Thoughts on Lizards

[RogueThirteen]

After two league seasons with Lizards, I'm moving onto a new team. Before I box up the scaled heroes, though, I figured I'd share some insights I have into the team that I realize are quite contentious among Lizard coaches.


(1) Don't fire your skinks.
Skinks are the offense AND defense of your team. I know a lot of Lizards coaches will advise that you fire skinks after two or three skills if they don't double or stat-up, but skinks score all the touchdowns and will be your only defense once the opposition has marked all your sauri (and most coaches WILL mark or screen-off every sauri each turn). Skinks quickly become the lifeblood of the team, and even with three agility skills each skinks are worth their weight in gold compared to rookie skinks and the lowered TV.

(2) Side Step and Diving Tackle. Every Skink.
A backfield of skinks with Side Step and Diving Tackle is absolutely essential if you want to stop most opponents (especially fast or agile ones) from scoring. Once they're through your sauri and have cut off all your STR4, the only thing able to play defense will be the skinks. If they've got Side Step and Diving Tackle, they're a nightmare to get past. As a third skill, I'd take Sure Feet, as you'll be surprised how often the little fellas need to use all 10 Movement just to play defense across the whole pitch, and your rerolls are too precious to throw away on a failed GFI. Two skinks should take Catch to make your offense all the more potent (this could be before or after Side Step). On Doubles, consider Kick, Block, and Guard (to make all those other SS, DT skinks STR3). DO NOT take Jump Up. Even with Diving Tackle, it will never get used enough to be worthwhile. DT is one of those skills you will likely never use, but it completely shuts down the opponent's options. Usually they'll stay marked by a skink rather than risk the dodge.

(3) Break Tackle is much more valuable than Block
As imposing as a backfield of SS, DT skinks can be, you really need a saurus or two who can always help make the big plays. I'd take Break Tackle (then Tackle or Guard, depending on your league) on at least two sauri. I'd strongly consider taking it as the first and second sauri level-ups, as two BT pieces will make much more difference than two Block pieces. Yes, it would be nice if they could also get Block, but BT+T is more important, and they'll likely never get to 31spp.

(4) Mighty Blow is for Pieces with Claw and/or 3+AG
Every saurus level-up is precious. Don't throw it away on Mighty Blow. Even with MB, your sauri will level far too slowly. They need skills like Block, Break Tackle, Tackle, Guard, and Frenzy much more than they need MB. Lizards aren't going to win a war of attrition or get a numbers advantage barring the stars aligning (see below), even with some MB.

(5) Expect to lose the Blocking War
With so many Str4+ players, I thought I'd always be king of the blocking. Boy howdy, was I wrong. After just a little development, most "bashy" teams (Orcs, Dwarves, Chaos, Humans, Chaos Dwarves, etc.) will have far more Block and Guard than you. Some Elf teams (if they get three or four Guard pieces) will be able to push you around in a clustered scrum. Your Sauri skill insanely slowly at the whim of MVPs, so by the time some of your Sauri have Block, your opponent will often have 4 or more pieces with Block and Guard, and a lot more Block than you. That's ok. Str4 is your advantage here -- but to make use of it you need to keep your sauri loosely spread out. Don't bunch up, or you're opponent will be able to bring in his Guard piece to assist against two or three sauri. Keep a spread screen so that the opponent's Guard is worthless. Force them to bring in two assists PER SAURUS if they want a 2-Die Block. Don't let one or two Guard pieces circumvent their need for lots of assists.



Just some of my insights from having played about 25 games with Lizards at the local league. These are all things I wasn't expecting and found I had to adapt to, and I thought it might be worth tossing them out for discussion if any other players are contemplating starting Lizards (or if any veteran Lizard coach wants to raise some objections).

[DoubleSkulls]

I think your advice is for league play, whereas the "tv trimming" advice tends to come from TV matched formats on FUMBBL and Cyanide. In those formats you can play 200 games to skill up the Saurus and ignore the skinks. That luxury doesn't exist for traditional leagues and I think your advice is more sensible.

[MattDakka]

I think your advice is for league play, whereas the "tv trimming" advice tends to come from TV matched formats on FUMBBL and Cyanide. In those formats you can play 200 games to skill up the Saurus and ignore the skinks. That luxury doesn't exist for traditional leagues and I think your advice is more sensible.

+1. Private and perpetual leagues are two different worlds.
TV trimming is essential in perpetual league, therefore I fire the Skinks who don't get a stat boost or a double on their second level up.
The first skill for my Skinks usually is Side Step.
I never took Catch, the Skink who picks up the ball is the scorer, 99% of the times.
I don't want to risk hand-offs, especially with 3 rerolls and ag 3.
When a Skink rolls a +1 AG or a double he becomes my ball carrier of choice, the rest of the Skinks is fodder, it's better to have a good Skink ball carrier than 3 or 4 Skinks with 2+ normal skills bloating your TV, in a perpetual league.

[Hitonagashi]

1) In a scheduled league, agreed. Once they get SS/DT, they rarely get to 3rd skill. Once they have sprint and sure feet, they are decent one turners. If it gets to 76 with nothing special, then maybe sack it.

2) I'd go further. Sidestep/DT. No exceptions. They die fast enough as it is when marking, you can never have enough ss/dt skinks.

3) Massive disagreement here. I detest Break Tackle on saurii...it feels to me like I failed at the positional game. Lizards are amazing positionally, and I never feel I need it. To me, BT on saurii is like Pass Block (go controversy!)...it's a nice skill, just nowhere near as good as block/mb/tackle/guard/frenzy. If I have at least 4 saurii with 3 skills already, I'll probably add a BT, or if I have a +st block saurus, I'll probably toss BT on that for cagebreaking. Another possible exception is if you have tons of clawmbpo to face, and you expect to be heavy men down.

4) Disagree as well here. In a scheduled league, I'd go block first, but then I go 1) MB, 2) Tackle, 3) Guard, 4) Frenzy (on separate saurii). MB is a great stack skill, and the earlier you get it, the sooner it can stack with tackle, guard or frenzy. Having a killer is a wonderful aid for a team that can completely dominate from players up.

5) Kinda agree. You can win the blocking war...but only if you force it into a "blitz, counterblitz" game, where each turn you end your turn with as little contact as possible. It's slightly counter intuitive not to engage your st 4 av 9 pieces, but it works well. Then, on defense, you pick your moment and commit your entire team at once, and it's hard for him to move them.

[DoubleSkulls]

I think the point is that if you are only playing only 20 games for example you can't wait for multiple skills on Saurus. So MB, although handy, is much better when combined with Tackle/Frenzy/Piling On.

I disagree about Break Tackle though, although you may be much better at the positional game than I am I find that a pair of Break Tackle Saurus help massively when the game takes unanticipated turns and I need to reposition. Break Tackle is a funny skill though - having it means you often don't get marked so don't need it. Not having it means you get marked and need it...

[Hitonagashi]

Hmm, this is my only league Lizardmen team(FUMBBL White Isle League):
http://fumbbl.com/FUMBBL.php?page=team& ... _id=655713

The format is 8 regionals, promoting to 4 conferences, promoting to a single premiership, and since I started 2 seasons ago, I got promoted into a conference on my first season, then won the conference on my second, so I'm entering the premiership for the first time. Games are scheduled, and everyone in a division plays everyone else once, 5 points for a win, 2 for a draw, 1 for a loss (0 for not turning up).

I took block on the first skill on every saurus, and then followed it up with mighty blow on the first one to hit 2 skills:
http://fumbbl.com/FUMBBL.php?page=playe ... id=8018684

Sadly, he got rocked (rip, apo rip) on the halftime kickoff in game 13, but I think I could have easily got him to 31 spp by mid next season.

It's also the fact that MB is just useful. Each time you stun someone, or it turns a stun into a KO, then that's a big win for you. Lizardmen thrive when they outnumber their opponent (though they don't need to in order to win), because the more players that are tied up with your saurii, the more freedom your skinks have to wreak havoc on the ball carrier.

I don't think playing without Break Tackle is that hard. It just takes a little practice, and it's quick to adjust. The major thing you have to change is every single turn, before you start your actions, plan which saurus you want to be free at the end of the turn. Work out where their threat is going to be, and usually, at least 2 blocks (and maybe my blitz) is spent freeing him up. It may sound like a lot of work, but free saurii are a major threat to the opponent. Whenever you have a free saurus, with their movement, you have a wonderful blitz set up.

Generally, if you have a block saurus, and a break tackle saurus, you want to be blitzing with the block saurus. If you can spread your skills so you have block on multiple saurii, then it's not that hard to block a saurus free to be your blitzer!

Another (admittedly Blackbox) successful lizardman team is Carnis's, who also ignored BT, and went 15/0/0 in his first few games:
http://fumbbl.com/FUMBBL.php?page=team& ... _id=676238

As he was playing that, we were discussing skills to take, but both of us I think agree that you don't absolutely need Break Tackle.

[garion]

I agree with Hito on everything he said in those two posts.

I also think break tackle is a complete waste of a skill on Saurii, Block MB Guard all round, with a frenzy po one (maybe two) is all you need. The better you get with lizards the less you ever need break tackle and if people are willing to tie your MB saurii up every turn then that is 6 MB two dice blocks they get every turn and they will quickly start winning the battle of attrition.

As a skill later on it could be useful for you dedicated blitzer, but thats all really i think.

[DoubleSkulls]

I agree - if you expect to get all 6 Saurus up to 2/3 skills then you can live without Break Tackle, but not many Lizardman teams are doing that in common table top formats where you just don't play the same volume of games. The league I'm in right now the winner of the season will play 13-14 games, and then everyone starts new teams. The league I was in before it was rare to see a team play more than 20-30 games. Online you are often expecting to play 30+ games with a team and therefore early skill selection is often geared towards what you want after 20-30 games. In shorter formats your team is retired by then...

[MKL]

A friend of mine played a very successful Lizardmen team in our league, and his experience match Roguethirteen's one.
I think he was just less methodical in developing the Skinks: he kept rolling stats and doubles, that lazy git!

Our format is also similar to Roguethirteen's one: 6 games pre-league, followed by up to two 12 games seasons. 30 games total, in a format that put emphasis in being competitive very early.

I think the point is that if you are only playing only 20 games for example you can't wait for multiple skills on Saurus. So MB, although handy, is much better when combined with Tackle/Frenzy/Piling On.
(...)

Agree.

[Hitonagashi]

Hmmm, no, even then, I think Block is better than Break Tackle.

Even if I just have 1 skill on all saurii, I'd prefer it to be block than BT. In the NAF, I took block, block, frenzy, guard, mb(regretted that one, it was a specific pick to face norse and didn't work), and guard on the Kroxigor. At no point did I regret taking no BT.

If you are only playing 14 games though, I would probably move MB down the priority list. Tackle and Frenzy would be my no 2 picks, and then 3rd saurus to hit 2nd skill would get MB. If you are expecting to play over 20 games, I'd go with MB on the first one to hit 2nd skill. Tackle obviously depends on how many elves you've got around.

Lizardmen are naturally extremely competitive early on. Just having 7 ST 4 and fast moving skinks is enough to win many games at rookie levels (if you can manage your RR's).

I would call Block/MB a wonderful saurus skill, because if you can manage to blitz with him as often as you can, in one half, I think you'll get 1 stun and 1 KO on average. That's a good return for me. Each time I stun someone, their position suffers next turn. Without MB, I think it drops to around 1 stun on average for your blitzer.

[phil78]

+1 to block over break tackle.

I played a lizard team in a short fumbbl league (6/7 games a season, ) and I took one BT early on and it's been fairly useless, especially compared to the rest with block.

[RogueThirteen]

Yea, I expected a lot of these strategies to be controversial, which is why I was hoping to open up some discussion about them. Partly, I just feel like skills like Mighty Blow, in general, aren't as valuable as skills that help you control space (Break Tackle, Side Step, etc.) or risk (Block, Dodge, Catch, etc.).

And yes, I'm thinking here of playing Lizards in tabletop league format, where you can expect like 30 or fewer games. My team played two seasons and a total of thirty games, going 19W, 4L, 7T and winning both end-of-season tournaments. The opponents were a generally varied mix of bash, elves, and humans. [Anecdotal note: after those 30 games, I had one Saurus with 3 levels, one saurus with two levels, three Saurus and a Krox with one level, and one rookie Saurus. This whole "MB is so much better once you have Block, Tackle, PO" is certainly not realistic for any tabletop league format, even with recurring seasons. I did, at one point, have a Saurus with Block and MB (he died after about seven games) and his MB never once was used. Break Tackle I use about once every two or three turns while on defense.]

It may be that I'm not very good at the controlled positioning game (or perhaps I just have a very different overall strategy), but without Break Tackle I would have been at a complete loss. While on defense, especially against teams like elves and even humans that could get their cage into my midfield quickly enough that they also screened off or marked off most of my sauri, that Break Tackle was invaluable at always making sure I could get a Saurus with Tackle to hit those annoying Blodging cage-corners or to just mark up some of their Dodge pieces with a DT skink now ready to grab some ankles. I have no doubt my BT, T saurus pretty much single-handedly won about a third of my games by helping keep me so flexible on defense. Maybe that just means I have a lot to learn about positioning players, but I guess I fail to see how I could always ensure some sauruses were free while on defense, especially given that to protect your skinks your sauri and krox are pretty limited in where they can set up on defense and are all generally immediately vulnerable to marking or screening.


And, I suppose a BT saurus has a 55% (with a TRR available) of blitzing right into a cage and hitting the ball-carrier (and with a STR4, Tackle blitz that's scary for any opponent). Certainly only a last ditch effort (and I've never needed to do it), but the option is nice in case things get really desperate on defense.

[Smeborg]

I humbly suggest that the truth lies somewhere in the middle. 1 or 2 Sauri with B-Tackle are very handy, but you don't need to give it to all of them as first skill.

And as pointed out by others, format (expected number of games for the team) has a huge influence.

[Hitonagashi]

Yea, I expected a lot of these strategies to be controversial, which is why I was hoping to open up some discussion about them. Partly, I just feel like skills like Mighty Blow, in general, aren't as valuable as skills that help you control space (Break Tackle, Side Step, etc.) or risk (Block, Dodge, Catch, etc.).

Kinda. The way to think of MB is that it does help you control space by removing opposing players, which gives you more room to maneuver and more free players. You are completely correct though that Lizardmen are all about space control. Control the pitch, control the game.

And yes, I'm thinking here of playing Lizards in tabletop league format, where you can expect like 30 or fewer games. My team played two seasons and a total of thirty games, going 19W, 4L, 7T and winning both end-of-season tournaments. The opponents were a generally varied mix of bash, elves, and humans. [Anecdotal note: after those 30 games, I had one Saurus with 3 levels, one saurus with two levels, three Saurus and a Krox with one level, and one rookie Saurus. This whole "MB is so much better once you have Block, Tackle, PO" is certainly not realistic for any tabletop league format, even with recurring seasons. I did, at one point, have a Saurus with Block and MB (he died after about seven games) and his MB never once was used. Break Tackle I use about once every two or three turns while on defense.

That isn't what I'm saying . I know in a short term format you probably won't get to 3 skills on many players, if any (though if you have a MB saurus, I'd say that that's a good one for it). I'm saying that the extra KO on average that MB gives you is worth taking the skill. I don't understand why you have a saurus with block and mighty blow and you never blocked with him? I use a block/MB saurus as my dedicated blitzer, and over several turns, the odds of getting the KO just keeps going up. I blitz in, hit someone, and retreat (not staying in contact). That way, they have to come to my MB, or let me have a blitz next turn.

It may be that I'm not very good at the controlled positioning game (or perhaps I just have a very different overall strategy), but without Break Tackle I would have been at a complete loss. While on defense, especially against teams like elves and even humans that could get their cage into my midfield quickly enough that they also screened off or marked off most of my sauri, that Break Tackle was invaluable at always making sure I could get a Saurus with Tackle to hit those annoying Blodging cage-corners or to just mark up some of their Dodge pieces with a DT skink now ready to grab some ankles. I have no doubt my BT, T saurus pretty much single-handedly won about a third of my games by helping keep me so flexible on defense. Maybe that just means I have a lot to learn about positioning players, but I guess I fail to see how I could always ensure some sauruses were free while on defense, especially given that to protect your skinks your sauri and krox are pretty limited in where they can set up on defense and are all generally immediately vulnerable to marking or screening.

I think the key here is what you said about protecting your skinks. I don't. If you are on defense, you should be pressuring the cage every turn, trying to pop it. If every turn, a saurus smashes into, or marks a cage corner, they can't spare their blitz to go after your skinks. I do use BT as a late skill for almost that idea though(blitz with my primary blitzer into a cage, pull the BT out of a TZ back to cover). I always try and pressure with my Lizardmen. If your team is clustered around his cage, it's a pain for him to get through.

The other thing to bear in mind that the objective is to win. If you are happy to stall, then I deliberately leave gaps for elves to come through (so they split half their team), knowing that once they are there, I can swamp the cage with DT skinks and blitzing saurii, forcing them to score the turn after. Then, I score back over 4 turns, 8 turn the second half, and win 2-1. The tricky thing for them is to stall for 8 turns against your saurii, and that's the threat you pose. When I say gaps, I mean leaving a place where an elf can blitz a saurus out of the way to pour players through. This frees up room elsewhere on the pitch, because if you are happy for them to score early, you don't need to cover every angle of the pitch as diligently as you could.

And, I suppose a BT saurus has a 55% (with a TRR available) of blitzing right into a cage and hitting the ball-carrier (and with a STR4, Tackle blitz that's scary for any opponent). Certainly only a last ditch effort (and I've never needed to do it), but the option is nice in case things get really desperate on defense.

But that's the thing...he's so unreliable! You need rerolls badly for lizardmen, and that player needs to roll a 2+ followed by a 2d without block to do anything. You've only got a 45% chance of not using a RR on that blitz.

That's my main issue with break tackle...without block, it's far too unreliable. I don't end up using it, because I need to save my rr's for the saurii without block, for the skink pickups, for the skink blitzes (if the ball carrier breaks off alone), for rr'ing crucial pushes. I don't want to have to use RR's on rerolling a 2+ to get into position.

[RogueThirteen]

Oh, I didn't mean to say that the MB Saurus didn't ever block. I blocked with him every chance he got, he just never actually used Mighty Blow on any of his knockdowns because it would not have had an effect. Though, he didn't end up blitzing very often because blitzing mostly fell upon a Tackle saurus.

And I certainly wouldn't advocate taking Break Tackle on all six saurus, that would be a lot of diminishing returns. But I would always take it as my first and second saurus skill-up, then the other four sauri can grab Block as their first skill.


Though it does sound like we have some very interesting differences in play style. Protecting my skinks does restrict the placement for my sauri on defense. On offense, though, the skinks usually end up largely on their own, forming a skink-only sideline cage as they drive down but then the opponent only gets a single blitz and they've got to send it at the least valuable skinks on the outskirts