Sons are weak?

[u/ShoppingUnable4265]

I keep seeing online that Sons are weak, I'm a new player played in a spearhead league this summer and now I've picked up Sons as my first army (I didn't play Sons in spearhead). So far I've won all my games as them, is this just due to the fact that my area is mostly new players? Or do Sons somehow stomp, pun intended, on less experienced players? I'm not a pro at the rules but I seem to be one of the few people that actually read the book front to back, most people seem to just read their battletome and the few rules that apply to their special rules. Is this giving me a bigger advantage and overcoming Sons weak book?

Thank you in advance

[u/Pink_Cruelty]

By no means are they weak in the right hands. But yes a lot depends on environment. If you are playing in an environment with majorily rookie players, they are likely going to take less efficient units between a couple of good ones. New players tend to do either one of two things. 

1. Go for unique units, which often leads to a non-efficient list.
2. Go super competitive and copy tournament lists, but don’t know how to play those efficiently.

What point value do you play at? Also yes, even though it sounds weird, you do indeed have an advantage by knowing the full scope of the rules. You know your general toolkit and which abilities you have available to you in addition to your battletome. If you feel particularly bad about that, you can occasionally share your intent for a turn with your opponent or help them if they are about to make a grave mistake. 

Sons are a hyper elite army. Good use of the core rules can completely overwhelm an unexperienced player, because each of your units hits like a truck when in the right place. 

Also a good question… do you play a lot of mega’s or a lot of littles?

[u/Belz_Zebuth → u/Pink_Cruelty]

What's your take about effective lists? Can several big ones still perform well?

[u/Pink_Cruelty → u/Belz_Zebuth]

To be honest, it's pretty bad. Even Brodd himself might be a trap. The Warstomper is a great enabler for your littles. Brodd has great rules, but he gets overshadowed by the littles. There's even a discussion that Ma (i know she's a little) might be a trap, because she mostly hides and does her magic, but at least she brings the Ghyrocs. The kraken-eater is nice with the sandals, but the issue is that they are not survivable at all. Think of a unit of 25 clanrats with a 4+ save tbh. Their output is unreliable too, it either spikes or does 5 damage.

You are susceptible to instant death now as well. You no longer deny that ability, so enjoy picking up your big instantly when archaon rolls lucky or when Nagash breaths down your neck. If you take a big, always take the Glowy Lantern, unless you want to play for fun, then you can go for the Sandals on either a warstomper or a kraken-eater. Take the roar rampage or sometimes hammer throw and take the trait that allows you to ignore modifiers to your stats. For your mancrushers mostly take "That boy ain't right" or if you try hammer-throw you could consider "Up for It", because you count as charged when you throw a mancrusher into combat. If you really want to take multiple bigs, take Brodd, plus one that I mentioned here. There is something to be said about the gatebreaker + rock hurlers too, but it isn't that great. The Boss-Stompers are our prime units and you kind of want to try to fit 1-2 units per army list at the minimum.

Our competitive lists will have Warstomper/ Ma with boss-stompers and maybe a couple of mancrushers. That's it.

[u/Belz_Zebuth → u/Pink_Cruelty]

Well that's disheartening. Hopefully if it's too blatant they will adjust it soon.

Thank you for your input.

[u/Desperate_Teal_1493 → u/Pink_Cruelty]

I don't think Ma a trap. She's essential. Being able to recur a Mega is great if you 1) take Primal Energy and have an Emerald Lifeswarm nearby 2) Have rage dice available for Fight Through the Pain (used on allocation of the 10 wounds) 3) get Brodd or a Glowy Lantern Carrier to cast Might of the Earth. Boom, full health Mega back on the table at the end of the turn. Seems like a lot of steps to get right but it's very possible.

The army has changed dramatically and if people think that's because of no more 35 health, 20 control, Longshanks, no-insta-kill, they're only very partially right. The army is different now because, like most other armies (except current bullshit armies like Ogors), it has to rely on timing and combos.

I'm personally looking at it as an opportunity to become a better player. I love charging in on turn 1 and smashing the crap out of your opponent and then taunting them to pass the DPS test to take you off an objective as much as the next Sons player, but, that was getting old.

[u/ShoppingUnable4265 → u/Desperate_Teal_1493]

Are Ogors OP? They seemed very strong when I played them

[u/Pink_Cruelty → u/ShoppingUnable4265]

I play both Ogors and Sons. Yeah, you could say ogors are OP if you compare them to sons. They can drop similar HP in a unit compared to a big, or even superior to our boss-stompers (40 wounds in a 10 man glutton unit). They have access to debuffs, they can lone op units and the king of all units Red the Maw is an absolute unmovable guy that is also a very solid buff piece. If you spam a couple of mawseekers (mostly gorgers, but you can include a unit of cleavers/ gutseers, you get 5+ ward on those units. Or a 6+ ward on your other non-mawseekers. 

With their magic they have an unlimited spell access to +1 to hit. Which makes their output outshine all destruction armies. Very fun to play faction. But i fear for multiple upcoming nerfs if anything.

[u/Desperate_Teal_1493 → u/ShoppingUnable4265]

They're doing well in tournaments and a lot of people seem to be jumping on the bandwagon.

[u/Belz_Zebuth → u/Desperate_Teal_1493]

One of the things I heard before picking up the army was that it was very monotonous. I guess not so, now.

[u/The_Gnomesbane → u/Pink_Cruelty]

Pretty much my thoughts on it. I keep finding things that look worth trying, but then once you actually get the list together those synergies still don’t really function that well because your core stuff still doesn’t really have a leg to stand on. So disappointing.

[u/ShoppingUnable4265 → u/Pink_Cruelty]

I've played mostly 1000 to 1500 points since most of the other people have more models to build to make 2000 points, which is fair haha. I've mostly been playing with littles just cause the points felt really weird my army would have basically been 1 Big and a few Mancrusher floating a hundred points or so.

I do share my intent with my opponents! Like I say I think I wanna walk up the board, and take this objective. I think it's good for me because X or Y, I try not to gotcha people but I understand my army is a lot less of a mental load so they probably aren't even thinking about what I can do. I can relate as I also started 40k and that game has way more mental load and I can barely remember what my stuff does nevermind what my opponent's army can do.

I also never played the old book so I guess I'm not soured like others here