Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

@Grim:

This effort is misguided, which is a shame as you seem pretty sincere about it.

Units considered outside of a codex wide basis are units considered outside of a meaningful basis.

Letters are less cost effective than virtually any other core infantry unit (I put the breakdown a few posts up above, but the gist is that they are 3 times as expensive as Marauders but drastically less than 3x as effective). Does this mean that DoC infantry swarm lists are inferior to WoC swarm infantry lists?

Maybe? I wouldn't know, I've never seen such infantry lists going at it, because no one plays fighting infantry.

Even if you could develop a metric for the perfect costing of infantry (say Empire footmen plus X), it wouldn't help you any, as you'd end up hand waving all the interesting stuff. Compare empire swordmasters to Marauders, and you'll inevitably get into what it's worth to have the Will of Chaos, or the ability to get marks vs. the ability to get detachments. Both are one codex exceptions, and you'll have to wing it basically according to your prejudices.

There's no evidence that GW uses any such metric, and anyone who's interacted with GW corporate would be skeptical as to their ability to stick to such a thing. I prefer to believe that they are sincere in their communications, and as a miniature making company balance their rules to sell their mini's.

Tiekwando's post is a perfect example. He's got +1 as a cost to get fear causing, then another +1 to get ItP. For myself, I don't think 1 per guy is enough to cover being a fear causer, and then I'd certainly not put 1 as the cost of ItP on top of fear causing. For a fear causing unit I'd see ItP as a drawback, perhaps justification for a point decrease. We don't agree, and I doubt he's about to post that my post has caused him to change his ways and embrace my views in all things.

If we were on your living rulebook committee you'd be hosed. You couldn't price anything with ItP/Fear without our disagreement breaking out, and once complete, if you chose one or the other of our interpretations as gospel you'd have an opinionated document of value roughly equal to any of the posts in Dakka's Proposed Rules section, a wishlist.

I get the desire to put an API on GW's army book creation process, but I don't think they use one. I wish we played a game balanced enough to get value from such an approach, but I don't think we do. I'll stop posting in this thread. Good luck with your efforts.

actually ironically i do agree with you about your fear thing, i orginially had 2-3 points for fear and 1 point for ItP (still think it was worth something) but then i realized you really are only gaining immunity to panic/terror at the cost of fleeing, which you might be right is not really a bonus, so i made fear 1 pt and ItP 1 pt (on the other hand fear could be 2 pts and not pay for ItP)
Actually switching sides for a second another core unit you failed to mention would be saurus... who would absolutely wreck bloodletters, especially with spears, they are relatively immune to fear the daemons cause, are not likely to run in panic/terror and can flee if they need, with a good chance of rallying. they are harder to kill from shooting from anything not a warmachine, and are only slightly (on average less than .1) worse against Order Knights (which i hope are somewhat representative) and are incredibly better against any infantry unit in the game. In fact i think there are only two things that the bloodletters are better at, character assassination (except mages), which is not going to happen often, and magic missile defense (before it goes off and against metal #1,#6)

@grim ok i guess i should also mention that dark elf warriors cost 6, -1 spears, -1 light armor, 4 pts, have better or equal stats, except ws, and hatred. So I think 4 is fine. Plus i really dont think they need to be more expensive.

@40k actually i do have a question for you, how would you make them a useful unit? (this is a sincere question)

I think that they're costed correctly. Especially, in context to the rest of the codex. Horrors and plaguebearers should both be more expensive. 40kenthusiast I think that you're underestimating how well they'd do against other army's rank and file. If you look at the bigger picture of army composition and how everything works together I think that they'd have their place if plaguebearers weren't so much more durable and almost as good at the bloodletters' intended job.

Agree with the horrors and plaguebearers comment above - the other troop choices are so much better, that it almost makes BL not worth taking anymore.
I'm sure I'm going to get blasted by the "undercost" folks, but I would have much rather seen:

1. Tone the herald down (0+ armor is a bit rediculous for a hero model) and make him give the unit frenzy, or
2. Give them a rule similar to the "Warrior elite" for Black Guard, or
3. Give them 2 attacks each - they're Khorne!
4. Make them count as having great weapons

Where I would take them (in probably units of 12, 6 wide) - 2 attacks each, hatred given by the herald. Keep the T3 (keeps them on par with Black Guard). Make their weapons great weapons (fixes the high initiative, but keeps it high for initiative test magic). Slightly stronger than the Black Guard with killing blow, but doesn't have the option for the Always strikes first banner. Possibly increase the points to 14.

I must admit I find it funny that the models have the biggest hand weapons in warhammer. Imagine what they would look like with great weapons!?!

If they had 2 S4 attacks with a great weapon and killing blow... Now that would be good.