Hello my valued Lizzardmen brethren!
I have played a view friendly games and 5 league games with 9th Age now. We have running a 20 men League in our town.
Playing all games with Lizardm.. I mean Saurian Ancients against all kind of other armies I have some expierience now.
I am more a tournament player so I like the Idea of a balanced game. But you can balance warhammer only so far, without a total rules overhaul. I don´t mind some balancing issues as long you can win with your army even with a view dificulties and have some fun on the way.
But some of the sneakpeak changes I do not understand at all. I was experimenting with the templeguard a lot. (was experimanting with lots of different units actually leaving me with a lot of unnessesarie losses but that I dont mind experimenting was a lot of fun!) And the guard never did survive any of my games even the ones I won.
I played the guard aggressive as combat block with armor piercing and rerolls to wound on 1 and 2 banner always with a Slan. Just to find out that our elite infantry has no place on the battlefield against other elite infantry. This was nothing new but I like the Guard a lot and was willing to try it again with the new weaponmaster rule, hoping together with some Slan buffs they will rock.
There was this espeacially cruel example with this dark elf unit with great weapons (Sorry not to good with english unit names but I think you know what Unit I mean) They just killed my templeguard with one swing (aktually one did survive giving my Slan one more round to live but still 27 dead) and they are even cheaper then the guard. [they had the plus one attack buff from there bloodcouldron or what it is called and my two sallys who tried to frie them the round before missfired with is bad luck on my part]
Or the even more fun expirience where this Demonprince from the Chaoswarriors killd the templeguard only with help from 3 Chariots on his own in about 6 battlerounds. I had a countercharge ready with an Stegadon I mean Taurosaur with sharp horns but It did nothing expcept to die to to the demonprince. While his General a Warlord on a flying mount stoppt the rest of my possible army support. In this battle I was killed by just two charaktermoddels.
Not that I have a problem with good charakter models. Aktually my most wins with Lizardman I achieved with the help of my fighter heros and Oldbloods. I let them home in my recent games to experiment and because they are very expansive now. Just to find out that with out them my Lizards are just fodder for the elite of many other armies. Like when I confronted this Orkunit with Plate armor that that was shockingly good. (A solution would be to buff my units with Magic but my fellow players know that they have to stop my buffing in crucial rounds now after I jused this trick far to often in the last years - was always a fan of nice buff spells insted of onedicing doom spells)
To make a long story short. I cannot understand at all why the templeguard has to be made weaker. All armies I engaged had a solid or even destroying answer in ther elite segment for my guard. Even as the guard is now I wasnt planing to use it anymore because 35 Saurus do the trick as good while beeing in core.
The unit that was realy good in my testgames was the SkinkKrox Unit as it was to be expected. Its not that easy to counter this unit. Most of my fellow players hat a problem with them, but never with the guard.
But I expect my core Saurus Units to do a shockingly good job in the future. Because my next testing step will include big blocks of Saurus with movment 5 and 6. But when this will be common it will be nerved too. So Im realy a little dishearten with the 9th age at the moment.
I wanted to test the toughnes 5 Kroxigors as well but It seems I will not have the oportiunity to do it. I had already bought 6 more Kroxis ^^ But the will stay in the box sadly
I have no problem with changes even when they are reducing our already small core as long as they make some sence balancing wise. I will definatly try the changes even when I dont understand the templeguard changes at all because they are already week and have to compete now with posion skinks.
I will still try it because the 9th Age has somthing realy going for it.
It is free for all! You have nothing to pay for it!
So you can easily play 9th age today and Sigmar tomorrow and 9th age the day after and whatever you like later on.
In this regard I have nothing to complain. But I want the 9th age to realy be successful and they have to do better than this

But I will try what ever they throw at me because its for free!
PS:
In case you missed the point, this was a "the templegard is to weak" rant ^^
PPS:
Hope my english is not to bad