Same here. I was in a hobby store when I was 10, looking at whatever there was to see. Rockets maybe? I don't really remember. Then I see this little metal dinosaur with dinosaurs holding spears!! I gotta have that! Bought the model. Found out there was a game. Told all my friends. The rest is history.
I started playing Lizardmen for two reasons... 1. Slann Mage Priest - awesome fluff, and still in my favourite warhammer mini of all time (it reminds me of Wart from Super Mario Bros. 2!) 2. Dinosaurs of course!
I had a 5th edition boxed set. Sixth edition was taking over, though. I did not have a lot of models. And at some point I thought of a way to use the Brett archers as a mercenary unit in the Lizardmen army. That meant I could use 3/4s of the minis from the box to cobble together an army. (The Bretts became Bretagna's Besiegers a variant of Barganza's[?] Besiegers DoW unit.)
Gods, I remember seeing the sets in the store Hobby Bunker when I was like seven. I bought a bunch of pewter Reaper Miniatures since the Lizardmen were far too expensive. Wanted them so bad because dinosaurs of course! Now as a clearly mature adult I can afford to buy them myself haha!
I wonder what percentage of Lizardmen players joined the cold-blooded cause because of Dinosaurs! One of my main reasons.
I am starting to think a rather large percentage since my local gaming store, one of the owners started playing lizardmen for that reason as well.
I collected them because no-one else in my area collected them. The dinosaurian mounts had no impact. I liked the lizardous troops. Yes, they are all real words. Check the Nexstionary
I started playing Lizardmen because of my love of lizards, dinosaurs etc. Very strange thing that happened is when I started playing them, I had much better games compared to Dark Elves, I did go back to have a Dark Elves game at one point and it went terrible. It seems Lizardmen are like blessed for my games (even though my Skinks got ran over by Dwarves at one point and the rest got blown up a few times by Chaos, but still very good at their jobs each game).
Where to beginn with. There are a lot of reasons why I did start a lizard army. => I like jungles => I like green like the army book => Dinos? => Aztecs / Mayans which means ripping out the hearts of your enemies eating them and sacrificing the rest what is left over and still being force of order (means the good guys) => They are coldblooded ( they keep calm despite ripping enemies to pieces with their teeth) => Obsidian blades look so awesome ! => Temple Guard , hey they do look awesome. Let us abduct Professor Bienlein! and there is more...
You must be a natural Lizardmen player then, because Dark Elves as an army are significantly stronger then Lizardmen. It's great that you have been able to make the most of the army!
It pains me every time I hear something like that. Not that you're wrong, but the fact that certain armies are considered generally better than others. It's just so poor game design, especially because the lizardmen fluff is SO much cooler than DE (Not that my opinion is coloured in any means, by the way ) , though the entire aspect of certain armies just having gotten slacked off because GW likes them or didn't bother checking if their rules would add up...*Sigh*...
It really is a sad situation that there is such a high degree of imbalance, though 8th edition is more balanced than 7th in my opinion. But the top, mid and low tiers of army power does still exist. Too many authors and not enough play testing. Lizardmen are mid tier at best, while DE are definitely top tier.
I believe there was a thread about calculating proper points for a model. The conclusion quickly being that GW doesn't really seem to do that and each book pretty much exists in its own little vacuum and that game designers just give points how they feel like it. The example given was Temple Guards Vs White Lions, but I think multiple such examples could be brought forth. My point (For points) is that IF they would just attempt something like that, they would (Perhaps, I'm not good with balancing rules) give a far more versitile and balanced game. Just make a standard model for points, like: M 4 Ws 2 Bs 0 S 2 T 2 W 1 A 1 I 2 Ld 5 - Common man Points 1 or 2 And lead every thing from there, is it worth twice, trice or quadruple that of such a model? Then price it within a reasonable points cost as such. Yes this isn't always doable and special rules and such and such.... But it would be a start, Mathematics to the rescue!!!
Well not sure if I had bad set up of models for Dark Elves but who would survive in fight? War Hydra or Troglodon? (Both have similar stats but War Hydra has more attacks depending on wounds) Somehow my Trog survies against the same unit while my Hydra vs that unit dies straight away or panics then gets ran over. Yep, Lizardmen works best for me. I thought Wood Elves are the hardest of the bunch, they can troll you from teleporting woods to woods as I noticed during a game between WE and Tomb Kings
Wood Elves specialize as an avoidance shooty army. They are fast, with great ranged ability but very squishy in close combat!