Saurus Oldblood

The Saurus Oldblood was designed to synergize with Saurus Warriors and Saurus Guard, with two abilities that pertain to them.  But one such ability offers only small benefits, and the other comes with a tradeoff that may not be worth it.  But it can move around with a unit of Saurus Warriors, where it benefits from Look Out, Sir!, and with its 2" weapon range, can battle from behind the Warriors where its safe from 1" range weapons.

The Oldblood comes with all the SAURUS buffs in a Coalesced army, and can serve as a cheap general that can benefit from the very good Coalesced Saurus command traits and artefacts.  Like any SAURUS general in Coalesced, it can be upgraded to be even more resilient, or serve as a valuable support hero.

As a unit with a Wounds characteristic of 5 or more, the Oldblood counts as 2 models for contesting objectives.

There's not much of a case for the Saurus Oldblood in Starborne.  Starborne lacks synergies with SAURUS, and offers no faction command traits or artefacts.  It can join a unit of Saurus Warriors or Guard to fight along side them improve their fighting with its special "Wrath of the Seraphon" All-out Attack, but All-Out Defense is usually more valuable.  You would almost always be better off spending the points toward more Saurus Guard, more Saurus Warriors, or go a different route and get a Skink Starpriest for the same cost.

In Coalesced, there may be the occasional use case for the Saurus Oldblood, especially as the general.  As a SAURUS, it benefits from Scaly Skin to reduce the damage of attacks against it, further enhancing its resilient 3+ save.  It also gets the +1 to bite on its three bite attacks, and in Koatl's Claw, it gets +1 to Wound on charge.  As the general, it can be enhanced with the excellent Saurus command traits and artefacts, to further enhance its resilience and/or provide powerful support enhancements.  As a Saurus general, it also makes Aggradons battleline units.  It can also take the Arcane Tome as its artefact, making it a wizard and an Andtorian Locus, for a super resilient general to achieve the Spellcasting Savant grand strategy.

The Saurus Oldblood is meant to sort of blend in with a Saurus Warrior or Saurus Guard unit.  As such, when it fights, it can have 1 Saurus Warrior or Saurus Guard unit wholly within 12" fight consecutively just before or after it, almost as if they are fighting as a single unit.  This is nice, but not something to add this unit to your army for.

The Oldblood's Wrath of the Seraphon ability sounds impressive, but has two fatal downfalls.  The ability makes it so that whenever it issues the All-out Attack command to a unit of Saurus Warriors or Saurus Guard, they get +1 to wound in addition to the normal +1 to hit that the command provides.

• In Koatl's Claw, the subfaction in which the Oldblood on foot is most likely to be included in an army list, the Saurus Warriors and Guard will already get +1 to wound whenever they charge.  So at least much of the time, this ability won't be helpful.
• The main job of Saurus Warriors and Saurus Guard when in combat is to survive.  That's what they're there for.  It is almost always better to issue All-out Defense to them rather than All-out Attack, and one cannot issue both.  So this ability should usually go unused.

As your general, a Saurus Oldblood can take a command trait.  If it's a Coalesced Oldblood, it can choose from two of the very good Savage Commanders command traits:

• Thickly Scaled Hide makes the Oldblood more resilient, adding +1 to all save rolls.  It already has a 3+ save and -1 to enemy damage, so this +1 to save can make it very hard to kill.
• Vengeful Defender is the support choice, and is probably the better pick.  This lets the general and up to two other nearby SAURUS or KROXIGOR units make an extra normal move in the hero phase (or one other eligible unit can make two extra moves instead), greatly increasing their threat range.  This can only be used while the general is wholly within your territory, but there's not necessarily an urgent need to have the Oldblood on foot advance into enemy territory.

A Coalesced Saurus Oldblood can take an artefact from the Relics of the Warrior table, which includes three artefacts of power, two of which are excellent:

• The Blade of Realities enhances the damage output of the Oldblood's Relic Celestite Weapon, improving its rend by 1, and giving it +1 to Damage against enemy heroes.  This is not really worth it on the Oldblood on foot, as it typically only amounts to a few extra damage.
• The tactical option is Sotek's Gaze, which prevents all enemy models with a Wounds characteristic of 1 or 2 from contesting objectives when within 6" of the Saurus Oldblood.  Not only does this make it easier to score objectives, but also sometimes affects the enemy unit's abilities.  For example, against another Seraphon army, it could prevent Saurus Warriors from getting their +1 to save or prevent Raptadon Chargers' Tepok Lances from dealing 2 damage.