[MATHHAMMER] 2.0 Battleline Comparisons EDIT: added more new unit analysis

[swarmofseals]

Assuming the now-available information is correct, we can now do some nice comparisons between LoN batteline options. I'm only going to focus on basic battleline stuff here, not subfaction specific battleline.  I'm also going to ignore zombies for the moment because I'm fairly certain that they stack up poorly against the other options. I'll be doing offensive and defensive efficiency comparisons. Note that for offensive efficiency a higher number is better, but for defensive efficiency a lower number is better. 

 

OFFENSIVE EFFICIENCY

Spoiler

 

Skeletons (10 man, ancient blades, with/without death hero): .046/.034

Dire Wolves  (5 man, charging/not charging): .0611/.046

Chainrasps (10 man): .066

 

Skeletons (40 man, ancient spears, 30 models in range, with/without death hero) : .081/.054

Dire Wolves (30 man, 15 models in range, charging/not charging): .032/.024

Chainrasps (40 man, 20 models in range): .043

 

Theoretical Maximums:

Skeletons (40 man, spears, with death hero): .108

Dire Wolves (charging/not charging): .064/.048

Chainrasps (40 man): .084

 

Offensive Analysis: Chainrasps are the most offensively efficient option for small squads, although Dire Wolves are close on the charge.  For large units, under realistic combat scenarios Dire Wolves are very inefficient while Chainrasps are mediocre compared to Skeletons, which are better even without a hero in range. With a hero in range they are by far the best on offense. Under ideal conditions, the Chainrasps close the gap slightly but the Skeletons maintain a solid lead. Note that it's a lot harder for a unit of chainrasps to achieve ideal conditions than it is for Skeletons to do so. 

 

DEFENSIVE EFFICIENCY

Spoiler

 

(against Rend 0/Rend 1/Rend 2/Mortal Wounds - does not factor in deathless minions)

Skeletons (submax): 5.33/8/8/8

Skeletons (max): 4.67/7/7/7

Dire Wolves (submax, without cart): 4/5/6/6

Dire Wolves (submax, with cart): 3/4/5/6

Dire Wolves (max, without cart): 3.56/4.44/5.33/5.33

Dire Wolves (max, with cart): 2.67/3.56/4.44/5.33

Chainrasps (submax): 5.33/5.33/5.33/8

Chainrasps (max): 4.67/4.67/4.67/7

 

Defensive Analysis: Against rend 0 and mortals, Chainrasps and Skeletons are identical but Chainrasps are far better against rendy attacks. In small unit sizes, Chainrasps actually beat out Dire Wolves against high rend, but Dire Wolves are better against rend 0, 1 and mortals. With access to a Corpse Cart, Dire Wolves blow the rest of the options out of the water. 

 

INTANGIBLES

Skeletons and Chainrasps both benefit from being good platforms for buffs, although in a LoN army I strongly suspect that Skeletons will be more buffable. This is particularly true for Grand Host and Legion of Night.  Skeletons also get to debuff enemy bravery with their banner. Skeletons can also benefit from cover.

Chainrasps, on the other hand, are quite a bit faster and can fly. However, they cannot benefit from cover.

Dire Wolves are by far the fastest of the lot and take up more space on the board (which can be a good thing and a bad thing). They are also less vulnerable to battleshock.

 

CONCLUSIONS

Skeletons and Dire Wolves both still have a clear niche. Dire Wolves are the best defensive option, being both defensively efficient and fast. They also take up the most space, which tends to be desirable in a defensive unit.  In large units, Skeletons are the best offensive option by far.

Chainrasps are in an odd place. In small unit size situations they clearly beat out skeletons but lose to Dire Wolves. In large units their 1" range becomes awkward and causes them to lose out quite badly vs. Skeletons. Meanwhile they are still worse than Dire Wolves on defense. That said, comparing 40 Chainrasps vs. 30 Dire Wolves may not be quite fair. The main reason here is the new summoning abilities. It's going to be very difficult to fit a unit of 30 Dire Wolves into a single gravesite, while 40 Chainrasps can fit pretty realistically. It may turn out that the tactical necessity of clustering your gravesites in order to bring back a huge block of Dire Wolves becomes a serious impediment to using that warscroll in a massive regiment. In that case, it's more fair to compare the defensive efficiency of 40 Chainrasps against small unit sized Dire Wolves. In that case, they compare favorably with no Corpse Cart and are mostly a wash if a Corpse Cart is present. 

 

EDIT

Now that we have the warscrolls for some more of the new units, I'd like to add a couple more things.

 

I don't quite see the point of Glaivewraith Stalkers at the moment. Their unit size is really strange and there is really nothing remarkable about their stats:

Glaivewraith Stalker offensive efficiency (charging/not charging): .067/.044

Glaivewraith Stalker defensive efficiency: 7.5/7.5/7.5/15

So on offense they are only slightly better than Dire Wolves, and slightly better than Chainrasps when charging but much worse when not charging. On defense they compare very poorly with all of the basic options. I really don't see the point in them at all unless they get some very specific and very large buffs from something that we haven't seen yet. 

 

***NOTE***: all offensive calculations after this contain a weighting system I devised that takes rend into account. Rend 1 attacks are multiplied by 1.33, Rend 2 by 1.66 and Mortal Wounds by 2.16. These weights are slightly arbitrary and may be incorrect but they are based on solid reasoning which I'll be happy to explain if anyone cares.

Myrmourn Banshees are somewhat interesting:

Myrmourn Banshee offensive efficiency (full sized unit with dispel/without): .061/.12

Myrmourn Banshee defensive efficiency (full sized unit): 8.75/8.75/8.75/17.5

Defensive efficiency is very poor, while offensive efficiency is unremarkable unless they've unbound something. Their unbind is shorter range but it does get a potentially hefty bonus. Normally I'd write these guys off as a niche unit, but their relatively high value attacks make them a good platform for buffs and the fact that they are summonable is huge. They will be pretty easy to destroy, but they will also be easy to bring back and will generate a fair amount of value by being brought back. 

 

Grimghast Reapers are the most interesting of the new warscrolls IMO. The natural comparison is against Grave Guard. I'm only going to put the math in here for Great Wight Blades as that's the most common configuration for GG. As both units have similar reach (2" but 32mm bases for the reapers, 1" range on a 25mm base for GG) I'm not going to bother with handicapping large unit sizes for realistic number of models in combat. Just keep that in mind when comparing to other units listed above. I'm also going to assume single wound targets for the Death Knell ability, so Reapers will be very slightly worse when fighting multiwound models.

Offense

Grimghast Reapers (Max size, vs 5+ models/vs <5 models) - .116/.080

Grimghast Reapers (Min size, vs 5+ models/vs <5 models)- .107/.079

Grave Guard (Max size, Great Wight Blades) - .107

Grave Guard (Min size, Great Wight Blades) - .102

Defense

Grimghast Reapers (Max size): 6/6/6/12

Grimghast Reapers (Min size): 7/7/7/14

Grave Guard (Max Size): 9.33/11.67/14/14

Grave Guard (Min Size): 10.67/13.33/16.67/16.67

 

Against units with 5+ models, the Grimghasts are better than Grave Guard on offense. Against smaller units they are worse but still pretty solid. Meanwhile, on defense the Grimghasts are actually pretty respectable particularly against high rend (as you'd expect) albeit weak to mortal wounds. Grave Guard on the other hand are absolutely miserable against everything. Both units are summonable, but it'll be a bit easier to return 30 Grave Guard than 30 Grimghasts due to the smaller base size. Both units are good platforms for buffs, although it's a bit easier to buff Grave Guard in Grand Host. Grimghasts are also reasonably fast and can fly. 

Basically, Grimghast Reapers have offense that is at least generally on par with Grave Guard but are way faster and way more efficient on defense.  They seem like a very strong candidate for use in Legions of Nagash lists. They are particularly interesting in Legion of Sacrament and Legion of Night, both of whom lack an obvious hammer unit. Legion of Blood has Blood Knights and Grand Host has either Morghasts or Grave Guard (with the diadem/lord of nagashizzar combo). Grimghast Reapers could be a great solution for Sacrament and Night.

 

[RuneBrush]

I'll hold my hands up and say I'm not generally a fan of mathhammer, but I really like how you've laid this out.  It backs up what I was thinking about units of 10 chainrasps over skeletons too.

p.s. shouldn't it be a 30-dog unit rather than 30-man

[Bademeister]

I like to do the math for units and i have created a list to compare units of my own.

To look more forward i compared buffed units of skeletons and chainraps hordes. i modified their characterristics with commom buffs they should normaly get in the battle.

For Skeletons its +1 to Attacks by your Commander with the Lord of Nagashizzar ability and the Ossific Diadem Aura. To add a peak you could go for another +1 to Attacks form a command ability (Wight King, Vampire Lord).

For Chainraps Hordes i added the buffs of the already known Guardian of Souls, +1 to Wound, Reroll 1s to hit by the Spirit Torment and +1 to Attacks by the Knight of shrouds on Ethereal Steed.

40 Chainraps (Attacking 20 of them) compared to 40 Skeletons (Attacking 30 of them) 

Offensive 0,051 Damage per Point (14,25 Damage after Save Roll of 4+) for Chainraps

Offensive 0,067 Damage per Point (18,75 Damage after Save Roll of 4+) for Skeletons

You see, Skeletons have a better Damgeoutput in maxed units, with commom buffs in a "normal" attack. The more Chainraps Horde Models can attack the closer the gap to skeletons get. 

Yet we don't know the new Command Traits and Artefacts of the Nighthaunt Allegiance. i'd could be that chainraps horde become better than skeletons with these buffs.

 

[swarmofseals]

9 hours ago, RuneBrush said:

I'll hold my hands up and say I'm not generally a fan of mathhammer, but I really like how you've laid this out.  It backs up what I was thinking about units of 10 chainrasps over skeletons too.

p.s. shouldn't it be a 30-dog unit rather than 30-man

Thanks -- yeah Mathhammer isn't for everyone. I certainly don't advocate building lists based solely on the stats, but I do think it's an important tool.

8 hours ago, Bademeister said:

I like to do the math for units and i have created a list to compare units of my own.

To look more forward i compared buffed units of skeletons and chainraps hordes. i modified their characterristics with commom buffs they should normaly get in the battle.

For Skeletons its +1 to Attacks by your Commander with the Lord of Nagashizzar ability and the Ossific Diadem Aura. To add a peak you could go for another +1 to Attacks form a command ability (Wight King, Vampire Lord).

For Chainraps Hordes i added the buffs of the already known Guardian of Souls, +1 to Wound, Reroll 1s to hit by the Spirit Torment and +1 to Attacks by the Knight of shrouds on Ethereal Steed.

40 Chainraps (Attacking 20 of them) compared to 40 Skeletons (Attacking 30 of them) 

Offensive 0,051 Damage per Point (14,25 Damage after Save Roll of 4+) for Chainraps

Offensive 0,067 Damage per Point (18,75 Damage after Save Roll of 4+) for Skeletons

You see, Skeletons have a better Damgeoutput in maxed units, with commom buffs in a "normal" attack. The more Chainraps Horde Models can attack the closer the gap to skeletons get. 

Yet we don't know the new Command Traits and Artefacts of the Nighthaunt Allegiance. i'd could be that chainraps horde become better than skeletons with these buffs.

 

Fair enough -- I pretty consciously avoid factoring in buffs like these because it creates a lot of assumptions about your listbuilding that may or may not actually be true. You won't get Ossific or Lord of Nagashizzar unless you are Grand Host, and there are plenty of Sacrament/Blood/Night armies that are going to be choosing between these options for battleline. Similarly, once you start factoring in buffs from multiple external heroes you are creating a narrower and narrower game scenario. Your math becomes invalid when the opponent picks those heroes off, and furthermore you aren't factoring in the price of those heroes into your calculations. Units have to be wholly within 12" of the Spirit Torment for the buff and models have to be within 9" of the Guardian. Both of those are pretty restrictive ranges. I haven't seen the Knight of Shrouds on steed warscroll yet, so I'm not sure what the nature of his attack bonus is. 

Basically, if you want to build your army around buffing up your battleline units as much as possible then you should absolutely consider these kinds of buffs, but you should also factor in the costs of the heroes etc. into your calculations if you do. 

 

[Aginor]

Interesting analysis, thank you!

[5kaven5lave]

+1, thanks man. 

What about running the Chainrasps just as a 20 like they do in the new set?

[swarmofseals]

3 hours ago, 5kaven5lave said:

+1, thanks man. 

What about running the Chainrasps just as a 20 like they do in the new set?

Assuming I'm correct about them being on 25mm bases it should be just fine as they can fight in two "ranks". They should perform with similar efficiency to 10 man squads but have more impact.

The only concern here is that they become more vulnerable to battleshock at 20. For example, if an opponent deals 7 unsaved wounds in one turn to a 10 man unit they will kill the whole unit on a battleshock roll of 6. If they deal 8 wounds, it's a 4+ and with 9 wounds it's a 2+.  In order to wipe out a 20 man unit, the opponent only needs to do 12 wounds to wipe out the unit on a roll of 6, 13 wounds for a 4+, and 14 wounds for a 2+. So even though you are adding 10 wounds to the unit, the amount of damage it takes to kill it in one go is only 5 more on average. The ability to survive a turn even with only a single model remaining is pretty huge for Death battleline because of our ability to return models on a massive scale. That's why I tend to favor either minimum or maximum sized units. Minimum units are the most efficient at soaking damage because they barely worry about battleshock at all. Maximum sized units are much less efficient at withstanding concentrated damage, but they have the highest chance of actually surviving an assault. A medium sized unit has the price efficiency of a small unit but has to worry more about battleshock.

The new Inspiring Presence makes this dynamic even more stark. Because you use it during the battleshock phase, you can reliably use it to save a unit that has been hit hard.  Before we'd have to guess at what units are vulnerable to attack and use Inspiring Presence proactively, which definitely didn't always work. Of course, with the ability to return destroyed units whole now command points are even more valuable. I think Death may value CP more than any other faction -- we have strong actual command abilities, get a ton out of the new Inspiring Presence, and also our summoning mechanic uses CP. Do you really want to use a CP to inspire a mid sized battleline unit? Probably not. That said, you'd probably rather return a 20 man squad than a 10 man squad (although a 40 man squad would be even better, albeit harder to do reliably given the space restrictions.

[5kaven5lave]

Ah nice. Thanks for looking into it for me!

[ianob]

One thing we do know so far is that Nighthaunt have better buffs than LoN - they have +1 to hit and wound from heroes. Whilst this doesn’t mean that the units are better in a vacuum, it does change their value (and hurts pure math comparisons as army composition is very much a factor when one army has access to something another doesn’t)

Myrmourn Banshees are very good. It will become apparent why once you  see Malign Sorcery later - magic is going to be much bigger in the new meta which means that not only does the value of their unbind go up but also the likelihood of getting their extra attack. Also their very high attack quality means they are a good target for +1A command abilities and spells plus they’re summonable so you can vanhels Danse them. Shame about the small unit size.

[Nevar]

On 6/14/2018 at 11:11 PM, swarmofseals said:

I don't quite see the point of Glaivewraith Stalkers at the moment. Their unit size is really strange and there is really nothing remarkable about their stats:

They can fall back and charge.

With flying, this means they can 'fall back' into enemy backfields potentially and then charge rear echelon units.  Or, even if you have them fighting the same unit, they can fall back and then charge again to keep their better on the charge profile.

I think they are tactically interesting, and the rules reflect their fluff pretty well.  If they are useful or not will remain to be seen.  If they were faster I would say they are amazing, but with AoS's 3" no go zone around models, the slower moving Glaivewraiths will have difficulty skipping directly over an enemy line, although using a pile in to shift to the other side of a combat line before then disengaging and charging rear echelon units could be viable assuming they survive the turn it takes to pull off the tactic.  Though they are highly unlikely to draw much ire from people until they successfully pull it off once... then they will become mental games units which I tend to enjoy.

[Neinball]

6 hours ago, swarmofseals said:

The only concern here is that they become more vulnerable to battleshock at 20...

Remember Chainrasp are Bravery 10 so long as the unit champion is alive.

[Guest]

Nicely done. I admit I already wrote grimghast reapers off, because their profile felt seriously unapealing.

Now I'm tempted to change my opinion. Stalkers are nothing to cheer upon and chainrasps won't be the most competetive battleline, that's easy to see.  But tbh skeletons and direwolves set a high standard.

Hm...I'm also curious about the new buffs and heroes, right now I'm not overly excited on the profiles of NH. I need to see the book to evaluate where the old models stand (spirit hosts f.e.).

 

[swarmofseals]

7 hours ago, ianob said:

One thing we do know so far is that Nighthaunt have better buffs than LoN - they have +1 to hit and wound from heroes. Whilst this doesn’t mean that the units are better in a vacuum, it does change their value (and hurts pure math comparisons as army composition is very much a factor when one army has access to something another doesn’t)

Myrmourn Banshees are very good. It will become apparent why once you  see Malign Sorcery later - magic is going to be much bigger in the new meta which means that not only does the value of their unbind go up but also the likelihood of getting their extra attack. Also their very high attack quality means they are a good target for +1A command abilities and spells plus they’re summonable so you can vanhels Danse them. Shame about the small unit size.

I addressed the buff question earlier when it was brought up by @Bademeister -- I don't like including external buffs in the math largely because they involve costs that are difficult to quantify. We do know that NH has some interesting buffs, but those buffs are somewhat costly. Most of the ones we have seen have a relatively small radius and either require units to be "wholly within" or only affect models actually in the radius. Others require command points.  Most of these support units also do something else though, so you can't just add their cost in cleanly when doing the calculation. Regardless, I think it's totally possible that NH will provide more interesting buffs and it's also possible that they won't. I'm also not really trying to compare these units in the context of a Nighthaunt allegiance simply because you won't be using Skeletons or Dire Wolves as your battleline if you are Nighthaunt. It's only relevant if you are Legion of Nagash. So while there may be a bunch of great buffs available in the NH abilities that we don't yet know, they aren't very relevant to this analysis. Sure you could ally in more buffers, but you will rapidly hit a tipping point where your army is like 60%+ NH and you have to ask yourself if you'd be better off going whole hog. You'd only really choose to take a hugely NH force with LoN abilities if the NH abilities themselves are terrible.

I've seen a lot of the Malign Sorcery stuff and agree that the unbinding is a substantial ability. That said, LoN already has a lot of sources of great unbinding (and at 30" range), so it's not clear to me that allying in a very defensively inefficient unit will be the best way to skin that particular cat. Totally agree re: their attack quality. In fact, in my original post stated "their relatively high value attacks make them a good platform for buffs and the fact that they are summonable is huge."

6 hours ago, Nevar said:

They can fall back and charge.

With flying, this means they can 'fall back' into enemy backfields potentially and then charge rear echelon units. 

There are much better units for getting into the backfield though -- a 6" flying retreat will only allow you to fly over really small units. 

6 hours ago, Neinball said:

Remember Chainrasp are Bravery 10 so long as the unit champion is alive.

I factored this in to my calculations. The fact that they are more vulnerable to battleshock at 20 than they are at 10 is precisely because they are bravery 10. At bravery 10 they only ever lose models to battleshock in a 10 man squad under very specific circumstances. At 20 though you are much more likely to lose models if your opponent concentrates damage. See an earlier post in the thread for a more detailed analysis of this.

[Nevar]

8 hours ago, swarmofseals said:

There are much better units for getting into the backfield though -- a 6" flying retreat will only allow you to fly over really small units.

Perhaps, but with the new pile in rules, they can pile in through enemy lines and then detach and charge something else.  I am not saying they are the most stellar unit, like you said they are slightly better than Direwolves and Chainrasps on the charge, and they should -always- be on the charge because of their ability to fall back and charge.  So they are better offensive units than both of those, not as good in the defense.

It also is a point against them that they are not battle line also.  Can't even use them to fill in required slots.

Still fine with it though, they are by far my least favorite Nighthaunt models, so now I do not need to buy any.

[swarmofseals]

26 minutes ago, Nevar said:

Perhaps, but with the new pile in rules, they can pile in through enemy lines and then detach and charge something else.  I am not saying they are the most stellar unit, like you said they are slightly better than Direwolves and Chainrasps on the charge, and they should -always- be on the charge because of their ability to fall back and charge.  So they are better offensive units than both of those, not as good in the defense.

It also is a point against them that they are not battle line also.  Can't even use them to fill in required slots.

Still fine with it though, they are by far my least favorite Nighthaunt models, so now I do not need to buy any.

They don't get the charge bonus during your opponent's turn unless they have been charged themselves. You are right that they will have the charging bonus most of the time, but it's not all the time. They are also only like 1.5% more efficient on offense than Chainrasps but 30-50% less efficient on defense. That's not a tradeoff that I'm particularly interested in. And yes, if they are in combat during your opponent's turn they can pile in around the enemy a bit and then retreat during your turn. I still think that will only work if the enemy unit is quite small. You also have to actually survive at least one round of combat with the opponent's front line and have enough left over to actually interfere with the opponent's back line.

[Sception]

Rather than vague approximation of the value of rend, I/d rather see offensive values split out by save of the defending unit, the way you split out defensive value's according to the attacking units rend.  That would be a lot more hassle, though, so i understand if you'd rather not.

I'm also not sure grave guard are a meaningful comparison for grimghasts, since grave guard, as far as I'm aware, are not a unit that is competitively run.  You can be better than grave guard without being good.

The better comparison would be to chainrasps in nighthaunt lists (both being battleline infantry options), where the wraiths are significantly superior in offence and somewhat inferior in defense, per your numbers.

In Legions of Nagash lists, they'll be competing for place not with grave guard, which again aren't played anyway, but rather with morghasts, the current LoN go-to for fastish, rendy, non-battleline melee hammers.  Or with spirit hosts, a more direct comparison since they also ethereal summonable units, but that comparison is thrown off by the hosts' ability to deal mortal wounds, which gives them a role grimghasts can't really emulate, champion's bell not withstanding.