Eh, I personally wouldn't seperate us from other power armies. This site has the tendancy to downplay our strength, and the outside perception is definitely a little more extreme. If you told someone you thought seraphon was the best book, you probably wouldn't get a ton of arguments. Its easily right in the mix with fyreslayers, KO and tzeentch and there isn't a ton of separation between them. I agree that the nature of releases does create a situation where some books languish for a while, but i guess i've just played for so long at this point i've just accepted it (for better or worse, and I can be a bit of a gw apologist sometimes). I think they could do a lot better job keeping books more up to date, but things have certainly gotten better. Hopefully we keep trending in that direction!
I personally would say that right now it's: #1: KO. #2: Lumineth, #3: Seraphon. The recent Metawatch data came out before the full release of the Lumineth. Now to be 100% honest I have yet to play against them, but I'm not looking forward to it. I'm not looking forward to never being able to get magic spells off unless I bring Kroak, never being able to do anything to Teclis unless I bring Kroak and all his support units, *still* losing the magic game because Teclis can bounce it back on me, getting my heroes sniped turn 1 or 2 without being able to do anything about it, or losing the objective game to the cows and hammer elves because lol they can kick you off objectives and also have two units fight in a row. Lumineth at the very least *seem* to have only one weakness, and that is a somewhat low model count. They also *seem* on paper to be able to hard-counter Seraphon at the moment. This is just how it appears on paper to me, and I fully acknowledge that I could be completely wrong. I guess we can only wait and see how they fare when they start participating in tournaments. I think it's only the Fangs of Sotek Kroak and Skink spam list that's truly annoying to play against, but I do agree that at least this one list is probably annoying for most opponents. All of our other lists have severe weaknesses that even armies weaker than us in general can easily exploit. But I think this has more to do with the way AoS is more or less "rocket tag" with the amount of pure damage and especially shooting damage that most top armies have right now, and less to do with them actually being "weak" lists. FoS at least has some ways to counter or endure the initial enemy onslaught and still be able to hit back. You're right, I think that sometimes it appears that we downplay our own army's strength. I believe that's most likely due to this being a Lizardmen/Seraphon fan community, and we really do love our army. But as ardent fans I think the tendency is to look and see what could be better. Doesn't mean that we ignore what we have, just that it's human nature to always be looking for something better, I guess. I don't think anyone here actually thinks we're a weak army, but since we have a pretty safe environment to voice our wishes for what we feel could or should be it can definitely come off as overly negative at times. I think a lot of the criticism of our own faction comes from the fact that currently there is only one truly competitive list, that being Fangs of Sotek with Lord Kroak and Skink blobs. A very large number of us are really tired of being forced to only use Kroak, Salamanders and Skinks if we want to win. The majority of our army is very sub-par in comparison. Doesn't mean it's not fun to play and you can't do well with it, but I think that people are usually attracted to the army because of the dinosaurs and the big, tough Saurus somewhat more than the idea of just running Skink hordes. We want to play Lizardmen, not Gitz. And the fact that more than half of our army is considered mediocre at best is a big turn-off to fans. But we're also loyal, so rather than give up and go play another faction we tend to voice our displeasure at the fact that Saurus and big dinos aren't a viable competitive army. Stuff like this annoys the Lizardmen fans because, at least lore-wise, we get nothing in AoS. Lord Kroak should be just as strong, if not stronger in-game than Teclis, Nagash, Morathi, etc. Our Saurus shouldn't be chaff, our dinosaurs should be able to go head-to-head with other monsters, etc. Seraphon have a single very powerful list and a bunch of just ok lists. Other factions may be considered weaker than our strongest list, but still have multiple ways to play that are equally good. KO is in the same "boat" (haha) with one massively OP list and the rest of them being very underwhelming, but at least their army is much smaller than ours so it makes more sense. That, and like you and @Canas were saying in the other thread a lot of the newer armies are getting a lot of "break the rules" abilities that while maybe not the most overpowered thing in the game, are much more annoying because there's literally nothing you can do about it. Lumineth are a very good example of this and that's why I believe they are OP. Not looking forward to the Umbraneth when they come out. Being shadow-based, I'm guessing we're going to be looking at a lot of army-wide negatives to hit, teleporting, and yet another god on the battlefield. Malekith will probably be just as annoying as Teclis and Morathi, if not more so. Sorry for the long post, I know I get overly detailed sometimes
No worries at all! I actually think a big part of the problem is that people aren't being experimental enough. There is definitely more than one competitive list and I think the negativity helps feed that narrative. If people embraced the power and really explored our book's incredible depth, I think we'd be surprised. Most of our army is not subpar, you don't have to play kroak, salamanders, and skinks to win and you can 100% play saurus and dinos and do well, at least in my opinion. Just feel like the problems of other armies are being overexaggerated and the power of our army is being downplayed which makes thing look even more skewed. You can do just as much about sentinels as you can about teleporting salamanders or run and shooting 40 skinks, or even 3d6 charging knights. Things are crazy out there man, but every game you play isn't against changehost. The books good, believe in it, play tons of games, use tons of units. Go wild man.
Pretty much. the only "problem" in our army is the need to rely heavily on synergies, which comes with 2 issues: - many of the key heroes are frail ones - to make synergies work requires a certain degree of skill, while other armies are just strong without the need to align circumstances to unleash the combo. But our overall potential is still high.
yah most of the problem is a VERY high skill floor and a bunch of new players. the main reason i personally don't think we are at the top is that we are so easy to pick apart. nothing in our book is all that durable and it's only a mater of time until people figure out how to counter us or kroak is nerfed. i know we have been doing well so far but i think thats more to do with a high representation then anything else. i don't know for sure i have been having a hell of a time finding decent stats. that and 2 of our major opponents just got a big buff. TLDR we are good but hard to use. i am still wary but most of my complaints are poor/boring warscrolls and abandonment of the core rules that i loved not over all power.
I'd add on to that that there's also a serious disconnect between our rules & our fluff in places, especially for our saurus. What should be relativly elite medium to heavy troops according to the lore end up fighting like hordes of light cannonfodder. Which is just kinda weird.
ya that's why i really wish TG weren't terrible or we kept our shields. heck just make it a MW protection ability instead of rend nullification it is so easy to pick our guys apart with mortals.
on a separate note blood bowl keeps getting the fun dinosaurs any idea if we can proxy him as something? if nothing else he would make a good dragon oger
Give him a hammer and make him a really odd kroxigor. Give him a gold cannon and a shield to make him a really, really weird bastilidon.
Totally, its definitely not a straight forward book. Actually why I think focusing more on what it's capable of with good play is so important. I think the fangs of sotek list comes across as "the only competitive option" because it just has so many fall backk mechanics, it's easy to recover from mistakes. Summoning, teleporting, massive overwatch, and strong range/magic mortal wound damage really covers a lot of holes that you would have to actually play around with a different list.
I've played against my gms lumineth and I didn't think they were better but then again anyone who is trying to cast vs a kroak and a slann is in for a world of hurt. And 2 flying dread saurians with a 2+ save vs ranged is a pain for most to deal with
I believe a huge problem with AoS in general is that a lot of people don't play a lot of different armies, and even if they do, they likely cannot run diverse builds of those armies. People will be so laser focused on their army they either only see the strengths or (most of the time) only see the weaknesses. I used to struggle vs Skaven until I started list building Skaven armies in the anticipation of facing Seraphon armies. Once I started to do that, I began defeating my buddy that plays Skaven more.
Yeah, playing other armies definitely gives you a much deeper understanding of how they work and how to play against them. Unfortunately most people can't afford to have multiple large armies. Thankfully TTS lets you practice with anything, so maybe that's a good way to learn how to counter other "OP" armies...
Sometimes it's not even about playing, but just about list building. The difficult part is understanding the ins and outs of a faction without getting the book. I did a lot of Skaven list building but I found out some of their strengths and weaknesses.
I suspect its because today was heavy Chaos focused. (Decay for 40k and decadence for AoS). I don't know when the Seraphon warband will be fully revealed, hopefully soon, but we'll see.
At the very least seeing Sigvald return shows that GW at least isn't afraid to bring back old characters from Fantasy. Maybe there's hope for the return of some Lizardmen after all...