Tactical Command
http://www.tacticalwargames.net/taccmd/

Points Formula Playtesting & Sample Armies
http://www.tacticalwargames.net/taccmd/viewtopic.php?f=173&t=30167		 Page 1 of 2
Author:  The Bissler [ Wed Aug 26, 2015 12:55 pm ]
Post subject:  Points Formula Playtesting & Sample Armies
I thought it may be useful to keep a note of our experiences with the new points formula. It won't be perfect by a long shot because much of the feedback will consist of us simply listing our forces and the results. On the odd occasion where we do a battle report I'll post a link. Note that we are using 0.4 costings currently.

We played a 3K Eldar v Ad Mech battle which turned out to be a classic. I took the Eldar and their list follows (hopefully Craig will add his list below).


Guardian Host 97
Falcon Host 354
Tempest Host 498
Jet Bike Host 481
Falcon Host 354
Howling Banshees 85
Striking Scorpions 76
Striking Scorpions 76
Doomweavers 65
Phoenix Fighter Bomber 274
Warlock Titan with 2 Pulsar & Wing Weapons 684
Total 3,044




Force Observations:

This would have cost 4,550 under Gold costings so anyone unfamiliar with the formula project will see that you get far more bang for your buck under the costings so bear this in mind when you set your game size.

Infantry is much cheaper under the formula so as a consequence I am happier to take Guardians which I would never have taken previously. 97 points for a Guardian Host makes them too reasonable to ignore now though!

Another no-brainer is the Tempest Host. They've always been a cornerstone of my Eldar armies and at 498 a Host you absolutely cannot ignore them!

I also threw in Doomweavers which I've always found fairly ineffective simply because they are cheap. I'm enjoying the fact that some of the price reductions are helping me rediscover some units I would have previously ignored. The Doomweavers were still poor for the usual deviation problems. I did employ them to try and cause maximum damage to Titan locations but it was not to be.

At the other end of the spectrum I wanted a Titan in the mix and always prefer the Warlock Titan for the Witch Sight power which I feel makes them far more durable. I have to say it did take a fair amount of abuse until it lost a wing and the Holofields at which point it was only a matter of time before it was destroyed!

The Phoenix bomber is relatively expensive but I feel worth it for the firepower it brings to the field. I bought it specifically to counter one of Craig's artillery units which has been plaguing me in recent battles. It completed the task I assigned it before AA units took it down!

Overall, you get far more for your points than you used to under Gold for Eldar, something which I personally find surprising as they were always my default force if I was really out for the win. I don't know how much of this is because, along with Marines, I have played literally hundreds of games with the Eldar and how much is because they have some of the best specialist units in the game. I'm not sure what chance a Chaos force would have had against this lot, particularly because when I bought a Khorne army recently they worked out very similar in cost as they would have under Gold rules.

The battle: this was a battle of massive attrition. Although the Eldar took an early lead the Ad Mech were never out of contention and gave as good as they got. The first two turns featured huge exchanges of fire and fierce Close Combat, while I'd say that in Turn 3 the brutalised forces were involved in much more objective grabbing charges to try and secure the win.

Note that objectives are worth 50VPs and the VP yield on units is 10% of their cost. The victory threshold was 400VPs.

Turn 1:

Both sides claimed 4 objectives.

Eldar had the following units broken:
Scorpions 8VPs
Doomweavers 6VPs
Phoenix Bomber 27VPs

Eldar: 326VPs
Marines: 241VPs


Turn 2:

Again, both sides had 4 objectives each

Eldar breaks:
Jet-Bike Host 48VPs
Warlock Titan 68VPs

Eldar: 392
Marines: 357


Turn 3:

Eldar managed to secure 5 objectives to the Marines' 3.

Eldar breaks:
Falcon Host 35
Falcon Host 35
Howling Banshees 8

Eldar: 482
Marines: 385

In this final turn, the speed of the Falcons made a difference, stealing an objective at the end of the game which turned out to be crucial to securing the outright win. Both forces were pretty much shattered in this meat grinder of an encounter. A draw would have been a fairer result IMO, but after a string of losses I was happy to score a victory again!
Author:  Craigm999 [ Wed Aug 26, 2015 1:48 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Points Formula Playtesting
Hi, Here's the list i took;


Ad-Mech / Titan Legions (v0.4)


Companies

Formation Name / Gold cost / NPF Cost
TG Mech Assault Coy (c/mdon) 650 536
TG Stormblade Coy 900 337
Tech Guard Titan Def Coy 500 168
TG Leman Russ Coy 750 397

Support
Heavy Platoon 250 110
Heavy Platoon 250 110
Lancer Knights 300 209
Griffons 200 110
Hydras 300 210


Specials
Reaver Hull 300 278
Quake Cannon 100 81
Turbo Laser Destructor 75 50
Gatling Blaster 50 34


Reaver Hull 300 278
Turbo Laser Destructor 75 50
Plasma Blastgun 75 28
Melta Gun 50 47

Gold Total 5125
NPF Total 3033

Adding to the Bissler's comments, and not to take anything away from his victory but i still feel the Ad-Mech is a funny army list, with no bikes/cavalry/walkers and poor infantry it makes taking on a mobile, force with such good infantry as the elder very hard.

The Lancer Knights again failed to do anything of use, unless i'm using them wrong i can't see their appeal.

My Reavers also were unfortunate to not do more damage (a mix of poor deployment and bad dice rolls!)
They did however soak up a ridiculous amount of fire in Turn 2/3 so quite happy with that.

in hindsight i reckon another unit of Hydras and perhaps basilisks or more griffons would have been a better option to force the eldar skimmers out of cover and counter their pop-up attacks.

Next game isn't for a few weeks so will see what revision the Points formula is at and see if i have time to re-do my lists.
Author:  The Bissler [ Wed Aug 26, 2015 2:14 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Points Formula Playtesting
Yeah, your Melta Gun finally getting in range, firing upon 4 Tempests and missing all of them was particularly bad luck. I'm sorry I couldn't keep a straight face but you did say something funny at the time!

In fairness I did roll a fair number of 1's myself! That was why I couldn't take out your Titans! Stupid damage rolls!

Do you happen to have a note of what I broke?
Author:  Craigm999 [ Wed Aug 26, 2015 2:33 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Points Formula Playtesting
off the top of my head;

Turn 1;

TG Mech Assault Coy (c/mdon)
TG Leman Russ Coy
Griffons

Turn 2

TG Stormblade Coy
Heavy Platoon
Hydras

Turn 3

Lancer Knights
Reaver Titan


Maybe?
Author:  The Bissler [ Wed Aug 26, 2015 2:59 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Points Formula Playtesting
Excellent, thanks!

Think I may have picked off the Hydras in turn 1 also, but this looks pretty good to me.
Author:  primarch [ Wed Aug 26, 2015 3:15 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Points Formula Playtesting
Hi!

Cool stuff guys!

I feel some army lists, like the Ad nech one needs some revision, since it really doesn't reflect how they are represented in 40k lore, but that is more of an NE6 project than a Gold one (which I can't change).

Primarch
Author:  The Bissler [ Wed Aug 26, 2015 3:20 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Points Formula Playtesting
I'm sure Craig will happily work with NE6 lists (as will I). ;)
Author:  Matty_C [ Wed Aug 26, 2015 9:22 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Points Formula Playtesting
Nice work here chaps. I've moved to a different city, and don't get to play NetEpic at the moment, only EA. As a result I can't be as directly involved as I'd like to be. :(
Your comments on the relative price differences between the Eldar and Khorne makes me a bit nervous. Any plans for a match between those two?
Keep up the good work!
Author:  The Bissler [ Thu Aug 27, 2015 5:20 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Points Formula Playtesting
Hi Matty,

We played a Marines v Khorne battle fairly recently. Khorne got absolutely spanked. Taking play / strategic decisions / dice rolls out of the equation, here is my army list from that game. You may want to compare it with those above.

Demon Horde 418
Ogryn Warband 63
2 x Juggernaughts 342

Bloodthirster 411
2 x Cannon of Khorne 670
Daemon Engines (3xTower of Skulls) 303
Daemon Engines (3xBlood Reapers) 228

World Eaters Century 410
3 x Rhinos 168

Total: 3,013

The Gold value of this would be 2,775.

Note: If I created this army with the latest update it would come in at 2,998.
Author:  The Bissler [ Thu Aug 27, 2015 5:34 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Points Formula Playtesting
Khorne have always been a force which I found tricky to win with under the previous system for the reason that they are so slow moving that they are often decimated before they get into the fight. I've always found that the only way they have a chance is with a terrain-heavy set up.

I should mention that Evolution actually makes Khorne more effective as Daemon Engines are much improved as they usually have a chance to get some shots in before being destroyed. Ordering as you go and the changes to the turn sequence are responsible for this improvement.

By playing Evolution Khorne should have a better chance of success, but when you compare the likes of the Ad Mech and Eldar lists above to theirs, you can hopefully see why I was having problems.
Author:  The Bissler [ Thu Aug 27, 2015 5:37 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Points Formula Playtesting
Before this seems like I am on a mission to trash the points system, Craig and I like it in general and have had some very balanced games using the points formula.

That doesn't mean I think it is perfect, indeed it is a work in progress. I'm just wondering if some weighting may be required for certain forces which have very slow moving armies...
Author:  The Bissler [ Thu Aug 27, 2015 5:44 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Points Formula Playtesting
Squats are another force I've been struggling with. Here's a list I had which also got brutalised (though I forget which force I was up against, possibly Eldar).


Warrior Brotherhood 659
Cyclops 636
Iron Eagle Squadron x 2 500
Rapier Battery 51

Air Attack Corps 562
Land Train with standard battlecars 614

Total: 3,022

Gold cost: 2,775

Update cost: 2,756


Note that I took the Cyclops & Land Train to get some of the flavour of the Squats and deliberately avoided the prohibitively costed Collosus. As you can see, there has been some improvement on the costings since I picked that force which is good.
Author:  The Bissler [ Thu Aug 27, 2015 5:57 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Points Formula Playtesting
I've also got an army list for Orks which I'll put up tonight. From memory the Orks fared better under the formula and provided a closer game but that was against a slow-moving IG force. That said, I did concentrate my force which effectively meant a quarter of the IG army was an irrelevance and I still lost! :D
Author:  Craigm999 [ Thu Aug 27, 2015 8:31 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Points Formula Playtesting & Sample Armies
yes, for our Khorne/Marines game i took the following;

Land Raider Coy 483
Battle Coy 613

Razorbacks 138
Vindicators 112
Vindicators 112
Terminator Det 287

Predators 116
Predators 116


Attack Bikes 155
Land Speeders 241


Specials

Reaver Hull 278
Melta Gun 45
Quake Cannon 81
Chain fist (reaver) 28


Grey Knights 243


Gold Total 4000
NPF Total 3048
NPF VP Total 305

So ~1000 points of old money more. I think we could have ran the same list a couple of times and got very different results based on deployment/terrain etc, not convinced at the moment that the points were the only culprit in the chaos rout here - but being so limited probably didn't help!

also, my list was squeezing the most out of the 'cheaper' marine units (i went with out my usual 2-3 thunderhawks that now cost ~3x as much as in Gold

For the Squat game i took eldar, can't remember the exact listing, but it was a pretty even spread of cheap/expensive units and ended up being only slightly cheaper than Gold from what i remember on this one it was poor deployment on my part that gave the squats the first turn, but then the subsequent ability to out maneuver them and kept my more expensive units safe until later in the game. Again, don't think the Points had a massive impact on me at least, but the Squats were definitely a more 'compact' force :)

I think the only really mad lists we've seen is with taking Imperial guard, with it being possible to get almost double your old Gold value if you pick carefully, meaning you can have a massive activation advantage.

some of the issues experienced can be put down to the way Evolution skews things, however as the talk of NE6/P going down a similar path for activation's i suppose its even more pertinent to continue with the play-testing as we have been.

All said i'm very happy with using the formula in our games, and take my hat off to Magnus for persevering with it.

As for improving the lists for NE6 i'm happy to chip in, although not being fully versed with all the latest 40k lore i might need to do some swotting up!
Author:  MagnusIlluminus [ Thu Aug 27, 2015 1:26 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Points Formula Playtesting & Sample Armies
Something that you guys might want to do, if you have the time, that Craigm999 kinda mentioned above, is that you should probably re-play the same battle (IE, the same pairing of armies with the same formations; terrain and deployment could be different) over again. At least once, possibly twice. And at least one of those re-plays you should switch who runs each army. The reason for doing this would be to help eliminate random chance from the result, and switching armies could help eliminate "player bias" as well. This would help to show if there really is a power difference between them or just local conditions (die rolls, etc).

In other words, while the results from a single battle *are* helpful for seeing how the formula might need further fine-tuning, the result from any single battle could be an isolated event and not really indicative of a larger trend.

In yet other words: "My Chaos force lost a single battle, their points are wrong!" has much less meaning than: "This exact Chaos force has lost the last 12 battles it has been used in, with different players and foes. Something is broken here."

Oh, and just so as it is explicitly stated, I do appreciate feedback (like this thread). Thanks for the play-testing guys.
Page 1 of 2 All times are UTC [ DST ]
Powered by phpBB® Forum Software © phpBB Group
http://www.phpbb.com/