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Post by hocestbellum on May 15, 2019 9:38:20 GMT
I'm starting this thread so I can talk about our jacks (or at least, my perception of our jacks) without further derailing welshhoppo's Welsh Masters thread.
My offhand comment was: Whereupon it was pointed out that the Spriggan, Grolar, and Ruin are all P18.
This is, of course, correct. However, it's not quite telling the whole story; the key part is 'credible alternative to the Juggernaut'. I'll pick Ruin whenever he's available over a Juggernaut because for +4 points you gain +1 MAT, Reach, magic weapons, potentially free boundless charge, self-powering, and spell hate. It's an incredible deal. But he's a character jack, so he's not always an option and I can never take more than 1.
But in terms of everything else, Khador has this huge hole in the middle of its melee jack options.
We're in a weird place because of the power of the Juggernaut; it's the only spammable P19 jack. (I tend to categorise warjacks into two cost categories: Spammable and elite. I would say spammable is anything 15pts or less, elite anything more.)
Other factions tend to top out at P18 in the spam range, and they'll usually have some upgrade option. Menoth can pay to go from MAT6 P18 Crusader to MAT7 P18 reach Guardian. Cygnar can go from P18 Ironclad to P19 reach Stormclad. And so on and so forth.
Khador can't do this. We can pay points to gain reach, but at the cost of both P and MAT. We can't actually improve upon the Juggernaut in any way in terms of damage output or combat abilities.
Okay, fair enough, that just means the Juggernaut is top of the pile; it must be the thing that other things upgrade to. But what is it upgrading from? Leaving aside character jacks and the archaic chassis, we have Marauder, Kodiak and Devastator as P16 with 2 initials, and Decimator and Destroyer at P17 and one initial.
So my point here is that in the spammable range and sans Jugger, we have no jacks with two initials and a P+S>16. If we removed every faction's hardest hitting cheap jack, Khador would be joint bottom of the power tables with Ret and Cryx. Our options are hit like a truck or hit like a pillow.
That just seems insane given our faction reputation. There's such an enormous gap between the Juggernaut and every other option we have. Making the Decimator P18 doesn't fully close that gap, but at least it gives us something of an option.
And we've got 5 jacks with P16 and two initials. That also seems like a design-space mess-up
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Post by Soul Samurai on May 15, 2019 12:26:35 GMT
The fact that we don't have a "strict upgrade" over the basic beatstick Juggernaut (other than character jacks) is something I've commented on in the past; perhaps the purest example I know is the Mangler in Mercs being a strict upgrade over the Nomad, in that (outside of cost/efficiency), there is nothing the Nomad has that the Mangler doesn't have the same or better. I've always felt the Spriggan should be our upgraded melee jack (it kind of is fluff-wise?), but with the lower MAT and P+S it just doesn't work out that way (I feel it was closer in MkII).
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Post by hocestbellum on May 15, 2019 13:19:10 GMT
Back in Mk2 it was much more of an upgrade; all our jacks were MAT6, and reach was its own thing. That meant the Spriggan was just as accurate, more so on the charge, and gained 1.5" of threat range. Plus, since you were generally only taking one jack there was more of an incentive to make it a decent one.
I think we'll see even fewer Spriggans in lists now the Adjunct is out. Sure, the Flares cover a wider area but the Adjunct is less than a quarter of the price, and also helps with magic weapons, focus efficiency, and properly getting through a cloud wall.
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Post by michael on May 15, 2019 14:03:04 GMT
Trust me guys, I tried. I’ve had more than a few...spirited discussions ... with local players who insist (usually in a rage) that Khador has the best warjack P+S out there*, and they are always surprised to learn that we are basically scraping the bottom of the barrel once you look at the actual data. Cygnar has an average heavy P+S higher than ours! Cygnar! (Anyway...) * P.S. - Did you know that two charging Doom Reavers are basically guaranteed to kill any fresh warpwolf on the charge? This is an amazing fact I learned from a local Circle player. (Hopefully he doesn’t use this forum and doesn’t think I’m picking on him, if he sees this...) But this is a good example of the seriously overhyped “Khador is best at everything” mentality (from non-Khador players) that seemingly somehow pervades the WM community...
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Post by hocestbellum on May 15, 2019 14:23:01 GMT
Trust me guys, I tried. I’ve had more than a few...spirited discussions ... with local players who insist (usually in a rage) that Khador has the best warjack P+S out there*, and they are always surprised to learn that we are basically scraping the bottom of the barrel once you look at the actual data. Cygnar has an average heavy P+S higher than ours! Cygnar! (Anyway...) * P.S. - Did you know that two charging Doom Reavers are basically guaranteed to kill any fresh warpwolf on the charge? This is an amazing fact I learned from a local Circle player. (Hopefully he doesn’t use this forum and doesn’t think I’m picking on him, if he sees this...) But this is a good example of the seriously overhyped “Khador is best at everything” mentality (from non-Khador players) that seemingly somehow pervades the WM community... If you exclude the archaic chassis, our average 'main melee weapon' power is 17, which is second only to Cygnar on 17.25. If you include the archaic chassis, we drop to 16.5, moving us below Protectorate and non-dwarf Mercs as well. Cryx and Ret are still below us on 16.375 and 16.33. Useful debate fodder there! But it's not like this is especially new; the Decimator dropping to P17 was the only change from Mk2, I think?
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crimsyn
Junior Strategist
Posts: 389
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Post by crimsyn on May 15, 2019 14:50:51 GMT
Trust me guys, I tried. I’ve had more than a few...spirited discussions ... with local players who insist (usually in a rage) that Khador has the best warjack P+S out there*, and they are always surprised to learn that we are basically scraping the bottom of the barrel once you look at the actual data These discussions also tend to quickly go down a rabbit hole of which in-faction buffs you include and exclude from your analysis, and which variables you throw out for simplicity’s sake. For example, the Juggernaut does look overpowered if you don’t consider any in-faction buffs, only count the PS of its highest weapon, ARM, and number of boxes, while ignoring disadvantages in SPD, DEF, lack of animi, and point cost. Basically, what I’ve noticed in a lot of these cross-faction comparisons is that the worse you get at math, the more ridiculously OP Khador looks in theorymachine. And don’t get me started on people who go “ARM 20 is OP! BTW, you’re dice minus three because Arcane Shield brings me up to ARM 22”...
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Post by Soul Samurai on May 15, 2019 15:40:56 GMT
the Decimator dropping to P17 was the only change from Mk2, I think? Beatback was nerfed since MkII (you used to be able to move 1" in any direction, so you could end up 12" away from a model you shot) and ROF was buffed (in MKII you needed to pay a focus to take the second shot), and of course MAT was buffed to 7. Just gonna throw out my usual "Decimator should get Point Blank" wishlist item here, just for the hell of it.
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Post by Soul Samurai on May 15, 2019 15:45:38 GMT
These discussions also tend to quickly go down a rabbit hole of which in-faction buffs you include and exclude from your analysis, and which variables you throw out for simplicity’s sake. For example, the Juggernaut does look overpowered if you don’t consider any in-faction buffs, only count the PS of its highest weapon, ARM, and number of boxes, while ignoring disadvantages in SPD, DEF, lack of animi, and point cost. Basically, what I’ve noticed in a lot of these cross-faction comparisons is that the worse you get at math, the more ridiculously OP Khador looks in theorymachine. And don’t get me started on people who go “ARM 20 is OP! BTW, you’re dice minus three because Arcane Shield brings me up to ARM 22”... Yeah, I remember when the Juggernaut price increase was being discussed, the only numbers some people would accept was "probability of Juggernaut one-rounding an Ironclad on the charge" and "probability of an Irobclad one-rounding a Juggernaut on the charge". While I was very clear that I wasn't arguing that 13 was too expensive, I tried to point out that that logic ignores the very very important SPD stat, and that in a vacuum as was being discussed the juggernaut WOULDN'T get the charge, but some people refused to think about that logic. I guess both warjacks always get the alpha simultaneously or something in their games?
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crimsyn
Junior Strategist
Posts: 389
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Post by crimsyn on May 15, 2019 17:05:56 GMT
These discussions also tend to quickly go down a rabbit hole of which in-faction buffs you include and exclude from your analysis, and which variables you throw out for simplicity’s sake. For example, the Juggernaut does look overpowered if you don’t consider any in-faction buffs, only count the PS of its highest weapon, ARM, and number of boxes, while ignoring disadvantages in SPD, DEF, lack of animi, and point cost. Basically, what I’ve noticed in a lot of these cross-faction comparisons is that the worse you get at math, the more ridiculously OP Khador looks in theorymachine. And don’t get me started on people who go “ARM 20 is OP! BTW, you’re dice minus three because Arcane Shield brings me up to ARM 22”... Yeah, I remember when the Juggernaut price increase was being discussed, the only numbers some people would accept was "probability of Juggernaut one-rounding an Ironclad on the charge" and "probability of an Irobclad one-rounding a Juggernaut on the charge". While I was very clear that I wasn't arguing that 13 was too expensive, I tried to point out that that logic ignores the very very important SPD stat, and that in a vacuum as was being discussed the juggernaut WOULDN'T get the charge, but some people refused to think about that logic. I guess both warjacks always get the alpha simultaneously or something in their games? I feel like if people aren’t ignoring Khador jacks’ low SPD, they are handwaving it by saying that Khador has access to speed and movement buffs on most of our casters, so our warjacks are “really SPD 6” ... which kind of ignores the fact that if our warjacks are “really SPD 6,” doesn’t that mean that a caster like Harkevich is “really FOCUS 3” because he has to spend three focus to make our jacks “really SPD 6”? I’ve said it before, there was a time where I felt like playing Khador and engaging with the Warmachine community online was miserable, because shortly after moving to a new city with more competitive players, I felt a little bullied because I wasn’t “gud” enough. So, I worked at getting, if not “gud” then at least okay... at which point when I started doing okay, I was informed that I was playing on easy model because Khador was so OP that Khador players don’t even have to think to win... unlike the people playing ghost fleet or whatever the boogeyman list of the day. But, tbh, a “gap” between PS 17 and 19 on our jacks seems like a silly thing to worry about.
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crimsyn
Junior Strategist
Posts: 389
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Post by crimsyn on May 15, 2019 17:12:50 GMT
That is not to say that Khador is bad or to start a Khador pity party, but we are far from an “easy mode” faction except maybe to some extent in the first couple weeks of a Journeyman League. We are somewhere in the middle on a game that is overall fairly well balanced, and shouldn’t be made to feel bad for playing our faction. Especially not in Warmachine, where one of the selling points of the game as compared to Other Game is that it is balanced enough that you don’t have cases where you want to play a good list but if violate a bunch of unwritten rules about how good your list can be you are playing cheese and therefore a jerk.
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Post by hocestbellum on May 15, 2019 19:27:55 GMT
To expand on the context for this thread a little: I'm not worried or concerned about this gap in hitting power, nor do I take this as evidence that Khador jacks are in any way deficient.
My main point was 'there is no credible alternative to a juggernaut', and the reason I wanted to expand on that a bit is that in a different thread I'd said I always find it funny when no-one takes Decimators.
The reason I find that funny is that during the CID PP implied they would nerf the Juggernaut and Marauder more rather than buff the Decimator or the Spriggan, saying that the problem lay with the compared models. From the Spriggan thread:
There was similar stuff said about the Decimator. This tickles me because it completely misses the point. The Decimator isn't compared to those jacks, it's compared to the Destroyer, where it is less useful and more expensive. The Spriggan is not compared to those models because its niche is stealth removal. It competes with Viktor and now the Adjunct. Now every time I'm reminded of when PP got completely the wrong end of the stick, I chuckle.
So this was a convoluted way of showing that the Juggernaut is our only beatstick, and that I am easily amused.
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Ganso
Junior Strategist
Posts: 932
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Post by Ganso on May 15, 2019 19:53:05 GMT
* P.S. - Did you know that two charging Doom Reavers are basically guaranteed to kill any fresh warpwolf on the charge? This is an amazing fact I learned from a local Circle player. (Hopefully he doesn’t use this forum and doesn’t think I’m picking on him, if he sees this...) But this is a good example of the seriously overhyped “Khador is best at everything” mentality (from non-Khador players) that seemingly somehow pervades the WM community... I find that type of mentality prevalent in the Lower-Mid to Scrub Tier players :-P usually the ones that want to absolutely kill everything on the table with disregard to positioning, scenario, target priority, etc. etc. lol What I actually see a big gap is in the 12 point slot, we have jacks in the 8, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, and even 19 (WTF are you doing there Black Ivan?) That jump is really weird on the points, I would actually like to see Destroyer in the 12 point gap. Seems to me that giving a gun to a MAT 7, RAT 4 jack, who can't even shoot it in melee, is a Downgrade from the Juggernaut. edit: apparently we don't have a niner either
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Post by jonnyboy on May 15, 2019 22:18:06 GMT
Im so used to destroyers being in a higher tier of point costs that 12 points seems absurd. But i rarely bring them because they are expensive an ineffective at most of their role. 12 points would make them interesting.
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Post by anderfreak on May 15, 2019 23:29:49 GMT
How do people feel about the grolar? I get the impression it doesn't perform up to its points value.
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Post by kovnikninehouse on May 15, 2019 23:55:00 GMT
How do people feel about the grolar? I get the impression it doesn't perform up to its points value. Right now there is only one caster that I reach for a Grolar first before anything else and that is Strakhov1. He is a super assassin jack under Strakhov1. Super fast and all the tools ghat Strakhov1 wants in a jack. Although someone else mentioned using a Grolar with Sorcha1 and I am intrigued by the idea of ether on feat turn or from freezing grip that the Grolar could truely shine with her as well
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