When talking about "tier" or "power level", let's note that the difference between the best and worst armies in KoW is less than what used to be the ùinternal* difference between two lists of the same army in Warhammer.
In short, you can be successful with a Salamander army, it's just that it can take some finesse to do at high level of play.
One reason is that the Salamanders have a lots of "jack of all trades" units able to do many things, like the fire drake (both a decent medium monster, and a decent firebreather) and the fact that of course those abilities are not free.
This means that if/when you use your fire drake as fire support, you are not using his melee potential, and if you use it in melee, you are wasting his powerful breath attack.
Usually in KoW most players prefer to use specialist units to do their optimal job, as it's easier to manage, that's part of what make Salamander armies seems "weaker" as the same tactic does not work as well with them
In theory however, if you manage to use your units in a way that exploit their multiple strengths, then they can be effective.
To be fair, there are also a few units that are slightly overcosted, even taking into account the previous point, but this doesn't prevent them to still be useful, there is no unit that is useless in KoW like there were in Warhammer.
About this point, note that the Ghekkotah Warriors Horde is supposed to have 40 attacks and not 30) (double the regiment attacks), this has been acknoledges as an error by a member of the Rules Comitee and should be put in official erratas if not already added since last time I checked.
In tournaments this won't pass until the errata is official unless the organiser recognise it, but in friendly games you can use 40 attacks for the horde, just explain it to your opponent.
Not that it makes the unit overpowered, they still have Me5+ and a very low def, but they are cheap enough for a horde that you don't lose to much when they die, while the 40 attacks can still make any opponnent hesistate.
Tip : add to a horde the hammer of inevitable force (new artefact added in the Clash of Kings supplement, make the unit always wound in melee on 4+ ignoring the target defense) and you will have a glass hammer unit that your opponent won't like to engage with his elite units and monsters.
40 attacks hitting on 5+ so average of 13.33 hits, always wound on 4+ with the artefact, so 6.66 wounds on average on *anything*, and then you have vicious so you reroll 1s to wound for an average total of 7.77 wounds if my math is correct.
It's not as extreme as what some very elite units can do, but it is still decent and the fact that you can do this on average on anything even big tough units with def 5+ or 6+ while your own unit cost only 185 points (magic artefact included) means that you are very point effective.
Of course, you will have to screen this unit, else they will be focused upon with shooting or combo charged and killed before they get the chance to attack, just dont put them in front of your line where a pair of knight regiments will be able to charge them
! KoW is easy to pick up, cracking fun to play, and hard to master, and brings proper rank and file gaming back to the forefront.
