8th Ed. Army Versus Army Matchups: Rock, Paper, Scissors

[Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl]

Are Hellcannons overpowered? Yes

Would they be overpowered if they cost 1000 points a model? No, they would crap. That means the ideal points alottment is somwhere between 200 and 1000 points.

Are jungle swarms underpowered? Yes

Would they be under powered if they cost five points a base? No, they would be crazy OP. That means the ideal points value is between 5 and 35 points.

I wish GW watched the meta tournaments and adjusted points up or down so competitive lists didn't all look the same.

The crazy thing is they've only just started doing this this year, with that 40K amendment sheet they released on Warhammer Community not long ago (even the General's Handbook and the dreadfully-named Chapter Approved supplements failed to satisfy this requirement as they were more KoW Clash of Kings-style scenario packs than anything else).

Better late then never, you say? Yes so long as they release such sheets regularly for 40K, AoS and the Old World if they don't mess the latter up, but the answer is still no for 8th Edition at the very least, as they were 6 years too late for that game.

 

[Cptn Timmy]

Hello Everyone, I feel that Iam quite late to this party but you know . . . Merry Christmas . I still would very much like to chip in to this thread but before Ido I would like to add to the conversation as well. I have to very much agree with @NIGHTBRINGER in the viewing of Warriors of Chaos not being all that great. His tournament very much fortified my opinion on Woc vs anything. On their own point for point they just cant win very many combats, and you dont really have the option of dwindling down an opposing units number before engaging when you play WoC. This lead me to my biggest criticism of that tournament (albeit it is a very small criticism and i very much appreciated the tournament, a very large thank you for the work you put in to it @NIGHTBRINGER .) The tournament had a lot of units testing on thier own leadership to break from combat and in my, though somehwat limited, experience in warhammer a proper general rarely leaves a unit out on their own to test and run without handing in the extra couple pips of leadership from the generals presence. For Ex; trolls are probably the most glaring offender with their poor leadership and stupidity you rarely find them outside a LD bubble or w/o a character accomplice. This in essence is why i think the WoC did so poorly in the tournament and yet have so many people that think they are extremely OP, once you add in a character to givr them higher LD or stubborn for that matter, they start to become very fearsome. I started writing extensivley on this topic here but then realized it was staating to get long and drawn out and off the OP so i think i will start a thread on this with what i began here.

Now for the Original Post. Which Army am I most confident against:
I am most confident against High Elves* with the caveat that there is no Frostheart Pheonix.
My introduction to warhammer was me vs my brother with a Woc Sc box vs, High Elf Sc box. From there we grew our armies and i would say 75% of the warhammer i have played has been this match up. I had the close combats down to how many Warriors I needed to defeat x amount of white lions or to tie up x amount of pheonix guard. Which heros i could fight and which units I had to tarpit or chaff or avoid and if i needed to drop some breath weapons on who in order to bring them down to a manageable size. This was the most confident i felt in warhammer because I knew the match ups inside and out.
I think you can see where this going. . . . .
My Least confident match up; High elves* with a Frost Heart.
The arrival of this model throws every single matchup i had figured out for a loop and i still to this day do not know of an answer for that darn bird. The most success ive had against it was tying it up with a hortensse lord for the game, which is obviously not a favourable points sink.

My last caveat to this arguement is that this was not the army I feel the most confident in winning against but the army I feel the most Confident against.


Edit: I realized this answer is rather personalized and doesn't really help with general idea of this thread, so here is my more general answer.
I play WoC, Lizardmen, and Ogres.
I have played against High elves, OnG, Vampire Counts, Skaven and bretonnia.
In experience I am most confident against skaven because I find their CC to be abysmal and their magic and shooting heavily unreliable, and their reliance on their general.
I am least confident against Vampire Counts because they seem to show up with the most "how the heck do I deal with that" armies.

In theory (counting all armies not just the ones I've played against) i am most confident against empire because "haha paltry humans"
And least confident against dwarves because I am almost all melee based and I struggle to fight even a high elf shooting list. (Although I think my lizardmen would give me the best chance to do well against shooting armies.

 

[NIGHTBRINGER]

His tournament very much fortified my opinion on Woc vs anything. On their own point for point they just cant win very many combats, and you dont really have the option of dwindling down an opposing units number before engaging when you play WoC. This lead me to my biggest criticism of that tournament (albeit it is a very small criticism and i very much appreciated the tournament, a very large thank you for the work you put in to it @NIGHTBRINGER .) The tournament had a lot of units testing on thier own leadership to break from combat and in my, though somehwat limited, experience in warhammer a proper general rarely leaves a unit out on their own to test and run without handing in the extra couple pips of leadership from the generals presence. For Ex; trolls are probably the most glaring offender with their poor leadership and stupidity you rarely find them outside a LD bubble or w/o a character accomplice.

The handling of break tests and leadership was tricky and something I was never fully satisfied with in the tournament. It was always a balancing act and trying to find the lesser of all evils. I agree with you that it was far from perfect, but there simply wasn't a truly elegant solution to it.

Using the general's leadership would have been a perfectly acceptable way of handling it as well, although it would be slightly unfair to the units that possess solid leadership and/or stubbornness on their own. Either way someone is going to be disadvantaged. That said, it would have been interesting to see how the results of the tournament would have shifted. I fully agree with you on the topic of the Trolls, who were massively disadvantaged by not having access to their general's leadership. Auto breaking in the tournament felt a bit unfair to them and if I remember correctly, there are quite a few matchups that they would have won if they would have had a general's leadership to fall back on.

The thing that bothered me the most was the fact that Stubborn leadership 7 (or better) units were effectively unbreakable in the tournament. That was definitely unrealistic and a bit unfair. Sadly, I only thought of a solution to it after the conclusion of the tournament.

This in essence is why i think the WoC did so poorly in the tournament and yet have so many people that think they are extremely OP, once you add in a character to givr them higher LD or stubborn for that matter, they start to become very fearsome.

The thing is, the Chaos Warriors would only have slightly benefitted from the general's boost (unlike the Trolls for example, for whom it would have been a game changer). The reason for this is that they already have leadership 8 themselves, and would only get a boost of 1 leadership if we assume that the general is a DP or a Chaos Lord. In the case of a Sorcerer Lord (which is often the case in mid sized games), they wouldn't have even received a bonus.

Secondly, the fact that they were breaking from combat in the tournament meant that they were losing those rounds of combat, and losing by at least 2. Not a good sign for them.