So the tourney I attended wasn't quite what we hoped. The venue didn't open, for a start! Fortunately a mate of ours owns Golem Studios, and we were allowed to play there... Started 3 hours late in the end... Anyway, I played. Ogres then Dwarfs. Ogres - We have no answer for these guys. Quick, ranged weapons, brutal combat. Did not enjoy. Almost got tabled, save one chameleon skink, CoC standard, one Scar Vet and a priest. Oh and the ancient step. He was worth his points, and wiped out a block of Maneaters single handed. Dwarfs - PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW lots of dead lizards, one exploding priest took a unit of skinks with him, and a handful of Temple Guards. Lizardmen caused three casualties in combat. Ridiculous. It doesn't help that everyone except me took tournament lists. It was supposed to be six mates having a laugh so yeah, disappointing. So what's next?! I think there will be a 2400pt lizardmen army going up for sale!
This one Ogres usually have 1 deathstar, with all the juicy characters and a whole load of ogres to suck up any wounds. Then around the deathstar there often is a unit of leadbelchers, Mournfang cavalry and an ironblaster or 2. We can deal with all the "other" stuff. Though hardhitting, they are few in number and without supporting units. Skinks can really help redirecting, shooting and otherwise distracting the Ogres. As for the deathstar: Try and use terrain to make him spend an extra turn getting around it, use your skinks in the same manner. Redirect, slow him down and then A: Punish the rest of his army B: Go all-in on the deathstar I usually like to evade deathstars and leave only them standing on the field. Making the unit look silly when it has destroyed T2 skinks all day. Be prepared to sacrifice anything and everything to this unit, because it is just so dangerous. Alternatively, focussing everything on said deathstar is only good when you can take it all the way. You need the big spells for this, Pit of Shades and purple sun are very, very good at killing Ogres. Dwarves: Hard to actually beat. Also, most players like to field lots of war machines and large units of great weapon wielding dwarves. Not much fun to play against, let alone win. So, how do you do it? Dwarves force you to play to their game: coming towards you under a hail of exploding lead... Again, skink and supporting units to move fast and annoy the Dwarves. Trying to hold up their war machines whilst your combat units advance. Try for magical buffs on your units, because 30 dwarves with GW's is nothing to be sneezed at. T4, WS4, Ld9 and S5 is tough to chew trough. Old-bloods on cold one with a defensive kit can hold his own vs anything dwarves can throw at him. Dwarves only have the shooting phase as their strenght, as they have no real movement threats and simply no magic. It is no surprise that their shooting phase is in fact really, really good. You can try and overwhelm your opponent by simply being active in every phase of the game. Even dwarves will succumb to combined arms of skinks, saurus, Slann and monsters. Just keep calm and game on! Maybe try reading a bit about tactics, change up the list a bit and then practice some more! In any case, good luck. The Hunted
In my humble opinion, there is no army that Lizardmen fight at a greater disadvantage against then Dwarves. If I want to have more than a 10% chance of beating my Dwarf friend, I need to make an anti-Dwarf army (which would be weak against most other armies). My anti-Dwarf army is all Saurus Warriors, Temple Guard, Cold One Cavalry all deployed in very large units each packing Saurus characters and with no magic at all (so all the runelord expenditures go to waste). The Dwarf army book is coming out in a matter of weeks. If half the rumors/leaks are true the aspects of the Dwarf army that cause LM the most trouble will all be toned won. Organ guns will no longer auto-hit, the anti-magic will be toned down slightly, cannons and great weapon troops will go up in price (right now they can field a runed up cannon for the price of an Empire vanilla cannon). My experience fighting Ogres is limited, I defer to the Hunted on this.
Odd, I've haven't had much trouble fighting dwarfs. This might be because I run my scar vets on foot, so they can't get sniped by cannons. Dwarfs with Great Weapons get munched by saurus and temple guard, and we've got the best war machine hunters in the game. Salamanders and razordons make a mockery of large blocks and are surprisingly durable against warmachines (yay for 5+ handler save). -Matt
The first table I played on, against, ogres, was 6x4 and wide open. No LOS blocking scenery. The second table was 4x4, and had buildings up the sides but not enough room to get my larger TG/S units up the side. Dwarfs with GW absolutely monstered my TG and S. Well what was left of them after 3 turns of war machine pulversising! Cham skinks didn't last past the first turn in either game. I did alright rolling 6s on the javelins. But against blocks of ogres (with 5+ regen) it's pretty meaningless.