 Long beards spent four turns marching across the table to get to the fight, which was good. And my Chameleon Skinks went into the forest next to the bulk of his force.

I can tell right now that my friend isn't going to give me an inch, not even with terrain or deployment, he's actually considering making in his own hills so he can bring them in and field his artillary on them. Let that soak in for a moment....

TURN ONE( I won this roll too)
LIZARDS
The Saurus blocks move forward with the skinks in front of them to shield any organ gun shots. One of my priests rolls double ones and explodes. The other one rolls low and is dispelled by the Dwarves. My Chamelion Skinks kill a couple long beards from his command unit.

DWARVES
I lose three skinks to the organ gun and Two Saurus from each unit from Missile fire.

TURN TWO
LIZARDS
Repeat of Turn one, Dwarf Command is getting shot up, it's now a rank lighter. My remaing priest burns a power stone and almost kills himself.

DWARVES
Repeat of Turn one, I lose a few more Skinks and Saurus. The Squads on the far edge of the table havn't moved at all.

TURN THREE (Finally something Interesting, sort of)
LIZARDS
I move my forces forward again, putting my skinks in his assault range. I move my saurus Calvary toward the rest of my army. My skinks kill two or three more dwarves from the command squad and no Iron Breakers. The plan is to have them flee and counter assault when his forces don't connect with anything. Dwarf Command loses most of another rank to Chamelion Skinks. My priest tries to get off a spell but is dispelled by the Dwarves ( This is one priest casting four power dice).

DWARVES
The Iron Breakers and the Command Squad assault my skinks. I fall back and they connect with nothing. Woo hoo! I lose more guys to missile fire. His organ gun kills two Chamelion Skinks. His lone Thunderers and Long Beards come off of their hill and move towards the battle but are still like 18 inches away. One Saurus Unit is below half strength and the other is at about 75%. Skink squads are at roughly 60% each.

TURN FOUR
LIZARDS
Both Skink Units rally using the LD of the general. My command Squad assaults his command squad, my weak Saurus unit goes after his Iron Breakers. My Saurus Calvary flanks his command squad. The Chamelion Skinks fire into his Organ Gun and kill one crewmember.

His Dwarven Thane challenges my Scar Veteran and the Vertan kills him, the Saurus Calvary take two casualties and kill one dwarf. Go figure. The Saurus kill thre more Dwarves. My weak Saurus unit don't do jack to the Iron Breakers and take a few casualties. The Dwarves run away, I overrun them and advance into that damn organ gun and proceed to kill all the crewmembers. My priest almost deals another wound to himself when he uses his last power stone.

DWARVES
He whittles down my Skink Squads a little more and the lone Sqaud of Longbeards begins taking fire from my Chameleon Skinks, I kill five in one round which is awsome. He loses another two from my other Skink Squad who's priest exploded. The Iron Breakers kill some more Saurus and I kill one of them.

TURN FIVE
LIZARDS
My Command Regiment hits his gunline and wipes out a bolt thrower, sweeps into another bolt thrower and kill all of them too. The stand and hold options take out a rank of Saurus from my command unit. That leaves 10 Thunderers on the hill, we're next to one another though so they can't shoot or charge me and I can't do jack to them. My Saurus are killed down to one guy who runs away from the Iron Breakers. Chamelion and regular skink fire whittles down the lone long beards to about six guys. I forgot about my Wizard that round. (There's one of my rookie mistakes.)

DWARVES
I lose more skinks to missile fire, both squads are now under 40%. His lone longbeards move closer to the fight and lose noone to skink fire. His Iron Breakers turn around.

TURN SIX
LIZARDS
My Command Regiment turns around. My lone saurus runs off the table. My remaing two Saurus Calvary charge into the long beards and get butchered. My skink priest is dispelled.

DWARVES
The priestless skink squad is wiped out by the lone handgunners who have been shooting at them. The Iron Breakers and the Lone Longbeards charge my command sqaud and I kill four Iron Breakers with my Scar Vet and one warrior with the Saurus. I lose two Saurus, the command squad is now at like 40%. The Warrios run, the Iron Breakers don't. One handgunner squad kills my remaining skinks down to two guys and the priest. Who manages to make a Leadership check.

TURN SEVEN (we kept playing out of a need for closure)
LIZARDS
My Skinks move back into the forest to avoid being killed and my Scar Vet kills three more Iron Breakers, the Iron Breakers deal no wounds but both sides stay. My priest gets dispelled by the dwarves again. The Chameleon Skinks stay where they are and whiff.

DWARVES
Both Thudnerers stay where they are and do nothing. The Iron Breakers are killed down to a man and the Saurus are down to just over a single rank. The one remaining rank of Lone Longbeards goes into the forest after my skinks but comes up short.

TURN EIGHT(LAST TURN)
LIZARDS
My Skinks stay in the woods, so they don't get wiped out by the two squads of Dwarven Thunderers that are waiting for them to try something. The Command Squad Turns toward one thunderer unit. I forget to move my Chameleon Skinks farther into the woods because I"m focused on the damn Iron Breakers and the fact the store is closing. My priest is dispelled again. I gave up on trying to cast Comet of Cassendora and am just going for second sign at this point, anything to make him do something.

DWARVES
His single Iron Breaker rallies. The Thunderers whiff and kill a single Saurus, one rank left. His one rank of long beards assault and butcher my Chamelion Skinks, I forgot to move them in my turn, stupid rookie mistake.
---End of Game

Last Men Standing
LIZARDS
Scar Veteran with one rank of Saurus.
Level 2 Priest with 3 skinks.
Roughly 375 point of Lizards left.


DWARVES
Twenty Thunderers.
1 Iron Breaker
5 Longbeards.
Roughly 375 points is what I was told.

End Result = DRAW


We didn't tally up extra Victory Points for capture regiments, slain generals or bouard corners. I did a once over and I think it still would have been pretty even. On the upside, I killed his Thane which felt really good.

CLOSING THOUGHTS
GOOD THINGS
The Lizardmen were making breakchecks all game I didn't think they would, especially the skinks being so close to the general, that was great. The Chamelion Skinks did amazing, way better than I expected, except when I forgot to move them. The normal Skinks have amazing staying power, I can only imagine how they last when the guys shooting them don't have a bs of 4. The Saurus were amazing, enough said. The Scar Vet is a death machine, no other way to say it. He broke two units and killed three war machines almost by himself with the saurus just soaking up all the hits.

BAD THINGS
My screw ups, the Calvary were a waste of 150 points. I let the Chameleons die. The priests were a total waste of points but I forgot about one of them for a round or so.


I lost over half a unit to artillary and I would have lost more if I hadn't tricked him in his deployment, the only reason it wasn't a massacre was the lost Thunderers and Long Bears units. The Iron Breakers will not go down to normal saurus, I need something that hits harder. Although two ranks of Saurus did hold them up for several turns. I need to find a counter for those damn hills, next time it will be more artillery and he'll learn to use bigger hills in terrain deployment.
 
Just some notes on the dwarves: The dwarf player would have only been able to take one unit of Longbeards as you require a unit of warriors for every unit of Longbeards.

Also a note for fighting Dwarves don't rely on fear to destroy them unless you outnumber them they are probably not going to run due to their high leadership.

Now a note on your list:

You need to take at least 5 cold one riders as that is their minimum unit size, and you need at least minimum. Also remeber for outnumbering each cold ones count as 2, so a unit of 5 cold ones is the same as 10 foot troups. Which can help in combat res. Don't overlook cold one riders they are a power unit, especially with heroes in the front rank.

Some other notes on your tactics. Make sure against dwarven armies especially that you use your skinks to destroy the artillary.
 
Nice battle report. Also for the next time you play him, Thunderers are only BS 3 (hitting on 4's) but there Dwarven Handgun special rule gives them a +1 to hit (so 3's normally). But don't forget to measure for long range and the -1 for Skirmishers (your Skink screens).

It seems like his shooting was doing really well.
 
Thanks for the report. Chameleon skinks are awesome, esp in a unit of 9, good work! :)
 
Skinks to destory his artillary? They really don't do much in hand to hand against dwarves and shooting against war machines isn't good. This is how we treated my poison attacks against his war machines. 5 Poison attacks hit. Then I take those attacks and allocate between the crew and the machine. Every 1-2 goes to a crewmember, every 3-6 goes to the machine. Poison attacks against the machine don't do anything and with the dwarves heavy armor they saved more often than not against the blowguns. Are you saying I should pile on the blowgun shots and hope enough get allocated to the crew?
 
Oh and I think I found the hill counter, even though I can only use it in a 2000 point game. Whatever lore/spell combination makes the hills throw rocks around, ... that is going to sodomize his aritillary, on top of that he sets his whole damn army up around hills...I can't wait. I figure I can get a 2nd generation Slann to take 5 spells, that gives me a pretty good chance of getting the one I need, and even if I don't there are a few other spells in that set that will help me with the missile fire. I think it's Lore of Life, or Lore of Nature. Considering his deployment strategies I think it will be more useful than Lore of Metal. Can't remember which one.
 
(A) artillery crews do not have heavy armor

(B) yeah, I would generally agree that missile fire is not going to be terribly effective against the warmachines as one is already relying upon an unlikely roll; yet another condition will cause very few casualties. Against dwarves, unless there is a master engineer in the unit, I find that a JSoD does well enough.


(C) Yeah, so I just saw your new post. I would strongly suggest lore of life, especially as in addition to the rock spell you could get rain lord or howler wind (one which is great for mitigating cannons, the other just good enough to make handguns and grapeshot of all varieties useless). Metal also works wonders (I would suggest shadow as well, but there are only 2 spells that would prove useful)

For dwarves, a great way to counteract the cheesy shooty list is to place a slann behind a wood, and field a bunch of fast units such as terries and krox and skinks as much behind cover as possible. Using skink priests for LOS, simply use metal and life spells to force the enemy to come to you. If he doesnt come towards you, sucks for him, he should have fielded a more balanced army. If he does come forward, have units pounce on his units only when they are depleted. Position your army so that you can move quickly out on the 5-6 turn to destroy his warmachines once unattended with terries or JSoD. Although you are essentially playing with cheese in order to beat cheese, hopefully your game will encourage your opponent to field more flexible armies. My dwarf opponents have even started fielding gyros and rangers :jawdrop: .
 
Thanks for the tips Toa. I'm going to buy a Dwarven Codex. As far as cheese vs. cheese goes, yeah, he's using every single advantage that he can, like I said the guy is making is own hills like step pyramids and surrounding them with rocks trying to get a ring of "very difficult or impassible terrain" so I can't get up the hills to get at his artillary. He's using every advantage he can get so I"m going to have to do the same. That being said both him and I made mistakes in the rules the first game. I forgot that a great weapon always strikes last for two turns. He used a "stand and shoot" option to cut my command unit to pieces with his war machines as I charged them, I think I read last night war machines can't "stand and shoot". I also suspect there were one to two rounds of shooting that his Thunderers were hitting my skinks on a 4+ instead of a 5+.

I havn't fielded a JSOD against him yet. So think next game I"m going to assult a cheap JSOD out of a saurus regiment and into his war machines. Plus I"m nixing the Skink Priests, I just don't think their worth the points, if I'd had another Saurus Regiment on the board last game I'd have wiped him. And some Salamanders would be nice too.... I just can't bring myself to buy three for 72 bucks.

Thanks again for the advice people.
 
You are correct, no war machines can Stand and Shoot.. only his Thunderers, and even then YOU have to be more than half your Charge distance away.. and he's still at -1 to hit. Also, his Thunderers can't Stand and Shoot if you charge something else, like a war machine.

If terrain is such a big problem why don't you guys randomise? My club still does it that way. D3 + 2 pieces of terrain, then we use the lists in the 6th ed BRB.. rolling 2d6 for each piece.. then 7d6 and direction to place each piece. Often makes terrain very fair as dice determine what you get, not another player, etc.
 
Yeah, just as Sepulcher said, you should randomize terrain for every game. Not only should you randomize what makes it onto the board, but you should also use the 7th ed. manner of randomizing where the terrain is placed. Generally, if you are just starting you might not be able to randomize everything that makes it onto the board, so until then the randomized placement should ensure that your opponent does not make the game into a rout. If he refuses all of these things, just try to choose the board edge which will deny him the best vantage points.


As far as the war machine stand-and-shoot goes, the war machine itself cannot do anything, although engineers/master engineers with ranged weapons can stand-and-shoot.

If you really want to go all out on taking out your opponents shooting, it might be useful to replace one of the dropped skink priests with a FSoD (flying skink of doom). In essence, this is a skink chief with a cloak of feathers, blessing of sotek, and either two hand weapons or a sword of might (against dwarves I would suggest a sword of might for 3+ wounding). Although weaker than a JSoD, a FSoD will be able to fly over his ranked units into war machines (and a combination of the two is very useful).

Before investing in Salamanders, terredons might be a better investment, as Salamanders are more useful as a reactionary unit, while the terries can complete hit and runs on thunderer units or go straight for war machines.

P.S. Saurus :smug: :smug: :smug:
 
I meant to put this in here, I didn't mean to make a new topic, my mistake. I'm assuming the mods can just delete new one?

LIZARDMEN VS. DWARVES 1500 POINTS

LIZARDS LIST 1500 POINTS

2 Twenty Man Saurus Units with full Command
----1 Scar Veteran with Spawning of Itzle (armor), Spawning of Sotek, a Great Weapon, Light Armor and Aura of Quetzle.


2 Twenty Four Man Skink Skirmisher Units

1 Eight Man Saurus Cavalry unit with Full Command. (These models are awsome).

1 Skink Chief with Blessing of Sotek and Dagger of Sotek.


DWARVEN LIST 1500 POINTS

4 Bolt Throwers with Engineers

1 Organ Gun with Full Crew

2 10 Man Thunderer Units

1 Thirty Man Dwarven Warrior Unit
---Thane with first strike rune and 1+ armor save rune.

1 20 Man Iron Breaker Unit


Thanks again for the advice guys, I"ll read over the terrain rules again and see about generating it. Here's a brief synopsis of my second game with my friend, I would say it's not worth mentioning accept I did learn something important, I think. There were two things that happened in this game that led to it being a total disaster for me. Deployment and terrain. It was the kind of board where everything is built into the table, with the terrain placement rules.

The Board in this game was great for him. The whole damn thing was lined by hills and there was a big hill in the middle. I set up with the intention of being able to use that huge hill to block his line of site, thinking one hill would block me from what's on top of another hill. Apparenlty this is not the case, an employee told us that if he can see my units then his hill is higher and he can shoot over. Considering all of his artillary was on a huge hill in the corner I knew I was toast.

Deployment was bad for too. I thought he was deploying in the middle of the table but the Dwarves were just out of the case "sitting there", in their movement trays. Since were were rushed for time we skipped the hit by hit deployment and threw our stuff out, big mistake for me. I'll never do that again. I ended up catty corner to his army with the useless hill in between us, which at the time I didn't know was useless.

So the first turn we get into an argument about line of sight, the store staff says the rules support him. For the next Six turns I marched my army towards his little cluster of Dwarves crammed onto the corner in the far side of the board, he shot the crap out of me, apparently everything was in line of sight every turn. That would have been the whole game, half my guys dead from shooting without one Dwarf down. We played for nine turns though so it wasn't a total waste of an evening. Eventually I got into combat with less than two ranks of Saurus in both units (my only remaining troops) and the store closed.

Deployment, Board and the rules governing Terrain. There's a big part of me that doesn't look at this as a loss because I don't feel like we even played. All I did was move my Lizards into the teeth of his artillary for six rounds, shrug. Ok, duh, I can't win that. I knew the game was over by the end of turn one. Next game we're rolling for board choice, we're deploying per the rules and we're putting down terrain per the rules. Oh and he has those hills now, there is no rule governing the "size" of the terrain, so he's got four hills. Each is about Seven inches deep, two tiered, and 18 inches long. I think his goal is to make it impossible for me to place terrain once he puts those things down.

WHAT WAS GOOD?
Even though I didn't get my Scar Vet into combat with his Thane, I almost killed him with regular Saurus, I feel confident my Scar Vet can consistently kill his Thane. I learned the best thing to do against his Dwarves is just suck it up and get as close as possible, I'll never try to hide behind anything again without some kind of magic support.

I never failed one break check, Lizardmen are tough and dependable, if they can withstand the punishment from that game then I"m going to start relying on it like crazy. Next game I"ll have the models I want to field a JSOD to take out his artillary and I won't make the mistake of deployment. Maybe even hide some Skink Chiefs in big Skink units since Skirmishers can charge around R&F units.
 
Yeah, fixed terrain boards are rather lame, as are many of the GW staff. Read up on the terrain section/line of sight section in the big red book

P.S. You should also look at your army build. Its got 2 big easy to shoot point sinks, and your skink units are way to unwieldy. If your tired of getting trounced by those war machines, take a JSoD and a FSoD instead of your two current builds.
 
Thanks Toa, I'm going to try them out next time, I was thinking about dropping the skink squads down to 15 man a piece. And I don't see me taking calvary next time but it's hard to tell, espcially since my positioning was so bad.
 
Yeah, well the problem with Saurus cavalry is that they suffer specifically against dwarf and empire shooting compared to other armies. Their T4 is mitigated by the S 4 shooting, and the armor piercing means that our 3+ save becomes even more pronounced. I wouldnt necesarily cut them out completely, but perhaps maintain them as a bare-bones 5 Saurus regiment, for purely flanking use (and as a missile screener). Until you get units like terries, I would suggest simply breaking your units into smaller pieces so that there are more targets which your opponent must deal with (you generally wont have to worry about panic).
 
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