8th Ed. Unusual 3k List

[Bainbow]

This army list tends to get a lot of funny looks when I field it, but it wins far more often than not when played right. Besides, there's little more fun than to see your opponent raise an eyebrow at your choices, then pummel their army into submission.

Lords
1 Slann (Lore of Light)
-Soul of Stone
-Harmonic Convergence
-Channeling Staff
-BSB

1 Oldblood
-Light Armour
-Enchanted Shield
-Dawnstone
-Piranha Blade
-Potion of Speed

Heroes
Tetto'Ekko

1 Skink Priest (Lore of Beasts)
-Level 2 Wizard
-Dispel Scroll

Core
70 Saurus Warriors (led by Oldblood)
-Spears
-Standard Bearer
-Champion

Special
40 Temple Guard (led by Slann)
-Revered Guardian
-Standard Bearer

10 Chameleon Skinks
-2 Stalkers

Rare
1 Ancient Stegadon
-Sharpened Horns
-Engine of the Gods

3 Salamander Hunting Packs


What makes this army unusual is that, with the exception of the Chameleons, there are no duplicate units. The Saurus all make up a 70-man strong horde unit, for example. While this may seem like putting all eggs in one basket, creative movement and placing of all of the units both supporting and primary allow me to use the Saurus unit as a kind of tank to draw enemy fire and punish enemies who don't pool enough resources to bring down my tanking Saurus Warriors, and with enough enemy units forced into dealing with my primary unit, the rest of my army are able to wipe out any enemy unit left unoccupied with relative ease. Magic support is vital in this build as it keeps my Saurus both alive long enough to effectively tank, and strong enough to pose such a significant danger.

The catch, however, is that this strategy relies very heavily on reacting to the opponent's moves and so requires a fair amount of trial and error to get a grip with initially, but once an aptitude for reacting quickly enough to every move is established for this, it becomes both a tricky army to counter and an extremely adaptable one capable of dealing with almost any threat. In addition this reliance on reacting to enemy moves ensures that no game follows the exact same strategy, combining great battle efficiency with great enjoyment, making for a fun winning army.

Right now I'm working on going one step beyond reacting to opponents and am trying to master predicting enemy moves, only improving the victory rate.

 

[airjamy]

70 sauri, that is taking things to the next level. I feel like that this list is like a bulldozer, it completely demolishes everything in its path, but enemies will dodge out of the way. I think you will have a very poor matchup against shooting fast lists, but i think you figured that out yourself. The only problems i find in your list i find that i do not know where tettoeko goes, you dont want him in the front rank of your sauri. Maybe fit in a small unit of 10 skinks as a bodyguard for him? If he goes solo, he dies turn one in 3K. he is important in the list, vanguarding your blocks in key, but i do think you should at least defend him later.

You also only have one monster, i like to think that 1 monster=0 monster, because your enemies warmachines have only one target. more then fine, and even an interesting idea for the rest

 

[Bainbow]

With shooters, the major thing to do is catch the shooters as fast as possible, which usually means trekking across the map without getting shot up, easier said than done. I usually deal with this through a mixture of Pha's Protection for the -1 To Hit modifier against BS shooters, and Birona's Timewarp for the Movement increase that allows me to move far more swiftly across the map to catch the shooters.

As for Tetto'Ekko, I do typically leave him constantly behind my lines, using the bulks as a buffer. This is because the three things that I mainly use him for are his Vanguard ability, the Herald of Cosmic Events ability, and the Comet of Cassandora, all of which have global range. If people want to go after him, they need to make their way around the lines to him which is a lot more effort than is worth because I have two other wizards who are quite frankly better at synergising with the melee focus of this army with the Lore of Light and Lore of Beasts.

And while it's true that I have only the one monster, that's because it typically takes up a supporting role, valued for its flank charges, -1 to casting values, and ward saves, occasionally for charging monsters or multi-wound units but I don't count on that because enemies can evade that, especially monsters. If my opponent were to take it down, all that would achieve is time for my bulk hordes to cross the map with fewer cannonballs to their faces. As I say, I use that horde to punish people who don't try to bring it down fast enough.

 

[airjamy]

I guess you can sortoff protect your units up to a certain point. A savvy opponent would try to take out tettoeko, your monster, your chameleons and maybe the sallies. From that point on, playing point denial is very easy. Only the ancient stegadon is a hard nut to crack, the rest should die easily as long as you focus all combat and shooting on it. If I would come up against this list in a 3K tournament I would play simple point denial. I always have hordes of skinks, at least 4 units in 2400, so I would maybe sacrifice a few units to redirect the sauri and the generally annoy them. You would never get your points worth if your opponent really plays to win. I would say that this would not be the most fun way to play, but your blocks are just to slow to do much of anything. You do not have High magic to walk between worlds, the only thing that might speed up your sauri is the Timewarp, which you won’t always have, and the vanguard, against which I would deploy accordingly. Even if you have the timewarp, it would be my prime spell to dispel, just for this reason. You would already very early have to put down your dough units, I would still have masses of skinks to deploy while your money units will already be on the table, making it even easier for me to evade your units.

I do feel I am very harsh on your list, but on second sight it does not seem all that strong. What are your experiences with it, what do you win against and what do you lose against? It seems you already have experience playing the list.

 

[Bainbow]

Oh absolutely feel free to be harsh on the list, pal. I used to run High Magic with this for Walk Between Worlds, but the Lore of Light seems to work better ever since I experimentally switched to it a couple of months ago.

My experience with the list is that playing normally with it, it fails heavily. But playing it in such a way where you make moves to counter every action your opponent makes while constantly moving forward, and predicting moves when able, the list suddenly does a 180 and actually works, better than the conventional lists that I used to play. While a savvy enough opponent can make things hard for me, it has a far greater number of wins than it does losses for me now.

 

[n810]

As far as I can tell Light is definitely the best for a Saurus centric list.
I imagine beast/heavens would be second though.

 

[airjamy]

Oh absolutely feel free to be harsh on the list, pal. I used to run High Magic with this for Walk Between Worlds, but the Lore of Light seems to work better ever since I experimentally switched to it a couple of months ago.

My experience with the list is that playing normally with it, it fails heavily. But playing it in such a way where you make moves to counter every action your opponent makes while constantly moving forward, and predicting moves when able, the list suddenly does a 180 and actually works, better than the conventional lists that I used to play. While a savvy enough opponent can make things hard for me, it has a far greater number of wins than it does losses for me now.

It is interesting for you to say that, and i guess that meta is also very important in the considerations that go into this list. How large are the tables you normally play on? In my club, we always play 2K or 2.4K on a regular tournament table with quite a lot of terrain (from 6 to 10 pieces of differing sizes), on my club i guess you would suffer. I feel like your list really shines on small tables with little terrain or terrain that bottlenecks your opponent into you. In a regular tournament setting though, i feel like you can't use your blocks.

It can also be that the typical paper logics does not really work on your list, i would think that a 70 big block of sauri looks monstrous, and that your opponents might not be able to help themselves shooting at them? As long as it works, no reason to stop with it right

 

[borkbork]

"Unusual" is an appropriate discription indeed.

In theory, however, i think there are quite a few ways to deal with it. The most obvious one is, as already mentioned above, ignore/delay the saurus and kill the rest.

I think My fast orc list (wyvern, gtilla, arock, wolf bus, savage orc horde) is going to have a blast against this list (in theory atleast), unless you manage to criple me with magic in the first turn. And i find magic extremely unreliable. Anyway my prime tagets would be the chameleons (to safe my warmachies), tetto and the sallies (that are a mojor threat to my cavalry)

Anyway, i would love to see a battle report to see how you use your list.

 

[GreenMachine]

I like it! I want to try something this. Seventy saurus is just insane, that must be a pain to manuever. My other army is O&G's and I ran three hordes and found that they would often have trouble getting across the board as terrain impeded them alot. The only nitpick I have is why the stalker upgrade on the chamos?

 

[Bainbow]

It is interesting for you to say that, and i guess that meta is also very important in the considerations that go into this list. How large are the tables you normally play on? In my club, we always play 2K or 2.4K on a regular tournament table with quite a lot of terrain (from 6 to 10 pieces of differing sizes), on my club i guess you would suffer. I feel like your list really shines on small tables with little terrain or terrain that bottlenecks your opponent into you. In a regular tournament setting though, i feel like you can't use your blocks.

It can also be that the typical paper logics does not really work on your list, i would think that a 70 big block of sauri looks monstrous, and that your opponents might not be able to help themselves shooting at them? As long as it works, no reason to stop with it right

The games we play are usually done with randomised terrain, meaning that it could be anything from no terrain to being littered with the stuff and anywhere in between, and the tables are typically 4ft to 7ft depending on turnout and game size.

 

[Bainbow]

"Unusual" is an appropriate discription indeed.

In theory, however, i think there are quite a few ways to deal with it. The most obvious one is, as already mentioned above, ignore/delay the saurus and kill the rest.

I think My fast orc list (wyvern, gtilla, arock, wolf bus, savage orc horde) is going to have a blast against this list (in theory atleast), unless you manage to criple me with magic in the first turn. And i find magic extremely unreliable. Anyway my prime tagets would be the chameleons (to safe my warmachies), tetto and the sallies (that are a mojor threat to my cavalry)

Anyway, i would love to see a battle report to see how you use your list.

Double post, my bad.

The entire strength of this list is reliant on how its played rather than how its built. So long as you keep a vigilant eye on your weaknesses and field/move/attack accordingly then you can very easily take opponents off guard. It's not an easy army and you have to do all the work yourself, but it can work nicely.