8th Ed. 4000 pt mega campaign vs evil

[harbinger334]

heya guys my local club every once in a while does a mega battle with like 15,000 points made up of all different armies per side on our side so far we have a few armies but my part in this is to make up 4000 pts of butkicking lizardmen to hopefully prevail against the forces of destruction this time (we lost horribly last time) we play on on huge table with campaigns worth of scenery (our club has an extensive scenery cupboard) and we have some custom rules as each side is about 15,000 points alltogether 1: we have 2d6 magic dice per army as otherwise there isnt enough magic to go round 2: we usually play a seize building objective 3: we are able to play with as many proxies as we want (yeah i know its not exactly legal but then we need enough points to make this mega) so ive made my 4,000 pt list but i dont know what im up against until the day possibly woc darkelves and maybe some dogs of war (semi legal) maybe some other armies on our side so far we have high elves brettonia another lizardmen player and empire (possibly) this is my list guys thoughts / improvments would be appreciated im new so sorry if the brackets for items annoy you thanks again guys core
60 x saurus + fc + spears (might break into two units of 30)
24 x skinks + poisoned attacks + fc + 3 krox
24 x skinks + poisoned attacks +fc + 3 krox

lords
slann
wandering delebirations (all sigs)
becalming cogitation (reroll one failed dispell per turn)
harmonic convergence (3 channels)
+ channeling staff (5+)

saurus oldblood
+coldone
+ great weapon
+ ancient steg helm (+1 to as +1 to toughness and gives him d3 impacts)
+dawnstone (re roll failed as)
+the egg of quango (one use only roll a dice can do d6 s3 hits at start of combat or like d6 s4 or 2d6 s 5)

heroes
skink priest + lv 2 + cloak of feathers
skink priest + lv 2
saurus scar vet
+cold one
+great weapon
+ l armour
+bsb
+ skavenpelt banner (frenzy (unit))

special

4x 3x ripperdactyls
10 x cold one cavalry + spears + fc

Rare

ancient steg + sharpened horns (each impact hit does d3 wounds)
ancient steg + sharpened horns
total 3990

 

[Pinktaco]

I've never played a battle this big so what I say may be completely useless lol.

So what I'm thinking is what exactly is your goal with your ripperdactyls and COR?

You're paying a total of 370pts for your COR which IMO is quite a lot for what they do. Usually when I take COR it's for them to serve as a bus for my oldblood OR, if I want to be more aggressive, as a bus for 3-4 characters (say 1OB + 2 Scar vets, or 4 scar vets, 2OB +1 scar bet BSB etc.).

A character bus will crush everything they reach and have +1 save against cannons + ironcurse icon.
A bus with one character serves as transportation, since it'll be the character who'll do most of the beating up anyway.
A bus just with 10 COR + spear is.. not THAT efficient. Look at it this way: For almost the same points an empire player can take 15 inner cirlce knights, same amour save, same WS and have great weapons. S6 each and every time they strike and they got enough bodies to do so for more than a couple of rounds. Alternatively they can have S6 on the charge followed by S4 and an armour save of 1+ (so better than ours). Fact is that against S4 units our COR WILL die since they can "only" save themself on 3+, an IC knight is still saving on everything except 1. And we pay more for ours. With regular lance knights I'd personally not take 10+ because they rely more on their lances to do the job and then just hold out unit support.

I'm also fairly certain that IC knights may take a banner, which we may not.

It's just to point out that we pay freaking 4pts to have ONE additional strenght on the charge. It's so utterly useless that it's laughable for that price. Why couldn't we at least have been given heavy armour + halbards? That would even things out a litte more.

Anyway so the good thing about the COR is that they pack a lot of S4 attacks. 5 of these guys without champion = 20 attacks, 10 at WS3, 10 at WS4. So they can attack a lot and do therefore gain more from magic and the odd magical banner. Give these guys the armour piercing banner (which would've been sweet if we could've actually taken it on the regular COR standard bearer like we used to..) and they'll suddenly be much more dangerous against a lot of things. Wyssans Wildform? 20 S5 attacks. So yeah they benefit a lot from magic.

Their downside? The second rank does not benefit from predatory fighter nor any of the additional attacks the front row have, in fact they only dish out 1A pr model. So 20 from front row and 5 from the second.. You should also keep in mind that while they do boost a higher initiative than our slow saurus warriors they'll most likely still hit last anyway.

This is why taking 10 models is sort of useless because they mostly serve as extra wounds.

Also, stupidity.. It made my oldblood stand around and do nothing first round in my last game xD

So IMO I would cut down on them. I dunno how many cannons you expect to face, but if you intent to have your OB in the unit I'd say you should consider sometihng like 6-7 COR without spears and without the champion. If you go with 7 COR, no spear, musician/banner you've just saved yourself 130pts compared.

Now, IMO I wouldn't have the OB carry the Egg. It's awesome alright, but for 130pts you can probably get Crown of Command for your OB (just a suggestion) and give the Egg to a skink chief on terradon/ripperdactyl. Have him fly behind your opponnet units, make a rear attack(+3 CR) and pop the egg. Combine it with the COR + OB unit and you've still spend the same amount of points.

Do keep in mind that this is just a suggestion. You can take 10 COR if you want, but I find them quite expensive for what they do.


So, about the rippers - what exactly are your thoughts about these? Because with this high amount of units you can do all kinds of things. Am I reading it right if you're bringing 4 units with 3 models in each? If that's the case I'd consider either just making 2 units of 6 models or 1 unit of 6 models + 2 x 3 for warmachine hunting. 4 units to hunt warmachines seems like a lot. If you want them to kill stuff I'd say 4 is too little. You'll want all 4 to be able to hit at least once so having more models for extra wounds is worth it.

I hope I'm making sense.

 

[harbinger334]

hey pinktaco thanks for replying ! hmm yeah i can see what your saying i was hoping to have the skavenpelt banner scar vet in the COR unit and then add the oldblood in so then the unit has (forgive me if my maths is lacklustre) unit of 10= 11 (for characters) + 24 normal = 35 attacks (riders only) + then 30 attacks from the mounts (skaven pelt banner affects mounts too doesnt it?) + 2 supporting = 67 attacks 35 of them at s5 and the rest at s4 my plan was to also have the egg in there to do the damage at the start but im not sure of the wizdom of that i agree that maybe i should cut them down a bit as they are expensive or maybe even cut them out alltogether idk got any suggestions as to what to spend the points on?

my thoughts with the rippers where just to have them as support guys really i kinda wanted more units so i got more blot toad markers so if i wanted too i could mark several units but swarm one at a time with ripppers and still get d3+1 frenzy and hatred i was angling maybe for side chargers what are your thoughts on that?

i was hoping my cold ones could do some damage but i could replace them quite easily any suggestions?

btw i agree 4 pts per model is rediculous but i resighned myself to the fact that wounding on 3s and -2 to as while not worth it could be the differnce between obliteration of the unit and winning combat so i decided to add it anyway. I dont know about you guys but i miss the old banner bearer for the COR that has really messed me up

thanks guys

 

[Pinktaco]

If you take 2 characters + 10 COR, 5 wide you have:


w/o skavenpelt:

oldblood = 5A
Scar vet = 4A
3 COR = 6A
Mounts = 10A

2nd rank = 5A

Total = 30A

w/ skavenpelt:

oldblood = 6A
Scar vet = 5A
3 COR = 9A
Mounts = 15A

2nd rank = 5A

Total = 40A

Unless of course you want to go super wide.

Also do bear in mind that if the Scar vet carries the skavenpelt banner he cannot use magical armour. So this means that while he can gain 1+AS with shield, light armour, scaly skin and +2 from mount he doesn't have more than S5 and no ward save.

Anyway I think most people are going 5 wide so they (the COR) don't come with a too big foot print and are thus more manouvreable. This means that with 2 characters you'll have the same amount of attacks from 8 COR than from 10. 10 COR is purely for the extra bodies and with spear that's 68pts.

I won't tell you to cut them out entirely. I still use them whenever I feel like. Just be careful with what you use them for. If it's for maximum damage I'd consider removing the banner, spears and 3 COR. This way you've saved yourself enough points to pack in another scar vet. Give them all great weapons and you now have 13 attacks that'll with a minimum of WS5 and S7. Pop Savage Beast of Horror on them and they have 22 attacks at strenght 10.

You can, as I previously said, also consider going with 4 scar vets. The unit will be super expensive, but with 4000pts you can afford it.

About the rippers.. I can't tell you what is most efficiently. Personally I'd bump at least one of them to 6 models or maybe just both. You can still place 2 toad markers and if these two unit ever reaches the same target (rear + flank charge) they'll rip the flying f**k out of it.

With several models of 3 their efficiency can drastically fall if they lose just one model. Even if they get off a flank charge they can lose one model and hitting back with just 2 models isn't exactly awesome. At least not IMO. Again though, I'm no expert - I'm still messing around with them.

Now here's a super random alternative for some of your units:

I see you have a total of 6 kroxigors waiting in the skrox unit. How about bumping the two skink units together, keep the poison and removing the kroxigors to special instead.

Now find room for more kroxigors in your points. I've used 10-11 kroxigors a couple of times and I'm going to do so again this thursday. They'll kill close to everything they come near, with the exception of large blocks of heavy hitting units (say dwarf longbeards, hammeres, empire greatswords etc).
It's quite the expensive unit, but if you can bring along:

- BUS with oldblood/scar vet w/GW.
- Several ripperdactyl units.
- 2 Ancient Stegadons.
- 1 large kroxigor unit.

You have a very hard hitting army.

It's just a random *ass suggestiong though, but I've had an army with a 3 characters in a bus + the 11 kroxigors against and empire and they both smashed everything they came near. Add stegadons and ripperdactyls to the equation and you can smash a lot of stuff up lol. Oh and year they're all quite mobile, with the fastest being M10 and slowest M6.

I'm sure there are people on the board who disagrees with me though.

 

[harbinger334]

hmm all good points thank you pinktaco ! i appreciate it! i do agree about the scar vet not being able to take armour but i was hoping to get him out of immediate danger by challenging on the first turn with my ob regardless a 3 scar vet unit sounds awsome XD i like the idea of the kroxigors but the only problem i have is that they always strike last with their gws is there any way i can circumvent this or minimize the damage they will take in 1 turn? i just havent had much success with them with the new book hmm i guess i could also try the rippers in bigger units how have your battles with rippers gone? thank you pinktaco once again i will say i really appreciate the help !

 

[Putzfrau]

Seems like you'll run into chaff problems. You don't have enough and in a 4k lists you'll be fighting a ton of it. Your three combat blocks will get redirected all game.

 

[harbinger334]

@putfraz (sorry if i spelt ur name wrong) i tried using like jungle swarms backed up by 3 bastiladons last time we did one of these huge battles (last one was about 1200 pts) (due to empire not turning up) and it failed miserably to stop even a unit of clanrats so i dont really know what do?

 

[Putzfrau]

@putfraz (sorry if i spelt ur name wrong) i tried using like jungle swarms backed up by 3 bastiladons last time we did one of these huge battles (last one was about 1200 pts) (due to empire not turning up) and it failed miserably to stop even a unit of clanrats so i dont really know what do?

Well the best chaff lizardmen players have are skinks. Units of 10 skirmishers or cohorts or both. In 4k points i would easily run 50-60 skinks in 5 units or so. I'd also run less rippers, so obviously simply adding 5 units of skink skirmishers to your list might not be as effective but /shrug. I find that my battles are won and lost on what my skirmishers do, and how well I can speed bump and redirect the enemy.

It's gonna give you more drops and give your huge saurus block time to actually get into combat,

I would think 2 units of saurus would be better than 1 huge but who knows. I've never actually played a 4k points game so /shrug.

My username would have been on the reply page so i dunno why you had trouble with the spelling but whatever.

 

[harbinger334]

Hey guys big news flash for this the stakes have been upped and now there is 20,000 points on each side of the battle field made up by 5 people per side we have 2 bretts players 2 lizardmen and 1 high elf they have 2 woc 1 beast men and 1 dark elf and one dogs of war we are all using 4000 pts per army so im stuck what to take fresh outa ideas can u guys help me?

 

[Andy06r]

How is magic being house ruled for this grand alliance? At this point level any semblance of balance is out the window. I would just build a list with a narrative that has some resiliency so that you don't die in two turns of what will be an all day game.

The lack of cannons on both sides could turn this into a hilarious monster mash. Have a carnosaur?

 

[harbinger334]

magic will be house ruled so that each player has 2d6 dice and can only cast spells on an allie directly opposit him or an opponent either in front or diagional of him (we will be split into squares) its going to be so weird i have literrally no idea what to take however andy their will be cannons as dogs of war cannons are only 90 points each and of course there will probably be boltthrowers lol should be fun tho i will try and get a few pics for you guys this battle will take place on sunday 5th of january

 

[Pinktaco]

First off, as Andy said how is the magic?

Secondly as he also mentions there aren'y a lot in the way of cannons.

IMO I'd go big and use combine the strong attacks to crush anything that should come in the way. What I mean is - 2 x lizardmen players = twice the carnage from ancient stegs + potentially double Walk Between Worlds/Hand of Glory.

I dunno exactly how this is played out, but if if played on one large table with all of you infront of each other (good side vs evil side) you can be placed near your lizardmen ally. What this mean is that you can essentially have you stegadons in the middle of the two of you and run up together, both use high magic to boost their movement and thus double charge/focus on one player. Crush him.

The same can be said about your Britonnia players. I'm obviously not going to determine how you play, but if both of them went with a character heavy bus of death, doom and destruction they can both potentially crush one enemy together.

While the heavy stuff roll in on the flank on your designated victim the rest of your army will march forward and hold out. What I'm suggesting is to combined 4 of your 5 armies to hopefully overwhelm 2 of your opponents.



The strategy sort of resembles the bliztkrieg manoeuvre in which you use your heavy and fast moving units to take out key objectives and have the more slow moving units to clean up the rest (the slow moving on this picutre being the straight lines from the liz and brit player and the curved the fast, combined heavy hitting units).
Also if you do this you can possibly make a combined HE/Liz army as shown on the picture, but I'm in no way sure what's the best way to do this lol..

Again, this is just a suggestion and something that could be fun. Both chaos and beastmen have several multiple wound targets which can be charged by the stegs and their sharpened horns. Say you can get a combined 4 of these up on the flank of a single opponent. It won't even gimp the remaining of your army since it's only 500pts from each of you.

Now combine this with something like a carnosaur hero from both of you (the slann doing his thing with the remaining army) and you now have 4 stegs + 2 carnosaur heroes.

If we continue down this path you'll need stuff like cameleon skinks and ripperdactyls. If you combine all that you can put quite a lot of pressure on one point of their line, break through and either just roll up and kill a bunch of stuff from their flanks or seriously mess up their formation which will allow your other part of the army to be a huge problem.

As mentioned, not allot of cannons = more opportunity for monsters. You can take this strategy and instead of slow moving units you just add.. monsters. Have a combined steg/carnosaur assault on the flank while fast moving monsters come from the middle.

Use rippers/skinks to redirect stuff so they don't interrupt your plans. There are a lot of things you can do.

You can also make the move more pinch like, like this:



Oh I just realized you have a priest with the cloak of feathers - this mean you can continue to cast spells on your fast moving heavy hitters for a while.

You can probably take your current list, put the scar vet on a carnosaur and rearrange some of your pts (for instance save points on your COR, get rid of a single priest. Or, remove 3 COR, the spears and the champion + 3 ripperdactyls. Now give the Scar vet a Carnosaur instead of the CO and you should have plenty of points for the carno + upgrades for it AND you still have the same amount of priests.

So in other words you can still pretty much use your current list if you fancy. IMO I would go for the carno now that you have the chance. Hell you could probably completely ditch the COR and have a third ancient stegadon for the points.

Also I'd give that poor scar vet an armouf of destiny.

should your opponent(s) consider to fly his demon prince in your direction you now have several stegs and a carnosaur placed close to each other. Should on be charged the rest can follow.

Personally I think I'd ditch the COR and have that extra steg charge up along your OB in the middle. It's much more intimidating than the COR bus + you don't have to be that much scared of you character getting sniped by a canon. The egg + steg helmet + impact hit from the actual steg should do something on anything it hit.

Hmm I just tried to run the numbers of your army. I might be a bit off and I dunno what the limit it, but maybe you can run without the second level 2 priest. If my numbers aren't wrong you can thus fit in a 4th ancient steg. Should this not be allowed consider demoting you second priest to a level 1 and pop in a chief on ancient steg.

IF you can manage 4 ancient stegs w/ sharpened horns + slann + Oldblood on CO + scarnosaur you have a pretty smashy army. Now, I might be mistakening, but you have enough points as is in your core so that you can leave the kroxigors and put them in special (if you want). It's really up to you though, but I'm just not sure what the skrox unit is meant to do, so you can have 6 kroxigors in one unit under special if you want. I dunno..

All suggestions, but since you know who you're up against and who you play with I'd definately use that as a strenght and abuse it. You can make some pretty mean smashing units and unless there's a restriction you can make combined charges against the same targets. Just for a while consider what 2 scarnosaurs + 4 (or 6?) ancient stegs can accomplish when they hit the same area.

From what I can understand britonnia players can put in a lot of characters in one of their knight units and thus have the same effect. Since their busses aren't wide two of these f**kers in the front should crush anytihng they meet.

If both the Brit playes have the heroic killing blow they can do some seriously nasty things to both the WoC and Beastmen player.

If special charactes are allowed the roll with tetto'ekko and have fun with your dinos.