Taipan said:
The key point is they trade favourably with Elite units, and against chaff (ie Skavenslaves, human tier stats), they rape face.
I have to disagree here. Saurus are only equitable with Elites that are hilariously under powered themselves: ie, Wood Elves and Skaven, possibly Orcs and Goblins. They'll get overshadowed by most Special Choices due to access to much higher strength, or outright superior stats - either they won't hit enough, they won't wound enough, or they'll take too many wounds in return - whilst the true Elite of Elves, Warriors, Ogres and Daemons won't give Saurus a second glance as they go through them like a hot knife.
Yes, they are good at killing low quality infantry. Everything is good at killing low quality infantry - that's why they are low quality infantry. I don't consider Dark Elf Spearmen to be good choices because they can kill Skavenslaves or non Halberd State Troops.
Taipan said:
Skinks I think you rated fairly. I don't understand people's switch to Cohorts, they're just to easy to run over with even just other chaff Core (nevermind Specials, who barely notice the speedbump). Skirmishers I run a couple off as anti-monster and for getting in the way of charge lanes.
Speaking for myself, as I've just made this switch even though when 8th Lizards dropped I said I'd never use Cohorts again, its because of the increasing prevalence of high Strength in the game (itself a reaction to all the high armour now running about) making T4 nearly as irrelevant as S4. Most of the damage dealing stuff out there is now S5/S6 or higher, which means that it goes through Saurus just as quickly as they would Skinks. Unfortunately, the days of big blocks of humble S3/S4 Core infantry that we saw at the beginning of 8th edition are a thing of the past (unless those blocks can get Great Weapons or are Witch Elves).
Neither unit is going to kill much (crappy WS and crappy S all round), so with that being the case, you might as well bring Skinks who: a) will have more models, b) won't die as easily to the ubiquitous Purple Sun, c) have better movement than Saurus, d) have about as much chance of achieving something with Poisoned Javelins, or Poisoned Attacks, as Saurus do with Predatory Fighter e) can keep you in the high Strength/high Armour Save arms race with some Kroxigor in Core (thus saving you Special/Hero points, which is where everything is that will actually help you win battles) and, finally, f) whilst you can buff Saurus to the point that they can achieve something, there's other units in the book with vastly greater pay offs (Temple Guard, Ripperdactyls, Scar-Vets, Kroxigor) - a Skink Priest has a had time just casting one Wildform, so you want it where it will make the most difference. Whereas the much easier to cast Iceshard Blizzard is just as useful on Skinks as it is on Saurus; freeing your Slann to drop the spells you want where they are needed the most. Perhaps, most importantly of all, Skink expectations are significantly lower: you don't expect them to do anything but sell their lives, so if they do do something - great. If not, okay then. Whereas with Saurus, you've got that profile being a bitter disappointment every time you remove models in droves from Purple Sun or Monstrous Cavalry, or every time you finally get to make a bunch of attacks and only deal one wound because you can't hit anything.
Putting Jungle Swarms in Core, or giving Saurus Blessing upgrades for ppm similar to Chaos Marks, would have gone a long way to making them that much more viable. As it stands, much like the Lizardmen book as a whole, they are
almost good, but not quite good enough to take over more fodder.
Of course, after watching my Cohort blocks get torn up I'll probably come back here to eat my words.
it's okay, most players don't even think of them either. But they do give Poisioned Attacks now and they're fast enough to keep up with Saurus, so there is that. Shame about the points cost though...