Boar

Ok let`s start with thinking about Seraphon Coalesced What is this brouhaha over Seraphon you ask? Well one of their sub-allegiances is Seraphon of old teleport, some summoning etc. Other, gives all units damage reduction ability, any multi-damage attack will have it`s damage reduced by one (to mininmum of one). It`s this second ability that causes some concern. You may already read or realised that frigate firing shrapnel is half as effective vs those guys. Also D3 attacks that are quite common in our army lose 1/3 of output. While 1/3 on average doesn`t sound horrible you have to realise that you were getting 1/2/3 damage and now spread is 1/1/2. In effect this makes those weapons unable to deal 3 damage, and this possibility is large part of appeal of those. In effect those weapons should be treated as 1 damage weapons with chance (1/3) of one additional damage dealt. As you can see my reader 1/3 loss doesn`t quite cover what happens with say aethermatic saw when facing Coalesced Seraphon. So below few words on two units (more to come!) that either don`t suffer from this debuff or the effect is limited. Arkanaut Company: Against coalesced they take relatively low hit to their combat effectiveness, in shooting just one attack is affected, it`s worse in melee unfortunately where 2 pike attacks are affected for each 10 arkanauts. They melee performance was weak to begin with but sometimes pikeguy could roll hot, no option for pleasant surprise this time. PLUS: -largest amount of bodies per point for us (with 4+ save), also better damage when close to objectives -gold share increases their potential somewhat -you probably have to take some anyway MINUS: -loss of damage on pike -slow (move 4, and large amount of bodies for air transport considerations) -missile weapons mostly are addition to melee due to their low ranges -rather low damage output per model Thunderers with Rifles No loss of damage potential on rifles. Can be supplanted with fumigator, also decksweeper even without bonus for all special weapons is still better than aetherrifle – though obviously with lower range. PLUS: -decent damage and range -fumigator and additional attack when in melee increases their utility in close combat MINUS: -slow on foot -you need to pay at least 240 pts to get gold share Arkanauts + Thunderers In some situations you could deploy arkanauts and behind them (more than 1” from front) thunderers with one or more fumigators. When attacked by 1” range enemy part of them would get debuff from fumigator partially protecting arkanauts, and by sticking Thunderers in melee gave them

I have some thoughts on this (or rather on our units) I will try to write it down later today, well tried it yesterday but browser ate my work😡 I will just note few things quickly, which inform my and I assume @Phasteonconcerns. We are not panicking, it`s just tough nut to crack. Seraphon can do 6+ FNP bubble, skinks can have 4+ or even 3+ save thanks to spells or abilities, not to mention mystic shield. And they can have massive amount of bodies with skinks 10 models for 60pts. So they can have all of things you mentioned in some manner, and in addition scaly skin ability, which btw affects all their units, unlike many of defensive buffs out there which are contingent on heroes or CP. This is all without mentioning offensive synergies, which if you even look just on warscrolls (not touching battalions, allegiance abilites etc.) are aplenty. You dismiss Seraphon, army that can get more shooting damage from just 180 pts of skinks than we can from 250 pts frigate (and by more I mean twice as much)? And just to be clear those offensive buffs are not that concerning in on itself, however in conjuction with scaly skin that makes their heroes almost twice as hard to remove ie. those buffs to remove.

Because of 9" away from enemy limitation. With normal move you can get closer to set up charge f.ex, or bring to bear 9" range weapons like gaze of grungni or arkanauts pistols

-half dmg for frigate -about I think 1/3 drop for ironclad - avg 1,33 dmg on various weapons instead of 2 dmg, max output of those reduced by 33% (so almost half output dropped on CC of riggers, also roughly half output on HTH heros ie. admiral, endrinmaster), Bound endless spells are definetly annoying, but to me not as much as loss of damage. Not to mention that lower damage makes enemy wizards that much survivable, and it`s this, that may have major impact, spells being bound is problem in addition to pillows fired from our cannons, not major in itself. At least that`s my take on it. Actually how mortal wounds interact with such ability? Are drill cannons going to save us 😶?

So Seraphon Coalesced reduce incoming damage by one from each attack (to min of 1), effectively halving output of shrapnel and aethershock carbines of capital ships. In essence Frigate loses half firepower against Coalesced. My brother is buying Seraphons right now, concern rising.

Well you can`t make Dwarf much shorter🙂

Ha, I didn`t get initailly what you mean here, but I think note on github cleared it up for me. So in essence sometimes v.low probability maximal damage would not be shown, right? Something like fleetmaster with venomfang blade who, at least in theory could cause 24 mortal wounds, but since probability is low it never shows up because you would need not thousands, but often milions or more simulations? Also would it be possible to add export feature (to csv) to some of derivative stats? For example from window with average damage per save. So you could export something like table below. I mean, you obviously can copy and paste like I just did but maybe it could be useful. Though I have to admit, as I am typing this I am starting to doubt usefulness of such feature. Save Kharybdyss Dreadspears Corsairs Darkshards Chariots 2+ 1.96 1.39 1.85 2.22 3.67 3+ 3.1 2.5 3.7 4.44 4.67 4+ 4.24 3.61 5.56 6.67 5.67 5+ 5.38 4.72 7.41 8.89 6.67 6+ 6.52 5.83 9.26 11.11 7.67 - 6.85 6.67 11.11 13.33 8

When it comes to damage output volley gun and drill cannon are actually similar on average, hence my question. One option could be - in say 6 man unit- taking 2 volley guns, but not in addition, but instead drill cannons. Due to low amount of shots from drills you have quite large chance of doing nothing with them. When constantly and reliably chipping at enemy unit is more valuable to you as player volley guns could be better. Drills are more of high risk, high reward things.

Curious what`s your reasoning behind this?

I counted avg. damage for individual weapons. That way anyone can mix and match, in second column with bonus to hit where applicable. So only mortar is worse than rifle (if in range obv.). Like you noticed other mortar problem is high chance of doing nothing (over 80%, while rifle fail rate is around 60%). However other weapons are 50% better in output than rifles, or 100% better with +1 to hit, and fumigator is always twice as good. aetherrifle 0,44 0,44 fumigator 0,89 0,89 decksweeper 0,67 0,89 mortar 0,33 0,44 aethercannon 0,69 0,93

They being within 12" is obviously a must, but I am getting different result vs 4+ save. Just aethercannon and decksweeper (so two models) without bonus ( so they hit on 4+) deal the same average damage as three rifledwarfs

Admiral`s is smaller in scope, but it can be affected by artifact that gives you one free CA use from warscroll

You can have more as per last FAQ. Q: In a Pitched Battle, if a unit that is a Behemoth can be taken as Battleline, does that unit still count towards the total number of Behemoths that can be taken in the army? A: No.

vs 4+ save drill have avg.damage of 0,94, skyhook/grapnel 0,83. Against lighter armor drill is slightly worse, but gains even more vs 3+ and more. In situation of -1 to hit drill would always be better than skyhook/grapnel.

It kinda looks like balancing concern on one hand, so they didn`t write f.ex one free use of any command ability. On the other hand similar traits/artifacts with free use of warscroll ability are in other battletomes, so kind of standarization. And than they realized that warscroll as it is written wouldn`t give enough benefit to justify taking artifact and so writers added generic abilities onto this? Pure speculation obviously.

+1 would be nice. As for saving place on warscroll, I actually think it`s good that they didn`t do that. Since you watched WW, you maybe noticed that Vince called out that triumphs weren`t repeated in the book, and that`s arguably bad move as it makes rules more opaque esp. to newer players.

That is done in mind with artifact that let`s Admiral one free use per turn of warscroll commands.

Hey if there was only Vince it would be OK

Gunhauler can help, not so much with 6++ save (that too obviously) but simply by limiting where enemy can go with their troops.

Love idea with saw-spear

Yeah hand of gork is pain, and wizard is of course hiding behing loonshrine (which is shrine`s unwritten additional ability🙂). The problem I can see with engaging squigs too much, is that it could leave not enough time to clear grots from objective (I usually put grudge on largest grot unit btw). Also when clearing grots you have to position your guys and ships taking into account grots crawling out of loonshrine. Since we are not numerous we can lose command of objective by enemy simply running close. There is also matter of navigator`s aetherstorm, which if succesful vs. manglers/boingrots can buy more time to shot at grots.

So far I played 3 battles with new KO, all of them on 1250 pts vs Gloomspite, and hard getting to objectives is definetly true. Grots are annoying, but can can only put -1 to hit on one unit, so there is that (and 1/6 times spell will fail). The thing about Mangler is wrong though, he can one shot ironclad on charge but it would be relatively rare occurence (slightly less than 1/6). And if Ironclad rerolls saves from aether gold it would be very lucky Mangler that would do that (1% chance). Artifact on boss could certainly improve that chances though. Units of bounderz with their mortals on charge could prove to be more dangerous, and perhaps should be dealt with first.

Hard to say right now, detailed show about KO will be on wednesday, but in last he was very dissapointed

Kinda my thoughts as well. I will watch though and hope that Tom chilled out over those few days. Don`t get me wrong, Tom is great guy, thought more emotional one of the two.

Ability has text like below, so as you can see you simply add +1 "Add 1 to hit rolls for attacks made with a Grundstok Mortar, Decksweeper or Aethercannon when it is used by a unit that has at least 1 of each of these weapons"