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 tmarichards wrote:
Saurus and Temple Guard aren't really very good units, in the UK they're seen in the Lizardmen lists that do the worst. It does depend though, for example if your opponent's game plan is to just push their combat units at yours then a Life Slann in Temple Guard can do well, even though it's doing well for the wrong reasons.

You can do combat-ish Lizard lists, but it's not really where they excel. If you don't want to play full avoidance, you can do alright with maybe 1 unit of Saurus and a unit of Skink-Krox, which are an awesome unit but need Light magic to really shine.

Overall though, the Zulu Dawn MSU shooty-avoidance style is probably the strongest way to play Lizardmen. Lots and lots of small, cheap units that surround the enemy and poison them off, double fleeing charges and generally being obnoxious whilst you shoot and magic off the enemy. A couple of Scar-Vets on Cold Ones are great for killing off small units, but the increasing amount of cannons in the game does mean they're becoming more of a liability.

This is totally correct in my opinion. Life Slann/TG builds are limiting and really only perform well against unbalanced armies and inexperienced players. While Light/Saurus lists are viable the skink cloud is hands down the most competitive build for lizards. It's a very different playstyle so might not be something you're keen on. Furthermore if you're just starting fantasy it's probably not the best way to learn. I've been running a skink cloud since the beginning of the year with some success, if you're keen to see how it really works check out:

http://littlewaaagh.blogspot.co.nz/search/label/Lizardmen

The blog has a bunch of lizardmen battle reports and posts of me talking about how Skink clouds work.

Cheers. Jeff

 shamroll wrote:
@Sneaky_Gobbo: I've been looking over your battle reports and they have been pretty helpful. I'm not 100% sure what you mean by double flee or how to properly set up for it but overall it has been pretty helpful. I only have 60 skinks and I'm trying to keep my army to 1 case at the moment so I'm not going to go full skink army just yet. Not until I get some more battles under my belt and figure out my preferred play-style. I also don't do competitions so I don't mind the uphill battle (my 40k army is tyranids which I started in 5th edition). So for now I'll probably be running mixed saurus/skink armies.

How are Kroxigors? Are they better on their own or with Skink cohorts?

How are Cold Ones? They seem to be good on a lone Scar-vet and used for flanking and hunting. Are the Cold One Cavalry just too costly to be an effective unit? Dumb question but what is the minimum width of the unit, 5 or 4? I thought they have to be at least 5 wide but most cavalry is sold in groups of 8 which would make more sense for 2 ranks of 4 wide, not 1 full rank + 3 in the second rank.

The Double Flee looks like this:

E=Enemy
T= Terradons

Step 1: You park two units in front of an enemy unit like below:

EEEEEEEE

TTT TTT

Step 2: he declares a charge on one of the units which flees

EEEEEEEE

TTT

TTT

Step 3: He then redirects and the second unit flees as well:

EEEEEEEE



TTT

TTT

Step 4: He fails his charge as he can't complete the charge as the original unit he attempted to charge prevents it. The trick of making it work is ensuring that you can control the flee angles and making sure that the first unit ends up in front of the second (you'd usually stagger the two units). If you can avoid other enemy units declaring charges (not always possible) you can tie up an enemy unit forever in this way. It works with any unit but is best done with Terradons (or any fast cavalry) as they have the feigned flight rule which means they can reset the double flee every turn.

For learning stick with a combined arms list tbh, I'm a big fan of light to buff saurus and skrox. Slann do not need to be in TG units to be safe either.

I would definitely only run Skrox in large Skink units. These can be very capable if you point them in the right direction (they're very good against monsters as they can't be stomped). Check out this link which is Jack Armstrong (a top UK lizard player) talking about how he uses Skrox.

http://baddice.co.uk/daily148/

Cold Ones are fantastic mounts for Scar Vets, who can be kitted out to be virtually unkillable with BRB items and their awesome statline. This is a great podcast on how to kit out scar vets:

http://baddice.co.uk/daily145/

Cold One Cavalry are a bit too expensive for what you get due largely to the low initiative meaning they have to get smacked before they can even go. I haven't ever used them though so I could be wrong and it could be cool to make a Cold One bus where the front rank is Scar vets and an Old Blood. As for how wide to make your ranks, I would always go with a minimum of 5 so you can count rank bonuses unless you're planning to hit something you know you will crush mercilessly.

Hope this helps, at the end of the day you can theoryhammer all you want on the net, but it probably won't really start to gel until you start playing plenty of games at 2k+ points which is where the rules really start to work correctly.

HawaiiMatt wrote:

tgf wrote:

 tmarichards wrote:
That last post is, unfortunately, just bad advice. It's one of the least competitive ways to play Lizardmen.

As always, it's worth remembering that just because something in your local metagame works well, doesn't mean it's actually any good. Unless something is consistently doing well in tournaments, played by and against good players, it's not valid as an argument for what is best. Hence why all the best Lizards tournament lists are chaff clouds, and the Life Slann combat lists are the ones that fluffy players turn up with because they're not looking to win the event.

If playing uncomped 8th its the best build out there.

Unless you are fighting skaven with a bell. T8 temple guard just vanish if the skaven player rolls the magic number near the middle of the bell curve.
I found that the last thing I want to do against skaven is run good sized blocks on infantry.

-Matt

@TFG I'm with TMARichards, Life/TG is the least competitive way to run Lizards. I'm not saying it isn't good but it's not as good as double light/saurus or skink clouds.

The main issue that comes out of Life/TG is the positioning of the Slann within a unit in the second ranks. That means Wizards are free to move 24.1" away from the Slann to avoid becoming Becalmed and nuke the unit with Dwellers, Pit, FT etc, all they want. A Slann on his own or in the front rank of a unit can't be caught out like this. Then after you factor in that TG are overcosted, make your Slann less manueverable and the opportunity cost of other toys the army just doesn't stack up. Basically the list is for people who can't figure out how to protect their Slann without dumping 100's of points into an inefficient unit. People hate Dweller's because it feels so unfair when your toys just come off, but it's not as dangerous as Lizard lists which absolutely control the board while still throwing out their own nukes.

Your correct about the best powers though and magic defence.

I once saw a game on Universal Battle where what Matt described occurred, it was hilarious.

gork and possibly mork wrote:
In run a slann, life, cupped hands, rumination, mystery, becalming cogitation,
In a unit of 30 temple guard and a scarvet with halderd and dragon helm.
A unit of 33 saurus with scarvent on cold one with GW,
2x3 salamanders
3x10 skirmishers
2x5 chameleon skinks.

Both blocks go 7x5, I have never lost, drawn once and won about 6 times with this. My temple guard block is legendary in my club, and neither of the blocks has been wiped out. Ever.

People learn to hate flesh to stone. Learn to fear anything initiative based, stop it at all costs. Then win lots.

No offence mate but it's really not the best that Lizards can bring to the table. What it does is very brutal at basic levels of play where opponents aren't running optimised armies and don't know how to approach the bunker unit, but at higher levels it'll get circles run around it. As you say you've only played 7 games with it in a club environment. If you take it to low comp tourneys and perform better than the skink clouds though I'll happily eat my words. The only really overpowered thing in that list is the 6 Salamanders.

A good way to quickly figure out what is powerful for any army is to look at what gets comped hard in ETC/UK tourney comp systems. With the exception of the 6 Salamanders your list is permissible in ETC, SCGT 2012/2013, and is only a 9/20 before the 6 Salamanders are applied (at which point it becomes -7).

But hey this is just one man's opinion, if it works for you keep doing it........