8th Ed. Protecting your Carnosaur from warmachines?

In 8th edition the Oldblood Carnosaur combo is basically an atom bomb you can toss onto a unit, but warmachines are here to stay..
How would you in a game situation protect your giant dinosaur of death?

Normally I run my Carnosaur Lord like so -

Saurus Oldblood (1#, pts)
1 Saurus Oldblood
1 Carnosaur
1 Sword of Strife
1 Armour of Destiny
1 Dragonbane Gem
1 Potion of Speed

So he has 7 attacks at strength 5, Carnosaur essentially explodes on units, and he has a 1+, 4+, and 2+ if it's flaming.

How do you run your Carnosaur Lord to protect from warmachines?

I usually fly him up to the battle line and get into combat as quickly as possible and hide behind trees etc for modifiers.

Edited. Do NOT post individual points cost for units/items. In addition, do NOT post what items/rules do. It's against (forum) regulations. Thanks.

 

you can drop the 4+ ward armor and the 2+ ward vs fire and give him the 4+ ward talisman and the charmed shield, ths means he will ignore the first canon ball that hits him. the fire ward isnt really that good on him anyway, unless u plan on fighting a bloodthirster (DONT!)

Other than that there isnt much u can do, charmed sheild still wont protect your mount but give a bit more padding against cannons. ultimately any big monsters without regen are going to really suffer against war machines with LOS being almost unrestricted.

lizzys best defense against the onslaught of the gun line is the sig spell from heavens. take 2 or 3 skink shammys and spam this on his war machines.

short of this invest points in terradons and camo skinks and knock his war machines out early in the game and let you carno have free reign.

incidently here is a fun build i made for a carno lord, can only be hit on 6s in combat and has T5 and 1+ save. and still has 6 S 5 attacks. really tasty. good for fighting nasty enemy chars.

Saurus Oldblood (1#, 461 pts)
1 Saurus Oldblood @ 461 pts (General; Hand Weapon; Shield; Scaly Skin)
1 Carnosaur (Causes Terror; Scaly Skin)
1 Fencer's Blades
1 Glittering Scales
1 Aura of Quetzl

 

I'd keep fire ward, since dwarfs will have flaming cannons

 

that loadout right there makes him much more tempting than ever before for me. i play against beastmen primarily, and they don't have warmachines.... so maybe i'll give this a shot at higher point games.

 

Hi, new to the forum and to Warhammer.

Just wondering how this would give an OB a 1+ save in combat when he can't use his shield due to the Fencer's Blades being paired weapons. It looks like it would only be a 3+ AS, but you would have 7 attacks at WS10, STR 5.

Does the Carnisaur add to the OB armor save like a cold one?

 

As i see it he gets a 2+ AS and 6 S5 attacks.

First the armor...
4+ from scaly skin
3+ with glittering scales (it's a light armor)
2+ with carno save (adds 1)

might be missing something though?

5 base attacks and 1 from having paired weapons, does this count while mounted btw?

It is an awesome build though a saurus that can accually hit... and is very hard to hit in return, very nice!

 

Thanks for that. I didn't know that the Carny would give 1 more. Still, a 2+ AS that can only be hit with 6's...

 

The best bet to protect it from warmachines is to adopt the meta of point denial. With how VPs work now, you can't really afford to risk big chunks of easy to shoot points.

Your best bet is to use him in conjunction with chameleon skinks. Hide the carno behind a building or watever, and deploy your skinks in striking range of the big threat war machines. When it's safe, or safe enough to come out, then it's worth it.

Gunning him up the middle and hoping for the best isn't a strategy really.

 

Wow, that build is incredibly amazing. *Tosses my carnosaur build in the trash*

Can't wait to try it out!

 

Actualy if you just run some skinks in front of him as a screen fo a little added protection,
(-1 to shoot or a less accurate template)

 

A screening unit needs to obscure line of sight to the majority of the target for it to get hard cover. A unit of skinks will never provide hard cover for an oldblood carnosaur. And less accurate templates only come from 'indirect fire' where the machine has zero line of sight, which again, a skink unit won't prodive to a carno.

 

oh.. yea

Well at least they would grant soft cover.

 

Soft cover is only hedges, fences and 'soft' terrain, so skinks won't count for that either. It's a large target too, so it's not allowed to gain cover from obstacles which include soft cover stuff like fences, hedges, walls etc.

Long story short, the only things you're going to be able to use as cover for a carno are woods and korxigors. I didn't compare the carno to TG or saurus, so I'm not sure if they are tall enough to cover the majority of it.

 

Carnosaur isn't a large target. It lost that rule in the last book.

 

Wow, I just always assumed.

Either way it's going to have to be a pretty decent sized obstacle class of soft terrain to give it -1, seeing as the model is physically big.

 

No. It's all covered on page 41. Shooting through a unit counts as hard cover when the unit obscures the majority of the target, otherwise, you get nothing. Soft cover is soft terrain only and it mentions what they includes, but units only count for hard cover.

 

Hmmm.....

I'm gonna have to look that one up again...

 

Monstrous mounts do not provide an addition to armour. Isn't there a 5 point item that specifically gives you a save vs. war machines? I don't have my BRB with me.

 

Page 105 has the rule for ridden monsters and armour saves. They do increase your armour save by 1.

The item is the ironcurse icon, its a 6+ ward for you and your unit against warmachines.