|
|
Post by NIGHTBRINGER on Dec 5, 2019 18:15:08 GMT
Praise Hashut!... a new poll! The question is simple, from a competitive gaming perspective what is the best way to run Infernal Guard/Ironsworn? When answering, consider their effectiveness, role in the army, points cost, core/special allotment, etc. Vote and discuss!  |
|
|
|
Post by NIGHTBRINGER on Jun 28, 2020 4:54:43 GMT
Taking a closer look at the close combat potential of the various Infernal Guard builds. First round of combat, wounds only (no ranks, standards, champion, etc.)...   |
|
|
|
Post by strutsagget on Jun 28, 2020 15:25:46 GMT
First two images seems not to work for me.
What are you comparing the options against?
|
|
|
|
Post by NIGHTBRINGER on Jun 28, 2020 23:16:18 GMT
First two images seems not to work for me. What are you comparing the options against? The first two images were just my failed attempts to post the third image (I've grown too used to being able to post pictures directly to Lustria Online). I don't even see them on my PC, but they show up as little white boxes when look at this thread on my mobile. There should (hopefully) be one image with three small Excel charts on it, which explore... - Infernal Guard (hand weapon + shield) vs. Infernal Guard (Great Weapons)
- Infernal Guard (hand weapon + shield) vs. Infernal Guard (Fireglaives)
- Infernal Guard (Great Weapons) vs. Ironsworn
Just a little bit of Chaos Dwarf on Chaos Dwarf violence to get things started. I plan to compare them to a few other units to gain some sort of sense of how the upgrades match-up and if they are worth their points cost.
It was interesting to see the much maligned Ironsworn beat down their GW brethren (which makes sense, as they do cost more). I was a bit surprised to see that Fireglaives barely beat HW&S. Of course they are paying for their ranged capability, but I thought the +1S would outweigh the loss of armor + parry save by a greater margin.
|
|
|
|
Post by strutsagget on Jun 29, 2020 6:20:33 GMT
I think you sum up pretty much the fireglaives. You pay 4p for a “short” range weapon. That’s the main problem and why there not that competitive.
Think the ironsworn are great, just that they cost way too much.
Think we need to do comparisons against other armies and over multiple turns (ranks) with same points and see what’s worth it or not.
If we share a spreadsheet like google docs we can fill it out together.
|
|
|
|
Post by strutsagget on Jun 29, 2020 6:25:04 GMT
Also think you miss one point of Armour for the HaS vs fireglaives as only the HaS gets 3+ and fireglaives that’s two hand weapon gets 4+?
Edit:
Sorry you are right as it is -2 from S5 also.
|
|
|
|
Post by NIGHTBRINGER on Jun 30, 2020 6:06:05 GMT
Think we need to do comparisons against other armies Indeed. Here are Infernal Guard HW&S, GW and Ironsworn against Lizardmen Saurus Warriors and Temple Guard:  Note: the Saurus Warrior and Temple Guard attacks include the extra attacks generated from Predatory Fighter. The extra WS of the Ironsworn over the "regular" Infernal Guard is completely useless against Saurus Warriors but comes in very handy against the WS4 of the Temple Guard. That is one thing to consider when comparing Ironsworn to their core counterparts, their boosted WS is utterly useless when facing enemies with WS of 1, 3, 6, 7 or 8. The Temple Guard are very tough opponents and are only beaten by the significantly (+3pts) more expensive Ironsworn. Against Saurus Warriors, Great Weapons seem to be our best option. While this only accounts for the first round of combat, it is pretty easy to eyeball a sustained combat (assuming that break tests are passed). |
|
|
|
Post by NIGHTBRINGER on Jun 30, 2020 6:14:44 GMT
I think you sum up pretty much the fireglaives. You pay 4p for a “short” range weapon. That’s the main problem and why there not that competitive. The upgrade for Fireglaives is 5 points. So for every Fireglaive Infernal Guard you could have a HW&S Infernal Guard plus a Hobgoblin with a bow. |
|
|
|
Post by strutsagget on Jun 30, 2020 6:16:57 GMT
I think you sum up pretty much the fireglaives. You pay 4p for a “short” range weapon. That’s the main problem and why there not that competitive. The upgrade for Fireglaives is 5 points. So for every Fireglaive Infernal Guard you could have a HW&S Infernal Guard plus a Hobgoblin with a bow. Indeed so that I think most people do, add hobos instead. Reminds me i need to paint and buy more hobos for my army. Might lend some night gobos from my friend and test though. |
|
|
|
Post by NIGHTBRINGER on Jul 1, 2020 3:06:21 GMT
Indeed so that I think most people do, add hobos instead. Reminds me i need to paint and buy more hobos for my army. Might lend some night gobos from my friend and test though. It is an intriguing thought. In place of a unit of 30 fireglaive IG , you can field a unit of 30 HW&S IG and 30 Hobos with bows. The fireglaives pack a greater punch with S4 and armour piercing, but the Hobos bows have an extra 6" range and more importantly you have two units instead of one. That's twice the number of wounds for your opponent to get through, and it allows you to commit your IG to close combat and still have the Hobos shoot at other viable targets. |
|
|
|
Post by NIGHTBRINGER on Jul 1, 2020 3:25:46 GMT
For the next engagement of our Infernal Guard, we take on some of the apex predators of the infantry world... Chaos Warriors. I've decided to tackle three of the most common builds: - Mark of Nurgle with halberds
- Mark of Khorne with additional hand weapons
- Mark of Tzeentch with hand weapon and shield
  MoN + Halberd clears up all there of our Infernal Guard variants, although the Ironsworn at least make it close. Speaking of Ironsworn, I'm tremendously impressed with how evenly they stack up against MoT and MoK Chaos Warrior builds. When comparing core IG with HW&S to GW, they are pretty close... so much so, that I'd say you're better off with the HW&S for more bodies. Overall, no surprise that the Chaos Warriors come out on top, but the Ironsworn are proving to be pretty impressive. Shame that they aren't core. |
|
|
|
Post by grandmasterwang on Jul 1, 2020 7:45:24 GMT
Think we need to do comparisons against other armies Indeed. Here are Infernal Guard HW&S, GW and Ironsworn against Lizardmen Saurus Warriors and Temple Guard: Note: the Saurus Warrior and Temple Guard attacks include the extra attacks generated from Predatory Fighter. The extra WS of the Ironsworn over the "regular" Infernal Guard is completely useless against Saurus Warriors but comes in very handy against the WS4 of the Temple Guard. That is one thing to consider when comparing Ironsworn to their core counterparts, their boosted WS is utterly useless when facing enemies with WS of 1, 3, 6, 7 or 8. The Temple Guard are very tough opponents and are only beaten by the significantly (+3pts) more expensive Ironsworn. Against Saurus Warriors, Great Weapons seem to be our best option. While this only accounts for the first round of combat, it is pretty easy to eyeball a sustained combat (assuming that break tests are passed). I will have to pore over this in more detail when I have some time but it's fascinating that the Hashut warriors vs Saurus warriors come out at an absolute push in terms of wounds done. |
|
|
|
Post by strutsagget on Jul 1, 2020 13:47:09 GMT
[mention]nightbringer [/mention] I just want to say I love this thread |
|
|
|
Post by NIGHTBRINGER on Jul 3, 2020 3:48:31 GMT
[mention]nightbringer [/mention] I just want to say I love this thread I am glad you are enjoying it!! The show goes on with our next set of infantry opposition (eventually I plan for us to move onto units other than infantry). This time we take a look at two Vampire Count units: - Skeleton Warriors with Hand Weapon and Shield
- Grave Guard with Great Weapons and the Banner of Barrows (which grants the unit +1 to hit in CC)
In each case, I am assuming that the Chaos Dwarfs have passed their fear checks, but always consider that eventually we'll fail one and drop to WS1.
A point on the presentation of the Grave Guard data. You'll notice that I have two separate lines/rows for them, one for conventional attacks (labeled Grave Guard) and one for killing blow (labeled Grave Guard Killing Blow). In each case you'll see 12 attacks (6 for base-to-base and 6 supporting). While it may look like I am doubling their attacks, under the wounds column the math is taken care of. In this case, the GG have S6, so they are wounding on 2's. What you'll notice is that under their regular (non-killing blow) attacks they are wounding 67% of the time representing rolls of 2, 3, 4 and 5's but not 6's. The 6's to wound are taken care of in the Killing blow row where they are wounding 17% of the time, which represents the 6's they roll and activates killing blow. So in the end they only have 12 attacks, but I've split it into two lines. The reason for splitting up the data this way is two-fold. Firstly it helps show where the majority of the damage is coming from and second, I'm lazy to write out longer and more complicated single line formulas  . Hopefully that makes sense, if it doesn't let me know and I'll try to clarify... and if I've made a mistake somewhere, let me know and I'll correct it. Without further ado:  So with the Skeleton Warriors we obviously come out on top with all of our Infernal Guard variants. Also remember that in addition to the wounds caused, the unit will also crumble by the combat resolution differential. So the Ironsworn will be removing about 10-11 Skeleton Warriors per turn. I think it is evident that our elite single attack infantry will take a really long time to get the job done (and that is not even considering the VC player healing the unit). Single attack models are not particularly great at quickly wiping out large numbers of cheap troops. Something like Saurus Warriors with their 2 base attacks + predatory fighter are much better suited to the task. Witch Elves would do even better (3 attacks, re-rolling to hit, poison, etc.). The Grave Guard unit is a bit more interesting, but one that ends up slightly disadvantageously for our troops. Infernal Guard with HW&S straight up lose combat, which means break tests for us. When sporting GW's they come out precisely evenly, however the Grave Guard are slightly cheaper (even when factoring in the 50pts banner) and consequently they outnumber us 26 to 24. Plus, in a dead heat, the fear tests will eventually be the deal breaker. Ironsworn win their combat, but only just barely and they have to make up a 5 man deficit, but do carry the advantage of not having ASL as the GG do. It will be a very close fight across multiple rounds (and while I am confident in assuming that we pass our fear check on ld9 in the single round scenario above, I am less confident across repeated rounds of combat). So all in all, it would be a very close one. |
|
|
|
Post by grandmasterwang on Jul 3, 2020 4:35:59 GMT
[mention]nightbringer [/mention] I just want to say I love this thread I am glad you are enjoying it!! The show goes on with our next set of infantry opposition (eventually I plan for us to move onto units other than infantry). This time we take a look at two Vampire Count units: - Skeleton Warriors with Hand Weapon and Shield
- Grave Guard with Great Weapons and the Banner of Barrows (which grants the unit +1 to hit in CC)
In each case, I am assuming that the Chaos Dwarfs have passed their fear checks, but always consider that eventually we'll fail one and drop to WS1.
A point on the presentation of the Grave Guard data. You'll notice that I have two separate lines/rows for them, one for conventional attacks (labeled Grave Guard) and one for killing blow (labeled Grave Guard Killing Blow). In each case you'll see 12 attacks (6 for base-to-base and 6 supporting). While it may look like I am doubling their attacks, under the wounds column the math is taken care of. In this case, the GG have S6, so they are wounding on 2's. What you'll notice is that under their regular (non-killing blow) attacks they are wounding 67% of the time representing rolls of 2, 3, 4 and 5's but not 6's. The 6's to wound are taken care of in the Killing blow row where they are wounding 17% of the time, which represents the 6's they roll and activates killing blow. So in the end they only have 12 attacks, but I've split it into two lines. The reason for splitting up the data this way is two-fold. Firstly it helps show where the majority of the damage is coming from and second, I'm lazy to write out longer and more complicated single line formulas . Hopefully that makes sense, if it doesn't let me know and I'll try to clarify... and if I've made a mistake somewhere, let me know and I'll correct it. Without further ado: So with the Skeleton Warriors we obviously come out on top with all of our Infernal Guard variants. Also remember that in addition to the wounds caused, the unit will also crumble by the combat resolution differential. So the Ironsworn will be removing about 10-11 Skeleton Warriors per turn. I think it is evident that our elite single attack infantry will take a really long time to get the job done (and that is not even considering the VC player healing the unit). Single attack models are not particularly great at quickly wiping out large numbers of cheap troops. Something like Saurus Warriors with their 2 base attacks + predatory fighter are much better suited to the task. Witch Elves would do even better (3 attacks, re-rolling to hit, poison, etc.). The Grave Guard unit is a bit more interesting, but one that ends up slightly disadvantageously for our troops. Infernal Guard with HW&S straight up lose combat, which means break tests for us. When sporting GW's they come out precisely evenly, however the Grave Guard are slightly cheaper (even when factoring in the 50pts banner) and consequently they outnumber us 26 to 24. Plus, in a dead heat, the fear tests will eventually be the deal breaker. Ironsworn win their combat, but only just barely and they have to make up a 5 man deficit, but do carry the advantage of not having ASL as the GG do. It will be a very close fight across multiple rounds (and while I am confident in assuming that we pass our fear check on ld9 in the single round scenario above, I am less confident across repeated rounds of combat). So all in all, it would be a very close one. Thanks for that. I do think it's noteworthy that Ironsworn take less than 1 casualty per round vs the skeleton horde. Can you possibly do a vs horde unit of spear Skeleton warriors as well. Grave guard are certainly a fearsome unit. Strength 6 vs Dwarfs t4 is always a bit of a sweet spot against them. |
|
. Hopefully that makes sense, if it doesn't let me know and I'll try to clarify... and if I've made a mistake somewhere, let me know and I'll correct it.