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 Boss Salvage wrote:

 DarkBlack wrote:

 Swampmist wrote:
So, while we're talking about statistics and such, I have a question to pose: is the Keeper of Secrets worth it's cost, especially in an army with few slaanesh units? How likely is the tempting gift to kill the person affected by it? Im going to get one for fluff reasons, but I'd like to have an idea of the math behind everything so I can make informed decidions whilst in-game.

You don't take a KoS for that. I took mine for the fun conversion (medusa), but the command ability is amazing with other Slaanesh daemons, the melee capability is good and the spell is good against most battleline,

Aye, the Kipper has a lot going for her beyond Dark Temptations

But we can still break Dark Temptations down if you'd like. We don't have to do a lot of math on this one - 1 of those 6 attaks alone should come up and get the hero devoured, and that chance only gets stronger the more base attaks the hero has before the Keeper's gift, especially as anyone with a weapon already has at least one attak (for completeness: a hero with 1 attak should die 1.17 of the time; with 2 attaks 1.33 of the time; with 3 attaks 1.5; and so on).

Add to that that DT kicks in before modifiers, and it's pretty clear that no enemy hero is going to accept, unless they've already been written off by their owner or are suiciding just to smack wounds into your Keeper. Let's say you've gotten the jump on a wizard of mine, and I've got the 1 attak D3 damage bonking stick on him. I know he's dead meat, but for some reason you tempt him with loads of attaks. I am absolutely going to take the gift! 7 shots at D3 damage into a daemon about to munch his wizardy body? Sweet warp yes! However because the Keeper doesn't have to tempt heroes automatically, you'd simply not offer the bonking stick guy extra attaks.*

TL;DR: I wouldn't worry too much about Dark Temptations. In situations where your opponent is likely to accept it, you don't really want to offer it. In situations where you'd love for them to accept it, they're not likely to. It's probably most likely to go off in those cases where the other player feels like hurling caution to the wind because YOLOhammer, or y'all are playing a bit of Narrative Play

- Salvage

*Assuming that the tempted batch of attaks is carried through to damage, and not interrupted when the hero's "soul is immediately devoured by the Keeper of Secrets and it is slain."

While totally awesome for narrative play, Dark Temptations is pretty much useless from a competitive standpoint. The Keeper's default spell is a bit meh too, and while speed and melee capability is great point for point I don't think it stands up well compared to a GUO or LoC unless you have a very large slaanesh daemon unit (or soul grinder) to use with the command ability.



On a separate note, what are people seeing as the best options for their points. There's another thread about Kurnoth Hunters and while they are certainly good I don't see them being quite as much bang for their buck when compared to some other choices. For single models, Be'Lakor is an absolute steal at 260 points considering his range of melee, magic, and control capability. That said, Moonclan Grots. These guys are great for their cost once taken past the starting size. For 360 points comes a 60-man unit with a 5+ save (4+ vs shooting), three attacks each at 4+ to hit and 3+ to wound until its below half size, gives enemy models within 2" -1 to hit, and moves 5" with a run of 1d6+2 plus a likely 1d6" extra for Destruction allegiance in case that wasn't enough to get them somewhere annoying. Granted their bravery is garbage but with +1 for every ten and a banner bonus outside of melee it can weather a few casualties and should be getting inspiring presence anyways. If/when the unit dies, it isn't much of a loss since it was only 360 points.

Grots are great at tarpit ! Cant expect them to do much offensively though. But then , thats why you hide fanatics inside them ! right

@Ninth, You're imagining the entire unit to be armed with nets!? Haha I love the idea, but I don't think it's possible to see this on the table.

 Swampmist wrote:
Though, now I have another marhhammer question: Why take a plagueclaw catapult (outside of a pure Pestilens force) when you can get three poison wind mortar teams for the same cost? Am I missing something aboit the math here?

Let's ignore model aesthetics, theme, formations, and all that. Here's some mathhammer (assuming an average D6 = 3.5 and targets with 5+ saves (both PCC and PWM have -2 rend)):

PCC vs 1-9 Models = 1.56 W
3PWM vs 1-9 Models = 2.625 W

PCC vs 10-19 Models = 3.89 W
3PWM vs 10-19 Models = 3.5 W

PCC vs 20+ Models = 3.89 W
3PWM vs 20+ Models = 6 W

The mortars do kind of edge the catapult out in most cases, and crush it when it comes to really large enemy units, with the auto 6 damage vs 20+. For me, I'd also favor the mortars because they're a little more mobile (sort of a moot point in AOS, thanks to targeting everything and stuff being generally fast + shooty), and definitely because I'd rather take 3 good shots than 1 great shot, especially as a Skaven player who well knows how the dice can abandon us. The numbers above don't take into account the fact that dice don't round - if that one PCC shot misses, there's 0 2D6 wounds, not 1/6 of that or something. Likewise the PWM, except with 3 shots you get plateaus of wounds caused, not a cliff We might also say something about range: while the PWM can shoot past 22", they run the risk of dying 1 out of 9 times they do so, which to me is ... perhaps acceptable, and may not come up that often with a 6" move bringing that up to 28" anyway. The PCC on the other hand always shoots 31", but as artillery is likely to be parked in the DZ lobbing shots until somebody comes to kill it.

A final note here might be survivability. You have to cause (statistically) 9 wounds to 1 PCC to kill it (i.e. override its save and cap its wounds), vs 10.8 for 3 PWM. Against shooting this changes however, as the PCC takes 12 wounds and the PWM the same 10.8. We could say stuff about 3 targets vs 1 and all that, but with splitting fire and so on it's less of a caveat in AOS than other games.

PCC have always been poorly costed, and this feels about the same. They can do cool stuff in the right matchups, and its easier to convert and sub a PCC into a Nurgle army than a bunch of Skryre mortar teams, but I suppose point for point the mortars probably continue to take it.

- Salvage

 Bottle wrote:
@Ninth, You're imagining the entire unit to be armed with nets!? Haha I love the idea, but I don't think it's possible to see this on the table.

Why not? It doesn't cost anything to upgrade them. But more importantly there's really no need to arm the whole unit with nets anyway, just the outer 'rank' of the unit since they only have 1" range. This way, the interior models can use spears for 2" melee range to add more attacks, and get pulled first for casualties.

Grots are great at tarpit ! Cant expect them to do much offensively though.

My moonclan grot unit has these among its solo kill tally: a 6-man Stormfiend unit, an 11-man Ironjaw Brute unit, a 20 man Phoenix Guard unit, and a 30-man Corsair unit. My opponents are more afraid of my grots than my ironguts (that in GHB costs about 25% more).

@Ninth, I meant from a modelling perspective really. Do you have 60 netters!? Actually the nets have range 2" so if you had a frontage of 20 and managed to get everyone in combat (a big ask I know), you could get the two rows behind in range too and have 180 attacks on 4s followed by 3s, so 60 armour saves on the opponent haha.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
My opponents are more afraid of my grots than my ironguts (that in GHB costs about 25% more).

They aren't really comparable to the synergistic, micromanagement play of Moonclan, but I still want to run a 100+ gnoblar Ogre army Sadly OK scans have not been forthcoming. Or 80+ more gnoblars

- Salvage

Thanks boss! Yeah, I agree that they look awesome, and the battalions might shift it back in the catapults favour, but I personally am playing both pestilens and Skryre, so wanted to see if there might be something I'm missing should I pick up another get started pestilens box . Though, having 2 mortars and a catapult might be good, points permitting.

 Bottle wrote:
@Ninth, I meant from a modelling perspective really. Do you have 60 netters!? Actually the nets have range 2" so if you had a frontage of 20 and managed to get everyone in combat (a big ask I know), you could get the two rows behind in range too and have 180 attacks on 4s followed by 3s, so 60 armour saves on the opponent haha.

Wow I've been playing them at 1" this whole time, thanks Bottle! I need to order more nets off eBay now...

I just noticed the Chamber Extremis doesn't have any Battleline units, which mean you cannot run an Extremis only army. That sucks.