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Post by insyderznf on Apr 7, 2017 17:46:58 GMT
Playing pirates lately im trying to come up with a way thier theme could help them a bit. Lets have fun and wildly speculate
1) Commodore cannon is way to slow.
Give it AD
2) Sea Dogs - they are simply not quite worth the cost in my opinion. Im not sure how to fix them. They die way too easy to just about everything. They dont hit hard unless they have hawk and are fighting other infantry (making them cost 17 points). They are inaccurate without rockbottom (21 points now). Both hawk and rockbottom also die easy. This also means if the pirate theme requires infantry you are going to be required to take them to get bonuses. Which means rockbottom will be poor very fast.
Give them native tough? Im not sure what else to do.
3) Press gangers. I fell they are in a decent spot with free ad and tough.
4) Both freebooters and buccaneers are in a good place. However they struggle against no knock down heavy armor, like colossals or soon to be battle engines.
5) Mariner, i can never find the points for it. Not sure how to fix it. I requires a loader and pirates dont live very long as it is.
6) Sea dog deck gun. Umm, what's the point of a rat 4, range 12 pow 13 gun fpr 3 points? McDougal can get them to an amazing mat 5! For another 4 points. It feels like someone at privateer press balanced everything against rockbottoms buff abilities as if rockbottom did an aura buff instead of a single targeted unit per coin buff. I have no idea how to fix these without them having brutal damage and being a mini version of the horgehold artillery. Or if they had straight knockdown on the model hit.
7) DSM - see rockbottom rant above.
8) Aiyana and Holt are still good.
9) Galleon is too expensive by 3 points imo.
So for a theme to help pirates we would need something like
For every 25 points of privateer models, this unit may add a privateer small based solo for free.
Commedore cannon gets advanced deploy
Lord rockbottom gets 10 coins (or his effect is an aura but a unit can only benefit from one effect at a time).
Dsm gain ambush
Caster can start with upkeeps in play.
Thoughts?
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Xintas
Junior Strategist
Posts: 824
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Post by Xintas on Apr 10, 2017 14:52:54 GMT
I think pirates aren't really the issue; I think the issue is that recursion and swarm are pretty hard to justify when your opponent is playing ARM skew most of the time. I think the cannon is fine as is, but the units and the whole pirate boat end up feeling very weak against most of what is played competitively. Put them up against a traditional MK2 list though and you wont see that issue.
TL:DR Pirate problems are mk3 infantry/solo problems; not unique to them
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Post by Korianneder on Apr 12, 2017 12:35:16 GMT
I think pirates aren't really the issue; I think the issue is that recursion and swarm are pretty hard to justify when your opponent is playing ARM skew most of the time. I think the cannon is fine as is, but the units and the whole pirate boat end up feeling very weak against most of what is played competitively. Put them up against a traditional MK2 list though and you wont see that issue. TL:DR Pirate problems are mk3 infantry/solo problems; not unique to them You have to basically double down on the recursion and swarm aspect. That's why the pirate theme in Cryx is getting played. It relies entirely on overwhelming the enemy with lots of models that could all return to play. With that said, I guarantee the commodore cannon won't get AD. That would let it fire into the enemy's deployment zone with Shae on first turn. Deploy 13 + 3 from Shea's feat + 3 from advance + rng 20 = 39 inches. That would be 1 inch into the enemy's deployment and with AD you'd get to pick your target. PP is trying to avoid being able to attack someone before they even get a turn that's why there have been some changes to various things like Sloan's feat. My guess is you get free solos for your infantry. So take units, get all the support solos they need for free. This also helps the cost of sea dogs. I'd also imagine the privateer warjacks get some bonus to encourage you to use them in the pirate theme. Probably something like getting accumulator (privateer warrior) to get them free focus. Finally I imagine sea dogs would get some extra rule as well since they're the focus of a pirate theme. My guess is they'd gain CRA as a base unit rule instead of just on the riflemen. This would give them some more power on the advance and give the riflemen a use by letting more models combine with their cra's.
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Xintas
Junior Strategist
Posts: 824
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Post by Xintas on Apr 12, 2017 13:22:46 GMT
That all makes sense and seems reasonably likely, except for the CRA thing. I mean, it's certainly possible, but I think Sea Dogs or even Press Gangers getting parry or AD would be more likely. If the theme is built around going all in, I can't see why ranged attacks would be the bonus, but I've certainly been wrong more often than not when it comes to predicting what the themes are going to look like.
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Post by insyderznf on Apr 13, 2017 19:11:14 GMT
Press gangers already have ad, i would like sea dogs to get tough, cra would make sense though as it is kind of silly to only have cra on weapon attachments making the best cra they can do is 3.
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Post by josephkerr on Apr 15, 2017 21:34:04 GMT
The best benefit the theme could have is reducing the number of points per unit necessary to get solos. If its as low as 15 then the full pirate boat is feasible.
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Post by carey on Apr 15, 2017 22:51:07 GMT
The best benefit the theme could have is reducing the number of points per unit necessary to get solos. If its as low as 15 then the full pirate boat is feasible. I agree. The only way to get pirates life back on the board is a discount on solos. That and ambush on a unit of PGs would basically be a cookie cutter PP theme list. Alternatively I suppose a discount on solos for "privateer" purchases might make jack spam lists more viable. The other suggestions (CRA etc) are fine if you want to give pirates all the things, but that's not how PP rolls. They'll get to do something stupidly well, probably dudespam and threat range, with specific weaknesses, probably limited pathfinder, low POW outside Galleon and low max ARM.
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Post by ComboSmiteNick on Apr 16, 2017 5:10:02 GMT
I think pirates aren't really the issue; I think the issue is that recursion and swarm are pretty hard to justify when your opponent is playing ARM skew most of the time. I think the cannon is fine as is, but the units and the whole pirate boat end up feeling very weak against most of what is played competitively. Put them up against a traditional MK2 list though and you wont see that issue. TL:DR Pirate problems are mk3 infantry/solo problems; not unique to them You have to basically double down on the recursion and swarm aspect. That's why the pirate theme in Cryx is getting played. It relies entirely on overwhelming the enemy with lots of models that could all return to play. With that said, I guarantee the commodore cannon won't get AD. That would let it fire into the enemy's deployment zone with Shae on first turn. Deploy 13 + 3 from Shea's feat + 3 from advance + rng 20 = 39 inches. That would be 1 inch into the enemy's deployment and with AD you'd get to pick your target. PP is trying to avoid being able to attack someone before they even get a turn that's why there have been some changes to various things like Sloan's feat. Commodore can't move and shoot so that's not an issue.
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Post by ComboSmiteNick on Apr 16, 2017 5:14:44 GMT
What I expect from a pirate theme:
-Free pirate solos for taking pirate units. -One unit of Press gangers gains Ambush. -Amphibious jacks get some benefit (Unyielding, Shield guard, Brutal Charge, etc)
I don't actually think these benefits are enough to make pirates competitive but they would be enough to convince people to buy and play the list anyway.
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Xintas
Junior Strategist
Posts: 824
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Post by Xintas on Apr 18, 2017 14:21:27 GMT
Press gangers already have ad, i would like sea dogs to get tough, cra would make sense though as it is kind of silly to only have cra on weapon attachments making the best cra they can do is 3. You are 100% right. In my head I wrote ambush. Thanks for the correction!
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Post by Korianneder on Apr 18, 2017 21:59:53 GMT
You have to basically double down on the recursion and swarm aspect. That's why the pirate theme in Cryx is getting played. It relies entirely on overwhelming the enemy with lots of models that could all return to play. With that said, I guarantee the commodore cannon won't get AD. That would let it fire into the enemy's deployment zone with Shae on first turn. Deploy 13 + 3 from Shea's feat + 3 from advance + rng 20 = 39 inches. That would be 1 inch into the enemy's deployment and with AD you'd get to pick your target. PP is trying to avoid being able to attack someone before they even get a turn that's why there have been some changes to various things like Sloan's feat. Commodore can't move and shoot so that's not an issue. That certainly does change my statement. For some reason I thought they had the same treatment as their light artillery cousins.
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Post by AdeptusB on Jun 6, 2017 21:18:07 GMT
Odds are the Pirate Theme Force will be included in a separate themed book (and not the Mercenary Command Book), right? So, that means that there will most likely be two of them. How do you think they will be broken down? My guess is that there will be a 'Privateer' Theme (i.e. pirates who work under the authorization of a government), and a 'Pirate' Theme (purely outlaw). So, what would distinguish those two? Maybe the Privateer one will allow a few Steelhead models (to represent 'regular' navy troops working in conjunction)...?
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Post by Azuresun on Jun 6, 2017 22:23:03 GMT
I think pirates aren't really the issue; I think the issue is that recursion and swarm are pretty hard to justify when your opponent is playing ARM skew most of the time. I think the cannon is fine as is, but the units and the whole pirate boat end up feeling very weak against most of what is played competitively. Put them up against a traditional MK2 list though and you wont see that issue. TL:DR Pirate problems are mk3 infantry/solo problems; not unique to them You have to basically double down on the recursion and swarm aspect. That's why the pirate theme in Cryx is getting played. It relies entirely on overwhelming the enemy with lots of models that could all return to play. The problem there is that Revenant recursion doesn't rely on your enemy having living infantry.
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shoe
Junior Strategist
Posts: 706
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Post by shoe on Jun 7, 2017 7:34:22 GMT
hopefully there are 2 pirate themes
1 with jacks for bart with aiyana and dougal and 1 with mans for shae
right now pirates do well only against living dudespam in theory, but in practice that means winterguard or kingmakers and those will shoot it right off the table lickety split because they have no blast immunity
and if they have arm spam and u gots pirate mans u are in a list chicken scenario at best
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Post by bobrek on Jun 7, 2017 21:49:11 GMT
I'd like the pirate theme to make River Raiders actually useful in mercs. Really Firetrucking cool looking models that are extremely situational bordering on useless.
Given how crap their MAT and RAT is would it be OP to give them a crit effect DOT or something in theme?
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