Legion Role Redundancy

[CorporateSellout]

Put simply, I find that a significant portion of the Legion's abilities focus on the same goal: targeting troopers. Everything from the ranged units to the light warbeasts seem to lend themselves significantly better to wiping out units, but conversely we lack various complimentary tools to reliably take down high armor targets or multiwound targets. At the same time, many of out abilities only benefit from the guaranteed kill of a trooper: sprint, snap-fire, massacre, berserk, swift hunter, mutagenesis, blood drinker, recycle, cleave, overtake, eruption of ash, carnivore, & flesh eater.

The impact I see this having is that, to guarantee use of our special rules, many of our various forces are clamoring for the same targets: the units that are more of a sure kill, and the big threats go ignored or are not adequately dealt with because so many of our special rules favor, if not require, targeting the frail troopers.

Take for example the Strider Deathstalker whose rules snap-fire and swift hunter both trigger after a target is destroyed by a ranged attack. Given the choice of targets, a wise player will use the deathstalker to pick off troopers instead of going after warbeasts (even damaged ones). For the deathstalker, this isn't a significant issue, but if the entire Legion force is focusing on this same goal, they're missing a key element, and once they run out of troopers to go after, they become markedly less effective against the opponents that are left.

Is this redundancy of preference for trooper targeting alone a problem for the Legion?

[RuneGrey]

This goes more into the whole 'Warmachine vs. Hordes' argument - remember that all 'living model' rules allow us to use them against beasts as well as troopers. Unfortunately, when it comes to warjacks, those abilities are not anywhere near as useful. Take poison on the Raptors - excellent for hunting light warbeasts and troops, as well as putting the hurt on heavy warbeasts. Against Warmachine, they're only useful for hunting troops and solos, and occasionally harassing low armor light jacks.

On the other hand, most of the abilities you mentioned can trigger of killing jacks - they're just placed on models that aren't used for jack hunting. There's nothing to keep sprint or berserk from triggering on killing a heavy - it's just that you get more mileage out of killing troopers with them, since you're more likely to see them go off.

I do agree that Legion does need a boost in dealing with jacks outside of our few, fairly expensive heavy beasts. However, I think our tools aren't the big reason for this - I think its more that we lack any sort of higher power weapon master infantry that can reliably lay a lot of hurt down on the charge. The difference between our Swordsmen and things like Iron Fang Pikemen or Bane Thralls is pretty dramatic, and that really leaves only Lylyth1 as an option for allowing troops to deal with heavy armor.

[OrsusSmash]

I think this is partially a matter of perception, but its also an issue of function.

Put simply: I find that (especially in Mk. II) Legion runs best when run beast heavy. The biggest danger with running a lot of warbeasts is not having the volume of attacks necessary to deal with infantry swarms. Thankfully, two of our heavy's have spray attacks, so they can help thin the heard, but realistically our heavy warbeasts other than Typhon are better suited to going after beefier targets than infantry.

So, that means that anything else we take should be able to cut down infantry at least moderately effectively to give us a fighting chance (I don't know about you, but I'm outnumbered more fights than not.)

Also, not to derail the discussion or attack your post, but I disagree with the idea that our forces are skewed towards trooper removal. If anything, I think Legion has wonderfully balanced troops, capable of at least threatening a large variety of targets. A quick list:

- Legionaires: CMA for hard targets (helped by new LOS and melee rules);Vengeance for infantry.
- Swordsmen: Weaponmaster for hard targets;good MAT and Cleave (w/UA) for infantry.
- Archers: CRA for hard targets; Surpressing Fire, Combined Arms, and Dual Shot for infantry.
- Warmongers: Good P+S for hard targets; Good MAT, Reach, and Berserk for infantry.

Some of the above abilities are reliant on UAs, but thats the case for a lot of units (a good UA adds flexibility.) WG UA anyone? ;)

I'm not saying that we don't have a preponderance of abilities based off of trooper elimination. We do. But I think thats critical for allowing Legion to do what it does best: strike effectively where it wants, how it wants. Our infantry is flexible and dangerous to most things, and our warbeasts are very dangerous to single targets. The high-level synergy between the two is actually very elegant, and one of the main reasons I love playing Legion. :D

[possiblyarowbot]

Archers + UA + Sorceress = Dead Jack

[CorporateSellout]

Realistically our heavy warbeasts other than Typhon are better suited to going after beefier targets than infantry.
Clearly, you're speaking only of the carnivean and angelius. True the carnivean has the potency to take down heavies, and the angelius can do some serious damage with his one shoot, but every Legion warbeast (including these two) can easily focus on making more attacks.

*The Seraph and typhon are obvious with their potent ranged attacks
*Even the angelius and Carnivean use their sprays for troop clearing (not to mention that the Carni sprays while he's attacking after the big targets)
*The Soldier's animus is only reliably worth its cost when you know you're going to kill the target in one charge (troopers and solos and possibly damaged lights)
*low damage on the protector, raek, and teraph limit them to troops (not to mention the AOE on the teraph and dual attacks on the raek)
*cheap lessers can spread to engage various small (trooper) enemies and can buy an extra attack (or two) with ease. (Not to mention that sprint demands that the harrier focus on the guaranteed kill, again troopers)
*effects like sniper, blight storm, and suppressive fire focus on killing troopers

The list continues... I struggle not to just say that everything in the Legion has an answer to troops. I can safely say that a Legion player would have to try pretty hard to not have at least two or three tools to reliably counter troop swarms.


Archers + UA + Sorceress = Dead Jack
BTW, 22 pts of damage doesn't make a dead jack...

[Garth]

Have you ever killed a warjack with archers + sorceress ? Or is this just theory.

It doesn't work.

Oh and one funny thing:

Warjack with arm 18, CRA with 11 archers 2 times: 20 damage
Warjack with arm 18, sorceress helping: 22 damage.

Against arm 20:

Without Sorceress: 16 damage
with sorceress 22 damage.


Is this worth 4 points ? And what you need for that combo: a warjack must be in 12" to your unharmed archers and the soreceress must be in range.

This never happens and even if it would it...well for the 4 points you can take something better than the soreceress.

[possiblyarowbot]

My bad, it would take one more attack from one of the many things that only get their benefits when they kill something. So, let's throw in, say, a raek.

So, for 16 points you can get a fairly reliable jack wrecking crew. Take out one part of the triangle, the other 2 are still useful. You cant make the same statement if you took a carnivean and 5 pts worth of other stuff, say 2 shredders and a shepherd.


So, scenario 1:

Raek is taken out, you still do 22 damage
Scorceress is gone, you still get two CRAs at 21 + 2d6 and a frickin raek
Archers are taken out, nobody cares

Scenario 2:
Carnivean is taken out, f#%, well we still have four POW 10 +3d6...
Shredders are squashed, maybe the shepherd can keep carny alive

Looking at just dice averages, the archers do the same damage to an arm 18 jack as the 2 shredders. The shredders may be cheaper, but it's harder to keep them alive longer.

Whatever

[chrsjxn]

My bad, it would take one more attack from one of the many things that only get their benefits when they kill something. So, let's throw in, say, a raek.

So, for 16 points you can get a fairly reliable jack wrecking crew. Take out one part of the triangle, the other 2 are still useful. You cant make the same statement if you took a carnivean and 5 pts worth of other stuff, say 2 shredders and a shepherd.


So, scenario 1:

Raek is taken out, you still do 22 damage
Scorceress is gone, you still get two CRAs at 21 + 2d6 and a frickin raek
Archers are taken out, nobody cares

Scenario 2:
Carnivean is taken out, f#%, well we still have four POW 10 +3d6...
Shredders are squashed, maybe the shepherd can keep carny alive

Looking at just dice averages, the archers do the same damage to an arm 18 jack as the 2 shredders. The shredders may be cheaper, but it's harder to keep them alive longer.

Whatever

I'm a huge Raek fan currently, but I think this idea is a little bit optimistic about the Raek's damage potential. P+S 12 just doesn't push out a lot of damage over even moderately high ARM values.

[alchahest]

so to kill a six or seven point jack, we need 4 points of Raek, 8 points of archers, 2 points of archer UA, and 4 points of sorceress?.

ooor


11 points of carnivean, 4 points of shredders, 1 point of shepherd?

your point is very valid. by having way more points we ARE capable of taking things down. so would be anyone.

[leojond]

So you guys are assuming that none of your 22 archer shots are going to exceed armor? lol.

[possiblyarowbot]

So you guys are assuming that none of your 22 archer shots are going to exceed armor? lol.


Thats pretty much assumed. I like to think of of it as a balancing factor.


Also, the raek has TWO base attacks and can boost. or use reach + shadow stalk. I could have said the soldier, but I didnt want to bring 3 shredders into this.

[possiblyarowbot]

Basically, this whole thread is on par with at least 2 other threads decrying the lack of a cheap high armor high damage output model like every other faction has.

[Defenstrator]

So you guys are assuming that none of your 22 archer shots are going to exceed armor? lol.
This is one of those conversations that shows who has been playing with these things and who has not. You are already making an assumption, that all 22 shots hit. Archers are RAT 5, so you are going to miss even a Khador heavy standing in the open on a roll of 4 or less. Then you are assuming that all the archers are in range, which often they are not. A full unit of 11 guys tends to be spread out a bit, to avoid AOEs at the very least, so there will normally be a few that have to be moved into range. And then there's the fact that none of the Legion units can pick coloums, only the Deathstalker can. Without this ability damage is spread all of the grid, making it hard to actually cripple a system or aspect. You do damage, but don't lower the targets damage potential, which he will then release on you in retaliation. And of course your squishy Sorceress had to get close in order to do this, leaving her open to get killed. You would be better off using the Sorceress to hose troops with her spray and just CRA the jack. You kill more stuff and are more likely to take out whole coloums/branches.

Probably the biggest issue is that Legion lacks for offensive POW buffs for units. There's Dracconic Blessing and that's about it. Parasite is a great debuff, effectively making Swordsmen P+S 13 and Warmongers 17, but after that most of our damage multipliers are beast only, which is why we rely on them to do the job.

[CorporateSellout]

It's not about inability to take down armor...
My OP was questioning the validity of the claim that too many of the Legion's special rules rely on the redundant role of targeting troopers to come into play.

Basically, I see many Legion options wanting to do the same thing: pick off weak troopers and solos. Once those are gone, or if your opponent doesn't take any of them; the usefulness of much of the Legion's tools drops significantly. When there aren't troopers or weak solos to hunt, you lose the reliable use of those rules that are prevalent in the Legion's arsenal.

[alchahest]

yeah. I think we need a little more cannon mixed in with the glass. not on everything, mind. despite being expensive, all four of our heavies are actually pretty darn adequare at making things hurt. but they're very specialised. we simply need a cheap, semi-tough heavy with 1-2 initial attacks that can get in and tangle with (not necesarrily always beat) other cheap heavies. like a heavy version of the nephsoldier.

[RuneGrey]

This is one of those conversations that shows who has been playing with these things and who has not. You are already making an assumption, that all 22 shots hit. Archers are RAT 5, so you are going to miss even a Khador heavy standing in the open on a roll of 4 or less. Then you are assuming that all the archers are in range, which often they are not. A full unit of 11 guys tends to be spread out a bit, to avoid AOEs at the very least, so there will normally be a few that have to be moved into range. And then there's the fact that none of the Legion units can pick coloums, only the Deathstalker can. Without this ability damage is spread all of the grid, making it hard to actually cripple a system or aspect. You do damage, but don't lower the targets damage potential, which he will then release on you in retaliation. And of course your squishy Sorceress had to get close in order to do this, leaving her open to get killed. You would be better off using the Sorceress to hose troops with her spray and just CRA the jack. You kill more stuff and are more likely to take out whole coloums/branches.

Probably the biggest issue is that Legion lacks for offensive POW buffs for units. There's Dracconic Blessing and that's about it. Parasite is a great debuff, effectively making Swordsmen P+S 13 and Warmongers 17, but after that most of our damage multipliers are beast only, which is why we rely on them to do the job.

Actually hold on a second here. Now against Khador jacks the assumption that you're not going to penetrate armor is a pretty valid one, but Khador isn't the only people who field jacks. Remember, with this size unit there's 2 ways of determining averages - flat average (assuming all members roll a 7 on 2d6) means they'll all do 1 point of damage. But distributed average assumes that all members roll all possible combinations, which is possible with an 11 man unit. Against ARM 17 (Cryx Helljacks) you'll see an Archer barrage doing 7 damage for the first 7 shots, and then 12 from the distribution of the next 4 shots. 19 damage from the first barrage, totaling 38 damage total from both volleys. The curve slides down from there, unfortunately - 8 damage from the first 8 shots, then 9 from the 3 that do penetrate armor, for a total of 34 damage. But we're still talking about an average of 34 points of damage to a jack from one barrage using a Nyss Sorceress against ARM 18, which seems to be the overall average for jack toughness. Plus, the fact that they don't get their 2 shots unless they aim, and their more humble RAT 5 is a more respectable RAT 7.

If you throw two huge CRAs, we're back to more straight up averages - a POW 21+2d6 attack will on average yield 28 damage before armor, and 10 damage after armor against ARM 18. So 20 total.

You can make an excellent argument that setting this situation up is unlikely, and I'll agree there - it's probably going to involve you using someone as bait, then filling whatever attacked your beast / strong solo / etc full of arrows. So at this point, you're better off firing individually with a sorceress supporting - the damage potential will be higher in theory, disregarding missing.

The real question as far as using archers to eliminate jacks and beasts is where the best damage potential is - you can also get 11 two man CRAs off with dual shot, and under the previous model, 6 will do 1 damage on average (POW 12 due to CRA). The remainder should do 19 damage on average. That's still 25 damage, higher than the 20 you'd be getting from two huge CRAs - however, the massive CRAs will have the advantage of insane reliability and being able to hit anything in the game... if you can draw that many shots.

[CorporateSellout]

Isn't there another thread discussing the damage that you can do to high armor jacks somewhere?

Anyway, I agree that the fragility is sometimes frustrating and we could use something that will last (even the Carni is often dying to the first counterattack after it jumps a heavy). However, I don't have a problem with being the fragile army... it does add some character, but what's disturbing is the similar tactics so much of the faction is required (or at least encouraged) to use. With an army full of screwdrivers, you find that it's difficult to handle a nail the same way you do a screw, but as the saying goes, "When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." It's difficult to have a balanced army when everything gets treated like a screw because... it's what we do, and we have lots of options to do that same thing.

[Angelust]

I feel like most of our games come down to something like:

1) Trade your heavies for their heavies. You are almost always paying more for your heavy, so your army will look lighter after the trade-off
2) Use your awesome solos/light cav/raek/etc to go and wipe out their back-line support units. You will often be trading a 4-point Raek to kill a 2-3 points of support, sometimes to tie up beat-sticks in the rear so they have to turn around and deal with you, allowing alpha strike for something else.
3) With whatever is left over of your diminished forces, try for a caster kill.

Since we're a huge suck-fest at attrition, I find the most problems with true brick armies with multiple heavy jacks, or multiple high arm 8-hitpoint shield wallers, like shock troopers, Cetrati, lotsa light beasts/jacks, etc.

I think we just need to get used to the fact that we'll almost always be on the losing end of a jack/beast trade, and our force generally does best cutting off the head as soon as possible. If your opponent can ring his caster or block all possible assassination attempts, then I think we're generally pretty boned.

[Defenstrator]

While I am really liking the new Raek I prefer the Raptors for dealing with the backfield. They're normally fast enough that they can start shooting stuff up on turn 2, and are often a pain for your opponent to deal with.

[Lazlo]

While I am really liking the new Raek I prefer the Raptors for dealing with the backfield. They're normally fast enough that they can start shooting stuff up on turn 2, and are often a pain for your opponent to deal with.

Agreed 100%. If my opponent leaves a flank lightly protected I'll usually run them 18" + 5" and on round 2 they are ready for some back-field carnage.