8th Ed. 2400 Cowboy MSU

[Coop92]

Hello everyone! I am new to lizardmen and wanted to run a list by you guys to see its viability. I plan to make a goal list and then accumulate/paint units slowly until I reach it. Here is the list:

2399/2400

LORDS (22%):
Saurus Oldblood - Cold One, Sacred Stegadon Helm of Itza, Talisman of Preservation, Great weapon
Saurus Oldblood - Cold One, Armor of Destiny, The Piranha Blade

HEROES (13%):
Skink Priest - Level 2 Lore of Beasts, Cube of Darkness
Skink Priest - Level 2 Lore of Beasts
Skink Priest - Level 1 lore of Beasts, Dispel Scroll

CORE (29%)
20 Saurus (5x4) - Full Command, Hand Weapons
20 Saurus (5x4) - Full Command, Hand Weapons
15 Saurus (5x3) - Full Command, Hand Weapons

SPECIAL (29%)
5 Chameleon Skinks
5 Chameleon Skinks
5 Chameleon Skinks
6 Cold One Riders - Full Command
6 Cold One Riders - Full Command
2 Jungle Swarms

RARE (7%)
Salamander - Extra Handler
Salamander - Extra Handler


So, I invision this list working by having the three saurus blocks be my anvils spread out near the middle of the deployment zone. The jungle swarms can take a flank and then have the cold ones and the Saurus Oldbloods be on the flanks most likely as well. The camo skinks will try to take out war machine crew members or archers in the back and the salamanders will help to take out weaker infantry.

My hope would be that the saurus blocks tie people up and give the opportunity for flanking charges by the swarms, cold ones, or oldbloods.

The point of the skink priests is to spam wildform to help tip battles in my favor and maybe cast big spear on harder to kill targets (or morph into a giant dragon if I get that spell). They took the cube of darkness and dispel scroll because I only have level 2s to dispel and if my opponent gets Purple Sun off I need to stop it immediately.

I decided to not go with any monsters because I thought they'd be too easy of targets for cannons in this list. Hopefully because there are so many targets in this list, it will be hard for my opponent to deal too much damage to me through shooting and magic.

I went with 1+ armor and 4+ ward on both of the oldbloods so that they will hopefully be hard to kill (which I think is necessary since they only get a measly 3 wounds). Not sure that I like the build on the second oldblood though. Piranha blade looks promising, but I'm not sure if just a great weapon would be better because I can hit at str 7 and not 5.


SO my questions for you:
Do you think a second Saurus Oldblood is worth it, or would it be more worthwhile to drop the second oldblood in favor of some other units?

How many jungle swarms do people usually run? Is 2 ok?

Does MSU typically work well with lizardmen or do saurus work best when in larger groups?

Any other general suggestions/tips are more than welcome. Thanks!

 

[Coop92]

Any thoughts?

 

[Creeping Death]

Never seen a list like this, so can't say if it will actually work, but I don't think so. The cold one's of LM are much less than the ones of the DE. You need to run them as a bus to make them work, but then you put a lot of points into a rather weak unit. Taking 2 units of five (with a cowboy in each of them I suppose), really makes no point.

You need to have a Bastiladon now, he is the only unit (besides skink skirmishers en CH skinks) that is worth its points in a LM army (and makes your SW initiative 2 iso 1, which makes them hit at the same time as their opponents in 10% of the cases iso never ;-) ). I would certainly drop the level 1 beast Priest and give the scroll to the other beast Priest. Your Cowboys are having a proper build, so you will enjoy them.

If you are going to play with your list, I wish you a lot of fun, but you will need Lucky dice to defeat your opponents. Be prepared to see your troops being slaughtered (even by the mounts of your opponents) before they can hit back. If you are fine with that, you can have a lot of fun with LM (and with an improved list) and eventually win some matches with them.

Cheers CD

 

[n810]

Looks like one of my list...

(theory hammer)
I think as ling as you combo charge with one of the flankers you should probaly win combat,
especialy if you manage to get wildform off, all in all, it looks like a good list for stratagist.
I garuntee your oponent will not expect anything like this list.

 

[Zwuppie]

You miss an anvil unit! i should advice a block of 40 saurus warriors (at least 30)! Secondly I see you don't have a battle standard bearer, bring one, or you get hurt a lot!

 

[Screamer]

You miss an anvil unit! i should advice a block of 40 saurus warriors (at least 30)! Secondly I see you don't have a battle standard bearer, bring one, or you get hurt a lot!

But I guess 40 saurus isn't usually considered MSU...

Interesting and different list! Try it out and let us know how it went

 

[Zwuppie]

yeah but msu with 2x20 saurus never works.. so 30-40 saurus warriors or only msu skink units..

 

[GCPD]

I'd certainly admire the man (or woman!) who is willing to make Saurus MSU work.

That being said, I'm not confident that it will. The theory behind MSU is twofold: first, dictating and controlling the movement phase and, secondly, distribution of points and strength across the army so that the loss of one, two or more units doesn't interrupt the battleplan.

Generally speaking, there are two ways to approach this. The first is combat MSU, and the usual suspects for it are Elves, and they do this very well because they hit before their opponents and hit well, therefore reducing the damage that their fragile units will take. They also have the additional movement to ensure that they maneuver into ideal positions for multi charges (flank charges especially help to minimise the damage). For an ideal look at this, check out Swordmaster of Hoeth's fantastic High Elf MSU blog over on Ulthuan.net. Others who can do this well are Empire due to their knights (movement and armour), and of course our friends Warriors of Chaos (low model count due to high prices, excellent offensive and defensive stats, access to fast movement).

Additionally, there is the the shooty/avoidance style, of which Wood Elves are a classic example, but so too is the Skink Cloud. It shoots you up and it runs away whilst you try and catch it, and if you do you get almost no points for it. But both concepts rely on the same two theories of control and distribution of points.

I'd say that the problem with your list as it stands is that Saurus don't make for good MSU: they are too slow to get into position, which means that they are just as likely to get rolled over by something as they are to get into a position where they can choose the match ups and act as an anvil. Secondly, they are too expensive: just one of those 20 Saurus blocks is some 250 points. The high damage-dealers that you will want to anvil aren't going to have any problem cutting that unit down to the point where it can't claim Steadfast and breaks, and will relish the opportunity to do so for those juicy points. Meanwhile, although your COR units are small they are still expensive, and once you stick the Oldblood in they double in points - making them prime targets for all the shooting and magic that your enemy has.

Basically, if I deployed across from you I'd see two units where that are realistically threatening where all the damage is concentrated; they are also two of the four units where I'd be looking to get my victory points, and there's not very much to stop me from getting in to them.

If you wanted to avoid the Skink Cloud MSU approach and take a combat one, I think that you can still do it within reason. Take some units of ranked Skink Cohorts which can retain their Steadfast through numbers: 25 of the buggers will only set you back 125 points before Full Command, and it doesn't matter if they die in droves so long as they maintain those all important ranks long enough for the Saurus to arrive.

Alternatively, you could try minimum unit Saurus with just a Musician: whilst you'll lose them to practically any combat, you aren't losing a lot - only 120 points - and with multiples of them you can stick them in a double line. Once the opponent kills one unit, they either have to overrun into the one behind it or attempt to reform. In the former scenario you can smash your flanking unit into their exposed flank; in the latter scenario where they turn to face your flanking unit, you can just stick the Saurus into their flank and hold them up whilst your flanking unit goes and kills something else.

Whatever you decide, I'd strongly suggest adding some minimum sized units of Skink Skirmishers or Skink Cohorts: these guys will help you to dictate your fights through fleeing and redirection. These would also give your Skink characters somewhere to hide. I would also strongly recommend adding a BSB both to ensure any combats you are anvillling hold, and rally any fleeing units.

If you are looking solely to Wildform spam, then you can drop all three priests down to Level 1 and just rely on your magic items for defense.

I'm not sure how to approach the COR as you want the Oldbloods to have somewhere to hide, but you want to do so without painting a big target on their heads. Maybe stick one on foot who can move between the multiple units of Saurus as required, and downgrade the second to two Cowboys? You could stick them both in some core Cohorts so they can't be targeted by Ballistic Skill shooting, and then spend some Special points on Ripperdactyls and Terradons (which imo would be arguably superior in an MSU list).

Edit: These are just the thoughts of someone who spent about 6 months studying Elf MSU, but didn't really get as much practice in as I'd like, so don't think that I'm the voice of experience on this. You should choose and run lists that you enjoy regardless.