AoS Wish-list for a theoretical future "balance patch"

sure if we are talking effective wounds per point then yea i can find a ton. ill get back to you when i get up tonight

 

We should be talking units you consider good. The argument is that skinks aren't good unbuffed, so we should be able to find "plenty" of units that you consider good, that are just as wound efficient as skinks while doing more damage.

Your math was also a little off on horrors. 40 horrors do an average of 10 damage against a 4+ save. Skinks do 13-14, assuming no reroll 1's. But if your comparison builds the entire cost of the starpriest into the equation, it really should include that which increases skink damage to 15-16. 5 extra damage is not insignificant, especially when a good chunk of that damage is mortal wounds, so skinks are only getting better as you shoot tougher stuff.

You also can't take blue horrors in units of 40 unless they popped from a pink unit of 20 (which would make them cost more). Meaning their +1 hit is disappearing real fast and their range is a ton more restrictive.

IMO that kind of stuff thats hard to just math out makes a big different on the tabletop.

 

Gladly! I'd rather do this after we play a "real" matchup. I was using knights of the empty throne for the first time and erta was bringing 240 skinks. I dont know how much is to be learned form that matchup haha.

 

That is not an advantage of the unit with the bad base stats on a warscroll. That's an advantage of having good support units.

A unit with a badly statted warscroll is just that. A unit with bad stats. The supports are merely crutches used to get that unit to perform. It's not an advantage that the support can potentially buff a different unit as that just leaves the bad warscroll unit as (mostly) dead weight.

And this is kind of the crux of the whole issue. We got fairly good & efficient support (albeit a bit too easy to kill...), but rather terrible baseline units.
An opponent who looks at just the fully buffed unit cries OP, because our design of weak basescrolls and lots of delicate easily broken moving parts demands we absolutly shine whenever we do get that combo going. A seraphon player who looks at how poorly our units perform when our support is denied, and how easy it is to deny the support, complains about their terrible baseline units.

If you want to balance it in such a way that both sides are more or less happy we're going to need better baseline warscrolls. We can still have a playstyle that revolves around synergies to get the most out of it, but our baseline needs to be good enough to do able to do more than just stand on objectives and hope for the best.
On the one hand that'l allow the seraphon player to actually try to salvage a bad situation, instead of being stuck with mostly dead weight as things start going south.
And on the other hand it'l remove the worst excesses of OP nonsense for their opponents to complain about because those no longer need to be as powerfull to make up for the (over)reliance on powerfull but supremely fragile support systems to empower weak baseline units.

 

I don't believe i made that claim at all. I specified that there is an advantage to having our balance of power lean on support heroes rather than base warscrolls.

I've spent a lot of time and energy arguing why our base warscrolls aren't as bad as they seem and our heroes aren't as easily disposed of as is implied. I've tried to use real examples that have come to life in the games i've actually played and the experience i actually have addressing these concerns on the table top. I've tried to be pretty moderate in those statements too.

It's disheartening to have that informational consistently met with these types of blanket statements with little to no supporting information. You keep saying our support heroes are too easy to kill and our base warscrolls suck. Says who, exactly? You? Based on what experience? Against what matchups? Using what deployments? Are you being patient enough? Are you yoloing too hard and getting your own heroes killed? These are relevant questions that need answering if anyone is going to continue to make these exaggerated claims.

The concept that "seraphon are only OP on the back of easily killable heroes, if only people would kill the heroes it wouldn't be that bad" doesnt take into consideration the way the game is actually being played on the table. Its easy to say "oh look, a 5 wound hero with a 5+ save. I'm sure he dies turn 1 all the time." it's significantly, significantly harder to put that into practice, something i've seen the evidence of personally, something i've tried to describe at length here.

If anyone is having trouble seeing how that plays out, or just generally playing seraphon and keeping their heroes alive, hit me up. We can talk through some stuff on discord and walk through some deployments and scenarios on TTS.

If anyone has any experience that differs from what i've stated, please elaborate. I want to have the discussion about whats actually happening on the table, not these theoretical, hypothetical situations that involve a lot of handwaving and math calculating with no context.

 

Absolutely. Those tools are few and far between.

As an aside, how are you killing 3 fyreslayer heroes on the first turn? Seems like that would be a deployment issue on the fyreslayers part.

 

I get first turn teleport my dread he makes his charge into the 3 foot heroes dealing a lot of mortal wounds. One dies due to the fact that dice are random and unpredictable. He proceeds to murder the other 2 by splitting attacks between the 2 next question

 

Is it still the lost you posted in your "tuning DT for the projected meta" thread? I'm interested in trying it out

 

Yeah. It changes a bit each time I play, but the core stays the same. Its harder to play and less forgiving than fangs is, but I really like being able to protect my important stuff by hiding it off the board.

 

One army you missed that can totally do the "snipe all the characters turn 1" is CoS, at least Living City / Greywater with Bridge.

My other main army is CoS, and I use 40 Sisters of the Watch ambushing to remove every hero in range ASAP since it can neuter so many lists

 

Lumineth, KO, Cities, Tzeentch, Skaven, Shootcast, Bonereapers and Seraphon all have the tools to take out a significant number of enemy heroes in turn 1-2. I think the massive amount of shooting and hero sniping is a big reason why a lot of games only go to turn 3. If you lose everything that you need to perform well in the first turn, the game's usually over at that point, unless your opponent is just not equipped to clear your troops after taking out your support.

 

aright now that life has stoped kicking me in the nuts lets do this. first we have to establish that points per wound is a bad measure of what is good in aos. not hard, see the following (10 man 1 wound per man save 6+ 60 points) or (10 man 1 wound per man save 4+ 60 points). now obviously the second one is better same points per wound but with a better save this is why we use "effective points per wound" and account for the save. even this isn't perfect as (10 man 1 wound per man save 4+ 1000 points) and (10 man 1 wound per man save 6+ 5++ 100 points) and (5 man 2 wound per man save 4+ 100 points) all have the same effective points per wound but the second two are better then the first due to the rend mortal and battle shock resistance. this is why all my mathhammer unit break downs have full graphs for each unit but as this dissertation is going to be long enough as is we will be using 0 rend attacks coming from a 4+ save unit and expanding when necessary.
second we must acount for buff heroes now there are two main types of support heroes auras and 1 offs. to have the unit performing it's best you HAVE to pay for the heroe so the points have to be added into calculations. one offs are easy as they can only support one unit at a time and so the cost is just added to gether for every one and we call it square. even if they can go support someone else the universal nature of this will keep things more or less fair regardless. aura heroes are more tricky as they can support more then one unit at the same time, to keep things short we will divide wholey within auras points by 2 and within auras by 3. again keeping things short.
so keeping that in mind skinks with shield have a EPPW (effective points per wound) of 4.5 and non shield skinks have a EPPW of 5.14. this will bee our baseline for durability on units from hear on out. unbuffed bolt spitter skinks have a EPPD (effective points per damage) of 108 in small form and 54 when in horde. both range and melee are the same. buffed skinks have a EPPD of 150 in small and 32.25 in horde. this will be our base line for offence

Eternal guard are one of my favorite low key defense units not the best thing in their army but still solid. they have a EPPW of 4 when unsupported and not moving and a EPPW of 0.78 when supported. now this is deceptive as they are melee units and must remain stationary but still solid OB holders.
they have a EPPD of 36 when moving and 27 when not. this makes them a more effective screen then skinks as you get more for your money both defensively even unbuffed and they can hit back much harder(granted with no mortal output). they are slower then skinks only 6" move but with +1 to run they are only down 1" when used as a screen and their army has a teleport as well.

demigryph knights. with a EPPW of 4.44 they stand as durable as shield skinks are. they have a EPPD of 23.42 with halberds unsupported, 28.24 with non charge lances unsupported and 17.46 with lances on the charge unsupported. with support this jumps to 14 for lances on the charge (halberds get worse). they move 10 and +1 to runs and charges. still a melee unit but they are also considered to be a bit to expensive.

Iron drakes this one gets kind of complicated so bear with me. iron drakes have a EPPW of 7.5 when hit with melee and 5 when hit by ranged unbuffed it's over all much higher but not overly so when hit from range and better then unshielded skinks. now their EPPD when unsupported and moving is 44.07 when stationary it's 22.01 now buffing them makes them even more fun with a stationary EPPD of 14.22 with what is essentially mortal wounds. they are slower but they come from a army with solid teleports and then you just have to ask if less durability is worth 2 times the damage and taking 60-120 wounds out of your opponent turn 1.

Kurnoth hunters(with bows) EPPW they teleport to move so are always planted 4.22. they also buff themselves so their EPPD is 53.44 at twice the range unsupported. not the best unit out there but needs no support to function and is better then base skinks the good warscroll we are working from.

warplock jezzails best non kroak hero snippers in the game EPPW 20 in melee(ew) 7.78 at range better. EPPD is 45.16 all mortal wounds or rend -2 they teleport to move and need no support to work. not as durable but you have to eat threw a entire scaven army to get to them and better damage then anything out side a 40 man buffed skink block.

i'll come up with more but thats it for tonight im board
i have not found a 1 to 1 skink parallel yet but i have only touched on 3 armies so far(maybe ungors? i'll have to check) and there are more to come. what we have seen so far is that skinks are not the most cost effective screen in the game not by a long shot with both eternal guard and demigryphs doing it better both being more cost effective, both doing much more damage when charged and one being faster while the other is just barely slower. nether of them are considered to be the best units in their book, skinks are out side of kroak. damage wise skinks are far out classed by almost any good ranged unit with the ones i put above ether being massively more damage wile only giving up some durability or solidly comparable while not needing support at all to do so. all of the above significantly out class base skinks which was the original contention.
initial hypothesis skinks are good but not broken and their bass warscroll is rather $&*$. conclusion more data needed

skinks are generalists the only time they do good damage is in a fully buffed 40 man and a minore shooting attack does not make up for the difference when in a 10 man screen

 

I formatted this a little better just so we can go off this. I used basically the best unbuffed numbers for everything and used the "it moved" qualifier when it came into play. This was simply to try and get the best "totally unbuffed" representation of that unit, and keep it consistent across all. if anything looks off let me know. First number is "EPPW" second is "EPPD"


Skinks
4.5
54

Eternal guard
4
36

Demigryph
4.44
28.24

Iron drakes
5
44.07

Kurnoth Hunters
4.22
53.44

Warplock Jezzails
7.78
45.16

So, if i'm looking at that i feel pretty good about unbuffed skinks, and nothing in this comparison makes unbuffed skinks garbage. Unbuffed, their EPPD is obviously a little low, but thats kind of the nature of the beast isn't it. Also, even the cheapest unit here, eternal guard, is still TWICE the cost of skinks which makes a massive difference when you're looking at the game from the perspective of board control and not just "how well does this thing kill or get killed" which is really unfair. that's without mentioning you based your wound efficiency off a rend 0 attack, which benefits the units with stronger saves more than the units with more wounds. What does the efficiency look like with mortals, for example? Mortals are HUGELY prevalent in the current meta, and a big part of the reason why skinks are so effective (because you're just paying for raw wounds, not a save that gets bypassed.)

A good screen isn't necessarily a unit with the most efficient wound count, something i never claimed skinks had. Generally, damage from a screen is more or less irrelevant and you're just looking to eat board space and ensure combats are happening on your terms (you're getting the units you want into the enemy units you want, before they do.) With that said, are you seriously telling me that demigryph knights are a "better screen" because their ppw is .06 lower than skinks? That analysis is so far removed from how the game plays its hard to believe.

So yeah, i feel pretty comfortable with my statement after that analysis. I mean, the argument was skinks were "garbage" and they are at the very least comparable to everything there and none of those units are "garbage." The whole argument is basically stacked against making skinks look good and they still look more than fine.

Skinks are a good warscroll, not just because of their raw efficiency or their points per damage, but because of EVERYTHING. It's those things PLUS all the buffs that can be put on them, all the advantages they get from our various allegiance abilities, the way they fit into the larger army by providing CHEAP wounds and ranged mortal wound damage, and the fact that their bravery 10 (in starborne) with an 8'' move. In Fangs your looking at a potential 17'' move the first turn on a block of 40 relatively efficient wounds that can be buffed to do relatively efficient damage. That is insane. And that's if you don't feel like teleporting them... FOR FREE. Oh and then it can also shoot you again in the charge phase and also potentially retreat from said charge. A lot of these things provide powerful flexibility and aren't necessarily easily fit into a mathematical equation of "how good is this unit."

I'm more than fine agreeing to disagree. In my opinion, anyone not recognizing the power of all that, at this point in time, simply needs to see it displayed on the battlefield in all the various difficult matchups and battleplans.

 

I'm not all that good at mathhammer, but from what I'm seeing on the numbers Skinks are comparable in the "points per wound" department while doing the least damage (unbuffed) out of any of the units they were compared to.

Just my two cents worth: I don't think Skinks are garbage, but I also certainly agree that they're pretty terrible in combat without at the very least the Starpriest buff put on them, and they really need the Serpent's Staff, Skink Priest prayer, and probably the Hand of Glory spell thrown on them for them to actually do much of anything combat-wise outside of Fangs of Sotek. But they are also versatile. You can bring them in hordes and buff them like crazy if you want them to be your main fighting force. Or, you can just bring a few 10-man units for screens, in which case all they're there for is to die, so it doesn't matter that they probably won't do a single wound to the enemy charging them. Or you can bring them in 20-man units to serve as backup shooting and flankers for your melee units.

So all in all, I actually think Skinks are pretty good, but no where close to OP or even under-costed, imo. If people really felt that Skinks were too oppressive to play against, it's probably only in Fangs of Sotek. In which case maybe altering the FoS command ability to just be overwatch or retreat, but not both? So instead of shooting and then rolling to see if you can retreat, you just pick shooting or retreating? That might be enough of a balancing move to make FoS less annoying. But of course, Coalesced still needs a few minor buffs to be brought up to the level of Starborne. If there wasn't just one Seraphon list (Kroak+Fangs of Sotek) that nearly everyone played, I think you'd see a lot less complaining about our army. I still think that DoK and Lumineth are going to be drawing some of the heat away from us anyway.

PS: Not saying Coalesced are bad, I prefer playing them, especially Thunder Lizards. But even though Saurus can do some respectable damage, especially Knights, Coalesced still suffers from one terrible faction rule (who even cares about terrain rules 90% of the time anyway?) and one that's either really good or useless. (Seriously, make Scaly Skin affect all damage, including mortal wounds, except maybe for spells. It's already useless against the vast majority of attacks which are already only 1 damage...)

 

using a full 40 man does not account for min sized screens which will come up latter. if you are going to have skinks and at their best you should be fair across the board.
have guard at their best which would be 27 instead of 36. you also picked the least effective weapon and situation for demography knights you should have used halberds 23.42 if you didn't want to acount for the charge. iron drakes should also be at 22.01 not 44.01 i know that with guard and drakes they need to be stationary to function but the army has easy access to teleports(i even acounted for that in the buffed cost) so that's hardly a strech for drakes and guard are a defensive unit they want to be charged so far more often then not(especially as a screen) they will have non move stats. you where very charitable with the EPPWs(more so then i would be) not sure why that didn't extend to damage if you are going to pick the worst one then be fair and give skinks their 108.
i went in depth because it's not a simple problem and simplifying it does my argument a disservice

you need to have them in large numbers for that to work making them cumbersome but yes a 40 block does well as long as you ignore that they are outclassed by things that are not the best in their books 10 mans less so

nope the last two in the list where also unbuffed and they are a match for a 40 block and blow ten mans out of the water.

not in your comparison which assumes horde skinks so 30 or 40 which puts them at the most expensive unit here. if you want to use the clame that they are cheep you need to use the 10 man stats.

your main argument so far has been that skinks have the best points per wound i just met you an your playing field. it's a bit late to change your mind now. and as i said at the top this is a very simplified rundown as deep math hammer requires graphs to work properly. you can go see the full spread sheets at any time i made them public almost a year ago.

yes you did. the whole 6 points per wound statement you have many many times comes to mind also latter in your statmen going on about how cheep they are. true you have never clamed that they are the very best but it has always been a ajore part of your argument. oh also this quote "so we should be able to find "plenty" of units that you consider good, that are just as wound efficient as skinks while doing more damage."

only irrelevant if they die immediately a weakness of skink screens but not the two i mentioned above

no im saying they are not better "because their ppw is .06 lower than skinks" im saying that because they do the job just as well on top of being faster and hitting really hard. getting into position better and forcing your opponent to deal with them instead of just acting as rode blocks.

no the argument was "base" skinks are terrible. kurnoths archers are bad as they are the worst kurnoth choise in a bad army(i did say they weren't great in the first post). you are also assuming a full 30 or 40 man as 10 man do not compare any where as well and ignoring that the buffable units scale much better then skinks do and then several of the above units unbuffed do better then skinks do buffed

i have demonstrated that out side of buffed 40 man their damage is not at all efficient but ok you can make that clame

yes skinks are generalists and as such are out classed by most specialists. half of what you bring up here is ether true of most units(buffs allegiance abilities effective wounds etc.) over stated(we can only teleport one unit a turn so it's hardly a strength of skinks as that is a hotly contended ability. and we are not the only army with teleports even free ones both kurnoth and jazails from above also have free teleport if limited. and if you don't count free many armies can do more then one unit a turn)(17" is if you roll a 6 so a bit disingenuous). they are not OP they are not over costed their flexibility comes at the expense of them being able to do anything well.

fine by me

 

Fair enough dude. I'd encourage you to play the list a little bit more and see how it works on the tabletop. Then let me know what you think. Personally, I feel that added information will give a better feel of what i'm talking about, something that might not be as apparent when comparing fractionally different numbers on a spreadsheet.

I will concede, when comparing effective wounds in the exact manner you did skinks are not the most efficiently pointed model in the game. I'd argue raw wounds per point would have been helpful to include as well so the units with good saves aren't over represented. Eternal guard aren't as good as they could be, specifically because they are expensive into mortal wound damage.

I think bravery 10, movement 8, 6 ppw, with a 16'' range attack is pretty sweet and it works out pretty well for me. I dont find myself getting a ton of value out of "garbage" units all that often and skinks never seem to let me down. Maybe thats just me. But if skinks are garbage i'm good with garbage.