8th Ed. How do Saurus survive to actually fight?

I'm still new, but boy have things been rough. I'm a long time 40K player and I'm still adjusting to armor saves being taken away from high strength weapons. My saurus warriors aren't faring too well as they are getting crushed before they get to swing back. I had a unit of 25 get slaughtered by a giant when he did his jump up and down thing. My opponent rolled a 12 on 2D6 wounds and with no armor save I was wiped out.

Is there any point of taking spears? With the super low initiative it seems that I'm not going to have enough survive for the 3rd rank to be there during the fight. At least with hand weapons I get to parry against normal troops. What is the lizard advice on this?

For what it's worth I've been facing beastmen and ogres mostly to this point and they are all pretty strong.

 

The thing is.. there is no point in taking saurus to begin with.

 

That depends on your local meta, in a comp they'll get mauled but in friendly(ish) games they can be pretty effective.

I think the general advice is that spears are situational, they can be of use if you are fairly certain you are going to be receiving the charge and you are likely to be able to steer the fight so that the unit that charges you is not going to wipe out the third rank of saurus, for example you have a 5 x 6 block that is unlikely to take more than 15 casualties before it gets to strike back. However in most cases the extra attacks are going to be as valuable as the parry in term of the number of extra attacks you will get in total throughout a game by having the front two ranks complete for longer than with spears.

Of course if you know that you are going to be facing a load of low strength stuff that isn't going to leave you without an armour save anyway then spears are free attacks.

As a slight digression from your question I would probably only take a small saurus block for character hiding purposes against beastmen and orges (and that is more to do with what models I own rather than suitability) and then fill up core with skink skirmishers. Poison ranged attacks are awesome and can quickly make back their points when they kill an ogre or two.

 

Yea, Saurus dont fair well against Monsterous Infantry.
What they do work well against iis standard ST3 TO3 infantry.

 

Don't take them to be killy (unless you are going to invest in a lot of magic). Bring them as a fairly reliable anvil with a large footprint to draw attention, and/or as Scar-vet/Oldblood delivery systems and rely on them to do all the damage whilst the Saurus give rank bonuses/strip Steadfast.

 

We'll, I traded my Dark Angel army for my Lizards and I have 90+ Saurus, so I have to find a way to make them work.

 

well in small games, (1000-1500) ive been pretty effective with them when spamming dual wyssans with skink priests, usually you get at least the other one off.
once i indeed got dual wyssans off (second IF) against WOC and they slaughtered a horde of frenzy warriors.
S6T6 sauruses were quite funny.

 

A unit of 30 is a good steadfast block in the right matchup don't just go charging willy-nilly. Its all about learning what they can take and what they can't in my last game against ogres they actually broke the remnants of a bull horde witha well timed flank charge and turned a win into a tabling.

This does not mean they can do evrything just as you play you will learn how to use them. It bothers me also as i have 80 of the blighters and an abiding hatred for trying to rank up skink units.

 

Also always look at your scar-vet and see if its better to make a challange or just hit the unit, yes saurus can be weak and lose a fare few guys but thanks to cold blood they dont really care, so if your vet can get rid of or atleast absorb the 3-5 hits from their special characters then win win

 

Like most things, I feel they have a place but you have to pick their target.
A unit of 10 skink skirmishers held up a giant for 3 turns once, so saurus aren't particularly weak against giants, it seems your opponent just got a lucky roll.

I've been working on Lore of High Magic, so Hand of Glory on initiative in conjunction with a bastiladon solar engine could see you striking first. ALternatively, there are spells like Wyssans Wildform and Flesh to Stone which buffs their toughness, making them harder to wound.

I find that they're ok to support charge of hold up a unit for a while.
Another thing i learned last night (played a game), is that a scar vet in the unit can make a big difference

 

Yeah I find a priest babysitter with wyssans make saurus viable

 

Saurus doesn't do well against (compared to skinks w/ jav+shield in close combat):

Strength 6+ w WS4+: Skinks survive equally good.
S5: Saurus are a tad bit better, but not by much.
T6+: Skinks also wound on 6
1+ AS: Skinks are equal to saurus.

What they do well is:
Anything with S3-4 and T3-4 with save 4+ or worse.


Flank or rear attacks is always good, since the enemy doesn't get rank bonus, supporting attacks or parry saves. But to get the flank charge, you will need skinks to redirect...

It's all about knowing what to fight, against the wrong unit they just gets slaughtered and you get sad

If you want to use saurus, it's also a good idea to add a scar-vet to the unit, both to soak up damage, but mostly to give you a few high-streanght attacks. Sword of might, biting, GW or +2S sword is good for this. Foot-sloggers should be cheap, prefarably AS2+ but 3+ is acceptible for a GW-wielder. Ench shield, gamblers armour, dragonhelm. And luckstone! Maybe potion of strength against AS1+
Cowboys is also great, but they don't get look out sir! But they are great redirectors, since most units don't actually kill him in one round of combat.

 

Not much to add here, but my (noobish) experience is with magic buffs (Wyssans or Hand of Glory, maybe the Basti) and right opponents, they're fine.
Against the wrong oppos and they can be toast.
My personal triumphs have been one unit of, initially, 24 saurus holding up three units in a Vamp Counts army, which included being charged in the flank (OK, snake eyes on my morale helped!). But that was good luck, just like your oppo with the giant got good luck with his jump up and down. Also, with the benefit of Hand of Glory a similar sized unit took out a giant spider thing (Araknarok?) in an OnG army.
Disasters? Having a VC blender lord not blink when facing them and my sons six minotaurs go to town on a unit of 20. He was a very happy boy that day!

Personally I love saurus warriors. I know they aren't competitive, but I play for the fun of it. Yes I want to win, but its not the be all and end all of it for me. So my armies always include them. Probably a couple of blocks of 20/24, altough experimenting with one of 35 at the moment. Only had one game with the 35 and lost, but that was due to my own ineptitude rather than the saurus underperforming.

Keep trying with the saurus!

 

Hey all, there's some good advice here. Although I'm surprised that no-one has mentioned this but our Dinosaurs make a saurus combat amazing; dual charge a unit with 25 Saurus and a Steg and you're almost guaranteed to take out most of what can be thrown your way. I think magic is very important for Lizardmen; we have powerful casters in the Slann and good cheep magic from Wissans as already mentioned.

As with any army; I don't think it's worth debating a particular unit verses another because the game is designed to use a lot of movement and obtaining the higher ground through other means rather than simply....I'm going to hit that unit with this unit and see what happens.

Plus it's all in the dice...the other day my friend hit 30 Saurus with spearmen and I was mutilated. The game before I decimated a unit of Pheonix guard after only taking 4 wounds!!!!!

 

The thing you have to remember about Saurus is, that they are just core. They will not win a combat with white lions. They'll lose most battles against special choices, and that's perfectly fine, because they tend to do far better than most core infantry.

Saurus just suffer from the fact that they just don't work as a standalone unit. They NEED support, one way or another. But remember this: In a completly static fight, they'll win against an equal point cost of zombies. Against any VC player, that wont happen, because he WILL spend his magic phases on raising more. that's how he supports his unit. You can do the same by buffing them with HoG/Wyssans/etc

I typically run 2 CoR units as flank supporters, each with a Scar veteran. They crash into a unit engaged with a Saurus block = I won combat, no questions asked.

This means I have more than 1 thing I rely on. Saurus wont win any difficult combat by themselves, but I have several options to make sure I do:
1. Scar Vet bus of Cold One Riders that can flank charge
2. Magic.
3. Ripperdactyl unit that can rear charge if it isn't busy clearing chaff or warmachines

Before combat starts, I make sure to whittle down their numbers with skink skirmishers. Moving up to catch them in their flank, and then peppering them with shots work brilliantly at making people charge recklessly, or even do stupid things, like reform towards the skinks, leaving their flank wide open.

 

My best experience was against empire...

In combat with a halbardier horde

Charged in the front by greatswordsmen (w arch lector, wizard and witchhunter) Charged in the side by 3 or 4 demigryphs.

Saurus hammered away at the units, scar vets killed his BSB, racked up enough kills to cause halbardiers and demigryphs to flee. My turn the a skink priest charged and made the demigryphs leave the board humiliating!

Unfortunately, next turn he ate a cannon-ball to the gut

 

My experience hasn't been all bad, but I haven't found what role they do well yet. I keep reading about using them as an anvil, and being new to fantasy, I have no idea what that means. As for skink skirmishers, they have done really well for me. What I'm unsure of is who is supposed to support who. Being skirmishers I thought they should be good vanguard forces, but they get rolled pretty easy and don't even make a very good speed bump. (Salamanders have been great for me, BTW). On some battle reports I've watched I've seen Saurus backed up by Skinks, but this seems backwards to me. What way works better? Saurus supported by Skinks, or Skinks supported by Saurus?

 

I am not a fan of saurus blocks. They can hit quite good if supported with an old blood or scar vet, or maybe two. Still i don't like them. They haven't won any games for me so far. Skinks have.

Skink skirmishers are fantastic. Very fast and easy to maneuver. If the etc comp would allow more then 4 (think it is 5 in the new rules) unit i would fill my whole core with them. Same with swe comp, if it wasn't so expensive I would only use them there as well.
Next best after you have taken as many skirmishers as you can I fill up with small cohorts.

/Crillaz