8th Ed. Rookie Questions

[lucius101]

Ok so I'm new to Warhammer, as in I've never played it but decided to give it a go with 8th Ed. Chose Lizardmen because I like the background and feel of the army as well as looking cool. Got some, probably, really basic questions before i start gluing models together and mess up. Hoping you can point a die hard 40K fan in the right directions so I embrace the loving arms of Warhammer

Spear - The sound really useful in the rule, is there ever a reason to not arm a unit of Saurus Warriors with spears? Don't want to glue lots of hand weapon armed warriors together to find they should have been given spears.

Unit size - for 2000 - 3000 pts what's the best unit size, I'm guessing around 20 for 4 ranks of 5 but this seems to result in my 2000 pts army only having about half a dozen units. Is that right? or should i be aiming for more smaller units?

HOpefully people can point me in the right directions so I can get to grips assemble and start playing my Lizards

anyone else think the big lizard should win this fight?

 

[Larinus]

Well, since you're new to this, you won't be playing with or against a big army for some time. (Correct me if I'm wrong) So if I was you, I would probably glue spears on to start with, because in bigger armies you always want at least one unit of spears, and you can always play them as hand weapons if you want to. Your opponent will typically allow some proxies for beginners, and even when you've got big armies, most opponents won't mind a few here or there.

When it comes to unit sizes, you don't generally want to think about your army above 1000 points. Build your army first for maybe 750 points, then expand as you see fit. With 8th edition, you don't want to have to small a unit, as they will be liable to Panic Tests, so 20 would work fairly well.

P.S. Thanks for giving me a distraction from my Maths homework.

 

[strewart]

Greetings, welcome to the board and the lizardmen!

In 7th ed, spears were certainly the best choice by far. Now it is a lot less clear and people seem to be getting good results from either. Look at the advantages and disadvantages of each; spears will give you an extra rank attacking (only with 1 attack each though since they are supporting attacks) so your unit will be able to kill a bit more. Hand weapon will allow you to get a parry save with the shield which could be crucial against high strength opponents that remove your armour and still save a few extra, but you will get less attacks. I think its a personal choice, and I would encourage you to assemble some of each and try both.

Unit sizes, yeah 20 is pretty much the minimum size you want now. You may find yourself with only 2 blocks of saurus in a 2k army by the time you have characters, support units and elite choices. Thats fine. As you play larger games you will want to expand your units to 25, 30 or even greater. This edition of warhammer really is about large units and if you just take 20 you will probably find they get whittled down by hordes.

 

[Xul]

I play a block of 30 with HW+shields (5x6) and it proved quite good against pretty anything (including sustained stone thrower & doom diver bombardment). the downside is I can only field a limited number of other units in smaller games. but that's quite OK so far, as my opponents always focused on the saurus block