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Like many I'm tempted by the Seraphon Christmas Bundle with the lovely monsters and Skinks. Looking at the rest of the Seraphon range I'm less enthusiastic. A lot of the Saurus and outlier models like Kroxigor have aged pretty poorly.

Can a Seraphon army go full Skink and Dinosaur, maybe with some Slann and still be viable or do the grots of the space lizard world get shot off the board?

I'll leave the actual nuts and bolts to a Seraphon player, but my understanding of the army is that skinks + Slann is fine for the base of your force, but to take full advantage of the army you need all the various units to summon in for their appropriate situations. The strength of Seraphon is their stranglehold on magic and their flexibility, in my experience. So just throwing a pile of skinks on the table and calling it a day isn't going to get you anywhere, but using them to fill out your battleline in order to field as much EotG and Slann as possible, that might do the trick.

Actually, Skinks+Large Dinos is how Seraphon play at tournaments. Every Seraphon player should have 60-120 skinks to perform good.

Bundles contain everything you need to start skink-heavy list, while saurus list need different units to perfrom effectively.

I am also excited by the Seraphon bundle. I will get it and probably start playing AOS. I hate the Serpahon background and do not want to rely heavily on summoning however - I am an old school lizardman player, my first army now sadly sold off. Is it at all possible to play lizardmen without relying heavily on summoning?

Many of the Lizardmen models could definitely use a reboot (like those cavalry) but Temple Guard are not only cool models but they're pretty decent on the table. I'm annoyed they're priced similarly to Black Orcs but aren't as good although you have magic and Carnosaurs to back you up.

Temple Guard with an Eternity Warden backing up your Slann is a pretty decent force if you're using Skinks and bigger dinos spread wide.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Da Boss wrote:
I am also excited by the Seraphon bundle. I will get it and probably start playing AOS. I hate the Serpahon background and do not want to rely heavily on summoning however - I am an old school lizardman player, my first army now sadly sold off. Is it at all possible to play lizardmen without relying heavily on summoning?

I was sad to see that as well, you can still buy your units and put them on the table so you don't have to summon if you don't want to. Summoning is an optional spell you can cast to add units to your army without paying points but you won't be able to do it every turn like the old Vampires could.

Is it at all possible to play lizardmen without relying heavily on summoning?

It depends on how competitive your environment is. The more it is, the more you have to summon. Thunderquake Starhost, probably the strongest choice, where you can go without summoning. Probably, repelish constantly dying skinks is the only summoning it needs.

Hmm. My problem is that I do not know really how competitive it is going to be, as I am trying to start again in a new city after a long absence.
The last time I tried this was in 8th edition with my Night Goblin army. Went to GW, got a game against someone playing Daemons, spent half an hour deploying. On turn 1 or 2, my opponent flew a mage on a disc to the side of my battle line and obliterated my force with one vortex spell, and the game was over, so I packed up.
I don't mind losing, but I prefer to lose after at least a bit of a game, you know? My free time is not copious enough that I can waste hours of it travelling to have an experience like that.
I think AoS might be better in that it is lower model count and not as fiddly to set up, so at least if I get wiped the set up and tear down time is not as extreme as it was in 8th. But I am wary of similarly unbalanced nonsense from what I have read meaning the game is effectively only "played" in the listbuilding phase.

Seraphon are the strong army and hard to remove from table because of summoning. But it is hard to play without skink summoning beyond 1000 pts.

Slann is mandatory in Skink lists because both of summoning and spells. Thunderquake are the best in terms of survivability, while Shadowstrike is about strong alpha-strike. These two are the best competitive starhosts that built on skinks.

New battleforce gives you ready Shadowstrike. You just need more skinks for it to perform better;

For thunderquake 1 more bastiladon or stegadon and another stegadon built as Engine of Gods are needed. And at least one razordon/salamander/kroxigor kit. I'm yet to be tabled as seraphon.

The Slaan is a cool model, so I can see myself choosing it anyway. I kinda choose models based on aesthetics (hence not being too upset if I lose as long as I get a sense that there was an actual game).

I am not super into summoning due to not liking the background, but perhaps if it is just skinks I can imagine they were just lying in wait or coming out of some aquatic entryway.

Slaan general + Astrolith bearer will give you more than enough summoning in all but the most competitive settings. If you need to tone it back you can -actually cast spells- with the Slaan (I know, I know, it's not what he's for but he can actually do it) instead of hiding him and banking for summons.

But to answer the original question--absolutely. In fact the Saurus side of Seraphon is weaker right now and I have not seen a competitive Seraphon list run any Saurus at all, ever!

Thanks. I will probably get a Slaan anyway (the old Slaan Mage Priest was the first Warhammer model I ever saw, before I even knew what Warhammer was, so nostalgia points!).

I can kitbash an Astrolith bearer from the Start Collecting box.
My army will probably be SC+Bundle for now, and I suppose the caveat I will make with myself is that I will only summon if my opponent does.