AoS My First AoS Army

I'll drop my thoughts here on saurus knights, don't bother, get your eye in with some simpler units - saurus knights are a pig to play right and if you don't already know how to use the rest of your army i fear you may come a crop-pa.

The main thing to master in AoS is synergy - use your characters to buff your units and each other. a unit of 20x saurus warriors is alright but with a battle standard bearer (gorgeous model) and they are re-rolling hits - skink priest with priestly trappings allows them to re-roll saves. Very quickly you have a rather formidable unit.

Enhance it further with a Slann casting mystic shield to give them +1 to the armour save that you are already re-rolling. That mystic shield cast is at a +1 itself tanks to the battle standard bearer Then back it up with an Engine of the gods for a nasty hammer unit should they get bogged down in combat. The slann also benefits the cosmic engine's roll...

I really could go on - but in essence once you master synergy in a small, simple force, you will then very quickly see how you can further improve this and very quickly you're enemies really WILL tremble before you!!

 

There are some major flaws in your statement here.

Saurus Knights are hard to play right, but when played right they're our most powerful unit bar none. You shouldn't dissuade people from playing Knights, you should make them aware that they're very difficult to play but are very powerful, it's up to the person you're advising to determine their own limits just as much as it is for them to determine their budget, army, or overall playstyle.

The Skink Priest is not a good character for an aggressive army such as a Warrior focused army. Celestial Rites is a powerful ability but it's also the hardest Priest ability to use in the game with only a 50% activation rate, it's not something to rely on. In addition, the Priest is extremely fragile and is prone to being slain before you can really use it, and while you can just summon it back that wastes a very valuable casting that should be used on a more valuable spell.

The Engine of the Gods is similar to the Priest, for a monster it is phenomenally weak in melee and will get absolutely annihilated. The Engine should be used in defensive armies where it can be protected, allowing it to safely unload a tonne of damage without fear of getting killed. If you play it in an aggressive army then it'll have nobody to protect it and will get slain very quickly by any half-decent opponent, and with its high summoning value the odds of you managing to bring it back are low, and it also wastes a casting. A regular Stegadon is a much better alternative to the Engine as the normal Steggie is very melee-focused and has an insanely high Rend which makes it an ideal Line Breaker to smash through defensive lines that are too tough for your Warriors to crack.

Focusing your synergy on making your Warriors durable is not something that should be prioritised, Warriors are cheap troops that can be summoned back very quickly, the focus should instead be on making their attacks more powerful and on buffing the Slann's casting so more can be summoned faster, buffing the defense of a light and aggressive unit forces the Warriors to become something of a jack-of-all-trades, master of none. And the problem there is that when there will always be a better unit than them that they won't be able to crack, their attacks won't be high enough to break defensive lines because you didn't work on their attack synergies, and their defense won't be high enough to survive attacks from a rival aggressive unit that's actually had its primary focus, its ability to deal damage, buffed.

 

True but the problem there is that it may waste precious Rerolls, and even then you'll only have a 50% chance anyway, you just get two shots. It doesn't solve the unreliability of the Rites unless you use Curse of Fates, and that would be much better served on the Slann for the Casting bonus. Plus it doesn't solve the problem of the Priest being an easy target to kill.

Definitely use the Sunblood, yeah. But you should not take the Sunclaw Starhost, that is the opposite of what you should do. The strength of Warriors lies in their numbers, splitting them into three units will prevent any Horde bonuses. Furthermore Warriors are not durable enough to survive extended battles, especially when divided like that as it would allow clever opponents to isolate each unit and pick them off one by one with relative ease. A Rend -1 and an extra attack for your bites is not worth dropping the +1 To Hit and +1 Attack for the Celestite weapons for.

However, if you're fighting Chaos Daemons then the Sunclaw Starhost shifts dramatically, that Damage bonus is brilliant. The Sunclaw Starhost, very similarly to the old Lore of Light (which is quite fitting because of the whole sun thing,) is designed to kill the hell out of Daemons. But against other armies, you'd be better with a single horde.

 

Ok, well that's a fairly comprehensive rebuttal, if I may: I was not trying to say dont go any where near saurus knights - they are a difficult unit to use and if you are learning to play AoS and learning to use seraphon, you'll be better off taking a simple force to learn the rules, before expanding into the more complex/situational warscrolls.

Secondly, I agree with your examples of how best to buff saurus units effectively to maximise their use on the field. My example was merely aiming to try and show how different units can benefit from each other in close proximity to each other. I wouldn't pretend to uphold it as the best combo ever.

So apologies if it was misleading. If I may just add a bit from my own experience; the skink priest and priestly trappings has proved very effective for me and even won me games, I hold it in high regard as a setup.

 

But that's losing out on 20 whole wounds that could be used to keep your Horde bonuses for far longer, which is a massive amount.

 

But the Rend isn't as valuable because it's only small and you have better Renders anyway, like the Sallies. Dropping those two small units into your horde will give you a massive amount of extra survivabilty and ensure you keep your attack and hit bonuses for far longer, which are honestly more valuable than the Rend anyway, and it'll come at practically no sacrifice as other units can fulfil the Rend role better.

 

You also have to remember that if you have 35-40 Warriors in that unit, you only need to lose 5-10 of them to lose your bonus attack, which will cut the amount of hits you deal in half. While losing the Rend in favour of bulking up the unit will only lose you about 16% of the damage you deal, which is absolutely preferable to losing 50% as you would with halved attacks.

 

I have to ask: what makes the Knights harder to play than the warriors? I see a movement difference of 2" in the warscrolls but other than that I am not sure.

On a side note, most of my stuff has arrived and I spent the last two evenings building Skinks. I never realized how small their arms and mold lines really were. It's tough getting old.

Thanks for all of the feedback and info!

 

The major differences are in their value and their strengths. The Warriors are cheap infantry who are cheap to summon, if ten die then you shouldn't care because you can easily summon 20 with little trouble. But Knights are far more valuable, not only do they summon in smaller numbers than the Warriors, but once they die any you summon back will only be half as powerful. This is because of the Knights' strength, which is the ability to cause two Mortal Wounds in addition to the normal wound on the charge for every 6 they roll To Wound, which is amplified by the support of Starseers' rerolls and Curse of Fates. However one of these Mortal Wounds comes from the Firelance Starhost battalion, so summoned Knights don't have that extra Mortal Wound. In addition, due to the fact that they have more wound/points/whatever than Warriors, you'll have fewer of them on the field which means that you'll be controlling far less ground than if you were playing Warriors, making it easier for you to be outmaneuvered.

 

Bainbow:

Thanks for the details on the difference between the troops. I am going to try the 8 Knights that I got in the get started kit. If I have difficulty I will start painting warriors. I did get Skinks because I wanted to paint a unit of them and because I knew what my forces should really be.

Hopefully I can get on the table soon and let you guys know how things go.

Thanks!

 

Honestly if you like the Knight playstyle, don't give up if you have difficulty. Just practice more with them. Nobody starts out as a pro, after all.

Also make sure your Knights have lances, and get any Scar-Veteran (the Scar-Vet on the Cold One may be a better choice, to be honest) and enough knights to make three units so you can field the Firelance Starhost. It's vital for making the knights really work, don't swear them off until you've used the battalion because you won't have had full-power knights until you've used the battalion.

 

Ok, I am seeing terms in several post that I can't seem to figure out. I have the Lizardmen Warscrolls Compendium from the WH site (my friends said this is what I needed). In addition I have downloaded the separate PDF's that are on the web store for the different models that I have ordered.

I can't find reference to Sunclaw Starhost or Firelance Starhost (there was another I think also that I have seen referenced). Am I missing a book or information about these formations? Is there a post that will explain them better?

Sorry guys but my noob-ness is showing here. I'm trying to do this right but I think I am missing some vital information/knowledge.

Thanks!

 

Oh, don't worry about it. The battalions come with books like Battletomes and what-not, they should be easy to get hold of even if you don't own a Battletome (the Battletomes' real draw, I think, are their lore and world-building.) They're more of the battalions like what you get at the bottom of that PDF.

What the Firelance Starhost does is that if you take a Scar-Veteran and three units of Knights. The Knights can add 3 to their Run and Charge rolls if they're within 10" of their Scar-Veteran, and on the turn that they charge every wound roll of a 6 or higher with their Celestite Weapons causes a Mortal Wound in addition to any normal damage. You may notice that this last Mortal Wound ability is identical to the Blazing Lances ability you get from giving your Knights lances. Well, these two abilities stack, meaning you cause two Mortal Wounds for every wound roll of 6+ when you hit with your lances. It's this combo of Lances and Battalion that gives the Knights their power.

I believe you can purchase the Battalions to your app for cheap if you feel like tossing a bit of money towards supporting the devs, but that's up to whether or not you want to. You don't need to.

 

Well @Sabaton, first go smack your friends. As the Lizardmen Warscrolls Compendium is for the 8th edition models as how they got re-ruled into AoS, most are now updated to the Seraphon status and those you need. What you did good is get all the individual scrolls from the website as these should be the up to date ones. But grab them all.
Also as @Bainbow said, the app holds all warscrolls and for a little payment also the battalion warscrolls. But you really should get the Battletome: Seraphon. All is in there! (If you buy the digital one you get the battalion warscrolls added in the app at no (extra) cost.)

 

Plus the artwork in the Battletome: Seraphon is superb!