8th Ed. The BEST close combat units in all of Warhammer.

I like the custom Chaos Dwarf smiley... The fact that he has a "top hat" is not lost on me.

 

The time has come, @NIGHTBRINGER , to finish what you started...

 

(ahem)

@NIGHTBRINGER ?

 

And he has been aesthetically prolific!

All kudos to him, his work pieces and his workshop which I'm fairly jealous about

But surely, the time has come to finish the battle royale?

 

I've been painting!! Planning something cool for tomorrow, details to follow.


As for this thread, eventually I'll get back to it. Luckily, @Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl created a sister thread to this one, so there is no rush.

 

Blimey! What brought that on? Something you ate at Christmas?

I look forward to seeing what it is that you’ve been so desperate to paint!

 

Hahaha... that's fair!

I've actually painted a couple of small things (and started a bunch of things), but I've yet to take pictures of it.

I've been working on my prototype Chaos Dwarf colour scheme. He is almost finished.

But for tomorrow's event I'll be painting something completely different and new. @Mrs. NIGHTBRINGER is joining in too!

 

And they say Hitchcock is the master of suspense...

 

@Mrs. NIGHTBRINGER and @NIGHTBRINGER - New Years Day painting challenge!

 

New Year's Day has come and gone my friend...

FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!

 

Patience my young Padawan.

It's going to be a little while longer. I'm about to go on my Octuple Slann mini hiatus!

 

Mini-hiatus is over...

Sooooooooooooooooooooooooooo........?

 

Well, well, well... it's well past time we got back into the swing of things ( @Lizards of Renown ). To start things off, we need to face the problem that I ran into before my hiatus from this thread... namely, the Hammerers vs. Demigryph Knight matchup. I shall present you with the problem, my proposed solution and then ask that you each weigh in on my solution. If you have an alternate solution that you deem to be more fair, please put it forward and we can all discuss it before we collectively deciding how to proceed.

So let me take you on a little adventure filled with the annoying need to re-calculate previous matchups.

It all started with the following Demigryph vs. Hammerers matchup (the headers are misaligned because I shrunk down the size to fit it into single picture screen grabs, so as to not hit the 10 image forum post limit... I shall return to normal size after we resolve this)...



It seemed like a simple enough victory for the Hammerers, but I found it strange that the Demigryphs lost this matchup, while their Monstrous Cavalry brethren, the Mournfang, won this very same contest. So I took a quick look back and noticed that the Mournfang vs. Hammerers matchup was contested at lower points total (360pts per side). These situations are bound to come up as I've typically aimed for contests pointed at somewhere around 350-425 points (give or take, monsters excepted), depending on how I can best even out the points between sides. However, having one side win (Mournfang) and another side lose (Demigryphs) based potentially on a random starting points cost (where both sit inside the typical values used throughout the contest) seemed wrong. So that required some further (painstaking) investigations. And we have...


And therein lies the problem. By shifting the points total by the margin of a single Demigryph Knight, the results are flipped!!! At a 416pts start, the Hammerers win, but at the 358/360pts start, the Demigryphs win. Both point totals fall within the typical values used for the tournament, so both results feel equally legitimate.

Of course, this all meant that I had to go back and apply the same starting conditions to the Mournfang and the Skullcrushers in their matchup against the Hammerers.

The Skullcrushers, as I suspected, win in both scenarios...




So no issue with the Skullcrushers' result, nothing needs to be changed on their front. Then I went back into the Mournfang matchup...





So the Mournfang surprisingly win the contest at both the lower and higher starting points levels. This was admittedly a bit unexpected, as I figured they would follow the same trend as the Demigryph Knights did. It took me a bit of time to realize the obvious difference that was staring me in the face, it came down not to the starting point size, but the starting model count. There is a significant disparity in the points per model between our 3 MC units:

• Demigryph Knights = 58pts
• Mournfang = 70pts
• Skullcrushers = 78pts

Because of this, the starting model count varies at the lower and higher unit points costs:

• Demigryph Knights = [7 models @416pts] and [6 models @358pts]
• Mournfang = [6 models @430pts] and [5 models @360pts]
• Skullcrushers = [5 models @400 pts] and [4 models @322pts]

And there in lies the problem. At the higher points total, the Demigryphs could only get 6 of their 7 total models into base contact. That means that one model (in the supporting rank) could only utilize its rider's abysmal offense, while its mount made no contribution. In the case of the Mournfang and the Skullcrushers, they both got all their models into B2B and thus all of their mounts got to attack. Although this only effects the first round, the difference was enough to sway the results.

So personally, 4 things came to light:

1. I despise re-visiting and recalculating things, and I will procrastinate when faced with such a scenario
2. I hate those damn Hammerers in this competition. Whenever there is a problem (outside of errors on my part) those bastards are usually a part of it (i.e. their White Lion matchup was razor close too).
3. The model advantage (due to lower points cost) that Demigryphs enjoy over Mournfang and Skullcrushers, breaks down at higher points cost because their models are forced to the back sooner
4. Most interestingly, although not tested in this tournament, Mournfang and Skullcrushers are significantly better than Demigryphs when forced to fight from supporting ranks. You never want your MC in supporting ranks, but the Demigryphs are nearly 100% reliant on their mounts offensively, while the Mournfang mounts probably account for around two thirds of their offense, and the Skullcrushers are 50/50 if we exclude stomps.

Anyways, I digress. Back to the topic at hand. Here is my suggested way of handling this situation:

• the Skullcrusher's victory over the Hammerers stands as is
• the Mournfang's victory over the Hammerers stands as is
• the Demigryph and Hammerer matchup is declared a draw. Each of the two results is just as viable as the other. I can think of nothing fairer than treating their 1-1 record as a draw.

So what do you think of that solution? It seems in my eyes to be the fairest was to proceed (and we finally get to enter a draw into our table of results!!). Agree or disagree?

Update: With everyone agreement, the solution, as detailed above, has been applied. Here is the updated table, complete with our first ever DRAW...

Spoiler: And for the Hammerers and Demigryph Knights...

 

I am happy with this being the result, therefor you wouldn't have to revisit all the matchups.
Would you check previous battles for possible draws if the units are able to fight in a different combination within the preset points costs though?


Grrr, Imrahil

 

Hey, don’t blame us Dwarfs, blame the Demigryphs for having shit riders, you just can’t trust an Umgi (particularly an Imperial Umgi) to get a job done

I thoroughly agree. I was going through duels between these units in my mind and came to the same conclusion you did - if the Demigryph Knights are forced to support, their awful rider profiles and inability for the Demigryphs to support result in them marginally losing, while if they can attack with all their Demigryphs they can marginally win, and because both sides win marginally, it makes perfect sense to class this as a draw.

 

Wowzers.

The sacrifice you are making for the greater good is quite impressive @NIGHTBRINGER!!

I think it should be a draw. The whole point of using averages and "what are the odds" and discounting entirely a general's usage of the troops is simply to work out ON AVERAGE who is the best close combat troops.

The general using the Mournfangs, for instance, in a real game would make a really concerted effort to get those D3 impact hits for each model. If you have a unit three wide, then you're talking about 3D3 impact hits at S5 which is a highly significant factor and oft times will swing a hard combat their way. I understand why you haven't included it in the results, but I'm just using it as an example of my point.

The excellent thing we will end up with is an ON AVERAGE listing of the best troops which will be helpful for people playing the troops. Based on their standing, they could work out strategies to tarpit them or power-up one of their units to deal with them etc.

 

Exactly this

And otherwise we end up with a table without any yellow cells in it

Grrr, Imrahil