I've just recently started playing Lizardmen and picked up a lord on a carnosaur model. (I have a slann coming from ebay hopefully to change it up). I really love the chompy guy (he's eaten pretty much anything i've thrown him at, though a lot of it is from flank charges), but find he's a bit of a target once you're in combat. They're probably not going to knock the guy off the back with his re-rolllable 0+ armor + 4+ ward, but the carnosaur has the same T but less armor. Anybody have any hints on how to keep him alive?
He said in combat though.. There isn't really anything you can do there, if you keep hitting the flank there should be minimal attacks back so minimal damage coming your way. Thats really all you can do; pick your targets and/or try to kill them before they can attack. Harder with stepping up rules.
That would be rerollable 1+ since you never can go below that in 8th other than that you can´t do much more than to put him on a flank and hope for the best
Depending on the size of game, a slaan providing life buffs and healing wounds can really keep the carnie in play (mind you, that is likely 3.5K+ size army so the opposing side is likely to have a ton of shooting). For smaller games where the carnie lord is the general, about the only thing I have ever found to keep him alive once he is in combat is to try and use supporting skink priests with harmonic convergence to make the enemy -1 to hit or the heavens spell that forces your opponent to re-roll all 6s to hit and to wound.
The thought occurs to me.. Use target priority to your advantage. Throw him in at the front of a unit with one of your own units attacking, a double charge just like what you do with stegadons and chariots. Unless they have great weapons, they are going to look at the saurus/skinks, look at the great big carnosaur, and decide they will get much better combat res out of attacking the unit. Additionally, with your unit in the way, your carnosaur will probably only be contacting 1 model or so.