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Tl;dr: Lizardmen aren't great in MP battles because their only good units are too expensive and not cost effective while the rest of their roster simply do little to the enemy, and they have few answers to enemy archers, cavalry, or artillery.
I'm a lizardman main but don't play in tournaments, so take what I say with a grain of salt.
But Lizardmen are just…not in a good place at all outside of campaign, really, and this is for several reasons.
1. Lizardmen as a whole rely on a strong front-line and their large monsters. The problem here is that without campaign buffs, Saurus and Temple Guard are mediocre at best, and I'm not unconvinced they weren't nerfed in some way given just how much worse they feel like they're performing in melee. They almost never trade with infantry of similar tiers, are extortionately expensive, and have so many counters now with how common armor piercing is and how slow they are even for an infantry unit. Large monsters have very obvious weaknesses of course. A few sets of ranged units, some spears, maybe a single target spell, no more monsters. We don't need to talk at length about skink infantry like red crests or stalkers because we know they're not good outside of a Tehenhauin or Oxyotl campaign.
2. Lizardmen do not have ranged dominance. Their best ranged units are ALSO monsters, with the Stegadon being a mobile ballista, and the Dread Saurian a walking galleon with punishing side bombarding attacks, but these are both extremely expensive, and you won't be getting a Dread Saurian unless you're already winning. Their only other passable ranged unit is the Terradon riders with fireleech bolas, which we'll come back to in the next point. Their skirmisher infantry such as the chameleon skinks are highly specialized. Low damage output, inability to evade units like hound packs or cavalry even with the speed debuff from poison, and mediocre at best ability to fight in melee means that their sole function is to tickle the enemy infantry from the flank and give the poison debuff to help the Saurus maybe get the upper hand in a fight. This is effective in campaign, but in battles this just doesn't do enough before the enemy has a counter that causes everything to crumble.
3. Lizardmen cannot establish aerial dominance. Other factions get griffons, wyverns, vargheists, and dragons. Lizardmen get scaly birds and a feathery snake. The blowpipe terradon riders are basically the fell bats of the Lizardmen roster, and they have no means whatsoever to challenge the much bulkier flyers that other factions bring with their abysmal ranged damage. Ripperdactyls are the same, their strength is swooping down on and dispatching infantry, with only their RoR having an anti-large bonus that ultimately still won't trade into other flyers. The Fireleech Bola terradons and the Coatl are meant to support the ground units, with the Coatl giving disrupting spells and the ability to conceal important units on the approach, and Fireleech bolas being the only decent ranged unit the Lizardmen has that isn't attached to a dinosaur…just attached to a flying reptile that's easily shot down with archers instead.
4. Lizardmen cavalry is mediocre and expensive. Cold one riders aren't worth much in a fight even with the rampage being removed due to their abysmal speed. The only passable cavalry they have is Horned Ones, and they're insanely expensive and their uses are few, while also being easily caught and killed by other cavalry. Not much else to say about that, just the one mean of moving fast on the ground they have access to is not really all that fast or all that effective in combat.
The Lizardmen faction has always been about rushing into melee, but in Warhammer 3 they just don't feel good at doing so anymore compared to 2. Saurus can barely trade effectively into even chaff units like high elf spearmen or Tomb King skeleton warriors (to say nothing of Tomb Guard or Nehekhara warriors) and are insanely expensive at 800 supplies each, Temple Guard have never been worth their asking price and remain as such, being an almost inconsequential upgrade from Saurus spearmen. The only time skinks are combat effective is when they're riding on the back of a large, prehistoric monster, and they serve little purpose besides cheap chaff to throw at the enemy en masse or trying to sneak in and capture the point. Their casters are good, but a small consolation when the main strengths of the faction have fallen from grace in Warhammer 3.
In short, their units are too expensive and/or too weak, or otherwise have too many counters that they in turn have no answers to. Saurus are their bread and butter, but their expense and apparent nerf from Warhammer 2 mean that their one bastion to hold against the enemy is broken, because they simply cannot have enough of them on the field at one time because of their cost and they die and break much more easily than in the past. Skink units are just not good enough to fall back on, even en masse, and monsters are easily focused down without infantry backing them, so there's ultimately little the lizardmen can do once their saurus break because they'll never have the supplies to replace them once they're gone.
In fact, one of the main problems I've had is simply not being able to send out units because they're too expensive to summon. If the lizardmen player loses the initial engagement and their units break off the field it's game over; the enemy will get an entire military force and the lizardmen player can only summon in Saurus and some skinks piecemeal only for them to be immediately smashed by superior numbers so that by the time they have enough supplies to summon more, the ones they've already summoned have shattered off the field again.
Without Saurus, the lizardmen are nothing, and Saurus simply don't stick around anymore. They are especially menaced by undead factions, with the Vampire Counts just easily outdoing them in melee with their infinitely larger and more cost effective armies, stronger magic, and powerful monsters, and the Tomb Kings being the Tomb Kings.
Bootleg Empire got shotguns, by Dawi is still missing their Grudgerakers….
Again, really wish you did honourable mentions for the factions with Marauder Horsemen
Lizardmen have a lot of good stuff but if you want the taco, felkon and the rest of those guys approved best unit it’s definitely Saurus warriors with shields (spear or club)
It’s not just marauder horsemen who attack with melee in front and ranger in back. Most ranged units will continue to use their ranged if they are not in direct melee but the front of their unit is. You can test this with multiple units. It’s just most players make a thin line so the ranged typically get engaged all at once or the units melee is so bad the front line dies so quickly you can’t really see the units back line use ranged attacks.
I'd give marauder horsemaster to norsca. they don't have much else going for them though. I guess access to lore of shadows, rage, and marauders.
Probably chosen of the gods ushabti great bow for tomb kings. Thing has like 250 range, explosive damage, and almost 50 MD 90 armor so even if you dive them with furies they probably beat the furies in melee. They're the dps behind the 3k gold worth of 10 infinite hp silver shield skellies.
Is kislev missing from this? You would probably give it to the basic kossar. I'm not sure I don't play much Kislev.
For the crypt ghoul comparison nurgle's spawn are not considered the best and they have unbreakable. But I'm forgetting crypt ghouls do too.
I haven't used bombers much as coast due to ammo but I do like animated hulks.
I don't think marauder horsemen/horsemasters being able to shoot in melee is a bug. In the game files, they have the variable "autonomous_rider_can_shoot_in_melee" set to "true". This looks a lot like an intentional feature.
Please CA don't break glass on the nerf hammer just bring similar units up to spec or put a MP cost increase on those bad boys. Turin Slaanesh got everything because Slaanesh is the god of excees and may the buffs never end
Oh my Emperor. War wagons, a meme trash units back in w2, is now best unit for the empire in domination. I love this games for that. There are amost no ,,useless neverpick'' unit in it. Malus was a meme back in w2, now he is kinda in ,,meta''.
I would love a worst unit for each faction video.
Demons of Chaos dont have acces to Hellstriders?
I’m sorry but it’s lore accurate for beast men to suck. Literally they are only useful/obtained victories when attacking undefended towns. Like even goblins have better success rates because they actually use tactics
I have to ask why you didn’t make the crane gunners the best unit for Kathy, if they still have the over penetration they added a while ago they were busted
You were spot on about lizardmen. Chameleon skinks are hands down their best unit.
Yeah agree with this list I think mine is almost identical too, its a shame a lot of those have been forced to pick to due their brokeness – Hellstriders/marauder horses for instance rather than their balanced tactical utility. Bring on the 18th and hopefully a needed balance pass
Tzeentch doesn't feel like a magic trickster, but just a bunch of kids throwing water with a fire illusion cast over it.
Tfw when you don't have a Ironhail waifu to flip you upside down, put you in the trash can and blast you into another dimension
For woodelves i would say scouts are far better
What…
So this is best low tier units, what about top tier? Because shades with dual weapons or greatswords are soooo much better than the corsars
I'm not really a multiplayer player but I find these vids interesting. Just curious what "scm" stands for because you mention them a couple times.
i think half units you recommed are piece of shit, i can't tell it's a joke or are you serious? warwagon? lightweight sled better than heavy sled?
Never played multiplayer in this game, shocked to hear you can spend all of a ranged units ammo then get a full refund for it, that's just asking to be broken wide open.
Tomb kings are good now!?! This pleases me
"Lizardmen feel verry aliens to me", well Turin, you don't know how close to the truth you are
so basically the only unit that stayed in the spot as the strongest unit from wh2 is the chameleon skink?
Great vid. As a sometime multiplayer, I love getting tips from you to help my game. I just don't play that mode enough to figure it all out by gameplay.
I would love if multiplayer balancing came via cost.
I hate changes for multiplayer that affect campaign play.
Hope CA takes more note of the unrest this brings and goes this route more often
Funny that the faction that play almost only Cavalry theirs best unit is a shitty Arty piece
The ogres were briefly mentioned and were even roasted for not having much going for them. I feel like CA really hates ogres and is doing everything they can to nerf them to the ground, especially in multiplayer. CA, please fix this ASAP.
"The people who play campaign", I appreciate you including 50% or more of the player base there, Turin. Thank you.
I don't mind all of the MP changes, I personally don't play multiplayer, but whenever the MP guys affect my SP experience… well, let's just say it doesn't make me smile.
please don't get CA to nerf norsca even more. haven't they suffered enough?
Why was I unsubscribed? Weird
@ 10:00 flying Slaanesh lord, what ?
Make a video telling the devs we need End Game Crisis Options for multiplayer campaign!
Honestly it's hard to say what the overall best lizardmen unit is in my view.
On the low end, chameleon skinks and even the skirmishers can be useful when played smartly. Their frontline is usually pretty good early on, and later you get kroxigors and temple guard which are generally great when not misused. The kroxigors tend to soak up a lot of damage unless either played defensively or unless you can sneak them around enemy ranged through forests. But they're still good against anything that doesn't have "immune to psychology", and that doesn't do too much ap damage or have an anti large bonus. That's assuming you can't get them close to the enemy early on.
I'm a scrub so I generally go heavy on the monstrous units. Especially the bastilladon variants early on. The ranged stegadons are good too, for arty that can defend itself pretty well.
Aside from range or anti large heavy armies I haven't had too many problems with carnosaurs either. One or two might die if you leave them in the fight too long but sending a line of 3 to 5 into the enemy's side can be good to break up their formations early in a battle. Keep them in the fight for a moment to do some damage while your frontline closes in to mop up and you can get some nasty damage pretty quickly. If you use your skinks to poison enemy troops while that's happening it can get disgusting if the opponent doesn't have a good answer to it like light cav to run the skinks down or if the enemy infantry don't have anti large or a lot of ap.
I don't want to ramble on too long so I won't go into how I think the heroes and lords are (also haven't had a chance to use dread saurians or troglodons yet, and i generally don't bother with cold/horned ones).
I can't really comment on best but one of my favorite units for them is the salamander/razordon packs. I use them both about the same way, but having a choice between fire and poison missile damage is nice.