Foreword

I was going to write something like this once my Lanterns hit 200 games. Sadly, the IRC channel is down at the moment, so I guess I'm writing this instead! It's inspired by a thread that Nelphine asked for tactical advice in, and it's about playing Lizardmen against the Claw races at higher TV. It is also extremely long, even by my standards. I doubt it'll get many comments, and I doubt many people will finish it! It weighs in about 4000 words, and I haven’t proof read it. It’s just my thoughts, spewed onto paper. If there’s interest, I don’t mind tidying this up, and sending it to Plasmoid as a specific playbook.

I’m happy to discuss tactics in the comments. I’m learning new stuff every day, and this is just a distillation of tactics I’ve picked up over 250 odd Box Lizardman games. Nothing in it should be taken as gospel, everything in it is up for debate, and there are far better lizardmen players than me. Good luck!

Principle

To me, in the Box, you build to play Claw teams. Approximately 50% of your games will be against the "big 4" (chaos, CD, Pact, Nurgle), so if you can't face claw, you die.

I will also say that this approach makes you weaker against Dwarves. For me, that's a price worth paying...every build has its bogey, and I'm willing to be weaker in 5% of games to be stronger in 50%. It's not like Lizzies are common enough for people to build specifically to face them..

Team Development

1) Mighty Blow en mass. This isn't a panacea that wins games automatically. This being said, every claw based team has weak players that you can punch. Claw teams tend to heavily lack guard, so if you go numbers up, they really struggle to put your saurii down. I'd estimate that 30-40% of my games against claw teams, I win through outbashing them. ST4 + MB really hurts..

2) (High TV) Get a +AG skink. I call this a tactic, because in my view, it's pointless going above 1750 in the Box without one, you'll just get smashed down again. The impact of a +AG skink cannot be overstated to lizardmen, and it turns an average high TV team into an extremely competitive one. Personally, I sweetspot between 1400-1600, firing skinks every 2 skills until I roll a +AG, whereupon I expand back up and prepare for a major again. It's not 'nice', or particularly fair to the newbs you frequently encounter at that range, but it's necessary to major build.

In my experience, facing the bashers, you *will* pop the ball. However, usually, assuming your skinks are protected, you will need at least 1 dodge, and a pickup in 1 tz, followed by a dodge out. With an AG 3 skink, this is a 29% chance of success at turning them over. With an AG 4, it's a 69%. If you have a team reroll, the odds go even higher.

3) Get Break Tackle. The corollary to point 1 is that somewhere between 60% and 70% of the time, you will lose the bash battle. Against Chaos, my Lanterns take around 5 casualties a game (39 game average). When you get smashed off the pitch in the first half, if your remaining saurii can't dodge free, you've lost. When to get Break Tackle? Much more interesting question, and one I haven't solved myself. I've started (as of 10 games ago) taking it as first skill on the 2 LOS saurii, 3rd skill on regular saurii (after Block and Mighty Blow), and 5th skill on killers (block/mb/po/tackle/BT). This does make me weaker without Guard, (and even weaker again to Dwarves!), but I think it'll help more than guard would (which was my previous skill in that position).

4) 4 good...2 bad. My 'standard' LOS against claw teams is 2 saurii, and 1 skink. The skink usually draws in their biggest baddest legend (easy SPP, and pixelhuggery often go together), and as a consequence of this LOS, the 2 saurii rarely skill. This is great! It means you have the perfect markers. You'll be replacing these regularly (and they do NOT get apo), but that's okay. Most claw coaches are rather shocked when their clawbombers actually have AV 9 pieces move in to mark them, and they don't take it into account much. Obviously, this latter point is of questionable value against good coaches. Luckily, as a rule of thumb, good coaches don't play clawbomb (except CD's, which is an entire different ball game...). Markers make your life easier.

5) Maintain a bench. I average 4-5 Cas taken a game against claw teams, and the KO rate is double that. Lizardmen are quite capable of playing competitively for a half with 3 saurii and 9 skinks on the pitch...especially if they are defending a 2-0 lead! My rule of thumb is...1600+, 1 skink reserve, 1800+ 2 skink reserve, 2000+ 3-4 skink reserve.

6) Rerolls. Not as useful as skills at low TV, don't forget them at higher TV! I believe 4 to be a minimum for a competitive major team, with 5 not too bad at 2000 TV+. That said...below 1500, I usually get by with 2.

7) Save cash. You've got a limited high TV lifespan. Your saurii/krox are expensive, as is maintaining a bench. I usually like to save up around 300k+ before I start growing, because that will give me 30 odd games at 2k TV+..which is two or three majors worth! (counting builders/fixing MNG's).

8) When you drop, drop hard. Don’t try and keep a high TV strategy going at mid-tv. What works at high TV, buildwise, will fall apart at low TV, and what works at low TV (low rr’s, no bench, no skink skills), will get you demolished at high TV.

On Pitch Strategies

1) Hit stuff.

As hinted to in the previous section, bashing can be an extremely effective tactic. If you get to recieve (which I always take), against Chaos, there's going to be 3 Beastmen on the LOS. If you can put all 3 down with MB hits, you've got a fair chance of getting numbers early...and a clawmbpo blitz vs a mbpo blitz (on AV 8) is close enough that you stand a good chance of maintaining those odds.

There is an extra caveat...pick your target carefully. If they expose a killer low AV piece, smash it. Most bashers won't (see the allusion I made to clawbomb being the new pixelhugging strategy), so in which case, personally, I pick a reasonably high value target. The odds are that a 'success' will be a stun/KO, not a CAS, so you want to pick a target that has value. It's not worth lying your 160k killer saurus on the ground to PO a 60k beastman! A 100k Block/Guard Beastman however, is another strategy. Also, be very careful about PO'ing non-armour breaks. Usually I only PO an non armour break if a) I'm tied down, and not likely to get away (tied up by 2 rookies), or b) I'm hitting an extremely valuable player which a stun is worth lying down for....and....


2) Free stuff.

Obviously, the clawbomb coaches will attempt to mark your saurii with clawbomb players, so they can hit you the next turn. I usually spend most of the game positioning to get myself out of those troubles. If I can't threaten the ball (see next section), it can be a neat trick to blitz into the clawbomb marker (usually CW) with a MB/PO saurus, attempt to chainpush your other saurus out, and then use the power of PO to lie down to avoid the other clawbombers counter hit. They do it to you, so why not return the favour?

In all seriousness, it's utterly vital you do not let your saurii get hit repeatedly by claw. Be happy when they are tied up on (reasonably) non-important targets, because in a game of mobility, you win. Your blitzers are just as fast as theirs, and your assists are faster. You can move faster, and switch flanks faster. You can afford to let yourself get tied up if it means that their clawbombers are chasing ghosts. If a saurus with skills is tied up by a particularly dangerous player, 5+ dodges do happen! It'll turn you over, so be sure it's worth the risk (and losing that players TZ's for a turn)


3) Chase the ball.

My primary strategy is Bash, and I change to Ball once I start losing the numbers game (which is often). If you only care about winning a one off game (such as in a Major), move this right up to point 1. For that matter, swop MB as second skill for Break Tackle, it's far better at winning one off games. The principle is simple...you attack the ball and sidestep/dt the carrier.

The Chaos team wants nothing more than to take it's time, bashing and hitting away, trading blitzes on pointless players with you. If you mark the carrier, he has to concentrate on freeing it. He has to concentrate on screening, and caging, and all those players cannot be used to hit saurii. By playing aggressively and moving your saurii into contact, paradoxically, you increase their lifespan. If he hides in the backfield (as quite a few chaos coaches do), blitz a hole in his lines and pour 3 skinks through. If he falls back to mark them, your saurii are suddenly winning the numbers game (and it's only a 3+ to get free anyway with skinks), if he doesn't, you swamp the ball carrier.

The reason that I play the bash game as a primary game is that this approach will hurt you. You will frequently win against teams without a 2 headed ball carrier with it, but expect to take 3-4 SI/RIPs. For developing a long term sustainable team, this is an impossible attrition rate. It's also really bad for early stage major play, as you need an intact team for the later rounds.

4) Skinks screen Saurii.

This sounds rather counter intuitive, but it's a great strategy when you have the bench. 2 Saurii are markers (rookie usually), 2 saurii are guarders etc, tying up higher value targets, and 2 saurii are blitzers/sweepers. The final 2 should be kept back, and prevented from hitting contact at all costs. I will happily screen a killer saurus with a skink to prevent him being marked. Most high TV chaos teams carry stat-busted players, especially niggled ones. PO on a niggle is very tastyy indeed, you just need a blitzer to hit with when he exposes it! You also need a blitzer for when he pulls a cheeky flank switch, so that you can slow it down long enough to get your saurii out of contact back there and where they are needed.

5) Kroxigor has Thick Skull.

This bit is rather self evident, but I feel a lot of coaches forget it. Thick Skull dramatically changes the odds of you being KO'ed (41% chance of being KOed after the armour breaks drops to 27%). As such, once the drive has been going a bit, I'll bust a hole in his lines with my saurus reserve blitz, and toss the Krox against the biggest, nastiest clawbomber. Usually, he'll a) bring in assists, and b) PO it as often as he can till it dies. For that reason, I dont usually take Dodge on a Krox, because the players I throw it at have Tackle. Skills such as Block are wonderful, because if he sees the chance to PO a 170k piece repeatedly, he'll usually do so to the detriment of his position. Coincidentally, I also have a high Kroxigor turnover rate (at the 120 game mark, the Lanterns had lost more Krox's than Saurii!)

6) Sideline halfcage

The principle here is simple. Assuming your ball carrier has sidestep (and only if he does!), you form a half-cage along the sideline. Also assuming the basher cares about the ball, they’ll usually follow you. This is the point where if they haven’t played against Lizardmen much, they discover just how frustrating it is to be trapped against the sidelines by ST 4 players sweeping around and pressing them in. Your saurii crash against them, force them in place, while your hyperagile skinks dart across to the other side of the pitch. This is another strategy that is greatly aided by having a +AG skink, as it may involve a dodge.

This is also about your only scoring tactic when you are heavily shortmanned (5-11 odd). Form the sideline halfcage, and then try and screen it with saurii. Make sure you are at least 3 squares into their half, and especially if you have a +AG skink, it’s insanely hard to stop it scoring...as whatever screen they put up, 2+ dodge with dodge to get through.

A word of warning here...I realise this is a basher guide, but do not try this against Elves. They will either dance laughing into your cage, putting the ball into the crowd and then running off with it, or spin round your saurii and trap you against the sidelines. It does not work against dwarves either (darned Frenzy slayers...).

Still, mastering the ‘bait and switch’ approach can be a key to fighting at high TV.

7) Get good at positional play.

I realise this is not helpful at all to new coaches, but Lizardmen require you to have a good sense of when to commit your AG 1 pieces, and when to hold them back, when to free them and when to leave them. You do not want to commit them all to one side, and you must always maintain a spread across the pitch. Wherever they break, you should be able to blitz away a marker and move the now freed saurus somewhere very annoying for them (even if it’s only forming a double layered screen).

8) Do not fear claw.

I realise, given everything I’ve said, this sounds kinda counter intuitive. It’s also what you need to get your head around. The odds of a single claw/mb/po block causing a cas/ko is quite low. The odds of many blocks causing a casualty are high. At any moment in time, you should be prepared to throw any saurus at a claw/mb/po player, to mark him. Given as this isn’t usually expected, it allows you to seize the initiative. It’s a ST 4 AV 9 piece, regardless of skills, those are an utter sod to shift. If your player gets killed...it was for a good cause. Lizardmen are not for the pixelhuggers among you. In addition, Claw without MB is quite safe to mark when you need to. Don’t be afraid of marking a claw player with a saurus, even on a regular basis. Most bashing coaches rely on the fact that you won’t tie up their killers, and their killers will kill free. If you can negate that assumption for even a couple of turns, it can be long enough to do the damage.


Racial Specific Strategies

In order of difficulty

1) Chaos Pact
There’s two variants here..big guys and no big guys.

If they have Big guys, dance around them. Don’t commit, do not let your saurii get tied up with them, and concentrate on hitting the little guys. If they have a mino, put it down as often as possible.

If they have no/one Big Guys, concentrate on their Guard. If they expose a Clawbomber, MB/PO it..but assuming they are protecting it, they will probably be exposing some Guard. Splat it. Without Guard, they can’t get the assists to out-strength you. If they have a skaven, hit it.

As a general tactic, rely on your speed here. If you clear a hole in their lines, without a Skaven, they are very vulnerable to skinks pouring through. In my experience, they’ll pull the bashers back, do a MB/PO/Tackle hit on a skink, and leave most of your saurii with 1 person marking them. If you’ve got a MB spam, you will probably stun/KO 1-2 of those. Your skinks then fall back slightly, back into your lines, and you’ve gained about 5-6 squares of position at the cost of one (probably dead) skink. Given as at high TV you should have a bench, this is a worthwhile trade.


2) Nurgle.

Nurgle are a very scary race. Their Beast will stop skinks dead, their disturbing presence means you can’t reliably handoff, and their foul appearance means that it’s an utter pain to hit the Nurgle Warriors.

Luckily, for all those advantages, they have some pretty heavy disadvantages. Rotters are super fragile, and a great target for bashing (especially as they’ll tend to come to you, to mark your block/mb players). In addition, they have precisely one fast player; the pestigor. This makes them extremely vulnerable to a bait’n’switch, as if they commit their NW’s to fight off your saurii on that side, your skinks can shoot over the other.

Most veteran Nurgle players won’t fall for that trick, but their low speed makes it extremely hard for them to 2 turn, and fairly hard to even 3 turn! This means that while all the other 3 claw races have a good chance of 2 turning you, you can usually afford to score on turn 6 if you are heavily pressured against Nurgle. In addition, when things go wrong on their drive, they tend to go badly wrong, as they don’t have the movement to recover from problems, which drastically increases the effectiveness of the pressing game.

In theory, there’s no reason why Nurgle on Lizzies shouldn’t be a competitive game. That said, in my experience, something usually goes wrong for them, and once it does, they can’t recover. For optimum effect, play to increase the likelyhood of them failing a roll. It’ll open you up to more damage, but of all the 4, Nurgle are the weakest to it.

3) Chaos Dwarves.

While at lowish TV (1500), a min-max CD team will rip an undeveloped Lizardman team apart, at higher TV, the boot is most certainly on the other foot. They need to bring in multiple dwarves
to get the 2d’s on the saurii, which usually lets you pound on them, their hobgoblins are as vulnerable as your saurii to MB/PO, and their bulls are usually sweepers.

The fact is, that most clawbombing CD teams do not have ST 4 clawbomb. Your opponent and you share a common goal. He wants you to have your saurii away from his Dwarves so that he can get clawbomb hits. You want your saurii away so you can respond to his moves.

Tie up the bulls where you can, blitz a hob where you can, only hit a dwarf if it is a) on the LOS, or b) niggled. Your main strength here is on defense. Your offense is fairly standard, but your defense is where you can truly shine. As good as the bulls are, they can’t usually make 2 dodges a turn. Exploit this. Stick a marking saurus on one, and then screen around the bull with skinks. If he pulls all his dwarves to cage the bull, he won’t be able to bash you, and you’ll win the bash game. They are useless against a double layered screen, so as the half gets towards the close, give up the halfway line and pull everyone back 6 squares. Suddenly, his dwarves have 2-3 turns to catch up, which means if he advances on you, it’s with only Hobs for protection. If he hangs back, he gives you the freedom to maneuver around him, and move to screen off the bull assault.

Usually, I aim to win 1-0 against Chaos Dwarves. 8 turn stall, then grind their offense to a halt.


4) Chaos

Personally, as the Lanterns record attests to, I find fighting Chaos the hardest. This is because of all the claw races, they can feasibly 2 turn. As anyone who has watched BillBrasky can tell, passing forms an integral part of his game. His general game strategy is to 8 turn grind recieving, attempting to force the opponent to score in 6, with a passing play to score. This approach is shared by a lot of Chaos coaches (the ones that actually try and win).

The interesting point for Lizardmen is that Chaos are expensive and fragile. They have no defensive skills (unlike nurgle and CD’s), so they have to get the numbers game. If you start bashing them, they fall apart. Against Chaos, and purely against Chaos, I rarely play the pressing attacking ball game once the ball is safe in a cage. The odds of them getting out of it (especially with two heads) are too high compared to the damage they will inflict.

The Kroxigor marking trick is one I use frequently here. With some good timing, you can tie up 2 chaos warriors on it, which leaves your saurii free to smash the rest of his team for 2-3 turns. If you have to resort to this, pray.

If you 8 turn stall them, they are in deep trouble. Generally, I hang back, and dart from side to side, waiting for them to commit. Usually, I have to offer a bait to get the Chaos coach to commit. This usually involves offering them a clawbomb blitz, after which, they can move their killer in to mark one of my good saurii. You do this on one flank, then (break tackle helps here), move another saurii to smash a hole in the other flank and pour the skinks from the center down it. They are then torn between killing your good players and stopping your score. This will tell you a lot about them as a coach...but most players will try and stop the score, pulling back, and leaving their killers attached to your killer saurii you offered as bait. Now, you withdraw (or push on towards their endzone, if things are too hairy), and PO the guy marking you. On defense, kick really helps. I’ve taken it on skinks twice before, and loved it both times. Dirty Player is also really useful on a skink, as quite a few chaos warriors have niggles, so stomping on them can KO them for a drive.


Final thoughts

Be prepared to lose. Sometimes, the claw just gets you. My back of the envelope estimation is that 20% ish of games against claw, you will be lucky to escape with a draw. What most people forget is that 20% ish games against high TV elves, their blodge will be flawless and they will dice you to death. When that happens, shrug, move on, and whine constantly on IRC to people who have better things to do than to listen to you. Erm. That last bit might just be me...but I take dice badly, okay!

Develop your own style. My style is bash tinged with speed, which is what this guide is aimed at. Woodstock and Ansidrin are both wonderful coaches, and they both advocate taking BT earlier than I do. Lizardmen can suit however you choose to play them, and if you don’t like bashing, these tactics will not work for you. Remember to change tactics when things go bad. Bash is a fine starting strategy, but keeping trying to bash when you are numbers down is pure folly. You have flexibility, so use it.

Good luck out there. It’s a big bad Bloodbowling world, and I think Lizardmen are some of the most fun you can have in it!

Postscript

If you really did get this far, I’m going to stick with my typical long blog post thing, and plug the kickstarter. I want some super shiny looking poker chips...so if you got any value off this, go pledge already! Finally...if you did get to the end of this, you have way, way, way too much time on your hands. Welcome to the addiction!