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Hi there,

I'm organizing a type of escalation league for my gaming club. In the league you can earn credits through various means, and with these credits you can buy stratagems to improve your army or lift some of the restriction that have been imposed on you.

These restriction are:

• No more than 1500 points
• The Faction you use for your Primary Detachment must remain the same during the entire league.
• Only Battle Forged armies
• Only one Combined Arms Detachment per army.
• No Allied Detachments
• No Super-heavy Vehicles or Gargantuan Creatures
• No Formations

Anyway, I could use some help balancing the following stratagems/upgrades. Here's the list:

If you look at the 'Reinforcements' upgrade, you can see that every credit is equal to one (codex) point. Everyone starts with 25 credits.


Do these seem fair to you?

Furthermore, I was thinking about adding a couple more where you can basically buy a Secondary Objective, such a Slay the Warlord, because the league missions do not normally feature Secondary Objectives. Now the question is, how much would those be worth in points?

Of course that depends on the missions, so let me quickly describe them in chronological order:

Mission 1 - Purge the Alien
Mission 2 - Secure Table Quarters (2 VPs per quarter at the end of the game).
Mission 3 - Crusade with 6 Objectives (VP values of 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3)
Mission 4 - 4 Objectives (3 VPs each).

So having a secondary objective could certainly help break a tie.

Perhaps it should also be worth mentioning that every win gives you 5 points in the league, every draw gives 3 and every loss gives you 1. There is also another way of scoring points in the league, hence the 1 point for a loss, but I won't go into that.

Any help would be appreciated

Two things that leapt out at me were the point cost on the seize the initiative (going first can be a very big deal) and why pay al a carte for FOC slots when you can grab a whole ally detachment for 5 more points.

Another problem with a structure like this is it is going to cause a gap between the good players and the bad, and that gap is just going to grow. If I’ve been winning a lot, and have an extra 100 points over you, it just makes it that much harder for you to win, and more likely I’m going to get more wins, and thus more points. In an ideal world, you should have a diminishing return for puppy kicking, and reward fighting uphill.

Wish I could play in that. With the wysiwyg + fully painted credits, I could run a BA jump pack force that all jump in on turn one.

Hey, thanks for replying.

Two things that leapt out at me were the point cost on the seize the initiative (going first can be a very big deal)

That's also the one that worried me a bit. A +1 modifier is, however, not a certainty of getting the first turn, so I didn't want to overprice it. Although, I probably should up the credit cost on that one.

and why pay al a carte for FOC slots when you can grab a whole ally detachment for 5 more points.

You make a good point there, but for that 1 extra FOC slot you don't need another mandatory 1 HQ en 1 Troops. In a lot of cases I'd just rather take a fourth Heavy Support slot, without having to invest in another HQ en Troops choice.

However, if you want an extra HQ slot, you are indeed much better off buying an Allied Detachment and just invest that extra Troops unit as well.

The problem with increasing the price of the Allied Detachment, is that the extra Combined Arms Detachment becomes way more appealing.

Another problem with a structure like this is it is going to cause a gap between the good players and the bad, and that gap is just going to grow. If I’ve been winning a lot, and have an extra 100 points over you, it just makes it that much harder for you to win, and more likely I’m going to get more wins, and thus more points. In an ideal world, you should have a diminishing return for puppy kicking, and reward fighting uphill.

Not sure what makes you think that winning games would reward you credits, though. I posted a link to the credits table in the post above (at the top), but let me directly link it here as well:



These are the only ways of earning credits.

As you can see, you get more credits if you are at a lower rank (Never Surrender!). So if you're at the bottom of leader board, say 6th, you get 60 credits. And if you're at the top, you only get 10. So weaker players get some extra help.

Furthermore, you earn extra credits if you play against a higher rank player (Act of Valour), i.e rewarding you if you fight uphill. So if that number 6 player plays against the number 1 player, he automatically gets 75 credits.

Strategy Points are unrelated to winning games by the way.

niv-mizzet wrote:
Wish I could play in that. With the wysiwyg + fully painted credits, I could run a BA jump pack force that all jump in on turn one.

That would be awesome

Ahh, OK. Sorry, I didn’t click through to your link. That clears a few things up. I thought the 5/3/1 for W/D/L was how you got more points.

With the "counts as XX level of allies" choices, is that reciprocal? And I’m not sure of the verbiage in the 7th ed rulebook on detachments, but if you bought an extra detachment, would it count for them?

Can you upgrade options? For example, I want to play a genestealer cult army using IG and nids. I spend 30 points for the ally detachment, and 15 points gets them down to Desperate Allies. Later, after earning more points, can I just spend 15 more to get to allies of connivence, or do I need to pony up the full 30, where the 15 I spend previously are wasted?

Also consider your staring options. Assuming not painted or WYSWYG, what does 25 points get you? If you don’t want to mess with the FOC, or care about super heavies, you have the warlord and goes first options. And if you are using a special character, the warlord one is useless. What I would suggest is lowering the extra points blocks from 50 to 25, so there is a universal option for everyone. I might also cut the allied detachment price down, so people can use it out of the gate.

With the "counts as XX level of allies" choices, is that reciprocal? And I’m not sure of the verbiage in the 7th ed rulebook on detachments, but if you bought an extra detachment, would it count for them?

It should be reciprocal. Good point. I could change the wording to:

"Your Primary Detachment and a Faction of your choice count as being {insert level of alliance here} with each other."

That only counts for your Primary Detachment, which would be the Detachment that contains your Warlord. Any other Detachments would not share the same level of alliance with your chosen faction. That is mainly because those other Detachments do not necessary have to be of the same faction as your Primary Detachment.

Can you upgrade options? For example, I want to play a genestealer cult army using IG and nids. I spend 30 points for the ally detachment, and 15 points gets them down to Desperate Allies. Later, after earning more points, can I just spend 15 more to get to allies of connivence, or do I need to pony up the full 30, where the 15 I spend previously are wasted?

I thought about that before I added those alliance options, but I preferred to keep things simple. So you would have to weigh one against the other.

Also consider your staring options. Assuming not painted or WYSWYG, what does 25 points get you? If you don’t want to mess with the FOC, or care about super heavies, you have the warlord and goes first options. And if you are using a special character, the warlord one is useless. What I would suggest is lowering the extra points blocks from 50 to 25, so there is a universal option for everyone. I might also cut the allied detachment price down, so people can use it out of the gate.

Lowering the 'Reinforcements' option from 50 to 25 seems reasonable enough.

I'm probably not going to lower to price of the allied detachment, because I actually don't want people using it right out of the gate. I am, on the other hand, going to lower the cost of the extra HQ slot to make it more appealing compared to the allied detachment.

I definitely agree that the price for the bonus on steal the initiative should be a lot higher. If someone were to ally in Coteaz he'd potentially be able to roll a 3+ re-rollable after the second round.

Also, I'm not sure if you need the escalation stratagem as I'm not going to use my warhound and I'm unsure any of the other players even own a superheavy.

Oh and did I mention I'm considering allying in Coteaz?

Hang on a minute...

*looks at Brother Michael's location*

HERESY!

I definitely agree that the price for the bonus on steal the initiative should be a lot higher. If someone were to ally in Coteaz he'd potentially be able to roll a 3+ re-rollable after the second round.

Except it's not a bonus to your Seize the Initiative roll

And to make matters worse, this 'someone' should perhaps read what the Mission Rules say under 'First Turn' before he decides to bring Coteaz.

Also, I'm not sure if you need the escalation stratagem as I'm not going to use my warhound and I'm unsure any of the other players even own a superheavy.

Well... We'll see about that, won't we?



NOW, BEGONE!

Well, I've proven again that I can't read...

Still, a +3 bonus means there's only a 1/12 for the opposing player to win the roll-off, which is pretty damn low, especially if compared to the 30/36 chance that you win it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Terreed wrote:
And to make matters worse, this 'someone' should perhaps read what the Mission Rules say under 'First Turn' before he decides to bring Coteaz.

I have to say, even without the possibility of stealing the initiative he's still worth the points


EDIT: forgot about the existence of imperial knights. People do have super-heavies after all

Brother Michael wrote:
Still, a +3 bonus means there's only a 1/12 for the opposing player to win the roll-off, which is pretty damn low, especially if compared to the 30/36 chance that you win it.

I hadn't worked out the probabilities, but now that I have, I can see that it is certainly priced too low. There are diminishing returns on it though, which is a good thing.

The probabilities of winning a roll-off with the different modifiers are:

+0 modifier: 15/30 (= 50%) (obviously)
+1 modifier: 21/31 (= 68%)
+2 modifier: 26/32 (= 81%)
+3 modifier: 30/33 (= 91%)

The only question that remains is, what is it worth? Is it worth giving your opponent an extra, let's say, 100 points just to have an 81% chance of getting the first turn? 81% is hardly a certainty that you get it, there's still about a 1 in 5 chance that you won't (unless you have some very gracious opponent) and then you're screwed, because now you're going second and you are probably outnumbered as well.

I don't know, 40 points for a +1 modifier seems about right to me. And yes, I am over-analyzing this silly league