8th Ed. Building a list for an escalation league

[jungle dragon]

Hi all. I'm new to the forums and Lizardmen. We're starting an escalation league in my area, going from 500 to 3000 in 250 pt increments. Being fairly new to fantasy, I started Dwarfs with 8th, after a decade of 40k I could use some advice for starting out my list of scaled ones. 500 pts seems to be a tight squeeze and there are people playing pretty much every army here, so I've had some difficulty on deciding how to start things out.

I'm not a fan of the skink model so I'm trying to avoid using skinks/skirmishers. I was thinking of a list something like one of these two:

Skink priest - 125
Level 2
Dispel scroll

Saurus x10 - 150
Full command

Saurus x10 - 150
Full command

Salamander - 75

List 2

Skink priest - 65

Saurus x10 -128
Musician and standard

Saurus x10 - 128
Musician and standard

Cold one cavalry x5 - 175

I have to field 3 units which is really killing me. Any thoughts and advice on where to start and where to go from here would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Wirewolf]

At 500pts either list is a good one but might I suggest a hybrid of the two. Basically Drop the COC from the second list add a salamander (shear awsomeness) and either add more bodies to your saurus units and/or add 10 naked skink cohort or a small skink skirmisher unit.

I know you dont like the skink models but you saurus are so slow that you need a mobile fire base that has the benifit of poison vs. tough monsters.

 

[jungle dragon]

Thanks for the tips. After getting in a couple practice games I've settled on this for my 500:

SW x18 - 234
Spears
Standard
Musician

Skirmishers x10 - 70

Salamander - 75

Scar vet - 118
Light armor
Shield
Cold one

I've had good results with the SV killing off small units like wolf riders and weapon teams. The salamander's done really well frying gobbos and rats.

Now I'm just stuck on where to go from here. I'm thinking of adding in another saurus brick for the next 250 but another salamander and some random bits is tempting.