8th Ed. What to bring against the new DE?

Me and my friend played a friendly game the other day between my lizards and his new DE. It was a nice 1600 pt battle with me taking a slann, skrox unit, templeguard, saurus, two skink priests, and a scarvet cowboy. He had a huge horde of spearelves, another huge horde of executioners, a hydra, a small unit of shades, a BSB hero and a lord level sorceress. I had just the toughest time against his executioners horde. It ate through both my saurus and temple guard. What do you find to be more effective against those pesky elves? I really liked my cowboy, tanking that whole horde of spearelves and eating his sorceress, but then he was all that was left. What to do?

 

Salamanders will fry T3 elves Just watch out for the shades, they will likely try to pepper the salamanders with bolts

 

I missed you saying either skink skirmishers, or Chameleon skinks (who can do the same in a pinch), i assume i heard wrong?

Skirmishers are your best friend, park them in front of the executioners, but wheeled, so he has to pursue/overrun away from your TG and slan, or other goodies.

You writing up your exact list would also help us help you.

16 TG stand little chance against the exec's, 26 stand a better chance if buffed, there's a big difference.

 

Yeah, basically How to Play Lizardmen 7th Edition 101: Redirect with Skinks, shoot them with Salamanders.

The Salamanders aren't as good at it anymore, but its still a viable tactic - especially against all this low T low AS hordes that are popping up (Personally I'm of the opinion that Executioner and Witch Elf hordes are a trap, but there you go...).

The same tactic also works fairly well with some melee units if you can go into the flank, as then you are only facing 3-4 attacks. I'm thinking primarily Ripperdactyls, as you may lose one model but the other two should make a mess of things, but Temple Guard or even Cavalry should do okay too.

 

Though the movement nerf (no march and fire) was a big down change the actual rules of the breath weapon I like better. Strength 4 and only -1 to AS vs the previous S3 -3 AS I find is even better than what it was for destroying what we need to destroy named T3 Low armor save whores of GW users.

 

What unit size and config would you use for the sallies? i've never really used them before (i know, shame on me)

My list i used for the game has been lost, but I am pretty sure I had 20 TG, 20 Saurus, a 22 skin Skrox unit with two krox, my mage priest with High loremaster, a cowboy scarvet, a priest with beasts, and a priest with heavens. This was the first game I played with the new book. I was trying out somethings that were new, as well as relying on my solid mainstay TG/Slann bunker. I've never used the cowboy before (again, I know, shame) I now have seen the light. To say the least, I wasn't impressed with the skrox unit. I do think that the TG had a bad match-up against the Executioners, but I wish that our elites could go toe to toe with the squishy elves.

 

Neither army sounds very optimal, which is probably a good thing. In core, the better core options for him (worse options for you) are repeated crossbowmen with shields, dark riders with shooting, and possibly corsairs. The repeater crossbows have AP and double shoot which can wrack up a lot of wounds over multiple turns on the saurus, non-skimisher skinks, and TG units.

Good advice. Break up the skink cohort into two 10 model units of skinks and sub in sallies for Krox and one skink priest. Even at 2500, one skink priest and one slann is enough magic.

Execs are the big issue because their S6 and re-roll 1's to wound plus killing blow is optimal against both TG and saurus units and very deadly to a scar vet. Use skink units to frustrate, divert and delay this unit. If he runs horde style, his execs will tear through the 10 model skinks before they have a chance and he will get either a free reform or overrun, so you are often best off getting the skinks right in the face of the unit and at angles to force it to pursue and overrun at angles that expose a flank. While you mght start with a skink unit just geting in range and shooting and then fleeing, if charged by execs, after that, getitng a skink unit up close and at angles keeps the execs it from moving far and keeps the exec unit from wanting to overrun/pursue. I've even seen where a salamander gets off a full flaming shot on a unit of execs and then acts to redirect or hold off execs and one really good flaming shot will pay for the cost of the salamder. With two rounds of shooting and then stand and shoot on execs, skinks almost pay or pay for themselves against execs. Then use salamanders to shoot acroos the exec unit. If he runs a narrower unit of execs, then there is a chance that one or more skinks will survive combat and flee and he has to decide what to do about that. You probably don't have enough to survive if they successfully flee to avoid having to rally on double 1's, so good chance the unit is lost.

With the skinks to shoot and hold up execs, if he moves the spears forward you may be able to get around the execs and try to get the match up with the spear unit, where his S3, even with re-rolling to hit and re-rolling 1's to wound, will put a lot less wounds on your unit and allow full armour saves while your units will tend to cut through his armour saves and wound at a much greater rate even if you hit at a lower effective rate.

If you take high magic, fiery convocation wrecks execs and forces him to spend max power dice to dispell it in his magic phase if you get it off. Also, high magic on your units and rolling for miasma on his units helps a lot, especially in reducing the number of hits fo the execs on the TG and possibly allowing the TG to hit on 3's.

Hydras are vulnerable to skinik shooting but the new regen they have can be annoying. The new salamander with S4 has a better chance of getting a wound on the hydra but its flaming shots are best used on rank and file units, especially execs.

The scar vet cowboy should avoid the execs (which have killing blow and high S to generate wounds and cut through armour) at all costs and go after the hydra and spearmen and perhaps the shades if you can.

 

I won against dark elves twiice now (2 wins: 0 losses). They get very upset with our T4. Fill your army with saurus and do what saurus do best. Move, move, kill. I also took a carnosaur in my last game and he ate a couple of units quite happily, but be careful of the doomfire warlocks, they really have no downside to miscasting (only lose D3 wounds).

 

Thnik about what one would pay for a lvl 2 caster mounted on a fast cav mount (M9) with 5 wounds, 10 attacks at S4 with bells and whisltls, a 4+ wards save, and that on average suffers only D3 wounds when it miscasts (no miscast table and half the miscast wounds are avoided by the ward save, so an average on 1 model is lost per miscast). If you realize the point cost of that unit, then it is pretty obvious to see why Warlocks are kind of a favorite in DE armies right now.

Each rider has 2 WS4 with poison S4 attacks (re-roll 1's to wound) with ASF (which at I5 generally means they re-roll to hit to max out poison hits and the re-roll one's to wound). With fast cav and M9, they can get on your flanks and in your rear to cast spells and selective charge stuff they can easily kill, like war machines and small skink units (which they will largely wipe out with ASF, poison and re-roll 1's to wound before the skinks can strike back. They can charge out and clear out your skink chaff and then when you declare a charge them they flee back and reform and march right back out again as fast cav.

Then they are a lvl 2 with two good spells and only suffer D3 wounds on miscat which they save half of those wounds with the ward save, so a miscast costs them about one model each time on average. The warlocks also get two spells automatically that can hurt your army. Soulblight (-1S, -1T) is the DE answer to S4 T4 saurus and TG. Doombolt's D6 S5 hits will cut through the armour some and wounds the TG models more easily.

The primary weaknesses of warlocks are that they are T3 and LD8 with no music; so, on a bad day, they may panic or flee and then not rally on the first try and end up out of the game for a turn or two. They are often run cheap with min models or maybe 6 or 7 as a character on a dark steed delivery unit. Once they are 4 or less in a unit, each time you score an unsaved wound for the first time in a shooting or magic phase they must test for panic and, often outside of the general and BSB, they will sometimes fail the panic test and flee.

If you see warlocks, it is worthwhile if you can to direct magic misslies and direct damage spells early to reduce the unit(s) and maybe get a panic. Also, to try to keep skinks out of charge range but still able shoot them often with skinks because a bit less than half the time warlocks will fail both the 6+ AS and the 4+ ward save and you need to reduce them and hope to panic them.

 

NexS1, what was your army build if you don't mind me asking? I believe that DE are one of the hardest opponents for us to face, though just my opinion. I just see a lot of tactica about warlocks and witch elves and wonder how my slow saurus will cut it. Do we just go for skink cloud against them? do we use our stegs? should we try our krox?

 

I think vs DE the salamanders are the most important component. Whoredes of Witch Elves (mindrazor) and Exec just decimate anything we throw at them. Exec will destroy stegs quickly, carnosaurs even quicker. Saurus are hit on 3 wounded on 2 with rerolled 1's they will kill almost as many saurus as they have attacks.

So flame template and hope for some sweet shots. And anti horde spell helps too.

last think I had really issue with is the Witch Elves with the Cauldron of Blood, the only weakness of witch elves is no save and that cauldron gives them a 5+ ward and possible super frenzy. Also the cauldron takes up alot of space which reduced super sally shots.

Oh yeah and warlocks.... I've had them oneshot stegs many times.

 

So salamanders, but what else would you field though? It sounds like there's nothing really that can handle the normal DE builds.

 

My son plays LM primarily and my primary army is Dark Elves, so I know the matchup. I would not say LM can't handle the normal DE builds. Plus you were not playing a maxed out DE build anyway. Realize that a bunch of 2 rank by 5 wide units of skinks can earn a lot of points off the witch elves and executions and other DE units and help cut them down in size before they finally get into combat. Positioning them at angles to the units, multiple skink units can shoot at the same time and kill a good number of models and then one unit can take a charge and get destoyed each of his turns. Salamanders are eseential but so is a good slann that gets off some magic. A fiery convocation on an executioner unit or witch elf unit even if a miscast eats 5 or 6 TG (assuiming a slann on a flank) is well worthwhile in messing up the opponent's next magic phase and really cutting down those witches and execs.

The DE army's best tools are magic (blade wind, word of pain and black horror are issues for your skinks and saurus particularly in larger units) and shooting. Repeater bolt throwers can do a lot of damage to monsters and Krox and TG and saurus, and repeater crossbows (dark riders and darkshards) can earn their points with shooting against TG and saurus. Using small skink units separated out will keep those spells from being as effective.

It really does help to start doing warhammer math and understand how things work.

Fiery convocation math: With a 5+ AS, execs will suffer a 2/3's wound rate and save only 1/6 of the wounds for a total loss rate of 55.56%. Warriors with shields suffer the same loss rate. Witches without the ward save simply lose 66.7% of rank and file models. Corsairs and dark riders with 4+ As and witches with 5+ ward save (with cauldron) will suffer unsaved wound rates of 44.4%. Plus once in play, the dark mage must use power dice or a displell scroll to dispel the spell in his next magic phase or lose even more models to the spell, which is really important in stopping DE magic coming back at you or forcing the DE mage with a lot of dice to risk miscasts to get something big off. You have similar math for soul quench hits, which you get 2D6 hits at a casting cost of 8+, and salamander hits (which can often get over 8 and as many as 10 to 12 models with a well placed and angled shot and good roll). Plus salamander flame hits and fiery convocation generally cause panic tests except if

You want javelins on your skinks for the extra armour save and parry save in case the DE player has repeater crossbow shooting on warriors or dark riders and for the ability to move/march and shoot with skinks and stand and shoot at very close range when charged. With T3 elves, improving the hit rate is worth more than poison and suffering a movement penalty and a double-shot penalty to the BS when shooting and you will almost always be moving and repositioning skink units for redirecting and blocking and shooting against dark elf armies. Also, effective redirecting and blocking means getting up close and blowpipes cannnot stand and shot if you are within 5" of the charging DE infantry unit with M5 (within 9" if charged by warlocks or dark riders due to their M9). Against execs and witches with a 5+ ward, 10 single shot javs cause 1.67 wounds per round of shooting at long-range and 2.22 unsaved wounds at short range. With stand and shoot, they cause 1.11 wounds at long range and 1.67 wounds (unsaved) at short range. That may not seem like a lot of wounds caused but the point is to set up the unit for magic damage and salamander shooting and to use multiple skink units to slowly deplete the unit to the point where the TG can ultimately fight it and destroy it or avoid that unit and take on and kill enough of the rest of the army to win overall.

With the parry save, 10 exec attacks on a unit of skinks with shields cause a total of 5.4 wounds. An exec army seeing LM should run units at least 7 wide to max hits and, in larger battles, 10+ wide to get an extra rank of attacks in as a horde. Without characters, that means 15 attacks with champ will kill on average 8.1 skinks and the skinks will be lucky to get any wounds back (hitting on 5's and wounding on 4" and then 5+ saves) but will be able to flee (difficult to rally below 3 models on double 1's even cold blooded) and force the player to not pursue (hoping you don't rally) and reform to avoid exposing a flank. If the unit is in horde formation, has characters or has frenzy, then 10 skinks will die before they get to hit back but the unit is heavily invested or worth delaying combat with.

Witches are another story, with 3 attacks each, poison and ASF (2 hand weapons and frenzy), they tear through skinks by causing so many wounds you really have no hoping of hitting back and forcing a pursuit. While 10 witches will only average 3.70 wounds, with three atacks across the front, they will generally get 28 or 29 attacks if 7 wide and more if horde.

Spearman, by contrast, do only 3.29 unsaved wounds per 10 attacks and tend to be run narror so that you may see as few as 10 attacks and as many as 15 attacks when they charge (no extra rank on the charge) and that means you will hit back some and maybe get a wound or two if lucky and still have a decent unit to flee with and have a chance of rallying. This is why we see corsairs with two attacks each and a better armour save of 4+ or darkshards (about as effective as spears in combat plus a parry save with shields and with great shooting ability) played over spears.

Realize that a TG unit will have some issues with executioners due to their greater weapon skill and S6 killing blow threatening any high armour save/multiple wound characters, but can win a fair fight with them. Execs have a narrower base which allows them to match up favorable with TG if they deploy more files than the TG unit and you will lose effective attacks from the slann taking up a total of 4 TG model spaces (2 in the second rank and 2 in the third rank). At T4, 97.2% of exec hits will wound and cut through the 4+ AS and 2/3's will hit unless you change the weapon skill balance with hand of glory on the TG or miasma (assuming you go for it) on the execs. That is 64.8% unsaved wounds per attack coming at you. In return, you will do a lot of damage on execs with 41.7% wounds per attack back and get effectively with PF 2.33 attacks per rank and file in the front rank to actually do more damge from the front rank than his front rank will cause but you will tend to have fewer supporting attacks that do proportionately less wounds and lose for that reason. The biggest problem is that the execs will cut down your unit and limit your supporting attacks. Get hand of glory on the TG or, miasma on the execs and the math will often flip with you hitting on 3's and him hitting on 4's. and you having more attacks in the front rank, then 10 exec attacks cause 4.86 unsaved wounds and 10 TG attacks cause 5.56 unsaved wounds back and you win as long as you have full attacks back. Cut the exec unit in half before it gets to the TG and you might lose the first round of combat slightly but will generally wiln every round after that due to the execs running out of models and ranks after your first round of combat. With stubborn TG, you can often combat reform to add files (go wider) to max front rank attacks to increase the damage rate on execs (with 2.33 effective attacks per model in the front rank) if needed.

Also note that DE spearmen will struggle against saurus because, even though they will get a lot of hits and re-roll to hit, they will wound far less and have difficulty cutting through armour unless the DE mage takes lore of shadow and gets off mindrazor on the unit. 10 attacks by spears on saurus only cause 1.48 average unsaved wounds. The saurus will hit less but have as many or more atttacks back (with 2.33/saurus in front rank) and much greater ability to wound and leave a minimal armour save. Thus, ten saurus attacks on spearmen will cause 2.78 average unsaved wounds.

Hope the math is right but should be.

Another note: the hydra is an issue for LM armies without a monster because skink shooting will only wound on posion hits half the time with the 4+ AS and then the new regen recovers half the previously lost wounds at the end of the opponent's turn. Lucky skink shooting combined with a good rolls on soul quench will sometimes do the trick and kill the hydra outright. But that sometimes means putting some wounds on the hydra and pulling it out of range of the generral in pursuit of skinks so that it cannot restrain pursuit at LD6 or avoid panics, etc. and then trying to finish it off with TG before he gets the thunderstomps and hope the breath weapon does not do much damage. You end up risking the TG unit being depleted to kill or break the hydra or losing a lot of saurus to a hydra to kill or break it. IN a larger points battle, a scar vet on cold one hits first and puts enough wounds to cut down the attacks back and saves most of the wounds anyway and no thunderstomps occur such that the hydra loses combat and flees or even dies due to wounds or is caught fleeing and dies.

 

I know that Lizardmen are supposed to play with coordination from a couple units to win games but it would be nice to be able to go elite vs elite and feel more than comfortable about the match. Olderplayer, thank you for the mathammer. I really am not very good at it and it helps me understand the match-ups I want to create. Go teamwork!

 

TG are priced at a premium due to ITP and stubborn with slann and ability of the slann to sit in the second rank. But, even, then the math says it is a pretty fair fightt before augments. White lions are the other match up LM need to be concerned about because the math is similar (White Lions get an extra rank of attacks but no killing blow and no murderous prowess). It really has to do with S6 attacks being optimal at killing TG and WS5 special infantry but being overkill against WS3 models, S3 models and models with a worse AS than TG. So, the matchup uniquely favors execs and white lions whereas points costs of white lions and execs relfect that they are relatively less effective against cheaper infantry, like skaven clanrats, in comparison with TG where TG have two attacks, +1T, and better armour saves giving them more abilitiy to kill and less likely to be killed when facing WS3, S3, T3 models. Also, absent augments and boosts from magic, banners or other models, white lions and execs are often killed more easily by magic. and some other attacks BTW execs with Killing blow and murderous prowess are an issue for scar vets and oldbloods but not as much with white lions where the high AS still stops some wounds.

 

Gonna slip back in the - salamander - you should be getting one decent shot off on a block of exec or white lions before you engage. That should even things out for us.

HE and DE don't have much of anything that does great block removal.

 

@oldplayer math post -

excellent point on understanding math.
small rules point: cannot use scroll to take out a spell in play - only as it is cast.

 

By golly, your right on the scroll. Much appreciated. Geez, I read the FAQ but missed the last part of the dispel scroll rules (p. 504). I've probably seen people use the scroll to take out RIP spells a number of times (including throne of vines when cast with IF in the next phase) over the years and never bothered to check that.

 

I mostly play vs DE and find that magic and Salamanders will do the trick (often mixed together with walk between worlds). Dark Elves hit hard but are fragile. I often bring a steg to hunt down their monsters also.