From a post I made at The Pyramid Vault:
http://z1.invisionfree.com/forums/Thee_For...showtopic=13101 Looks good, it's what I started with.
You don't nessesarily have to buy a hero or a priest if you don't already have them, but only have the box. You could make a couple of very convincing Scar-Vets and Priests just by taking a Saurus on foot, a saurus on a mount, or a skink or two, and flashing them up a bit. Especially making them look different from the rest of your troops, such as I gave my soldiers closed mouths, champions half open mouths, and my Scar-Vet had the wide open angry mouth! Adorning them with the plastic shoulder-pads, skulls, icons, and other bitz also help, and don't hesitate to cross pieces if appropriate, such as using a big hand weapon from the Cavalry sprue instead of from the Saurus sprue.
Likewise with a skink priest. You have to use all of the bodies, true, but obviously the meanest are the ones with a big, pierced crest. Make a couple of these braves, with appropriate weapons (like the big hand weapons they get) and make one or two more "big crests" mages by adding bitz like skulls, even giving them an adjusted staffby cutting up unused saurus spears and such. Go crazy, and it's cheaper than using metals!
Though not as good as before, you can make a couple of Jungle Swarms by getting some 40mm bases and adding the snakes that come with the Cavalry sprue. I even added a modifed cav banner to each to make them more diverse.
I also went with half and half spears and HWs, each has its merits, and even the rulebook states that you can use both in a unit, as all you need is a "majority" of the actually used weapon shown. You might also want to wait and play sans arms for a couple of games to see how well you like each, for both skinks and saurus.
Sounds like you've got a good thing going. I too wanted to keep it cheap, and this is how I started. If you max everything out (everyone gets sacred spawnings, all upgrades, ect) you can get up to 1500 or so this way, though not always recomended. I ended up buying a bit more (at 25% off, at least) but one thing you have to remember is that this game is expensive, unnessesarily so, so if you do like it, be prepared to either stay small or spend quite a bit on figs. Save money when you can if you can come up with a neat proxy (as previously stated). In fact, as long as both you and your opponent agree, you can use anything you want to proxy. I played a big game yesterday (9000pts. total in play) where a Tomb King player was using a werewolf from D+D to be his Casket of SOuls. I then took a sharpie and a cube of foam and wrote "Casket of Soul" on it, with some skulls and "How to Use Casket of Souls:" ect. writen on the back, and he then used that. We all had a good laugh.
You too can have fun like us.
Good luck,
bothquickanddead