daloonieshaman wrote:Through League play and a combined 109 games the 4 lizardmen players without a doubt agree that surehands is a MUST first pick for a skink. (it is not holding the ball it is picking the damn thing up) If a skink has the ball he is in one of two placements. To far away for anyone to hit him, or scoring. Block is the very last skill of ALL of them he needs
Well, if you are going to be like that..with 182 lizardman games and a +50% win record with Lizardmen on FUMBBL, I say it's fine without it
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To me, there are 3 situations where you are picking up the ball:
1) Deep. Lack of a reroll isn't an issue, except against elves. Keep the ball deep, and keep the other skinks near it. They can't get there in the first turn, so you have a second turn with a reroll to pick it up and run to a new cage.
2) Short: Assuming you haven't lined all your saurii up on the LOS (cos that would invite a blitz), then you have spare saurii. Apart from the one that will do your blitz, you surround the ball with skinks before moving into the pickup. You then form a wall in front of the skinks with the saurii. If you are facing leaping elves, then you might need a reroll...but usually having to go through a loose wall of saurii and a tight X of skinks prevents them from capitalising on it.
3) Medium: 2 spare skinks to cover the ball, one to pick up, and your saurii wall them off. When I play, I use the saurii to create a wall higher up the pitch, which means that their first turn is smashing through the wall. It's more important to stop them swarming the backfield than it is to put the LOS down. Casualties with lizardmen are very much a secondary option.
In all cases, if it's absolutely vital, you have a team rr *shrug*. The times when I've needed desperately to pick the ball up and couldn't spare a team RR are few and far between. With the right planning, you plan for the first turn pickup to fail, and then move to the offense on the second or third turn. You usually have 8 turns to score, why rush things? In
this recent game I failed the first 2 pickups (with a reroll on the second), and still scored fairly easily in 8.
Now, the case for why block is useful:
1) -2d's. You play elves, you take a -2d. Heck, if you haven't got enough guard, you'll take a 2d. There's no guarantee that you can guard up all the cage corners(especially in rookie tournaments), and if the elves can remove the TZ, then it's an easy 5+ dodge into the cage (on average, by turn 3-4 they will have succeeded a 2d in). Block means they have to pow you, especially in a tournament like this where the only players with dodge and tackle are likely to be wardancers(who will leap in anyway, and require a whole new set of tactics).
2) Blocks of your own. It gives you a 2 pronged threat to their defense. I've played the skink 1d several times in low TV tournaments...backfield throwers don't always have block, and one thing saurii are *very* good at is trashing an X cage (just engage it and wait for them to try and shift you). If you can storm the backfield, that can completely stuff slow teams like orcs on a deep kick....but if you commit your saurii reserve blitzer(you were keeping one out of TZ and central to respond to threats right?) you are asking to be flanked. Skinks make the perfect storm...4 skinks storm backfield, one dies to a blitz, 3 then dodge out of whatever they were trying to cover them with, into the ball carrier next turn and 2d him with block, grab the ball and run it in.
3) Survivability. On defense, stopping the ball comes first. A 3+ dodge is inherently risky, so quite frequently, you have to disrupt the cage etc. It might be (happened a few times), that leaving your 4 skinks in contact for a turn is worth the chance of having a load BH (they don't have 4 players to try and move your saurii, forcing them to dodge or get their cage smashed). If this happens, your block skink is very good at surviving them. They need a pow on 2d to put him down...hardly certain by any means. In addition, your skinks will get blitzed when your opponent is on offense. Block means that it's more likely that you'll have a ball carrier in the second half.
I've always held that if you set up your initial receiving position correctly, you don't need to worry about sure hands *shrug*. As I said, very very useful against strip ball elves though.
Sorry!
. As far as I can tell with STABB, your tackle might not turn up. Also, a tackle and a frenzy are both threats for different reasons. An elf player might mark the tackle, but forget the frenzy, and if you've got to mark both of them in such a way they can't be blitzed free...it's tricky and easy to mess up.
