Just can't beat those d*mn lizards!

Mortalman · Post by **Mortalman** » Wed Feb 26, 2003 2:40 pm

Hi,

I had a league match against Lizardmen last night, so I prepared myself by reading through some of the tactics on this forum on other Lizardmen threads. I realise they aren't like other teams so I tried to modify my tactics accordingly...

But I still got hammered, like I always do when I play Lizards! Pre last match my league rating was 4 played, 3 wins, 1 draw, with a goal difference scored 8 conceded 1. Last night I lost 3-0, didn't get a single SPP outside my MVP! Just the thought of it makes me feel

What I need to know is whether my team is just fundamentally badly suited to playing them, and what skills/players I need to develop to beat the scaly b******s - I'm convinced it can't be totally luck based, he's the only coach in our league of 8 that I have consistently lost to, in fact he's the only coach I've lost to period!

My team:

Blitzer: Tackle, Pro
Blitzer: Tackle
Blitzer: +1 S
Blitzer
BO: Block, Guard
BO: Block
BO
BO
Lineorc: Tackle
Lineorc
Ogre: Block
Thrower: Accurate, Block
Goblin: Catch, Sure Feet
4 x Re-roll
10 x Fan Factor

4 Assistant Coaches
1 Apoth

For the last time - please help me!!!!

BigD · Post by **BigD** » Wed Feb 26, 2003 2:45 pm

What is the breakdown of the team you played against?

BigD

grotemuis · Post by **grotemuis** » Wed Feb 26, 2003 2:57 pm

maybe you need to get some mighty blows and dp's for hurting skinks.
The skinks are the way to hurt the lizardman. Get the skinks out of the way as soon as possible. If he is going to protect them, fine. He will be on the defensive and you're in charge of the game.

Don't bunch up you're players to much, let him come to you, then strike back with avengence

Skummy · Post by **Skummy** » Wed Feb 26, 2003 3:02 pm

This seems like a commonly asked question. Maybe there's enough call for an NAF article on beating lizardman...

It sounds like you've got exactly what I'd want to take against a lizard team. As Big D commented though, it's hard to give a relevant answer without knowing what sort of Lizardman lineup you were playing against.

Mortalman · Post by **Mortalman** » Wed Feb 26, 2003 3:04 pm

Team Breakdown:

Saurus: Guard, Piling On
Saurus: Guard, Block
Saurus: Block
Saurus: Block
Saurus
Saurus

Kroxigor

4 x Skink
Skink: AG 4, sure feet, sprint
Skink: Block
Skink: Guard
Skink: Block, Sure Hands, Sidestep (favoured ballcarrier)

5 Re-rolls
Fan Factor: 16
Apothecary

Obviously with so many skinks it's hard to take them down (though granted I do seem to have a strange problem both knocking them down and getting through their armour) and the advanced ones are seriously slippery.

Post by **DoubleSkulls** » Wed Feb 26, 2003 4:39 pm

How are you approaching offence? Slow 8 turn drives or going for quick scores?

You need to protect your ball carrier better than you are (he must have turned you over at least twice).

If he is turning you over in the backfield (e.g. you fail the pickup and then find yourself swarmed) you need to bring more players deep.

Don't send your boyz off skink hunting, let them come to you. Keep the tacklers near the ball carrier. Stunty isn't so useful without dodge and it makes it more likely you can stop him exploiting any loss of possession.

I suspect you are having difficulties facing a team that is a lot faster and nearly as strong. What you need to do is tie down the Saurus with your BOBs and then try to get a blitzer based cage moving forward while he only has the odd Saurus to help his skinks.

Nermal · Post by **Nermal** » Wed Feb 26, 2003 8:52 pm

i have managed to beat the lizard team in our little league by following a simple method. tie up the krox with your most expendable player. as the krox usually will stay put after that, he cant dodge and he will just block your player around a bit if he passes the bone head.

tie up the saurus with your line men ansd bobs, once again no saurus will dodge and there will be a block fest going on. move away from the krox when he is tied up then move the action away from the saurus's when you can. that will only leave the skinks to play the ball or to attack your blitzers that is when you move slowly up the pitch and hurt the skinks as much as you can.

as you allready know the skinks are the only players the lizzies have to handle the ball as all the other players have crap agility. so when they are hurt (and they hurt so easily) he will just go on the all out attack to try to cripple your players, (he will not be able to do much else) and orcs can take a beating better than most.

these ideas are only that, ideas. you will not stand a chance if the dice do not want you to win, but hopefully they point you in the right direction.

Zombie · Post by **Zombie** » Wed Feb 26, 2003 10:07 pm

Either his skinks have rolled 4 doubles and one +AG in 8 skill rolls, or someone in your league has forgotten that skinks have no access to general skills. That makes a world of difference.

Zombie · Post by **Zombie** » Wed Feb 26, 2003 10:08 pm

Hey, i once beat lizardmen with halflings 1-0, but that was just sheer luck. I almost never failed a dodge and he had trouble with simple go for its.

Tapek · Post by **Tapek** » Wed Feb 26, 2003 11:13 pm

I've found the *easiest* way to beat on Lizards is to pound the Skinks into oblivion. This can be hard, since most have Block and Dodge, in addition to annoying skills... Dirty Player and Mighty Blow start eating away at them. They might rack up an early point, but if you kill the skinks, you can score more or less by your leave, simply by throwing an S4 tackle zone on every lizard left, since they all have AG1.

BigD · Post by **BigD** » Wed Feb 26, 2003 11:19 pm

Zombie is right on this of course. The Skinks don't have access to General Skills unless they've rolled doubles. In which case thats a hell of a lot of doubles. But then again, he also has 5 ReRolls. Now that is Scary! How long has this team been playing?

I'd concentrate on the Skinks alright but use your players with Tackle. That should take care of the Dodge part and hopefully give you a chance to smeg on the little guys. The Kroxigor is a big guy but just stay away from him. He can't move far and if possible try to get the opposition to use him first. If you're lucky he'll blow it and result in a turnover. Otherwise take out his Saurus's without any skills. Thats the best option when it comes to those Big Guys. But its the Skinks that have got to go first. Get rid of them and you have an excellent shot. Try to get him to waste his Blitz on one of your players. If you have too put somebody out to sacrifice... It might be worth it.

BigD

Mortalman · Post by **Mortalman** » Thu Feb 27, 2003 10:00 am

Thanks for the replies guys!

Ianwilliams:

How are you approaching offence? Slow 8 turn drives or going for quick scores?

I've tried both. The slow 8 turn drives got no-where cos I ended up fighting a wall of saurus and any turnover just punished me. My Ogre ended up making the only breakthrough but was pulled down before he could score. The other night I tried a passing play, which worked fine (ie I had receivers in position to score and my passer was in position) until my accurate thrower failed a 3+ pass and fumbled the ball!
Despite this I feel passing's the way to go, because I can easily tie up the saurus and let his skinks try to pull down my blitzers!

In answer to the numerous replies about his skink development, he is aware they can't get general skills, what can I say? Some players are just lucky! We witness each other's rolls after every game so there's no chance of him cheating. As for the re-rolls he won the chaos cup and walked away with the max prize amount, combined with a fairly huge fan factor that's left him in a good position for finances - especially as he hasn't lost a game since the cup! The team has been around for about 14/15 matches - we play leagues of 7 games (1 game against each other league member) then go into a knock-out cup. We're now into our second league.

My plan had been to play the pass and then relax into my defensive game. That's usually where I've had success in the past. Thing is now he tends to form a half-cage with 2 guard saurus protecting the uber-skink on the sidelines. You can't push him off cos of sidestep, even if you could get in to the cage (unlikely with AG 3) and he'd count as s4 cos of the two guards! Oh and no point getting strip ball due to his sure hands.

Anyway this wasn't supposed to be a rant on his team. I think I get the gist of the tactics and the vital element I'm missing is hurting things! I never seem to cause any casualties. So next time I'll run the pass again then let him run to equalise while I smash up any part of his team I can hit! If he's taking 2 saurus with the uber-skink that only leaves 4 on the line!

Incidentally, the passer did turn the ball over twice, but it got so much closer to scoring than the cage that I'll try it again. As I said above the first time was a failed 3+ with a re-roll, and the second was due to a saurus interception of my perfect long bomb!

The message is clear to me - mighty blow, piling on and dirty player loom on the horizon!

[/b]

Heiper · Post by **Heiper** » Thu Feb 27, 2003 10:17 am

The tactic to play them has already been said. But I agree that it's a nastie Lizzie team you are play there. I don't know how he sets up on defense, but you should be able to "hold" the problem saurus away from your cage with the BOBs. Just keep standing next to them and they HAVE to blitz (saurus don't dodge). 4 BOBs keeping 4 saurus away from your cage will force him to move in with skinks to stop it, and we all know how fragile the skinks are.

Thats what I do when I play them at least, make sure the saurus are busy with other things, and move down.

Defense is an other thing, but again, keeping the saurus busy is the key. Always have someone on the saurus, you even have AV9 so you should come out of it pretty good.

Post by **DoubleSkulls** » Thu Feb 27, 2003 10:28 am

Mortalman wrote:Incidentally, the passer did turn the ball over twice, but it got so much closer to scoring than the cage that I'll try it again. As I said above the first time was a failed 3+ with a re-roll, and the second was due to a saurus interception of my perfect long bomb!

Orc passing is normally I high risk play. I think you may be better forming a cage driving it into his saurus to suck them all in and then roll out with a weak cage protected by your tackling blitzers.

Hopefully you'll suck him into attacking the cage with skinks, where you can mash them.

Building a murder team will help too - but takes time.

Mortalman · Post by **Mortalman** » Thu Feb 27, 2003 11:45 am

By the way - not sure if it came across when I wrote down his team break down, but the 4 x skink entry is in addation to those advanced skinks! Yes he has about 8 skinks on his team, so reserves is not a problem for him - another bonus of winning the chaos cup: lotta money = lotta reserves.

On defence he deploys a front line of 3 unadvanced skinks

and puts the saurus/kroxigor a few squares back with an advanced skink roaming at the back as a safety. It makes it hard to tie him up with man-to-man coverage, but means he can't easily capitalise on a blitz.

I didn't feel my passing play was risky. A s4 blitzer with an assist from the guard BO broke a hole in his line easy, and him, another blitzer and the gobbo ran it into his backfield. Then all I had to do next turn was run up the thrower and throw a short pass (3+ with re-roll) to the goblin (who has catch) who can either run it into the endzone or hand it off to a blitzer for the score. This compared to trying to fight through a wall of saurus where they have more guards than me it seemed like a good option.