Do or Don't: Seraphon (Lizardmen)

as much as I like characters like fulgram he's a chaos primarch and I don't really like chaos great villains in concept but unfortunately they've been hit over the head with the author favoritism bat just a bit too often so let's switch over to something so anatha of chaos that the two sides oppose each other at every opportunity no matter what no not the golden These Fine specimen ah the lizard men returning to monkey is nice but sometimes you need to go even further back sometimes you need to return to T-Rex now we're talking a faction so awesome that when Warhammer fantasy died it simply said no and continued on into the age of Sigmar much like one of their characters come to think of it but we'll get to him later indeed the lizardmen or saraon as they're now known have carried into the age of Sigmar pretty much unchanged it helps that their goals are very simple see chaos apply Club to face so do you like angry azte lizards riding dinosaurs do you hate chaos with the burning passion do you like having a wide variety of units that are backed up by powerful magic do you like Angry Aztec lizards riding dinosaurs then step on up and take a look at the saraon but before we begin a very important word the saraon the lizard men they're lizards but they're smart lizards they know the value of knowledge and they have spaceships they may be powered by Magic but even a magical spaceship still needs math which is why you should check out the sponsor of today's video brilliant brilliant as you may be aware is the best way to learn math data science and computer science all of which are things that are worth learning but more importantly it's fun to learn those topics I've said it before and I'll say it again those School classes are as boring as possible there was one science course I took in college that I will fully admit was my daily nap time brilliant meanwhile takes the absolutely crazy idea of not boring you to sleep with its lessons which is crazy I know but they're visually informative and entertaining which means for the first time in years I have learned science without wanting to be doing almost anything else instead and you can learn at whatever level you're at I checked out scientific thinking 1.1 lately because it's been about 2 years since I've set foot in a classroom and I am understandably a bit Rusty on the fundamentals it started with gears which I found interesting because it turns out they're slightly more complicated than just being a circle-shaped metal thing that spins and that's the beauty of brilliant I checked this course out cuz I was curious and wanted to learn and whether it's the same for you or you're studying for a test or it might help you in your career brilliant has the lessons you need and of course it's entirely on your own schedule there's no getting marked down a letter grade because you were 5 minutes late on submitting an assignment no I'm not bitter about something that happened to me in college why do you ask and just to make sure you're willing to try brilliant I got something special for you using my link in the description which is also on screen at this very moment and will be in the pin comment you can get the first 30 days of brilliant absolutely free and if you're one of the first 200 people to use the link you can get 20% off your annual plan just like that learning more is always great to keep your brain in tiptop shape so get brilliant today and start learning now now it's time to talk about the angry lizards the saraon or lizard men as I will be referring to them as from here on out because to hell with your copyrightable names are surely enough a collection of several different lizard folk races all dedicated to the destruction of chaos and the Fulfillment F mment of the Old One's great plan we're going all the way back to Fantasy for their Origins here since unlike almost everyone else in AOS they directly kept things going on from fantasy into the new setting they were Once Upon a Time created by the old ones to shape the Warhammer world as they saw fit for their experiments they would cleanse it of races deemed unworthy by the old ones and overall just make things ready as the old ones tried to create the perfect race to counteract chaos the slon mes by Excellence are the most powerful in the world at Magic short of the Gods themselves they were in charge of reshaping the very Planet itself the sorus are the Warriors intended to wipe out those opposed to the old ones plans as you might have guessed from what I said there used to be a lot of different races and species in the Warhammer fantasy world that we don't see in the setting then the Saurus had their way and there weren't any more of those races except for the Orcs because they're Built For Fighting and winning anyways the skinks and cocar are in charge of things like managerial duties and manual labor respectively though they can certainly hold their own in a fight all these different species of lizard worked in harmony together to fulfill the Old One's plan then the Old One's magic Gates exploded demons were everywhere and the old ones dipped out with the help of the elves and grimnir Chaos was pushed back to the poles of the world but the Lizardman now had no guidance and the first and most powerful slon were all dead so they tried to figure out what to do for a few thousand years by reading old tablets left behind by their creators Flash Forward a few thousand years to the end times and the slon that were left decided that wasn't going to plan and decided they were going to dip out too so they popped into their magical Temple pyramid spaceships and just floated off into space eventually they were found by a really really big dragon who helpfully pointed them out to the realm of air and now we have the current incarnations of the lizard men beings of magic inherently connected to the lore of Heavens who bolt down in lightning storms wherever chaos appears sounds a bit familiar doesn't it well actually there's more to it than just that but I'll save it for the pro and con sections as for the basic backstory of the faction that's really all you need to know lizards were made to fight demons those lizards of course don't like demons lizards smash demons wherever they see them so I pick these scaly bastards well this might sound strange but if you want an army of robots in a fantasy game then the lizardmen are kind of what you want each of the species is essentially a biological Android programmed to do certain things the sorus are the Warriors the skinks are the Traders and Craftsmen the cagor are dumb manual labor and the slon are the Mages and leaders there's a bit more to it but that's mostly in the realm of specifics like certain soras can lead armies and certain skinks can still be priests it's a pretty unique concept because while on the surface they're kind of standard lizard folk from D and D or whatever once you look underneath the hood there's quite a bit to make them stand out fun fact this also means that the men in lizard men is technically a lie they've not really got a gender since they either walk directly out of spawning pools fully formed or are brought into being by the slon at a moment's notice using the power of lightning depending on the L reading of course as of age of Sigmar the lizardmen have also finally become a very proactive faction they're still trying to enact the great plan to some extent but this no longer involves sitting in a Temple City for a thousand years straight while the World falls apart around them early on they explicitly could see the future better than Z and his followers and it's important to note that there's a a zinch demon who can perfectly see the past and future simultaneously in fact them wrong-footing zch has become sort of a trend in age of Sigmar there was once a cabal of wizards who were enacting a ritual over the course of 99 days and when they finished it was not Z demons who came out of the portal what came out was a whole lot of angry saus ready to kick them to death they'd foresee a chaos Invasion happening and right when they were needed hundreds of thousands of angry lizards would be directly on top of some wanabe chaos Lord's head Bor did hurt this by ruining some of the devices the slan used to see the future but they can still look across Ross reality as it is in the present and plon down lizards onto problems until they go away especially compared to Fantasy where they were pretty reactive and prone to doing nothing while they tried to figure out the great plan the Lizardman have become some of the bigger movers and shakers in the setting if you don't like that however there's still room to play the old style Lizardman in the lore some of them have landed on the Mortal Realms directly with their massive Temple ships and terraformed the surrounding landscape to look more like luster used to AKA katakan but magical they pretty much live just like the Lizardman of old isolationist reptiles that beat the out of whoever comes Too Close regardless of whether you're a follower of chaos one of sigmar's stormcast eternals or just some really unlucky dude who got lost on a hike one day so if that was a concern for you worry not age of sigar hasn't ruined the Lizardman lore if anything and managed to keep it both exactly the same while giving you options if you don't want more of the same also unlike old fantasy the Lizardman aren't slowly but surely losing a war of attrition the only way they used to be born before was the spawning pool method I mentioned earlier and they couldn't make any more of them everyone tainted or destroyed was a permanent Lizardman loss but the ones who exist perly in the Mortal Realms can now make more of them if they're needed meanwhile the starborn are either formed from the thoughts of the slon at a moment's notice or Bean down at the salon's command suffused with the very essence of the magic of Heavens in their veins in AOS the lizan are here to stay and only grow and in number that war of attrition isn't one they plan to lose this time around this is also where I'm obligated to say that fantasy and age of Sigma are cooler than 40K because 40K doesn't have the balls to have zenos as awesome as this in it in AOS they also have the room for every level of subtlety or lack thereof you could one in an army do you want sneaky spies and assassins along with subtle and far-reaching plans because in the earliest ages of the Mortal Realms the slon watched the growing reality and guided it in any way they could they taught civilizations magic and technology and ensured magical lay lines were uncorrupted to keep the realm stable they also disposed of certain groups that are perhaps just a bit too chaos looking to let live there's even some evidence that the entirety of the end times and the birth of age of Sigmar as a setting is just another part of the Old One's great plan which if that's true holy to me that that's awesome yeah it might be seen as a bit of a copout but to me it reads like the old ones were Joseph Joe starring their way across time in reality which is awesome and of course if you don't like subtle D behold the beauty that is an 8ft tall saurus riding a T-Rex you can describe that site as many things but subtle is not one of them relatedly this means that you can fluff your liis and force as fighting in anything from the largest of Realm shaking battles to the smallest of skirmishes the great plan accounts for all and so the Lizardman must be capable of any and all fields of warfare whether that means sending out Strike Team of skink assassins are wandering directly into chaos corrupted regions to beat everything in them the death the Lizardman will see it done they're also a good guy faction Al be it in a very Warhammer way where good is relative the lizard men oppose chaos in all ways and especially after the destruction of the old world they become more willing to work with those in the Grand Alliance of order Lord croak even worked alongside morathi to seal a God of destruction once and if they're willing to work with morathi of all people they must have mellowed out pretty severely now granted I would give most of my remaining lifespan to work with morathi but the Lizardman are physically incapable of being as down bad as I am so something else must be at work here clearly but all that being said they still eliminate cultures they deem unworthy and the coest lizardmen who live in the Mortal Realms directly have a nasty habit of braining anyone who wanders into their neck of the woods in short while they're definitely on the side of good they're not afraid to get their hands dirty not in the sense of them committing crimes or anything like that just the sense that you're getting your head cut off if they think you're a problem and whether or not you actually are a problem is irrelevant another positive I'm a big personal fan of is is that they cause fear in the hearts of chaos whenever they face it even before age of Sigmar fighting chaos was half of what they were designed for the other half was disposing of races the old ones didn't like but we we can just ignore that for now nowadays they're even better at it it's to the point that the starborn Lizardman can purify chaos with their blood which is also yet another case of fantasy characters doing things better than Big E ever could and regardless of whether they're coales or starborn all of the Lizardman caused the scaven to experience flashbacks to lustria from old fantasy inflicting their minds with images of sacrificial altars and scaven blood running down pyramids the size of skyscrapers now as a certified scaven supremacist I'm not a big fan of that last bit but I do appreciate the lizin being hardcoded the counter chaos almost as hard as the lumineth are and it's hardly fair to say being lesser than the lumineth is a fault of their own making that's just standard in the age of Sigmar you can't blame anyone for not living up to the Colossal standard of the luminoth realm Lords to get back to the Lizardman in the Lizardman video though they're all terrifying in general for that matter yeah their specialty is fighting chaos but anything they fight is going to wish they weren't fighting them don't lie to yourself if you saw one of these monsters come around the corner with intentions to kill you you'd piss yourself and run too there's also a lore blurb in AOS where a bunch of lizardmen pop out of a pool of water an inch thick via magic while they were beating the out of the chaos host they were attacking the last thing the cast Lord in charge saw was the Stars themselves realigning into the shape of a grinning frog I didn't really know where to put that in as a lore positive but I couldn't not mention something like that if anything you can take it as a sign that is personalist as most of them are at least some of the salon have a sense of humor there's actually a scenario in an AOS RPG where the lizan threatened to Siege the city of anvil guard until they return some plaes the plaques weren't actually anything relating to the great plan the skink assistance to the Locos slan carved them out so we could remember his favorite pet back to life so that's what you should take this section as the lizardmen have managed to gain a personality in age of Sigmar some of them anyways and last lore positive Aztec lizards riding dinosaurs if that isn't top five of the coolest things you've ever heard of then turn off the video and don't come back until you've had a good long hard think about where you went wrong in your life now for tabletop positives first off the lizardmen are surprisingly versatile a big ugly Dino blob isn't the only option available to you by any means skinks are solid skirmishing units can choose between an 8 in range with Ren or a 16in range and while their save is quite dog at a 6 Plus they're your best bet for a cheap screening unit sorus meanwhile have a four up save always have Ren and have two wounds a pop only Ren minus one but that's more Ren than no Ren they can also bite people dire mortal wounds once the fighting is over and get a plus one to their save when they're contesting an objective or in their territory which means they're not going anywhere anytime fast have positioned well of course big Dino blob is also an option and it's quite the option at that take eight stegodon why not it's funny and I doubt anyone's going to complain in a friendly match just for the sheer spectacle of it as for how effective they are I can't say how viable an ALT Dino Army would be from a competitive standpoint that being said they're godamn dinosaurs they're pretty slow they have a ton of wounds and the T-Rex has has another smaller but still angry lizard on top of it that has a laser hand it used to be a character named cocar by the way but unfortunately now it's just a generic leader model but I prefer to think of it as meaning there are now thousands of Croc cars running around the Mortal Realms pushing people's in even their mini Dinosaurs the agodon Lancers can cause some real pain as their rage modifier goes Higher and Higher and they get more and more attacks their versatility doesn't just end in Army composition either because the starborn and coales have mechanical differences as well the coales as a rule of thumb are generally better in direct com combat they're the true lizard brain subf faction with things like certain units having a built-in damage reduction or getting some extra damage on a bite attack the starborn meanwhile are for those who want to be a bit more cunning with their plans they have cosmic power points that they gain for each spellcaster on the field at the start of the hero phase as well as whenever they cast a spell dispel one or dispel an endless spell you can use them to do things like resurrecting slain models buffing units or the best option summoning extra units so while the coales are stronger pound-for-pound there's nothing funnier than enacting surprise Jurassic Park on your enemy's back line you can summon a dread soran if you manage to rock up 50 power points it's physically impossible in smaller games but if you're playing a mega game and manage to pull it off you're at the very least going to laugh their magical game is also pretty damn good the SL are of course the magical powerhouses but skink wizard units are roughly half the cost of the slon and for that price they're decent enough for what you're getting they've spells to protect units spells to debuff enemy units and a pretty decent area of high damage spells and that's not even including the glory that is Lord croak Lord croak may get his own video in the future so I'll keep it brief but in short his job is to make every other wizard in the game feel inadequate potentially even Tas who is a god of magic nowadays in the setting he can get command points like it's Halloween and he brought the extra big candy bag he's got a two plus to Casting and unbinding roles and can unbind spells cast anywhere on the map it might not be the most optimal way to use them with how expensive he is but you could put him at the very corner of the map the entire game and just use him to block any enemy spellcasters if you want even if you lose you can piss the other guy off pretty badly with that he can put to hurt on enemies with debuffs or just straight up hurting and overall he is what you want to pick whenever you're facing an enemy who thinks the Liz and only knew how to do Dino brain hit stuff as a matter of fact Lian heroes are all pretty solid additions to their army buffing them and giving them some pretty high levels of synergy Lord croak continuous trend of being an absolute monster is either killed outright or just doesn't take any damage if he takes 18 wounds or more at once he just dies automatically but otherwise he just rolls some dice and adds the wounds he's taken and if the total is less than 20 he just goes on as normal combine that with his four save and the inability to change that save and he's surprisingly tanky for a wizard sorus old Bloods make sorus units hit better slon can make units fly and get a buff to saving against ranged attacks old bloods on carnosaurs can issue commands without spending any command points between abilities like that and the relics you can equip them with they can seriously buff elisan Army to say nothing of the fact they're all pretty good themselves and of course there's models like the engine of the Gods which has its own special way of assisting nearby units and harming the enemy it can also summon sorus or skinks to the battlefield if it rolls well and it's power Power Generation table which is yet another way to prank your enemies with surprise lizards they weren't expecting it can be used with the coals too meaning you have once again another way to wrong foot enemies expecting you to go full unab banga even with the subset of lizard men who specialize in full unab banga as for the models themselves they're all pretty damn great now they were getting up there in the years but with the refresh they finally got they're beautiful sorus look like the Fearsome Warriors they should cigor all look like Killer Croc has been taking race horse roids for breakfast and the slon all look like the ancient magic Frost they are additionally they're not only easy to paint but pretty much a blank canvas to go wild with all the colors of the rainbow will work with them they're a bunch of scaly wizards they can come in whatever color you want them to sure something like the aquasaurs is the classic but you don't got to limit yourself to that by any means lastly the lizin can be a pretty cheap Army to collect relatively speaking for GW standards of course the high point cost of their models means that you can fill out an army composition pretty quickly with them if you're really only interested in lower point games the Vanguard box and maybe a skink wizard is all you're really going to need sure if you make an army entirely out of skinks you're going to be spending a lot on them but why would you want an all skink Army that's a bit goofy of you if I say so myself they're also more or less unchanged from fantasy Army wise which means you've got a vintage Army that's also still getting updates nice the sorus attorney Warden model doesn't have rules unfortunately but hey you can still get them which I'm more than fine with being able to collect old models but not play them at least has value to people who like collecting Warhammer and I wish more minis were available like that yet even they are not without weakness as you might have guessed from ear the limen do not make the best of neighbors the starborn are mystical and rather mysterious in their lore the first time they fought alongside order was when they lightening their way down onto a battlefield the stormcasts were already fighting on and then they just kind of dipped out the moment the fighting was over which isn't evil or anything but it's not the kind of Ally you're going to be making small talk or any actual plans with as for the coales they're like the old Lizardman from fantasy if you go into their jungle it doesn't matter who you are you're going to die a messy death even in the age of Sigma role playing game saraon can't become Soul bound like most other races and I believe it's actually advised for them to solely be NPCs who join for a single adventure and then leave they're run order because they build up civilization and OPP post chaos but they're at best not going to be making smell talk with anyone and at worst just as much a threat as chaos destruction or death to the average citizen of the Mortal Realms Lord kroak did work with morathi of all people like I said before but that was a pretty exceptional situation not the norm you may have allies with your lizan army but you're not going to have any friends and although the saraon have more characterization of them than the did as the Lizardman that's still not saying much they're still following the ever unexplained great plan they're still biological Androids who on an individual basis don't have any plans in my life beyond fight chaos there's Lord croak who's willing to work with others and sacrifice himself as need be as shown from the end times there's that one slon and skink who like the pet dinosaur and that's more or less your lot for characterization your average Lizardman isn't going home to a lizard woman and lizard child after the fighting is over this is what they exist for consequently this means lisman stories are going to be in short Supply and the major narrative events potentially won't focus on them as often as other factions of course as I've said for other factions like this this makes them perfect for a Homebrew situation or if you're into Warhammer as a Sandbox war game rather than something driven by characters but if you are driven by characters and the faction having a very relatable human feel to them it's not the best one in the world for you to pick another lore-based con for them is that they like many of the order factions in AOS failed but they failed in a way beyond all the other ones did they failed the old ones the first time around Dearing the great plan to be a bust during the end times and then when the age of chaos rolled around they failed to prevent chaos from overtaking most of the Mortal Realms now especially for that last one you might say that you can place the blame for that in almost all the order factions and fair is fair you can but the Lizardman unlike the other factions were specifically created to fight chaos from their very Inception in an entirely different game their whole purpose was to prepare the world alongside the old ones to prevent Cass from overrunning reality and it did just that twice not a great track record as a final lore KH the lizan are still forever in the Stone Age with their Tech now between the salon being able to unmake entire continents with a thought and the fact that sorus are 8ft tall geckos constructed out of brick houses this isn't that much of a problem but part of the fun of Warhammer fantasy in AOS is that cultures in them change and advance and the Lizardman don't really do that they don't necessarily need to granted but there's still never going to be a Lizardman unit of musket skinks or something like that which is a shame as for tabletop cons one of the biggest weaknesses is their relian is on Heroes and whatnot to make the most out of your army slon casting spells or SARS Heroes buffing your units these are what you need to make the most out of a Lizardman Army now it's not as bad as the undead factions where if your vampire General dies before the game is in its last round you might as well just concede then and there they can still function without their Heroes a dinosaur doesn't really need the guy in charge to tell it what to do they just won't function at their best without that guidance this is compounded on by the fact that the units are rather pricey for what you're getting with those points so without those Heroes buffing them they're kind of suboptimal suboptimal doesn't mean bad I want to make make that clear asaurus is going to beat things to death no matter what but he could be beating things to death much more effectively with a hero or general telling him how to best do it moving on to the big hitters the cheapest of the dinosaurs is also 180 points minimum with the rest being roughly 250 or more and Lord crog flops his meat down at 410 points while he's an absolute monster for 410 points that's still pretty pricey to keep your army running at Full Steam need all your special dudes alive for long enough to buff your army through at least a couple rounds of fighting and of course the priceing issue I mentioned is a problem all by itself 10 saurus is 170 points only 10 less than a unit of chaos Warriors that might not sound too bad but the sorus have a four up save and Chaos Warriors have a three up the sorus do have a slightly better bravery score than the Warriors but at least personally I'd take the save over the extra bravery point this only gets worse with character and Dino units added in and while working in sync the limen are damn scary their expense of nature means that losses are going to hurt even skinks are 90 points for 10 minis which due to me loving the scaven means I consider them to be complete dog for that cost I mean come on now 100 points gets you 20 Clan rats and the skinks have a worst save of six plus unless you give them the option with a Starbuck Shield a six plus save they might as well be politely asking the bullets coming at them to please not hurt sure they have some more movement Shenanigans but the point to cost ratio is way off for me in low point games losing almost any unit can hurt you a lot and even in higher games you should still be careful with your dudes you can still bull rush into enemy models it's not that you'll be screwed if you do Lord croak brain level maneuvering is by no means required to play the Lizardman just make sure your full frontal assault is in some way part of a plan even if it's a basic one and you aren't just going full orc otherwise it might just end with you losing a couple hundred points of models before the battle is even started they're also pretty melee Centric which means the slow speed of a good portion of their units can hurt them if you wen't able to weather a hail of range attacks against armies like the kadan overlords I wouldn't say they're the worst in the game at range and the Wizards can mitigate it further with their spells but you really want your dinos to be getting into bite range to be truly effective Ive raising their two wound rolls and dealing with render other problems they face now the two wound rolls isn't too much of a problem admittedly because they have pretty solid stats for that one already but their counter to an enemy with a lot of Ren is to really hope that the enemy doesn't have a lot of Ren the sarus three up situational save looks really good on paper until an enemy unit with Ren 2 comes along and suddenly the terrifying Sapient dinosaurs more resemble the chicken than the T-Rex to end off the tabl up cons is a variety of miscellaneous stuff not really worth their own section a good chunk of the Dinosaurs as well as the sorus are pretty damn slow skinks are weak as hell with piss poor leadership stuff like that most of their models have a fairly obvious downside that you're going to have to find a workaround for not crippling exactly but something to keep note of at all times also the riida Riders I do not like this unit and I don't really know why they're fast flying Cavalry so they do have their uses but maybe I don't like them because of the five up save on a flying unit with only three wounds per model maybe it's because they're most effective by placing frog-shaped hit markers on certain units and that requ requires a decent bit of planning and positioning to make the most of maybe it's because I just don't like the idea of taking this unit when you can take a different kind of pterodactyl that is a ranged option instead or hell maybe it's all of the above but at this point I'm complaining about a single model for over half a paragraph straight time to wrap up overall the saraon are solid for a variety of lore interests play Styles and modeling choices make sure to get your warriors into melee quickly and any cheap skirmishing unit should be annoying the hell out of the enemy until you can get the carnosaur in melee range those things drove dragons out of an entire continent back in Warhammer fantasy with them as your age of sigar army you can repeat that on any smartass who tries to tell you that T-Rex was a scavenger while a magical one is turning his wizard into a pulled pork sandwich thank you as always to my wonderful channel members you were the great plan to my saraon Lizardman guiding me ever forward even though I don't really know what I'm being guided towards if you'd like to support the channel feel free to subscribe or become a member either way thank you for watching and take care out there I wish Lord croak and the emperor met so the emperor could feel objectively inferior in every possible way living status and how well they're able to get around nowadays well the emperor is in Non-Stop hell and has been for 10,000 years while Lord croak died and just wouldn't no they wheel him out whenever something needs to explode really badly really quickly death just didn't affect him fighting off chaos while true Warhammer fantasy did explode from chaos Lord croak held off infinite Demons by himself just like the emperor does except he fixed the issue permanently and is still able to go out and do stuff and of course sex appeal need I say more on who wins that one

Channel: PancreasNoWork

Views: 308,981

Keywords: Warhammer, Age of Sigmar, AoS, Warhammer AoS, WH AoS, Warhammer Age of Sigmar, PancreasNoWork, Do or Don't, Lizardmen, Seraphon

Id: DH35aStgoeU

Length: 25min 34sec (1534 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 12 2023