8th Ed. Noob needs help with list building

[mattblowers]

Here's the deal. I've been lurking the forums trying to get up to speed. I've read the codex (army book?) and the handbook here (great help, thanks). I'm so new to fantasy that I don't even really know where to start with list building. I'm a seasoned 40K vet and I love playing units that most people think are bad and doing well. I'm not knowledgeable enough with Fantasy or Lizardmen to be there. Despite my best efforts I don't even know where to start. Here's a few quick questions?

1. What are we trying to accomplish with Lizardmen? ie. What is our main goal? How do we impose our will on other armies?

2. What should we avoid trying to do with Lizardmen? What is outside our comfort zone? (ie, my Tyranids are never going to win 40K by playing passively or having a gun line shootout)

3. What is the best type of list for a noob to run to learn the playstyle of Lizdardmen?

I traded a large Dark Angel army for a decent sized Lizardmen one. The following is what I currently own.

Slann Mage
2x Skink Priests
Old Blood/Scar Vet on a cold one

90+ Saurus Warriors 50ish with spears, 20ish with hand weapons, the rest still on sprue.
15 Temple guard

60+ skinks: 12 with blowpipes, 20ish with javelins, 24 that I just built but haven't armed yet (which way should I go?)

7 Jungle swarms

14 Cold ones (I know they are supposed to be bad, but they came with and they look awesome)

3 Kroxigor

2 Salamander hunting parties

2 Ancient Stegs with Engine of the gods
1 regular Steg

1 Troglodon (my favorite model, it's gonna see play time sooner or later even if it is subpar)

 

[SilverFaith]

Lizardmen have two main ways of being played.

1. Redirecters through skinks, forcing the expensive units to go out of their way to kill small, inexpensive units, while keeping them away from combat for a decent amount of time.

2. Large blocks of Saurus that gradually attempts to "grind" through the enemy forces, supported by other units. This is where units like Jungle Swarms and monsters in general (Stegadon, etc) are very effective.

In general, despite the supposed "power" of the Saurus, you never want to take anything head on. You play an army of redirecters, and you always want to have support. Saurus are best when they get supported with rear/flank charges, but are really too expensive to be used as the conventional "Deathstar" type of thing.

My personal opinion is that you should either go all in, and try to cross the board ASAP, or go the complete other way, and stick back, waiting for the enemy to come to you. Going halfway will rarely be a good idea.

Lizardmen are pretty difficult to play, in my opinion. Dwarves can just march up the board, smack into enemies, and expect to stick around for a long time. Lizardmen can't. You have a powerful wizard in the Slann, but movement is pretty much where you make or break your game.

With that said, Scar Veterans will never let you down. They are powerful for a silly low cost, and easily hit a 1+ Armour save, with an Invul save, as well as S7. You can pop pretty much anything you want, and take a ton of attacks to the face without flinching. Cold One Riders are expensive, but work well as a "bus" for your Scar Veterans, to give them additional protection.

 

[sillyduck123]

1. I guess what your tying to achieve is to kick the other players ass on the game board. I aim to terminate the enemy wizard to have full domination over the magic phases its fairly easy after that.

2.

Dwarves can just march up the board, smack into enemies, and expect to stick around for a long time. Lizardmen can't. You have a powerful wizard in the Slann, but movement is pretty much where you make or break your game.

thats 100% true when it comes to lizardmen

3. The list you have there is fine it has a great selection of units for you to experiment with.

 

[Scalenex]

I love playing units that most people think are bad and doing well.

Based on this and the models you say you like best, I suggest you go with the Troglodon and Cold One Cavalry and build around that.

Fill up most but not all of your Core with Saurus Warriors (nearly every army needs at east one or two units of Skink chaff). Bulk up your Temple Guard, 15 is not enough, but people who don't care about WIZIWIG will let you fill your back ranks with regular Sauri, or you can put a few TG heads on regular Sauri (because the army boxes come with spare TG heads).

I would recommend putting the TG and Slann in your center, flank the TG with big dinosaurs and flank the big dinosaurs with Saurus Warrior blocks. You can use the Cold Ones in place of a big Saurus block or a dinosaur or just stick them on a flank.

I would recommend taking Lore of Light since it covers the weakness of Sauri very well. I would recommend a Skink Priest with lore of Beasts (take Wyssans unless you roll Anaheir). You don't need two Skink priests since the Troglodon will serve as another channel/vassal.

If you have points left over, take a Saurus character on a Cold One. If you still have points left over, take some Salamanders. If you still have points left, enhance your dinosaurs or bulk up your Temple Guard or buy more magic items and disciplines.

The basic strategy is to march across the field and pummel your enemy into submission. The big dinosaurs provide Stomps to help your infantry. The Slann buffs away the weaknesses of the Sauri. Power dice permitting your Skink Priests enhances their core competencies. Light has two magic missiles and you will probably get at least one. You have a Skink Priest and a Troglodon to help aim it/them.

That should be a REASONABLY competitive army that fits what you described you wanted to accomplish without requiring you to buy more things. I've gotten some mileage out of the Troglodon using the basic strategy. I tried a WD Slann but I think Light would work better. After a few games with this, you should get some new ideas in your head for your own experiments (you strike me as an experimental player).

I have yet to figure out a good way to use Swarms barring an exception when I played a Watchtower game with lots of rivers. Swarms were PERFECT then because I could not only stall people, I could stall people in rivers which they could not march through (and the Swarms could) and I only had one objective I really needed to block, the tower. In other scenarios my Swarms seem to be free points for the enemy. To get mileage out of Swarms you probably want a Bastiladon. Solar Engines are better in an all comers environment but the Ark of Sotek works well against relatively squishy armies like elves or humans. The hard part is Bastiladons are not Stubborn and have a low leadership score. A ranked block of most things can route them if they don't have back up.

Since Troglodons depend on boosting PF units and Swarms are for playing the redirecting game, I do not believe Troglodons and Swarms should share the same army list. Limit yourself to one of these two unpopular choices per army.

 

[n810]

I would use a swarm unit with each saurus and temple guard unit,
use the saurus based units to charge the front and the swarm on the flank or
at least on a corner to limit their exposure, but mostly so their "there everwere"
rule effects the big combat block.

 

[Waah]

I would use a swarm unit with each saurus and temple guard unit,
use the saurus based units to charge the front and the swarm on the flank or
at least on a corner to limit their exposure, but mostly so their "there everwere"
rule effects the big combat block.

I want to do this and live the dream just once, just once.

 

[teufelhund]

Definitely bulk up the TG. I usually run a double horde; 1 saurus with spears and the other TG Slann bunker. Fill out the rest of the core with skirmishers; I prefer javs for the quick to fire it always seems to work out better than double shots hitting on 7's and losing poison and believe it or not the parry save will come into effect in chaff on chaff battles. Keep the ancient stegs near your blocks so they can fight supported; although I usually run giant blow pipes. I'm not an engine of the gods fan, but it could be right up your alley and has some decent synergy with your other models. My last recommendation would be to run your slann with channelling staff and Harmonic convergence to boost your magic you'll need the edge to buff the saurus and TG. +1 for lore of light. Best of luck.