So, many of you have probably already seen me on the forums avidly defending a severely underestimated unit in the Lizardmen book... the ranked skink unit with kroxigors or, in short, skrox units. The way I play at least involves a lot of battles on the flanks with my support units duking it out with the enemy support units. We have some awesome choices in this category so normally Lizardmen prevail here and then move on to support the saurus warriors holding the line in the middle. The faster you can get to the flank of whatever is engaging your saurus warriors the better chance you have of winning. Sometimes, that fast moving carnosaur is blocked and held up or that stegadon is tied up in a combat it will take turns to win. The skrox units break those stalemates and help your big hitters to get to the center faster. I can understand how a weaponskill 2, toughenss 2 unit would make many lizardmen players cringe, I really do. But with the advent of salamander tactica, scar vet tactica and others our little skink friends need some representation too. Alright, first off I would like to comment that at 5 points a model, skinks are by far the cheapest troop choice available to a Lizardmen general. I say this because it makes them easier to include as a support unit in an army that is nearing your point limit. They will also be good for chasing down annoying skirmishing units or archers who have little combat res to their name. Okay, so there are four basic set ups for a ranked unit of skinks. 1. 5x2 skinks sssss sssss This is a great screening unit. Really... some magic items cost more than this unit. 50 points will protect your carnosaur, your slann and any other unit you don't want to be shot. This is especially effective against weapons like bolt throwers which basically wound on a 2+ anyway, no matter if you're toughness 2 or not. It's also great against monstrous creatures (large targets) where you can throw 10 javelins at them a turn. Now, arguably a 10 skink unit of skirmishers is better (20 poison shots) but these guys can do it too. They also make redirection easier for new players (I don't think I even understand how to redirect with skirmishers...) 2. 11 skinks and 1 kroxigor ssmbs ssKKs ssKKs Alright, here is where people start to diverge on the usefulness of the unit. Right here with the muscian and banner in the front rank costs 124. I understand that this can break a lot of peoples budgets but lets look at what this unit can do. Right now, this unit has a combat res of 3 (banner, 2 ranks). This is more combat res than any other support unit we have short of a 15 saurus cavalry unit. Of course, this is where you have to start looking at the role each of your units plays. This is a great unit for supporting your flankers. Aka, that unit of cavalry you send around the side. One of the problems I notice with flankers is that they sometimes get tied up by enemy support units and never get to that big juicy target you're trying to take out. This skrox unit is what you use to punch through whatever they have. Really, how many M6 blocks of troops are there out there? Plus, this one causes fear and has the static combat res to really bring the hurt to skirmishers and other small units that you find on the flanks of an enemy army. Okay, the toughness 2 skinks probably aren't great in combat but the kroxigors can really mess some people up. Str 6 is pretty huge. It wounds on a 2+ on most infantry and takes away most of an armor save. Really you have to use this unit with something else to get the full benefit. If your carnosaur needs just that little bit of extra punch this is the unit to support them. They can also be a flanker in their own right, tipping the scales in your saurus warriors favor. 3. 16 skinks and 2 kroxigors ssmbss sKKKKs sKKKKs ssssss This is the point where you need to find what works for you. If you aren't sold on the idea of a skrox unit or can't seem to find a use for them, then certainly spending more points (204 at this juncture) isn't going to make it better. These guys hit hard though with a static combat res of 5 (outnumber, banner, 3 ranks) and 6 str 6 attacks. The amount of skinks in this unit also make it decent at pegging a few wounds off some large target with 16 poison shots. I actually think that two of these units would work great in my 1500 point list once I fill it up with all the new models. A flank charge puts this guys at 6 combat res before your 6 str 3 attacks (something will hit right?) and 6 str 6 attacks (should hit and kill 2-3) bringing you up to 8-9 combat res before blows are struck back assuming you get the charge. Plus, if you're hitting their flank, they don't get any rank bonuses making the net change from those saurus hitting the front potentially a 13! If they get 5 combat res for 3 ranks and outnumber versus your saurus they now lose everything but the banner making them have a 1 (-4) plus your 8 or 9 gives 13 to you! I understand that this unit now costs 6 more points than a unit of 15 saurus with banner and musician but any player worth his salt knows that if you filled your army with units of saurus warriors you would be so static that the enemy wouldn't have that hard of a time pushing you around. You need some fast support units and these guys are pretty potent if you use them in the right places. I do not recommend charging these guys into the front of anyone except for 5x2 archers or skirmishers (or calvalry, haha!). The T2 skinks will be easy to hit and kill but hardly anything short of a calvalry charge will cost you 8-9 skinks. They can help you break ties and should hopefully secure the flanks for you for the win. I would go into the 24 skinks and 3 kroxigors... but at this point they cost more than 5 kroxigors and I think their effectiveness is dwindling... Let me know what you think. -Sebulba
well, you have a 100+ point unit that is good against... infantry i guess: a) charge an infantry block to the front. lets say skaven clanrats who are arround that points aswell. you start with static 3, the clanrats have 5. on the charge you you have 5 skink attacks, you hit with 2.5 wound with another 1.25 and he saves half of that, so probably skinks kill nothing. he korxigor hits with 1.5 attacks and probably wounds with 1.5 attacks but lets assume you have 3 wounds from the kroxigors. the clanrats still have 2 models in the front rank. they attack back with 2 attacks on 3+ wounding on 3+, they probably kill a skink. CR: skinks=3+3 skaven 5+1=> draw IF the kroxigor wounds 3 times, next rounds clanrats win because they hit before the kroxigor. ofcourse, this units role is to hit a flank b) they charge the same unit of clanrats in the flank. now he has static 2 and you have static 4, with the same rezults as above you win by 3 and probably break them, again if the kroxigors wounds with all 3 attacks i don't like the odds of that, at all. a unit with 2 kroxigors looks more promising, you actually have the potential of destroying the entire front rank of a unit wich will win you combats, but the unit is more expensive aswell. also, 15 saurus might do better than that unit if taken the other way arround (he charges your skrox): a) clanrats charge you in the front: 5 attacks with arround 3 hits, 2 wounds. you hit back and lets say you kill 3 of them. you have 6 CR he has 7, you lose and have to test on Ld 6 (assuming the general is not anywhere in sight) b) clanrats charge you in the flank, same thing but you lose by 3, thats testing on Ld 4 if they get charged they lose combat and yeld arround 200 VP's to the enemy. all of this not counting that the enemy can kill your kroxes when he charges you or in the 2nd round of CC. S4 on infantry is not unheard of (sotmrvermin, blackguard, saurus, chaos warriors, etc) those units are also weak agaisnt shooting, they can panic quite easly, and even if they don't, they lose that SCR very fast. i never used them, but i don't like how that looks. i will try them out once to see how they actually do, but i still don't like them. ofcourse i don't take into account fear causing and M6. both are good, but only so good. and for those 2 bonuses we can get better things (saurus, cavlary, sallies, terradons) this is a personal opinion and should be treated as such
also add in about 1/2 a wound (I guess) to a stand a shoot reaction from the skinks if they get charged.
I would like to think that the skrox unit has uses. Granted in a stand up fight they are not the best choice...probably the last choice actually. But their movement does preclude them as a half decent flank unit. I wouldn't want to try and hold a flank with them though... The other side is that if you intend to play an all skink army (I'm sure there are some out there) then this would probably end up being your mainstay unit. Something just occured to me. Isn't their a special rule for that particular unit that says something to the effect of not allowing them to wheel or something? If I'm correct then that would hamper their flanking ability greatly.
I did a build of 40 skinks and 5 krox. I played against beastmen and demons. Totally toppled over bloodletters and tuskigor chariot then fought against ungors and gors. Pretty much every unit I fought against ended up losing with maybe 6 skink casualties. The rank bonus and outnumbering you get from the skinks is crazy and its really effective in winning combat resolution. I didnt have any krox casualties and there was only one wound on them. the player I played against kept wanting to just kill skinks for combat res
thas becuase it doesn't really make sense, you need to perfectly charge a 5 models wide (20x20 bases) enemy unit to get all kroxigors into base to base and even then you only get 4 of them max. 5 is a bit of overkill, and my guess is that unit never got charged by something capable of killing them... like non basic infantry.... blood letters have 6 attacks on the front rank with a champion while gors/ungors are rather vulnerable with allmost no save. if you are talking about the new beastmen book i have no clue what they are capable of tough... also, killing skinks for combat res is the way to go against such a unit, WS 2 > Ws 3; T2 > T4, 5+ save > 4+ save
That unit costs 475 points! If you add a Standard Bearer and musician (guessing you would since this is a unit all about combat resolution) it bumps up to 489 points. Sorry, but that's as much as a geared up Slann Mage Priest! It is exactly the same cost as: 1 Saurus Scar Veteran: Burning Blade of Chotec, The Maiming Shield 26 Saurus Warriors 1 Saurus Warrior Musician 1 Saurus Warrior Standard Bearer 1 Saurus Warrior Unit Champion Now, guess which one holds up better? Saurus have the same toughness as the Krox. They are 100% tougher than skinks. They have a better armor save than the skinks. Which one fights better? Assuming you are running your skinks at the absurd 10 wide formation to make sure all of the Kroxigors can fight (though the chances of all five ever making into base contact with anything are not great as it would have to be 160mm wide!) you would have a maximum of 10 WS2 and 15 WS6 attacks. This is of course assuming all of the skink are alive to attack. The Saurus block running the standard 6 wide with champion and Scar-Vet up front would have 11 WS3 attacks plus another 5 WS5 attacks. They are likely to all be in base to base contact. If we took the extra crazy step of adding spears to this one large unit of Saurus you could add another 12 WS 3 attacks to that meaning 28 total attacks to the Skrox 25. Even without the extra rank fighting you are looking at likely more attacks from the Saurus since they would all be in base to base and are more likely to live to fight at all. Without spears it's pretty close and advantage is probably Skrox... maybe. With spears? Not even close anymore. Which is better for Combat Resolution? The Skinks start with 6 ranks. They outnumber. If they lose 6 skinks per Close Combat (your figure, not mine) they are down to five ranks after a turn and likely still outnumber. The Saurus start out with 5 ranks. They probably outnumber most units they come up against. They probably keep the rank bonus twice as long as the Skinks do. So after one turn the Suarus end up being the better unit for Combat resolution. Which is faster? Easy choice here you say? Not so fast! Skrox units can't turn! They have to wheel. Wheeling on a ten wide front takes up a lot of that extra 2 inches of movement they get. So much so in fact, I'd call this a push if not even advantage Saurus. Really, for the same cost that Skrox unit can be outmatched, outclassed, outmaneuvered and outdamaged by another unit in our Army. If you spent only 29 points more on the Saurus to upgrade to spears it's no longer even close in attacks and damage output.
Actually, on average the krox will kill 6.25 saurus spearmen on the charge before anything happens. The skinks kill .8333 so a total of 7 saurus down (10 attacks because of champ). remaining 3 saurus and champion swing back and kill 4.1666 skinks. the scar vet has 5 attacks on skinks and kills 3.47 for a total of 7.6388, the skinks outnumber for the win. If the saurus somehow fail their fear check though, it's just incredibly ugly of a loss for the saurus. Fighting rounds in the future could be helped by pounding down the scar vet, at the cost of early resolution. If you really wanted to crush the saurus you would really need some luckamancy from lore of heavens. In the future the saurus are down a rank, but the spear attacks before krox are gonna be ugly. This is not really the skinks best fight by the way, against something knight like the skinks would be better off.
I wasn't talking about them fighting each other, Donkey. I was talking about one unit's effectiveness versus another units effectiveness, not one unit versus the other unit. There is a vast difference.
indeed, if you want to compare numbers have both units fight a specific one, even if its skrox/saurus v skorx or skorx/saurus v saurs.
I put a disclaimer at the bottom saying this isn't the best fight scenario, that something knight like would be better, anyone above the age of 14 should be able to draw up another one for us.
Yeah, I mean what you mostly run into on the flanks are either fast cavalry, flyers or skirmishers. Either way, you're going to have static combat res and they typically aren't. Everything in the army has a purpose and these guys are meant for running up a flank and interrupting their support units. Plus, out of a majority of the battle reports I've read the Skrox unit survives the game and takes minimal casualties. Does anyone take them who has had them wiped out by something?
I get what you're saying, Sebulba. My previous post comparing the units should show, however, that the Saurus Warrior at the same points cost unit should still be more effective than the huge skrox unit almost all around. If the skrox were supposed to be out on the flank, throw that Saurus unit out there instead. Plus, the Saurus would be more versatile while fulfilling the same roll.
Assuming you were fighting an army that wasn't ItP, like VC's, wouldn't putting a BSB with the fear banner in a huge unit of skinks with 1-2 Krox make for some wicked devastation. You are almost always going to outnumber, and you just need to win the round and see the enemy take off. Yes you'd have to watch out for challenges and temper the fragile nature of a skink BSB, but it's just an idea. I know you can use the Saurus BSB here, but just despise mismatched base sizes. I always wanted to run it once as an experiment against Empire or HE.
Yeah they do, but you only add up their US for the fear check, so you are looking US3 per Krox. Unless you big time load up on Krox you won't outnumber and not auto-break the enemy....at least that's how I understand it.