I appreciate the reply. Just to clarify my position on a few things:
1: I'm not arguing that needing support to perform well is bad, just pointing out that other armies have units that can do the same or better than ours unsupported. Our army offsets this by everything being quite inexpensive points-wise overall, but it certainly makes our stuff easy to pick apart by skilled players. I totally understand that pretty much everything needs support in our army and I'm fine with that, but that's still a weakness, so please don't take my pointing it out as hating on our army.
2: I wasn't saying that any of those units are
bad, just pointing out their weaknesses, and criticism doesn't mean you hate something. I like using Saurus Knights, Warriors, Carnosaurs, etc. I'm just pointing out their shortcomings from my own experience.
3: I'm no expert at MathHammer, so everything here is based solely on my personal experience and not charts and theory-crafting. So I fully recognize that this is a completely subjective viewpoint and probably not accurate to what many, or even most, people have encountered in their own games.
To answer some of the specific points you made:
Since when 2 attacks 3+/3+ -1 1 is bad? And they have jaws above that. The only real weakness of guard is lack of battalion. Saurus/Knights are better overall, but if you want guard to be effective, you can buff them exactly the same way. You have less models in unit, so you can honeycomb to take as many units into combat as possible. 2 wounds instead of 1 means they will lose effectiveness slower and will be less affected to battleshock. 3+ to-hit means that they demand less CP, so you can bring more other buffs.
Guard are very tanky, and 2 wounds definitely means they stick around reasonably well. I never said they were a bad unit, I bring them pretty much every time I bring any Slann. I have just never had good results in combat with them, mostly due to the fact that they are bunched around a Slann and not trying to get straight into combat. Maybe if I brought them as a full-sized unit and threw them straight into the enemy I'd have different results. I'll have to try that sometime
They have tons of attacks. If you have problems with high saves, bring in a starseer and starpriest or support them with couple of salamanders. Why should they be universally effective? They are absolutely devastating against anything with 4+ or worse save and still pretty good against 3+. You are talking like a unit requiring support to be better is something bad.
I was not as detailed here as I wanted to be. Even with the Starpriest's buff, you're looking for mortals on 6's to wound, and their attack profiles are pretty inaccurate, so while the mortals *definitely* help out big time, they still don't do too well at hitting things to begin with and if you have any of those defenses I mentioned previously their damage output is much, much lower than the projected output against a base 4+ save with no modifiers. I still said that Knights are good, I've used them and they have done well for me sometimes, but also done very poorly other times. They're very "swingy" in my experience.
Once again, suprisingly, this unit needs support to to damage. You can make them hit on 2's rerolling 1's and wound on 2's as long as you have enough CP. Most of tier B and worse factions would kill for such battleline unit. Of course, they are not phoenix guard, but they are still 4 attack per model in Koatl's claw. If you want rend, there's battalions, if you want +to-wound, there's a sunblood.
My personal problem with Saurus Warriors is that they seem to need more support than anything else in order to do well. Again, I realize that they need support, but it seems to me that they need too much. And as others have said, it really doesn't seem to match up well with the idea of them being these big, tough, savage warriors able to ferociously rip through their enemy's ranks. But in my games, unless I take then in Sunclaw, get the Starpriest buff, get at least a +1 to hit, and get the Hand of Glory spell off on them, they just don't do that much damage. Of course, damage isn't everything, and like I said they tarpit well, but I really feel that our Saurus should be a little bit better in combat.
Most of behemoths in AoS are easy to kill, that's why we don't see much of them, only a chosen few. The key is to chose engagements carefully and don't rush to where it will die. I almost always manage to strike carnosaur in full health or with a couple of wounds lost. The thing is, Carnosaurs are good second/third wave of attack, not the frontline. When I play saurus lists, my main lines are often wiped out by turn 3, but my opponent is also weared out and they cannot do a thing to carnosaurs, who easily chew through their remains. In the last game, I lost all my knights, while my opponent had chaos lord on new beastie, sorc on manticore and 20 knights. I wiped all the above with just two carnosaurs left. Chaos Lord charged and brought Scarvet to 4 wounds, than carno activated and killed full-health sorc on manticore. For just 210-230 carnosaurs are at least good monster choice. We just have better.
You're absolutely right. I was just answering your question as to why a lot of people don't like Carnosaurs. As I said, I've used them many times, but since my opponents know their potential, and since AoS is such a shooting/magic meta right now, My Carnosaurs are almost always the focus of the attack. So their fragility is still a mark against them. But I actually do like using them
As for terradons, they are not just good, they are one of our best units. They don't need to have better save, they are not about survivability. They are literally bombers. Once again, you are complaining that a unit needs a support to be good. But this is natural in aos. I think, NPE is born exactly when there are a lot of units which don't need support at all.
Maybe I'm just not good at using Terradons then, lol! I always seem to have the same problem as I do with Carnosaurs. My opponent knows they're going to mortal wound bomb something important, so they get shot down first. And regardless of their awesome speed and damage output, they still die to a stiff breeze. And if that breeze blows your way before you are able to get them where they're needed, they're toast. The only time I've had them do good is when I brought a unit of 3 in a TL list, because my opponent just didn't want to shoot at them when I had Kroak and a bunch of dinosaurs on the field, and since they were an MSU they were a much lower threat priority.
Salamanders don't need +1 to-hit to remove units. 3+ to-hit is often more than enough. You can add +1 when you need badly to remove something, but they don't need it to be good.
I'm sorry if my sentence was poorly written, I said Salamanders are good, and then switched to Kroxigors and said they're also good they just need that +1 to hit buff. I've had good games with both, although for some reason my Salamanders always seem to roll badly, lol!
Sorry, but you sound like you don't want our units to be good or okay-ish. You want them to be broken and just play point-and-click game, where our units just go and delete stuff without need of heroes/battalions. Seraphon always have been around synergies and that's why I love them.
Absolutely not! And I'm sorry if it came across this way. I personally don't think saying that I want an extra -1 rend on this unit, or a slightly better attack profile on another, or a bit better durability on our most fragile units is wanting them to be broken. I hate playing against "point-and-click" armies, and that's really the essence of what NPE is. Once again, I totally understand our reliance on synergies. And while I definitely do wish that we didn't rely *entirely* on synergies for most things to do well, I understand it's the core of our army design and I think it does work very well overall.
I will always say that I wish we had combat heroes that could stand on their own without needing 1-2 CP and a spell to buff them first. And I also would like it if our battleline was a bit less gimmicky, but that's just my personal opinion. It doesn't mean that I love playing Seraphon any less, because they'll always be my favorite and main army
As my point was proven about Vince having an unreliable viewpoint on the seraphon we went straight back into theological discussion about out units. Good old lustria online
Sorry bro, couldn't help it
