Druchii.net

I'm a fairly experienced dark elf player as I've commanded their armies for over six years.
Yet there is one army that always gives me a big headache, LIZARDMEN!

And in particular skinks, those pesky little arrow blowers decimated scores of my soldiers.
As of this edition I had high hopes with the new dark riders and doomfire warlocks cathing those little buggers.
But here is where I come to my today: My usual advesary has updated his lizardmen army with 6 units of skinks and 2 units of chameleon skinks.

"So what's the problem" I hear you think, you just hunt them down with your fast cav, masters on peg/ dark steed...
Yes I would do that if this player wouldn't put an oldblood or scar veteran in 4 of these units.

How can I take these anoying units down with minimum casulties on my side?

He also plays 2 skink priests with scrolls, so my magic isn't coming trough like I want it either.

Your advice would be highly appreciated.

Dispel and Feedback scroll? or Frog?

some other scroll in the lizardmen armybook

Cube of Darkness

The best way to deal with skirmisher skinks is magic missiles. Chillwind is amazing vs skinks - they have low T, and succesful wounds will decimate their shooting abilities. Doombolt perhaps overkill, but gets the job done also. Vs skinks in non-skirmish formation, cut them down with hails of crossbow bolts. Again, they have low T, so massed amounts of low strength hits will take care of them. Try to avoid charging them... stand and shoot can quickly make that a bad idea, unless you charge them with knights (but they are surely needed elsewhere). In fact, go ahead and charge them with chariots. Impact hits will quickly make them break and flee as skirmishers cant be steadfast!

So yeah, summarised: magic missiles for the autohits. Massed crossbow fire, and impact hits.

As all the above but remember they lost a leadership point this edition! Making them take ld test is very viable as they often operate outside the general and bsb bubble!

But Cold Blood seems insanely good on the table.

It is but ld6 is still not great even with rolling 3 dropping one. We have an army with a a bucket load of ways to manipulate leadership, cause leadership tests and we can charge far to chase fleeing units off the board. If they go skink heavy try the ld bomb list they are a good tester army as that slann can only impact a certain area and clustering plays against skinks strengths. Trust me played lizzies for years and that 1 point ld change has had a huge impact on my play style!

I think that a unit of warlocks charging might do it. You get strike first, and can kill a ton of skinks. After he strikes back with his scar vet you probably wont lose to many, he has to hit, wound and make it past your saves. I haven't run the math on it but I would think that you could win by enough to break him, and hopefully run him down.

The problem lies with the 2 oldbloods and 2 scar veterans he has located in 4 of thes units of skink skirmishers.
they give those units leadership 8 or 9 and they kill almost everything that hits them.

I could give it a try with the warlocks though stand and shoot probably decks one of them, so I hit back with 8 S4 and 4 S 3 attacks.
This kills 7 skinks on average, leaving room for him to hit back with 3 skinks and a scar veteran => the skinks won't do much in this phase, and the scar kills 2 if he's lucky.
So I would probably win combat by 5 or 6.
That's even too much for cold blooded creatures like scar vets.