8th Ed. Jungle Swarms

Skink Cohort versus WS3, T3, 5+ infantry:

NP = 3/6*3/6*4/6 = 1/6
P = 2/6*3/6*4/6 + 1/6*4/6 = 2/9

For a 33% increase in value. Base cost = 5 + 2 for poison attacks. So normally you pay 40% for poison in close combat.

70 points for 2 swarms costs the same as 10 poison attack skink cohorts and adds the same value to combat. But it also gives poisoned attacks to the cohort block for "free". It doesn't give any actual point savings until 36+ skinks but you'd have 2 units instead of 1. Again pay a little extra but get the optionality.

 

Hey, guys... I think that I may have come up with something. It just struck me a few minutes ago, and I'm not entirely sure whether it even makes Swarms viable at the moment.

Consider:

6 Hunting Packs with 6 Extra handlers in the same combat as Jungle Swarms, everything unbuffed.

6 Hunting Packs get 12 attacks. On 4s, 6 hit, and 2 wound automatically via poison. So 4 rolls to wound against T4, and we see 2-3 wounds. That's 4-5 wounds total, not much change - one extra wound can be expected.

24 handlers attack, hitting on 4s. 12 hit, and 4 wound automatically. 8 wound on 5s, so a meager 2-3 wound again. That's 6-7 wounds total, but it would have been 4-5.

We're now up to 10-12 wounds before saves, swarms, and stomps. It would have been 8-10, if my math's right.

Stomps will probably get you another 3-4 wounds... 13-16 wounds before saves with swarms, and 11-14 without.

A little better, I guess? *shrug*

It's a pretty cheesy thing, but having the handlers pile in like that seems to help out a lot. Even better if you can get those guys Frenzied somehow, I suppose!

*shrug* Worth mentioning, too, is that you can screen the Hunting Packs with the Swarms.

Meh. These guys. >_>

edit:

Slann with Skavenpelt Banner can join Hunting Packs... so the 12 attacks become 18, and the 24 attacks become 48. o.0

Wounds would be nearly doubled, but this is all soooo very expensive! At the same time, however... I field both Slann and Razordons pretty regularly. The only weird part is fielding Swarms. xD

Edit edit: (perhaps) better yet, a skink chief with the banner?

 

Ancient/Normal Stegadons as well usually the Skink's attacks would be as effective as throwing wet towels at them but with poison... hmm

Also Skink Chiefs don't get poison but they would here,

The Saurus have definite use for it

Oh my god... Tehenhauin removes 'Squish!' and gives things Hatred: (Skaven) rerolling poisoned attacks, put that in a unit of Skinks (Without Poison) and Tehenhauin in the Swarms that would eat Skaven, be pretty good for fluff and do decent damage against Non-Skaven

 

If i use swarms i do it like this:

special gets filled with 2 arks of sotek, 2 units of 2 swarms and +- 37 temple gurad with the razor standard.
inside the unit i add a slann with the lore of heavens and some miscast protection/channeling options. also the slann has the skavenpelt banner.

witch if you make the unit 8 wide, this gives us 30 poisonned, pf, s5 atts and a chance of harmonic convergance witch is just insane on this unit. since i rekon the rerolls still count for your extra PF atts. the chanses for poisons are awsome.


some (fail) mathammer here:


30 atts WS4 S5 poisonned and harmonic convergance with harmonic comvergance


VS White lions 8 wide

wite lions first: atts with champ hit on 3s ==> lets say 17 hits

wound on 2s, so lets say 15 wounds.

now the TG attks: 30 attks WS4, hit on 4s, poison and PF on 6: 10 hits + 5 pf/ poison and rolls of 1
rerolls give us another chance at a 6 letss say 1 more hit and a poison so 11 hits 6 poisons.

now the additional pf atts 3 hit and 1 poison

withch makes for 7 poison and 14 hits

S5 wounds on 2s ==> 12 wounds. Reroll the 1s, so maybe 13 wounds +7 poisons = 20 wounds on the white lions.
this is not counting the swarm attks or the possible bastilidon atts and stomps or snake pulse whitch is before combat. And would therefore decrease the nomber of LW atts by a few. maybe 3 or 4.

WL 15
TG 20



also this unit only starts to lose attks when dropping below 14 moddels +slann


maybe i should have written this down a bit more constructivly. but u get the point.

 

How do you get 30 attacks from the TG?

 

Scratch my previous post.

8 wide, with frenzy, is 24 attacks in the first rank, and 6 supporting attacks because of the slann. So 30.

Which is ALSO wrong. Holy molly, I need to think these posts through...

The champion (IE the revered guardian) has 3 attacks, so you don't get 30, you get 31 S5, or 28 S5 + 3 attacks of whatever the Temple Guard has for a magic weapon

 

Remember that only applies if your opponent is wide enough for all bases to touch.

It may be a better option to "Horde it up" and get that extra rank? Which allows you to also sling the slann to the side (obviously the side closest to your other units) and get nearly 3 full ranks of saurus attacks.
Against 5-wide 20mm infantry (say, White Lions), we'll get 6 files, ie 25 attacks with unit champ or 31 with frenzy.
Perhaps this is preferable?

Myself, I like to run 25 TG, an oldblood/scarvet/chakax and slann, because it looks purdy. No other reason

 

Considering how many extra points you are throwing into this schwerepunkt I'd certainly hope it works for you. However, it is kind of depressing that your napkin calculations show that a single standard deviation can still swing you from winning to losing. Bringing likely double the points into the fight and assuming a successful casting of an augment I'd expect your temple guard to at least be able to win consistently.

Poison is best when fighting something with T equal to or higher than your S. Razor standard is better when fighting something that has a better armor save. Both sides are stubborn so the fight will last a while which gives all his extra points (300+25+65 for slann, 70 for jungle swarm) time to get flank charges into either of your units and maul you. I recommend assuming 2 bases of jungle swarms because elves might be able to kill a whole base (even on the flank) before you strike and therefore lose your poison.

Consider the same fight but skink cohorts against white lions.

 

I specifically picked white lions because it would be one of the worst possible matchups..
Against anything with a higher T and or relies on a high armor save, they get that motch more effective. A WS of 6 ,T3 5+ armor and S6 really isn't that good of a matchup for this unit. but even so statistically they should win. even if they are not in horde formation when they could. or even if the enemy has more bodys and strikes first. also not counting the damage done by the supporting units.

I know point for point the ksinks will kill white lions more effectivly than this build will. Altho the skinks will not win any combats against white lions. This is one of the worst possible matchups yet they still win.



Not counting the swarms the frenzyed TG with razor standard on their own are a serious force to be rekkonned with.
I was just implying that poision go's well with both predatory fighter and reroll's. And that havving all 3 in a S5 ap unit with a more than decent number of atts is just scary.

 

This is wrong.

White Lions are ridiculously good against blocks just like the templeguard - well-armoured, and good toughness, and needs to be killed outrigt.

Against skinks, they are overkill, and are a complete and utter waste. It is the exact matchup you want to make.

Maybe it's because I also have a skaven army, so I am aware that "winning" combat isn't about destroying the enemy block - it can also be about tarpitting them forever without accomplishing anything. Point for point, you can have more than twice as many skinks, and thus ranks, than the White Lions, which makes you capable off keeping steadfast for most of the game, if you go for the standstill. Easier still, just grab a ton of 10-man units, and redirect them off the board, because they WILL destroy it, and they WILL overrun it, and fly off route. Congragulate your opponent on killing 50-100 points, while you slaughter the rest of his army. It's harder to do as lizardmen, because 50 points for 10 man is far more expensive than what skaven can do, but it still works all the same. Temple Guards are directly countered by White Lions, because they are easily capable of hitting CC because of their high armour save against shooting, but at the same time, skinks are a counter to the white lions, but for an entirely different reason. A "kill"-counter would be Couldron witch elves, who are capable of putting out more hurt than the white lions, while relying on a ward save, rather than toughness or armour save.

Cost is everything, and when you pay for ASF to not get ASL on greatweapons, while also having S4, and great armour saves against shooting, you are only paying the bare minimum to get the needed killing power to deal with units like Temple Guards, without wasting points on defense, which the Temple Guards would shred anyway. In fact, standard Saurus works better against them becausue of this as well - they cost less than the temple guards.

I have to agree though, you are better off throwing poison on units that lack the punch (IE Strength) to wound properly. This makes jungle swarms good against things like a steam tank, because templeguards do shred some of their high armour.

The problem with jungle swarms, is that they are too expensive to use with skinks. skinks can get poison for 2 points. why not just take that upgrade instead, and not have to rely on getting the swarm into combat as well, as well as managing to keep it alive? Not only is it cheaper in a lot of cases, it is also more effective. And skinks with their low S actually benefit from it, where few things have a high enough toughness to require poison on the templeguard. Maybe my local group just consists of far too many humans/elves/undeads, but Toughness 3 is just too widespread, making s5 more than enough. Poison is simply wasted points. Maybe against Dwarves or Ogres, or other lizardmen, but it is still pretty meh.

 

Not really. You get 3 skinks per white lion, and a white lion has only one attack. Point to point, a white lion can more reliable kill one skink, but skinks can less reliably kill more white lions.
The other things like stubborn at come into play later is where the kicker is.

Plonk a basty nearby and you're striking together (doesn't really matter when you've got 3x as many models then them).

Also, you can buy poison for skinks, so jungle swarms are useless here.

 

Now you talk about killing, specifically, which I didn't.

Skinks are super good at countering White Lions, because White Lions will spend an eternity killing the same number of skinks, thus accomplishing nothing at all during the entire game, if they ever got stuck.

No reason to go with poison. You wont kill them all anyway, so you might as well make the skinks cheaper, and just get more of them. Make them an unkillable horde, keep them near the general and BSB, and they will never ever die without more than the white lions hitting them.

This is probably the most important thing i've learned from playing Lizardmen and Skaven- playing to table the enemy is the wrong mindset. You need to focus on killing more points in units than the opponent, while avoiding or otherwise shutting down blocks you don't want to bother with. White Lions is not a block you want to bother with. A 50 man block of witch elves with a couldron is not something your units should bother with. You throw a few spells at them to make them inconsequential, or make sure they never hit anything valuable. You should never be thinking "What unit do I throw face-first into this monster?".

Myy local player seem to have a fetish for his Witch Elves. He ranked 6 out of 25 last tournament. Out of my last 10 games with him, I have been in CC with his Witch elves a grand total of 1 time, which was when I had already reduced it to 8 man and killed the couldron and hag. He is not an incompetent player, he just can't get his massive unit to do what it is supposed to do - draw fire, or kill anything that it hits.

White Lion Deathstars are the same. They are a trap - don't fight it. It's not worth it.

 

Sure, you can do that if you like. But Skinks aren't slaves (2.5 SS per skink), so alot of points are wasted going into doing some thing you'd be better off dealing with in other ways.

Jungle swarms may actually be OK to hold them up for a few turns with the help of some Ark of Sotek Basties. Deployed deep rather than wide, it minimises the attacks to it, and the ark can keep them strong enough to hold them off until you're positioned for a combo charge.

 

Yup my thoughts exactly. 25 White Lions is the same price as 51 skinks and 2 jungle swarms. The jungle swarms actually become useless so you may as well add another 12 skink cohorts. You'll be steadfast for 3 round of combat (1.5 game turns) and your points come out of core instead of special.

Swarms are interesting for edge cases in the chaff battle where you can hold people up through 2-3 rounds of combat where your skinks wouldn't have lasted 1 round. Even then the skinks might come out on top by being able to whittle down some attacks through shooting and stand and shoot and can still be stubborn if in the woods.

 

I feel that swarms have a place, it's just against high toughness things for our saurus (or anything for our useless saurus warriors haha)

It's the tradeoff from unstable vs shooting attacks of skirmish skinks. 70 points will get you 10 wounds, Skirmishers, chaff and march/charge blockers, it's just the aforementioned decision of unstable and poison combo charge or shooting. Both have uses, though skinks are more versatile, and of course.. core!

 

If the mindset is to not let them get to you then why not go with 5 units of 10 skinks instead of 1 unit of 50. They can at most kill 10 skinks a turn and are uccupied 2.5 nturns with 50 skinks instead of 1.5. ?