WarCry is (too) unpredictable

[bonesaww666]

All horde armies are not the be all and end all that people are making them out to be.

The movement rules heavily hamstring the maneuverability of max troops, as activating units one at a time while reacting to your opponent can cause you to gum up movement lanes.

Dropfleet/Dropzone relies heavily on making lists that can out activate or hammer your opponents into a coma. They are both great games and generally a mix of both holds more weight.

Only game that I think stacking is overly devestating is in Bolt Action, mainly due to the Pin Mecanic, Japanese Dice Bags can ruin many a day because you don't actually have to kill your foe to take them out of the action.

[Smooth criminal]

Infinity is a popular competitive game and it has all the warcry ****** (lots of terrain, measurements, los, dice swings, important crits) so anything can happen.

[El_Commi]

2 hours ago, Hannibal said:

If I remember correctly, in M2E you could only count on outactivating with one model. You were allowed to skip a certain number of activations if you were fielding less models.

M1E didn´t have such a rule as well as offered an unlimited number of chain activations which made shooty alpha strikes pretty lethal in the right cicumstances. This was addressed by M2E.

I generally don't recall this being a thing, however it has been a while since I last played.  IIRC, you had to activate a model on your turn. You couldn't skip. I played a number of tournaments and I never saw a turn skipped.


In response to my other post, here's the correct probabilities. I ran them quickly in excel, them realized I didn't handle the permutations properly so had to redo it in R,  (Im in work so skimmed through it hence the lazy math). 

 

Purple line is raw percentages. Yellow line is those same percentages bounded to the list of probabilities. Assuming all 8 hits deal damage (Treating 1's as a success cause the math is easier, although the probability distribution will look similar anyway) . 

Blue bar is 1/4, orange is 2/3.  As you can see, orange has a tighter spread than blue. But, its min damage is significantly higher. Blue has higher range of outputs, but a much lower damage at the bottom end of the damage output.

Once the probability of the expected damage is factored in, the damage curve over N games looks like this: 

Yes it is more predictable, but requires the game to be designed with tools to offset this higher damage at the lower end. Given the low probabilities of crit, this could make some for really grindy games. 

 

Edit, forgot to add average damage is :  9.43 for blue and 24.89 for orange

Edited August 7, 2019 by El_Commi

[Wraith01]

I like unpredictable, keeps things interesting and definitely fits the theme. 

[tom_gore]

9 hours ago, El_Commi said:

*edit: Spreadsheet error, see my next post for clarification*

Malifaux M2E didn't have anything to prevent out-activations, (I can't speak for M3E), and the out activation strategy was integral to some aspects of the game, smaller model count lists have their own advantages and disadvantages, same as in any game. 
So I don't really see this as a major concern for Warcry tbh.  What matters is how you react to the evolving game. 

I'm not sure of your math here. I'm getting 9.664470895 and 16.55482363 when I run the numbers.  If you look at the graph below, I don't think this is as big an issue as you suggest. Grey line represents probability of 6's on that many die. Bounded to 0 and 8.  The probability of at least one 6 is 0.53. 
The blue and orange lines represent damage. Each of these damage outputs maps on to a probabilistic outcome (assuming the dice is perfect). We can see that the most likely outcomes here show 2/3 as having higher damage. 
 

 
I mean, you are right in saying that the damage curve for 1/4 is much steeper than 2/3.  However, the probability of hitting those higher damage values is quite slim. (The above assumes 8 attacks which all hit). But, once you factor in the probability the 2/3 has a much higher overall damage curve. 

And whilst minimizing the range of output matters for balance in a competitive setting ( I made similar arguments for competitive wow arena back in the day), in a game those... "oh Sh**" moments are what make it fun to play- provided they are not too common:which the probability damage curves above suggest they are not. 

In  addition to discounting the probabilistic outcomes, your perspective discounts unit specific abilities that may hinder/mitigate crits and damage output which could further smooth out damage.  (Although, I concede this does go both ways and it can enhance it)

Don't know why the math is different. I just calculated the average damage done by 1 attack (for example for 1/4 damage profile used (0 + 0 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 4) / 6) and multiplied it by 8. Still, thanks for the curves. It does show those high damage numbers are rare, but of course rare things happen.

I can definitely live with that, because I'm not super competitive. I do know some players will be put off by this since they feel they don't have enough control of the outcome of attack actions.

 

[Obeisance]

I saw this thread and I was going to talk about Infinity, got beaten to it.

The dice mechanics are just different. In GW games, you're rolling buckets of dice looking at averages and/or 6s.

In Infinity, you're stacking mods and range bands to push the math in your favour.  The critical hit mechanic is swingy, but it gives you that 1:20 chance to not get ruined by overwhelming dice/mods. Yes, you can be totally blindsided by hidden models.. but playing around them is sort of a given. If you play against Combined Army or Shasvastii, you know there might be a Noctifer with a Missile Launcher hidden on a rooftop. Or any army that has access to TO: Camo might have someone off the table skulking near an objective. Personally, I love the hidden model mindgames.

I've also played a lot of Warmachine/Hordes. That was D6, based, but you could bump the curve in your favour with boosting hit/damage. 

While Infinity may literally be the best game I've played, I'm enjoying taking a break to play AoS and I'm looking forward to getting some Farcry games in.

 

[gabbi]

Aaw, man, you're making me itching for iNfinity again... stopped playing it because is a very demanding game that requires constant play or you're going to forget all mods and abilities. And att I were not able to dedicate the attention it demands and deserves. But it is such a great game and also a very "different" one. It has some aspects that no other miniature game has (sometimes it feels like a stealth videogame, at other times it's more like a tower defense, all during the same match). Really a great game and a game like no other.

Ok, end of OT, sorry... ^^;

Edited August 8, 2019 by gabbi

[El_Commi]

3 hours ago, Obeisance said:

I saw this thread and I was going to talk about Infinity, got beaten to it.

The dice mechanics are just different. In GW games, you're rolling buckets of dice looking at averages and/or 6s.

In Infinity, you're stacking mods and range bands to push the math in your favour.  The critical hit mechanic is swingy, but it gives you that 1:20 chance to not get ruined by overwhelming dice/mods. Yes, you can be totally blindsided by hidden models.. but playing around them is sort of a given. If you play against Combined Army or Shasvastii, you know there might be a Noctifer with a Missile Launcher hidden on a rooftop. Or any army that has access to TO: Camo might have someone off the table skulking near an objective. Personally, I love the hidden model mindgames.

I've also played a lot of Warmachine/Hordes. That was D6, based, but you could bump the curve in your favour with boosting hit/damage. 

While Infinity may literally be the best game I've played, I'm enjoying taking a break to play AoS and I'm looking forward to getting some Farcry games in.

 

I really really loved Infinity. It was a beautiful, fun, cinematic game. With gorgeous models. But I couldn't get my mates to buy in, and I don't have the time for the massive ruleset  

[El_Commi]

7 hours ago, tom_gore said:

Don't know why the math is different. I just calculated the average damage done by 1 attack (for example for 1/4 damage profile used (0 + 0 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 4) / 6) and multiplied it by 8. Still, thanks for the curves. It does show those high damage numbers are rare, but of course rare things happen.

I can definitely live with that, because I'm not super competitive. I do know some players will be put off by this since they feel they don't have enough control of the outcome of attack actions.

 

Yeah, I fully appreciate the fear of getting randomly exploded by a super rare roll. But in Warhammer those are the memorable moments. The problem with the 2/3 being the baseline damage for grunts is that you have to have a much higher starting health pool across the board (Avg damage is 9 v 24- assuming all hit with fails both values will be lower but retain their relative positions..) which could make games longer and more complex to play. 

I'd be surprised if GW designed games around the math, but they'll know what "feels" right for the objectives they're after. 

[marke]

In M3E there are pass tokens to solve the "activation spam" problem. To be honest the core mechanics of the game made it less of a problem in M2E as well.  Malifaux is an excellent and well polished game by the way, and should be played by everyone. 😁

Most modern skirmish games have some solution to activation problem. Warcry doesn't seem to have one. However, imo the challenges Warcry's ruleset is facing is keeping the game meaningful while lacking player interaction, resource manipulation and multiple win conditions. Walking to bash face and letting only the dice (or stats) decide the outcome of the game isn't going to be very interesting for very long.

The game is still very new and has potential to grow. These things take time, and I hope it sells well enough for GW to care about it and add more depth.

[ServiceGames]

2 hours ago, marke said:

The game is still very new and has potential to grow. These things take time, and I hope it sells well enough for GW to care about it and add more depth.

You are correct, the game is very new and has a lot of potential to grow.  The biggest issue with GW games outside of proper AoS and proper 40K is staying power.  I think the real question should be, is GW going to add enough depth and stabilize the rules a little more before people get tired of it and abandon it?  If GW releases some additional rules/depth out within the next month or so, it has a chance to stay around.  If they wait to see how well it sells before they start to care about it, it'll be too late... people will already have moved on.

Just my $0.02 based on my local meta

SG

Edited August 8, 2019 by ServiceGames

[Ajmaus]

I yse to play a lot of spartan games years back.. And the mechanic was fairly similar you rolled a set of a dice and 6s counted as 2 hits... The game kinda just turned into the most important ability was getting more dice because all you wanted was to fish for 6s... I have only played warcry twice and i already think if you played it competitively its just going to be get as many models as possible amd roll for 6s.. However, the part im loving about warcry is the table and scenerio random generation and using the variety of models the box came with... I thinks its the first gw game where matched play looks worse to me then open play lol.

[gabbi]

Well, in Dystopian Wars rolling 6s was way more decisive as not only they were worth two successes, but they "exploded" (i.e. keep the result, reroll and add the new result. Eventually rerolling again in case of another 6). Never been a fan of the mechanic, honestly: rewarding 6s TWICE was a bit too much, for me. 

[exliontamer]

8 hours ago, marke said:

In M3E there are pass tokens to solve the "activation spam" problem. To be honest the core mechanics of the game made it less of a problem in M2E as well.  Malifaux is an excellent and well polished game by the way, and should be played by everyone. 😁

Most modern skirmish games have some solution to activation problem. Warcry doesn't seem to have one. However, imo the challenges Warcry's ruleset is facing is keeping the game meaningful while lacking player interaction, resource manipulation and multiple win conditions. Walking to bash face and letting only the dice (or stats) decide the outcome of the game isn't going to be very interesting for very long.

The game is still very new and has potential to grow. These things take time, and I hope it sells well enough for GW to care about it and add more depth.

Amen to all of this. Warcry is like the skirmish game equivalent of those "early access" video games. We're basically fronting the cash and the "support" so that someday, hopefully, GW builds a better game and improves the rules. You can argue about whether or not you like that model, but that's basically what happened with Kill Team as well and it seems to have worked out...okayish? I guess? I mean arguably everything in Elites should have been in the base version of the game. But then GW couldn't charge 40-50 bucks for an upgrade book and open the gate for players to buy more model kits once or twice a year.

Similarly Warcry should have debuted with more varied win cons, more actions and interactions that the units had to take to achieve victory...so that players would have to make a real choice outside of: do I double move or double attack this turn?

I think Warcry can get there, either through GW working it out eventually or through community innovation on the core concept. And at least we got some shiny new chaos model kits out of it! That's cool right?

[soak314]

8 hours ago, marke said:

However, imo the challenges Warcry's ruleset is facing is keeping the game meaningful while lacking player interaction, resource manipulation and multiple win conditions. Walking to bash face and letting only the dice (or stats) decide the outcome of the game isn't going to be very interesting for very long. 

31 minutes ago, exliontamer said:

Similarly Warcry should have debuted with more varied win cons, more actions and interactions that the units had to take to achieve victory...so that players would have to make a real choice outside of: do I double move or double attack this turn?

I find the "just run over and whack each other" criticism very troubling, because Warcry goes well out of its way to provide some very specific mission goals while setting a hard limit on the time to achieve them in.

Consider the situation: "kill all of your opponent's hammer, which is just a couple of 8 wound plains runners!".  Sound dead easy!

But with a mutual 2-3 stage staggered deployment, over the course of 4 turns, while your opponent's hammer is actively nyooming away from you, WHILE you have a 30 wound chaos beast messing around the middle of it all because loltwists, you'll then be provided with some very meaningful decisions to make.

[exliontamer]

19 hours ago, soak314 said:

Consider the situation: "kill all of your opponent's hammer, which is just a couple of 8 wound plains runners!".  Sound dead easy!

But with a mutual 2-3 stage staggered deployment, over the course of 4 turns, while your opponent's hammer is actively nyooming away from you, WHILE you have a 30 wound chaos beast messing around the middle of it all because loltwists, you'll then be provided with some very meaningful decisions to make.

That's not good game design...that's just arbitrary and random. Sometimes goals will be not only challenging but impossible. 

Take by comparison Malifaux where you have multiple goals and victory conditions to choose from and in many cases you keep them secret from your opponent until the first time you score so that they can't just move the unit you have to kill as far away from you as possible. And most of them require actions other than standing or killing or moving so you have to make real choices with your economy of actions.

I am not saying Warcry can't be fun, but the inherent randomness to the mission/deployment/twist is just lazy development...not a cleverly built challenge. I won't even get into the standardized terrain because it is literally just a cash grab.

EDIT for clarification:

<break for separate thought about Matched Play>

Now my hope is that matched play goes way more towards the Malifaux side of things with standard but varied scenarios and [adding in] some element of surprise or scheming against your opponent [eventually]. We will see what the future brings. But for now to claim that randomness = tactical depth...I just fundamentally disagree with you. But that's cool. Different strokes.

Edited August 9, 2019 by exliontamer

[Moldek]

I understand people’s concern but I disagree with the idea that the game is lazy / early access. 

I think their main goal was to make an easy to learn game with some meaningful variations and cool model. Could it be more balanced / tactical? Sure but let me counter with this ; I took 2 people to my GW to play demo games, not having played myself, and both times we were able to figure out the rules and have a fun 30 minutes game. Can you do that with infinity / malifaux? 

I just don’t think their focus is on a deep game and people looking for that will be disappointed. And I think that’s fine. I’m not playing AoS because I don’t enjoy list building and learning 60 different abilities and synergies. I want a simple fun game with cool models, that is swingy and tells a story.

I do think there are some cool ideas in this thread (hidden agendas for instance sounds really fun) and the discussion is very interesting. I hope they do deepen the game and create cool add-ons, but I just don’t think they are targeting seasoned strategists  

obviously the game is not perfect and criticism is constructive so I’ll keep my eyes peeled for any improvement I can add to my houserules!

[exliontamer]

4 minutes ago, Moldek said:

I understand people’s concern but I disagree with the idea that the game is lazy / early access. 

I think their main goal was to make an easy to learn game with some meaningful variations and cool model. Could it be more balanced / tactical? Sure but let me counter with this ; I took 2 people to my GW to play demo games, not having played myself, and both times we were able to figure out the rules and have a fun 30 minutes game. Can you do that with infinity / malifaux? 

I just don’t think their focus is on a deep game and people looking for that will be disappointed. And I think that’s fine. I’m not playing AoS because I don’t enjoy list building and learning 60 different abilities and synergies. I want a simple fun game with cool models, that is swingy and tells a story.

I do think there are some cool ideas in this thread (hidden agendas for instance sounds really fun) and the discussion is very interesting. I hope they do deepen the game and create cool add-ons, but I just don’t think they are targeting seasoned strategists  

obviously the game is not perfect and criticism is constructive so I’ll keep my eyes peeled for any improvement I can add to my houserules!

Yeah, I hear you. Believe me I understand that my wants/desires/expectations aren't necessarily going to line up with GW's business plan (or even their philosophy for the game). And that's fine. There are reasons I love Warcry and reasons I am severely disappointed in it. And I agree with you, the reasons I am disappointed are actually pretty easily remedied through homebrew and house rules and such. I'd like it if GW wanted those same things that I do, but I am realistic that it probably won't happen...or won't happen for a long time.

Also to be clear, I am totally glad that other people are having fun with the game. I don't want to be a curmudgeon. In fact I have had fun playing it, believe it or not

[tom_gore]

1 hour ago, exliontamer said:

That's not good game design...that's just arbitrary and random. Sometimes goals will be not only challenging but impossible. 

Take by comparison Malifaux where you have multiple goals and victory conditions to choose from and in many cases you keep them secret from your opponent until the first time you score so that they can't just move the unit you have to kill as far away from you as possible. And most of them require actions other than standing or killing or moving so you have to make real choices with your economy of actions.

I am not saying Warcry can't be fun, but the inherent randomness to the mission/deployment/twist is just lazy development...not a cleverly built challenge. I won't even get into the standardized terrain because it is literally just a cash grab.

Now my hope is that matched play goes way more towards the Malifaux side of things with standard but varied scenarios and some element of surprise or scheming against your opponent. We will see what the future brings. But for now to claim that randomness = tactical depth...I just fundamentally disagree with you. But that's cool. Different strokes.

Have you seen the rulebook? Matched play has fixed scenarios just like AoS, so the battleplan cards are not used there.

Which is good, since I cannot imagine playing in a tournament with the battleplan cards. That just wouldn't make sense.

[exliontamer]

7 minutes ago, tom_gore said:

Have you seen the rulebook? Matched play has fixed scenarios just like AoS, so the battleplan cards are not used there.

Which is good, since I cannot imagine playing in a tournament with the battleplan cards. That just wouldn't make sense.

Yes I have. And sorry, that final paragraph likely should have been a more clearly defined separate thought. I think it's the right direction for matched play, I just wish there was more tactical variety. In fact the "randomness" of the card draws in the other play modes isn't inherently bad, it's just implemented poorly. Imagine if you drew three cards for victory conditions/goals and could choose two of them (and your opponent could choose two of their own, not necessarily the same two)...that's the type of thing I'm talking about. It would instantly make the game better and it is so easy to do. It's something I will definitely playtest with my group given the opportunity.

[Moldek]

1 hour ago, exliontamer said:

 Imagine if you drew three cards for victory conditions/goals and could choose two of them (and your opponent could choose two of their own, not necessarily the same two)...that's the type of thing I'm talking about. It would instantly make the game better and it is so easy to do. It's something I will definitely playtest with my group given the opportunity.

That’s a great idea. I’ve also been thinking about a game mode where each round you draw objective cards similar to underworlds and earn points that way. Like « charge from a levell higher », « kill 2 models in 1 activation », « have a model alone near an objective »... could be really cool

[overtninja]

The advantage of randomized elements is that you could play the game with the same terrain layout and same models and expect different outcomes each time, both on a turn-by-turn basis and over the course of the game. The disadvantage is that sometimes the game feels out of your control - you can make intelligent plays, all the right moves, and still lose.

However, I think that is preferable to the converse, where there are very few randomized elements, so you can pretty quickly math out the expected outcomes of any confrontation and determine the victor before dice are even rolled. For me, WHFB 8th edition got very close to this, especially because it was popular to play with little terrain and generally minimize the amount of random elements in the game, and the community in general strongly disliked anything that was random that they couldn't minimize. It made for a very stale, binary experience, where you basically looked across the table at what your opponents had, or read their lists beforehand, and knew who the victor would be with an 80%+ certainty. This is ultimately unsatisfying for the player, as it basically dissuades actually playing the game if victory or defeat is a foregone conclusion.

I think one of the reasons that Warcry has so many unpredictable elements is that it is a very fast game to play, and also a small game. In this kind of situation it's better to make sure each game is dynamic and unexpected outcomes are abundant, or the game would become boring with lots of repeated plays. Since each contest takes 20 or so minutes to play, this is an important and intentional design decision, so that each match feels unique and outcomes are not foregone conclusions, even if one player is clearly losing at any given point. It adds to the excitement, even if it allows one player to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, to the other's displeasure. When this happens, you can simply play the match again and see what happens then.

If the game was longer, as in a matched play AoS game, this is not always an option, so the number of random elements in the game should overall be less, so that the players feel more control over the outcome of the game based on their decisions rather than the luck of the dice. In a Warcry game, I think the spectacle and play to play action of the game is more important than the grand strategic moves and long-game play choices that AoS rewards - because your strategy is 'get close and then beat them until they die' with pretty much every force in Warcry.

[Sadysaneto]

crits should be random

[Onslaught]

I believe critical hits  make combat fun, brutal, epic even, and give little guys the possibility to beat a stronger/ bigger enemy., and that's the way I think it should be. Anything can happen and any model can turn things around. 

Remember Mordheim Critical Hit Charts? It made for fun memorable gaming moments, the kind of moments your remember for years!

I'm more concerned with the initiative roll, that's where randomness should be curbed. Warbands should start the round with the same number of ability points, like you get 6 ability points each round to use as you want. Unused points cannot be carried over to the next round, but leaders could generate one extra ability point per round that would carry over. I'd make it easier to plan ahead some spectacular actions and no player would get an edge over the other because he rolled a quadruple and his opponent only a double. That would definitely make the game more competitive I think.

My 2 cents !

[BarfAtTheMoon]

Yeah, I didn't come to Warcry to play chess.  There can be strategy in preparing for randomness, and as a game literally set in one of the most chaotic places in the mortal realms, that makes it all the more thematic.  
That being said...hidden agendas or secondary objectives would be pretty awesome.  And I wish they expanded the available warbands and the loot mechanics before adding in mercs and monsters.