8th Ed. Heroic Saurus characters on foot

Hello all!

I've enjoyed reading many threads on here about the undeniable efficiency of Saurus Scar-Veterans and Oldbloods on Cold Ones. They typically get a great weapon and gear that grants a 1+ armour save and 4+ ward save. I've also browsed conversations about how Carnosaur-mounted characters are cool but vulnerable to cannons.

However here I'm interested in discussing Saurus on foot. Nothing is more compelling to me than a staunch lizard boye marching and fighting with his Saurus phalanx like a Homeric Greek hero, ferociously tearing apart massed enemy infantry, or bravely duelling opposing characters.

I've had a bit of recent success with the classic great weapon / armour of destiny build, sometimes throwing in a Crown of Command when I'm scared for my lizards facing particularly fearsome foes. But as my gaming group is not particularly competitive, I'm now considering a more unique and fun loadout:

Oldblood- sword of bloodshed, armour of fortune, potion of speed, shield. 246 points.

This guy gets an astonishing 8 attacks, with his S5 enough to cull Stormvermin, Halberdiers, and other T3 fools. I love boosting my blocks with Wyssan's Wildform, and I feel this build benefits from going to S6 a lot, whereas a great weapon going to S8 rarely makes a big difference. My dream is that one day this guy will be Wyssan'd to S6, chug his potion of speed, and ferociously hack apart an entire rank of charging Chaos Warriors before they can strike!

What do you guys think? Do you have any other unusual fun builds for a heroic foot reptile to suggest?


Here are a few pictures to inspire you from my recent games:

One of my Oldbloods fights a long duel with an elusive Vampire.


My venerable Oldblood general, Loq-Boq, chops into an Arachnarok Spider with his great weapon.



A better view of Loq-Boq. With his ancient blade, the Blessed Moonrazor of Xhotl, he has slain countless enemies of the Old Ones.

 

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It is an interesting idea. Whenever i run Saurus characters on foot, it is because i do not want to run 2 Cowboys. In a comp game, i feel like you cannot really have more than 3 characters, especially with how expensive Slann are. In smaller games i like to have a Scarvet as BSB, seeing how there is no Slann. I have found the item that gives +1 Toughness, the Sacred Stegadon Helm, quite ok. With Light Armor and a Shield that gets you up to a 2+, with T6. I have found that it is generally better to make your BSB tanky, especially with how low our I is, so that he can survive and keep giving the rerolls with his BSB.

 

I'm a big fan of a deathstar style Temple Guard Unit, with Kroak, with an Oldblood with GW, Armour of Destiny and Dawnstone. Lots of Unbreakable goodness and with that death range spell from Kroak being used concurrently with a duo of flying Skink Priests (Arabyan Carpet and Cloak of Feathers). Worked like a charm against O&Gs. Not great against high armour enemies due to spell only being S4. Still fun though.

 

Interesting ideas. I mostly plan on not having a Slann at all- the 2400 point army I have now features no Slann!

That means I have plenty of room for ferocious Oldbloods! The Stegadon Helm is a cool item, I've always wanted to try it. However I thought it might not be able to be used with basic light armour, because you can only have one piece of armour, and a shield? Not sure...

Great weapon, armour of destiny, and dawnstone is a classic choice. Even more incredible when in an Unbreakable unit!

Any alternative builds you've tried? I've heard some people like the Glittering Scales magic light armour (-1 to hit for enemies), plus the Fencer's Blades weapon (paired weapons, WS10). That means almost every enemy character and unit is hitting on a 5+ at best! So you have defence from being hard to hit instead of a strong armour and ward save. Never tried it myself.

 

I see what you mean! The Stegadon Helm is not classified as either Heavy Armor or Light Armor, so you can wear it in conjunction with other pieces of Armor. Same with the Dragonhelm from the BRB!

I have tried different builds in the years i played competitively, but frankly, nothing beats a unit of 30 Crossbowmen shooting at your Scarvet and those 30 bolts just bouncing harmlessly off your 1+ rerollable save. Fencers blade plus Glittering Scales is cute, but there is quite a lot of Hatred/reroll to hit in the game, which makes that build a bit unreliable. It also does not help you at all when you are being shot at.

 

Ahhh good point. I see most of the magic armour options from the BRB say "heavy armour" or "light armour" but the Stegadon Helm doesn't. Is this a commonly accepted interpretation? Opens up lots of other combinations I didn't consider.

How about this as a kind of can-opener:

Oldblood- sword of strife, potion of strength, armour of fortune, luckstone, shield. 246 points.

Still has decent protection with a 1+ armour and 5+ ward save. And in a crucial turn can unleash seven S8 attacks!!! Afterwards going down to seven S5 attacks, which is still solid for chopping up regular troops. Obviously he's not going to be duelling Nurgle Daemon Princes or Vampire blenderLords, but could be a unique and fun thing to try.

 

I’ve done glittering scales with Kroak (-2 to hit). I should try that with Fencers Blades as well!

 

I have never been to a tournament where that was not allowed, so i am positive that you are allowed to do that. There is no rule that says you cannot.

 

You can't have two magic armours unless you are a special character whose list of magic items is pre-determined. Says so in the magic items section of the BRB and the Stegadon Helm is definitely armour.

For Lizardmen, it doesn't really matter as you can do light armour and Steg Helm (2+ armour save which is still epic) and give him a 4++ talisman.

 

Yeah of course, but the question how i interpreted it is if you are allowed to have mundane light armor and the Steg Helm. It is not allowed to have say the Glittering Scales and the Steg Helm, as they are both indeed Magic Armor. I think i might have read that wrong.

 

Right.

Yeah, nothing about having more than one piece of armour (you can have shield, light/heavy armour, barding, so helmet is another piece).

 

I think it's easy to get confused about what the intention was. Not the only thing that's confusing in 8th ed! Here's the somewhat ambiguous area. I think it's not really clear what a "suit" of armour is, so it's only to be expected that people have different interpretations:

 

I've always thought that if they wanted to make it so that you couldn't have both the stegadon helm and/or dragonhelm and/or helm of discord and/or trickster's helm with regular armor, they would have just made them light armor like the Glittering Scales. Why leave pointless ambiguity and have two different kinds of item have the exact same effect?

 

That's a very good point. From that perspective, I have to agree with you.

Anyway, in terms of the Oldblood builds, did anyone have any thoughts on my idea?

Oldblood- sword of strife, potion of strength, armour of fortune, luckstone, shield. 246 points.

1+ armour, 5+ ward save. And for one turn, seven S8 attacks! Obviously not *quite* as durable and consistent as the classic armour of destiny + great weapon build. But that one turn when you might chop apart half a dozen Chaos Knights? Priceless!!

 

Definitely a pretty cool build, I like it a lot. It stays pretty durable and packs a serious punch. One of the more unique builds I've seen. I usually have a hard time fitting in saurus characters in my lists because I usually run a slann and I have a beatiful Gor Rok model (My favorite character from the fluff) that I try to squeeze in whenever I can. One of these days I want to try a list with just saurus blocks and no slann.

 

I've always thought it's annoying rather than ambiguous. Why make it so you can either have a helm or armour? It's one magic armour piece only so not unclear, just a bit stupid.

 

My current list is just hefty Saurus bloccs and no Slann! Partly to be a special unique snowflake, but also for my army theme. I just love having the Lord allowance for savage close combat fighters.

Can't fault you for taking Gor-Rok, he's awesome! Only issue is I feel he should be a Lord level guy with three wounds, to represent his legendary durability. For me I mostly can't resist making my own custom characters. Here's a work in progress shot of my most recent Oldblood, made mostly from the plastic Carnosaur box bits.

I agree it's silly and a little arbitrary! With a couple more carefully edited sentences and some examples, they could have made it 100% crystal clear.

 

Absolutely! I've been working on a custom stat block for him to use in larger narrative games to truly showcase the might of the Great White Lizard.

The character is looking great, I love the skull on the base. It's also very cool that you use pure black for the blades (to represent obsinite and stay true to the fluff, I assume?). Personally, I can't help but cover everything I can in gold. Even some of my beastmen have golden markings and weapons!

 

Would love to see what you come up with for enhanced Gor-Rok!

I know what you mean about the gold, it's tempting to paint lots of areas gold. But I try to be a little sparing with it, especially on character models that have so much already.

My blades end up being black or dark grey, to represent obsinite as you guessed! For characters, I generally add a purple glaze, just to suggest it's a magical weapon. If you scroll up to the first post in this thread, you can see another of my Oldbloods converted from Chakax who has a slightly purple mystical stone blade!

For my latest guy another item loadout I was considering is to give him the sword that has the Always Strikes First rule, and a potion of strength. For for one round he can strike first with five S8 attacks, pretty fearsome for monsters or heavy cavalry. The ASF sword may also help protect him by denying the rerolls Elves would usually get fighting him.