Lizardmen vs. Vampires

Lizardmen

Maya-skink priest level 2 with cupped hands

Olmec- Saurus Scar Veteran with Warrior Bane, glittering scales, luckstone, and a shield

20 saurus warriors with full command

20 saurus warriors with spears and full command

10 skink skirmishers

salamander

salamander

Vampires

Vampire Lord

Corpse Cart

6 ghosts

25 skeleton warriors

4 blood knights

Scenario Watchtower

So this was the first game of a campaign at my local GW. We each had a 1000pts. Luckily I started in the watchtower because otherwise he could have started in the watchtower with his ethereal unit and I would have been hardpressed to destroy them. I rolled the worst spells in the heavens lore for my skink priest. The first spell which allows rerolls of ones in combat and then the wind blast spell. (Wind blast cannot blow guys off the table and cannot blow guys out of the watchtower. I always get wind blast and barely anyone has fliers or shooting units that I regularly play against.)

So he gets first turn and assaults the watchtower with his ghost swarms. Luckily I had a magic sword because that's the only damage I'm able to deal against them. He moves up quickly with his blood knights and casts some deadly spell where my guys die on a roll of a six, five died.

My plan at this point was to delay his blood knights by feeding him salamanders and keep my bsb and saurus warriors alive in the tower. Furthermore, I was going to cast like crazy with my lame spells in order to get a miscast, hand it off to the vampire and hopefully kill him. That's actually my only way of doing damage to such a character.

So on my turn I moved up with the skinks and fire. I had placed the swamp right next to the tower to take full advantage of my aquatic skink skirmishers. My priest windblasted the bloodknights back 3 inches. One salamander eats 2 handlers and one salamander blasts the bloodknights. He actually fails his look out sir! but no one is touched by the s3 hit on a toughness 5 vamp. And I forget to dispel his nasty spell on my saurus warriors and they continue to disappear. The skinks poison several skellies.

He fails his charge with the skeletons. His bloodknights decimate the salamander but thankfully he doesn't overrun into my priest. Instead he continues that nasty vampire spell on my saurus warriors and my skink priest. He miscasts here but isn't touched by the strength 4 hit.

As you can see, the Saurus warriors are now totally depleted by his nasty spell. I move away from the outer tower with my skink priest. I did manage to dispel it on my priest. The final salamander now eats all of his crew and becomes stupid.

His bloodknights move over to threaten my depleted saurus block. He heals some of his ethereals before they kill some more of my saurus in the tower with a first strike spell from the corpse cart.

Lizardmen vs. Vampires pt. 2

I forgot to mention that he moved back with his skeletons for fear of the swamp killing them on a charge from dangerous terrain tests. This was so helpful because it allowed my little skink skirmishers from literally tar pit his skeleton block so that it was unhelpful in attacking the tower. I moved the depleted saurus block to kind of guard the tower, at least psychologically, from the blood knights, whom I did not want charging the watchtower. My skink priest casts the reroll ones spell on my saurus in the tower which keeps them alive a little bit longer. My salamander just nicks his vampire lord, who fails his look out sir again! But in a way, this made it even harder for me to get a wound.

So he charges his blood knights at my skink priest, who runs away. Then he redirects into the saurus warriors who take the charge only to be wiped out. He overruns into the skink skirmishers. I saved all my dispel dice for the nasty unit-killing spell which he managed to still get off with a miscast. Again, the miscast bounces of the vampire. So in magic, he managed to heal up his ethereal swarm, give them first strike and seriously deplete my saurus unit in the tower. It looks like curtains for me.

On my turn, I rally my skink priest, move up with the salamander, and dispel the death spell on my several saurus in the tower.

He assaults the tower with his blood knights killing the final saurus warrior but the scar veteran remains alive and passes his break test. I should say that he has passed he break test 3 other times with the fantastic rerollable cold-blooded leadership.

The scar veteran stays alive, guarding the watchtower and we roll to see if the game is over and it is. Victory to the Lizardmen. I've never experienced a victory wherein I only had 3 models left on the board. As a prize for surviving my Salamander gets +1 strength in the following games and his guys get all sorts of boosts.

In retrospect, I'm always going to take a magic weapon on a scar veteran even if it's just 5 points, just in case I come up against this sort of situation again. I'm not sure if I'll take the cupped hands strategy again. It was 45 points and I never once miscast AND he miscast twice and was utterly unharmed for it. But it did enable me to roll lots of dice for spells unafraid of the consequences. And I've seen plenty of miscasts go horribly wrong. I think it was a good gamble especially in 8th where armies are frequently led by a magic user. I just long for better rolls on the heavens magic chart. I thought about offsetting this my instead of taking cupped hands, to instead take rod of the storm and plaque of tepok. But what do you think?

Also, I switched my list at the last minute to replace 3 kroxigor (dying to try out stomp attacks) with the salamanders. Which do you think is better in an all comers list? I think the krox would have been able to hold up and possibly kill a bloodknight or two. But what do you think?