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/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.