AoS Louisville Comp

[Sception]

Yet annother unofficial comp / rules modification has emerged from the community:

http://www.louisvillewargaming.com/Files/AzyrComp.pdf

This one notable for assigning points values to everything, which I can respect if primarily for the amount of effort that went into it. At the same time, I think AoS units are a bit more even in power level than the assigned points imply. In particular, I'm not sure 3 horrors is twice as strong as ten ghouls, and in particular am not convinced 6 horrors are twice as strong as 20 ghouls. Even more extreme, my few games so far do not at all convince me that witch elves are the equal of triple their weight of ghouls, skeletons, or zombies.

But points can be fiddled with, I like that they're being done at all. I do in particular like their summoning solution - to limit how many units any given summoning caster can maintain at one time (is dependent on their assigned points - so a necromancer could only have one summoned unit in play at a time, while nagash could have five). That seems reasonable to me. I might even suggest keeping track of which unit is summoned by which caster, and if the summoner is killed their units are removed as well, or at least penalized? Maybe command drops to 0 for any summoned unit whose summoner is no longer on the table? I don't know.

They also echo other similar comp/rules rewrites in banning units in melee from shooting / being shot at, and adding a 'look out sir' rule. Neither of which I feel is appropriate yet, with how little cumulative experience the nascent AoS community has under its belt at this point, even if I think both may prove to be useful house rules in the long term.

So I have mixed feelings about it, although, again, all in all I do appreciate the work that went into this particular version.

 

[Tawg]

You meant Bravery drops to 0. But I get the point. That solution is just work intensive though, especially compared to the rules as they stand, but it's certainly a solution.

More over, I don't mind points assignments, but I have a feeling I would be in a similar boat as you, questioning some of their assignments. I'm still shocked that there hasn't been more math-hammer on the models. I feel like just doing math-hammer would really put a lot of things into perspective.


For instance:

Spoiler: Wight King Math

Take a Wight King.
He has 4" move, or sub-standard for infantry/humans. As this seems normal, it would be worth nothing.
He has 5 wounds, which mostly go towards further math.
He has Bravery 10 (All undead do. Not sure how important this is besides banshee wail type abilities, or how many of those there are).
His save is 4+, 3+ with shield. That means he has say, .50, .66 damage mitigation.

He can take a mount for the enhanced movement. Movement would be the hardest to value, since it's quite a bit more situational, but more is definitely better. It'd just take tooling to figure out how much movement is valued compared to other points.

He has 4 attacks at 3+, 3+, -1, 1. This means 66% hit, 66% wound, the opponent gets -16% to save, and it does one damage.
So 4x.667x.667= 1.78 attacks wound X Damge (1) = 1.78 Damge per swing. The -1 Rend means this is effectively 2.06 Damage per swing against anything with armor. I had thought to take "Damage per Wound" as a stat, so let's say 1.78/5= .3559 (against no armor) 2.06/5= .4128 (Against armor). This would be one of the most basic measures of balance. Simply damage out put compared to survivability. With the horse he gains 1 attack at 4+, 5+, -, 1 for .1665 damage per swing, .0333 Damage per Wound (Nearly meaningless).

The infernal banner would need to be looked at a bit, but it's essentially a 6+ save for most models in the range, or .16 damage mitigation. The range would need to be considered since like movement it's a less direct impact on numbers.

The Beheading Strike would be applied to the attacks made previous, with 4x.667x.167 = .445 of the 1.78 landing damage of d3. That nominally increases the wounds from 1.78 to 2.003 and 2.323 respectively with/without armor. Per wound this brings him to .4006 and .4647.

Shield is already accounted for, but this gives us the values of, DPW .4647, and .5 Mitigation + Horse option and Banner option.

That's one of the simpler numbers, since many units become a bit more complex.

Let's look at Cain Wraith really quick

Spoiler: Cain Wraith Math

6" move is the "high end" of infantry, plus they have Fly because they go through walls. Perhaps worth a bit.
4 wounds, 10 Bravery.
4+ Save that ignores Rend. That effectively decreases the "DPW" value of other units, assuming they have rend, and provides .5 Mitigation.

3 Attacks at 4+, 3+, -1, 2. This is 3x.5x.667 = 1.005 woundings, effectively 1.160 resulting in 2.321 Damage. DPW then is .5802.

Reap like corn allows to re-roll hit fails if 5+ models in opponent's unit. Most of the time this will be true, and results in the DPW changing to 3x.75x.667 = 1.500 woundings, effective 1.740 resulting in 3.481 Damage. DPW = .8704.

The ability to summon effects wizards rather than them, unless you assume warscrolls restrict summoning.

This leaves us with DPW .5802 (.8704 vs 5+) and .5 Mitigation + Flight/Ethereal.

So.. comparatively, the Wraith has better combat, which isn't too surprising, but the wight has options that might boost his effectiveness. I don't know how well this all would translate into telling a story of the balance of the game. I would be interested in doing more some time (Not tonight), but I feel like using these DPW/Armor would be the short hand guide for what is a fair match. Because I originally thought skeletons might be weak, but they are surprisingly good, and certainly a unit of 20 could probably go toe to toe with 10+ ogres (I don't know the numbers off hand).

But honestly balance is always a difficult part of games, and with one as wide and varied as this there will end up being "Mistakes". Short of a looser game system that values things based on warscrolls, or something equally abstract than points (Like the DPW perhaps), points will always end up short handing someone. Certainly interesting to look at though.

I really hope the community doesn't take away shooting in combat. I rather like it.

 

[Sception]

I'm skeptical of it, but I'd rather see it played as is a good deal more than it has been before rushing to a judgment against it....