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Post by sand20go on Aug 27, 2018 18:22:13 GMT
So in the recent discussion about Slayer spam (and a small but related discussion about Hellmouths in PT) it was voiced that Cryx "needs" carapace (or Legion "needs" Hellmouths) to survive the approach on gun lines.
There is a lot to this. But it is also reasonable to conclude that ONCE those builds GET to the gunline they often (usually?) will stomp face. It is sorta illogical to 100% argue that they should get to those lines unharmed.
(similar, NPE in 2016-17 was often targeted straight at Haley2 gunlines because MELEE armies didn't have a fun time getting shot off the board by control casters).
So where the balance?. How MUCH of a melee army should get to the gunline and how do we evaluate the right BALLPARK amount (understanding that through smart positioning/tarpitting the gunline could do more - or the melee army use terrain and abilities advantagously to also get through better).
(But clearly it can't be ALL of the Melee army because see "smash face" when the slayers hit)
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Post by gargs454 on Aug 27, 2018 18:58:12 GMT
Good question. In theory you want it set up so that all other things being equal a gunline vs. melee centric army should be a roughly 50/50 proposition. Gauging how many melee dudes need to get through though is tough since I think the answer, even among gunlines, is going to vary depending on the rest of the list composition.
Then you also want to factor in that the mixed lists (i.e. mix of melee and gunline) should also, in theory, be able to win 50/50.
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Post by ForEver_Blight on Aug 27, 2018 19:18:18 GMT
I'm not sure where Hellmouths are "needed" against gunlines. Boostable guns and sniper/deadlyshot are the safest ways to remove a hellmouth. Hellmouths are needed in Legion for scenario stability and board control. There is 1 "Control" caster in Legion. (She is probably the least played and hardest to leverage in the faction, but i digress) Everything else is Aggro. We don't have ways to stop other melee armies doing the job better than us. It doesn't fix any issue into gun lines, it gives us an option to make trades with melee. It mostly still gives board presence to a ranged list as Legion is still a very shooty faction.
As for carapace... Maybe? If cryx didn't get a waterfall of tech all in short amount of time I don't think it would be a problem. Carapace is also just the wrong rule to give. Carapace affects free strikes and if the intent is to solve getting shot, why then do they get to walk away from things and have higher armor doing so? There is only one list that is really making it bonkers and so in a normal game i don't think it's a problem. Melee bricks are teched to the gills to deal with armor. Even with Unyielding from gaspy 3 they won't survive. So, I myself see black industries as "good intentions, bad execution".
[edit] To more directly answer the question. Ranged lists will (almost) always get up on attrition vs Melee. But fail on scenario. It's why we have scenario. It's not Melee Vs Range. It's Melee Vs Scenario Vs Range. That's the balancing factor. The problem at the start of MK3 is that scenario elements were to methodical. The gun line knew how long they had to sit back and shoot. They could trivially contest so prolong the other list's demise. SR2017 and 18 are much faster. So I don't think Melee bricks, Carpace, or CID killed the win rate of pure gunlines. Scenario did, and that's how I personally think it should be. So we don't need a overwhelming amount of anti-shooting tech. We don't need a game full of more hard counters. We need more models that are better at dealing with scenario. for instance Hellmouths.
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bundeez
Junior Strategist
Posts: 325
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Post by bundeez on Aug 27, 2018 19:23:26 GMT
Interesting subject for debate. But may I ask which gunlines you are referring to?
Besides the occational Cygnar player who drops his gunline list I pretty much never see shooting in my local meta or regional tourney.
Imo Melee wins hands down.
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unded
Junior Strategist
Posts: 760
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Post by unded on Aug 27, 2018 20:02:39 GMT
Early MKIII we saw gunlines dominate hard.
A couple things have happened since to put gunlines on the back foot:
1) SR introduced terrain guidelines that gave a lot of counterplay against shooting (seems like this was how the dev team played all along) 2) Very live scenarios made hanging back a very poor idea 3) Grymkin came out, with loads of anti-shooting tech 4) BI came out, again with loads of anti-shooting tech 5) most factions received a moderate amount of anti-shooting tech (Menoth passage plus all the shield guards; Khador got sac pawn in WG theme; trollbloods got steady+tough and warders, all of hordes got Valkyries etc etc)
I'm pretty OK with this state of affairs. I don't think shooting should be meaningless, but pure gunlines are completely non-interactive for the victim, making for really awful games that might as well be played on an excel spreadsheet rather than actually using models and a table, so I don't mourn their loss at all.
-und_Ed
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Post by 36cygnar24guy36 on Aug 27, 2018 20:08:21 GMT
I think SR17 and now SR18 has done a fair amount to counter gunlines, I don't know if there is much more need for explicit anti-gunline tech baked into theme force benefits
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unded
Junior Strategist
Posts: 760
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Post by unded on Aug 27, 2018 20:35:54 GMT
I think SR17 and now SR18 has done a fair amount to counter gunlines, I don't know if there is much more need for explicit anti-gunline tech baked into theme force benefits Possibly true. I don't think that was actually the intent for BI though. Before BI, you simply couldn't play Cryx warjacks, and that's the big thing BI did - it unlocked a massive section of Cryx's models that couldn't viably see the table before it. The side-effect of it being a great anti-gunline drop is, however, unavoidable (and very predictable).
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marke
Junior Strategist
Posts: 187
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Post by marke on Aug 27, 2018 22:28:29 GMT
In my opinion the whole shooting thing in wargames can be generalized and lumped together with things like Sprint (to a certain extent and by concept, not how sprint currently actually works). Shooting allows for big gains with 0 risk, as does some absurd yoyoing (which I think is not currently possible maybe outside Kaya1, if even there?) -> hit the target, run to safety without the chance of retaliation. This is problematic design, because EVERY player will do that, and choosing targets is often not hard at all. Everyone will take free gain with no risk, so these kind of situations are not very interesting game-wise. Currently PP combats this (in addition to things mentioned) by having bad(ish) guns (and those said themes, for example), meaning guns rarely take out the opposing force before it can reach you. The solutions are not elegant. To improve the situation (if one wants to do that)? There are number of things, used in wargames already; Make shooting more interactive, alternate activations, increase the amount of terrain, make shooting somehow more risky (allowing some increase for the power) - not maybe usable in warmachine, but due to my lack of imagination; malfunction - or remove most of the shooting from the game and keep it a special case. Personally I don't think shooting in WM/H is problematic if we consider meta and counters etc. But it is boring and obvious af.
(Also, BI didn't unlock a massive selection of Cryx models. It unlocked Slayers and the Deathjack.. perhaps Seethers if we're stretching. Sure you can play things like an Inflictor now, and it is pretty sweet, but the power level just isn't there. It is still a defensive piece, and optional at best.)
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unded
Junior Strategist
Posts: 760
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Post by unded on Aug 27, 2018 23:04:04 GMT
(Also, BI didn't unlock a massive selection of Cryx models. It unlocked Slayers and the Deathjack.. perhaps Seethers if we're stretching. Sure you can play things like an Inflictor now, and it is pretty sweet, but the power level just isn't there. It is still a defensive piece, and optional at best.)
Fair enough, I overstated it a bit. It unlocked DJ, Seether, Slayer, and Nightmare (I like the inflictor, but honestly I could play him before BI). The big thing is that list of warjacks covers all of Cryx's beatstick options, which opens up a whole new playstyle for Cryx. It also gives a lot more play to the reaper and Malice, but they're still not very popular even now.
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Post by Gamingdevil on Aug 28, 2018 7:06:24 GMT
It unlocked DJ, Seether, Slayer, and Nightmare (I like the inflictor, but honestly I could play him before BI). The big thing is that list of warjacks covers all of Cryx's beatstick options, which opens up a whole new playstyle for Cryx. It also gives a lot more play to the reaper and Malice, but they're still not very popular even now. I don't think it unlocked Nightmare, seeing as he basically already has Stealth and Ghostly, negating the need for Carapace. Nightmare is still really expensive. Though I would argue that it did unlock all the bipedal warjacks (except indeed the Inflictor, its role didn't really change), in a way that Infernal Machines never could (it was a poor excuse for a jack theme because they wanted to give us something while they worked on BI). ARM 17 is just really low and while DEF 13 is quite nice (doesn't go for Seethers), most things that are good at their jobs have MAT/RAT 6/7 and coupled with the low ARM can still take out some systems. Shooting off arms has always been a weakness of Cryx bi-pedal jacks, so Carapace was the logical path to take, though I agree it probably shouldn't affect free strikes. I would argue that it also helped crab jacks to make a viable gun line without getting shot too hard in return. Though this is of a lesser impact. I honestly think this was a great solution and it made Cryx jacks see table time. Look at the WTC lists and you will find that heavies are still only taken to fill out WJ points in anything but Black Industries and there is good reason for that: it's very hard to get mileage out of them without the ability to spam and/or keep them safeish on the approach (Goreshade 1 also helps here, but he's not very popular). The problem arguably lies with Asphyxious 3 in that he shores up the melee weakness as well, while making them all fast and gain Pathfinder. Lists with other casters like Venethrax or Denny 2 still really feel the ARM 17 and get crushed if they get out-alpha'd. Although, like someone else said, dedicated combined arms or infantry based melee lists can still easily take out Slayers, even with Carapace, and Slayers still struggle to take on real opposing heavy bricks. EDIT and actually on topic: I feel like at the moment ranged is still quite viable, though it's currently mostly in Cygnar and Winds of Death? Others can do it, but they are not very popular for a variety of reasons. Gunlines are still very strong into infantry spam lists and combined arms list can benefit from having a shooting units available, such as Idrians in a Magnus 2 list. They serve their role and usually get in a turn or 2, sometimes more, of good shooting before being overwhelmed, which I think is reasonable. Actual dedicated gunlines like Rasheth, Siege 1, Nemo 3 (though nerfed), etc. can still be devastating at range and can inflict so much damage that, after the lines close, they can often get by with their more limited melee capabilities. They also often have elements to help with this, such as tortoises in Winds and Striders/colossals in Cygnar. Have such great spot removal can also be very useful on scenario, while the scenario still forces you not to simply stand and shoot, creating more interaction for the opponent. There are indeed lists out there that prey on full gunlines (and even then, can still get overpowered in some cases), but that is the case for every "skew" in the game; there will be hard counters out there, so you should cover that with your other list. TL;DR: Gunlines still have a place in a competitive pairing, you just can't put all your eggs in that basket because it's too likely to be hard countered. And I think that's a good thing for the meta.
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Post by oncomingstorm on Aug 28, 2018 7:27:01 GMT
It unlocked DJ, Seether, Slayer, and Nightmare (I like the inflictor, but honestly I could play him before BI). The big thing is that list of warjacks covers all of Cryx's beatstick options, which opens up a whole new playstyle for Cryx. It also gives a lot more play to the reaper and Malice, but they're still not very popular even now. I don't think it unlocked Nightmare, seeing as he basically already has Stealth and Ghostly, negating the need for Carapace. Nightmare is still really expensive. Though I would argue that it did unlock all the bipedal warjacks (except indeed the Inflictor, its role didn't really change), in a way that Infernal Machines never could (it was a poor excuse for a jack theme because they wanted to give us something while they worked on BI). ARM 17 is just really low and while DEF 13 is quite nice (doesn't go for Seethers), most things that are good at their jobs have MAT/RAT 6/7 and coupled with the low ARM can still take out some systems. Shooting off arms has always been a weakness of Cryx bi-pedal jacks, so Carapace was the logical path to take, though I agree it probably shouldn't affect free strikes. I would argue that it also helped crab jacks to make a viable gun line without getting shot too hard in return. Though this is of a lesser impact. I honestly think this was a great solution and it made Cryx jacks see table time. Look at the WTC lists and you will find that heavies are still only taken to fill out WJ points in anything but Black Industries and there is good reason for that: it's very hard to get mileage out of them without the ability to spam and/or keep them safeish on the approach (Goreshade 1 also helps here, but he's not very popular). The problem arguably lies with Asphyxious 3 in that he shores up the melee weakness as well, while making them all fast and gain Pathfinder. Lists with other casters like Venethrax or Denny 2 still really feel the ARM 17 and get crushed if they get out-alpha'd. Although, like someone else said, dedicated combined arms or infantry based melee lists can still easily take out Slayers, even with Carapace, and Slayers still struggle to take on real opposing heavy bricks. The purpose of Def 13 is not to never be hit, it's to be hit less frequently, cancelling out the lower armor/boxes by having the opponent miss the occasional shot. Even at Rat 7, the opponent is missing Def 13 ~1/4 of the time. If we're talking high value shots, the opponent has to consider investing more resources into boosting the to hit roll, applying buffs/debuffs, etc. It also increases the value of concealment and cover (you know what mobility is really good for? Sticking your otherwise non-pathfinder jacks in a forest, or behind a wall). Now, you can argue that the game has seen a devaluation of the Defense stat over the course of Mk3, but that's a systemic issue across the entire game, not limited to Cryx. Or should we give warpwolves and Angelii carapace, too? They're far more expensive than Cryx jacks, and only slightly more resilient to shooting. Cryx jacks don't hold up incomparably to shooting to other heavies, point for point. They're only slightly harder to kill than Ironclads, for instance, while being 2 points less, and in exchange, they get a longer threat range (plus, y'know, access to Cryx buffs). If there is a problem with Cryx jacks getting crippled by shooting, a better answer would be to have the theme benefit allow for them to heal a point of damage during the maintenance phase, like Bones of Orboros does. It prevents the opponent from just crippling slayers then forgetting about them as non-threats, without locking out an entire list archetype (an archetype which has historically been quite strong into Cryx) from playing into Cryx.
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Post by Gamingdevil on Aug 28, 2018 7:48:24 GMT
The purpose of Def 13 is not to never be hit, it's to be hit less frequently, cancelling out the lower armor/boxes by having the opponent miss the occasional shot. Even at Rat 7, the opponent is missing Def 13 ~1/4 of the time. If we're talking high value shots, the opponent has to consider investing more resources into boosting the to hit roll, applying buffs/debuffs, etc. It also increases the value of concealment and cover (you know what mobility is really good for? Sticking your otherwise non-pathfinder jacks in a forest, or behind a wall). Now, you can argue that the game has seen a devaluation of the Defense stat over the course of Mk3, but that's a systemic issue across the entire game, not limited to Cryx. Or should we give warpwolves and Angelii carapace, too? They're far more expensive than Cryx jacks, and only slightly more resilient to shooting. Cryx jacks don't hold up incomparably to shooting to other heavies, point for point. They're only slightly harder to kill than Ironclads, for instance, while being 2 points less, and in exchange, they get a longer threat range (plus, y'know, access to Cryx buffs). If there is a problem with Cryx jacks getting crippled by shooting, a better answer would be to have the theme benefit allow for them to heal a point of damage during the maintenance phase, like Bones of Orboros does. It prevents the opponent from just crippling slayers then forgetting about them as non-threats, without locking out an entire list archetype (an archetype which has historically been quite strong into Cryx) from playing into Cryx. I agree with your first paragraph, in that DEF 13 makes it less likely to hit. My argument is that the lower ARM and relatively low amount of boxes then makes it more likely that those hits actually achieve something. Even with Carapace, high value shots still usually take out a system unless they roll 3 for column. I also agree that Pathfinder for the whole battle group exacerbates the problem by easily boosting defense while also taking away terrain as a weakness for the list. I would argue for swapping it out with Escort, though then I would also argue for boosting the Asphyxious stat line back to speed 6, like the other non-WSC iron liches, so he won't be hobbling behind. This change would be two(three) fold in adding a significant weakness (terrain) into the list, and as a result having a harder time boosting defense, while also lessening the extreme board presence (+2 movement vs SPD). Healing instead of Carapace actually sounds like an interesting idea too and would indeed have a similar result. I guess the Carapace rule just made more sense to the dev team rather than auto-repairing helljacks. I don't think Cryx has invented nano-bots yet, while the magically stitched together sticks and stones do seem like a logical choice for it. PS: I also wrote an edit in my previous post to actually be on topic.
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