Warhammer Fantasy Battle Reporter Forum

First real post in the forum, though I've got a few BatReps up on Sigmar's BatRep page. Thought I'd show you my re-jigged Lizard army list, though there aren't that many lizards in it.

This is a legal force in a this ‘counts as’ that way. I’ll be inventing lots of fluff for it, based around the fact that one ruined Old One’s city has only three Skinks remaining, all priests, who build a force out of the local jungle pygmy tribes. These are basically Southlands’ Halflings, but function mostly as skinks, with the same weapons, stats and rules, though perhaps different reasons for the rules.

Take Cold Blooded, for example. I’ll stick to the mechanics of the rules, but say it works so not because of their ‘cold-blooded’ lack of emotion, but because they are ‘stubborn little buggers’ who fight that little bit more ferociously for the very reason they are so small – if they didn’t they’d not survive!

As for the rest of the rules, I’ll explain the ‘counts as’ equivalents as we get to them.

First up, Swarms – easy enough: they’re just the same…



..but I have put some spiders in there too to bulk out the lizards. If the Pygmies come from a part of the Southlands world with no Saurus only a handful of skinks then I reckon they might be a bit short of smaller lizards too.

For Salamanders it’s simply a matter of replacing the skink handlers with pygmies, armed similarly with little javelins. (The Salamanders were plastic toys that I just had to paint – they’re kind of cute, until they breath fire on you!)



The three Skink priests are not your usual figures. They’ll have the fluff that they’re an unusual spawning, a different species but part of the Skink genus (sort of thing)> This is because they’re actually really old Slann models from the early 1980s!



I’ll probably go for two units of skirmishers, 14-20 in number according to the total size of the army. Here, one again, blowpipe armed Pygmies take the place of the Skinks. Same stats - but as I can’t work out why they would be aquatic, I think I’ll just say they’re not. No opponent is going to complain if I get rid of some abilities and thus make them worse than usual!



Now here is the ‘dodgy’ one. I have rebased my pygmy boar riders and use now use them as ‘counts as’ Saurus. I know they’re Str 4, but the boars look like they might well be. I know they’re supposed to have a 5+ scaly skin save, well I’ll keep that and say it is actually the usual 5+ save for mounted plus thick skinned. And finally I know they have two attacks – well, fine, that’s one from the rider and one from the boar.



What do you think? Acceptable? They have the right base size and the army won’t really function without them, not now that the new list has ditched Southland’s variant Horned One riders which these guys used to count as.

Now for my favourite ‘new’ unit: Skinks with Kroxigors. I’d already modelled my gorilla versions of Kroxigors, called ‘Gorillagors’, and now realised they’re hands scraped the ground, meaning a front rank of Pygmies wouldn’t fit. So I took 6 pygmies, broke them off their bases, and repositioned them so that they could stand before the Gorillagors. I even had to gauge chunks out of the bases so that the gorillas’ hands wouldn’t be knocked out of place.



I like them so much here’s another picture:



Finally, the last two units. I don’t think three Skink Priests and a tribe of pygmies could keep an engine of the gods running, so their Stegadon is your basic giant bow model. Yet again, however, it’s a toy plastic dinosaur converted …



The Terradons, however, I didn’t like the toy options, so I bought the GW ones and put pygmies on their backs. I do like these and might have a Tic-tac-to (spelling?) equivalent, but I’m not sure. I don’t like units who might never turn up. I’d rather have ‘em from the word go and build a more solid plan around them.




So, the Southlands’ pygmies are reborn. I can’t wait to try them out. They never, ever won a game as a Southland’s variant from the old book, what with no ranks for the FC Horned Ones (my boars when they were on cavalry bases), but now I have stone dropping Terradons and a unit that counts as Saurus. I must be in with a chance. Surely?

I'll do a BatRep (photos) when I get a chance to use them.

I had the chance to look this post over breifly earlier today. Unfortunately I dont have a lot of time to read it over now either.

All in all, it looks like a very fun project. Are you going to make your own stats for the characters? After all some of the Lizardmen rules just dont make sense for these models (Aquatic, Cold Blooded & Scaly Skin comes to mind). I'll try to go over it in more detail when I get up tomorrow. I'll post some more thoughts & comments then. Keep up the good work!

When you read the post you'll see I discuss nearly all these rules.

What I've done is made sure the bases are the correct sizes (even rebasing my boar riders onto Suarus infantry bases). And in a spirit of 'WYSIWYG' I've made sure everyone has the right weapons.

As for stats and abilities - Scaly Skin is expressed as Thick Hide and Mounted, thus the same 5+. Cold Blooded is the same rules, but is for the Pygmies being 'Stuboorn Little Buggers' (my way of imagining them behaving in a similar manner to Cold Blooded). Str 4 on the Boar Riders is due to the Boars, and Mv 4 is 'cos the boars have little legs!!

As for aquatic, here's an exchnage that took place on the WE forum:

Member 1: And aquatic.. easy. The pygmies hunt the giant watersnake for generations now, and the techniques used for that hunt are also used for war....

Me: Ho Ho! I like the way you think ... I'm not sure what the giant watersnake is, or how they would hunt it, but I am going to quote your words verbatim and with conviction to all opponents. Let them work it out. I shall just look at them as if my answer is obvious, and I shall brook no argument. If they try to argue I shall say 'Watersnake' over and over until they break down and say, "Ok, please, let's play!"

Member 1: I can just picture you doing that....

"But they're pigmies... not fish"

"Watersnake"

"And just how do they hide ? "

"Watersnake"

"But"

"Watersnake"

....

Member 2: As for "Watersnake". That has got to be the army's battle cry from now on, hell you should even get it printed on a t-shirt!

Aquatic:
Instead of taking away Aquatic on your skirmishers, why dont you give them "Tree Hugger" or something like that. Let them keep the same "Open Terrain" effect when in forrest/jungle terrain (Limit it to 4inches instead of the usual 2.

Cold Blooded:
When you flesh out the project to include stats, take a moment to change Cold Blooded to "Stuboorn Little Buggers" in the stats. Even if you arent changing the rule any, it will keep better with the theme

Pigmy Boar Riders:
How you have them set up, you are actually taking one attack away from them. The boars attack would be in addition to what the rider would have. I would just add something to the fluff about how adept they are at riding the boars and leave the extra attack for the rider.

Watersnake:
Take some time to flesh this idea out. You could actually make a model for it, then use it in place of the Razordon Hunting packs.

Giants:
It might be kind of fun to add a giant as an option in this army. Mostly because it would be funny to see a bunch of pygmies running around with a Giant in their midst.

Other Thoughts:
It would be nice if you took the time to reference which rules/stats you are using for each model. I know you mention which model replaces what in the army list, but if you took the time to create an army list it would go a long way towards helping put together an army. Here is a link to one of my own projects if you want an idea for how to lay things out: http://battlereporter.freeforums.org/re ... -t615.html

All in all the army looks like a lot of fun to play. I'll be looking forward to seeing how the project evolves as you continue to work on it. Keep us posted on how things are going with the project!

I'd love to do a proper pygmy army list (I've played about with lists for previous campaigns, especially for NPC armies). But for now, if I use it as a straight 'this counts as that' Lizardman army, at least I can use it against players without needing their permission to use a home made army list!

As for the little Boar riders, I like your idea that the boars get the two attacks (thus both Str 4) and maybe say that the Pygmy is simply there to 'steer' and guide the boars so that they act that bit more intelligently in their furious efforts to bite and thrust.

I'm gonna get a game in this weekend (I think) with the enemy using a pirate (Empire/DoW variant) army. It'll be fun!

These are excellent BatPadre and what a superb concept. I don't recall seeing this post before ! I'll get some of these pics onto the forum slideshow tomorrow. Nice work.

How about some customised pygmy rules ? And, of course, the magic lore could be... Voodoo !

Pics added to the forum slideshow.

Thanks for sharing Padre (+1 rep)