I was listening to the Dwellers Bellow podcast “How to tame a dragon” and it dawned on me how uniquely suited to fighting dragons lizardmen are. Our monsters are all stubborn, terror causing, immune to psychology brutes that can hold up a dragon for a turn or two, our main line units are cold blooded ld 9 (assuming slann general) so won’t run easily and our slams can make our carnosaur heroes fly. Thoughts?
And you have NO monsters flying by itself with 8 wounds 6 attacks with 7 strength and 1d6 stomps. Oh i forgot carnosaur has just WS 3 that means against elves and chaos heroes often hit at 5+. Initiative of our heroes suck too.. We have no cannons or long range/heavy damage weapon except for a poisoned bow on a stegadon that has already hard to hit. Before could kroxigor got a chance to inflict some wounds but now they attack often after the dragon that has much better saves and great weapon is just -2 AP. To don't name Stegadon that doesn't anymore give any AP with impact hits against a dragon, Sorry but I completely disagree with this analysis, lizardmen have always suffered dragons. Now is even worse since they have higher WS (means harder to hit for the carnosaur/kroxigor) and higher saves (harder for skinks with poisoning javelins) and they lost +1 to be hitted as large target (harder for the stegadons bow).
I agree with @Kalisto that our weapons against the dragons are not the mightiest. That being said we do have some tools to work with: 1. Carnosaur Oldblood /w Ogreblade + Talisman of Protection. Dangerous enough to force the dragon player to alter their behavior or risk a dead dragon. 2. Slann /w Illusion magic. Can shut down the dragon's ability to charge. Easy to get to get the spells off if you can use the Arcane Vassal rule effectively. 3. Temple Guard Challenge lock This works BUT the dragon player needs to make the mistake of getting in combat with them. The problem with using other big monsters is that while they might survive and hold their own against a dragon for a couple of turns, you're effectively just feeding it big points. They are a nice way to stop dragons for your Carnosaur to punish a reckless charge.
This is basically what I was talking about. We have few enough units that the important ones can be deployed so charging one with a dragon can lead to the dragon itself getting into trouble without too much effort on our end. The Slann with illusion can carnosaur into a flying dino which should cause some concern to the dragon. Sure, the dragon can go after the skinks and saurus but the meat and potatoes of the army are going to be difficult to deal with. I had my list in mind when thinking through this which runs all three of these.
The problem is that you become obligate to play in this manner in every tournament if you want to have a chance. I mean you must have a Slann, a carnosaur and temple guards…maybe you can avoid carnosaur for an arcane vassal on Stegadon but that’s it. Which is really boring…. hoping that due scenario rules your Slann or carnosaur don’t start as reserves or something like that (which happen to me against a tzeentch’s list with +6 casting..)
Sure, but in any tournament you’re only going to play the best units (or cards or whatever) for the game you’re playing. There isn’t the same versatility as there is in casual play if you want to do well.
That’s true but in my community we have already started with a lot of different comped tournaments to avoid just that…
Totally. We have massive issues with dragons, that is our main drawback as a faction i would say, along with bad access to magic.
I mean,, the whole dragon thing is only relevant for competitive play and not for casual play, so i do not really know what casual play has to do with this issue. We are bad vs dragons, it is an issue. A lot of what you are saying also depends on running a Slann, and Slann are quite meh. No look out sir, very expensive, and he is just as good at casting as an opposing 160 point caster.