True..... it also sounds rather satisfying to charge your CoC in the rear of a lone Bretonnian Damsel. yea that nurgle rot really lowers the performance of your CoC
Depends on how you are using them... on the charge, DE CoK are a bit better, but otherwise Lizard CoR are better, and CoR are better for a character bus due to their higher toughness. Also, in what way is Predatory fight a drawback? What is fleeing from combat in 8th ed that you wouldn't want to pursue? It's also not hard to keep a skink within 6 inches, even one on foot. Regardless, I doubt you will see much of either unit, considering how much better other options in the books are (Executioners and TG).
- Chaff - a cheap unit fleeing into dangerous terrain - a cheap unit you dont want to follow as it would mean death by counter-charge next turn - a unit that youd rather want to take out with your flyers to keep a good position - Great eagle/any flying unit that uses the moveblock+angle trick to get your expensive bus running of the road. Why would I want to follow a ..what...50pts flying eagle when my opponents High Mage is in front of my nose soiling himself?
When does a Great Eagle actually survive combat? Most of the time they just die. More importantly, why bother charging it if you are worried about it? Poisoned shooting or a magic missile will deal with it just fine. If you are letting chaff and cheap units block you with the amount of poisoned shooting and magic we have available with Lizards, either you are doing something wrong, or there is something threatening enough in your opponents list that you should be avoiding combat as much as possible, or they have superior shooting and targeted your skinks before you could kill their chaff. One of the great things about Lizards is that there is very little frenzy in the army, so we would rarely, if ever be forced to charge something, and Skinks are possibly the best chaff/chaff killing unit in the game. The only times Lizardmen lose in the chaff war is when the other player's chaff is knights, units with template attacks, chariots, or when they are using long ranged shooting in the place of chaff, and most of those options require a much larger points expenditure than Skinks to be as effective. I would suggest attaching a skink priest to the side of your Temple Guard, where it will be in between that and another Saurus unit. For CoC, you may as well mount a skink chief on a Ripper or Terradon, or give a priest the cloak of Feathers and fly it behind them.
I like how you end up answering yourself ^^ also this: There IS situations where it can become a pain, a costly pain. Ive had my Templeguard anvil a unit and unexpectedly break them first round of combat. This made my TG bunker + Slann run so far forward that they got in a very unattractive position which set them up for two flank charges. The only reason that DIDNT cost me the game was because on flank fail-charged miserably and got Steg'ed through next turn, but you opponents bad luck hardly make it up for inconvenience of PF. though its not hard to solve and straight forward to do as you suggest it cant NOT be called a drawback that Saurus warriors and krox' now come with a forced Skink tax.
First quote: Should have the first "it" changed to "cheap chaff" and the second "it" to "them" for clarity. On the second: Why did you not have a skink priest attached to the temple guard? It clips onto the side, which keeps it out of combat if you are wider than the opponent, and it still gets "look out sir" rolls because the troop type is the same. I've been using a list nearly identical to the one I used with the last book, and PF hasn't been an issue for me, (and wouldn't have been if the same rule applied in the last book) and I only run a single skink priest. The most skinks that you could need would be 2, unless you have other problems with the list, and if you feel you need more than 1, it will allow you to take the Cube in addition to a dispel scroll (assuming you aren't taking one of them on the Slann). Or a chief on a Terradon, which can double as a warmachine hunter. The only time I see PF being a major issue is if you are running an army with multiple Saurus Units, Temple guard, and Kroxigors, and if you are doing so, then you pobably don't have enough skinks to shoot out chaff, which means that the list would have an issue in it's design in the first place that is simply made more noticeable by PF.
we must play very different then. The only time I bring a priest is when my Slann needs something else than a scroll, especially now that we got acces to HM and WD. Priests have never been much more than a pointdrop to me, if its my playstyle or lack of skill, dont know, ive just never come across a moment where the priest was needed..besides once or twice as arcane vassal due to stupid positioning on my part. this would be a good reason, its just that I play under ETC which limits: Cube/Scroll/Slann, maximum of 2 -.- but lets get back on topic, this is not a PF debate.
ETC tends to go way too heavy handed on comp... Where I am we are playing practically uncomped and the game is actually well balanced. I would guess the nerfs to Skrox units hurt the most under ETC, where the points limitations on units hurt Saurus and temple guard. The biggest issue with ETC is that it tries to force 8th edition to become 7th edition, which is unreasonable considering how the rules were written and the magic involved. It's why they are having to comp Death and Light magic, which in uncomped environments are fine, and light, if anything, is a sub-par choice for most of the armies that are taking it in ETC. As for CoR, they should be better under ETC comp, assuming you have the skink there, but if you aren't running any skink heroes, you are likely to run into some problems with them, and in general, other options are going to be more effective. Bastiladons have the Solar Beam, which is going to be better for clearing out Chaff than CoR, and Stegadons are going to do more damage and last longer in combat. That said, our CoR are not significantly worse than DE CoK, if at all, because theirs are T3 vs ours at T4, and with the higher base attacks, ours will be more relevant in combat even when not charging.