Lizards are poor archers. They have low speed, low damage, and a penalty in melee combat. But with the swamp creatures, it's a different story.
If you upgrade the lizards and use Vistan as much as possible (in principle, Kirr and Orrin would also be good here - just my opinion), then the lizards will surprise you a lot.
Now about the melee penalty. I don't know of any archers of level 1-2 without a melee penalty. And that lizards are weaker than Gloomwings is obvious.
