Starting a Competative Lizardmen Army, need Advice

[TheSustainableCenter]

So I'm starting a lizardmen army and I need sme advice. I'm going for a 2.5k list that is very competitive. Going to to be going with the slann but besides that I'm looking for advice on the composition. Any help is appreciated!

[Kayosiv]

Avoid the following:
Oldblood on Carnosaur
Engine of the gods
jungle swarms
Cold one Cavalry
All special characters
skink chiefs

Get some of the following:
Chameleon skinks
Salamanders


There you go. There's not a whole lot that's bad about a lizardmen list with the exception of jungle swarms being worthless. Even the "avoid" items aren't too bad in most situations, they're just not super competitive. Get some sauru for your fighting troops, some skinks for harrassment and redirection, and then build the rest of your list to taste. I like to go 2 stegadons with 2 big blocks of sauru with small units of skinks (both skirmishing and ranked in units of 10) as my main force.

[MOMUS]

I would say that most things in the lizzie book are very good for the cost, if i were you i would focus on a smashy list with lots of saurus/stegs and other bashy things or a sneaky list with lots of skinks and other skirmisher things.
Things i like:

Slann, i like to run mine cheap with not that many upgrades (hes already amazing at base cost)
Scarvets on cold ones, really good for the points and have effective item combos
Saurus, killy and tough
Skirmisher skinks, amazing take by the bucket load
Ranked skinks, small units of ten as redirectors or big units with krox to be annoying
Terradons, excellent at redirecting and point denial
Camo skinks, very shooty and hard to hit back
Sallies, too good for points best mobile-monster-warmachine in the game

Jungle swarms are not that bad, cheapest redirector in the book.

[Kayosiv]

I'd rather pay 5 points more to be able to throw javelins at things and have parry saves as well as +1 movement. +3 initiative, and some armor. The poisoned attacks cancels out the strength 3 and half the attacks in my opinion.

In the defense of jungle swarms... they never panic, which is nice.

[MOMUS]

I'd rather pay 5 points more to be able to throw javelins at things and have parry saves as well as +1 movement. +3 initiative, and some armor. The poisoned attacks cancels out the strength 3 and half the attacks in my opinion.

In the defense of jungle swarms... they never panic, which is nice.

They also have higher leadership than your slann

[Kayosiv]

True, but being unbreakable means this rarely comes into play. What it does mean is that they can reliably be left alone while skinks tend to run away.

[tmarichards]

Lizards are arguable the single most powerful army book in the game, and they have a plethora of different top-level builds. It's important to know what you want your list to do, as even though the component parts are all excellent if it lacks focus you will struggle a bit.

A few things that are always good to have;

Slann are ridiculously costed for their abilities, they're just an absurd unit. This is why more and more tournament lists take 2 at 2400 pts, to fully abuse how good they are and the double level 4 gives great coverage. Death/Metal and Light/Metal are both very good options, as is Fire/Metal (because Metal magic ruins the metagame). Alternatively, a single Party Slann is still very good and can work very well on Death (personally, the Death Party Slann is my least-liked thing to play against in the entire of Warhammer. I'd rather play vs Dwarfs than the Death Party Frog) or Light magic if you want offensive lists. If you want to go with a very points denial list, you can run Life magic in a big block of Temple Guard and 2 massive Saurus blocks, but this is neither very fun nor very competitive (there's a reason it's not featured in top UK competitive lists anymore).

Scar-Vets on Cold Ones are also very undercosted, and unless they're on a Cold One Scar-Vets have no purpose. They're awesome for killing small expensive units or just holding stuff up. Almost every competitive Lizards list runs at least 2 (they're often capped at 2, or there would be a third), and the most common builds are:

Burning Blade, Dawnstone, Charmed Shield, light armour- 1+ re-rollable T5 is very hard to shift, and the CS lets him dodge the first cannonball to come his way. To give you an idea of how tough he is- he take a charge from a unit of 4 Mournfang with Dragonhide Banner and not take a single wound, then break them in 2 rounds of combat or grind them out over the game if they pass their break tests.

Great weapon, light armour, Firefly Venom, Amulet of Itzl, Dragonhelm- again, 1+ save and T5 is hard to shift, he's S7 so he ruins knights (you could run a halberd if you want to make better use of his average initiative) and the Amulet lets him dodge the first cannonball as well.

Skink-Krox units- these are just awesome with Light magic. WS10 -1 to hit Skinks tank a lot of damage (especially as they can't be Stomped), and the ASF WS10 Krox behind dish out a lot of damage. With javelins, you can swift reform to be 2 wide, walk up to a unit and chuck a load of javelins in, then chuck a load more in on the Stand and Shoot and then smash up whatever is left. Again, there is a reason they feature so predominantly in top lists. They're not as simple as "push it forwards and win", which is why a fair few people either don't rate them or don't understand how they work, but they are very good if used correctly.

Salamanders- again, costed very badly in an edition where you can pre-measure for their templates and don't have to roll for partials. Very hard to kill (T4, 5+ and an effective 5++), and they kill a lot of stuff and synergise really well with the rest of the list.

[Graxy]

Double slann, double cold one scar vet, units of 10 skink cohorts , a block or 2 of skrox, 2 chameleon units, terradons (if you really feel like it), as many salamanders as you can field.

There's your list, have fun. Your opponents will not

[Armond]

I think your opponent having fun is important. Competitive does not necessarily mean overpowering. Were you looking for balanced? I just want to know what YOU mean by competitive?!

[innerwolf]

Lizards are arguable the single most powerful army book in the game, and they have a plethora of different top-level builds.

They can be the most powerful army book if you go cookie-cutter and use one of the *counts with the fingers on 1 hand*... 5? netlists out there (not counting different lores on the Slann, it doesn't really count as different builds).
The army lacks a lot of variety of unit options, and on top of that some of the most characterful (IMHO) are overpriced rubbish (Cold One Riders, Stegadons of all kinds, solo Kroxigors) compared to more up-to-date equivalent units. I would trade the overpowered-ness of the Slann and the very high performance of Chameleon Skinks, Salamanders and mounted Scar Vets for an army book with wide, balanced options.