I'm on the verge of buying a Lizardmen army but I'm wondering how much room is there for variation in army builds? I have read up on various slann builds, traditional with TG, etheral on his own, beast slann/hero deathstars, etc but I'm more interested in general army setups and want to hear peoples ideas. The lists I've made all seem rather similar. Apologies if this has been covered before
There are tons of different builds available to use with Lizardmen. Just to name a few: Skirmisher army: Lots of Skink skirmishers to re-direct enemy blocks while pumping out massive amounts of poison. Backed up with Salamanders/Razordons and Terradons. Add some Stegadons for fighting potential. Saurus army: Close combat dominance. Couple with Cold One Cavalry for hard-hitting hammers or Temple Guard + Slann combo for an awesome center unit. Traditional army: Saurus blocks advancing behind skirmishers. Skinks whittle opponents down to a manageable size for your Saurus. Backed up with Skrox for a flanking unit. Fast army: Use Skrox units as your core. Back them with Stegadons or Cold One Riders. Get some Terradons for early harassment of troops or warmachines. If you are looking for a competitive army, there are a handful of builds that seem to do better than others. Keep looking around the forums and you'll see some.
Sure, I can expand a bit on these armies. I haven't ran the Fast army list myself. It should be noted that Salamanders and Chameleon Skinks are pretty much default in any list I run. They are invaluable IMO. Slann is also invaluable. Whether offensive or defensive, they are a central part of your army. Low point games can constrain your points, but when you have 275 available for a Lord, get one of these guys. TRADITIONAL ARMY: I call it traditional because it's usually what you see people using. It also happens to be the army that Game Workshop shows on a lot of their LM stuff. Consists of mainly core units. When I run this list, I shoot for at least 2 units of 20+ saurus screened by 3 or more units of skinks skirmishers with at least one skrox unit and a Slann. If you can afford Temple Gurad for your Slann, great. The skinks move up in front of the saurus and attempt to pull enemies out of position. I like to think of it in terms of an MMORPG where you get aggro on an enemy to pull them out of the pack. With a unit of skirmishers, this is usually done by taunting and annoying them with tons of poison shots. If the enemy charges you, you can simply flee and effectively pull them out of position to ruin the enemy battle line. Conversely, if they ignore you they will slowly be whittled down in numbers until they either break or are nice and squishy for your saurus and skrox to finish off in tandem. If your opponent focuses magic and shooting on your skink skirmishers, oh well. Not such a bad deal since they are cheap. If he doesn't, great! His troops must really like the feeling of poison coursing through their veins, or lack thereof. If you are tight on points you can use the skink cohort instead of the skirmishers. This unit will be harder to move around but can provide excellent screening from shooty armies. Strengths: Versatile. For me this list gives most people a hard time. Weaknesses: I dunno. I'm pretty happy when I run this list. SKIRMISHER ARMY: My personal favorite.This army can be used to wreak confusion about the battlefield. The core consists of solely skink skirmishers backed with Terradons, chameleon skinks, and Salamanders. Razordons lack the movement to be effective in this list, due to their march or fire rule. It's good to have at least one fighty unit. I like the Ancient Steg with his Giant Blowpipe or a few Scar-Vet cowboys to clean house. There are 2 ways to use this list, and both can be used in the same battle. The first way is to constantly re-direct the enemy units. Taunt them with your poison shots, flee to pull them out of position, do it again. If you are up against a shooty army this won't work as well. Fortunately most baddies like close combat so this tactic will be ok 75% of the time. The second way to use this list is by swarming. If you think about it, all your skirmishers except Terradons have a range of 24" (move, march, shoot) Just be assured to get poison shots, so double tap sparingly if you are running blowpipes. With this decent range, the idea is to swarm a single enemy unit with several of yours (salamanders too!). You can run behind it, beside it, in front of it, whatever. Get a decent amount of units within range and blast away. In my experience this will break any normal unit due to the sheer volume of attacks. It's kind of fun to suddenly see 6-8 units hone in on one block. Especially a nice chunky horde... mmmmm... Roasted poisonous goblins anyone? Arli's avatar reminds me of this tactic. Strengths: POISON! Mobility, range, confusing. Weaknesses: No solid close combat units, low Ld, confusing. Lol. (you might forget to move a unit or two sometimes) Major Weakness: People hate playing against this army. It can be annoying. SAURUS ARMY: An excellent themed army. Very heavy hitting compared to most infantry especially if buffed with Light or Life. This army is similar to the traditional army, though you now swap out your skirmishers and skrox for some purely heavy hitters like Cold One Riders or Kroxigor. And yes, I know krox are not saurus. If you want to stay with the theme then a Carnosaur will do nicely This army works like a grinder. Anything that comes if front of you gets pummeled and broken. I find that using the oblique flank tactic works best in this list. That way you have the edge of the board protecting you while you roll into the flank of your opponent. Set up the army in an "L" shape to accomplish this. Cover your weak flank with hungry toasters (Sallies) Strengths: Close combat. Weaknesses: No poison, Slow, No range. The Slann will be hard pressed to buff everyone. FAST ARMY: Like I said, I haven't ran this list yet. The idea is to pick units with high movement like Krox, CoC, Stegadons, etc... Skinks or Skrox will have to take up your core requirements. With fast troops you will likely get into charging range first, so it's good to have some strong hitters in your combat units. If anyone has ran this type of list, please share your thoughts. Strengths: Fast, heavy hitting. Weaknesses: Expensive units, Slann will be left in the dust. DISCLAIMER: This is my opinion and how I have been using these lists. Please point out any flaws or tips to make these lists run a little smoother.
Good write up, I have two ideas for Slann in the Fast Army, but until I get enough Kroxigors and Saurus Cavarly to field a fast army, it will remain Theory Hammer. Idea One: Put the Slann in a unit of Temple Guard with the Standard of Swiftness, so they can keep up better. For even faster speed give them the Standard of Swiftness and Huanchi's Totem. The Slann is rushing to close the distance ASAP, so the Lore of Death might be a good choice, knock out the most important enemy characters quickly. Idea Two: Field the Slann solo without Temple Guard and give him a lore with lots of 24"+ and trudge behind the rapidly moving battle line. If the spells are long range it shouldn't matter if the Slann is behind the main battleline. Also the thundering line of Kroxigors and Cavarly will probably mean there's no fast cav or skirmishers sneaking around to threaten the exposed Slann.
I never did a skirmisher army myself, but I've been on the receiving end and didn't care for it. This weekend, I did an army swap with my friend who collects dwarfs in a 2,750 point game. I made a standard dwarf army with a mix of artillery and infantry. He went purist with a skirmisher army. 20 groups of 10 skirmishers with blowpipes,, 3 x 10 chamo skinks, 10 skink chiefs. He won quite easily, but it was a low scoring game. When I charged the skinks they fled and usually got away, thanks to slingshoting through units behind them. I couldn't lay down enough fire to wipe out a whole skirmisher unit before skinks overwhelmed my artillery and took out my war machines. I only caught a skirmisher group with my chargers onces when they fled. He couldn't put the hurting on my larger infantry blocks. It was an unsatisfying game for both of us. Lots of fleeing and rallying. No CC at all. Lots of dice for shooting with relatively little casualties resulting. Skirmisher armies may win battles but the battles will be unsatisfying. My friendship with this player is strong, but I think if I played a skirmisher army with a casual acquaintance they would never play with me again if I ran a list like this. I don't want to swear off a skirmisher army, I think a skirmisher army with a few dinos has potential to be competitive and fun though, and at some point I want to try something similar. I do think a pure skirmisher army will just annoy people. That's my two cents based on recent experience.
I think thats a unfair assessment, its just a different way to play. If you like pushing big blocks of troops forwards mindlessly into combat, use saurus (or just play ogres). Skirmisher armies require alot more skill and mastery of different sections of the rules, they offer more challenge to the people playing and playing against. Competitive builds in the UK are skirmisher based, usually something like this: Slann light, death, metal (double or single) 2 scar vets mounted Block of saurus Skirmishers by the bucket, some min cohort units Max amount of Terradons and chameleons Sallies
May I add one more build: Slann bunker build. Boring to play but good when you want to lose a friend/annoy someone.
I feel I need to big up another unmentioned build. The monster list. This really depends on your area meta. In mine there are few warmachines so I run 3 stegs at 2000 points. I would love a carny but it is magic heavy so I have to run a slann for defence, plus life keeps those stegs running.
While I haven't tried it, I really want to, but I've heard a Carnosaur instead of a Slaan is viable. I believe that would fall into the fast list?
Hello all, Lalweny here with my alter-ego until I work out some password difficulties... I've got some experience with a fast build. In particular, I build a "fast flank" army. This involves going for a small, hard-hitting and fast concentration of power on one half of the table, leaving the other half barely contested. The idea is to take on the other guy's army piecemeal, hitting a couple of his units with all of my hardest at once. A fast flank can also close with him quickly, avoiding being shot up too badly. I've come up with two different kinds of fast-flank army builds. One has an anchor - an anvil unit like a Slann/TG bunker. This unit goes in the center, with the purpose of holding one end of the line. Saurus Cav, Stegadons, Salamanders, Carnosaurs and Kroxigor go all together on one flank. The other build has no strong anchor unit - the only thing slowing down the enemy's far flank is skirmishers and jungle swarms. They're tasked with drawing charges, flank charging, whatever to keep those unit occupied. Here's one list I played against the Skaven, 3,000 pts. I should probably let you know that I designed it to be something fun and unexpected - Much like Scalenex, I'm more interested in doing that than in having a guaranteed win. Kroq-Gar Skink Priest Lvl 2 Engine of the Gods Skink Priest Feedback Scroll Scar-Vet BSB Rampager's Standard light armor Cold One 20 Saurus Cav (Scar-Vet goes here) FC Jaguar Standard 10 Skink Skirmishers (Skink Priest on foot goes here) Javelins and shields 2 Jungle Swarms 2x1 Salamanders 12 Chameleon Skinks (later realized that 10 is the max unit size) 8 Kroxigor For one thing, this is a pretty fun list to play - let me start with that. The Feedback Scroll and Jungle Swarms were experiments - with the Scroll, I knew I wouldn't have magical superiority, so I wanted something that could do serious damage to a Wizard early on. With the swarms, my hope was to bog down the Hell Pit Abomination until I could hit it with something, hard. By taking Kroq-Gar, with his Cav-as-Core rule, I was able to use my Core points on something fast and strong. I faced, in turn, a devious army: 2 big blocks of Stormvermin, one led by Queek Headtaker 2 Hell Pit Abominations (!) 1 Doomwheel 2 units of Rat Ogres, one w/ Skweel Gnawtooth 4 units of 3 Jezzails each Verminlord Doomflayer Ratling Gun My line looked like this: Sallie Kroq Krox EOTG Skinks Swarms Sallie ...in which the Skirmishers are about on the center line, and the Chamo's get Scouted into position in front of the Swarms. My army performed admirably. My Chameleon Skinks assassinated his Verminlord in one round of shooting. MVP's. His A-Bombs, fortunately, set up side-by-side in the center-right - meaning my fast left flank could crush his before I even encountered the A-Bombs. We only had time to fit in a few turns, but as we surveyed the damage, he conceded defeat. Note: the Jungle Swarms were not able to hold up the A-Bomb. It crushed them. Also, I didn't get a chance to test the Feedback Scroll - his only caster (Verminlord) died too quickly! Hope you find this of some interest!
love this read out! working out a slann in the fast army would be using Aphilmon's technique get a skink with cloack of feather, and a shadow slann fly the skink around and swap him with the slann when ever u need too i always play skink heavy, no combat units i add stegadons and scar vet cowboys for hitting power and a death slann for character sniping