Hobby Update – a case of cold ones!

With the launch date of the Call of the Crown as 30th September, I thought I’d better get a mosey on and start hammering away at my pledge.

With 6 Lizardmen coldone riders already on the table and started, I’d excluded them from the pledge but with another 6 not started, it seemed as good a place to start as any. So with my love (? – seems a bit strong, so I’ll go with enjoyment) of batch painting, I lined up the other 6 and swiftly finished off the unit of 12 in swift order. To round it off, I also managed to complete the 2 scar veteran heroes on coldones too!

In terms of colourings, for the unit I went with the classic Lizardmen scheme, blue Saurus and green coldones. While I’m quite happy to go my own way, it is a scheme I’ve always really liked. The one exception was one of the heroes, that was painted in the orange tones I’d previously used for the Gor’Rok special character and one of the heroes on Carnosaur. I’m happy with getting this unit off the table and it represented a good start to both the challenge and an inroad into my Lizards.

Slightly annoyingly, when sorting through my boxes I randomly came across another hero on Scar Vet. Quite how I managed to end up with 3, I don’t know. It’s what happens when you start to horde unopened boxes of minis I suppose…

Initial 6 riders (not included in the challenge)

The next batch of 6, including 2 scar vet heroes

The full unit

How do they play?

They are rarely seen in lists for a number of reasons. As with many cavalry options in 8th, they will struggle to break steadfast on blocks of infantry. They come from the heavily congested special slot, so often they will be skipped for other choices (Temple Guard comes to mind). The other reason is cost. They are 30 points each. If you want to give them spears, it’s another 4 points a model. Even for cavalry that is pricey.

Now, with the bad out of the way, they also have some good points. As with most Cav, they have a 2+ save. on top of that they have toughness 4. That makes them pretty resilient. They have the standard Saurus Str of 4 (that is boosted to 5 with the spear), 2 attacks base (with additional attacks on a roll of a 6) and a boosted weapon skill of 4 (vs normal Saurus). Combined with the cold ones 2 Str 4 attacks, a minimal unit of 5 puts out a solid 20 attacks! That is nothing to be sniffed at. It does however mean that the rules favour not running more than a single rank in a unit, as otherwise you lose a good chunk of the attacks (only a single supporting attack can be made from the 2nd rank). As such, the optimal way to run them is probably 6-7 in a single rank.

#callofthecrown2