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I haven't had a game yet but I've bought the first six warbands to get my friends into wargaming. I've heard a few people, Emily included I think, say that the warbands aren't all perfectly balanced against each other. I'm pretty sure this is so that they can be balanced in cost.

Since I'm planning to use them in simple games of, 'pick a faction and deploy,' I'm wondering what it would require to balance them all. I'd love to hear what you guys think!

It's not so much that they aren't balanced, it's that they aren't all new player friendly balanced. An experienced player could win with any of them.

Other than Vandalands(lack of range), which would work best by Fatherlanding them and taking 3 Warbands.

Ahh I see. It's new player friendly I'm aiming for though so what would you recommend?

Instead of three warbands to make up for Vandaland's lack of range is there a good option to just give them some ranged firepower?

 Casey's Law wrote:
Ahh I see. It's new player friendly I'm aiming for though so what would you recommend?

Instead of three warbands to make up for Vandaland's lack of range is there a good option to just give them some ranged firepower?

Aquitar, Chugoku, Civitas, Ribenguo, Scyzantium are the best ones for new players. Each of them has a nice mix of Range/Melee to be able to counter one another.

Axony and Zabar are fairly good matches for one another, but can overrun the other boxes fairly easily.

Vandalands... possibly dropping the Hamster Berserker for a Valkyr.

That's great thanks. I'll certainly proxy stuff first to see how it plays out. That Vandalands swap sounds good to me.

Do you think swapping a Bull Regular for a Kernish would make Axons too weak? Maybe a Highlander instead?

For Zabar. Would losing a Shaka bring them too low do you think?

 Casey's Law wrote:
That's great thanks. I'll certainly proxy stuff first to see how it plays out. That Vandalands swap sounds good to me.

Do you think swapping a Bull Regular for a Kernish would make Axons too weak? Maybe a Highlander instead?

For Zabar. Would losing a Shaka bring them too low do you think?

You could Swap a Regular for 2 Terriers and it wouldn't make much of a difference, everyone is afraid of the Heavy Brigadier.

Swapping two Shaka Warhogs for a Veldt Hound might be interesting.


Going against the Axony/Zabar Warbands, the most important thing to do is target priority.

If you are Fighting Axony you want to focus on first is shutting down the Heavy Brigadier. Off the top of my head Aquitar and Ribenguo can do this the best, Aquitar by using the Tactician's ability to nullify it and then take it down with the Badger or Weasels.
Ribenguo by making the Kunoichi take the Brigadier on head to head, she has a high WS as well, so its hard for them to hit one another. Keep it distracted until your other troops can come in to finish it off.
Once the Brigadier is dealt with, take out the Regulars, and then the Terrier.

For Zabar... Take out the Lioness first, and then make the rest of the army round around the table while you out range them.

I also have some problems with smal-scale balancing.

So, I have bought two warbands, one Vandalands and one Ribenguo. Vandalands has a Rat Lord, 3 Rat Raiders, one Shrew Hussar, one Hamster Berserker and one Vakyr. Ribenguo has a Kunoichi, a Tanuki Samurai, 3 Otter Asigarus and 2 Fox Sinobi. I don't have any more models other than these (not counting models for other games).

We haver running these against eachother, in HRLV:3/45/45/45 games and Ribenguo just steamrolls every one of them. It brings the asigarus with guns and shoots down anything from "25 and they and the Fox Sinobi are basicly untouchable by the Vandaland side. I think the armies are balanced on higher point games, but that's all the models we have. The Terror tree on the Rat Lord has some effect, but not much.

Can someone give me any tips how can I balance these armies to have more equal footing?

First off, make sure you have enough terrain on the field. This isn't a game for the wide-open spaces of Warhammer Fantasy tables. You're going to want 40k to Infinity levels of terrain, a variety of small forest areas, some low walls/hedges, etc.

The Kunoichi is a Beast, and a pain to deal with without a steady range ability or a hero that can nullify her Wits. The Hamster Berserker is probably your best choice to take her down with its high Might, especially if you can get lucky with a Northern Berserker roll.

Bring the Hussar and Valkyr in from reserve, in either the side or rear and take try to take out the Ashigaru from Range. If the hussar is lucky he can take down 2 Ashigaru in a single activation. The Valkyr should be able to go toe-to-toe with the Samurai, shooting it with the Crossbow before charging in.

Keep the Rat Raiders with the Rat Lord, not necessarily with Dishonor Guard, but just to give him some backup if something comes near him. Once the Hamster or Valkyr has something in melee, the Rat Raiders should go join it in combat (using Reach) and help finish it off.

That's sounds good, I will try it.

Thanks!

Thanks Cyp, this is all really solid advice. The Hound for two Hogs sounds interesting, I'm not sure how that'd play out. Maybe even a Hog and a Hyena instead. Also, if the big scary pussy cat is such a problem would it be worth just swapping it for a Duke?

Roo, do come back and tell us how that works out for you!

Also, as we see new models appear will warbands be changing? For instance if the Duke turns out to create better balance will it replace the Brigadier?

Honestly I wouldn't ever take only a single Hyena Witch Doctor...

A Duke in place of the Brigadier might work out well, its pretty equivalent to the Tactician.

We might do Alternate Warbands(Chugoku is pretty likely for this), but otherwise I don't think we'll adjust the Warbands.

Gotcha, I'll try out the suggested combinations when I've finally got them ready for the table and maybe other folks can try them out sooner.

I really like the idea of the Duke instead of Brigadier. For a start I prefer the playstyle and it makes sense since he seems to be less of a threat in these small games.

I'd like to see at least one perfectly balanced warband for each faction in the future with equally well balanced boosters to choose from. This would actually lend itself to competitive play which their is already talk of in another thread. Actually, if it was set up like this I'd be inclined to build a tournament scene here and consider holding some kind of campaigns and events.

I think I'll copy that last paragraph over to the aforementioned thread...

Well, its its 3/8 starters that have 'issues' atm.. or 5/8 that are 'balanced' out of the box.

That's better odds then GW.

Hahaha, so true. Yeh, honestly I have no complaints with what you have done. As I say though, I could see myself taking a more active approach to the game if their were certain options in place. Since the game is already fun and easy to learn, it's perfect for casual, fun events imo.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Here is a question. Do the warbands require a particular setup of equipment to balance them? Should I give the Shaka the larger shield for instance?

The Vandaland starter is on the weaker side, from what I read here, because it's lacking range. That is the one my main (and probably only for a while) opponent have.

On my side, I took the Mare-Civitas' one. The seems to be pretty restricted range wise too, with range weapon by default only on the Capitaine, and bows as upgrade on the two Conscripts.

Should two two starters go well together? any recommended change we change make to have nice battles before we get bigger forces?

Don't forget though that the two conscripts can get a second shot in with their bows.

And the couple of Lancers can jump a good distance across the board, which is a sorta-ranged attack.

I saw that. I just hope it is not too much for the range-lacking Vandalands starter.

 Tonio wrote:
I saw that. I just hope it is not too much for the range-lacking Vandalands starter.

It might be, you could always make conscript with a bow, and the other with a sword and shield

While we are here, what are the point/hero level amounts where the fractions generally becomes the most balanced?

I also have the problem that most of the scenarios listed in the book aren't really playable in small scale. Like an Objective Retrieval scenario requires 100 points worth of siege machines, which is 2 or 3 models, and 100 points worth of fortifications(that can be five pieces of wall.) Control requires at least 15 models per side and so on. The point is I don't have this kind of stuff yet.

If one of the sides have 2 siege machines, it barely has enough models to operate them in a 30/30/30 match.

And as I see, the last team standing mission got removed with the new rulebook version, which was kinda the only scenario we was able to play in this scale.

 WhiteRoo wrote:

And as I see, the last team standing mission got removed with the new rulebook version, which was kinda the only scenario we was able to play in this scale.

I'm flipping through both 1st printing and 3rd printing, and I don't see (and don't remember) removing any missions from the rules.

 WhiteRoo wrote:
While we are here, what are the point/hero level amounts where the fractions generally becomes the most balanced?

I also have the problem that most of the scenarios listed in the book aren't really playable in small scale. Like an Objective Retrieval scenario requires 100 points worth of siege machines, which is 2 or 3 models, and 100 points worth of fortifications(that can be five pieces of wall.) Control requires at least 15 models per side and so on. The point is I don't have this kind of stuff yet.

If one of the sides have 2 siege machines, it barely has enough models to operate them in a 30/30/30 match.

And as I see, the last team standing mission got removed with the new rulebook version, which was kinda the only scenario we was able to play in this scale.

I think they become the most "balanced" at roughly 100 resources and hero level 5... though I like to push the resources to 150.

My bad. It is there, but it is not bookmarked.

The pdf 1.2 rulebok got handy bookmarks, but the Killpoint mission is not bookmarked. I just overlooked it because of that.

I really should read trought the 1.2 rulebook.

Copying this in becuase of auto append.

Do the warbands require a particular setup of equipment to balance them? Should I give the Shaka the larger shield for instance?

 Casey's Law wrote:
Copying this in becuase of auto append.

Do the warbands require a particular setup of equipment to balance them? Should I give the Shaka the larger shield for instance?

No, Zabar does not need a bonus.

I might say give the Samurai a greatsword, as that's what we do at shows for WYSIWYG, but otherwise standard equipment is okay.

That's great thank you, Emily. Off to play with my toys now!

 Alfndrate wrote:

 WhiteRoo wrote:
While we are here, what are the point/hero level amounts where the fractions generally becomes the most balanced?

I also have the problem that most of the scenarios listed in the book aren't really playable in small scale. Like an Objective Retrieval scenario requires 100 points worth of siege machines, which is 2 or 3 models, and 100 points worth of fortifications(that can be five pieces of wall.) Control requires at least 15 models per side and so on. The point is I don't have this kind of stuff yet.

If one of the sides have 2 siege machines, it barely has enough models to operate them in a 30/30/30 match.

And as I see, the last team standing mission got removed with the new rulebook version, which was kinda the only scenario we was able to play in this scale.

I think they become the most "balanced" at roughly 100 resources and hero level 5... though I like to push the resources to 150.

Agreed on the 100 resource point. At 100 resources and 5 hero levels it allows you to take a nice mix of things.

Currently my favorite 100 resource list for Aquitar is:

Heros
Level 1 - Mole Tactician
Level 4 - Trapper

6 - Weasel Leagonaires
4 - Badger at Claws

Badger Exemplar
Weasel Exemplar

Weasels are Fusilers, Mongeese are Legionaries.

Weasels are Mongooses...

 Alfndrate wrote:
Weasels are Mongooses...

They look a lot alike, but they are actually not that closely related of species.

Gophers and Marmots are totally the same species though.

They split at the family level...Weasels are cuter though...