Skinks...

[Emjay]

Hey guys,

I'm new to lizardmen and want to play as tehuainin but I'm struggling to get anywhere with skinks for obvious reasons.

How am I supposed to be using them?

Particularly with an all skink army, what should I be doing in the battles and what sort of army should I be building?

Thanks in advance!

[Wh♂♂par]

Since it's no Saurus, think of it as a Bretonnian army. Skinks are there to stay, but use monsters and Salamanders to get the kills.

[Hugh de Salle]

Skinks are flat out useless in mid to end game they will get wiped , I do like the the Sacrifice mechanic but hes a poor lord , Kroq is a far better choice because he abilities are actually useful and the guy is hard as nails when he gets Grim.

I'm not saying Tehuainin is bad just his stupid -50 skink upkeep because you will be facing far superior armys later in the game like tier 4-5 and your using tier 1-2 trash mobs.

Play Kroq first of all imo.

Good luck

[ihKu47]

I've yet to play a full skink army but I've spent some time with the Lizardmen. Since skinks don't typically last long in a prolonged fight, what I would try is to try to route the enemy as fast as possible. Maybe a front line of normal skinks (javelins are always useful for that initial ranged damage and poison debuff) with red skinks circling to the flanks or the rear of the enemy forces for high damage dealing and morale debuffs. If possible, I'd have many dinos rampaging through the enemy forces, absorbing damage (so less damage goes to the skinks) and causing damage and morale damage. If you have flying units, I'd wait for the front lines to engage and use them to take out and preoccupy enemy ranged units - reinforce with big dinos if necessary. Kroxigors also pair well with skinks, skinks absorb some damage while the kroxigors dish out pain in large doses.

But again, I've not yet played in that style so hopefully someone with experience can offer better advice :)

[Ruinae Retroque Rursus]

If you're new to LM you really shouldn't be playing Tehen since gosh darn is he stupidly hard. Play Kroq if you're new.

But anyway:

Skink Cohort w/ Javelins > Skink Cohort. You can afford them, get the javelins. Use the javelins on actually valuable targets with low armor:
- Rat Ogres
- Plague Monks
not:
- Stormvermin (too high armor & shield)
- Clanrats (they suck)

Red-Crested Skinks are a better infantry unit that provides armor-piercing. However you don't really need this against the Skaven trash you'll be fighting: but you will need them against the Stormvermin the AI likes to pull out of nowhere now.*

Your major killing power is your Bastilodon w/ Ark of Sotek, just because almost nothing can punch through the 140 armor it has (and the armor-piercing targets you should be focus-ing down).



* Stormvermin required the T4 armory building before the patch. Now they don't, and can be recruited from any minor setttlement at T3.

[RenegadeKnight]

What I had success with was spamming red skinks. They're going to die a lot but with investment in blue tree, skink chiefs and that one skill in tenhuains tree they'll be back to full health after every engagement, even if nearly dead. I hoarded my sacrifices for buffs when I knew I'd need them. You really don't need to worry about getting sarus, just get some dinos and kroak. The red skinks can last long enough for you big guns to do the work.

[Ruinae Retroque Rursus]

Originally posted by RenegadeKnight:

What I had success with was spamming red skinks. They're going to die a lot but with investment in blue tree, skink chiefs and that one skill in tenhuains tree they'll be back to full health after every engagement, even if nearly dead. I hoarded my sacrifices for buffs when I knew I'd need them. You really don't need to worry about getting sarus, just get some dinos and kroak. The red skinks can last long enough for you big guns to do the work.

By the time you have access to dinos, kroak, and Saurus, you really should invest in them :P Even as Tehen, Saurus w/ Shields are a better call than Skinks (yes, you can buff Skinks to absurd levels, but you can also buff Saurus quite a bit: their tech tree is waaaaay better than the Skink one).

That said, Tehen's difficulty is mostly getting rid of Clan Fester: once you've done that you should (?) be good to go.

[RenegadeKnight]

Originally posted by aidenpons:

Originally posted by RenegadeKnight:

What I had success with was spamming red skinks. They're going to die a lot but with investment in blue tree, skink chiefs and that one skill in tenhuains tree they'll be back to full health after every engagement, even if nearly dead. I hoarded my sacrifices for buffs when I knew I'd need them. You really don't need to worry about getting sarus, just get some dinos and kroak. The red skinks can last long enough for you big guns to do the work.

By the time you have access to dinos, kroak, and Saurus, you really should invest in them :P Even as Tehen, Saurus w/ Shields are a better call than Skinks (yes, you can buff Skinks to absurd levels, but you can also buff Saurus quite a bit: their tech tree is waaaaay better than the Skink one).

That said, Tehen's difficulty is mostly getting rid of Clan Fester: once you've done that you should (?) be good to go.

The thing is you can get those skinks down to be real cheap. I went blue tree plus tenhuainins own cost reduction. It's pretty much the skaven fodder plus art, but your fodder isn't complete trash. Not that I didn't use sarus in the campaign, for tenhaunin I didn't feel I needed them.

[Emjay]

Thanks for all the info so far.

In a normal army composition, what role would the skinks play?

I'm guessing they are like goblins?

[Maximus]

Originally posted by Emjay:

Thanks for all the info so far.

In a normal army composition, what role would the skinks play?

I'm guessing they are like goblins?

Javelins are often used for flanking purposes, but I personally like to have, usually, 3 units of them as a meat shield, poisoning charging enemies so they won't hit too hard on them. Red crested skinks, usually 4 - 5 units, lay back and rush a few seconds later to deal damage, along with any eventual monster you'll get your hands on. Skirmishers... meh, I've never really been particularly good with them, but they work great to rush ranged units in melee and chase off the map routing enemies.

One thing you should focus on tho, is the engine of the gods mount for Tehen... really, just use the Javelins to blob on them as many enemy units as you can, blast the solar-god-ray-of-death (along with any other aoe magic or skill, like terradon's rocks) and enjoy the spectacle. After that rush in all your good damage dealing units to finish the job. It worked fine up to turn 200+, after that diplomacy bugged and I was stuck with "very low reliability" so I had to start over. With Tiqtaqto this time tho. His campaign is a BLAST.

[SMILEDOZER]

Just finished Tehenauin ME on Very hard, was actually quite easy.

my starting army was 4 RC skinks, 4 javelins, 4 skirmishers 2 hunting packs and whatever blessed spawns (i got lucky and got a carnosaur and a solar ray bastilladon which made things a bit easier).

What i usually do is usually just hide the army and charge the dinos in to clump the enemy together, then you just charge skinks in from all over and abuse the Tehens crow spell and the ark of sotek\sacrifical jungle swarm, and combined with a lot of clever use of ambush, the skaven are gone in a second and your only big challenge early game is taking The Awakening honestly.

i invested in the red "skirmishers" skill immediately, which is something i usually wouldn't do, but was definitely worth it despite being mostly useless late game (umbral tide is sick tho), just because it made the early/early mid game that much easier

But for straight up army composition and tactics without abusing dino cheese, i'd go with the same build for early game skinks, put the RC in the middle flanked by the javelins and skirmishers vanguarded behind the enemy army, or on the side to whittle and slow down any high value, low armor targets (rat ogres, plague monks, mournghuls, varmpire lords as every effort thrown at them helps win you the battle that much faster etc), then try and get as good matchups as possible for the RC in the initial charge, while you flank with the javelins and salamanders, have them launch their javs and a few salamander volleys from behind, charge the skinks in and then eventually bringing whatever terror unit, or salamanders if their leadership is low, you have (ark of sotek\blessed spawning\hero with screaming blade) for a quick rout and consider chasing them off the map or not and move on to the next blob.
Say you put your heavey hitters on the left side to overpower and kill off whatever they have there as soon as possible, then snowball over to the right side of the frontline to help out and look for opportunities to flank. Skinks are sort of like slower light cav that hold out longer and work better in water basically

For a Kroq'gar\mazda build, my go to early-mid game pre-dlc campaign stack is:
2-4 saurus spears, 2-4 saurus shields, 1-2 krox, 0-2 skink javelins, 0-2 skirmishers OR 2-4 chameleon skinks, 1-2 cold one spears, 0-1 horned one riders, 1-2 stegadons or bastiladons in a pinch, maybe a chief for lord sniping, a scar vet if mazda, a priest or 2 if kroqqy, later sub in templeguard in place of saurus spears (but keep the RoR spears for the sick aura), get 1-3 carnosaurs (scar vet included), 2-3 artillery (my favourite is solar engine)

and what you basically want to do with this build is making a firm frontline with saurus in the middle, spears on the flanks that charge in and just hold the line while you run your dinos back and forth in the mix like more capable chariots while your kroxigors hang out behind and charge in to deal fear and armor piercing where needed while you cycle charge your horned ones and cold one spears (never get the reg cold ones) in from behind to cause auto routs after they are done taking out enemy light cav and artillery

you could also put in some terradons to harass light cav\wizards\artillery, but they are very micro intensive and require a lot of babysitting

DLC units into that build, i'd go with a 0-2 hunting packs and an ancient sallyboy for super fast flanking ranged support, just keep the hunting packs away from cav!, ripperdacs to help out in the same manner as kroxigors, just from behind (beware their relative low melee defence though!), and red crested skinks instead of kroxigors in the early game

this got a bit long, but i hope it helps :)

[Emjay]

I appreciate that tehuainin isn't the easiest to play as but I somewhat picked him for that reason. Mazdammundi has the debuff to diplomacy which is a bit poop, kroqgar seems like he's in an easy position, especially considering he's a beefcake.

That left me with tehuainin and tiktaqto... tiktaq certainly seems interesting but I dislike his starting location and want my lizard empire to be on Lustria.

Tehuainin also has the sacrifice mechanic which seems pretty interesting. Not sure if the others can get the elite units in it but still...