Has anyone tried a 50 Skink Horde? No Krox, full command with poison? Possibly lead by a Skink Priest with Lore of Beasts.... The only thing I would be afraid of is Ld tests on Ld 5 or Ld 6
With a general/bsb nearby they'd be alright. But they give up so much CR that you couldn't really add anything into the battle to help except stegs I suppose (stubborn) and at 380 points what are they going to beat? Its worth a try but I can't imagine alot of damage being done.
I ran 49 Skinks with Poison and 1 Kroxigor the other day. I was playing against Tomb Kings so it may not be the best example, but they held up pretty well (give a little bit of luck). I put the single Kroxigor in the unit for Ld 7 mainly and run them in horde formation (although they are only a reform away from being 10 ranks deep if I really need some steadfast). I ran them right up the middle of the field and got charged by a unit of Tomb Guard with a Tomb King. Skinks won that round of combat. Then they got charged in the flank by Necolith Colossus and also charged by a unit of Skeletons. They didn't win that combat, but they were steadfast and held. (I should note that this turn the Skinks has Light of Battle cast on them so they were WS10, which probably makes a big difference .. but that's why I take Lore of Light!) That was enough time for my Temple Guard to get a rear charge in on that Necolith Colossus. Unfortunately the Temple Guard wiffed on their attacks and didn't kill the thing ... and the skinks were reduced enough that they were no longer steadfast and I lost combat ... but rolled double 1's for the skinks to hold! This whole time the Skinks had been picking away at the Tomb Guard, killing 5 or 6 of them a turn. Then a Necrosphinx hit the Skinks in the rear. The Temple Guard killed the Colossus but the Skink Cohort was reduced down to only the Champion who fled (that would be a 450 point Skink running across the table...) but the Temple Guard cleaned up. All in all, I think the Cohorts did exactly what I wanted them to do. They held up some combat blocks long enough for my Temple Guard to hit them in the side. They needed a little bit of magic (but what in the Lizardmen don't) and a little bit of luck at the end (the double 1's made up for my Stegadon getting overrun after failing a stubborn, rerollable, cold blooded 9) I'm not sure if 36 Saurus Warriors would have out performed the skinks (they probably would have killed more, but I think the extra 16 wounds in the Cohort unit (for 3 points less than the Saurus unit) let them stick around a little bit longer (at least against the things that didn't care about T4 vs T2 like the monsters and killing blows). Also, the Saurus wouldn't have been able to get far enough ahead of the Temple Guard to block my opponent from charging my Temple Guard. Probably the M6 vs M4 is the biggest tactical consideration to make between Saurus and Cohorts. For now, I'm going to keep running my 49/1 Skrox unit.
So i used to run a unit of 40 skinks + poison + mus/SB that i used for flank harassment/monster hunting. While i liked the unit I found it is too unpredictable. Even with 30 attacks sometimes you just don't roll the 6s you need..... The horde of skinks I run in every army now is 50 skinks + mus/SB. This is a pretty cheap unit for being so large (270pts). I keep it on the flank of one of my important units as protection, but it does need to stay in the generals bubble to be effective. The way i use it is for shooting harassment in horde formation. Then when it gets charged the 50 skinks is enough to hold for a turn against about anything. After the first round I reform it into 5 wide and use it to hold up units. This works best against elite infantry like beastigors or chaos warriors, something that will hit super hard but not break my steadfast. This is such a good hold up unit because it forces the opponent to charge it by throwing 20 poisoned javelins at them every turn.
I used a 40 skink "horde" in deep formation and they defeated a unit of LSG in a straight up fight. It should be noted that my saves and poisons for skinks are absurd! I don't roll good for saurus, but for skinks i roll like a baws. My average Chamo skink poison hits with 6 chamo's are about 4. It's absurdly retarded, also had a priest in th same skink unit save 2/3 attacks with his 6+ AS, sadly he already had a wound...