ive been getting a bit bored with saurus lately, so i've been looking at ranked skink units, and im actually suprised, a unit of 16 skinks and 2 krok only costs 196 points with a drum, has a 6 skink frontage and both krox in combat and 3 ranks against a t3 ws3 s3 sv4+ (human)ranked unit with banner and champ assuming the lizards charge, they get a whopping 7.6 combat res against the (humans) who only managed 3.8 off the charge -4 to the humans leadership isnt bad at all a unit of 15 saurus with full command is 195 points has a 5 saurus frontage and 2 ranks also against a human target they only manage a 5.6 combat res against humans, not to bad, but the humans manage a 4.22, the lizards only manage to force a -1.3 on the humans, suprising no? i realise that against shooting attacks the saurus have it in the bag, double the toughness and 1+ better save, but they are twice as expensive (per person) as the skinks. thoughts?
Skinks+krox are better on the first round against poor troops. Spear saurus will be better on every subsequent round. Skinks+krox will comparatively fail against even medium-power troops, let alone any elite. Spear saurus can hold off chaos warriors head-on...
obviously yes, but that makes the saurus more expensive, and they still struggle against generic warriors, let alone khornate with 2 hand weapons. besides, skinks arnt so bad against generic warriors, on the charge they only loose by 2! obviously saurus with spears are better defensivly, but the skinks can move faster and have an (admittidly bad) ranged attack also, against human standard troops, the skinks remain effective for multiple rounds of combat
ilnar: Ranged attack? In most situations you'll be fielding them 5-6 in each rank, so that's only 5-6 javelins. Trying wounding with that. Yes, against humans they are not to bad but I never fight humans anymore. Most armies out there are elite armies, for example, Choas Mortals, H.Elves, D.Elves, Daemons, etc. It's fine if you're stilling running skinks and krox together, yeah they look cool and are very fluffy, but they don't give you points back in the game. I think the best way to use them is to keep them on the sides as flank guarders. *** This topic has been talked about way to much.
5-6 javs is anouther wound against most targets. but my point is, they outperformed a saurus block of equal points value. i find this rather amusing
I would have to think skinks alone would do better in long term battles then with krox just because of all the poisen attacks they can trow(or blow) at the enemy...............
Let me start by saying I am not picking on saurus units here. I have also earned the nickname of the 'Ultimate yellow bellied skink'. I always run skink cohorts in my armies (no saurus). As most folks here know, my core competency list has 4 of the 16 x 2 skrox units which was mentioned earlier in the thread, along with a smaller unit. They do need to be supported, which I will do with a variety of terradons, sallies, stegs, EotG's , etc. With this kind of suppourt, they can be very nasty. I play against demons all the time, and they will actually hold their own. First, the fear causing helps a lot, since they won't run away. They also have lots of static combat rez, with banners, musicians, ranks, etc. The thing that most everyone whom I play fears about these units is their speed. I call them my 'foot cavalry'. They deliver a lot of fear-causing, high strength hi C.Rez attacks at the highest rate of speed for infantry. In fact, I have outflanked many cavalry units with them (I will post some battle pics of this soon). I have had players react in horror as they speed around the board, hitting stuff that was march blocked or softened up by fly-overs from my terradons, or burning alignment from the EotG's. Against demons, the DoC have such high strength and WS that it is mostly wasted on little skinks, which they always go after. They would do the same to most human units anyway. That leaves the kroxigors to hopefully do enough to equalize the combats. Remember, this is with the demon units losing at least 1 rank to a variety of ranged stuff. If my skinks do manage to hit them, the save is not better than the 5+ ward that they get against the ST6 attacks. Having a whole army that moves at such a speed makes things difficult for the opponent, since they cannot count on slow saurus units lagging behind, etc. I will say again that things can and do go wrong with this type of army, but it is never boring!
As a core centre for an army, you will never convince me that skinks are better than saurus. Your example was against humans, what charging empire troops? Consider the possible detachment that may hit your flank. Definitely the skinks are useful, and their speed is impressive, as well as the immunity to fear and importantly causing fear checks for things like chariots and the like charging them, but they can't hold up against most of the centre line troops. Even if you compare them to my block of 20 spear elves which are only a few points more than the skinks IIRC. You are slightly faster, so you charge, I have ASF so I hit first with 15 (I don't take unit champs unless there is a character, and that is an unfair fight) attacks and kill 6 or so skinks. Already you pretty much can't win. On the other hand, those 15 s3 attacks against the high toughness decently armoured saurus are only going to do a couple of wounds and leave a lot to fight back. Certainly the skink unit is far from useless, but it is more of a support thing than anything. And even in your example against the humans, the skinks may have been a bit better off but the saurus still won. And in a longer combat, when the saurus spears can come into play and their toughness leaves a lot more alive than the skinks, well they are better.
My example was not skink vs Humans. I was just saying how demons wipe out humans and elves quite easily. Is was tryiong to give an example of how high WS, high strength units will kill other things nearly as easily as skinks. I fought against a few DE and HE armies with my core competency list, and did very well. I knew I should not have gotten into this, since things can be misunderstood too easily without the benefit of seeing it in person. That is why I began and ended by saying that the skink units need the suppourt of the other elements of the army. I am not charging undamaged elf units. Some of those units have already lost half their number to burning alignment, rocks, etc. Also, those elves have to do leadership tests just to take the charges. If the elf player goes after the skinks, the kroxigors have a good chance of making up the combat resolution, since the elf units have lost at least one rank, meaning that they will now be outnumbered. I have been using this army since May, and have had good results against 7 different races. Again, I am not saying that everyone should abandon thier saurus units. This is what works for me, and one reason it does is that nobody else runs this sort of army. I like to hold up enemy units for one turn with the skinks and have my salamanders overshoot into the combat to help out for the next round, etc., and other wild things like that. I don't mean to make anybody upset.
Ah I did not mean your example, I meant the original poster's which was humans vs skinks then vs saurus. I did not dispute anything in your post because it all made sense to me. Fear not offending people, its just a discussion. You are very diplomatic with your replies, and respect other people's own opinions, with that attitude you will not offend.
Ahh, that is a relief I have seen so many wile back n' forths on various forum pages that go horribly wrong. If I could get the battle pictures that I took to be big enough here I think people will enjoy them and get a lot out of them. I have not found the magic formula for that yet! I have counters for every type of action that each unit takes, including 'move' counters that show which way the units moved. It creates a pre-made battle report like a White Dwarf. Now it is back to painting!
Hmm wow that does sound like an impressive way to make a battle report. Sammy did put size restrictions on pictures here, if that is too small for what you need just put the urls and people can click on them. We get heavily into debates here, but very rarely does it deteriorate into flaming and even then it seems to get calmed down and resolved very quickly, before I can even come in and put my foot down. Shout out your opinion!
High elf spearmen 5 wide and 4 deep kill a mean of 4.444 skinks. the remaining skinks kill .25 elves The kroxigor kill 2.5 elves. the elves win by 1.75 on kills, so if he does take out a rank to give you an extra rank and an outnumber the skinks would win by .25, not bad. Honestly, they don't really need to charge the high elf spearmen, they can just move up and throw sticks and kill 1.333 guys if they are 6 wide. The elves are worse on the charge anyway, and have to check for fear. Which... makes that above number change ...there is a 28% chance that they'll fail that leadership 8 roll and be hitting on 6's, making them kill 4 times fewer skinks. hitting on 6's they would kill 1.111 skinks the skinks then kill .815 elves, and hte krox still beans 2.5 so the skinkxigor are up by 2.2 in that scenario. (.28 * -2.2) + (.72 * 1.75) so on average the elves win by about .644 points. (including the odds of failing fear) Skinks will typically outnumber for the win. What about against vanilla warriors with shields that are 5 wide? .11111 kills for skinks 1.66667 kills for the kroxigor remaining warriors get 3.446 kills back against the skinks. skinks are down by 1.668 kills, actually better then fighting the high elves. if they hit on sixes then.... the warriors get .86 kills. the skinks win by .91 if they scare the warriors, same chance of failing so same formula (.28 * -.91) + (.72 * 1.668) .946 is how much the warriors win by on average, again, all you gotta do is outnumber to make this an even bet. saurus on the charge on kill .833 chaos warriors, while losing 2.07 saurus in retaliation, putting them down by 1.24. The warriors kill 2.4445 on the charge, and take 1.259 from the spears back. They still win by 1.18, the skinks blocks are generally better against the warriors of chaos, and it is easier to outnumber them.
mad right,,, yes saurus are awsome defensivly or in later rounds of combat IF you give them spears which makes them even less effective for the first round of combat. skinks, suprisingly are a tough nut on the charge, and faster i have no intention of losing my saurus blocks for them. but i will be taking a block or two somewhere
It's so nice to read that it's not only me who have thought a great deal about the skrox units. haven't tried em out yet but gonna do it this weekend. nice to here some reports where they do well, i've seen a lot of people sating they just aren't worth it. Now the fluff and this topic made me take 2 of these units from now on...
Most people who says stuff isn't worth it never try running those things more then maybe once or twice, you have to gain proficiency with the use of a unit to make it useful. Look at me, I don't own any terradons, and I'm the first to point out their flaws, I have a friend who runs 6 and shows me a whole new way to run those guys.
Hmm thats a good idea Donkey, move the skinks up into the face of the spearmen and shoot them then let them charge. I wonder if that is a viable tactic for them all the time not just against the elves that asf anyway. I mean if you knock off a number to reduce the rank, in stats we should use full ranks because you never know what could happen. The skinks could get shot and with t2 die a lot easier. Of course, there are usually more important things to shoot at than skinks. I am almost tempted to add this thread to the index. Or maybe merge it with the current skink cohort thread?
I know that something like this usually goes in battle reports, but I had been talking about my upcomng C.Comp game against demons in this thread... I have a few fun pictures. It was a 2250 core competency game (900 points of core minimum) vs demons. I had the usual four 16 x 2 blocks of skink/kroxigor, along with the 2 engines and the terradons. A slight change was made to put ni 2 skink skirmish units. I ended up at 1006 points of core. Both engines ran away quite unexpectedly from combats on turn 2, one was run down. For the game, the demons made nearly 50% of the darn ward saves. Burning alignment ranges were 2,4, and 6 inches before they were both gone. No casualties from those. He had a tooled up demon prince (410 points), two 20 bloodletter blocks, a bigger demonette block with herald & magic banner. There was a 15 plaguebearer unit with herald, 4 flamers, and 2 beast of nurgle (which we call pickles) The demons killed off 3 skrox units, one engine, and 3/4 points for the other one. I wiped out all but the flamers and plaguebearers, for a 395 point victory. The skink & kroxigor units were able to kill things in combat, and also helped kill off a unit with shooting. Their speed let me get off some charges which got his whole army hung up in the middle. The ultimate skrox victory was killing the Demon prince, which had overrun into it! He tried to go after the kroxs that time, and whiffed just enough. Either way, he would have died. I have a few images here of the late stages of the game, showing one of his poor bloodletter units being swarmed by half the lizard host!