New Lizardmen book, the good, the bad and the ugly

[jamierk]

Wow that sucks for the PF, much easier to bait them then.

For those playing the home game, pg 58 of the small book

"Overrun!
If the victorious unit charged into combat and the enemy was wiped out, it can move 2d6" straight forward.

If a unit charged into combat and, by the end of that round of close combat, all its enemies have been wiped out as the result of the combat (rather than the pursuit) the unit can choose to make a pursuit move, even with nobody left alive to pursue. This is an overrun move and represents the unit surfing forwards, hungry to find more enemies to fight."

[MR. GRUMPY]

Low WS and Initiative are drawbacks, true, but low Initiative armies have been coping with Pit of Shades/Purple Sun for years now. Given that Lizardmen can basically have double scrolls (one of which can Dispel Remains-in-Play effects) and enough Skink units to physically create roadblocks to keep Purple Sun casters far from Saurus units, I think life could be worse for them as far as magic vulnerability is concerned.

Hm well a meta thing but Ogres and Orcs do quite poorly in tournaments around here due to death magic so actually they dont really cope with it it hurts a lot. And this will certainly affect lizzies more now without the powertoad.

[draxynnic]

Wow that sucks for the PF, much easier to bait them then.

For those playing the home game, pg 58 of the small book

"Overrun!
If the victorious unit charged into combat and the enemy was wiped out, it can move 2d6" straight forward.

If a unit charged into combat and, by the end of that round of close combat, all its enemies have been wiped out as the result of the combat (rather than the pursuit) the unit can choose to make a pursuit move, even with nobody left alive to pursue. This is an overrun move and represents the unit surfing forwards, hungry to find more enemies to fight."

That sounds like it needs a FAQing. My reading is that overrun moves are an option, but you don't need to test to restrain overrun, therefor the PF rule might not apply to overruns. The frenzy rules, however, specifically state that frenzied troops will overrun.

I can see it going either way, though - ergo, needs clarification.

[Sirio]

I think I'll wait and play a few games to see what the LM players in my group come up with...

[Seventh Kingdom]

Is it just me or does anyone else think it was a bit lazy for lizardmen and high elves to share the exact same spells? I know its according to fluff and all, but still...

I mean, the least they could do would be swap the sigs for new spells.

[Domine Nox]

High Magic is High Magic. Everyone uses the same Fire, Beasts, Light, Life, etc. High is just another Lore.

[pk-ng]

Played a LM cloud list yesterday and it was brutal. 20-0 a HE in turn 6.
My List
Slaan BSB - +1 ld, Loremaster (High), -/+ 1 miscast, Healing Potion, Forbidden Rod
Scar Vet Cold One - S7, T6, D3 Impact Hits
Scar Vet Cold One - 1+/1+ S6
Skink Priest (Heavens) - Cube
Skink Priest (Heavens) - Scroll
Core all skinks
2x6 Chameleon skink
2x3 Terradons
9 Cold One - musician
2x1 Salamander

So it was pretty much comet to land in the first few turns kill his clumped up RBTs. Then once the RBTs were down I pushed my whole army forwards. Surround and shoot.

[draxynnic]

I was actually just about to observe that I, and probably others as well, had previously missed that Cold Ones have 2A again now (Games Workshop didn't make nearly as big a deal about this as they did when it was cut to 1A to begin with...). The extra S4 attack per model of frontage probably does go a long way towards justifying their pricetag...

Does make me wonder what's going to happen with the Dark Elf knights, since the reason for cutting it back in the first place was to stop the Dark Elf Cold Ones from being better fighters than their riders.

[pk-ng]

To be honest I don't think Cold One need spears. If you've bringing them they are pretty much a delivery system and there to protect your Scar Vet / Oldblood from range threats. Therefore should keep them cheap.

Cold Ones with 2A now is actually pretty decent against t3/t4 troops now.

[Tethlis]

I think Cold Ones are even better if you find a way to spam triple Wildform. A pair of Skink Priests and a Slann knowing all default spells has a very diverse magic phase... The Slann can use Forbidden Rod or Channeling Staff to add a lot of dice (seriously, 6 channeling attempts a turn and saving a Dispel Dice can give Lizardmen a lot of PD by 8th edition standards) plus Skinks to hold "double scrolls" that both know beasts means it's a pretty easy thing to give Cold One Cav four Strength 5 Attacks or more. If you manage to get it off multiple times than it only gets better, and taking characters into the Strength 6/Toughness 6 region is pretty scary too.

[Worloch]

True enough, but I have found that it is actually not that easy for the LM player to arrange the scenario where triple Wildform is likely, and even double Wildform takes a lot of work. It seems to the me the strength in that build is the ability to have a higher change of getting at least 1 Wildform off, as opposed to getting 2 or 3.

Wildform has a CV of 10 for a 12" range. Putting aside the Lore Attribute for the moment, a Skink Priest, even a level 2, is going to need 3 PD just to have a good chance of succeeding on the spell. That means 2 attempts from Skink Priests is going to require 6 PD. The Slann is going to be Lvl 4 99.99999% of the time, so he only needs 2 dice to edge on the success side of average, but needs 3 to nail it. So we're looking for at least an 8 PD commitment to go for Triple Wildform, and in order to achieve this, all the casters need to be within 12" of the target unit.


So even with the bonus PD possibly available to the LM player, it still takes a majority of the max PD pool, and you need the units to line up right. Not impossible at all, but it takes some doing and I just haven't seen the scenario manifest successfully yet.

If we start looking at the boosted CV 13 version, we can get 24" range, which makes the scenario a lot easier to arrange. The Slann has the best chance of hitting the CV 13 of course, and can do it reliably on 3 PD. For a Priest to hit the CV 13, we need to bump to 4 PD for reliability. 3 PD gives us a decent chance, especially with a Lvl 2, but it will fail almost as often as it would succeed. So, for each caster out of 12" range, we need to commit 1 more PD. 1@24" and 2@12" is 9 PD, 2@24" and 1@12" is 10 PD and 3@24" is 11 PD.

Bringing the Lore Attribute back in to the discussion, as we are talking about Cold Ones in particular, does help, but not by enough to change the final tallies, imo. That said, different people are more/less comfortable with certain break points on the dice for their magic phase.


It seems to me that with that kind of PD commitment, there are worse things that could be brought to bear in a Magic Phase than 3x +1 St and +1 To distributed on up to 3 units. So, if the LM is just looking for redundancy to get a single Wildform pushed through in a phase, it looks pretty good, but the double or triple just seems pretty questionable.