How do you counter Lizardmen as Dark Elves?

[Marcus]

Hi, I been playing a campaign has Corsair Felheart in the Immortal Empires Campaign. I bumped into the "Spirit of the Jungle" faction and he had an army of 15 sarus warriors and the rest a mixture of krixigors and monsters.

First contact he slaughted by army despite it having lots of armour piecing crossbows. My army was mostly corsairs, crossbows, 2 reaper bolt throwers, Felheart and a Sorceress with dark magic. Despite skirmishing with them with my crossbows, casting spells the warriors just tanked my crossbows and slaughtered my army.

How do you counter lizard men as dark elves? What army units are best against them. I find their monsters and Sarus Warriors quite hard to fight. I did manage to force their leader to retreat, but the rest of the lizardmen army kept fighting. Any tips would be great.

[A.Pot]

Use Dreadspears and Darkshards while you flank with Corsairs. Draw Nakai to somewhere close to the water and in range of your Black Ark.

[Basarab Laiota]

darkshards

[KoboldUtopian]

Darkshards are the key. Get the lizards to attack your spears and then shoot them a bunch. It also helps to move around to shoot them in the sides to avoid their shield block.

[Sin]

Lizards have two strength:
Rampage making them immune to moral.
Armor and defense stats.

Dark Elves have one of the most convinient armor piercing unit in the game:
Dark Shards / Shades
They not only pierce armor to a decent degree but they also have a fun volume of fire AND by virute of being ranged circumvent the defense value of lizards.
Shields block them which is kinda annoying but you can circumvent that by shooting in to their flanks / backs with 2-3 units.

Dark Elves also have one destinct weakness, especially in the early game:
Your front line has a mediocer stying power.
Ignore everything that isn't carrying a spear (those usually have higher defense stats aka stay longer)
Spread heroes across your line to provide leadership boosts. If you have rampage generators for your own troops (like hellebron) use them once morale gets hit.


What you want to do is to corner camp (set up at the edge of your deployment zone, retreat up hill into a corner with archers in the back and a front line spanning map edge to map edge.) This doesn't always work well against lizards since their high mass units can and will push through your line and eat your archers, so will flyers if you can't shoot them down, focus fire accordingly, use fast movers to split up / distract the enemy army on approach, but make sure that your fast movers are actually faster than their fastest unit or you will just lose them.

Alternative: Line up the spears with ranged clustered in the center of your formation, prevent flanks by moving reserve spears into charging enemies from the sides and shoot and shoot and shoot... if you see a way to do it move 1-3 archers around the enemy army and shoot their sauruses in the back so the shields stop working.

Lastly:
Magic. Check what kind of magic you have, pick the AP spells and use them on clusters of enemies. If you don't have AP spells try to hit their skinks, they have less armor therefor more damage from non AP spells will go through while contributing to the "enemy losses" statistic which will force a route eventually.
If you can savely do it snipe their lord in order to reduce the enemies strength value even more for faster routes.
Priority should be:
Single entities / Flyers who can breach your line and tie up your ranged.
Ranged units and mages.
Other heroes and lords.

[Fryskar]

Originally posted by Sin:

Lizards have two strength:
Rampage making them immune to moral.
Armor and defense stats.

Saurus have two strenghts, lots of hp and good dmg.
Armor is mid, Md is decent if spears wS.

[Red Bat]

15 Saurus is basically one of the most kitable armies that can exist. Saurus hit above their cost in melee, but they also have the speed of heavy infantry, meaning almost every ranged unit in the game can hit and run against them, and even a few of the ones who can't is going to get several shots off vs them. That's why you don't usually build Saurus only armies when playing Lizardmen. The few faster units won't matter. You can just focus fire them first if you want, or use spears or something to tie them up.

Pretty much every way to attempt a slugfest vs Saurus in melee is not going to be cost effective for Dark Elves. You can try to tie them up and flank them with Witch Elves if you want, but with 15 Saurus that's going to be a pretty big line of high HP units to try to cut through.

That said I don't know if this really sounds like something to specifically build against. Dark Elves shouldn't have too much trouble with Saurus with a typical army comp.

[Balkoth]

Saurus trade evenly with Black Ark Corsairs (the melee version) and with Kroxigar/monster support will smash through Corsairs.

Darkshards are the best damage dealers that can also burn through Kroxigars/monsters as mentioned.

Fellheart's army specifically can benefit from being nothing but Black Ark Corsairs (Handbows) for a cheap but effective army -- the idea is you just kite everything. The Kroxigars and monsters might be able to catch up but those can be focused down, then the Saurus get kited to death.

Otherwise Darkshards and Dreadspears are your bread and butter. Make sure you're getting the red line upgrades for them.

If you want to go all in, get Shades early. I think Fellheart can start recruiting them within the first 5 turns if he wants...but they are a lot more expensive and difficult to support until you have your economy humming.

[Fryskar]

Originally posted by Red Bat Media:

but they also have the speed of heavy infantry

31 is fairly standart infantry speed. Heavies like chosen (well, any armored chaos inf) got 28, blackorks got 29.
Empire swordsmen got mere 30, HE/DE spears get 33.
As long as its not shielded saurus, skirmishers or other ranged can work, but both will take fairly long to chew through that much hp.

[Dreagon]

Dark shards and the black ark corsairs. Dark shards are just really good units and the corsairs in Lokhir's army are really cheap and they have anti-infantry I believe so they should be pretty effective against saurus warriors.

[Shellbie]

Flanking and magic are the most powerful tools you have at your disposal when playing any faction. Ditch the Napoleon mentality and embrace the Attila playstyle, remember that the attacker is in control of the flow of battle.

[Balkoth]

Originally posted by Dreagon:

the corsairs in Lokhir's army are really cheap and they have anti-infantry I believe so they should be pretty effective against saurus warriors.

Corsairs trade equally/evenly with Saurus Warriors even with the anti-infantry. Now if you have techs and red line buffs and they don't then that gives an edge, but conversely if the Saurus have techs and red line buffs and you don't then you'll lose.