Lizardmen are a tier 2, borderline tier 3 army? Uh no. Access to the most point efficient caster in the game (not to mention its wonderful special abilities), 2 fantastic arcane items (Cupped Hands, cube of Darkness), cheap back up casters, fast skirmishers, flyers, scouts, solid HtH troops, strong shooting, monsters and Cold Blooded! Top tier for sure. But if you need empirical proof, a quick look at Rankings HQ shows Lizardmen as the number one army, narrowly edging out WoC.
Point efficient? 275 base, no combat ability at all, all his upgrades are expensive. Also forces you to take TG bunker (good and bad), unless you pay even more for Ethereal (questionable given everyone puts magic weapons on their combat heroes anyway, and magic still kills him). Slann are awesome, but we shell out so much to field them. Invalidates any other Lord selections as well, due to eating up the percentages so quickly.
Cube is kinda situational, and can backfire (it's annoying with Life, Shadow or Death, as it cancels the RIP you were casting as well), the remove RIP is on a 4+ as well. It's also quite expensive, you give up any other items on a Priest essentially or again, raising the cost of the Hypnotoad (and eating his arcane slot, meaning if he takes it no Hands).
Cupped Hands is essential however, there is invariably something we want to IF through (and statistically you'll miscast at least once per game).
Priests are the same price as Level 1's and 2's from most other books. On the downside, they are saddled with the questionable Heavens Lore (except in SoM, where 'Fantastic Foresight' will win you the game). The real value of a Priest is operating the EOTG (singular, as it's close to impossible to field two, due to percentages), and in carrying stuff like Blood Statuette, the dispel scroll or Ring of Rhuin (which obviously don't belong on Scar-Vets and will just further jack up the cost of Slann).
Our skirmishers, flying units, and Scouts are all suicide units (and some are too cost prohibitive in smaller games to fit in with the mandatory Core, TG bunker, Slann and Salamanders).
Saurus and TG do fine against chaff, but throw in a combat rock or Knights and they are in serious trouble (they're only marginally less expensive and they go last without Light magic up). They get Steadfast, Cold Blooded etc, but in practise that can mean they don't run from fights they're already losing.
Our shooting outside Salamanders is non-existant. Blowpipes kill a narrow range of things effectively (unarmoured monsters and monstrous infantry), and they will most likely get one volley in before dying. Magic artillery is how we balance against actual shooty armies (y'know, with real warmachines, not the gimped bolt throwers or silly giant blowpipes we are saddled with).
Monsters...Stegs are good, Salamanders are good, thats it really. Monsters are kind of unimportant in 8th. Carnosaur is fun, and not being a Large Target helps him hide better than most, but he's actually impossible to field with a Slann.
I don't know how they rank Lizardmen above WoC, vagaries of tournaments I guess.
I'm speaking more about 'if you build a proper list, how does it rank', not 'players taking terrible builds of tier 1 armies against the mono-builds of the tier 2/3', which may or may not have been the case in those games (or simply the vagaries of Warhammer etc). WoC faceroll Lizardmen in most situations, you have to avoid taking Warriors and Chosen and Tzeentch Sorcerors (and any useful magic items) to gimp them hard enough for Lizardmen to outfight on fair terms (in straight Core trade and Special trades). And if you're doing that, you aren't playing competitive WoC by definition. Not saying you can't beat WoC (dice rolls can always screw them and/or favour you), but it's an uphill battle for sure, and I definitely wouldn't rank Lizardmen ahead of WoC.
Magic tricks is not all we have. I have brought my Carno led Lizardmen to 4 Indy GTs and walked away with 2 Best Overalls, a Best General, and the last one I made it to Table 1 on the final round before losing to skaven. At no point did I need magic tricks to win.
Not going to detract from your wins, but that is really surprising. I'd be really interested to see what builds you fought, and how individual games went. I guess without the deadweight of Slann and TG eating up so many points (and EOTG), you have a lot more units and options with deployment. Do you Steg spam to make your Carnosaur less of a cannonball/magic nuke magnet?
With 4 chaff units, the Chosen should never be able “to break through” your lines.
I won't deny thats an effective strategy (and I wouldn't NOT do it), but it's a reasonable expectation he'll just set those chaff units on fire with gun magic or the Hellcannon and power through anyway. In his shoes, it's what I would do (because it's obvious that if said delaying units die/run, there is no roadblock). Some WoC players also have their own flanker/disruption units (Marauder Cav, Knights, even cheap Marauder blocks), who can potentially clear the way (either by killing the roadblock themselves or forcing you to re-direct them instead of the Chosen, to prevent stuff like Knights slamming into the flank of a Saurus block).
I will put a couple of scenarios together with Battle Chronicler this week.
Awesome. I know I'm disagreeing with you, but it's from a position of 'I think there are obvious counters so it might not always work'. I'm keen to see it work in practise, and how to shut down the obvious counters I mentioned (ie gunning down/redirecting the redirectors).
P.S Hinge I heard that WoCh will come up after Empire so enjoy your Ifernal Puppet and 3++ while you Can
I won't deny they need a nerf, but I don't know how much nerfing they'll need or even get. They might just do the usual style of balancing the army magic lores (from insane to decent), remove 90% of the magic items, do a bit of cost re-writing and make more than four units playable. It'll take a lot to make the current template unusable (Tzeentch Sorcerors+Chosen+Warshrine+Warriors+Marauders+Hellcannon).
) but i have a simple advice: DO NOT ENGAGE! they have awesome armour, awesome attacks (4 each if im correct) and high weapon skill and touhgness ( 5 and 4 respectively). they will simply chew your saurus for breakfast.
