Skink
Nacho
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But back in the old days we had named characters with special mounts, such as Krok-gar with Grimlock, and the difference between Ancient Stegadon (wich was much better than the "young" one, and costed more) was that it was way tougher and powerful. Right now it's the same stegadon with different builds and the same carnosaur with different riders.
I'd love them to be different, but right now, fluff-wise, they are the same, but their stats aren't; and actually, the carnosaur for the old-blood is worse than the one for the scar-vet, old-blood's hitting on 4+ (but dealing 3 damage), and scar-vet's dealing on 3+ (dealing D3), and the rest is just the same. Fluff-wise, it should be the other way around: the old carnosaur, who has seen many battles, has more experience and then has more "tricks" up his sleeve to bite the opponent, while the younger one has a harder time knowing what to do in combat, and then having a bigger chance to miss his attacks.
Same goes with the Stegadon and the Engine: the ancient one should be more experienced, tougher and stronger, and therefore knowing what to do in battle (that's what it was in the old days of Warhammer Fantasy), making the younger one inexperinced and much more prone to be killed. Let's remember that in the old lore, the older a dino or a warrior got, the thicker his scales, the stronger and the more experienced they were, and that was represented in their point-cost, stats and battlefield role. Stats for Engine of the Gods are way different than the stegadon: horns for the steg goes 3 attacks, hitting and wounding on 3+, rend -3 and 2 damage, while the engine gets 1 more attack but -1 rend; you could argue that their horns are more fractured due to old age, but that is totally different from the way you say it was "in the old days", and the crushing stomps, the old steg wounds on 4+ and the "young" on 3+, which according to the old days, should be the opposite. The rest of the stats are the same.
The problem with all of this is that i'm sure GW wanted them to be different, but they didn't make them different enough, either lore or stats, but costing the same there is no way that you'll go for the bow steg instead of the engine, at least in a competitive enviroment. And even if you only play friendly games and have never gone to a tournament, the competitive enviroment is what shapes the rules and game, so you are still affected by it:you go in a forum to ask whether a list is good, or if a combo can work, or if a miniature from a different company would fit in the army.
And it all revolves around the same. When you play friendly games with your friends or family, you field what you want, play a thematic army, go for strange tactics, field those sweet models you recently bought because they are so freaking cool... but it's the competitive enviroment that shape the way GW see the game and the way we all build our lists. When you go to a tournament of 20 people at your local game store, you normally see 2 or 3 people playing Seraphon, and all the lists look the same: slann + skinks + engines, maybe add a shadowstrike or a thunderquake for the extra rules, and all the Seraphon armies play the same tactical game. And that is because the rest of our army is not competitive enough to deal with the rest of the armies that are played. And even in friendly games you want to win every now and then.
I've seen in tournaments (specially in 40k, which i play much more than aoS at the moment) that different kinds of players tend to run different types of armies: the ultra-competitive normally goes for the newest and greatest toy (i.e. Imperial Knights + Astra, Thors + custodes + Astra, Flyrants, Eldar soup, Imperial soup...), changing armies as they please, the non-competitive one goes for armies that tend to have a theme they like (full death guard, full chapter marines, non-soup Imperium lists, grey knights, Necrons, sisters of battle...), normally having them beautifully painted, and then there are the ones that choose an army and want to be competitive, but want to do it with the army of their choice because they like it (Taus, Orks...). But every single one of them hate to lose (don't we all?), and we'd all like to field an army that can at least have a small chance of winning and not being tabled turn 2-3 every single time.
Seraphon players, i think, are the third type: we want to play our army, but we want to be competitive. That doesn't mean we want to win every single time, that means we want to have a chance, we want to play a friendly game with a full-saurus army without magic and stand a chance to win. We will surely lose, but we want to be able to fight. We want to field Kroxigors in a flank and charge thinking we stand a chance, we want to field 2 units of 20 saurus each with an old-blood in a flank and think i'll stand a chance of stopping the hordes of Orks that are coming my way. I want to play a tactical game, damn it. I don't want to have to field 2 engines, 2 bastiladons and a slann to have a chance of winning, because the first 2 times is awesome seeing all the dinos, but the third game you play with them, is actually kinda boring. We want a balanced army.
We don't want to be the best, we don't want 5 point saurus, we don't want a cavalry that can destroy a greater daemon in 1 turn. We just want to have a chance to play with all of our models, because they look freaking awesome, and not lose every single time. We even want some of our models go up in points because they are way too good for their cost.
Age of Sigmar is a different game, with different rules, different lore, different backstory... Summoning is just one of the new lore addition. We are playing a different game, so summoning has to stay; I don't like it either, i'd rather we were thinking beasts with big dinosaurs than the celestial daemons (so, angels?) we are now, but that's the game we are playing. Old Warhammer Fantasy world was literally destroyed, and this is what we now have.
P.S.: Sorry for the long post and the rambling. Congrats (and thanks) if you've made it this far
he usually wins me every single game, its just so op to not bring him in every game. 3 types of rerolls for a little 4+. Makes our units nearly unkillable, makes even more units even more viable and Bastiladons oh yeah,... buff 2 Bastiladons with snakes up and teleport them up in front of your enemy. Wacth him cry while you deal 24 MW in every combat phase while you are rerolling their 3+ safes ;D
