7th Ed. 1000 point Team Tournament Coming Up... Need your help!

[skinker]

So there's a team tournament being held at the local store in a couple of weeks. 1000 points for each team member. I will be partnering with my high elf buddy. I want to be really competitive so any help or advice you can give (even in the high elf list) will be very appreciated. Here's the lizard list:


CORE
10 Skink Skirmishers

13 Saurus Warriors
Spears
Standard

13 Saurus Warriors
Spears
Standard

SPECIAL
5 Cold One Calvary

3 Terradon Riders

RARE
1 Salamander Pack
Extra Handler

HEROES
Skink Priest LVL 2
Diadem of Power

Saurus Scar-Veteran
Light Armor
Shield
Great Weapon
Jaguar Charm


The Saurus will be deployed 6 wide with a hero in each unit leaving 2 sitting in the back row to absorb wounds. One alteration I am considering (please let me know what you think) is to remove a Saurus Unit, add another salamander and add another unit of 3 Teradons.

The plan here is for most of his army to cover shooting and magic. We're thinking, for him, two repeater bolt throwers, Archer Unit, 2 mages, and a big 12 man silver helm unit with battle banner and noble. This calvary unit will be the "Hammer" unit that pretty much autobreaks whoever it runs into.

 

[erians]

CORE
10 Skink Skirmishers

13 Saurus Warriors
Spears
Standard

13 Saurus Warriors
Spears
Standard

If you want characters in them consider FC on both saurus units. Also 12 should be enought, with screens you shouldnät loose too many and if they target saurus that means your cav, salamanders and terradons are free to do what they want. If you have some spare pts you don't know what to do with then its another story. Id also like to see more skink skirmishers, especially if its an uncomped tournament (you'll see a lot of abombs, hydras, jabberslythes, giants, doomwheels etc and without at least 40 ps shots you'll struggle to deal with them, espeically since the skinks will be a main target against those armies.

High elves has great figthing units (swordmasters are win on a stick) that can cover the Saurus role, while they have no good skirmish units (shadow warriors are a J-O-K-E) and no good shooting units (not counting war machines) that peform as well as skinks.

SPECIAL
5 Cold One Calvary

3 Terradon Riders

Cavalry is not the lizardmens strong suit. Compared to Dragon Princes CoC are pretty pathetic, at least when it comes to hit power and speed. Terradons on the other hand are made of win, and if you take several units of terradons then your HE friend can spend his rare choices on RBTs instead of eagles.

RARE
1 Salamander Pack
Extra Handler

Great choice, no complaints. I strongly recommend using single sallies (which means 1 as you don't have more rare choices). Their effeciency is greatest when they are cheap and expandable, a good golden rule is that anything under 100 pts can be considered a "throw away unit".

HEROES
Skink Priest LVL 2
Diadem of Power

Saurus Scar-Veteran
Light Armor
Shield
Great Weapon
Jaguar Charm

Jag charm needs to be backed up by several power dice, you have 2 power dice after Diadem which means your charm will be dispelled 100% of the time. A Cold-one scar vet is far more effective.

The plan here is for most of his army to cover shooting and magic. We're thinking, for him, two repeater bolt throwers, Archer Unit, 2 mages, and a big 12 man silver helm unit with battle banner and noble. This calvary unit will be the "Hammer" unit that pretty much autobreaks whoever it runs into.

Huge units of cav are rarely effective and silver helms are rather useless. The only 8+ Cav buses that are effective are Cold One Knight buses with Hydra Banner and the classic VC regenerating Black Knight bus. A Silver helm bus is fragile, doesnt hit hard and pay a TON of pts for a second rank. Not only does it not auto break that many things due to being stubborn or unbreakable (a black guard unit takes that bus out without breaking a sweat and don't get me started on Bloodletters with a herald), its a huge target for your opponent containing 506 VPs + 2 banners, and it will struggle against anything that doesnt take break tests like Deamons and VC. If you don't break anything on the charge you are done for as well. With only a bunch of S3 & S4 attacks backed up by a very random CR banner you stand little chance in combats that last more than 1 turn.

If your dead set on that set up go ahead, but when going to tag team tournaments you should take lists that compliment each other. In 1000pts High elves have good magic, good cav, good war machines and good elite infantry. Lizardmen has awesome flyers, good skirmishers, great fighting chars and good elite infantry. If I were to go to a team tournie with HE I'd let him take Bolt Throwers, mages and elite infantry while I focused on skinks, terradons, sallies and stegs. I understand that you can be limited by the models you have but in an uncomped tournament you will face tons of stuff that can handle that cav bus with ease.

 

[skinker]

Alright so based on your suggestions I have made the following changes:

Remove the Cold Ones. Add another unit of 3 Terradons and add another unit of 10 skink skirmishers.

I have 15 points to spare so if I took the saurus blocks down to 12 as you suggested, then I've got enough to go full command on both units I believe. My question is... is a champ on saurus really cost effective? 12 points for one extra attack? Why not just bring an extra unit?

We have also decided to drop the large high elf cavalry block in favor of 2 white lion chariots.

Finally, regarding the jaguar charm. How does team magic work exactly? Wouldn't we both cast all of our spells in the same magic phase? My thought was that with his 2 mages blasting away and my 1, we'd draw enough dispel dice to get the jaguar charm off.

 

[erians]

I have 15 points to spare so if I took the saurus blocks down to 12 as you suggested, then I've got enough to go full command on both units I believe. My question is... is a champ on saurus really cost effective? 12 points for one extra attack? Why not just bring an extra unit?

For several reasons. 1: Challange protection for your character. If the unit get charged you can challange fighty character with the champ to prevent the scar vet to get cut down by scary characters. 2: Challange protection for the unit. If you get charged by a big monster. 3: You have a limited amount of saurus in BTB contact, that +1 A is gonna be better than a saurus standing in the back row looking stupid. When it comes to smaller units of 12 the extra wound is nice as that extra saurus will soon get into BTB because of casualties. Test both and pick what you prefer, but in small units where you risk getting less than 10 saurus left its often better to go for an extra saurus, and in 1000 pts there aren't really any scary stuff you want to challange to protect the unit or character (such as GDs & Dragons). There is a pretty good discussion in this thread: http://lustria-online.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=3169

Remove the Cold Ones. Add another unit of 3 Terradons and add another unit of 10 skink skirmishers.
We have also decided to drop the large high elf cavalry block in favor of 2 white lion chariots.

Huge improvment. Lion chariots are scary when twinlinked (2D6 impacts + 8 ASF WS5 S5 attacks, yes plz) and they support LM very well as they lack "cheap" chariots. Im curious what you did with the rest of the pts, there should be another 120 pts left from dropping the Silver-star unless you kept the BSB.

Finally, regarding the jaguar charm. How does team magic work exactly? Wouldn't we both cast all of our spells in the same magic phase? My thought was that with his 2 mages blasting away and my 1, we'd draw enough dispel dice to get the jaguar charm off.

Kind of depends on the rules pack but yeah this is most likley how its going to go down. I wrote the Charm comment before reading what your friend was taking, even tho I always like Cold One scer vets more than those on foot. Transfering Fear immunity to a unit of saurus is gold vs VC, TK and DoC where everything causes fear. It would be intresting to see both lists together if thats not too much trouble.

 

[skinker]

Sure I'll post both lists. Thanks for your interest and wisdom!

Regarding your comments, I never thought about the fact that a cold one adds fear to the whole unit... this is indeed nice. I really like that jaguar charm though because its so much fun to flank charge something 20 inches away, or crash into a monstrous mount (or chariot for that matter) and destroy the riders. I am now torn between the jag charm and cold one. But anyway...

His list is still evolving (as is mine), but here they are in their current form:

Lizardmen

2 x 10 Skink Skirmishers

2 x 12 Saurus Warriors with Spears and full command

2 x 3 Terradon Riders

1 Salamander Pack with extra handler

LVL 2 Skink priest with diadem of power

Saurus Scar-Vet with light armor, shield, great weapon, jag charm

total = 997


High Elves

13 Archers

5 Dragon Princes with Banner of Sorcery (extra power dice)

1 Lion Chariot

2 Repeater Bolt Throwers

LVL 2 Mage with ring of fury (bound spell that does 2d6 strength 4 damage) and silver wand (extra spell)
LVL 2 Mage with seerstaff (pick your spells rather than rolling for them) and a dispell scroll.

Total: 973 (27 points to play with).

As you can no doubt tell, the bulk of his army (other than the chariot) is devoted to shooting and a very strong magic stage. His chariot will charge with the rest of my scary units, but we are thinking his dragon princes will hang back a turn or 2 as a last line of defense to protect his valuable mages and war machines. This also preserves the unit's sorcery banner.

Thanks again for your intuitive comments thus far!

 

[skinker]

Actually, I just had the following idea on his list...

We drop 3 archers and the dispell scroll and then field 5 swordmasters. This puts another unit of scariness on the table (win on a stick I believe you called it) that will have the enemy unsure of where to direct their fire and charges!

 

[skinker]

Any other advice on this?

 

[Dreadgrass]

I like the idea of the change, Also, I'm not a fan of the champions/ muso's in small saurus units, as stated above, you could get an extra saurus for those points and it all racks up... you could also consider dropping the champs in favour of a dispel scroll on your skink priest?

Overall I'm not too versed on High Elves, but the list seems solid, tactically if your focused on being the wall and having the skirmishers and allow him to be the "counter attack" wave it should work well.