7th Ed. Suprising tactics

meiby burning aligment of EoTG kicks alot of as**s. skink priests comet of casadora is quite nice too, especialy when targeted right and when it blows after 3 turns, then you roll 6 and his units in 18'' gets blasted quite nice
im only beginer so i dont know much...

 

My two favorite tricks are:

Lord with the Blade of Realities and Jaguar Charm: After you lure out your opponents scrolls, and make him confident in what you will usually do in your magic phase, you can unleash that, burst forward out of your unit, charge, challenge, and essentially snipe and break what ever choice target you choose, especially small flanking units running along big blocks. If you get stuck, do the same in the next turn and fly back out of combat (the only way to actually leave a combat without fleeing that I know of).

Choppy Hero/Lord on a Horned One: Similar to the 1st one, but most people don't realize the charge range on the horned one, and they also forget the hero can charge out of the unit. Let your enemy line up thinking he will get the charge, then you get your charge off with a fear test, challenge, and chop him up, then come up with your unit in the following turn, charging in or flanking the unit that flanks the Hero/Lord.


For fanatics, i just lure them out with skink skirmishers. Terradons are only useful here if you can land them in a position that he won't send the fanatic at them (such as between his unit and the one next to it) , as the cost ratio isn't worth it.

 

i'm sure nobody will see an oldblood on foot with a jaguar charm coming. i mean there is no way to fool somebody.
lizardmen don't usually supriese people, its an all cards down army that kills things. the only suprise you can pull are good dices in your favor

 

I am fairly sure he meant an Old Blood on foot In a Unit of Saurus Wariors.

 

Yeah, sorry about that. I did mean heroes/lord on foot in a unit. The deal is that most people forget they can charge out separately from the unit and base all their measurements off your base 4, but if you are jumping out at much higher, you get the surprise. But, use these once, and they guys you play will catch on and be prepared to stop you.

 

if your opponent knows the lizardmen army book he knows that a saurus character on foot has the jaguar charm or that there is a slann with the lore of shadows nearby. unless it doesn't matter, you wont be able to fly that saurus out of the unit, alltough it might make your opponent save 2 dispell dice every turn for it and maybe throw a scroll if you use it in the 1st turn.

 

I fully agree with the last sentence. Not much surprises we can pull of.
Except maybe: "What?! You chief on ancient stegadon does NOT have the war-spear!?"
But that isn't all that strong

We do not have enough magic items to make the opponent guess what 'build' we use for our hero.
In fact, we only have a few effective.
Scar-Vet on Cold one, with Sword of Might, BBoC, SoSS. Variating with the maiming shield or the shield of the mirror pool. Sometimes BSB, but rarely with a magic banner.
For foot scar-vets: its the jag-charm 87% of the time, and some other Hide of the Cold Ones builds...

Skink priest has: Scroll caddy, caddy+diadem, EotG magic offensive, EotG magic defensive, EotG priest protection (Amulet of Itzl). And that's it.

Chief: war-spear on stegadon. Sometimes on terradon with staf of sunny shooting.

That's it for our heroes. Let's compare that with Dark elves.

Their master: unkillable. Cheap on dark steed. Caledors bane and potion of strenght for some nice easy kills (on CO or Dark Steed). BSB with good selection of banners. On pegasus for: light troop hunt, or Ring of Hotek. Ring of Hotek build. Stone of midnight (something like that , against shooting. Usually found in ASF black guard).
Their sorceresses have no such thing as an EotG (thank god!) but do have:
pegasus, dark steed and cold one options. Sacrificial dagger. caddy. LvL 2 caddy that tries 1 big spell a turn. All varying.
Hag is the most limited (I think), with
Cauldron. Cauldron BSB. Or cheap hag in witch elves, the latter isn't used much; if at all!
Assasin (technically not a hero, I know!),
Varying killy builds. Do you want to
a) Ordinary kill things.
b) Kill things with high armour.
c) Kill things with high toughness.
d) Kill a lot of things.
or e) You (the assasin), your master BSB and your ASF black guard kill everything that dares to touch them?

You pick.

No, I would not say our hero builds have much surprise effects...
In our units? not so much.
Our units do what they say on the tin.
Saurii? Hold, then strike back with loads of spear attacks.
Skinks? harass, then die because of the cold wind.
Slann? Rain destruction upon the enemy.
Jungle Swarms? Not so much....

The opponent can also read the same tin. He will just read:

Saurii? Overwhelm, shoot, ignore.
Skinks? Get rid of them, but not with too much attention too them.
Slann? Pray for no IF. Deal with him the best you can.
Jungle swarms? Congratulate my opponent for using them.

Ofcourse, wacky movement can always surprise your opponent! Let's say, charging some skinks in a steam tank? Bet you didn't see that one coming!

...

Oh, right.

The Hunted

 

this maybe a surprise tactic or an asshole manouver but tell me if this is legal.
higher state of concoiusness makes your slann woundable only thourgh magic attacks. can i declare this ability only after using the ward save? I.E. X things shoot at me, nothing goes past the ward untill turn 3 when i say "Aww, actually, you didn' wound me and you can't wound me with any of the things you threw at me for the past 3 turns!"
i'm asking if this is legal [thus i'm asking in the wrong forum but i'd rather not start another topic in teh rules discussion seeing it is related to this topic] because it sure isn't nice, but maybe in a higly competitive enviroment would keep the slann alive and absorb a few turns of shooting

 

well, you could always say that you forgot that your slann had it and didn't have to use it until now, but in a highly competitive environment such as a tourny, don't count on winning best sportsmanship

 

The Blood Statuette of Spite can be a nasty surprise and can even take off a wound or two of a character if he rolls badly. There really is not too many surprises that you can throw with the Lizardmen. The Huanchi Totem is another neat surprise.

 

Most people get pretty surprised by how manueverable the EotG becomes when you give it the War Drum of Xahutec.

 

There is also the inevitable TG champ w/ magic items which people might not expect. Bane head on your slann which is casting against hero's is a nice little surprise.

 

All these examples are, with all due respect, not BIG suprises.
And, the items aren't that strong to begin with. Which is why they aren't used much. Which is why people are surprised IF you use them.
But these are, unless under certain circumstances, no real threats.
Bane Head->Kill 1 hero with RoBI. That you can overcome.
War Drum-> after the first use, opponent knows.
TG Champ+magic item-> too expensive to be any good.
Blood Statuette-> This COULD be a nasty surprise. But really only when facing elves (any kind).
Rod of the Storm-> In smaller games with a 'magic heavy' army, this is nasty. In bigger games, (> 2k) It's impact is mitigated. And is therefore not so strong anymore. Still, nice to have.
Huanchi Totem-> Too random to be seriously strong. And with a charge range of 14" (assuming SCOR), you should have a skink redirecter most of the time anyway.
But, this is also reasonably good. Not for structural use though, your usual opponents will only fall for this a couple of times.

That's my view on things.

The Hunted

 

the "bane head surprise" won't make it to the start of the game. you nominate the target before the game starts and at that point he knows where it is and what you re going to target with that character. if it weren't such an awesome item i wouldn't even use it for this exact reason.
i did use the bane head in sneakyer ways tough. targetting a hero you have no intention on killing will make some opponenets overprotective and maybe dedicate some extra units to his protection or just generally f!@k up his tactics. still not a surprise tough.

 

But when you nominate the target of the bane head, do you have to declare it openly? I haven't used it yet, but I assumed I would just secretly make a note on my army list prior to the start of the game. I wouldn't plan to reveal it to the enemy until it was used.

 

No, you tell your opponent which hero you nominate, its not like assassins or fanatics, you simply point at whatever you want to bane head at the start of the match.

 

I think this Bane Head nomination is getting into the subject area of 'open lists'. In our group you don't have to list magic items or other such "secret" things. With that being said, nominated targets from magic items (like bane head) aren't openly announced. Rather you write down your target and don't announce it's use until it's effects occure. If your opponent bawks you've got your target writen down and show him/her.

But I know other members of the board play in circles where open lists are mandatory and then there is the sportsman aspect of it all...but let's not get into that.

 

I've always announced the character I nominate, and I play in a closed list enviroment so a bit of both I suppose

 

I did announce it to a buddy of mine one time in a very friendly game (he was playing Dwarves). I told him I'd like to see how his General would stack against my Carn/Old Blood (I told him about Bane Head during the pre-game challenge). He gladly accepted and we even adjusted out deployment so our Generals could square off.
...oh the carnage!