8th Ed. What units should a newbie buy in 8th?

[Vladbat]

I currently have Dwarf and Vamp armies and was thinking about playing an army that would be very different from them. Lizardmen seems to be the way I am leaning. Since I am sitting on a ton of credit at my LHS I was wondering where to begin investing.
Any advice?

 

[n810]

The batalion box is a good way to start.
and quite a bit cheaper that buying the units seperately.

 

[Haemoglobin]

Agreed, The battalion box has alot of models you will use. But the Cold One Riders have lost alot of their potential though. You will probably want to buy extra Saurus and Skinks. Salamanders are great to use too (but rather expensive as a model in my opinion). Same goes for the Terradons and Kroxigor.

If you are starting to build an army you will mainly need Saurus warriors, Skinks and a couple of Salamanders. Maybe get a Skink priest aswell. There is a blister out there that has 2 models in it: one that has the 'cloak of feathers model' and the other that has a nice skink chief model. I think I got mine for 14.50 euros (the single blister).

 

[Vladbat]

Is it worth it to double up on Battlion Boxes? Or is there ever a spearhead type box..

 

[n810]

There might have been one for 6th edition...?

there are 2 different batation boxes out there at the moment,
the old one has skinks saurus and cold one calvery,
the new one has skinks saurus and temple guard.

Getting one of each would be a good idea,
since you probaly wouldn't want to double up
on either the cold ones or the temple guard.

Ps. the batalion boxes each have about 1000 points of models in them.

 

[Kurlin]

There might have been one for 6th edition...?

there are 2 different batation boxes out there at the moment,
the old one has skinks saurus and cold one calvery,
the new one has skinks saurus and temple guard.

Getting one of each would be a good idea,
since you probaly wouldn't want to double up
on either the cold ones or the temple guard.

Ps. the batalion boxes each have about 1000 points of models in them.

Umm the new ones have skinks, saurus, TG, and CoC. Doubling up is good cause then you get 20 TG, and 40 saurus, and 24 skinks. The only downside is you will have 16 CoC which is somewhat overkill, but great for a single unit and then bits for converting heroes.

 

[n810]

oops my bad....
I only got the old box a few years back....

 

[Xul]

I bought almost all my lizards (with a few exceptions I got as gifts) on eBay. I got loads of warriors and skinks for a very good price, then bought a few single salamanders (had to look for them a bit longer, though), even a Slann (although old model) for a very good price. I don't think the battalion is such a good choice, as the cavalry is not very useful (that's what I think) and you're not going to use temple guard unless you run a Slan (which is 1,5K games and up). even then you would probably need at least 12 of them.

 

[novatomato]

I love the COC, erm that sounds a little on the naughty side when I write it like that so let me re phrase that.
I love the Cold One Cavalry. They aren't as great this edition apparently (just about everyone says so) but I find that a single unit of those cold blooded killing machines will either A) get all the opponents magic and shooting for a turn or two, thus letting my slower saurus warriors get into combat unharmed, or B) kill just about every model my opponent fields.

 

[strewart]

I can liken them to my Dragon Princes, who have the same armour and same number of attacks but lower toughness and less survivability after the charge. From experience, my opponent has found them among the scariest part of my army for the sheer amount of kills they can inflict. However, they are always hitting first on 3's and rerolling misses which I think is a huge advantage, not sure if it is offset by the extra power of a cold one compared to a horse. And of course, the CO's are 5 points more expensive each, which is significant in a decent sized unit.

I just haven't been able to justify putting a unit of CO's into a list over say, a stegadon, which comes out to pretty similar points.

 

[novatomato]

Thing is, a stegadon will take a cannon ball or two and thats it. When you run into three dwarf cannons with master engineers for each one. the steg doesn't particularly last long, or you have to hide him away. And since the dwarf player also has three or four small units or either quarrelers or thunderers, he can shoot up other parts of my army as well. The CO's require my opponent to fire a whole lot at them in order to make sure they are dead, as opposed to one model taking two, or even three if you're lucky, d6 no armour save wounds on a model with five wounds, its gone. but taking the same number on a unit with ten separate wounds, he has to get lucky on the bounce for it to do the same thing.