I saw someone around here a bit ago that had a NG stuck on that back of a giant bat, and it got me to thinking...that would be AWESOME! And hilarious! We really don't have any units that they would make a good proxy for. Closest would probably be a gobbo boss on Gigantic Spider, but not really that good a match between rules and fluff. Move 7? Wall-crawlers? Poison?! So I gave up on the idea, but I just had a flash of insight.

What about using them (in friendly games with consent of the opponent before hand of course) with the rules for Terradon Riders? Swap out the Skink stats with NGs (they're really close actually; ours are slightly worse in I and Ld) then change them from poisoned javelins to spear+shield+bow.

So my questions are this:
- If you faced a themed, converted army (not done solely to gain benefit) would you be okay with someone playing with these?
- If you had the chance to include them (stats, point cost, and usefulness wise) would you jump on it in an instant? If the answer is consistently yes for any reason other than that they are cool then they might be too good. I don't want to it to be an awesome socks cheese unit, I just think it'd be fun, funny, and really really neat!
- Would you (either using them or playing against them) be more comfortable with them as Special or Rare choices? In Lizards they are Special, and I don't think they give us any more than they give Lizzies (possibly less as we have so many quick light units already), but as it'd be adding in a unique unit I could see understand Rare.
- How good are Terradon Riders even considered? I've never played against Lizzards or had any friends own them, but I don't think I've heard about these getting included in any of the cheese lists that people dread. I can see them being pretty useful if you get lucky/face an opponent with no shooting, but 2W and a laughable save for 30pts sounds like it'd make them not much to worry about.

Any other thoughts? (And I suppose I should mention, I'm building a themed NG army so they would make more sense than, say, putting bat-boyz in an army chock full of Savage Orcs and Grimgore)

Of course I'd play against them if the rules weren't unreasonable. Always best to ask well in advance of course and it's never going to be allowed in a tournament no matter how underpowered they are.

Wouldn't they look better with just one rider? I like to crowd my Night Goblins as much as the next guy but if you went with just one it would probably look like the bat could actually still fly.

I see no need to use existing rules from another army book, you're already breaking the rules so you might as well make up your own. I don't think Drop Rocks fits very well for bats for example.

If you compare them to Terradons costwise and you remove a rider (lose 1A and 1W), lose Drop Rocks, lose Poison and lose Cold Blood you could either add some new special rule or reduce the points by quite a bit.

Hmm, I suppose you could replace rockdropping with squigbombing if you modelled it right.

Huh, I didn't notice that Terradons had multiple riders. I was definitely thinking just one gobbo per bat (although as the Terradon itself has 2 wounds the model as a whole would still have 2 with only 1 rider).

What about changing the drop rocks to a sort of swooping attack that is closer to Daemons' Screamers? Have each Bat inflict a S4 hit whenever it moves over an enemy unit. Makes quite a bit more sense than dropping rocks. And Screamers are 35 pts, but they are S5 and have a 5+ Ward, so I'd still think that 30 for this rule would be pretty reasonable.

Sorry if I'm posting too late to be useful on this old-ish thread, I've only recently joined and I've been reading through some of these posts.

Interesting concept with bat riders, it seems the poor old greenskins are one of the few armies without flying units (apart from the Wyvern of course)

I used to play Lizardmen alot, and I found Terradon riders useful as long as they didn't try to be heroic.

Here's a few observations I can share about my experiences with them..

-They'd die pretty quickly against even quite modest infantry, and their low toughness meant that most shooting attacks meant almost certain death.
-Their rock-dropping attacks could take a good chunk out an elite unit or monster (if you didn't mind the Terradons getting squished in the process)
- They were a good suicide unit with a cheap character holding the Heart of Woe (dirty trick but it worked!)
- A hero with a cheapish magic weapon and a few other Terradon buddies could often act as assassins, lone characters or monster riders were often a little nervous when they heard leathery flappyness
- They worked well as faster fast cavalry (think Wolf Riders with wings), sweeping away skirmishers and warmachines/chariots (again with the dropping rocks) as long as they didn't take on anything too tough
- Their price seemed about right, weak but mobile and fast. I'm not sure if Flying High still exists in this edition, but back when I played them they could swoop down on anything on the table. Even the threat of something weak appearing anywhere on the table was enough for a few of my opponents to rethink their deployment and strategy.

Meanwhile, about the bats...
-The stats should be pretty similar to the Terradon riders, if they were too tough it would be almost cheating to include them.
- 30ish points sounds about right to me, considering they're quite weak but useful
- Two riders would be neat, one to fly it, the other to poke about with a spear or take potshots with a bow
-Maybe a Rare choice in an army lead by an Orc or Common Goblin character, and a Special choice if lead by a Night Goblin?
-For the swooping attack, maybe an automatic hit, but with the enemy unit getting a chance to strike back, maybe a -1 or -2 penalty to hit to account for them whooshing past?

I'm no Warhammer expert, but I hope my musings have been helpful :)