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Post by moarbarmu on Apr 8, 2018 3:53:02 GMT
I do not agree with the prevailing wisdom that the Highshields are a terrible unit. I think that they are useful in Hammerstrike. One large unit of Highshields with a CA is viable in Hammerstrike. A free CA is no problem. They do not have to worry about competition for large ranged units. They do well with Ossrum and Gorten but not necessarily Durgen. They enjoy Gorten's feat and an Avalancher in Ossrum's battlegroup can help out by knocking stuff down. Snipe on them on their mini-feat turn is very nice when shooting knocked down, valuable models. Tough and Solid Ground and Rockwall with Gorten and theme benefit is pretty nice. There are things they need to be useful outside of Hammerstrike but they are underrated in Hammerstrike. A little more in the way of defensive abilities and they would be great.
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Post by Charistoph on Apr 8, 2018 5:24:50 GMT
It's hard to say, really. Right now, they are a little bit of everything, and that's part of what makes them suck. They are a CRA/CMA/Shield Wall unit. Really, they need another unit to take over one of their roles, and WAs wouldn't hurt, either. Off hand, I would say, get them in to a dedicated role and buff from there.
If they are to be THE Shield Wall Merc/Rhulic unit, great. Reduce the range of their guns (and maybe increase the POW) and give them Point Blank or Gunfighter while making their Shield Wall or Double Time orderless. They would obviously lose CRA or CMA (depending on which gun rule they go with), but having both is really killing the unit's usefulness.
If they are to be the Rhulic gunline, swap Shield Wall for Carapace with a Girded Order (or vice versa) and increase their range. They may have to lose Practiced Manuevers with this, though. In return, they lose Double Time as an order, while giving them the Order to do double shots. This would mean Guns Blazing would have to be updated to be more interesting, though.
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Post by fallenexile on Apr 8, 2018 5:37:49 GMT
They're bad. They will be bad for a while. There are plenty of threads about this already.
Can we stop pummeling this deceased equine?
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Post by moarbarmu on Apr 8, 2018 22:51:53 GMT
I disagree that they are bad. I resent the assumption that they are bad with no evidence. The common wisdom is wrong. Their ability to do a little bit of everything does not make them bad. They are only a little overly expensive and fall to continuous effects too much. Being a well rounded unit does not make them bad. I refuse to accept the idea that you need a narrow role for a unit to be good.
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crow
Junior Strategist
Posts: 310
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Post by crow on Apr 9, 2018 2:29:33 GMT
Their problem, from experience, is they get out shot by ranged units that are cheaper than them(House Guard, Gun Mages, So many legion things, etc.) and are to slow to close the gap. Hence they get shot off the board before being able to get much done there. Well how about melee capability? When compared to a dedicated Melee unit, they lack the offensive output of cheaper melee options. For instance the Forge Guard (who are cheaper if the UA for the Highshields is taken into account) are slow, but each one packs a pow 11 on three dice (four if you charge). Meaning on average they hit for 21 p+s (no charge considered). Not only that, but they have a two inch reach. For the same points (or more with the UA) you get a pow 9 with a .5 reach. Even if you can finagle two or three into one target, a single forge guard outperforms them. Well what about armor? The Forge Guard only have one less armor when base to base then they do, and Armor 19 really isn't over the curve needed to make it any more survivable really than armor 18. Plus in order to stay at armor 19 they can't run, which means they're moving even slower. They have the some nifty tech in that they can move shoot move, but with speed 4, there aren't really any obstructions they're going to be able to poke out and shoot from and get back into proper cover. That or they'll try and pop out from a forest... to then move back in and get +2 def... which means they're still def 12. Then there is their ability to fire twice, which is pretty nice. In fact if they had more range and threat, it might actually make them playable... but they don't, and so if you're lucky you get part of a unit that gets to do this, and then they don't really do much the rest of the game (other than die). What about caster support? Well Gorten really doesn't help that much. If the opponent has enough speed to get to them, they've usually got enough attacks to cripple them, and pushing the enemy back for the reduced def at that point really doesn't help. And I've already discussed the problem with trying to use a wall on a Def 10 unit (the def isn't really high enough to save them). Ossrum gives them one turn to get into position... but it's one turn, and if it goes bad, you've placed 21 points into a unit that can't recover. I would certainly give Ossrum the best hope... but it works WAY better with Forge Guard, or if you want a ranged option, TAC or HAC. I have tried them several times, tried to make them work, and I ALWAYS find that I could have done more with TAC, HAC, or Forge Guard. They need to stop being so in-between-ish and just pick a role. I figure they'd be a good dedicated shooting unit with some kind of threat extension. Then TAC would be your magic weapons HAC would be your long range one shot lobber, FG would be your melee, and... well OAC need help... but that's another issue.
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Post by Sarcastastic on Apr 9, 2018 3:22:55 GMT
There absolutely is evidence they are not good. People have been trying to make them work for years now, again and again, every which way. And yet we still see no real success with them. That's pretty damn telling if you ask me.
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shoe
Junior Strategist
Posts: 706
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Post by shoe on Apr 9, 2018 3:27:57 GMT
There absolutely is evidence they are not good. People have been trying to make them work for years now, again and again, every which way. And yet we still see no real success with them. That's pretty damn telling if you ask me. i resent that!
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Munindk
Junior Strategist
Posts: 210
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Post by Munindk on Apr 9, 2018 6:26:09 GMT
I disagree that they are bad. I resent the assumption that they are bad with no evidence. The common wisdom is wrong. Their ability to do a little bit of everything does not make them bad. They are only a little overly expensive and fall to continuous effects too much. Being a well rounded unit does not make them bad. I refuse to accept the idea that you need a narrow role for a unit to be good. I disagree that they're not bad based on personal experience. I resent your assuption that they are not bad when you've provided no evidence or arguments to the contrary. Common wisdom might be wrong, but stating that its wrong doesnt make it true, if you're so certain you should prove it. I agree that being jacks of all trades isnt necessarily a bad thing, but it does make them harder to get use out of and when there are cheaper or easier to use alternatives out there, Highshields start to look bad by comparison. I'm with you on the price, I think its because you're paying for CMA on what I consider to be a ranged unit, practiced maneuvers are irrelevant if you're playing Ossrum, double time competes with shieldwall so you're paying for 2 abilities where you can only use one any given turn. Well rounded is not in itself bad, but it tends to make a unit expensive and difficult to use, which means that the unit usually isnt cost effective. I once read that in warmachine you should maximize your strenghts instead of trying to shore up your weakness, I've found that to be true and as they are, the Highshields are flying against that wisdom. I think Highshields are meant to be a take and hold unit. Move them to an objective and then sit there with hight ARM and shoot a lot. Trouble is, they dont have enough shots, they dont have enough range and their shots arent dangerous enough. Alternatively they could be a jamming unit, but they're not fast enough. As things stand I'd field 6 Steelhead Halberdiers and 10 Steelhead Rifleman for the same cost. Tldr. Challenging common wisdom is a good thing, but so do, dont just say you're doing it. And Highshields might not actually be bad, maybe they're just not cost effective.
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shoe
Junior Strategist
Posts: 706
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Post by shoe on Apr 9, 2018 6:48:27 GMT
so much resentment and wisdom in this thread...
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Munindk
Junior Strategist
Posts: 210
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Post by Munindk on Apr 9, 2018 8:18:49 GMT
Lormahordes - home of the resentful oracles?
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Post by borderprince on Apr 9, 2018 13:30:03 GMT
Major issues: (1) Threat range. Outside of Ossrum/Magnus1, they're limited to 14" threat. That's quite low for a shooting unit. They're outranged by Steelhead Riflemen in faction, who do shooting better. They're outranged by lots of shooting in other factions. Even standard Winter Guard infantry have the same threat range, using blunderbusses, which are better guns (POW12 is great on cheap warriors). It's hard to address this because they're rhulfolk, so aren't meant to be fast. Even if dwarves are natural sprinters...
One solution is enabling firing through engaged friendly models (i.e. Ossrum tactician). I've done this with Steelhead Riflemen via Stannis before and it's really quite useful for shooting models engaging your melee melee models to let them move and fight that round. But Steelhead Riflemen can do it via: Tactician (Stannis) + Aiming + Coin (Damiano) + Deadeye (Damiano) to be RAT9 + 3D6 firing into melee with POW13s. That hits quite reliably even with the target in melee bonus. Highshields don't have the hit bonuses to help with this.
(2) Hitting power - POW10 is low, especially if you're facing mainly jacks/beasts or more heavily armoured infantry. Yes there is CRA, and that's helpful. But in many situations CRA situations 3 Gunners will have more of an impact for about the same cost, but greater survivability and threat range. Against a Khador heavy, a single CRA from a max unit just edges out 3 Gunners on averageish rolls. Against an ARM18 heavy, the Guuners are better. And every point of damage to a Highshield reduces the effectiveness of their CRA, unlike the Gunners. Of course High Shields can have a once a game double shot, but then they're either in threat range of melee in shield wall (not enough) or double timed away but not in shield wall and very vulnerable to shooting. Gunners are more resilient than that, so can keep contributing.
Against warrior models a Blaster or two might be more effective too, but that's more situational and dependent on board state.
(3) Survivability. It's low. Their ARM isn't enough to reliably get enough of them where they need to be (even shield wall isn't great, although it helps against regular POW10/11 shooting - but then you slow them down more, affecting the threat range). If their hitting power were higher that might be OK, as they would be a kind of glass cannon shooting unit. But it isn't. So you end up with too few of them in place, not contributing enough.
This isn't a peculiar problem to the Highshields. It's shared by most single wound warriors, where it is addressed by being cheap (High Shields aren't) or having helpful special abilities (Trenchers, for example).
If you want an example of another unit which has almost exactly the same problems as High Shields, look at Assault Kommandos from Khador. They are kind of in the same boat. Expensive, use Shield Wall for survivability (which isn't enough), and don't do enough work when they get there. I suppose at least High Shields contribute to a theme bonus, unlike Assault Kommandos.
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Xintas
Junior Strategist
Posts: 824
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Post by Xintas on Apr 9, 2018 13:44:18 GMT
It seems like it's getting awful personal in here. Moarbarmu, your opinion appears to be in the severe minority. If you feel that they are not bad, that is certainly your prerogative, but I would be very interested to hear how you feel that they compare to other units.
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Post by Azuresun on Apr 9, 2018 22:19:35 GMT
If they are to be the Rhulic gunline, give them Carapace with a Girded Order (or vice versa) and increase their range. They may have to lose Practiced Manuevers with this, though. In return, they lose Double Time as an order, while giving them the Order to do double shots. This would mean Guns Blazing would have to be updated to be more interesting, though. Wow, zero to Carapace in one post! Normally, it takes at least three in a "how would you buff...." thread. Their guns should definitely have Armour Piercing as well. Like others have said, they need a role. That role seems to have been intended to be "defensive shooting unit"--a well-protected unit designed for defending a position with massed close-range fire against enemies who are coming to them--but they're just too easy to ignore or outshoot. To fill that role, they need a way to force enemies to pay attention to them, with either more dangerous shooting (Burst Fire?), or a control ability like Covering Fire. They also need a way to get to a place where they can't just be ignored, and reconciling that with Steamroller's mad rush to the zones is hard.
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Post by Charistoph on Apr 9, 2018 22:34:07 GMT
If they are to be the Rhulic gunline, give them Carapace with a Girded Order (or vice versa) and increase their range. They may have to lose Practiced Manuevers with this, though. In return, they lose Double Time as an order, while giving them the Order to do double shots. This would mean Guns Blazing would have to be updated to be more interesting, though. Wow, zero to Carapace in one post! Normally, it takes at least three in a "how would you buff...." thread. Their guns should definitely have Armour Piercing as well. Like others have said, they need a role. That role seems to have been intended to be "defensive shooting unit"--a well-protected unit designed for defending a position with massed close-range fire against enemies who are coming to them--but they're just too easy to ignore or outshoot. To fill that role, they need a way to force enemies to pay attention to them, with either more dangerous shooting (Burst Fire?), or a control ability like Covering Fire. They also need a way to get to a place where they can't just be ignored, and reconciling that with Steamroller's mad rush to the zones is hard. I forgot to mention Shield Wall would be lost in that situation. Carapace is largely inferior to Shield Wall due to its targeted affect, while Shield Wall only cares about positioning (and chained weapons). Carapace would actually make sense for a ranged unit, but then the Carapace-granting shields would be useless in melee.
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Xintas
Junior Strategist
Posts: 824
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Post by Xintas on Apr 10, 2018 13:12:34 GMT
If they are to be the Rhulic gunline, give them Carapace with a Girded Order (or vice versa) and increase their range. They may have to lose Practiced Manuevers with this, though. In return, they lose Double Time as an order, while giving them the Order to do double shots. This would mean Guns Blazing would have to be updated to be more interesting, though. Wow, zero to Carapace in one post! Normally, it takes at least three in a "how would you buff...." thread. Their guns should definitely have Armour Piercing as well. Like others have said, they need a role. That role seems to have been intended to be "defensive shooting unit"--a well-protected unit designed for defending a position with massed close-range fire against enemies who are coming to them--but they're just too easy to ignore or outshoot. To fill that role, they need a way to force enemies to pay attention to them, with either more dangerous shooting (Burst Fire?), or a control ability like Covering Fire. They also need a way to get to a place where they can't just be ignored, and reconciling that with Steamroller's mad rush to the zones is hard. Just out of curiosity, would giving one of the Rhulic casters a version of Gastonne's "everyone's a shield guard" spell make them usable in your mind? That would allow them to be un-ignorable.
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