How to beat a lizard
Introduction
I hate Lizardmen. My only regular opponent plays Lizardmen and he is yet to beat me. I then log onto the Albion Website and find that the Wood Elves are losing to the cold blooded ones 30% of the time, and are also being beaten by them in the overall rankings. I know that the Wood Elves are easily capable of slaughtering the Lizardmen, why are they getting beaten so badly? (By the way, I'm using the White Dwarf [257] army list, not the Ravening Hordes list.)
Lizardman strengths
The Lizardmen's main strength is that they are so diverse. Nearly every unit in the army is another race rather than being trained differently (like every other army in the game). There are the highly mobile skinks and the big, brutal Saurii, The Powerful Kroxigor, the massive Stegadon, the annoying salamanders, and scariest of all, The Slann. The Wood Elves are nowhere near this diversity. The thing is that every unit in the Lizardman army also has a major weakness.
Lizardman weaknesses
Toughness 2.
Toughness 2 is reasonably common in the Lizardman army (mainly since skinks are quite common). This can be easily exploited. It is quite easy to break a unit of skinks with bowfire, hopefully causing any nearby Saurus units to flee too. That is probably the only weakness of the Lizardmen as a whole, but each specific regiment has a weakness too.
Skinks
As just stated, skinks are a very exploitable weakness in the Lizardman Battleline. With Leadership 5, Toughness 2, and Weapon skill 2, you should easily be able to break them in one turn of Shooting or Hand to hand. This will allow you to hopefully overrun into another unit and hack them to bits. Of course, If there is a unit of Saurus hiding behind the skinks, it would be stupid to charge them with your scouts, But you could use an overrun to get your Treeman to do some bashing. The major thing that skinks are good at is their ability to annoy and frustrate you. With poisoned shooting attacks, they are capable of wounding anything in your army. This is why bowfire is recommended to deal with them. If a unit of Skinks stands and shoots, and destroys your Treeman or Dryads with a few lucky hits, You will get quite frustrated (obviously). Despite this, the Skinks should not be feared too much. They are easily the weakest link in the Lizardman army and quite expensive for what they are (8 pts).
Saurii
Damn they're good. They're like the anti-skinks. Slow, Good Strength and Toughness, Better weapon Skill. Fortunately, they still have a (reasonably) low Leadership. The best way to deal with Saurii is to Engage them with Dryads, Glade Riders, and Bowfire. Dryads equal the Saurii in most stats, but with their aspects, have an edge over them. Glade riders have a good strength, and can harass or slow down the saurii before they can do too much damage. Concentrated bowfire can break Saurii despite their high toughness. While You're clobbering Skinks, The slow Saurii Can have volley after volley of arrows landing in their ranks.
Jungle Swarms
I don't know how these guy's points cost can be justified. They're basically 55 point skinks. Strength 2, Toughness 2, and Initiative 1, they aren't too scary. Like skinks, they're designed to be annoying. Like every swarm in the game, they're unbreakable and have 5 wounds. Despite this, with toughness 2, they shouldn't be too much of a problem. I think that Jungle swarms are mainly for themed lizardman armies rather than standard armies.
Temple guard
Like standard saurus, they look pretty scary. They can be dealt with by concentrated bowfire or Hand to hand. You can't rely on breaking them though, since they're usually stubborn with a Ld 9 character in their ranks. They must be destroyed completely. Their only weakness is perhaps a bad armour save (5+/ 6+ vs Wood Elf bowfire).
Kroxigor
Another exceedingly hard unit. High Toughness, Wounds, attacks, and a whopping strength (7 with Great weapon) make them tough and powerful. I've never faced Kroxigor, but on paper, they don't seem to have a weakness. Maybe a regiment of glade riders with a forest lord carying the blade of ages (wounds automatically) is the way to go. The glade riders can cause some damage when they charge, while the lord slices his way through a kroxigor each turn. Besides this, a treeman probably doesn't have enough attacks to do any major damage, dryads might be too weak (Treemen and dryads are the usual solution to high toughness troops), and most things in the Wood Elf army will just get massacred. If anyone has a decent solution please E-mail me.
Salamanders
Why am I not scared of a salamander? It's just that every time I play against My brother's Salamander, I manage to mince it with bowfire on the first turn. Maybe I'm just lucky, but if it ever does fire back it manages to miss, and get shot to bits on my second turn instead. A bit of a waste of 70 points, isn't it (all it does is distract one or two turns of shooting from one regiment of my archers)?
Terradons
Ain't these guys different? A skink unit with (Brace yourself) T3. Still, they've got a bad Weapon skill, No armour save, only 2 wounds, Ld 5, they're not really contenders for hardest unit in the game (even with T3). One or two volleys and they'll fall over. If they get into combet though, with 3 attacks they're bound to do some damage. This is why they must be destroyed from afar.
Chameleon Skinks
Unlike the Terradons (Toughest skink unit in the game), these guys only have T2. Not to mention the usual skink stat of WS2. They do, however have an excellent BS (as good as Wood Elves), 2X firing Blowpipe (Poisonous) and -1 to hit with shooting. If any player gets the Chameleon skinks, they're there to exploit the special scouting rules. I think this can only be a good thing, as the closer they start to you (always VERY close with chameleons), the quicker they get into HTH, where they'll be decimated (since they have normal skink HTH stats), allowing you an overrun or pursuit.
Stegadons
Gulp. Even more powerful (and rare and expensive [points and money]) than the Kroxigor who I said are practically invincable. There are 2 flaws though. WS2 and the fact that they come alone. These 2 facts can be exploited by a treeman (as long as he charges). Using the Tree whack, a Treeman is extremely powerful in one on one fights. As long as he hits (on a 3+), Wounds (on a 2+), Opponent fails their save (guaranteed since S10 easily ignores a 4+ save), they can do d6 wounds, giving you the potential to destroy the Stegadon in a turn or 2. In a 3000 point game, get 2 treemen as your rare choices, and gang them up on high toughness enemies (Stegadons, Slann, Kroxigor), Get them both to Tree whack, and destroy your opponent's expensive unit in a single turn. (For those who haven't yet worked it out, I really like Treemen and their Tree Whack ability, especially since it's not limited to war machines only [Last edition it was]).
Slann
ARRRRRRRRGH. These guys are good at everything. 8 Wounds is the hardest thing to deal with, but being the most powerful wizards in the game doesn't help my quest to destroy them. 2+ ward save against my precious shooting and magic attacks. These guys must be the most survivable troops in the game. Maybe a forest Dragon is the way to go, maybe a Lord with Blade of ages, maybe Treemen (Tree whack) or Dryads (Oak aspect [+1S, +1 T]). I haven't yet found a surefire way to beat this F**K**G @\$$H*LE Yet. The easiest way used to be a concentrated bowfire volley, But now, With the 2+ ward save from Ranged attacks, this is not the way to go anymore. Once again, if anyone has found a successful way to beat this guy, E-mail me.
