I know they aren’t officially released yet, but the rules, points, and base sizes are out so you can proxy stuff in. One of the people I play with is looking to use them the next time we play and from what I’ve seen and heard they seem very daunting to go up against. I’m still pretty new to playing so I was wondering if you guys had any tips for how to at least be competitive against them. I like to run koatls claw type lists with lots of saurus so I’m worried I’m just gonna get blasted off the board trying to run into the archers.
Archers do trash damage for their points, their strength is character sniping from long range. Skink heroes won't live long vs them. They have lots of -1 to hit sources, easily reaching -3 if they want so bring all the +hit you can. They are a defensive faction with limited offence so get on objectives first and you will have a big upper hand. They can bounce battleschock tests so make sure you have 2 CPs and heroes to use inspiring precense.
Try get as much shooting into the cavalry units as you can if they bring those too. At least on paper, their extra hits vs. 1-wound infantry will decimate your troops if they're allowed to smash into them. If you're bringing Carnosaurs or Knights maybe try and hit their cavalry with your own before they run your Saurus over. Hammer elves and battle cattle can knock you off objectives, so watch out for that. And definitely try to keep your units in cover, or at least your heroes, as much as possible if they bring the archers. They are tailor-made to snipe heroes, but like @erians said, they won't be as big of a threat to larger blocks of troops.
Cover won't help since they dont care about LoS, save or hit modifiers. Only thing you can do is range them but since they have potential 42" threat range that's gonna be tricky. Global unbinds helps A LOT here thankfully, as their damage drops sharply without their buff spell.
If they bring teclis, try to bring him down first. Alternatively go for archers. I had only two games against them and won both. They have problems with maintaining proper screens, because of their shining company rule. Despite -1 to-hit and aetherquartz, they are very expensive per wound. Their leadership is also poor, so they have to rely on cathallar or on LoE to maintain it. If you snipe the cathallar, you may try to force as many battleshock tests as possible. As for spells, try to unbind protection on teclis, speed of hysh and power of hysh on archer units. One auto-unbind by teclis can be annoying, so you are not casting comet, if you are within 30" of him. Their mobility is not superior either, except cavalry and they cannot bring all the good stuff at once. Sniping characters and good magic are their main strengths.
played against them but it was a 1000 points 1v1v1 scenario and I was against nurgle and LRL. I had to go first and since they both are fat armies and LRL has lots of shooting I was kinda screwed. I was too slow to get anywhere and I lost a unit of knights in one attack to 13 mortal wounds to the archers. I kinda was stuck in the position where the tie breaker was whoever could kill me first and take my objective. I didn’t learn much from this game cause I was unfortunately relegated to the punching bag position. It does seem like if I could potentially get into the LRL I might be okay, but as Coalesced I don’t see how I can run across the map without losing a chunk of my army, and then I’d still have to cleave through a bunch of spears to open the way to the archers to stop from continually losing units every turn to mortals.
Yeah, the army-wide mortal wound output is going to be hard to deal with. 3 player games are difficult, though, because someone always ends up being the punching bag.