Slitherine

To spin-off from the overlap thread, indulge my wondering aloud at a basic FoG question:

Why do we price armies according to points per base?

Armies live and die according to BGs, and an 12-stand unit of heavy foot holds the same value (for most purposes) as a 4-stand unit of worthless Mob. Indeed, where an army can get a small unit of super-cheap trash, the player benefits immensely from grabbing it solely because it pads out his BG total.

Within the BG universe, there a numerous situations where the increased cost of adding stands to a BG does not correlate into increased value. Indeed, several armies are attractive because they can bring troops in 4-packs where the same troop is only available to other armies in 6-packs. Dom Rom Auxilia are an obvious example, but any army that allows LF in BGs of 4-6 will have 4-packs. Other troops, especially mounted, are all but unheard of in groups larger than 4-packs.

I think we can distill from this that many troop types hit rapidly diminishing returns at certain BG thresholds, such that the first 4 stands are worth much more than 2x the addition of stand 5 and 6.

This becomes relevant in some of the points-balance debates. Consider these two troop types:

Smug Men-At-Arms - Kn/HvyArm/Sup/Undr/Ln/Sw @ 23 points per base

Pants-On-Head Mouth-Breathers - MF/UProt/Av/Sw @ 5 points per base.

Imagine them in the same army list.

For 92 points, you can get a four-pack of Smug Kn. People do this all the time.

But wait, you could spend those points on a 12-pack of POHMB and a 6-pack of POHMB to back them up, with 2 points left over.

All things being equal, you will never spend those points on POHMB. Ever. There is no scenario where this needs a nanosecond of thought, even though the points system treats them as equivalent.

Of course it would be pretty impossible to achieve a pure points system where every expenditure of 92 AP will result in a BG or BGs that are equal in value. But I submit that much of the current disparity could be eliminated if we purchased armies and priced their components the same way we use them - by BG.

Instead of the current cost-per-base = BG cost, we could adjust points costs to reflect BG. Consider the Smug Kn BG, in an army that offered 0-10 bases. Who would take a 4-pack and a 6-pack? A 6-pack of Kn is hardly better (and in some cases worse) than a 4-pack. Why charge 46 more points for 2 stands that hamper the BG?

In the Kn example, absent zero points, I struggle to imagine anyone bringing a 6-pack instead of a 4-pack. But a mandatory 6-pack of Smug Kn at a cost less than 138 AP than might be a better way to capture and balance knights that historically were weaker than their contemporaries (e.g., English and Germans). They are equally good base-to-base, but harder to use because you have drag around 6 of them.

By pricing troops according to BGs, there would be a lot more room to work out other troop balances. Various undrilled troops might become cheaper per base as the BG got larger, as BG size tends to aggravate the burdens of being undrilled.

Thoughts?

There are several alternatives as this one would require to redo all lists almost:

• - Attrition points could be allocated by bases
  - Some troop types could count as half (light foot, mob) and some as double (core troops); as BG's are mainly even, then numbers would be usually round
  - Any base lost could count as 2, broken 2 and evaded as 1
  - Core troops could count as 3 bases to reflect the bigger impact of their loss
  - Sacked camp can be assigned as losing 10 points
  - Generals can be assigned too some points too, especially the inspired ones

This way, in order to increase your attition points, players would be encouraged to go for options of bigger BG's of core troops and that would add another reason to make the distinction between core and optional. Certainly the numbers could be changed, but I think that the idea fits the main aim of the change which I share. It makes little sense to increase numbers by splitting BG's or thinking that the same number of troops would have a bigger morales because they have been slpitted in more units. The division gives already enough tactical advantage.

spikemesq wrote:
By pricing troops according to BGs, there would be a lot more room to work out other troop balances. Various undrilled troops might become cheaper per base as the BG got larger, as BG size tends to aggravate the burdens of being undrilled.

Thoughts?

As has been mentioned above I think this sort of change is out as it would require all 13 list books to be re-written as it is a change way too extensive for an amendment sheet.

Regardless of any other issues with it I'm afraid this means that as a suggestion it is DoA.

Actually, you could implement most of this change without necessarily re-writing the army books.

The army books currently price troops by base and set min/max for BG size and total bases.

A global rule change, therefore, could work with existing army lists. Basically, apply a marginal discount for bases added to a BG over a certain limit. The discount and margins could be set by troop type.

For example:

Each base of Undrilled Kn/Cat/Cv/LH >4 in a BG - 50% discount.

Each base of Undrilled MF >6 in BG - 50% discount

Each base of HF >6 in BG 50% discount

Each base of HF/MF >8 in a BG 75% discount

These numbers are just for demonstration, but you get the idea.

A BG price system could be cultivated in later army lists to change certain lists to require the now cheaper 6-packs for German Kn, etc. But a lot of this could work within the current army list books.

As I agree with the whole concept I think that having all bases that excess the minimum size of the BG in the list (at least 4) at half cost will be enough by now. In fact we are going to incorporate that on our “Home made Rules” from now , to see how it works.

There are some BG sizes that are worth full base cost to increase from the minimum. Lots of infantry types work better in 8-packs than 6-packs, because of the shooting resistance (i.e., you only test on 3 hits, so skirmishers need to bring more firepower to have any effect).

There are other BGs that are almost equally attractive in 4s and 6s, e.g. MF. Consider the Dom Rom swarm under a rule where MF BGs of 4-6 bases were one price -- somewhere between the current costs. So if MF were priced at BG of 4-6 bases = 5 x base AP, the swarm concept would still be powerful, but not the hands down obvious choice that it is now.

Another way to balance the prices of BGs without changing the army list is to add a cost to each BGs (remember WRG 7th )

eg : 15 pts per BG increasing to 1000 pts the army price will offer current armies of 10-12 BGs some extra bases when current armies of 15-17 BGs will have to remove some.