Post by saniles on Jan 6, 2019 2:17:45 GMT
Pros and cons
Pros: Lots of attacks, good tougness and strenght and good armour save. Good viable unit for augments.
Cons: Cannot gain higher strenght weapons or magic banners. Oh and initative 1. Yeah we compete with zombies in slowness.
So what's the official reason to not use them? The meta of course. S4 doesn't do diddly to 1+ armoured units. Regen units sh1t all over them as well. Not to mention high strenght elf units.
They excel at murdering S3/T3 models like they were pancakes on a sunday morning. Anything S3 that doesn't reroll like a mutherfvcker can forget about wounding them, especially if we have sword and board (parry).
So keep that in mind whenever you decide to go for saurus warriors. If your meta is competitive it's a high risk to take them. If it isn't they should do fine. So let me give you 3 different setup I find common and interesting. The good thing about saurus warrios is that they generate a sick amount of S4 attacks. It's almost ridiculous. We just need to position (during deployment) them so we can actually utilize it.
Predatory Fighter
Pro: more attacks.
Con: You HAVE to overrun, unless there's a skink character nearby.
Assume that 6 attacks = 1 more attacks. 12 attacks = 2 more attacks. So front rank being 6 wide generally speaking = 2 more attacks. I'm assuming that PF only works for front rank, what you do is your own matter. A Scar Vet have 66% chance of popping an additional attack and an Oldblood have 84% chance to do so (they basically have 6 attacks tbh..). Since we'll always want to maximize attacks PF isn't actually that bad, so with a champ we're talking an additional 3 attacks than without. Not bad.
The setups
The cheap defensive block. 5 wide, 5 deep, can easily be fielded in a 1500-2000pts game. Give them swords and you'll find them quite resilient. Have them near your Slann BSB to keep them hanging around. Don't take a charge from S6 knights or monstrous cavalry units and you'll generally do okay. If playing at 2500pts put on one more rank (5 wide, 6 deep). Basic setup that can also be somewhat cheap depending on what you want from them. This unit will put out 11 front attacks, 1,76 PF attacks and 5 additional attacks from the second rank for at total of almost 18 attacks.
The standard spear unit. 6 wide, 5 deep. Spears boost our damage output with an extra rank and 1 model more wide will give an additional 4 more attacks compared to the defensive block and an additional +33% of getting an additional PF attack. This setup isn't meant to take a beating, but can put out a total of 27 attacks. That's 9 attacks more than the defensive one which is quite a boost. DO REMEMBER that we cannot utilize spears if we charge, not before the second round of combat anyway. Important minor detail.
The heavy hitting spear unit. 7 wide, 4-5 deep. Obviously spears again. 7 wide should still be able to have full attacks on most units they go up against. Total attacks are 31,4. However for this setup I think it'll do right to have something more. Add in a Scar Veteran. I haven't quite though about the putting him on a Cold One and risking the Look Out Sir being reduced to 4+. The SV can be equiped with light armour, great weapon and Talisman of Preservation OR skip the LA and take Armour of Destiny. The important part is that you have a great weapon and is somewhat defensive. With GW we can take armour of silvered steel and gain a 2+ save, maybe pick luckstone for that 1-time reroll, but I prefer a 4+/4+ save. So main objective for the SV is to deter cavalry units riding into our S7 attacks. If we're up agaist +1 knigths (inner circle knights mostly) we can put out roughly 1 wound on the unit per combat phase with the saurus warriors. Keep that in mind, same goes for the previous setup, more or less. We can do the same on the 1+ monstrous cavalry models which mean that combined with the S7 attacks we can likely remove 1 MC model a turn. Against 2+ models we can do roughly 3½ wounds, but usually these knights (bretonnia/black knights) have characters in them so watch out. I'm personally going to try out this unit some more because of the potential damage output, but there are some obvious issues here. The unit is one big FU and thus the opponent will send a stronk unit against it. So prepare for that. Having a SV will obviously remove 2 attacks from the front rank and add 4 WS5/S7 attacks.
Magic
I mentioned the unit being a good target for augments, but not every augments. Gaining D3 initative is completely useless due to them being I1 lol. Mostly Wyssan's Wildform will make them very, very good. S5/T5 with the amount of attacks we can put out? Yes please. WS10/I10? I'll take it. Gaining ASF and +1A is also very good. More attacks on the front rank mean more attacks from PF. +2/+4 toughness and they are suddenly invincible. Alternatively reducing our opponents WS (so we're equal at least) or strenght/toughness mean that we're reducing our opponents to a level we the warriors become slaughter machines.
I'd love to use lore of metal, but unfortunately the wounding spells are somewhat situational and we cannot use +2 scaly skin, however having +1 To Hit and Amour Piercing would definately help us a lot.
Rerolling 1s can be very effective. +1 To wound and flaming attacks mean trouble for trolls and beast of nurgles etc. Due to the high amount of attacks they are a very good target for most spells.
So what else?
Well I suppose if you go heavy on saurus you might as well go heavy on templeguards. Having two solid units mean that your opponent have to choose how to engange you. We still have our cowboys to intervene when needed and a unit of saurus warriors doesn't mean that we cannot use skink skirmishers to redirect. I believe we can easily have 4 skink units at 2500pts, depending on how you set up your units.
Learn some basic math you can easily remember. For instance White Lions 6 wide with champ will remove 10½ wounds on both saurus warriors and templeguards. DO NOT ENGAGE IF THEY ARE AT FULL STRENGHT. Lol..
Have an idea of how much you can do and how much your opponent will do to you. Just roughly. Saurus warriors are easy to do some basic math with because you can remove half your hits due to WS3. Against T4 you can remove another half and against T3 you can go by that 10 attacks in To Wound = 6,6 wounds done, so 20 attacks in To Wound = 2 x 6,6 wounds done.
Armies this will definately not work against:
Dark elf and Wood Elf avoidance lists. Skinks will be better here, but still die like flies (it's an uphill struggle regardless of what we do). Warriors of Chaos can be quite hard to some degree. Don't assume that our warriors can keep up with regular warrriors of chaos. Against nurgle halbard with us doing 31 attacks we'll do 3,3 wounds. That's not exactly amazing and they'll do 6.5 wound to use so twice the wounds and it's not exactly like they are twice as expensive, ffs.
Most other armies they can do alright against. Just don't take a double charge from bretionnia lances, or demi + inner cirlce knights charge from empire.. Or the dreaded steam tank
. Or a hell pit abomination. You know, the usual bunch. The good thing is that most of these things are things we wouldn't want our templeguards to go up against either, although they'll likely still fare better. Oh and.. Don't be in the path of a purple sun, okay? Good.
Skinks vs shield saurus warriors
So some of you might be against the defensive saurus unit. Fair enough. For me it's about the options and this is a fine option. Do remember that against S6 lance charges saurus warriors die as easy as skinks. So what do they excel at? They can always reform to put out more attacks and thus have more roles. They can easily serve as a support block that can dish out some good attacks. They are still a very good target for magic, again I'm going to refer to Wyssan's Wildfor. T5 will make them quite hard to shift, especially with parry. You don't want to augment skinks because they are T2 anyway so who cares. The obvious difference, however, is that skinks are half the price and faster. And can shoot.
There are for and against for both units so this is completely up to you.
Skrox vs shield saurus warriors
I'll never be a fan of big skrox units. They usually cost the same and never really perfom a good role. It's an alternative alright, but your skinks will die like flies and once you lose a single kroxigor you've lost quite a bit of your punch. Removing those 3 wounds isn't exactly hard and you cannot stomp. The best way to utilize the skrox unit is with small units that can strip units of rank bonus and be a general annoyance.
Troglodon
The trog was an interesting addition. Until we saw the rules. If you use the roar you boost your PF output from 16% of the attacks to 33% of the attacks generating more attacks. SO if you have 12 attacks it'll go from +2 attacks to +4 attacks. The monster unfortunately isn't worth it.
Should you play with PF working on the extra ranks then year maybe. Overall it's a sh1tty monster, unfortunately.
Solardon (bastiladon)
Forget about it buffing saurus warriors. I1 ->I2 us useless so just .. just don't do it. I3 templeguards with the +D3 initative from high magic *might* be worth it, just not on saurus warriors.
Characters
Can generally speaking be added to any unit, just consider why you do it. I find the middle setup I proposed to be decent without. Adding a character is like adding attention to a unit and you have to estimate whether you'll find it attractive to to add the extra punch in saurus warrior unit that's 6 wide. I just think that going all out on the attacks with the third option mean that you might as well add the S7 attacks.
Adding an Oldblood is IMO too much. They can easily gain a 2+ armour save with the great weapon, but at that point you've invested quite a lot of point in the OB and tbh I'd rather have in on a mount being a giant annoyance as a cowboy. Alternatively one could also add a cheap skink chief with the egg of quango to maximize wounds in the first round of combat and hopefully break most opponents there.
Are they worth it though?
In a competitive environment? Likely not. There, I said it. But let's also be honest - how many of us truly play in a super competitive environment? I personally think the whole mentality that "only the best can work" is completely absurd. Having a skink cloud is boring and takes up a lot of space. Not to mention actually painting 70 skinks + cameleon skinks. Ugh. No, I think there's a place for saurus warriors for most of us. They are, however, not an easy unit to play with because, like kroxigors, they cannot go up against everything in the game.
"Win" the deployment and you'll have an easier time with them.
Pros: Lots of attacks, good tougness and strenght and good armour save. Good viable unit for augments.
Cons: Cannot gain higher strenght weapons or magic banners. Oh and initative 1. Yeah we compete with zombies in slowness.
So what's the official reason to not use them? The meta of course. S4 doesn't do diddly to 1+ armoured units. Regen units sh1t all over them as well. Not to mention high strenght elf units.
They excel at murdering S3/T3 models like they were pancakes on a sunday morning. Anything S3 that doesn't reroll like a mutherfvcker can forget about wounding them, especially if we have sword and board (parry).
So keep that in mind whenever you decide to go for saurus warriors. If your meta is competitive it's a high risk to take them. If it isn't they should do fine. So let me give you 3 different setup I find common and interesting. The good thing about saurus warrios is that they generate a sick amount of S4 attacks. It's almost ridiculous. We just need to position (during deployment) them so we can actually utilize it.
Predatory Fighter
Pro: more attacks.
Con: You HAVE to overrun, unless there's a skink character nearby.
Assume that 6 attacks = 1 more attacks. 12 attacks = 2 more attacks. So front rank being 6 wide generally speaking = 2 more attacks. I'm assuming that PF only works for front rank, what you do is your own matter. A Scar Vet have 66% chance of popping an additional attack and an Oldblood have 84% chance to do so (they basically have 6 attacks tbh..). Since we'll always want to maximize attacks PF isn't actually that bad, so with a champ we're talking an additional 3 attacks than without. Not bad.
The setups
The cheap defensive block. 5 wide, 5 deep, can easily be fielded in a 1500-2000pts game. Give them swords and you'll find them quite resilient. Have them near your Slann BSB to keep them hanging around. Don't take a charge from S6 knights or monstrous cavalry units and you'll generally do okay. If playing at 2500pts put on one more rank (5 wide, 6 deep). Basic setup that can also be somewhat cheap depending on what you want from them. This unit will put out 11 front attacks, 1,76 PF attacks and 5 additional attacks from the second rank for at total of almost 18 attacks.
The standard spear unit. 6 wide, 5 deep. Spears boost our damage output with an extra rank and 1 model more wide will give an additional 4 more attacks compared to the defensive block and an additional +33% of getting an additional PF attack. This setup isn't meant to take a beating, but can put out a total of 27 attacks. That's 9 attacks more than the defensive one which is quite a boost. DO REMEMBER that we cannot utilize spears if we charge, not before the second round of combat anyway. Important minor detail.
The heavy hitting spear unit. 7 wide, 4-5 deep. Obviously spears again. 7 wide should still be able to have full attacks on most units they go up against. Total attacks are 31,4. However for this setup I think it'll do right to have something more. Add in a Scar Veteran. I haven't quite though about the putting him on a Cold One and risking the Look Out Sir being reduced to 4+. The SV can be equiped with light armour, great weapon and Talisman of Preservation OR skip the LA and take Armour of Destiny. The important part is that you have a great weapon and is somewhat defensive. With GW we can take armour of silvered steel and gain a 2+ save, maybe pick luckstone for that 1-time reroll, but I prefer a 4+/4+ save. So main objective for the SV is to deter cavalry units riding into our S7 attacks. If we're up agaist +1 knigths (inner circle knights mostly) we can put out roughly 1 wound on the unit per combat phase with the saurus warriors. Keep that in mind, same goes for the previous setup, more or less. We can do the same on the 1+ monstrous cavalry models which mean that combined with the S7 attacks we can likely remove 1 MC model a turn. Against 2+ models we can do roughly 3½ wounds, but usually these knights (bretonnia/black knights) have characters in them so watch out. I'm personally going to try out this unit some more because of the potential damage output, but there are some obvious issues here. The unit is one big FU and thus the opponent will send a stronk unit against it. So prepare for that. Having a SV will obviously remove 2 attacks from the front rank and add 4 WS5/S7 attacks.
Magic
I mentioned the unit being a good target for augments, but not every augments. Gaining D3 initative is completely useless due to them being I1 lol. Mostly Wyssan's Wildform will make them very, very good. S5/T5 with the amount of attacks we can put out? Yes please. WS10/I10? I'll take it. Gaining ASF and +1A is also very good. More attacks on the front rank mean more attacks from PF. +2/+4 toughness and they are suddenly invincible. Alternatively reducing our opponents WS (so we're equal at least) or strenght/toughness mean that we're reducing our opponents to a level we the warriors become slaughter machines.
I'd love to use lore of metal, but unfortunately the wounding spells are somewhat situational and we cannot use +2 scaly skin, however having +1 To Hit and Amour Piercing would definately help us a lot.
Rerolling 1s can be very effective. +1 To wound and flaming attacks mean trouble for trolls and beast of nurgles etc. Due to the high amount of attacks they are a very good target for most spells.
So what else?
Well I suppose if you go heavy on saurus you might as well go heavy on templeguards. Having two solid units mean that your opponent have to choose how to engange you. We still have our cowboys to intervene when needed and a unit of saurus warriors doesn't mean that we cannot use skink skirmishers to redirect. I believe we can easily have 4 skink units at 2500pts, depending on how you set up your units.
Learn some basic math you can easily remember. For instance White Lions 6 wide with champ will remove 10½ wounds on both saurus warriors and templeguards. DO NOT ENGAGE IF THEY ARE AT FULL STRENGHT. Lol..
Have an idea of how much you can do and how much your opponent will do to you. Just roughly. Saurus warriors are easy to do some basic math with because you can remove half your hits due to WS3. Against T4 you can remove another half and against T3 you can go by that 10 attacks in To Wound = 6,6 wounds done, so 20 attacks in To Wound = 2 x 6,6 wounds done.
Armies this will definately not work against:
Dark elf and Wood Elf avoidance lists. Skinks will be better here, but still die like flies (it's an uphill struggle regardless of what we do). Warriors of Chaos can be quite hard to some degree. Don't assume that our warriors can keep up with regular warrriors of chaos. Against nurgle halbard with us doing 31 attacks we'll do 3,3 wounds. That's not exactly amazing and they'll do 6.5 wound to use so twice the wounds and it's not exactly like they are twice as expensive, ffs.
Most other armies they can do alright against. Just don't take a double charge from bretionnia lances, or demi + inner cirlce knights charge from empire.. Or the dreaded steam tank
. Or a hell pit abomination. You know, the usual bunch. The good thing is that most of these things are things we wouldn't want our templeguards to go up against either, although they'll likely still fare better. Oh and.. Don't be in the path of a purple sun, okay? Good.Skinks vs shield saurus warriors
So some of you might be against the defensive saurus unit. Fair enough. For me it's about the options and this is a fine option. Do remember that against S6 lance charges saurus warriors die as easy as skinks. So what do they excel at? They can always reform to put out more attacks and thus have more roles. They can easily serve as a support block that can dish out some good attacks. They are still a very good target for magic, again I'm going to refer to Wyssan's Wildfor. T5 will make them quite hard to shift, especially with parry. You don't want to augment skinks because they are T2 anyway so who cares. The obvious difference, however, is that skinks are half the price and faster. And can shoot.
There are for and against for both units so this is completely up to you.
Skrox vs shield saurus warriors
I'll never be a fan of big skrox units. They usually cost the same and never really perfom a good role. It's an alternative alright, but your skinks will die like flies and once you lose a single kroxigor you've lost quite a bit of your punch. Removing those 3 wounds isn't exactly hard and you cannot stomp. The best way to utilize the skrox unit is with small units that can strip units of rank bonus and be a general annoyance.
Troglodon
The trog was an interesting addition. Until we saw the rules. If you use the roar you boost your PF output from 16% of the attacks to 33% of the attacks generating more attacks. SO if you have 12 attacks it'll go from +2 attacks to +4 attacks. The monster unfortunately isn't worth it.
Should you play with PF working on the extra ranks then year maybe. Overall it's a sh1tty monster, unfortunately.
Solardon (bastiladon)
Forget about it buffing saurus warriors. I1 ->I2 us useless so just .. just don't do it. I3 templeguards with the +D3 initative from high magic *might* be worth it, just not on saurus warriors.
Characters
Can generally speaking be added to any unit, just consider why you do it. I find the middle setup I proposed to be decent without. Adding a character is like adding attention to a unit and you have to estimate whether you'll find it attractive to to add the extra punch in saurus warrior unit that's 6 wide. I just think that going all out on the attacks with the third option mean that you might as well add the S7 attacks.
Adding an Oldblood is IMO too much. They can easily gain a 2+ armour save with the great weapon, but at that point you've invested quite a lot of point in the OB and tbh I'd rather have in on a mount being a giant annoyance as a cowboy. Alternatively one could also add a cheap skink chief with the egg of quango to maximize wounds in the first round of combat and hopefully break most opponents there.
Are they worth it though?
In a competitive environment? Likely not. There, I said it. But let's also be honest - how many of us truly play in a super competitive environment? I personally think the whole mentality that "only the best can work" is completely absurd. Having a skink cloud is boring and takes up a lot of space. Not to mention actually painting 70 skinks + cameleon skinks. Ugh. No, I think there's a place for saurus warriors for most of us. They are, however, not an easy unit to play with because, like kroxigors, they cannot go up against everything in the game.
"Win" the deployment and you'll have an easier time with them.