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HawaiiMatt wrote:
Agreed.
With -1 for flank, -2 for rear, -1 for monster, you're looking at a steadfast check you're not as likely to make, but it isn't near the auto-pass/auto-fail we have in the current system.

Yep.

I find needing a 2, or needing a 10 or less, with re-rolls, fairly unexciting. I'd enjoy games more if I needed a 7 or 8 for steadfast.

Absolutely. And it'd also mean the difference between human leadership and dwarven leadership would be a big deal again - the difference between 5 re-rollable and 7 re-rollable is huge.

As it stands leadership isn't a very useful stat. there's too many ways to make it so it never has any effect. I do not know how to fix this, maybe remove steadfast completely and keep step up so we don't have last edition's cav situation again.

Completely getting rid of Steadfast would change the game entirely.
I'd be back to running units of 20 Clanrats and Slaves in a heartbeat.

As said above, and in several threads before this: Steadfast shouldn't ignore all penalties to Ld for its break test. That way, you can still lose combat by a ton, and you're more likely to break, but you don't necessarily need snake eyes every time.

Warpsolution wrote:
Completely getting rid of Steadfast would change the game entirely.
I'd be back to running units of 20 Clanrats and Slaves in a heartbeat.

As said above, and in several threads before this: Steadfast shouldn't ignore all penalties to Ld for its break test. That way, you can still lose combat by a ton, and you're more likely to break, but you don't necessarily need snake eyes every time.

What if steadfast got worse every check?
First steadfast is unmodified. 2nd is at -1. 3rd is at -2. You'd have to place markers, but it could represent units getting worn out as they repeatedly lose combat.

A giant would tear a slave unit apart, he'd just do it in ~4 turns with a lot more death before they all ran.

-Matt

A giant shouldn't ever tear a slave unit apart and make them run. The slaves are a direct hard counter to giants. If a massive unit of slow (compared to nearly every monster) fodder gets stuck in vs. a monster with a much smaller footprint, you have lost the movement war.

It shouldn't be that you get to trundle up a monster blindly and it will eventually win vs. anything that can't kill it. Everyone would buy monsters.

DukeRustfield wrote:
A giant shouldn't ever tear a slave unit apart and make them run. The slaves are a direct hard counter to giants. If a massive unit of slow (compared to nearly every monster) fodder gets stuck in vs. a monster with a much smaller footprint, you have lost the movement war.

It shouldn't be that you get to trundle up a monster blindly and it will eventually win vs. anything that can't kill it. Everyone would buy monsters.

If those slaves are testing at LD10 with a re-roll, then 9, then 8, then 7, I'm likely to get 2 turns of movement, magic, shooting and combat before I take that Ld7 test.
It means you have to to deal with monsters, without the pinned for the whole game effect.

If it's a flying monster (chimera/daemon prince/dragon) it gets into combat a turn earlier, but it doesn't change the ~2 game turns it will take to break back out.
Again, this approach is to make steadfast a stalling effect, not a 4 game turn lock down.
Also, this isn't just about monsters. Lots of units can get pinned down for the remainder of the game. With no half points, that's kind of boring.
I want to see battle lines breaking, maybe not on the charge, but at some point.

Hell, I'd be happy with a -1 turn 4, -2 turn 5, and -3 turn 6 modifier to steadfast.

-Matt

That's chaff's job. A monster's job is not to break steadfast and take out vast units of chaff. Steadfast exists partially for this exact reason. Cuz a jillion guys pushing forward to kill that big bad giant don't even see their friends getting smeared up front.

It's like (pre)teenage girls at a Justin Bieber concert. If there was a huge lawnmower at the front of the stage, all the girls would know is, "we're getting closer to him!" until it was too late, and then the crush of those behind would doom them.

Anything that makes monsters beat their direct counter I wouldn't be down for. Don't care what turn it's on. It doesn't get less boring or lame if you have a chance to win on turn 6, then it just becomes a random hope contest in a fight you should have never gotten in.

 Brotherjanus wrote:
As it stands leadership isn't a very useful stat. there's too many ways to make it so it never has any effect.

Leadership is useful. I mean sure, the leadership of the average trooper hardly ever gets used, with the leader's value coming in to play more often, but when an army's base leadership is only 7, then it's general is only Ld 9, and that's a big difference from races where the geneal can reach Ld 10.

As long as units are testing on their unmodified leadership, that is. Add in combat res and whether your base leadership is 10 or 8 doesn't matter, because you'll likely be testing on or near to snake eyes.

I do not know how to fix this, maybe remove steadfast completely and keep step up so we don't have last edition's cav situation again.

With two ranks fighting, the horde rule and step up, the number of casualties inflicted in many games now means the number of kills inflicted in combat make leadership something of a nonsense. For two evenly matched, large units it's common for each side to roll 30+ attacks, and the difference between a slightly lucky sets of rolls and slightly unlucky rolls can be 10 casualties versus 5. So even though step up might let you inflict a few casualties back, you'll still end up testing on 2 or 3 for your break test.

Steadfast, is some form or another, is basically the thing that makes basic, cheap troops a viable combat option. It has to continue in some form or another.


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HawaiiMatt wrote:
What if steadfast got worse every check?
First steadfast is unmodified. 2nd is at -1. 3rd is at -2. You'd have to place markers, but it could represent units getting worn out as they repeatedly lose combat.

Interesting idea. It'd add a bit more judgement before committing chaff units in to combat with elite units and monsters. I mean, you'd know that your greater numbers will eventually wear them down, but you'd have to assess whether the effect of losing multiple combats would mean you'd break before getting through them.

Might be worth playtesting.


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DukeRustfield wrote:
A giant shouldn't ever tear a slave unit apart and make them run. The slaves are a direct hard counter to giants.

Well, they are a hard counter per the current rules. With the suggested change they'd be less of a hard counter. That's the point of talking about changing rules.

One on way, slave are the hard counter for just about anything.
The only thing that stops it from being as stupid as it can be is peoples like of desire to paint up 600 slaves.

-Matt

This isn't about slaves, it's about chaff. If you throw 250pts of 8th edition chaff vs. 250 pts of elite units, the elites will crush and break them. Monsters simply can't put out enough attacks fast enough, even with Tstomp. That's not their job.

I think all the races have some MC/MB that's capable of putting out 400-500% more attacks a round than their own best monster for the same cost. And yeah, they might not be the S6 T6, but they don't need to be. You just need a blender.

People hate rock scissors paper, but that's this game. You don't use chaff to take out war machines. They suck at it. But because they suck at it doesn't mean you force the game to make them better. If monsters were good at everything why have anything else?

I'm going to agree with Duke on this one.
I don't think monsters should break through big blocks of cheap units very easily. They excel at putting a handful of very potent attacks in a very small and/or specific place.

The penalty to Steadfast over time is interesting, but it seems more complicated than it needs to be.
I still think these options are the best so far:

- monsters count as 1 rank

- Steadfast does not ignore penalties to Ld based on ranks, standards, charge, flank, or rear
OR
- being charged in the flank levies a -1Ld penalty, per flank. The rear levies a -2.

Simple and subtle.

And Skavenslaves should be WS1 or S2.

DukeRustfield wrote:
This isn't about slaves, it's about chaff. If you throw 250pts of 8th edition chaff vs. 250 pts of elite units, the elites will crush and break them. Monsters simply can't put out enough attacks fast enough, even with Tstomp. That's not their job.

I think all the races have some MC/MB that's capable of putting out 400-500% more attacks a round than their own best monster for the same cost. And yeah, they might not be the S6 T6, but they don't need to be. You just need a blender.

People hate rock scissors paper, but that's this game. You don't use chaff to take out war machines. They suck at it. But because they suck at it doesn't mean you force the game to make them better. If monsters were good at everything why have anything else?

Elites actually won't crush 250 points of chaff, if that chaff is goblins, night goblins, gnoblars or slaves. You're looking at ~80 to 100 chaff going up against 12 chaos warriors. With 18 attacks hitting on 3's, wounding on 2's and parries on 6's, you're killing ~8 per turn. Slaves will tank that from turn 3 to the end of turn 6.
Night goblins only show up with 62 guys, but have 6+ and parry, and nets, and only lose ~6 to 7 per turn, they are still finishing a game steadfast.
Chaff in most cases wins, if you simply take a unit large enough that you won't run out of guys before the end of the game.
So chaff doesn't lose to an equal point value of elites, they lose to an unequal point value, or an unlucky re-rollable LD10.

IMO, monsters jobs should be killing infantry. It's fairly iconic and fluffy to have a monster wading into masses of infantry and smashing things up.
What is it that monsters are good at? Besides looking cool.

-Matt

Chaos Warriors are core. Obviously CW aren't designed for killing chaff because you're paying for WS/I/Armor that is totally wasted.

Do what I said and put them against Mournfang or Demigryphs or Beasts of Nurgle or Necropolis Knights. I'm pretty sure every army has the ability to put a frontage of attacks that will break them. The point is you want as many attacks in as small an area as possible, not spiffy armor saves which are useless against fodder. (Or massive T/S which is equally useless.)

I don't know every book and I'm not going to go through them all now, but even DoC has beasts or the crushers or the bug things I believe can do it. Beasts are like what, 5.5 attacks including stomp per 60-65 pts. You're putting a near equal amount of points together with almost no chance of winning as the chaff. That's a hard pill and I think it's balanced. Yes, if you maneuver them in front of a monster, who is smaller, faster, you've make a score assuming no other units come to assist.

I think the solution here is still some version of flank/rear, not making chaff useless again.

Let me start out by saying I just did a lot of math, and this is all a big surprise to me.

As it turns out, WS and Init isn't totally wasted. Neither is armor. Night Goblins win point for point against almost every hammer due to hitting on 4's, instead of 5's. Striking ahead of ogre units lets them drop a little over an ogre a turn, before the ogre swings. The lack of armor on ogres, and even the 3+ on necroknights (instead of 2+ or 1+) means they take significant losses (enough to swing the final outcome) by the end of the game.

Beast of Nurgle can't do it (4.5 poison attacks + stomp)
Mournfangs look like they can do it, until you factor in the chaff attacks.
Necroknights don't make it (only 20 attacks total, 8 at S4).
DemiGryph knights don't get it done.
Skullcrushers are the lone exception. The WS5 make the difference. They can get the night goblins (barely) but still can't whack equal points of slaves.

I've never really look at this before, but in general, an equal points of slaves or night goblins (with nets) will hold up just about anything I can find in the game, except for a single unit, for 8 turns (ie, likely the whole game).

Don't discount the chaff attacks either. It's the chaff attacks that make the difference in a few of the fights. In a grind vs 4 enemies on 50mm bases, the chaff should deploy wide, going into horde for the extra attacks (since you only need 15 models to be steadfast anyway). 30 attacks a turn, hitting on 4's and wounding on 5's adds up. Killing 2 mournfang during the game with the chaff easily puts the chaff over the mark on surviving.

Chaff is far from useless, it just needs to be much larger than people are normally fielding. If you want to stop monstrous cav, you want 60 to 90 guys. (that's equal points of night goblins with nets).
On paper, chaff beats the best hammers in the game point for point. So in theory, if you field a large enough chaff, All you have to do is protect it from nuke spells, and keep your general and BSB alive.
Chance of LD10 breaking is 3:36, with a re-roll that's 1:144
Taking 8 tests a game, it's only a 5% chance you'll see it break.

So what this tells us is that Steadfast is AWESOME, and we are doing it wrong. If you want to bank on steadfast, you need truly huge units.
If you want to break steadfast, don't do it with trying to kill the chaff, do it by killing the chaffs leadership. Assassinate his General and BSB (in that order).

-Matt

Fair enough, but I'd also point out that, with D6+4 pieces of terrain, more than one unit of 90 models is going to be an issue.

It's like the old WoC book; Khornate Marauders with great weapons were, point-for-point, the most efficient unit in the game.

But people who tried to run a whole army of them found out quick that they just couldn't bring enough of the units to bear.

Also, I still think the chaff is okay; a 300pt+ unit being able to kill 2 Mournfangs during the entire game isn't great. I mean, it's awesome for the defensive tar pit it is, but it's not great in terms of how it reflects on your final score at the end of the match.

I really don't want a flying monster to only need 6 kills to run down a block of 20 guys.

I dont get this one.
Your talking about a 250 or so point monster, of course its going to smash a 20 strong unit apart in combat and it should make them run.

Steadfast just seems far too solid as a rule.
Every great rule allways has a slight downside to it, except this one. (frenzy is a good example)

There should be some way of removing it via a heavy flank/rear charge IMO.
Not too sure what to suggest though, because finding a happy medium that works well isnt an easy option as theres far too many variables in units.

20 guys can cost anywhere from 40pts to multi-hundreds. That number is irrelevant.

Don't use slaves as an example. We know slaves are undercosted. Yeah, they are here and they aren't going to change anytime soon, likely. But I bet a billion space bucks when the Skaven book comes out they are going to be more expensive.

Necro knights don't ever have 20 attacks. They have stomp. They also have poison/KB and WS4.

Goblins are never going to have LD 10. Further, I believe in the law of large players. We know skaven slaves are great because everyone uses them. They don't use masses of goblins, whether they like to paint them or not. They just aren't that good.

HawaiiMatt wrote:
If you want to break steadfast, don't do it with trying to kill the chaff, do it by killing the chaffs leadership. Assassinate his General and BSB (in that order).

I remember arguing that in the first few months of 8th ed's release...


That said, I also remember arguing that flanking still counted, because the flanking unit gets a second rank of attacks, while the flanked unit does not. My mistake being I thought that would make a bigger difference than it does. This is largely why I've changed my position on steadfast from 'its fine' to 'its fine overall, but it'd be good if there were some reward for flanking those units, just to make protection of your flanks important again'/


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 Jackal wrote:
Steadfast just seems far too solid as a rule.
Every great rule allways has a slight downside to it, except this one. (frenzy is a good example)

There are downsides. You need to buy very big units, which means its limited crud troops, or to building your army around a deathstar.

And it means in many cases you have to deploy very deep, giving up the benefits of overlapping the enemy, and possible horde benefits. It means spending a significant chunk of points on a unit that is defensive in nature.

There should be some way of removing it via a heavy flank/rear charge IMO.

Again though, people keep focussing on situations in which steadfast is removed as the only option. All that means is a continuation of the leadership tests on 9 or 10, or without steadfast on 2, which is too extreme, and makes leadership a non-factor.

If instead, as suggested a few times, the combat result for flanking & rear attacks wasn't ignored, then many steadfast units would change from being able to reliably stick around for several rounds of combat, to likely breaking when they suffer flank or rear attacks. It means steadfast units would still be powerful, but only if the flanks were protected. Which brings a great of imporance back to movement.

DukeRustfield wrote:
20 guys can cost anywhere from 40pts to multi-hundreds. That number is irrelevant.

Don't use slaves as an example. We know slaves are undercosted. Yeah, they are here and they aren't going to change anytime soon, likely. But I bet a billion space bucks when the Skaven book comes out they are going to be more expensive.

Necro knights don't ever have 20 attacks. They have stomp. They also have poison/KB and WS4.

Goblins are never going to have LD 10. Further, I believe in the law of large players. We know skaven slaves are great because everyone uses them. They don't use masses of goblins, whether they like to paint them or not. They just aren't that good.

115 point general with the banner of discipline says otherwise. If you're running steadfast tarpits, you take Ld10, or you're doing it wrong.
I used night goblins with nets as my benchmark. I factored in poison with the necro knights, and killing blow (which only ignores the 6+ armor, you still get parry).


-Matt

What goblin-general is Ld9?

I don't think a flank or rear should result in losing Steadfast entirely; otherwise, small units of cavalry will go back to being stupid-awesome once more. I don't care how powerful you are; you and four friends should not be able to ride down foes that outnumber you 10:1.

I believe its because you are taking an Blorc Boss as your general.

20 guys can cost anywhere from 40pts to multi-hundreds. That number is irrelevant.

Except i wasnt working on slaves as an average was i?
Because 20 slaves comes in at 210 points away from what i had said.
My whole point was that a massive creatures ranging from 200-300 points should be able to cause severe damage to a basic unit of rank and file.

And for what its worth, i was running with the idea of 20 saurus with full comm. to get my numbers, so a tad better than slaves.

It's nice that's not the number you had in your head, but it doesn't change the fact you said 20. 20 is 20, whether saurus, slaves, or anything else.

Again, that is not the job of monsters. If 200ish points of monsters (not much is 300pts unless it's an old edition) beats the crap out of 200ish points of infantry, you'd be really foolish to buy infantry which are worse in nearly every other way. A standard monster is going to put down 4-7 attacks + Tstomp at S5-6 every round, that is "severe damage."

DukeRustfield wrote:
It's nice that's not the number you had in your head, but it doesn't change the fact you said 20. 20 is 20, whether saurus, slaves, or anything else.

Again, that is not the job of monsters. If 200ish points of monsters (not much is 300pts unless it's an old edition) beats the crap out of 200ish points of infantry, you'd be really foolish to buy infantry which are worse in nearly every other way. A standard monster is going to put down 4-7 attacks + Tstomp at S5-6 every round, that is "severe damage."

Which is half hits on the attacks, ~3.5 hits average on the stomps, and 5/6ths wound. That's ~4 to 6 wounds against opponents with T3 and 5+ or worse armor, who can't parry.
You need 5 wounds to win combat, because I've got 3 ranks a standard and a musician (winning the tie).
And that's if my infantry don't do any wounds at all.

I don't generally call ~5 wounds "Severe Damage". I more of think of that as "Breaking Even Damage".

Old edition?
O&G spider is creeping the 300 mark pretty easily.
And that puts out plenty of attacks on its own, let alone the crew.

Even the old steggy is a nice example as the impact hits push up the damage rating even more.

And the number does mean alot actually.
20 saurus compared to 20 slaves is a rather huge gap.
Not only in points, but in combat ability aswell.

I would throw a steggy into combat with a slave unit on his own, as i know they wont be getting anywhere, and due to the lack of a banner, they wont start with so much of a combat res.

I wouldnt think of throwing a steggy against 20 saurus unless i had a 2nd one, or another unit ready to multi-assault said unit.



Big monsters get killed by big monsters, warmachines and hero's, not by rank and file.
I really dont see why 20 empire swordsmen should be able to beat a huge monster in combat and then run it down.


And for "Severe damage" you could throw a skink chief with warspear on a steggy, that might come a bit closer to your idea of severe as your then looking at 2D6 impact hits, monster and crew attacks then another D6 for thunderstomp.
That should be causing 10 unsaved wounds pretty easily.

I don't generally call ~5 wounds "Severe Damage". I more of think of that as "Breaking Even Damage".

You can call it what you like, their job isn't to fight chaff. A monster fighting slaves or zombies is absolutely foolish and trying to "fix" it is nothing that remotely needs to happen. They will perform almost exactly the same fighting 3pt infantry as fighting 15pt infantry. Which do you think it's wiser for monsters to try and do? Cannons suck butt shooting at single rows of chaff/redirectors too--so don't do it.

Arachnarok is godlike. It puts out 16 attacks + tstomp, half are S5 poison, one is D6. It has no problems at its cost.

Big monsters get killed by big monsters, warmachines and hero's, not by rank and file.

I really dont see why 20 empire swordsmen should be able to beat a huge monster in combat and then run it down.

Because you don't HAVE to take stuff in this game. If you don't want to take cannons and you got no monsters, or sucky ones (like Lizardmen) you should not have to bend over and take it from any lol-list that puts together 5 monsters because you now have nothing in your army that can stop them. Nothing works like that. Cavalry, big infantry blocks, heroes, war machines. This isn't Warhammer Godzilla Battles. And a hero is generally a bad choice to send against a monster unless it's a really fast hero you don't mind getting smushed and/or who is on some kind of mount.

Well, you can make some house rules that if 20 empire swordsmen see a monster they explode into confetti. For all the talk of cannons, cannons, not every army has them, and not every army should be forced to take them. You just dumb down the game if every 2500pt game is really 2300 + 2 mandatory cannons. Then why don't you just cut to the chase and take out both the cannons and monsters and play from there?

I love the way you say lizards have sucky monsters.

One causes D^ impact hits, then has 4 normal attacks, 5 crew attacks, then a thunderstomp. (and as mentioned, can have another D6 on the impact)

The other has 5 S7 attacks, that cause D3 wounds, making it a pretty damn good monster hunter.

And both have a 4+ as standard.


Every army has access to a warmachine of some form, be it a cannon or a bolt thrower.
But i love the way you changed that to just cannons, because they are the only warmachine in existance now

"For all the talk of cannons" was your phrase, and also contains the most, if not only talk of just cannons.

Hero's are bad monster hunters now?
That one fooled me, because its not hard to kit out a hero to do such a thing.

Also, you say people shouldnt have to take such units, but its pretty hard to find a list that actually plays well which does not include a monster or a warmachine of some type.
Both have been a key weapon in WHFB since it was created.

If you have access to them but dont want to take them, sure, go for it.
But you cant really complain that a sub par army is doing sub par in a game.


So taking 2 cannons in a 2,500 game is dumbing it down now?
I would call it common sense to take them as at that level your going to see targets that are more than viable to shoot at.
Hell, if i play empire or dwarf, im going to run alot more than just 2 cannons.

Even when i ran O&G i used more warmachines than that.

I have the book... Steggadons are sucky compared to modern monsters. I think you need to read your rules again, because it doesn't do what you said.

I mean the crew are skinks. Sure, arachnarok are goblins, but the rok has 8 attacks not 3 or 4 and 8 wounds not 5. As for monster hunting, the rok would totally lol at Steggadons. They could easily be dead before they got a chance to attack even once.

So taking 2 cannons in a 2,500 game is dumbing it down now?

Taking out hard counters while leaving out what it was countering is dumbing down the game. You're left with less options which funnels all armies to conform to closer and closer "templates." If you keep taking out hard counters, after a point every army looks fundamentally the same.

You mean compared to the 1 example you just posted right?
The spider is a beast, no one can deny that.
But why use the steg against it when just below that, i brought up about the carnosaur?
S7 kills off saves, then 5 attacks with D3 wounds.

Im pretty keen on its chances, and thats not including the rider either.



"Templates"
You mean like the large block of infantry for steadfast trend?
Its more of a case of using what works well.

The average cannon is 100 points, even if that fires twice, its going to do damage since every army you play against will have something worth firing it at.

Does not have to be a monster, it could even be another war machine.
The point is, cannons are effective in 99% of games.

But thats not the topic we are on as it stands.

Carnisaur isn't a monster. It's a mount. It isn't a Special/Rare it is a Lord. That is the only time you will see one as of now. I don't like testing things that have all that baggage. Kinda like not including a Wyvern as a monster, as you don't know what's sitting on it. If you want to start doing 350pts of monsters/heroes we can take the arachnarok and add, say a mangler a squig. Costs about the same.

It isn't a case of using what works, but using what works and not using what doesn't work with the list of the former being very narrow and the list of the latter being large. If an army has 10 units. Of those 3 are great. 2 are good. 5 are bad or terrible. So you know what 5 units will be there and likely in greater proportion to the 3 great ones. I've seen enough army builder hero loadouts to know templates when I see them. That is due to lack of items in army books and smaller number in BRB. Fencers Blades are part of a very common hero template. And yeah, that's dumbing down the game.

The point is, cannons are effective in 99% of games.

That is clearly false. Even mathematically false.