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So Andrew and I got together once again for some WHFB action. And once again we pitted my Skaven against his Lizardmen. This was our sixth game together (or seventh?), and while I do enjoy winning, I was hoping it would be more like our last game than some of the others we had: last game he won unquestioningly, the rest did not go well for him.

Anyway, after dabbling in increasing army point values up to 1500, we decided we wanted to finish an entire game this time and so went back to 1000 points.
My list was an experimental one. I've actually created a few such lists that are a bit extraordinary, at least to usual Skaven mentality, just to see how things work.
This is my shooty experimental list:

Chieftan - General
Chieftan - BSB
Warlock Engineer - Level 1
Warlock Engineer - Level 1
20 Clanrats w/ hand weapons and shields, standard and musician
-Poisoned Wind Mortar
20 Clanrats w/ hand weapons and shields, standard and musician
-Poisoned Wind Mortar
4 Jezzails
4 Jezzails
4 Jezzails
Warp Lightning Cannon
Warp Lightning Cannon

Yeah, quite an odd list I have to say. Only two VERY small Clanrat units. Low Ld General and BSB with no magic items to help them survive or deal pain. 3 units of Jezzails, which I had never tried before. Two Level 1 Wizards.
Yeesh. Only time would tell if this was a super silly list to even try out.

Andrew's Lizards looked like this, give or take upgrades:

Saurus Oldblood - General
Skink Chief - BSB
Skink Priest- Level 2
15 Saurus Warriors
11 Skinks in Cohort w/ Kroxigor
11 Skinks in Cohort w/ Kroxigor
Jungle Swarm
Jungle Swarm
Salamander Hunting Pack - 1 Sal, 4 Handlers

This is, I think, Andrew's first list that doesn't attempt the use of either Skink Skirmishers or Chameleons.
He has been less than happy with the Lizards thus far, especially with the Skinks who he was hoping to base his army around. He had great success with the Slann, but understandably does not want his army to require a Slann to win.
We will see what happens this game and in the future, and where he goes with the Lizards. I really want him to get the Stegadon done...or at least trade it to me

Set Up & Deployment


We rolled Dawn Attack, and 6 pieces of terrain which turned out to be: 3 Forests, 1 Hill, 1 Tower and 1 Arcane Ruins.
I rolled to set up first, and was very lucky that all my placements were either in the centre or my choice. Andrew's rolls were good as well, with most in the centre, two on the flank and one choice.
My Warlock Engineers got Howling Warpgale and Warp Lightning. Andrew's Priest rolled Iceshard Blizzard and Urannon's Thunderbolt.

Skaven 1

*Movement: Both Clanrat units moved up just enough that a) the rightmost Warlock was within range of the Arcane Ruins, and b) I was just outside of Skink Move & Shoot range of 18". The Poisoned Wind Mortars followed suit, coming out a little into the middle to get clear shots of the enemy centre units.
*Magic: Winds of Magic were very good to me, with an extra 2 Channelled through the Ruins. I successfully cast Howling Warpgale, but Warp Lightning was dispelled.
*Shooting: This is the phase that the list was built for, so I was excited here. I started off with not one but TWO Direct Hits with the PWMortars on the Saurus unit. Yikes! The first blast hit 10 Warriors, but only 3 bit it. The second blast took out another 2, and so caused a Panic test, which was passed. Good start. My next shot was the rightmost cannon flinging green bolts of death across the field to the Priest's Skink Cohort. Well, when the bounce roll ends up being a 10, you can't really complain. You still can't complain when the shot zips through the Kroxigor, successfully wounds, and does so at x6. Yeah, that's one dead Kroxigor. We had a rule question here that we couldn't find the answer to (I'll ask it again at the end). The other cannon could just see over the hill, and so took a shot at the other Skink unit. It rolled low both times, but did managed a Strength 2 hit against four Skinks in the front because of the template that drops at the end. 3 Skinks fell. For those keeping score, the first four shots of the game took out 10 models, 5 of them Saurus Warriors, 1 of them a Kroxigor. So far, this shooty list is working out! However, the Jezzails, a little too far out to do proper damage, manage only one more kill, one more Skink in the Chief's unit.

Lizardmen 1

So far, not so good. Andrew's already starting to regret facing me tonight. Maybe he should have played with Rob or Loy instead, who are playing Wood Elves and Bretonnians on the table next to us.
*Movement: EVERYONE moves up. Again, my units are just outside of his javelins' range. But the Sal is perfectly placed to belch some fire at my BSB's unit.
*Magic: Decent Winds for Andrew, but a bit of luck on my part (including two more extra dice through the Ruins) helps me dispell all of his spells.
*Shooting: The Salamander, ever a thorn in my side, spits some flames and not only roasts a whopping 7 of my Clanrats, but also toasts that unit's PWMortar. Punk! I pass the Panic test, thankfully, even though I'm now down a rank.

Skaven 2

Can't complain about Turn 1! I may have lost only 2 less models than Andrew, but mine were only rats and a single weapon team. He's lost way more important stuff. That's the beauty of Skaven...most of what you table is pretty cheap and near expendable!
*Movement: I actually took a few steps backwards with both Clanrats and the surviving PWM. Every little bit counts when Charges could fail, especially with Andrew's luck. Plus if I'm outside of 6", his Javelins are at -1 to hit me.
*Magic: The Winds of Magic blow. Or rather, blow hard. Snake eyes! And only one Channel die, even with the Arcane Ruins bonus. BUT, three dice are all I need to successfully cast Warp Lightning on the Skink unit, dropping three more Skinks and dealing one wound to the Kroxigor. Should I have cast Howling Warpgale instead, knowing there would be shooting soon? Hrm.
*Shooting: Here we go. I was ready to zap and fry a handful of models again. Well, I was ready to, I just didn't. Instead the PWMortar shot scattered 10" away from the Saurii, the leftmost WLCannon blasted a hole just in front of the Priest's Skinks, and the othe WLCannon decided to misfire but shoot in the direction he was aiming at anyway. But the very strong shot fell quite a bit shy of the Salamander, who was just aching to be hit. Oi. The Jezzails did not really do much better, #1 doing nothing, #2 popping another Skink and a wound on the Kroxigor, and #3 taking out one of the Salamander's Handlers. Actually, I think it was this shot that I rolled three 6s to hit, and just needed 2+ to kill. Oh, what's that? Two 1s and a 3? Thanks for coming out. See? I'm not always the lucky one.

Lizardmen 2

Andrew was spared some real death on my turn. He was not getting close enough to start laying on some death. Oh boy.
*Movement: The Jungle Swarm on my right Charged into the Jezzails, taking a wound on the way in. The Saurii moved up, the Krox-less Skinks moved into the tower, and the other Jungle Swarm got up on the hill, ready to participate in the inevitable combat between the Chieftan's Clanrats and the Saurii.
*Magic: A pretty low Winds roll meant the Priest had little to work with. No successful spells. Again.
*Shooting: Time to do some damage! Ready. Aim. FIRE! Well, the Salamander did fire, but only burninated 3 Clanrats this time. And 15 Javelins from the various Skinks did, well, nothing. Just a lot of sticks now sticking up out of the ground in front of my units.
*Close Combat: First CC of the game! And it's between a Jungle Swarm and a unit of Jezzails. This oh-so-exciting combat saw the Jezzails put 2 wounds on the Swarm, who did none back. But the Charge meant they only lost 1 more wound to being Unstable, which meant they survived and held. Grr.

Skaven 3

Alright. Here we go. Time to get some Clanrats into the mix! CHAAAAAAAAAAAARGE!
*Movement: The General's Clanrats Charge the Saurii...who Flee!...and get Caught!...and are Dead!...and Andrew calls the game.

So, just when we thought we would play a full game, the Saurii commit the Lustrian equivalent of Seppuku and here we are, not even halfway through the third turn.
I totally understand, though. Andrew has had so little luck with the Lizards against me that I think his joking about dumping all of his LM models into a bag and jumping repeatedly on the bag...is not really a joke.
Even this crazy build of mine, which would have died easily in close combat, did too well. That Flee! by the Saurii was just a way to get the game to end. I don't know exactly why Andrew did so, but yeah, I guess he was getting frustrated with how the game was going. And I wasn't even really winning, so I won't even chalk this up as a Skaven win. Just another early-ended game to hopefully learn something from.

And now I've got a question:
My WLCannon shot bounced through the Skrox unit...hitting a Skink in the front row, the Kroxigor in the second, and then a Skink in the third. Now, does it actually hit the Skink in the third, or does the Kroxigor's big base count as being both in the second and third, so only two models get hit? We played it as he counts as two, but only because I felt so bad that on my third shot of the game I killed a Kroxigor.
Any help here would be great.

Anyway, this may or may not be the last game my Skaven face against Andrew's Lizards for a while. I'm not tired of winning, but I am tired of discouraging him so often.
We're going to play these armies against other players while working on our second armies (his Daemons, my High Elves). Maybe we'll come back together with those two armies and see if he can't do a little better.

Thanks for reading!
C&C always welcome.

Great report as always of an, unfortunately, less than great game. I should have accepted the charge and flanked you. I was pretty run down at that point and felt that I just needed to walk away from the table. Sorry man.

Yeah you get games like this from time to time in any game system, just have to tough it out and hope things go better next time.

I'm actually in a similar situation to you guys, I've been playing some low point games to get a mate into Fantasy, but he has repeatedly been beating me with his Skaven against my Lizards. Skaven seem to work much better than Lizards at lower points levels, I guess mostly because they have so many cheap options (whereas Lizards need a few solid blocks which chew up quite a few points before they start taking choppy stuff). Its a bit unusual, as both are top tier lists at 2000pts+, so pushing the points limit up a bit could help.

@ asm.zero

Good to see that you actually thought of that yourself. I was just about to comment the exact same thing. You probably wouldn't have even needed the supporting flank charge, as 10 Saurus Warriors will easily beat 20 Clanrats in combat.

It's really frustrating when things don't go your way early in a game, but that is often the way it goes for Lizardmen (especially without a Slann controlling the Magic Phase). You just have to hang in there, as your units mostly chew through the Skaven Core units in close combat.

Also, you probably don't ever want to include Jungle Swarms in your army again. They are basically the only unit in the entire Lizardmen armybook that is absolutely terrible. A second Salamander would probably have been a lot better.

I definitely know that feeling. Time and again when we used to play Warmachine I could hardly get my Mercs to work right, both Rhulic and Pirates. In fact with my pirates I don't think I was ever able to get my Solos to do what they were supposed to do, as they kept getting shot and killed by those dang Cygnar gunners.
So now you know how I felt!

Powerguy, we've definitely noticed that low points games favour the Skaven, while (so far) higher points favour the Lizards. I've won or done better (in the early stages at least) in all five games 1250 and under, while the Lizards did well at 1500. I think we'll put this match up to bed for a bit, though, and come back to them later. Thankfully we've both got second armies to start working on.

@airmaniac
Yeah, theoretically the Saurii should stomp the rats and in this case I think they would have but I had 5 other games under my belt where that just wasn't the case. Even if the LM kill twice what the Skaven kill the clanrat unit generally still has more ranks, strength in numbers, and, at least in our games, they had access to inspiring leadership and a BSB. When the rats don't run away at least for one turn to give the lizards a break (and an all important shooting phase) the rats end up grinding the Saurii down.

The jungle swarms were supposed to be poisonous speedbumps. Keep them at angles to redirect his clanrats away from each other...try and get the BSB and the general more than 12" apart, alas, it was a shooty army and he didn't advance so I had to come up with something else to do with them....my idea: tie down the jezzails for a turn or two. Not really worth the points in this case but if I can make < 100 points kill a couple things and take away his Insp. Ld / BSB combo that would have been points well spent.

Thanks for the feedback!

Andrew

A unit of sword and board Clanrats kills (on average) only 0.83 Saurus Warriors per round of combat (0.69 if the Saurus do not have Spears). Two ranks of Saurus Warriors kill (again, on average) 4.17 Clanrats per round of combat. If the Saurus Warriors have Spears and have 3 ranks, they will kill 5.56 Clanrats per round of combat. I'm fairly sure that even if the Clanrats do not break from combat, they will not grind down the Saurus in the long run (unless there are at least 5 times as many Clanrats as Saurus, in which case the Saurus losing wouldn't be surprising, as they would cost about half of what the Clanrats cost).

Airmaniac, while you do make very valid points, our games recently have tended not to work so much on averages as incredibly lucky rolls on my part, with the opposite for Andrew. Theory- and MathHammer are great games to play, until the Great Horned One smiles upon your opponent.

Another thing is its a pretty lopsided match.

skaven perform incredibly well at low point values, due to extremly cheap units.

lizards dont perform as well at lower points. Take skaven vs lizards at 2000 or 2500 points and it will be a much different outcome.

Exactly.
I think when we come back to have these two forces meet, we are going to up it to 2000 points. Right now we are taking really long to play even short games. Once we are comfortable enough with the rules and our own forces that we can play 6 turns in an evening, we can expand to higher points.

Interesting lists.

Regarding your question on the cannon bouncing past the kroxigor it depends whether the Kroxigor is killed as he is monstrous infantry so one of two things can happen.

Let's say your cannon lands in front of the unit and you roll a 10 going all the way through and coming out the other side.

option a - you wound the kroxigor and multiply it by D6 and kill him you will then hit the skink behind and keep going (and of course the one in front)
option b - you either wound and don't kill or you don't wound the kroxigor and the cannon shot finishes on the top of the kroxigors base. That means that the skink behind does not get hit by the lightning line but will probably get hit by the small template (at S10). Naturally you won't roll to wound the kroxigor again. Now whether the front skink gets hit twice I'm not sure but logically speaking he won't be if he is killed the first time but will be if he isn't killed the first time.

Now think about that when firing at a unit of monstrous infantry (say 6). you go through two ranks. If you don't kill the first guy then all they all will be hit. And if you don't kill the second guy they will all be hit as well (apart from the first guy who is already dead)

Thanks for that.
It's what I figured, since technically he is one model and would "be" in the second rank for purposes of the cannon.
But again, I didn't want to do this as I already felt bad for Andrew losing the Krox on turn one.

I don't know if I understand the question entirely. Let's say the unit was 4 skinks deep. But you chose to fire the shot through a kroxigor. Ignoring the blast template, you would hit a maximum of 3 models. The skink in the front rank, the krox in the second (and third) rank, and the skink in the back rank.

Template weapons cover what they cover. The cannon is just a slightly different kind of template.

Yes, that pretty much covers the question:
Does the Kroxigor count as both a second and third rank model?

The angle I shot the unit at was such that, in a three-rank unit, the shot bounced through a Skink in the front row, a Kroxigor in the second (and third), and a Skink in the third.

Kroxigor indeed cover both the second and third rank model. I believe they have some kind of special rule for it, though I'm not sure.

It's an interesting situation. As I understand it, cannonball entered the front of the unit, exited the side at the third rank, was fired from the front arc.

So the question is whether it hits a skink, a krox, and a skink, or just a skink and a krox. I'd go with the latter- because the krox counts for both the second and third rank...

i would play it as you draw a stright line- the old whippy meauring rods are great for this and if it goes through another skink after the krox regardless of its position it is hit as you follow the cannon balls trajectory