Tank Units: What's a Win?

[Hannibal]

After a demo last Saturday[1], I was talking with the guy, explaining some of the depth of the game.  Particularly delaying engagement with cheap units on which you plan to dump Courage Cards.  It took a bit, but he started to see after the game how fast moving it was and that a turn or two of delay really is enough for a tank unit.

That got me thinking:  what is a win with a cheap tank?  How many turns does a cheap unit have to hold up a more expensive unit to be considered a win, in your mind?  I'm talking a 70 pt Militia (or 79 pt Brownies, or 96 pt Slaves, etc.) facing off a ~200 pt swordsman/spearman/whatever unit.

For me, I consider about 3-4 turns of delay to be about the most I can expect out of those units, depending on who does the Final Rushing.  I start the clock when the lines become engaged.  

If I am the one doing the Final Rushing, and my tank unit does not, I count that at turn 1, as I am inflicting damage with my breakthrough unit while he is not cutting through my tank.  Then he'll FR the tank on turn 2, and probably cause a rout check.  On turn 3 (my turn), he'll almost certainly cause a rout check and this could very easily be a second check by now.  Which means I certainly need to dump Courage cards into the unit because if he routs the unit he gets to pinch on his turn.  Assuming my guys stick, they'll either be dead or routed on turn 4.  Although it is my turn next and so he can't pinch me, I usually want my break through guys to have succeeded by this point, because I need to run them off so I can get the flank or at least turn to face the guy who just routed my tank.  That's 4 turns of me inflicting damage with my breakthrough unit and holding off the pinch with my tank unit, which I see as a win.

If he is the one doing the Final Rushing, my tank unit will probably be engaged along with my breakthrough unit on this turn, which is Turn 1 of my tanking.  Again he may force a check there, depending, but he will certainly force a check on Turn 2 (my turn) and I really want my guys to stick.  Come Turn 3, the unit will be dead or run off, but I could care less what happens.  However, through turns 1-3, I'll be dumping Red cards onto my breakthrough unit because I really want to get free on this turn to flank or maybe even pinch on turn 4 (my turn).  In this case, I got 3 turns out of the tank unit, which is pretty serviceable I think.

What are your thoughts on the subject?




[1]  Yeah, yeah, I know.  Despite feeling I'm not a good ambassador to the game, I've been doing demos.  For all my griping, I still think its probably the best system I've ever seen and if somebody asks, I talk it up and will do demos.  

[Chad_YMG]

various stuff

[1]  Yeah, yeah, I know.  Despite feeling I'm not a good ambassador to the game, I've been doing demos.  For all my griping, I still think its probably the best system I've ever seen and if somebody asks, I talk it up and will do demos.  

Ha ha.

[Chad_YMG]

OK, a (brief) but more serious answer.

I don't think I can put a number of turns on it.  Ultimately it comes down to whether I'm winning my good fights before losing my bad ones, which will vary depending on how outclassed/outclassing I am in each one, and also what the damage is of losing.  I care a lot more about Antonian Horsemen crashing through my line than I do about Longbeards.

Generally speaking though, I think you're right.  If a cheap unit is holding off a mid-range unit and the battle lasts for four rounds that's generally a good result.

One thing that strikes me about this is that we need some standardization of slang for our discussions.  I'm not sure what is common usage here, but I tend to think of a "tank" as not merely a unit that's better at defending than attacking but a unit that can hold on (at least longer than the 100-point and below examples you give here).  I'm not sure my usage is better, but if you hadn't clarified here I would have thought you were talking about a different class of unit.

[Mexico]

I think in the common parlance of New England players, he's referring to "speedbump" units, or as I prefer to call them, the "chumps". 

[Hannibal]

I don't think I can put a number of turns on it.  Ultimately it comes down to whether I'm winning my good fights before losing my bad ones, which will vary depending on how outclassed/outclassing I am in each one, and also what the damage is of losing.  I care a lot more about Antonian Horsemen crashing through my line than I do about Longbeards.

Yeah absolutely.  And my example isn't a straight battlefield representation.  For example, if I have Peasant-Peasant-Greatsword, then I am much less worried if that far left unit breaks and is destroyed because the Greatswords have another "peasant shield" defending them.  My example was more to illustrate a concept, with a 300 pt unit beside a 100 pt unit fighting two 200 pt units.

I don't think I can put a number of turns on it.  Ultimately it comes down to whether I'm winning my good fights before losing my bad ones, which will vary depending on how outclassed/outclassing I am in each one, and also what the damage is of losing.  I care a lot more about Antonian Horsemen crashing through my line than I do about Longbeards.

To me tanking usually denotes a unit that can take a beating pretty well, usually high toughness/armor, lots of damage, and/or not likely to run away (Hawk Heavy Infantry).  Tanking is usually the act of standing there, getting hit, and not running away.  What NE folks call speedbumps or chumps, we out here call tarpit units.  These guys are cheap and weak, with their most redeeming feature being they're not likely to run (Zombies strike me as the best example).  Oh, and they're cheap.     To me whether a unit is a tarpit or a speedbump (the former connoting that it takes longer to chew through them) is a semantic function of what they're up against.  A zombie is a speedbump to Knights but a tarpit to Swordsmen.


Usually it takes a tank (Noun: tough guy) to tank (verb: eat attacks without running).  But in my experience, in this game it is better to use a tarpit unit to tank.  This can be because of the Pow bonuses everyone gets, because tank units are geared towards grinding wins in a game where you want to win-fast-lose-slow, because the expansion of Green reroll Cge cards makes tarpits less of a gamble, or because the backup rule usually means you can have 2 tarpits for less than the cost of a tank unit, I don't know.  I think its probably a confluence of these things.

[RushAss]

I don't think I can put a number of turns on it.  Ultimately it comes down to whether I'm winning my good fights before losing my bad ones, which will vary depending on how outclassed/outclassing I am in each one, and also what the damage is of losing.  I care a lot more about Antonian Horsemen crashing through my line than I do about Longbeards.

I'm with Chad on that, it's very situational and there's no clear answer.  The beauty of cheap tanks is that even if they fail, you have not wasted a lot of points on them.  When somebody says "cheap tank", the first thing that comes to mind is Zombies.  I've seen those suckers stand up to incredible abuse.  Sure they suck down command actions to keep them... er... "alive", but at 90 points they are just a steal. 

I do believe there is a difference between a speed bump and a tank, though.  In my mind, a tank is something than can hang in there against an average unit for 3+ turns.  Things like Possessed and Brownies are not tanks to me unless I can get them to line up across from a mediocre unit.   

[BubblePig]

I pretty much use the term speedbump or chump in this context. I usually use tank as a term for a unit where [turns it hangs around/point cost] is high but [damage inflicted per turn/point cost] is low, as opposed to glass cannon where [damage inflicted per turn/point cost] is high but [turns it hangs around/point cost] is low. Lower point cost comes at the expense of [damage inflicted per turn] moreso in general than [turns it hangs around] so most of the cheap units are pretty tanky by my definition.

[gull2112]

I view tanking as a role, and as such various units in various positions can either tank well or their tanking tanks.

Orcs swordsmen can hold a line with a minimum investment of resources and are good tanks. At the same time, they can be used as red card funnels and do a passable job at breaking through.

The caveat here is that you must be able to roll under 11. I always do, so they work for me as tanks. If you choose to roll higher you will need to invest some blue cards.

[BubblePig]

Or 'I Kill You Meself' which is green.
But yeah, a vanilla 5 5/5 offense with 2/3 defense is gonna be pretty tanky for the points (or grindy as some would say.)

[wariorpoet]

Here's my two cents as the new guy.
A speedbump unit's job is to prevent a pinch or hold of some scary monster for 1-2 turns so you can break through somewhere else. A tank (think high elf battle squad)  is supposed to hold of a breakthrough unit for 2-4 turns and keep it from wreaking havoc. The tank is supposed to last really long.

[RushAss]

Here's my two cents as the new guy.
A speedbump unit's job is to prevent a pinch or hold of some scary monster for 1-2 turns so you can break through somewhere else. A tank (think high elf battle squad)  is supposed to hold of a breakthrough unit for 2-4 turns and keep it from wreaking havoc. The tank is supposed to last really long.

You've pretty much nailed it.  The only thing I would change would be this:

A speedbump unit's job is to prevent a pinch or hold of some scary monster any unit for 1-2 turns so you can break through somewhere else.