AoS Saurus underpowered?

30 Chaos Warriors are 480 points. 30 Saurus Warriors are 300. I'd completely expect the Warriors to win that fight.

But let's math-hammer it out anyway (I'm not going to do fractions, so I'll just round as evenly as I can). If the Saurus go first, and assuming everyone is in range, the Saurus output 60 mace attacks at 3+, hitting 40 times, and wounding 26 times. The bite attacks add an extra 7 or so wounds. So 33 wounds total. The Warriors save 16 of them, then reroll the 6 1's they rolled, saving 3 more. 14 wounds suffered. The remaining 23 Chaos Warriors hit back, with 46 attacks generating 23 hits. 12 of these wound, the Saurus save 4, suffering 8 wounds. Both sides roll battleshock. The Saurus lose D6-4 models. The Warriors lose D6+1 models. So on average, at the end of combat, the Saurus lose 8 models and the Warriors lose 11.

That's an ideal scenario mind you. You'll almost never have 30 club Saurus Warriors in range to swing unless the enemy is strung out in some gigantic conga line. It's more realistic to have the Saurus with spears instead, fighting in two ranks, just like the Warriors. So again, assuming Saurus go first, we get 60 spear attacks at 3+, hitting 40 times, but wounding 20 times now. Bites are halved because only half are in range, so 7 hit, 4 wound. 24 wounds total, 12 failed saves, reroll the 4 1's, 2 more saves. 10 wounds suffered. 25 Chaos Warriors hit back, 50 attacks, 25 hits, 13 wounds. Saurus save 4, suffer 9 wounds. Battleshock time, Warriors lose D6-1 models, Saurus lose D6-3. On average, end of combat, Saurus lose 9 models, Warriors lose 7.

The Warriors get a massive advantage if they go first though, since they take away the horde bonus. 30 Chaos Warriors will get 60 attacks, 30 hits, 15 wounds, 10 dead Saurus. The 20 remaining get only 20 attacks back, 14 hit, 7 wound. Bites give about 3 more wounds, 10 total. 5 save, one more saved from rerolls, 4 wounds suffered. End of combat, Saurus lose D6-2 models, Warriors lose D6-4 models. On average, end of combat, Saurus lose 11 models, Warriors lose 2.

So in two scenarios the Saurus come out either ahead or pretty even. In the final scenario the Warriors pretty comprehensively crush the Saurus. Given the massive points discrepancy, that's pretty damn good.

 

Don't the warriors lose D6-2 models if they've suffered 7 losses? Bravery of 6, +1 from the banner, +2 from having 20+ models at time of the battleshock, resulting in 9 effective bravery?
And wouldn't the saurus lose D6-4 models? 10 Bravery, +2 from 20+ models, resulting in an effective 12?

Resulting in 8,5 saurus losses and 8,16 losses for the warriors as well on average?

And similarly, aren't the other battleshocks in your calculations wrong as well? Resulting in D6-4 for chaos and D6-3 for seraphon in the second scenario resulting in an average of 10 saurus and 5.5 warrior losses. And D6-2 saurus and 0 warriors in the third scenario resulting in 11,66 saurus vs 2 warriors losses.

Or am i doing something wrong?

The issue is that warriors only really work in (near) ideal scenario's. Yes in those scenario's they often do relativly well, but outside of those scenario's they're borderline useless. Just look at the one scenarion you gave in which they won. Not only does it require the saurus to go first but they need to be positioned in an utterly unrealistic way. And not only that, but ithey'l only pull ahead in the first round of combat as they've now lost their horde bonus and we're now essentially in scenario 3. Ultimatly they'l get utterly crushed in any scenario...

And that's asssuming I'm wrong about the mistake surrounding battleshock I mentioned earlier. If I am right about the mistake then the saurus do even worse.

 

If one is comparing size of a model when considering how many wounds it has, wouldn't saurus have 2? Considering they are roughly the same size as ardboys and chaos warriors. If you want to argue for how slim warriors seem, I would then definitely argue that guard should have 2, as they are a good bit buffer.

 

Nah you're doing it right. I forgot about the horde bonus for the Chaos Warriors. My mistake.

Well none of those scenarios were ideal. Saurus max out at 40, not 30, but I was just comparing straight numbers. And I never took external buffs into account, because then it just gets crazy. Again though, the Warriors are more expensive. They should win the fight.

 

My issue with Warriors and Guard being given an extra wound is that this makes them have the same number of wounds as a Knight, which doesn't make much sense.

Guards should probably be given two wounds, but if they are then Knights should get three.

 

in fairness, all the saurus need some fairly extensive rebalancing due to the powercreep, so that changes to one affect the other makes sense I suppose.

 

And in these non ideal scenario's they got unceremoniously crushed. Which is my point. The warriors may be more expensive and thus "should" win and that is fine. However, the difference in outcome between ideal and non-ideal circumstances is far too big. Simply put, the horde bonusses (and external buffs) are too powerfull relativly speaking to the saurus their base-stats, leaving them in the awkward situation where in ideal circumstances they pose a significant threat to the chaos warriors, but the moment you're not in ideal circumstances they'l barely scratch the paint on the chaos warriors their armor.

 

Arguably what we really need is for our monsters to be better. Imagine an Oldblood on carnosaur with 14 wounds and a rend 2 bite and rend 1 claws. A stegadon with damage that makes sense for those gigantic horns, say 3 damage and not 2. If they don’t do that then they could at least reduce our point costs

 

Our big dino's suffer from similar powercreep. Though what I'd want most for them is just being able to use more of em. Half the appeal of this army is fielding big dinosaurs, yet we only get a handfull of em due to their cost and the behemoth rules.

 

Agreed, we kinda got thenshort end of the stick with power creep and never really got enough attention.

 

This is something I feel could be partially addressed with Seraphon allegiances.

Similar to how Gristlegore from Flesheater Courts can take Zombie Dragons and such as battleline, it doesn't seem unreasonable that we could take Stegadons or Bastiladons as battleline if we used a certain 'Starhost' or something.

The Behemoth limit is still kind of restrictive though.

 

I wouldn't want it to be game-wide but Seraphon are a prime example of an army that kind of revolves around behemoths, at least it's a big part of its fantasy. It's weird we don't really field much that's larger than a regular human.

Apart form just giving us more behemoth slots, they could also give us stuff that's in between behemoth and regular troops. Good examples of this would be dracoth cavalry. They're still quite large and monstrous and fit well with our army. Currently the only thing we have in that catagory are the Kroxigors, and they're not even good.

The army fantasy would benefit a lot if we could field more stuff like that and there's plenty of examples; Kroxigors, Dracoth cavalry, beasts of nurgle, Korgorath, Akhelian allopex, Dragon ogres. They're all relativly big imposing models with considerable power that form nice centerpieces for a formation, but for some reason we don't really have em.

 

What i dont get is the small dmg output of our big ones.
How is it possible, that a Troglodon has no Rend and a Canrosaurus has one -1 or nothing ?
i always put the free people general on griffin in the competition.
he has -2, -1 and -2 rend on his attacks, and they do massive dmg.
he has a movement of what? 14? a 3+ save on top!
all this for just 260 points!
Not a single behemonth from us could stand against this "normal" general.
Maybe a Dread and even him could have a problem.
A Oldblood on Carno should be a real threat for the enemy and not a anoying thing to look for

 

The only thing we can hope is a complete rework on saurus and all models xD on rules and on models

 

What the saurus need is akin to bloodletters/khorne damon units.
Heroes all heroes add buffs.
Foot saurus heroes 12" bubble re roll 1s to hit
Mounted saurus heros 20" bubble re roll 1s to hit
Warriors horde bonuses at 20 add 1 to save rolls at 30 add 1 to hit rolls.
Knights 4+ save mortal wound on 6 to hit
Guard extra wound.