9th Age Your River-cohort ( skinks + caimans).Good or not?

[kubapj]

Hellou, I really like River-cohort. Usually I play 40 skinks (FCG + flaming standart), with 4 caimans in the 3thrd rank with Nakai hero (MR+3) and bestiladon with snake thing. That give the unit 4 up poison attack. But it is lot of points ( cca 500pts + 185 pts for hero + 145 pts forbestiladon - they have to be togeadher) My question is, do you even use this unit and if you do, what is your build?

BTW I wanna do some Slann bunker with 1 or 2 heroes to protect him with 19-18 TG. What will be the best build to saurus hero (lord) bodiguard for them?

 

[Pinktaco]

I don't use it like that. Caiman hero can be sniped because there are only 4 regular Caimans and the skinks die too easily. A single S4 catapult hit will ruin them.

If I wanted to do something like this it would be 2x40 skinks with poison + poison turtle. But that's still probably going to fail miserably

 

[Deusvult]

If I wanted to do something like this it would be 2x40 skinks with poison + poison turtle. But that's still probably going to fail miserably

Ok, so 40 skinks with c/c poison full cmd and flame banner, backed up by a poison turtle with rerolls to hit, did 22 wounds to a unit of maneaters left only the standard bearer. They then proceeded to kill the standard, a butcher and bsb (this was unlicky rolls) and hold a tyrant in combat for a couple of turns!!

It actually works well. Much better than saurus warriors imo. Even with the same back up they would never have done that.

 

[Pinktaco]

I believe that,wasn't entirely by the rules?

 

[Deusvult]

Yeah, we actually had a chat about it, due to my abilities in rolling like shit, it was only 4 wounds above average, only giving him one more ogre back. The funny thing was that, having that one model would have help me more than him, in the next round of combat.

Sidenote: i actually realised my stupidity before the forum post went up.

Anyways, the unit still worked quite well. Better than any of my saurus have.

 

[MJanek]

In my recent game 30 skink cohort with 3 Caimans worked wonders. It took charge from 3! different units in he same time, and kept them in fight for 4 rounds before finally breaking, thus saving my Temples flank and giving them time to deal with High Elves calvary. In this role, I think they are better then core Saurus, cause you can poison-shot enemy, then get "free" shooting phase as charge reaction to soften enemy. Then you just need to use your skink numbers to maintain more ranks (so they won't break even loosing battle rounds). Also, I'm not sure if it would work against more experienced opponent, but Caimans clearly scare people In result, my opponent focused almost all his attacks on them, instead of skinks (half of which would die in first round, what would lead to loosing ranks and then panicking). Also, I found especially useful using High Magic spell that grants unit ward save on 5+. It has ridiculously low cast level, and with it, those little rascals make wonders

 

[The Hunted]

I recently fell in love with these guys, though not the biggest units. I find them to be clumsy and still quite fragile.
I like 22 skinks with 2 caimans. Put them on the flank/off-centre and they are a real nuisance.
For me, they are the perfect flankers. You really don't want a unit like that in your flank, it will just own you on static combat resolution alone. And because of the caimans, I'm not really scared of monsters/high armour either.

They also nicely fill up my core for the most part, thus I can more easily spend the points in special (since I'm not reliant on M4 infantry).

So in short, for me:
They are cheap enough to not worry about, but usefull enough to cause a headache to my opponent.
Did I mention they can claim objectives?


The Hunted

 

[Lawot]

Just played this for the first time. In a game under the 1.2 Rules, I played a block of Saurus alongside a unit of 30 Skink Braves with 3 Caimans. They took on a Gargantula spider and knocked it out, though they did have a little help from a Taurosaur and they lost two Caimans in the process. I was pretty happy with them, though I do think I could have used them better. I'm definitely going to try them again in the future.