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I am brand new to WarHammer in general, my friend is starting a fantasy escalation league. We are starting at 500 pts. I've chosen the apparently cheesy lizardmen as my army and have come up with a proposed initial list and was wondering if it sounded decent.

(1) Slann Mage-Priest no upgrades
(10) Skink skirmishers no upgrades
(10) Saurus Warriors, spears, standard bearer or musician, and a champion

You can't take a lord under 2000pts.

Go with Scar vet, 2 unit of 10 skink skirmishers a skink priest and a salamander. I Mopped up my escalation league with that list.

After tonight I had actually started to consider a scar vet as we went to get our first models and I got one of the packs, which included 24 skinks, 24 saurus warriors and 8 saurus cavalry, which I am pretty sure I am allowed to use 1 of those to represent a scar vet.

Field 59 skirmishing skinks plus a Sarus scar vet as your hero. Refuse to get the skinks into hand to hand and tear up your opponent with a billion blowpipe shots. Bring kleenex for the guy who didn't bring lizzies

privateer4hire wrote:Field 59 skirmishing skinks plus a Sarus scar vet as your hero. Refuse to get the skinks into hand to hand and tear up your opponent with a billion blowpipe shots. Bring kleenex for the guy who didn't bring lizzies

Speaking of skinks, I cannot find the range on blowpipes. Maybe I am missing it but there is nothing in the rule book that I can find on them. Are they treated as something else for the purpose of range?

12" range on blowpipe. Kinda sucks, that is why some people prefer Javelins, because even though their range is only 8" they can move and shoot without penalty.

Javelins aren't near as good as everyone makes them out to be.
Sure, they afford your skinks an armor save, but they're toughness 2 and against ranged attacks it's only a 6+ and there are tons of strength 4 or armor piercing ranged attacks that will eliminate that armor save.
The other argument is that in close combat it'll become a 5+. That's still pissing in the wind as skinks are weapon skill 2 and would be hit on 3+, wounded on a 2-3+ by almost EVERY unit in the game. That 5+ save isn't going to filter out near enough wounds to warrant it's use. There's almost nothing in the game that skinks can stand up to in close combat without being slaughtered. That's because they're shooters not fighters. They're meant to harass enemy units with poison attacks and flee when charged to set up saurus warriors or other units with advantageous counter charges or to allow the enemy to over commit themselves and be surrounded by other units of harrassers.
Blowpipes lend greater range and a greater number of shots than javelins and due to poison, they offset the effectiveness of javelins in almost all scenarios outside of enemies 6-8" away. Then javelins perform better. Better still, with the longer range, it's easier to get them into a position where they're out of range of a unit's charge, unlike the 8" javelins.
If you don't believe me that blowpipes are more effective check the mathhammer against a rank and file, toughness 3 unit with a 5+ save vs shooting:

stationary or stationary javelin at 0-8"
1*((1/6)+(1/3)*(1/2))*(2/3))=5/9

stationary Blow pipe At 0-6"
2*((1/6)+((1/3)*(1/2))*(2/3))=5/9

stationary blow pipe at 6-12"
2*((1/6)+((1/6)*(1/2)*(2/3))=4/9

moving blowpipe at 0-6"
2((1/6)+((1/6)*(1/2)*2/3)=4/9

moving blowpipe at 6-12"
2((1/6)*(2/3))=2/9

Like I said, javelins only outperform blowpipes at 6-8", which is a very small margin to try and capitalize on. Just skirmish them for 7 pts a model instead of paying for a useless armor save and mostly inferior weapon. Focus on hit and run tactics with them, stay outside of a unit's line of sight to avoid the charge and march block them so your other units can engage them on their terms. If you're fighting a shooting army, let them maim your cheap throw away units of skinks to avoid your high volume of poisoned attacks.. then they'll be ignoring other elements of your army.

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