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Lizardmen follow up set ideas

  • M

    so while reading the lizardmen thread over in the grand battles section, i started thinking about where the Lizardmen of the fantasy range could go in future expansion sets.

    an obvious one would be another infantry set with additional weapon options. say Axes/swords/clubs and shields for the fantasy side (perhaps with some 'commander/hero' bits as well), and blunderbusses plus some RPG's and LMG's for the scifi side. (maybe an arm with a satchel charge/explosive mine or the like?)

    i can't really see them having a "heavy weapons team" type set (can't really think of a fantasy seige weapon that would fit, and the weirdwar/scifi options would basically just be cannons you could proxy easily enough)

     

    how about Cavalry? obviously lizardmen would be riding bigger prehistoric animals of some kind. i'm wary of jumping directly to dinosaurs, given GW's extensive use of them for their Lizardmen/Seraphon, but that is a popular trope.

    perhaps give them something like a small ceratopsian, or some sort of midget sauropods? i'd personally think that avoiding raptors would be a good idea for such a set. a little bit too common a trope.

    personally i'd go with a ceratopsian of some kind. say, Centrosaurus sized. (IE a little bigger than a rhino) could serve as their society's equivilent of oxen as far as usefullness for pulling and carrying stuff, but could be used in battle a bit like a small war elephant, able to charge into enemies. maybe have them carry two riders.. one mahout, one warrior with a long spear or a bow. probably no howdah though.

     

     

    you'd just want to make sure the arms are interchangeable with the infantry box, for extra build options.

     

    (main reason to go for a smaller dino btw would be to ensure you can fit the parts onto a single sprue, or even a half sprue. so you can fit plenty into the box)

  • CT

    I like the idea. I do get why you would be hesitant on using raptors due to how prevalent they are as calvary. Since Bulldogs already has a raptor calvary set you don't have to worry much about that probably. I think one additional kit for expansion would be a more dedicated command set. Particularly focusing on chiefs, shamans, and other famous character roles lizardmen usually have.

    Another cool idea would be more heavy infantry, like the Ogre equivalent to the Lizardman, possibly a Gatorman. Honestly, different types of Lizardmen in general would be cool.

    0 likes
  • M

    Partly due to the bulldogs getting them, partly due to them being a common trope.. but also because GW already has lizardmen riding raptors, in two flavors, so doing something else seems like a good idea. rhino sized quadrapeds captures the 'cavalry' feel while being something you don't see as often.

    hmm.. perhaps don't even do actual dinos, do stuff based on obsolete ideas of dinos? to go with the pulp-Retro feel of lizardmen as a concept? Crystal park Iguanadon!

    (art source)

    an almost literal reptile rhino.

     

    and as far as command set.. thats sort of what i meant with the 2nd infantry box. have the sprue include say, stone axes and hide shields, but also a 'trade goods' metal sword of some kind, a staff with the some seperate icons or totemic gribblies you can glue to it to make a standard, various small bits you can use to bling out your guys.. plus a few more napoleonic/scifi options like blunderbuss (muzzleloading shotgun) and Rocket propelled grenade launcher. and of course some interesting head options with extra decorations (including, IMO, at least one head with a british pith helmet. becaus it would be funny), thus letting it double as a command box (making champions, cheiftans, shamans, etc), or as an elite infantry box (the axes), and a heavy weapons box (the guns) depending on how you choose to build it.

  • BVD

    @Mithril2098 Actually, I could see them having heavy weapon or artillery set and it still working for generic fantasy and VSF/SciFi easy. 

    A cannon and maybe a light swivel cannon with optional "magazines" bits for both would do quite well with what the lizardmen have:

    They could also go with giant crossbow with two or more differnt bolts (one for normal fantasy and one or two with a bomb for VSF/SciFi or have magzine bit instead for the SciFi/VSF part):

     

    They could have East Asian style rockets with some bits to make them less fantasy and more VSF/SciFi:

     

    I could even see the little scalies a Hwacha with parts to change into a more "SciFi" rocket launcher:

     

  • M

    perhaps, but i'm just having trouble squaring the almost stone age style of the WGA lizardmen (with rough chipped stone spearheads and loincloths) with the level of society that would be able to produce seige weapons of that sort. the ones we have come across as a semi-nomadic or proto-cities type force. like if they have cities, they'd be like things similar to Great Zimbabwe or Çatalhöyük, or maybe ancestral puebloans. with neolithic or maybe early bronze age level of development. (at least, until some trader comes along to sell them muskets, and later AK's)

    and muzzle loaders or hitech support guns seem like the sort of thing that would work better as conversion work (especialyl if WGA ever makes a napoleonic era cannon crew set) or an STL release. it would be hard to make a box for them that can fit the fantasy, weird napoleonic, and scifi categories all at once.

  • BVD

    Thats the thing, I can't really see them as Stone Age; they seem more like a black powder empire or at least an  iron age race that is deceptive looking. For the lizardmen, I would look more at South East Asian countries such as Vietnam and Philippines that have a long, long, history of gun using warrior guys in loin cloths dating back to the 16th century if not earlier thanks to Kublai Khan spreading firearms technology. I mean look at the sprue closer:

    Loincloths are just jungle/hot place/swim wear from groups that may be part of a tribal culture but could just as easily be lower tier members of a greater nation/Empire. Think about the east Indians, the Khmer, Thai and the other South East Asian nations’ history: their foot warriors and levies often wore just loincloths, in some places for centuries but we would be fools to call their civilizations Stone Age, particularly when some were toting firearms before most Europeans knew what gunpowder was.

    But why are the Lizardmen loin cloths a little ragged looking you ask, cause they are Lizardmen and don’t care if they look a little ragged as long it protects their dangly bits, or maybe it because they are poorer members of their race. They are being sold as enemies of the “good guys”, so that could be factor as well, ragged and rough is often the bad guy look in fantasy.

    In addition the lizardmen all have these bandoleers with what are clearly metal buckles and pouches, so these coldbloods are at least Bronze Age level, probably farther along into the post Iron Age.

    Likewise they clearly have metal worked swords, not stone and bone. In fact the spear heads you claim are chipped stone are pretty clearly the same way since they have sockets if you look closely and may even have been made using a mold (I mean they are identical spearheads on different spears and are actually pretty smooth heads, that’s not possible with stone napping). But why do they have the unfinished twig shafts you ask, either cause they are lizardmen that don’t care if there are wood knots on the shaft as long the spear is function (very Bug Wars like😆) or perhaps there is some deeper cultural/mystic reason, the spear itself is also more like a throwing spear than a thruster so they maybe an expendable weapons.

    (While we are on it most of the lioncloth wearing "nomadic tribes" of Africia  have used iron weapons they made themselves since Romen times, clothing isn't a big factor in metallurgy development😆).

      Also about the guns the Lizardmen have, none on the sprue are actually low tech enough to be considered Napoleonic era flintlock muzzle loaders, all their rifles are later Victorian era level breechloaders with percussion caps even the native ones sold on the box as “fantasy guns” are actually either Snider Enfield conversions or just as likely lizardman made and adapted variants of the Snider Enfield rifle. So tech level wise,  they have low level gunsmiths and an arms supplier (maybe evil Turkish Dwarves) at least to all the guns on the sprue being made by them at workshops/factories  at most going for them. (So maybe that blunderbuss you want should be a lever action or a revolver loader blunderbuss just to make into a properly themed fantasy gun).  

    Heck if one wants to go with the idea they are the lowest quality of warrior from a more advanced reptilian empire you could even throw in the Death Fields AK as a lizardman made “automatic rifle” comparable to a BAR for industrial fantasy and Isekai Pulp games such as  “Sludge”, “Freelancer Skies Over Tolindia”,  “Sorcery and Shotguns” or even “Quar”.

      Honestly I think some sort of WW1 style gas weapon could work with them, I mean they have the masks for it.

     

  • M

    fair enough. i'm not sure i can agree on the idea of them being part of some higher tech empire, i can see how someone might choose to run it that way. to me it seems clear that the intent was to present a pre-industrial tribal society (per their usual fantasy depiction), with the option for them field higher tech weapons by way of trade or scavenging from more advanced enemies. not unlike the American Plains nations, the Zulu and Matebeli wars in africa, or the Montagnard in the Vietnam war.

    having given some thought to the idea of heavy weapons, i've thought of an option that might work.. but to me they still feel like they don't quite fit. basically i'd imagine a two wheeled cart (not a proper gun-carriage and limber, more like a repurposed hand cart thing.) onto which you can fit a large crossbow, a napoleonic cannon, or an autocannon.

    though to be honest, i still feel like traditional heavy weapons type mounts don't really fit the dynamic the exiting set suggests. i'd imagine that if they had them they'd be more like a Zamburak, the mounting of wallguns, swivelguns and other lighter support guns (such as gatlings, later on) to the saddles of a beast of burden. which if the cavalry set is done, could be done easily enough as a new sprue with saddle, gunner, and gun options that could be added to whatever animal got chosen for the cavalry box.

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  • BVD

    @Mithril2098 Well if we are going to be completly honest, design wise they where clearly thinking this game when they did the lizardmen:

     

    So with that in mind them having "proper gun-carriage and limber" fits fine for the same reason the Dahomy Empire had them along with heavy machine guns (ie trade partners), maybe they should have some tribal decortions though.

    Plus the Lizardmen are clearly at least on the same tech level as the iron age elephant riding Khemr in my pervous post, which I am reposting here simply to point out those gentlemen actually have a proper "gun-carriage"  for thier ballista in the right hand corner cause its really not a new idea or unique to  Europe:

    (in fact this would have been when the Vikings where raiding Europe,  so yeah you need to rethink your world veiws as far tech development goes. Just remember clothing or lack thereof by itself tends to dectate the type of weather normal for a culture, not its tech level😉).

    Add to this that from a mini manufacturing stand point it would actually be a whole lot easier for WA to err on the side of them "being advanced enough to make thier own guns minus the space AKs, of course they have X and Y" for fantasy box lore going forward. I mean if they are not making the rifles then who is and why are they not represented? it saves time just to have them do it themselves and gives more playspace to them and the other races which is probably wise given Quar is making more noise.

    Setting aside gun carriges and limbers and tech levels, if we are just talking for space 1889,  the logical artillery  options for lizardmen would be Krupp's C64 or 9 cm Kanone C/73:

     The Hotchkiss revolving cannon:

    And the BaK to deal with those pesky airships:

    But honestly I don't think most of those are real good genric fantasy options (the  C/73 might fit since dwarves often have breachloader cannons, but the others are more out there for one reason or another), my prior suggestions though would work fine across the board as would yours. 

    That all said I do agree that a hodaw  wearing quadreped monster would work nicely for them, though I don't think that should be marketed as a heavy weapon or artillery set so much as a seperate "vehicle/big warbeast cavalry" set (remember this is a whole army we are talking about, let them have a big beast hodaw set and a seperate artillery set).

    Personally  though I think armored warriors with optional shoulder armor and less delicate melee weapons would be a better starting point for more Lizardmen though, with the key focus being said melee weapons: maybe reimagined in steel Aztec style weapons, maybe Fillipino style swords and shields or just something curvy, point is more melee options.

    If any range weapons are added I would go with either some heavy looking fantasy style percussion cap pistols, a single fantasy hand crossbow, or maybe a fantasy take on the Chinese manportalable fire arrow launcher with parts to make it either fantasy or SciFi:

     

    Edit: though the satchle idea you brought up in the first post would be a great idea, maybe with throwable alchmeical flasks for potions and poison gas.

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  • M

    towed guns just don't feel right to me. and there is no reason why every faction has to have every possible unit type. perhaps a Zamburak type cavalry unit might be classed more as a heavy cav set, but i don't see that as a negative. and if said set comes with say, reloader arms with shells and/or magazines, and gunner arms for firing the animal mounted support guns, it could also be used alongside something like The Damned's heavy weapons or a napoleonic cannon to convert infantry to make towed/carried field gun units if a player wants those. (with perhaps the animals and their riders getting some muskets or AK's from the infantry set to become units of dragoons) 

    as far as weapons idea for the 'armed large animal' idea.. the classic ballista/"bolt thrower" for the fantasy set up. basically a large crossbow (or even just an oversided bow) maybe something like this oxybeles. relatively simple.

    i'd considered puckleguns for the VSF/napoleonic option.

    or just an old swivelgun.

    the 'modern/Scifi' would be easy enough given the recent stuff with The Damned. just pick one or two of the smaller options from those. (i've actually read a scifi series where you had plasma cannons mounted on the back of dinosaur sized lizards. though in that case it was a unit of human marines stranded on an alien world and having to march across a continent to reach a spaceport.)

     

    now, id we do get a emplaced heavy weapons type set, just to play devils advocate agaisnt my own stance, perhaps the focus should be on lighter equipment.. you'd probably still be looking at a ballista of some sort for the fantasy side, but for the VSF perhaps a coehorn mortar? they're small and fairly simple, and would be fairly easily portable. so would make sense for the "native uprising" type theme the existing set seems to have been envisioned as.

    and you could supply a 1 or 2 pounder cannon (ala the swivelgun posted above) as an alternate build option for the same gun mount.

    then for the 'modern' version give them just some light mortars.

     

  • BTB

    I like the Lizardmen box we have, they make good foot soldiers, but I think they are missing range weapon options that aren't guns like bows, crossbow, sling and or blowpipes for their use in traditional fantasy games.  If there was an expansion of the line I would also like to see Lizardmen with more clothes and armor to make leaders, priests and shamans.

    Their lack of clothes also makes it difficult to turn them into proper Aliens/Space Lizardmen. I really want to go wild with them and build some kind of Retro-Science Fiction/Conan type of Lost Civilisation with them, but there are too many parts I am missing.

  • BVD

    @Bobby The Basher Hmm, nah they really need more melee weapon user options before another round of range weapons, (there are quite a few fantasy game settings with guns and the spears are pretty good for blowpipe conversions, in some ways they make better blowpipes than spears, plus they are pretty clearly multipurpose spears that can and honsetly probably should be veiwed as throwing spears).

    You know options like shields, axes, clubs,  and swords that do not feel like dualist or decorative command weapons.  As it stands the smart way to buy and build a WA lizardman army is buy 3 or more lizardman boxes along with either WA's  Afgahn and/or Aztec human sprues to steal parts from and plan on Sludge ruleset being your go to.

    Edit: By the way @Mithril2098 Sludge and Space 1889 are my main reasons for arguing with you on gun carriages. Lots of cannon play in Sludge and Space 1889 is late colonial war action with a twist where even the natives started pulling out machines gun on carriages, so I don't see why the lizardmen of Venus wouldn't have gun carriges. Also I know you don't see it but I think it would be cool to have fantasy ballistia on a gun carriage towed by big dinos with thier swivel gun bedecked hodaws. 

  • Yronimos Whateley

    I don't know about anyone else, but Wargames Atlantic lizard men with batteries of those old medieval Chinese-style rockets seem to me to go together perfectly.

    Some handguns to go with the long fantasy-style muskets and assault rifle-things would be welcome in my book, as would more melee options - warclubs or maces seem like they'd fit that brutal lizard-brain thing well, but I could go with perhaps some sort of alien swords instead.

    "Space 1889" was one of the first things I thought of when Wargames Atlantic first released that set so long ago (I guess it's only been a cuple years now, but seems like ages ago!) 

    Lizard-men were routine stock monsters for Weird Tales regulars like Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith,  and H.P. Lovecraft, and undoubtedly made their way into fantasy gaming from there to D&D.  Products of "de-evolution" from fallen advanced and alien Atlantean and Lemurian lost civilizations, which retreated into the Hollow Earth to wait out the end of the Age of men to return from their hidden vaults with a weirdly stone-age super-science indistinguishable from magic to work mischief with against mortal surface-dwellers.  Also, things like Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars - I just sort of imagined these lizard-guys living in a pulp Venusian rain forest from sci-fi back in the days when whatever was on Venus or Mars was anyone's guess!  Those "Old Solar System" "planetary romance" pulps like the John Carter stories ran on a post-apocalyptic solar system full of lost civilizations that used swords, muskets, and ray guns side-by side.

    I wouldn't mind seeing some "ray gun" weaponry and sucn, and those antique-style rocket batteries could absolutely work for a fantasy setting, while honestly, the technology didn't advance all THAT much by WWII, and wouldn't look quite at home in Death Fields....


    German Nebelwerfer from WWII - the technology really doesn't look THAT different from the fantasy-friendly rocket batteries from medieval China, nor from some modern, high-tech multiple rocket launchers:  a Lizard-man heavy weapons rocket launcher could surely be designed to work in some vague "nowhere land" that fits across fantasy and sci-fi genres!

  • Tchey

    I’m still a very novice with miniatures and this kit, but i see my lizardmen more like elite troops, stronger than average human soldiers, faster, deadlier. Kind of Predator-like.

    In my army for the game Hobgoblin (rank and flank from the creator of Gaslands), i tend to have 3 lizards per unit, while undead are 6, and human would be 5. But that’s my vision.

    I’d love to have more variations, more tails, some armored bodies, different postures too, as we currently only have 3 bodies and 3 tails. Also, more "shield" arms, and melee choices.

  • Yronimos Whateley

    By the way, I can't resist adding that I REALLY appeciate that gas masks and rifles of different types were included in this set, when it would have been extremely easy for WA to have simply made it a straight-forward fantasy-only set and left it at that!  I kinda wish the frame had been bigger to allow more fantasy and sci-fi bits alike to the set, but even the options that sci-fi gamers did get in the nominally fantasy set were impressive, given the limited space WA had to work with!

  • BVD

    @Yronimos Whateley Yeah the gasmasks really are fun and work great for fantasy as well, I kinda of wish they had done something similar for the Goblins though they are good enough the way they are.

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