changes to knocked down jacks

[Jestor]

are responsible for the script of Giggli

I think the ruling is bad but, come on man, it's not on a level of bad the same as Giggli. There are just some limits that are unreachable :P

Kaya - Why I think it is is big is because it forces me to deal with extremely high armor jacks on turns that are not my feat turn. In fact, it renders them immune to the effects of water on my feat turn. How many warcasters in the game have a feat that benefits 20% or more of thier opponents army?

McNs - You didn't see a lot of talk about using those 3" templates because it was a non-issue before 5 months ago. Pretty much anyone who runs Calaban to any effect uses him in tier. That means no waters. I have yet to play more then 3 games with the guy so I can't comment one way or another, just an observation. I also know that you play him in tier a lot

[McNs]

@ Jestor - I think the change reinforces the need for Thrullgs in Barnabas' army. A sound tactic is going to remain feating and then charging a warjack (especially one sans Reach) with a Thrullg to mitigate its ability to shake.

Not a terrible strategy, but it reinforces my firm belief success with Barnabas directly correlates with your ability to keep Thrullgs alive.

As for the 3" AOEs via Blindwater - c'mon... bar Turn 4-6 you're almost never going to use those to extinguish a warjack. Its non-issue.

Barnabas retains the option and it reinforces my view of him as an attrition warlock, not an assassination warlock.

[Jestor]

I agree you won't see the 3" AOE's. I was just pointing out why there was little discussion on them. Half the time I forget to put them on the table

Thrullg's are a lynch pin to most Blindwater lists. I won't play 35 without at least one to threaten.

[PG_LEJKaya]

Please. This is a discussion about an actual nerf that is real and how much it affects the caster along with ways to get around it.
Trying to paint it as any kind of Whine (On the whole it isn't) is not productive.

[Bogues]

Sorry.
Someone please explain to me then. I will lay out my general impressions of this thread.

It is also that this does not seem like such a big deal to me.
Was it extremely game breaking? Honest question here. I really want to know how effective this was because the only couple of times I've faced Barnabus I made sure there was no way in heck he could pull off the water throw/push on my Jacks.
Really what is the big deal? Its clarication of an extremely muddy topic. Yes, it is a nerf to Gatormen but they were the only ones that could pull these kinds of things off.
There is already the good point in this thread over the fact that most WM players will rarely have more then 1-2 or 3 tops Jacks.

[Jestor]

You should try actually reading the thread before responding if you actually want to know why it was a nerf in the eyes of the community. Here is the basics though -

No matter how hard you prepare for it, you can not prepare for swamps that I have not put down. Unfortunately, the swamps Barney makes can not be placed on models or terrain. Due to the order of activations, Barney must place swamps AND feat before any other models go. A tactic of Barneys is extinguishing jacks. It is merely a delay tactic against a good player but it helps negate the counter charge turn.

Now, jacks in Barneys control area are immune to the effects of extinguish. This ruling makes jacks BETTER against Barnabus during his feat turn.

Do you now understand why some of us dislike the ruling? Am I over the top in my crusade against this ruling? Absolutely! I'll admit that I am playing it well over the top. It's a game changing ruling that, I think, was not needed.

Is there anything still that you do not understand?

[Beckman]

I also agree that the change was not needed and generally stupid. It makes no sense that if I throw you in water, your furnace goes out, or if you're knocked down in water your furnace goes out... But if I throw you while you're knocked down, your furnace is suddenly waterproof.

Now people will be slamming their own jacks for extra movement in order to be knocked down so they are safe from swamp pits. It's absolutely inexcusable that this would be changed to be the optimal play.

[bouncymischa]

I just hope that the same people that are campaigning for the ruling to be changed will campaign equally hard for the same change to be made to Cassius' feat. Otherwise it's just a double standard!

[Space Donkey]

Problem is you can't throw jacks into water. Pushing can work, so can slams, but the key was throwing. You feat, pop a few ponds a bout and then throw the jacks in. Now you can't use your feat (or death roll) for this. So makes it a bit harder to have any reliability.

I think you've got something confused here. Without water that was already on the table there is absolutely no way to extinguish 'jacks effected by Barny's feat. Push/Pull-no because the jack becomes knocked down outside of the water by the feat; Slammed-no for the same reason as Push/Pull as well as knocked down models are immune to the movement portion of slams; Throws: same reason as Push/Pull.

I could see some some justification for part of this ruling. Push/Pull should work as ruled (despite how much I wanted to turn Mr. Cuddles into a 'jack death machine on Barny's feat turn) based on the wording of abilities and whatnot referenced by the infernals because there is no knockdown following the Push/Pull. However, a thrown model is knocked down at the end of the throw movement. I understand why they ruled that a model suffering from an effect (status or continuous) does not suffer it again if presented with a situation which would normally cause it because shaking 4 "knocked down's" and 2 "stationary's" after taking 6 "corrosion checks" would be even more counterintuitive than the current ruling. I think the better ruling would be that a model may only ever be under the effect of each effect once not a model may only be affected by each effect once. That would prevent the shenanigans being avoided originally while still allowing a throw to work as written.

[infamousd]

I think you've got something confused here. Without water that was already on the table there is absolutely no way to extinguish 'jacks effected by Barny's feat. Push/Pull-no because the jack becomes knocked down outside of the water by the feat; Slammed-no for the same reason as Push/Pull as well as knocked down models are immune to the movement portion of slams; Throws: same reason as Push/Pull.

I think your confused.

Originally the plan was Barnabus feats, knocks down jack A, creates a pond near Jack A. Throw target (Say a Swamp Gobber) walks into the pond. Warbeast A picks up Jack A (As Jack A Is knocked down, auto hit, not need to boost) and tosses him into the pond created by targeting Swamp Gobber. Jack A is knocked out of the game because it landed in the water. So total Focus necessary to spent for this is 2 for the pond, one to throw.

Now You have to walk Beast A up, roll to hit the jack (two focus there) and roll to throw it in the water. You can risk not boosting to hit the jack, but it increases the odds of missing, and if you miss once, there is no second chance, and you have to beat the jack down, which with pow 17, is a bit harder of a feat.

You can push jacks into water, or slam them into water, or throw them into water, but they have to be standing first, and this increases the odds of missing, which means you will want to boost. BB has only 6 fury. So if your spending all your actions with boosts, it means two war beasts get up to 4 real quick (without boosting to damage), leaving you with less space/more fury left out there, for things like using other war beasts and having war beasts casting animuses. I use two Bullsnappers, means I can't use them on a turn both my gators toss stuff without a REAL risk of losing turns because something frenzies (My Bullsnappers tend to Frenzy and attack barnie... a lot)

Realistically the rule should be "If a Jack is in a knockdown state and in water, shallow or deep, its furnace is extinguished. It can only be reactived when a warrior model spends an action to reactivate said model."

[Space Donkey]

I thought you were talking about during Barny's feat turn before and that portion of my post was exclusively about the feat.

I agree with you that now Fury does become an issue more than before before on the feat turn only. Although it may just mean that we have to change our tactics a little and have our Snappers slam enemy jacks into the puddles the turn before we feat. It will be the same total fury expenditure but a frenzying Snapper with the equivalent to a wall as his target is better IMO than risking one munching on Barny's face.

[Bogues]

I would like to point out that Pow17 is actually +1 above average, especially for open fist....
In regards to what you can do during the feat-You still have everyone knocked down so auto hit and scrap! Average armour out there is 18-20 for most factions. Only a few Khador Jacks are pushing higher then 21.
The whole sticking point seems to be that you are all upset that you have to spend fury now to actually throw a model into water instead of just wandering over and punting in with no effort. A concept that still, IMO, is only going to work on inexperienced players.

[drachenfels]

I would like to point out that Pow17 is actually +1 above average, especially for open fist....
In regards to what you can do during the feat-You still have everyone knocked down so auto hit and scrap! Average armour out there is 18-20 for most factions. Only a few Khador Jacks are pushing higher then 21.
The whole sticking point seems to be that you are all upset that you have to spend fury now to actually throw a model into water instead of just wandering over and punting in with no effort. A concept that still, IMO, is only going to work on inexperienced players.

except that the ps17 is not the open fist and is the highest strength in the entire "faction"
and try scrapping something like behemoth, spriggan, avatar, centurian with dice-4 against that many boxes with no way to increase that.
and its not about spending fury, befor even on feat turn you still had to force to perform any power attack (throws or push)

[ricefrisbeetreats]

The only thing this did was reduce my purchase of Swamp Horror from 2 to 1. As soon as I saw the stats, I thought of the knockdown feat, pull into the water tactic. This errata changed that and made the Swamp Horror less desirable.

How will this affect my games? Probably a lot in terms of the order of activation. I'll have to prioritize on feat turn to either remove those high defense jerks or make sure I can scrap the jack. More often than not, I used the feat as a defense mechanism to allow myself the first attack.

I've been on a Calaban kick anyways. Haven't seen Barnabas in awhile, maybe I'll flip back to him and see how this changes things.

[Bogues]

Anything is going to have issues vs. an ARM 20+ Heavy no matter what faction you are.
But the majority of Jacks are 18-19 ARM unless sporting a shield. Khador is the highest base at 20 which is still only dice -3.

[mortal]

This errata changed that and made the Swamp Horror less desirable.

Yeah, I'm having a hard time trying to fit the swamp horror into my list anyway, this makes it tougher IMO. I'm still getting one, just don't know how much it will see the field.

[infamousd]

However with no real way to boost damage on most of out stuff (Parasite?) is how we differ from other factions. This means we have to be creative, and one of our more creative ways, just got sucker punched.

[TheLoki]

Anything is going to have issues vs. an ARM 20+ Heavy no matter what faction you are.
But the majority of Jacks are 18-19 ARM unless sporting a shield. Khador is the highest base at 20 which is still only dice -3.

The bite is -3.

17+charge = 7
2x ps 14 = 2
17x3 = 12

Jack is very very much alive. In fact its so intact it can easily wreck our beast in return.

[GlassJaw]

My biggest problem with this ruling isn't the effect it has on Barnabas per se - that's more like a by-product.

My problem is the potential cascading effect it might have. As a game designer myself, it's no longer a "logical" rule. This isn't to say that a game system with magic and steam-powered robots is "logical" but the rule system should be.

Essentially, something that is already knocked down cannot be affected by an ability that is triggered by the process of it being knocked down. This ruling has now created 2 distinct triggers: the fact that a model is knocked down and the process of becoming knocked down.

With regards to water, a person who is knowledgeable of the rules system would assume that if a jack is in water and knocked down, regardless of how it got there or when it was knocked down, would be susceptible to the water's effects. Not so with the new ruling.

The problem is now moving forward (unless an errata is released), the designers will now have to specify when an effect is triggered whenever a model has the knocked down "state" or whether it gains the knocked down state at the end of the potential triggering action.

For clarity, there should only be one if/then statement: you are either knocked down or not.

[infamousd]

Well lets do the MATH;

Wrastler vs Arm 18 Jack. Say we Charge, buy three attacks, and hit with both fists; Charge (on Average) 10 + two fists 6 + three bites 18. So Best odds, no missing, hitting average 35 points of damage against a arm 18 jack.

Wrastler + Parasite means 57 points.


Mauler (base war beast for Trollblood) Charge 9 + 25 + 1. No Buffs we get the same 35 points. However, Now lets add some basic buffs. Lets say the caster casts the beasts animus on itself and has the stone with it. Charge 13 + Attacks 45 + 5. So by itself (with the caster using the animus) The mauler makes damage 63. Same point cost.

[Halfhoot]

The bite is -3.

17+charge = 7
2x ps 14 = 2
17x3 = 12

Jack is very very much alive. In fact its so intact it can easily wreck our beast in return.

Except that 21 damage to a jack has almost certainly taken out systems. If one of those is the cortex... then no it isn't going to do squat to the Wrastler. If it's a one weapon jack and the weapon was taken out... again the Wrastler is going to survive. 11 damage to the heaviest of jacks in the right spot can turn it into a paperweight. The Wrastler only needs 1 hp left to finish it off the next turn.

Throw in Spiny growth on the Wrastler and an already hurt jack will have a hard time risking hitting you much as it could kill its own cortex if you didn't get all the boxes. That 21 damage can quickly become 23~27 after initial attacks.

[Jestor]

Except that 21 damage to a jack has almost certainly taken out systems. If one of those is the cortex... then no it isn't going to do squat to the Wrastler. If it's a one weapon jack and the weapon was taken out... again the Wrastler is going to survive. 11 damage to the heaviest of jacks in the right spot can turn it into a paperweight. The Wrastler only needs 1 hp left to finish it off the next turn.

Throw in Spiny growth on the Wrastler and an already hurt jack will have a hard time risking hitting you much as it could kill its own cortex if you didn't get all the boxes. That 21 damage can quickly become 23~27 after initial attacks.

Excellent posts (the one I quoted and those above). It's my experience that, even on Barney's feat turn, the biggest thing I can wreck is a Dwarf jack. Even then I need some help from a Posse charge or an errant Spitter shot or something.

Anything in Cygnar is going to get AS pretty much all of the time if they are a frontline jack. Sure, there are builds where they don't but most do.

Cryx jacks that aren't Deathjack are a joke to kill when knocked down, we all know that. The counterpoint is that they don't need to run on the frontline until the last second because of the movement buffs and such they can hand out to the army.

Menoth may be average to kill but, if it lives and has support, can most certainly wreck a Wrastler with out needing a full allotment of focus. They can also repair for fairly cheap.

Khador are tough for us to crack. They also have cheap access to repairs and, at least in my meta, tend to bringit quite often.

Retribution are the easiest jacks for us to wreck. Standard boxes, low armor with no melee buffs to speak of.

Spiny Growth is amazing for a turn where you know there will be retaliation, no one will ever deny that. I think most players take a minimum of 1 Snapper in every list. In 3 out of 5 factions (6 if you include Mercs though they are similar to each other faction depending on build) we are definately threatened on the retaliation turn. Thrullgs and the Swamp Horror handing out reach to a Wrastler can certainly mitigate that.

It will be interesting to see the army build differences, if at all, that this rule combined with the release of the Horror bring.

[Cannotcope]

Well lets do the MATH;

Wrastler vs Arm 18 Jack. Say we Charge, buy three attacks, and hit with both fists; Charge (on Average) 10 + two fists 6 + three bites 18. So Best odds, no missing, hitting average 35 points of damage against a arm 18 jack.

Based on your previous posts, you're on the "Gators need the feat to deal with jacks" side of the argument, correct? You do realize that, disregarding the spoiled merc colossal stat card, nothing in the game, currently released, has more than 34 boxes of damage. Doing 35 on average would then seem to be more than enough.

[bouncymischa]

My biggest problem with this ruling isn't the effect it has on Barnabas per se - that's more like a by-product.

My problem is the potential cascading effect it might have. As a game designer myself, it's no longer a "logical" rule. This isn't to say that a game system with magic and steam-powered robots is "logical" but the rule system should be.

Essentially, something that is already knocked down cannot be affected by an ability that is triggered by the process of it being knocked down. This ruling has now created 2 distinct triggers: the fact that a model is knocked down and the process of becoming knocked down.

With regards to water, a person who is knowledgeable of the rules system would assume that if a jack is in water and knocked down, regardless of how it got there or when it was knocked down, would be susceptible to the water's effects. Not so with the new ruling.

The problem is now moving forward (unless an errata is released), the designers will now have to specify when an effect is triggered whenever a model has the knocked down "state" or whether it gains the knocked down state at the end of the potential triggering action.

For clarity, there should only be one if/then statement: you are either knocked down or not.

To me, that kind of clarity would probably be worse for game design. I suspect plenty of games differentiate between certain game states and the act of changing those game states. Being able to do so increases design space and adds flexibility.

Let's say I create a Cygnar spell called "Electrostatic Field" that does additional damage to warjack cortexes when they're Disrupted. Does the spell trigger as the warjacks become Disrupted, or does it trigger on warjacks that are already Disrupted? Depending on how I choose to word it, it could work either way -- and a player would have to adjust their playing accordingly, either Disrupting the warjack first and then casting the spell, or casting the spell first and then Disrupting it.

The ruling initially came about because of a similar issue with Cassius' feat, which triggers when models in Cassius' control area are "knocked down". Did that mean that Cassius had to use his feat first, and then you go around knocking people down? Or did you have to knock your enemies down first, and then use his feat to set off a round of damage rolls?

I suspect part of the blame has to be laid at the stupidity of the English language, where we use the same words for both the state of being knocked down as the action of being knocked down. Heck, enough confusion occurs already at the difference between "magic attacks" and "magical attacks" (which are not the same thing). Not to mention that the player base is willing to try and wriggle any possible advantage out of any potentialy interpretations of the rules language, such as the period questions in the rules forum about whether or not Magical Weapons actually make Magical attacks or not. (Every once in a while, someone gets the bright idea of suggesting a Magical Weapon makes a non-Magical attack.)

It'd be handy if verbs and adjectives were actually more distinct...

[drachenfels]

Based on your previous posts, you're on the "Gators need the feat to deal with jacks" side of the argument, correct? You do realize that, disregarding the spoiled merc colossal stat card, nothing in the game, currently released, has more than 34 boxes of damage. Doing 35 on average would then seem to be more than enough.

behemoth has full 36

[infamousd]

Yup, in a perfect world where you hit every attack and roll 7 on all your rolls. Too bad that I live in reality, where average is really 3-5.

[Cannotcope]

behemoth has full 36

Nitpick :-P

[Darth_Fraggle]

This ruling makes me sad. I'd never thought of the tactic myself, so I'm not missing out on much, but it's really just the counter-intuitive-ness that bothers me. I do hope they at least errata Cassius and the furnace bit to add the word "becomes", because neither I nor anyone I know would have ever thought that it works the way the ruling says it does.

Are those the only two models that currently have similar wording?

[Bogues]

Are those the only two models that currently have similar wording?

I'm assuming it will affect Kreoss as well. He's the only other pop'n'drop i can think of....Actually did slam a knocked down Deathjack into the water once...good times lol.

[maxxev]

I guess you should think of it this way.

Knock down a model in water then it's suprised and will go right onto it's back, boiler submerged.
Knock down a model and THEN push it into water and that model is already trying to stand up, at the very least it's probably managed to roll over so it's boiler is on the top and therefore not actually in water.

Sounds reasonable to me.

[Space Donkey]

I guess you should think of it this way.

Knock down a model in water then it's suprised and will go right onto it's back, boiler submerged.
Knock down a model and THEN push it into water and that model is already trying to stand up, at the very least it's probably managed to roll over so it's boiler is on the top and therefore not actually in water.

Sounds reasonable to me.

For push/pull I can see that. But how does that account for a model that is knocked down getting picked and thrown into water 15 feet away?

[TheLoki]

Except that 21 damage to a jack has almost certainly taken out systems. If one of those is the cortex... then no it isn't going to do squat to the Wrastler. If it's a one weapon jack and the weapon was taken out... again the Wrastler is going to survive. 11 damage to the heaviest of jacks in the right spot can turn it into a paperweight. The Wrastler only needs 1 hp left to finish it off the next turn.

Throw in Spiny growth on the Wrastler and an already hurt jack will have a hard time risking hitting you much as it could kill its own cortex if you didn't get all the boxes. That 21 damage can quickly become 23~27 after initial attacks.

Your correct that 21 damage is pretty signifigant vs a jack. What i can argue tho is that if spiny growth is on the wrastler someone is gonna use banes or whathave you to scrape the wrastler off. A Menoth jack is a 1 point solo away from being fully functional again.

I'm not saying we bounce off them completely. We just have no reliable way to take jacks out on a crunch turn now with Barny. Calaban is another story as parasite always helps.

Armor 18 jacks have never been the issue so thats a useless comparison. Its when you get to the jacks with shields or native 20 ect ect. A stiff breeze can make a cryx jack explode so math isnt needed to prove that.

[Butcher's boy]

Maybe 'jack designers have developed a redundancy that protects jacks pilot lights when knocked down due to, otherwise the ruling makes no sense logically.

Despite this I'm not really bothered, I think there's a bit too much being made of this. Yeah it eliminates one tactic, buy from all these posts it shows that there are

[Butcher's boy]

...plenty more. (stupid iPhone. Hit send by accident)

Lets remember page 5 and get over it.

[Yertle4]

This "inspired" ruling has been out for a while - how have people been coping with it while playing Barnabas?

[Zwaggs33]

Well, I only recently started playing Barnabas. Only have about 5 games in with him. In those games I never once did any sort of slamming or throwing Jacks into his swamp pits. Mostly used them for anti-ranged and rough terrain to slow down melee infantry. So I guess this ruling isn't that big of a deal to me since I've never done anything like it anyways. No worries for me.

[Jestor]

I've been on a Retribution kick lately so I've only played 3 games with Minions since the ruling. One game was against Hordes so it didn't matter, one game I got a turn 2 caster kill so it didn't come in to play.

The third game I ended up throwing a jack on to the other side of a puddle instead of in it to keep him out for a turn while I set up the kill. If he had ways to increase the jacks speed or give that jack pathfinder I probably would have needed to do some extra work on it. Pre-ruling I just would have used a two handed throw power attack at a feralgiest in a puddle and been done with it. Jack was an Arcaneshielded Ironclad btw.

It effected one in three games I have played with Barney since the ruling. Not a huge amount but some. It's annoying but you can work around it. You just need to be a bit more clever. I don't proxy so I am not sure about Swamp Horror tricks but I assume it won't change much.

[Mattman]

Just out of curiosity would it cause to much rules confusion to change Throw? Adding a step in which you are no longer knocked down may be a way of clearing the issue.

If you are flying through the air you are no longer knocked down.

[Vex]

This should be a little less of an issue once the Gatorman Witch Doctor is released. Currently, pushing a 'jack into a puddle and then feating can be an issue due to control range limits for forcing beasts. Once the Witch Doctor is out, you can just advance the WD, push the 'jack into the puddle, then activate Barnabas and feat. You lose the auto-hit on the knocked down 'jack (but 'jacks are not usually hard to hit) and you need to take a Witch Doctor in your list (but that doesn't seem like a bad thing) so it still isn't ideal. But, it isn't horrible.

[Yertle4]

This should be a little less of an issue once the Gatorman Witch Doctor is released. Currently, pushing a 'jack into a puddle and then feating can be an issue due to control range limits for forcing beasts. Once the Witch Doctor is out, you can just advance the WD, push the 'jack into the puddle, then activate Barnabas and feat. You lose the auto-hit on the knocked down 'jack (but 'jacks are not usually hard to hit) and you need to take a Witch Doctor in your list (but that doesn't seem like a bad thing) so it still isn't ideal. But, it isn't horrible.

How are you getting a puddle there without activating Barnabas first? Remember that Swamp Pits are not upkeep spells.
The control range thing is not even an issue. I just think it's ridiculous that throwing a knocked down jack in Shallow Water won't extinguish it.

I find that Thrullgs are even more valuable with Barnabas now, since a disrupted KD jack won't do much for a turn, not to mention the ability to remove upkeeps like Arcane Shield, Death Ward, Defender's Ward and the like.