Naga Vikings: the best defense is a good offense

[Zelc]

Looking at all the factions, we don’t seem to have any that are strongly offensive.  Usually, the units with strong offensive stats also have at least a decent defense.  For example, I think the worst defense of any (5) 5/5 unit is 1/2.  I was thinking it’d be interesting to explore a faction with limited defensive options, but great attack stats.  A Viking theme seemed to fit the description.  I thought humans are a little boring , so I was thinking of other races that could fit the theme when I came across the Naga.

Hannibal recently posted the Corrigan faction, which is another sea-faring raiding faction.  We could change the flavor for this faction, or maybe just say these factions hate each other.  Corrigan vs. Naga for all the plunder?

This post is to throw out this faction as a preliminary idea.  I'm still a newbie, so a lot of this is going to be pretty rough.  I also don’t have access to the master costing spreadsheet, so my point cost targets may be wildly off!

Fluff:
In towns all along the coast, the naga were a story mothers told to their children to get them to behave.  “Eat your vegetables, Timmy, or the naga will come for you!”  Timmy would eat his vegetables, then wonder what happened when the naga swept through his town anyway, burning and pillaging anything they could find.

The naga are a once-aquatic serpentine race which adapted itself for terrestrial life tens of thousands of years ago.  Despite remaining quite capable in the water for limited periods of time, the naga are most suited for life on land and require boats to travel long distances in water.  The naga are terrors on the sea and frequently raid the coastal cities of the other races.  They're equally effective on land, though they don’t have as great of an advantage over their enemies as they do on the water.

In battle, the naga are noted for their brutality.  In hand-to-hand combat, the naga are strong and bloodthirsty warriors.  Their ranged firepower is equally strong.  Being trained for ship-to-ship combat, naga archers find it much easier to aim when the ground beneath them does not move.  In the heat of combat, the naga often give in to their battle-lust, throwing themselves at their enemies with reckless abandon.  The naga have also domesticated massive turtles that crush everything in its path.

Fortunately, the naga have exploitable weaknesses.  Their seafaring lifestyle and cultural pride limits the armor they wear, and their general disregard for self-preservation makes them easy to kill.  Only the elite Naga troops with their tougher scales and the domesticated turtles can survive prolonged fighting.  The naga also don’t have the benefit of fast mounts, which limits their mobility and their ability to quickly break through enemy lines.

Crunch:
The central idea behind the naga is great offense stats, but poor defense stats.  The naga tend to have great offensive stats, especially power, across the board.  Unlike most other factions, their basic “generic line filler” should fall quickly, but put several points of damage on their opponents before doing so.  However, their units will have very poor defensive stats across the board.  Their more expensive units can have higher toughness with a 1/2 or rarely a 1/3 profile, and some specialized speed units can have higher evade stats.  Still, it should be fairly easy to kill naga units.  One thing about the naga is while they have great attack stats, they don’t really have a strong breakthrough melee unit.  They don’t have a good cavalry or javelin throwers.

For ranged attacks, I’d like the naga to have a (4) 5/5 archer that suffers no penalty for move and shoot.  They’re masters of ship-to-ship combat, so it makes sense for the naga to have some good ranged attack options.  If we want to add more, other ideas for ranged attackers include spellcasters and siege weapons, both of which are important in fantasy naval combat.

The naga don’t have cavalry.  Instead, their speed units consist of faster and lighter naga.  These will be the only units with evade greater than 1, and won’t have toughness higher than 1.  Even though they move faster, they still won’t get impact hits.  Alternatively, we could make the naga more like the Umenzi and not give them any fast units.

For more defensive units, the naga have giant turtles at a 0/3 or 1/3 defensive profile and a poor (relatively speaking) attack profile.  I envision a squad of turtle-riders being their only reasonably-priced tank units, with the significant drawback of moving 2.5”.  Naga generals will have to decide between a reckless attack with a powerful but easily-killed line, or bring turtle-riders which will limit their army’s mobility.  In addition, the naga can field colossal tortoises.  These could be difficult-to-control solo units like the T-Rex, or we could attach a “howdah” with naga archers like the Giant War Elephant and say the naga ride them like a ships on the sea.

For their faction ability, the naga have a checkmark to give them berserking.  As a limitation, it must be played at the beginning of the movement phase before any units move.  It would give them auto-pass courage at the costs of being uncontrollable.  If that’s too good, maybe we could also take away 1 defense skill and add a die on attack.  Of course, I think they should also get bonuses for moving in water.

Faction Ability:
Berserking: You may spend a Command Action empower one of your units with Berserking.  That unit gains A(+1) +0/+0, D -1/-0, passes all Courage Checks, and always has the “Close” Standing Order and may not be given a Standing Order Modifier or be Directly Controlled.

Water: Naga units don’t suffer the MC penalty from Shallow Water, Deep Water, or Very Deep Water terrain.  Naga units can move through impassable Deep Water or Very Deep Water terrain with a -2 MC penalty.  (Note this benefit does not apply to River Rapids.)

Units:

Weaker Line Units

Naga Pillagers
Target Point Cost: low to mid 100’s
Attack: (5) 5/6 Defense: 1/0 Courage: 11 Move: 3.5” Health: 3/2/3
The basic line unit of the naga.  Unlike other races’ generic line units, these guys hit hard but die fast.  I see them as Naga without strong scales, and also more of a mob than an organized fighting squad.

Naga Raiders
Target Point Cost: mid to high 100’s
Attack: (5) 6/6 Defense: 1/0 Courage: 11 Move: 3.5” Health: 3/2/3
The slightly more expensive basic line unit.  Better against high evade factions.  Maybe some other stats could be tweaked as well here.  Probably one of the first units on the cutting block.

Naga Warriors
Target Point Cost: low to mid 200’s
Attack: (5) 6/6 Defense: 1/1 Courage: 12 Move: 3.5” Health: 4/3/3
These guys are better-trained warriors, as represented by their higher courage and health.

Stronger Line Units

Naga Shock Troops
Target Point Cost: low 300’s
Attack: (6*) 6*/6 *Defense: 1/2 Courage: 12 Move: 3.5” Health: 4/3/3
1 Impact Hit.  A(-1) -0/-0 while Charging.  A(+0) +1/+0 vs. Cavalry and/or Large units.  A(+0) +0/+2 while Holding vs. Charging Cavalry and/or Charging Large units.
These guys wield long spears, with the Impact Hit representing their superior reach.  They are the only units with impact hits in this faction.

Naga Myrmidon (Elite)
Target Point Cost: high 300’s
Attack: (5) 6/7 Defense: 1/3 Courage: 13 Move: 3.5” Health: 4/3/3
The elite soldiers of the naga.  Great offense, and actually decent defense.

Speed Units

Naga Darters
Target Point Cost: mid-to-high 100’s
Attack: (4) 6/6 Defense: 3/0 Courage: 11 Move: 6” Health: 2/2/1
By “Darters”, I mean speedy, not dart-throwing.  Suggest a better word if you have one.  There’s fewer of these guys so they don’t have much health.

Naga Harassers
Target Point Cost: right under or around 100
Attack: (3) 5/6 Defense: 2*/0 Courage: 10 Range: 5” Move: 6” Health: 2/1/2
Skirmisher.  Range attack uses the Javelin rule.  D +2/+0 vs. ranged attacks.
We could use these skirmishers to represent the speedy Naga.  These guys would be better than the historical guys because they’re stronger and faster, but they have much less health.  These guys could also serve to screen against ranged attacks, which this faction otherwise seems quite vulnerable to, so I gave it higher evade.

Ranged Units

Naga Archers
Target Point Cost: high 100’s
Attack: (4) 5*/5* Defense: 1/0 Courage: 11 Range: 14" Move: 3.5” Health: 3/2/2
No penalty for Move and Shoot.  A(-0) -2/-2 while Engaged.
The idea is these guys/ladies are trained to shoot while on a rocking boat, hence the no penalty for Move and Shoot.

Naga Flame Archers (Elite)
Target Point Cost: mid to high 300’s
Attack: (4) 5*/6* Defense: 1/0 Courage: 11 Range: 14" Move: 3.5” Health: 3/2/2
No penalty for Move and Shoot.  A(-0) -2/-2 while Engaged.  If Naga Flame Archers deals at least 1 damage to a unit in combat this turn, that unit must make a rout check in the next Courage Phase.
Oh SHIT fire fire FIRE!!!
Also, NO idea about point cost here.  It should probably be on the expensive side.  And it definitely has to be elite.

Turtles

Naga Turtle-Riders
Target Point Cost: high 100’s
Attack: (3) 6/6 Defense: 1/3 Courage: 13 Move: 2.5” Health: 4/2/2
Large.  Cannot be empowered with Berserking.
The only thing resembling tanks in this entire faction, and even these guys can put out some OK damage.  Problem is they’re really slow, so it’s not a no-brainer to add these in the army.  I’m tempted to reduce the attack stats and make defense 1/4, but I don’t know what that’ll do to the point cost.

Colossal Snapping Turtle (Elite)
Target Point Cost: mid to high 400’s
Attack: (4) 7/8 Defense: 1/4 Courage: 12 Move: 2.5” Health: 7/3/5
Colossal.  Terrifying.  Always has the “Close” Standing Order and may not be given a Standing Order Modifier or be directly controlled.  May not be empowered with Berserking.  To play Command Cards on Colossal Snapping Turtle you must first discard two other Command Cards.  Colossal Snapping Turtle requires two Command Actions to Rally.
A slightly worse T-Rex.  These things move slow, but their bite is pretty fast.  Also, they’ll definitely win their matchup, but they don’t have impact hits or many dice so it’ll probably take a few turns.  The biggest problem is they’re slow, so the opponent can avoid them for a couple extra turns as well.


Command Cards:
No idea.  Probably one to add command actions for Berserking or use in combat after a failed rout check to Berserk the unit?

[RushAss]

Go ahead with giving the turtles a 1/4 defense.  I mean, it's a turtle!  What is more well armored than a turtle?

Concerning defensive toughness, a 0 stat is just really bad and would indicate that these troops are simply not at all  healthy.  As I understand it, a healthy human adult male without any armor would be a 1/1.  So 1/0 seems to me that the entire faction is sickly or something like that.

[Kevin]

Nice faction flavor.

There's another faction under development that gives extremely high offense relative to defense.  A potential major issue with these factions is that these units are terribly vulnerable to ranged attacks...and often fight a bit better than their indicated value if the opponent doesn't take a stand-and-shoot army.

And in general stand-and-shoot armies = no maneuvering = less interesting game. 

[gull2112]

I really like this faction with the proviso that all Offensive skill and Strength stats be reduced by one. We really need to avoid stat creep so we don't devalue earlier factions. The only exception to this would be the pillagers who should be at 5/5 not 4/5.

What I like about the Colossal snapping turtle (after you lower OB stats accordingly) is that it would have a definite purpose. Yes, it is less useful in a standard Total Warfare scenario, but in any scenario where the opponent is trying to deny a piece of terrain or where there is an objective in contention, having one of these marching up could be very disconcerting for the opposition.

[Zelc]

Go ahead with giving the turtles a 1/4 defense.  I mean, it's a turtle!  What is more well armored than a turtle?

You're probably right .

Concerning defensive toughness, a 0 stat is just really bad and would indicate that these troops are simply not at all  healthy.  As I understand it, a healthy human adult male without any armor would be a 1/1.  So 1/0 seems to me that the entire faction is sickly or something like that.

Hmm.  My thinking was they don't wear any protective armor at all (hard to swim with that), and the weaker ones don't have strong scales.  Would that work for a 0 toughness stat?

There's another faction under development that gives extremely high offense relative to defense.  A potential major issue with these factions is that these units are terribly vulnerable to ranged attacks...and often fight a bit better than their indicated value if the opponent doesn't take a stand-and-shoot army.

I was thinking about that, and maybe the solution is to provide these guys with different options against ranged fire.  Maybe if this faction has the option of deploying a skirmisher screen, a turtle screen, and a shaman that can cast a defense vs. ranged attacks spell, it would be able to face a stand n' shoot army without being too strong otherwise.  I'd rather not give this entire faction 5" move.

I really like this faction with the proviso that all Offensive skill and Strength stats be reduced by one. We really need to avoid stat creep so we don't devalue earlier factions. The only exception to this would be the pillagers who should be at 5/5 not 4/5.

I don't know... this whole faction's purpose is to be strong offensively but not defensively.  Think of how the High Elves have all 3/2's for defense.  If we reduce the Offensive skill and Strength stats, then this by necessity turns into a weenie swarm army because none of them will survive long enough to deal any damage.  And for all but one of the foot soldiers, they cap out at 6 dice, 6 skill, and 6 power.  The Colossal Snapping Turtle I'm willing to compromise on, but I can't see it getting too many attack dice so it has to make it up on quality (plus T-Rexes have similar attack lines).

[Zelc]

Trying to stat out a Naga Sea Shaman.  The goal is to provide some defense against stand-and-shoot armies.  I'm torn between a ~150 point standard version and an elite version.  Please give ideas or comments.

Standard Version
Target Point Cost: mid 100’s
Attack: (3) 5/5 Defense: 1/0 Range: 7" Courage: 12 Move: 3.5” Health: 3/2/1
Spells:
- Summon the Winds (Blessing or Curse): Range Battlefield.  Cast Summon the Winds at the end of your Movement and Command phase.  Choose a friendly or enemy unit with a ranged attack.  If you choose a friendly unit, until the beginning of your next turn, treat that unit as being on 10' higher elevation for the purposes of making and defending against ranged attacks.  If you choose an enemy unit, until the beginning of your next turn, treat that unit as being on 10' lower elevation for the purposes of making and defending against ranged attacks.
- Call the Storms (Curse): Range 7".  Curses an enemy unit not in water terrain.  Treat that unit as being in Shallow Water until the beginning of your next turn while it is not otherwise in water terrain.

Elite Version
Target Point Cost: low 200's?
Attack: (3) 6/5 Defense: 1/0 Range: 7" Courage: 12 Move: 3.5” Health: 3/2/1
Spells:
- Summon the Winds: Range Battlefield.  Cast Summon the Winds at the end of your Movement and Command phase.  Treat all friendly units as being 10' higher in elevation for the purposes of making and defending against ranged attacks.
- Call the Storms (Curse): Range 7".  A (3) 6/5.  Curses an enemy unit not in water terrain.  Treat that unit as being in Shallow Water until the beginning of your next turn while it is not otherwise in water terrain.

One of these guys will replace either the Darter or the Harasser.  Not sure which yet.

Thoughts?

EDIT: Meh, I just realized what -2 MC really does and how horribly OP it is.  I need a different idea for Call the Storm.

[gull2112]

I would modify the faction ability to say that in any water but shallow water they get +1MC (because they are swimming).

I would say the snapping turtle should be 6/8. Upon reflection, I'm with you on the strength thing. We used to hunt snappers and they are Motherf*@#ing powerful.

You could give all the 1/0 toughness units +1/- vs. missile fire (due to their light bob and weave abilities), so they didn't quite suck so much.

[Zelc]

Some thoughts on updates:

I think this faction could probably use a cheaper Spear unit, either as an upgrade to the Pillagers in the mid-high 100's at a (6*) 5*/6*, or to the Raiders at around the 200 point mark with a stat of (6*) 6*/6*.  Either way, they'd pretty much deter cavalry attacks by threat of mutual destruction more than any sort of tanking ability.

I like the idea of D +1/+0 or +2/+0 vs. range attacks on the cheaper line units.  Then we can take out the Skirmishers as well, and don't really need a silver bullet type solution to range attacks.

That said, a Water Shaman-type unit could be very flavorful.  Weather control just fits with this faction.  I can't come up with great ideas for spells though.

With the new Outreached modifier, maybe Shock Troops should have it since they're using long spears.  Not sure if the impact hit fits anymore.  I'd like some unit to have it though; impact hits are fun.

The Giant Snapping Turtle needs to have a decent attack line, or else it's more of a tank than a monster.  I saw the mounted balista idea, and that might work.  Light siege weapons are important in fantasy naval combat.  Still, that makes the turtle fill a very different niche.  It'll be less heavy fear-inspiring monster and more tanky artillery.  Thoughts?

I don't want to make the Swim bonus too good, otherwise they'd be really strong on water maps.  The fluff is they've adapted to living on land, so they're not as proficient in water as they were hundreds of thousands of years ago when they first came on land.

Also, the faction ability definitely needs tweaking.  Auto-pass morale checks is great for this faction, but is probably too strong straight-up.  The only Close standing order thing is a possible penalty, but has no effect if the unit is already in combat.  Maybe costs 2 CA's to activate in combat?  Not sure how the fluff would work though.