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

Most interesting to see Chaos Trolls crushing Har Ganeth Executioners - I'm assuming this also works for bog-standard Trolls in Greenskin armies, as they also have 3 Strength 5 attacks and Regeneration?

Of course, when pitting them 1v1 in a melee situation it bypasses their one main weakness in the form of Stupidity, as Stupid units fight as normal in melee, but given that their opponents didn't have Flaming Attacks and were only T3, the Trolls certainly had an advantage against them.

 

My thoughts exactly. Things lined up pretty neatly for the trolls and the regeneration save was the big difference maker. The trolls strength of 5 is the perfect strength against the Executioners as it is just enough to wound them on 2's and just enough to completely bypass their armour save. On the other hand, the Executioners' primary selling point of having S6 is only half utilized, as they get to wound on 2's but it does nothing against the regeneration save. Having only 1 attack a piece hurts them, and their killing blow is useless in this matchup.

The vomit attack is less effective than their regular attacks in this case. The vomit attack allows each troll to exchange their regular attacks to make a single attack at S5 that hits automatically and ignores armour. So the strength is exactly the same and in this matchup they both ignore the Executioners armour save anyways. As such it isn't worth it to exchange 3 regular attacks (which averages out to 1.5 hits scored by each troll) for the single hit vomit attack. When we arrive at matchups where the opponent has a great armour save like Skullcrushers or Demigryph Knights, the Vomit attack will become more effective than the regular attack and I will switch over to using it. The same might be true for the Mark of Nurgle Chaos Warriors who while only having a 4+ armour save, are also -1 to hit in CC. I will have to test out the vomit attack to see if it is superior.

And I had no clue either until I opened up their profile page in order to set up the first matchup.

I'll set them up without a Runic Standard. That saves them a good bit of points.

Precisely. The regular trolls form O&G are absolutely the same as the chaos variant. They have the same abilities, profiles and both cost 35 points. The only distinguishing feature is that Chaos Trolls have the option to take additional hand weapons at 3 points a model (which the trolls in my calculations did not have anyways). So the matchup of O&G regular trolls vs. Executioners would be exactly the same.

 

@Lizards of Renown I don't think you answered my question on the best setup for Mournfang Cavalry (if you did, I somehow missed it).

I was originally leaning towards Heavy Armour + Great Weapons but then I remembered that Ogres get a parry save using the Ironfist, even when mounted! So now I'm leaning towards Heavy Armour + Ironfists.

The options come down to:

Heavy Armour and Great Weapons

• 4 WS3 S5 attacks from the Mournfang
• 3 WS3 S6 attacks from the Ogre
• 3+ armour save

Heavy Armour + Ironfists

• 4 WS3 S5 attacks from the Mournfang
• 3 WS3 S4 attacks from the Ogre
• 2+ armour save AND 6+ Parry Save
• 3 points cheaper per model (not like that makes much of a difference)

I think having "only" a 3+ save leaves them somewhat exposed, while a 2+, 6++ save is much more solid. The offensive boost from the GW is nice, but it only affects 3 of the model's 7 total attacks. Obviously it is matchup dependent, but what do you feel is best in an all-comers list?

@Charlemagne @airjamy @Scalenex @Killer Angel @Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl

I would really like to get this optimal build right for them and I definitely don't want to start calculations before we agree on what is best. I read this over at the EEFL forum:




Please let me know what is the most typical/optimal Mournfang Cavalry setup! I'm now leaning towards the Ironfists over the GW, but I'd really like to know how everyone else feels!

 

For all-comers list it has to be iron fists. They need to have enough survivability to go for a few rounds without losing too many models which considering they will always be a small unit anyways, makes a big difference.

Obviously GW's are awesome and considering their initiative not much of a loss to have always Strikes last, but in (I think) most match-ups this is nice-to-have rather than must-have.

This is basically Math-hammer to me as I'm not experienced enough with using them specifically so if someone's got better real-life wisdom they should stick it up here.

 

This is an excellent point for Ogres. Against most enemies they will be striking last and so need to have maximum surivability.

 

It's actually worse as River Trolls have a -1 to hit. And Stone Trolls have a 5+ Scaly Skin plus magic resistance. I have only ever seen River Trolls fielded as the -1 to hit is one of the most potent CC buffs OF ALL. It makes a HUGE difference on the Math-hammer and also in real life scenarios.

Definitely true, in my last battle against them a 9-strong unit of River Trolls did absolutely sweet FA the entire game as they failed two stupidity tests. Total waste of points.

 

Stone Trolls wouldn't get the benefit of their Scaly Skin or Magic Resistance against Executioners (because Strength 6 inflicts a -3 armour save penalty and Executioners don't have magical attacks or spells), but a -1 penalty to hit rolls against River Trolls is very nice indeed.

Yeah, that's the thing you need to worry about with Trolls - if you want to take them you have to take an Orc general in order for them to have any chance at passing their Stupidity tests (which most people would take anyway, but I can't at the moment because in all my years as a Greenskin collector I never thought to buy an Orc Warboss before GW executed the bog-standard Orc range ), and if you end up playing Dawn Attack you'd better hope both your General and your Trolls get the same deployment roll

 

I would say Ironfists as well, because as @Lizards of Renown said, given Ogres generally have rubbish Initiative even without Great Weapons you're going to need that Knight-level armour save to keep your expensive Monstrous Cavalry unit alive long enough for them to actually get their attacks out. A Great Weapon unit would have more of a chance against something especially massive and tough like an Arachnarok, but Ironfist Mournfangs are going to last longer against anything else, especially Initiative 5 Elf Great Weapon troops

 

But is it worth the point differential? River trolls cost 45 points, while regular trolls are only 35 points. That's a pretty substantial difference. 4 regular trolls cost 140 points, while 3 river trolls cost 135 points.




The next matchup is coming soon. I just have to check over the calculations which I completed late last night!

 

Well, let's have them as a late entry shall we? I think they'll do better than the Chaos Trolls.

Nice!

 

I'm reluctant to add new entries to the list as the adding a single entry means 16 more matchup calculations. With our current list of 16 entrants, I already have to conduct 120 matchup calculations (some of which will involve a fair bit of complexity). Adding the River Trolls will boost the required matchups to 136!

Towards the end we can run some separate numbers on them, but they are too similar to Chaos Trolls. Here is a head-to-head matchup



So, in practical terms the contest is drawn. There is a microscopically greater chance that the River Trolls win the combat and break the Chaos Trolls. However, there is a greater chance that the contest comes out as a draw (as 0.2 is far more likely to come out as 0 rather than 1). If that is the case then the Chaos Trolls would win a war of attrition because they have more models/wounds. Plus the actual combat results begin to favor the Chaos Trolls as they both lose models... i.e. 2 vs. 3 and 1 vs. 2

 

Oki-doke.

 

Excellent, everyone is in agreement. Thank you for the responses!


I have updated the original thread post. I previously added other updates as well including a table of contents with hyperlinks to all the match-up calculations (as there will be 120 of them once everything is all said and done!). That way, if anyone is curious to see precisely how a match went down, they will be able to find it easily.

 

Okay... fight time!!! For this matchup we have an all-time classic. Beards vs. pointy ears. Dwarf Hammers vs. High Elf White Lions of Chrace!

First off, let me say that is was probably the strangest mathhammer battle I have ever done. It is a razor-thin match up. They both hit on 4's, they both wound on 2's and they both ignore the other's save! The Hammers have an extra attack on their profile (2 vs. 1), but the White Lions fight in an extra rank. Which means, as long as the White Lions have 3 ranks or more and the Hammers have 2 ranks or more, they inflict the EXACT same amount of damage on one another. The White Lions get to strike first as a result of their ASF nullifying their ASL.

As the contest was so close, I made a slight modification to the calculation table. I added a "wounds remaining" column (second column from the left) where the wounds remaining are kept track off including all the decimal places (you can only see a single decimal place, but Excel is keeping track of all of them). The difference is pretty minor, a model here or there (more so towards the later rounds of combat), but I thought it was necessary after running the calculations on the old table. In terms of attacks, I always round to the nearest model manually... so 14.5 models remaining is treated as 15 models attacking, while 14.4 models remaining would be rounded down to 14, etc.

Since both units are stubborn, this one comes down to one unit completely wiping out the other...



So the Dwarfs squeak out a very tight victory. It pretty much comes down to who starts eating into the other's attacks first. Once that happens, the differential expands in each subsequent round of combat. That did get me thinking though. In this matchup the 50 point banner of the World Dragon is 100% useless... what would happen if it was a straight up match without the banner?? What difference would 4 extra White Lion models make?

Spoiler: ALTERNATE MATCHUP - No Banner of the World Dragon. This result does not count towards our experimental results as we are using all comers builds.

I was shocked to see what a difference that 4 models actually made. A 4 model change at the onset resulted in a complete reversal from the Dwarfs winning with 6 models left to the White Lions winning with 9 models left. It simply came down to the fact that the extra models allowed the White Lions to cut into the Hammers' attacks first. This compounded round to round... the Dwarfs had less attacks, which meant more White Lions survived... which meant more Hammers dead... which meant the Hammers had less attacks... so on and so forth.

Truly a strange matchup. It pains me to enter the hammer's victory into our table, as in a straight match-up they lose, but we are dealing with an all comers build.. and rules are rules! The Banner of the World Dragon will make a huge positive difference in other matchups. In most matchups it will be slightly detrimental and in this very strange and specific matchup it amounted in a catastrophic difference.

A quick check over the maths would be greatly appreciated as this is a new format and this is one strange set of circumstances leading to a very strange matchup.

Hope you guys enjoyed it!

Here is the updated table:





Most importantly... Thoughts? Concerns? Discussion!!!

 

I think this is fascinating.

For the record, my first ever ever army was Dwarves and I they've had a special place in my heart since I read LOTR in 93.

I honestly wasn't expecting it to be close and figured the White Lions would wipe the floor with them (pointy-eared, arrogant, b*****ds, [trails off into unintelligible mutters]), so I was quite gratified at the result.

Examining the other table without BotWD makes the point perfectly to me. Math-hammer is one thing and an essential TOOL for the Warhammer General, but that's all it is. You need to build your units based on who you think or want them to fight.

The difference in combat result with and without banner is considerable and makes me rethink some choices I have made in the past on magic items, standards, etc.

This is a great exercise.

 

That's a great point. Nothing in the game is invincible (not even the mighty Hortennse Lord). Math-hammer is a great tool to determine a unit's true range of abilities; both where it excels as well as matchups in which it falters. It can really help inform a player in how to construct their list, and then the game of Warhammer is decided by who can better setup favorable matchups/situations and protect themselves from poor ones.

It's also one of the reasons why I prefer creating all-comers list. It's relatively easy to tailor a list against a specific opponent (although not unfair, because you both get the same opportunity). Trying to create a general list is a lot more challenging because you have to really balance out your army and protect it from just about everything out there (unless you are running a niche rock-paper-scissors list).

The BotWD of course also offers protection against incoming offensive magic, so it is rarely a waste of points in an actual game.

Another good point. Sometimes all the fancy stuff can become a crutch. Having superior numbers can win the day.




New matchup coming soon. Some of the heavy hitters.

 

Don't be shy in taking part. The more voices the better. It's always helpful to hear a different viewpoint or an intriguing question!

 

The next matchup gives us a little bit of Chaos flavour. The mighty K'daai Destroyer against the infamous Beasts of Nurgle. Without further ado...



The Beasts of Nurgle come out with a very impressive win! They simply benefitted from having a combination of the Destroyer's weaknesses in their arsenal...

• poisoned attacks!!!... and a fair number of them. This is one of the Destroyer's primary weaknesses. It completely bypasses the Destroyer's impressive T6 (and Destroyer's special rule forcing opponents to re-roll successful wounds) speaking of which...
• magical attacks, which nullify the Destroyer's ability to force the re-roll of successful wounds
• ward save, while the Destroyer's flaming attacks negated the Beasts of Nurgle's regen, the Beasts simply fell back on their handy 5+ ward save
• too many wounds. 4 wounds per model really came in handy, for instance when that 1 extra wound meant that 5 beasts were attacking back in the first round as opposed to only 4. If they only had 3 wounds a model, this contest might have gone the other way (as the Destroyer's output remains the same, while the Beasts output decreases with each model removed)
• too many attacks... d6+1 attacks averages out to 4.5 attacks per Beast... meaning lots of successful poisoned hits.

I found this to be a very interesting matchup. It is a bit closer than the wound differential suggests, because the Beasts output was really beginning to drop off. However, the result was clean. Even if the Destroyer had survived another round, it would have been killed in the next... but it would have been razor close then.

I look forward to seeing how the Beasts perform in future matchups. I think uber armour (1+) will be their undoing. That is typically the case with units rely on poisoned attacks to win them the day.

And here is the updated table:


Most importantly... Thoughts? Concerns? Discussion!!!