8th Ed. Kroxigor Love?

[Ulodwor]

Kroxigors did get a significant boost with the new book, but very much retained not only their flavor but also their flaws. They share with the Carnosaur the unfortunate trait of paying dearly for damage output while lacking the initiative or resilience to support it.

They're similar to Dragon Ogres and Bloodcrushers, units which are fairly squishy, strikes after just about everyone else and have failed to make an impact in competitive play.

Light and Life can be used to to address the survivability issue of the Kroxigor but unfortunately the ability of the Lizardmen to use these lores is now slightly below that of the Empire.

With this in mind it might be overly optimistic to expect better performance from the Kroxigor with the new army book. While improved they are still a flawed, at best middle of the road unit and the Slann can no longer be relied on to compensate their shortcomings.

 

[Clarkarias]

1) skink skirmish screen - protects against BS shooting and provides opportunities for nasty surprise charges. Imagine a screen laid out 10 wide (spread over ~12" with gaps) with the krox behind on the left. To the opponent, it appears that a krox charge would require the skinks to charge in also. However, the skinks declare a charge against a unit to the right. As skirmishers, they immediately close up about their centre to 7", now exposing the krox. The skinks charge off to the right and even a failed charge puts them out of the way while the krox charge straight ahead and into combat.

Can you describe this one a little more Stonecutter? I think I understand what you are getting at even with a failed charge since the unit wheels first it can help get the skinks out of the way but it paints a difficult picture.

I feel Kroxigor are just like Saurus in that the are decent in combat but like Saurus, require buffs to become great. I am going to rock my High Magic Slann and swap out a spell for the Life default to get a 5+ Regen ASAP. I'm undecided from there as most of the other buffs require some 'luck' to get. I guess there is always miasma to hex instead of buff.

When I first thought of what I wouldn't want a unit of 8 Krox to go against I couldn't think of anything other then Death Star units. I'm slowly thinking of more things that I would need to watch out for: Massed Chariot Armies, White Lions (like everything else) and bigger units of monsterous infantry. Does anyone else have ideas on what a hammer unit of krox should NOT fight?

 

[The Hunted]

I think you need to be careful that the unit doesn't get charged. It doesn't have any static combat resolution, and at ws3, it can whiff. Then you have the Ld7 'problem', if you lose, I don't want to be rolling that!

With any buffs at all, they become truly ferocious. Hand of Glory seems like a pretty darn good one for the Kroxigor. WS4+? Yes please!

Stuff to avoid: ward/regen saves. You cut through armor like a hot knife through butter. But a magical ward might ruin your day.

Also:

1) skink skirmish screen - protects against BS shooting and provides opportunities for nasty surprise charges. Imagine a screen laid out 10 wide (spread over ~12" with gaps) with the krox behind on the left. To the opponent, it appears that a krox charge would require the skinks to charge in also. However, the skinks declare a charge against a unit to the right. As skirmishers, they immediately close up about their centre to 7", now exposing the krox. The skinks charge off to the right and even a failed charge puts them out of the way while the krox charge straight ahead and into combat.

Can you describe this one a little more Stonecutter? I think I understand what you are getting at even with a failed charge since the unit wheels first it can help get the skinks out of the way but it paints a difficult picture.

I feel Kroxigor are just like Saurus in that the are decent in combat but like Saurus, require buffs to become great. I am going to rock my High Magic Slann and swap out a spell for the Life default to get a 5+ Regen ASAP. I'm undecided from there as most of the other buffs require some 'luck' to get. I guess there is always miasma to hex instead of buff.

When I first thought of what I wouldn't want a unit of 8 Krox to go against I couldn't think of anything other then Death Star units. I'm slowly thinking of more things that I would need to watch out for: Massed Chariot Armies, White Lions (like everything else) and bigger units of monsterous infantry. Does anyone else have ideas on what a hammer unit of krox should NOT fight?

+1

The Hunted

 

[datalink7]

1) skink skirmish screen - protects against BS shooting and provides opportunities for nasty surprise charges. Imagine a screen laid out 10 wide (spread over ~12" with gaps) with the krox behind on the left. To the opponent, it appears that a krox charge would require the skinks to charge in also. However, the skinks declare a charge against a unit to the right. As skirmishers, they immediately close up about their centre to 7", now exposing the krox. The skinks charge off to the right and even a failed charge puts them out of the way while the krox charge straight ahead and into combat.

I feel Kroxigor are just like Saurus in that the are decent in combat but like Saurus, require buffs to become great. I am going to rock my High Magic Slann and swap out a spell for the Life default to get a 5+ Regen ASAP. I'm undecided from there as most of the other buffs require some 'luck' to get. I guess there is always miasma to hex instead of buff.

It is important to note that the 5+ regen is in the wizards unit only. So unless your slann has joined the Krox unit (doubtful), it won't be much benefit to them.

 

[Clarkarias]

It is important to note that the 5+ regen is in the wizards unit only. So unless your slann has joined the Krox unit (doubtful), it won't be much benefit to them.

I've thought about that. It woud give the Krox unit a banner (and I thought about a war banner too) at minimum. The slann can't go in the middle of the unit so will be at the corner anyway. I'd have to add an ancient to the unit to accept challanges but he is capable of killing a character in combat (if he survives to attack that is).

 

[JungleBeast]

I don't know about you, but I'm waiting for these guys to come out

 

[Spiney Norman]

Bear in mind that the Maneaters have to pay extra for all those weapon options, so while they are great, they'll end up costing quite a bit more than Krox. I think the closest comparison is actually to the Tomb Kings' Ushabti. Compared to that, the Kroxigor stacks up like so:

+1 M, -1 WS, +1 S, -2 I, -1 Ld, -Undead, -Animated Construct, +1 armor, +Aquatic, +Cold Blooded, +Predatory Fighter

I'd say the Kroxigor stacks up pretty favorably - that extra S and armor are a big deal, as is Predatory Fighter (to say nothing of M6 that can march vs. M5 with no marching). As such, I think they can find a place in a Lizardmen army as mobile hammers to complement the Saurus anvils.

Kroxigor stack up favourably when set against the most overpriced unit in the least competitive 8E book? Well thank god for that...

Seriously, comparing anything to Ushabti is about as useful as comparing to Demi-gryph knights, just for the opposite reason. Everyone knows Ushabs are woefully under-powered so trying to make Krox look good by comparison doesn't really work.

I think Kroxigor are strong choices, I'm just having way too much fun with my plethora of dinosaurs to care at the moment,

 

[laribold]

As a Wood Elf player as well I can't help but put Kroxigor into the same bracket as Treekin.

Treekin are a bit more expensive (15pts more) but have -1M, +1WS, +1T, +2 In, +1 Ld a 5+ forest spirit ward and don't have GWs so hit on base S5.

I've had a real love/hate relationship with my TK. The number of times they have totally fluffed their attacks to get broken in combat and then get run down is embarrassing. With Krox only having WS3 I think this eventuality would happen even more and so I'm a bit wary of running Krox outside of a Skrox unit.

I'd love to be proven wrong and those S7 hits are very tempting, but even with a Harmonic Convergence Slann I'm not sure I'd want to rely on magic to get these guys through a combat...

Another problem I've found with Treekin is that without a musician for swift reforming they can get horribly outmanoeuvred at times. Sure Krox have an additional pip of Movement, but no swift reforming severely curtails your ability to respond to threats.

For me, they've got an uphill struggle to prove themselves before I've even got them on the table!

 

[spawning of Bob]

I don't know about you, but I'm waiting for these guys to come out

Cool! An ethereal Great weapon!

 

[Caneghem]

As a Wood Elf player as well I can't help but put Kroxigor into the same bracket as Treekin.

Treekin are a bit more expensive (15pts more) but have -1M, +1WS, +1T, +2 In, +1 Ld a 5+ forest spirit ward and don't have GWs so hit on base S5.

I've had a real love/hate relationship with my TK. The number of times they have totally fluffed their attacks to get broken in combat and then get run down is embarrassing. With Krox only having WS3 I think this eventuality would happen even more and so I'm a bit wary of running Krox outside of a Skrox unit.

I'd love to be proven wrong and those S7 hits are very tempting, but even with a Harmonic Convergence Slann I'm not sure I'd want to rely on magic to get these guys through a combat...

Another problem I've found with Treekin is that without a musician for swift reforming they can get horribly outmanoeuvred at times. Sure Krox have an additional pip of Movement, but no swift reforming severely curtails your ability to respond to threats.

For me, they've got an uphill struggle to prove themselves before I've even got them on the table!

I think you are touching on some of the reasons why skrox are superior to plain units. Skrox units can have a banner and musician (allowing the swift reform), as well as a skink champ to soak up a nasty hero's charge bonuses. The skinks soak up missile and impact hits, and provide them with steadfast most of the time. All of that plus it uses only Core points? Sounds pretty great!

 

[GCPD]

Treekin are great, if a little overcosted. They have a long list of advantages that Cold-Blooded, Strength 7 (or even Strength 6, for that matter) don't make up for.

They share with the Carnosaur the unfortunate trait of paying dearly for damage output while lacking the initiative or resilience to support it.

100% this. For some reason, no doubt to create balance (that they then ignore as and when it pleases them), GW decided that all Lizardmen must have bad Weapon Skill, even where it doesn't make sense. This isn't necessarilly a bad thing if you can account for individual performance through either:

a) Improve the odds for sheer number of attacks
b) Have the resiliency to inflict damage over time.

Sometimes you can do both - Saurus Warriors, for instance, are fairly cheap enough to bring tons of them so you benefit from both a) (doing lots of attacks) and b) (having the numbers to stick around to keep doing lots of attacks). Trolls are another good example.

Sadly, we are at the point in the game where mere T4 4+ armour save just isn't good enough anymore. There's far too much high strength Monstrous Cavalry, Monstrous Infantry, lone characters, or horded up S4+ infantry out there, and most of these things are just as good recieving a charge as they are dealing one (unlike, for instance, Knights). Kroxigor simply lack the resliency to stick around to keep pumping out attacks against anything that you're going to want to put them in to. Against anything that they'll reliably do well against, there are either plenty of other tools available in the book that do it much more cost-effectively.

Secondly, since GW decided that Kroxigor are so good, they have been priced as such to mean that you can't bring them in numbers. Go look at the price of other Monstrous Infantry. Kroxigor sit at the upper price bracket along with other such notoriously overpriced and underused MI as Minotaurs, Ushabti and Treekin (who have the sole distinction of being overpriced but not underused, as Wood Elf players don't have much choice). Now go look at a Chaos Ogre with Mark of Nurgle and a Great Weapon. Guess whether I'd rather have 4+ and S7, or 5+ and S6 with impact hits and -1 to hit for less.

Worse, is that Vetock had the genius idea to overload Special with practically everything you need to make the army work. So even if you do fork out the 300-400 points for a reliably large enough unit of 6 or 8, you're significantly hampering yourself in what else is available.

You could put them in Core, of course. Though I don't know why you'd want to. The Kroxigor can be targeted by anything that they might want to kill, and because they are in a Skink unit there's less of them and fewer able to attack. Every model lost significantly reduces the damage output and overall efficiency. And the Skinks then get stomped. Or you could put them in to things which can't kill the Kroxigor... and then watch the Skinks die in drove whilst, you guessed it, the low number of Kroxigor attacks are unable to swing the combat.

TL;DR - no Kroxigor love. Sorry Cool looking models go sit on the shelf for another edition. Let's hope that 9th brings back Cavalry striking first on a charge, because catching such a unit on the charge is about the only viable use for them that I can see, and you don't see much cavalry these days when almost everyone gets Monstrous Crutches.

Edit: Okay, maybe you could consider 3 of them as a flanking unit to give your Saurus blocks some punch. But you really would need to go into the flank, and even then you may need to be careful what you are flanking. And for the same cost, I'm not sure that a Dragonhelm/Dawnstone/Cold One/Great Weapon Scar-Veteran wouldn't be better.

 

[Caneghem]

If you're running a High Magic Slann I'd say Kroxigors become a feasible choice, as you can buff up their sad weapon skill so they can make better use of their strong attacks, take fewer hits, and ensure that their PF attacks are also hitting home. They need the magical help for sure, and are not meant to take a frontal charge from almost anything. If you're using them in a main line skrox, you're really going to need to either get the charge, or push them up in your target's face and pre-buff them so that the chargers don't do as much damage. They can still usually wreck monsters pretty well, although the skinks get fairly well squished. Of course, if you have a bunch of poison shooting, you might not need help against monsters.

 

[Pulstar]

Secondly, since GW decided that Kroxigor are so good, they have been priced as such to mean that you can't bring them in numbers.

You can bring up to 30 Kroxigor in a single 2400 point army.

Two units of SC w/ 3 Krox each w/ FC fill out your core. Three units of 8 fill up your special.

90 STR7 attakcs and 90 T4 4+ wounds is going to be might hard to deal with. And since it all moves at 6 it would be hard to run away from everything.

It only leaves you with 600 points to fill out the rest of your army. But you could take a tooled up slann to be both General and BSB.

 

[Lizardmatt]

As a previous Ogre player, I would give up my impact on the charge and 8 points for +1 armor, +1 Strength and +Predatory Fighter.

I don't know about you, but my block of 8 Krox have been smashing face.
Skinks cleared out chaos hounds, and forced over-runs and pursuits of skull crushers toward the krox.
One in combat, the Krox beat the skullcrushers down. How? Uneven match ups.

Point for point, monstrous cav wins. So don't compete point to point. Run a bigger block of Krox and throw it at smaller blocks of monstrous cav. Yeah you'll take some wounds, but you will come out ahead with more than half the unit left. Now his cav is dead and you've given up ZERO points.
Lizards have some of the best chaff, and chaff clearing units in the game. It's our own fault if we don't use all out tools and look at match ups in a vacuum.

-Matt

 

[jeanke]

hi there,

I'm fairly new to this site, but seeing this topic I couldn't resist to share my opinion.
I've been playing since 5th ed.(yes I'm old!) and Lizardmen were my first (and still are my only) WHF army.
My favorite unit were (of course)the Kroxigors.
In earlyer editions they had that lovely skirmish-screen rule.
I intensively used Kroxigors to hunt down heavely armoured knights.
Also they were a very good flanking unit, warmachine hunters and monster-killers (...did I mention steamtanks?).
I stopped playing WHF more than a year ago becauseof the change in charge-rules.
(Lets face it; the slowest dwarf can now charge a fast Elf from 15" away!)
The fact that Magic has changed dramatically and is almost obligatory to boost some units in order for them to preform well is a little of a downside for me.
In previous editions (where you couldn't field a lord/slann in games under 2000pts.) tactic,strategy and of course some luck with the dice, made all the difference.
Now it's almost mandatory to field a Slann.
Anyways...Now that my Kroxigors are back at full strenght (7 that is), I'm planning on playing WHF again.
The extra's like Stomp at Str 5 and Predatory Fighter, I submissively accept.
Oh...btw the most beautifull Kroxi moddels are those from Bloodbowl;
I'll share some pics next week...if I can figure out how to use this high tech thing called PC.
Gee I am old...but than again so are my beloved Kroxigors.

Greets,
Jeanke

 

[thegraymist]

I want to replace my bastiladon and I was thinking a unit of 3 krox for the same price. I figured this was the best place to ask it.

The Krox have a few advantages over the basty.

• They have a much better movement in order to flank/get out of the way of a threatening unit
  They can cut through armour
  When hit with a cannon or trebuchet they only lose 1 model as opposed to dying outright
  They don't suck power dice in order to be effective (solar beam)
  They are effective against infantry but also effective against cavalry with high strength

I did try CoC which are great against infantry but less so against cav because they lack the high strength of a kroxigor. The Krox provide a nice threat radius as well which I think makes them a bit more versatile as a flank protector and their higher movement means they can also hunt things.

Alternatively is it just better to swap out a spell for metal to deal with armoured foes and sink the points elsewhere? I am sort of trying to find a use for my Krox as I love their models and general concept.

If used for flanking and flank protection, is a unit of 3 strong enough keeping mind the effort to keep the points to about 150? Are they competitive in that role since you can get 3 units of cohorts for that same price which could hold up a deathstar for 3 turns?

 

[Caneghem]

I want to replace my bastiladon and I was thinking a unit of 3 krox for the same price. I figured this was the best place to ask it.

The Krox have a few advantages over the basty.

• They have a much better movement in order to flank/get out of the way of a threatening unit
  They can cut through armour
  When hit with a cannon or trebuchet they only lose 1 model as opposed to dying outright
  They don't suck power dice in order to be effective (solar beam)
  They are effective against infantry but also effective against cavalry with high strength

I did try CoC which are great against infantry but less so against cav because they lack the high strength of a kroxigor. The Krox provide a nice threat radius as well which I think makes them a bit more versatile as a flank protector and their higher movement means they can also hunt things.

Alternatively is it just better to swap out a spell for metal to deal with armoured foes and sink the points elsewhere? I am sort of trying to find a use for my Krox as I love their models and general concept.

If used for flanking and flank protection, is a unit of 3 strong enough keeping mind the effort to keep the points to about 150? Are they competitive in that role since you can get 3 units of cohorts for that same price which could hold up a deathstar for 3 turns?

There are some negatives to krox you might have passed up. At only T4 4+AS, they can be brought down by bowfire and other shooting without too much problem, and they become a very good target for this type of attack. While our Saurus have the same resilience versus shooting, the krox is only a 9 wound unit that loses attack power for every 3 wounds. This is the main reason to take them with skinks still, just that nice protection from chariot impacts and missile hits. Imagine a strength 5 chariot hitting your 3-man kroxigors... all those impact hits nail them followed by all the crew and beast attacks.. you'll probably be left with 1 krox striking back, and then losing combat and getting run down. Many chariots that can accomplish this are cheaper than 150 points with a better charge distance. On the other hand, if you take two krox in some skinks (a bit more expensive), the impact hits are more spread out (krox hit on 5+), meaning you have more krox surviving, and ALSO granting steadfast from skink ranks. Skinks also grant their 3+ skink save versus enemy shooting, so krox are more likely to survive before they get into combat.

 

[JungleBeast]

With so much chaff to throw against the chariots, it would be the LM player's fault not dealing earlier with that. Allowing your hammering unit to be charged by opponents "expendables", yeah, not good.

Till now I've been running (proxies, looking for better/cheaper models, also eBay) 8 Kroxies together (4x2), maybe will total it up to 9 (3x3) for better maneuverability, with optimum results. Also using a 40-man Saurus unit (horde formation) which usually frightens or glues the opponents' attention away from the Kroxies.

 

[Clarkarias]

Till now I've been running (proxies, looking for better/cheaper models, also eBay) 8 Kroxies together (4x2), maybe will total it up to 9 (3x3) for better maneuverability, with optimum results. Also using a 40-man Saurus unit (horde formation) which usually frightens or glues the opponents' attention away from the Kroxies.

I think I'll try this. I've always been a big redundancy guy - 2 of everything - but I think this is a good setup.

 

[MarchoftheStegs]

Ushabti are easily the worst Monstrous infantry point for point in WHFB, really comparing any other books MI to them is just odd.

I plan on taking a unit of 6 to see how they do though, if they perform well i'll probably bump them up to 8.

Ushabti are good its just most people misuse them. my friend uses them to great effect.


Kroxigors on the other hand S7 great weapon attacks. We can make that work if you use it properly. or if you take enough to hold the middle of the army.