No, it isn't.
If you need to be smarter then your opponent during all the game to have a chance to win, this means that the army is falling back and that you cannot afford any mistake.
We are slowly being forced to adopt a certain playstyle to be competitive, despite the fact that at the beginning it wasn't this way.
Our dinosaurs were designed for melee; our elite troops were considered amongst the hardest nut to crack. In the past, a new player could win (when facing an equally able opponent) just because our warscrolls were strong, when supported by synergies (and synergy was the key to victory not only for us, but for all the armies).
Now, our synergized units are shredded by unbuffed enemy units. Some of our old abilities, that once were very strong (debuffs to bravery and Blood Roar, just to name one) are now obsolete.
We must play hit & run, movement and positioning, we need to outsmart the opponent and avoid serious combat like the plague.
And this is not an effect of a redesign of our army, but it's the effect of all the other ones evolving, while we're stuck with a 2015 Battletome and our strongest tools are abilities given to us by 2018-19 General Handbooks.
I think what I was trying to say is being a little misinterpreted. We need a new book. Unquestionably so. Carnosaurs are laughable when compared to the the current monsters and a lot of our current mechanics/warscrolls are just janky af. Certain warscrolls and abilities have waned in the four years or whatever since our book has been released.
We just simply aren't as bad as a lot of posts in this thread implied, and that was my only point. I wasn't saying we have a ton of great warscrolls and it's a fun, diverse army that has a lot of strategic possibilities. Because its doesnt and theres generally a few tricks you are relying pretty heavily on to win.
With that out of the way, i both agree and disagree with a lot of what you said. Your individual points about our warscrolls I largely agree with, but the overarching point I do not. Fundamentally, I don't have a problem with "you need to be smarter then your opponent during all the game to have a chance to win." In my opinion, that's not inherently a bad thing.
Do we have to adopt a certain playstyle to win? In a sense yes, but also it's literally the same playstyle lizardmen have always needed to adopt. Since 6th edition we have been a movement based army that relies on superior tactics and punishing mistakes to win. We've don't have a combat oriented way to deal with the keepers of the world, but we dont need to.
Now, is that a "good" position to be in? Honestly, i'm not sure which is why i never made a judgement on that. My only statement is we are a solidly above average army and that a good player can win consistently with a good seraphon list.
that's about all you can ask for in any competitive games workshop game. There are very few books that support multiple competitive lists and multiple competitive ways to play any given book.
With all that said, i'm still consistently surprised how well random lizardmen lists seem to do. People thought terradons were terrible and a 21 terradon strong double shadowstrike list just went 4-1. A Gotrek based list went 4-1 a few weeks before that and a thunderquake list won adepitcon. The adepticon winning player is currently running a slann/kroak endless spell spam list and seems to feel like it's decently competitive. For a four year old book that's actually kind of awesome.
