Faction Power Groupings - v.2

[elgin_j]

With all the recent changes to command cards and faction abilities I thought it might be worth reviving the old thread.  With the ongoing campaign to make the older and weaker factions more competitive this should provide a useful sounding board to validate ongoing work and, as I recently moved abroad and no longer have regular opponents, I am keen to find out how the balance of power may have shifted.

As a reminder, this was the original listing that Zelc posted:

Very Strong
•Dark Elves.

Strong
•Carthage.

•High Elves.

•Orcs.

•Ravenwood.

•Rome.

•Umenzi.

Average
•Dwarves.

•Hawkshold.

•Monsters and Mercenaries.

Weak
•Lizardmen.

•Undead.


Thoughts?

[RushAss]

Where have you moved to man?  I get the feel from your posts that you are in the military, but I could be miles off on that one.

Anyways, I largely agree with how you have the factions rated with just a few changes.

I'd move the Orcs and Ravenwood to Average and I'd put an asterisk on the Dark Elves because they are a very strong faction in the hands of an expert player but an average faction otherwise.  This can apply to any faction, but it seems to be magnified with the Dark Elves.  The thing we are hoping for with the recent changes is that the gap between strong, weak, and average factions will be very small.  It's sort of a necessary evil that there are going to be factions that are generally stronger than others, but that's OK as long as there is very little difference between a good faction and a bad one.

[Kevin]

Here's how I'd group stuff:

crazy-ass top tier:  Dark Elves with the printed Lashmistress (which has not yet officially changed, but should hopefully be)

<gap>

top tier:  Rome, Carthage, Umenzi  (currently)

High Middle:  Rome & Carthage (with fixed skirmishers), Dark Elves (with a fixed Lashmistress), Umenzi (with back-up rules changed, which looks likely to happen)

Middle:  Hawkshold, Orcs, Ravenwood, High Elves

Low-middle:  Lizardmen, Monsters and Mercs.

Unsure:    

Undead--I'm genuinely unsure sure if recent changes (including those looking likely to pass this week) are enough to move them from the lower-middle tier up to the middle.

Dwarves - changes to the Dwarf cards are in a tight vote this week, which will probably determine which group they end up in.  (With no change I'd still put them lower-middle.)

Even though Lizardmen and M&M remain on the bottom, recent changes are definitely narrowing the gaps between factions!  At some point the gaps become small enough as to become a tertiary consideration.

[elgin_j]

Where have you moved to man?  I get the feel from your posts that you are in the military, but I could be miles off on that one.

I am.  I'm now in Germany.

[dboeren]

So how far apart are the tiers in this game?

That is, if two armies are one tier apart, is that a 60/40 sort of matchup or what?

[Niko White]

They're honestly really close and if you're not super serious about the game you'll probably never notice.  In the vast majority of situations I run into in real life, player skill is overwhelmingly more important.

I'm not sure I could put a number to it because it's really hard to compensate for the kinds of accumulating small advantages being better can cause in a game where you're making so many small choices per turn (command card play and command action use primarily) but I'd say 60/40 is probably an upper limit for a really bad faction going up against a really good one.

Of course, another complication is that specific army builds can have different situations; if you select units poorly and your opponent doesn't, the game can be an incredible uphill struggle.  Assuming both people build competently, though, the vast majority of games will come down to a combination of play and luck within the game itself.

[BubblePig]

A very rough division of the game into phases:

1. choose faction
2. build army                
3. deploy                    
4. give orders
5. maneuver (before the lines have fully engaged)
6. main battle
7. endgame (units have won/lost their engagements and choose what to do next)

You can make things really hard for yourself with a big oops in phases 2 or 3, but choice of faction I would rate as the least important time to be keeping your eye on the ball. From most to least here is roughly how I rate the phases by danger of self inflicted harm and/or costly missed opportunity (ymmv): 3, 2, small gap, 4, 5, small gap, 6, 7, HUGE gap, 1

[dboeren]

Very interesting that deployment would be the single biggest factor, but then again it actually comprises two parts - positioning of the units and their initial orders.

I have only played one game so far, but both seem to be fairly important.  Positioning is the biggest factor in determining your unit matchups, while good initial orders reduces the need to spend command points on the unit for a while - enabling you to save those for drawing cards or activating special abilities.

This also seems to have a lot to do with Battlegrounds having lower mobility than a lot of minis games where you may be able to try to correct a bad matchup by running a unit towards a different part of the field.  So, overall it makes sense that the deployment would gain emphasis because of this.

Good to hear that faction choice is not a major factor.  When I saw people debating "tiers" I wanted to confirm how much effect this actually had.  First, because I'm a believer in well-balanced games where player skill is the main determining factor.  And second, because I rather like the idea of Lizardmen and they seem to be a fairly low rated faction.  On one hand, they could use a little more variety (everything is a lizardman but they come in small/medium/large varieties) - but the ability to field dinosaurs totally makes up for it, even if some people claim the T-Rex is a little subpar.

[Hannibal]

Good to hear that faction choice is not a major factor.  When I saw people debating "tiers" I wanted to confirm how much effect this actually had.  First, because I'm a believer in well-balanced games where player skill is the main determining factor.

Well, I do think there are definite tiers, but that the discrepancies between them have been blown out of proportion.  At a competitive level where you have a pair of really, really good players, then the 2-3% difference in "all-things-being-equal-win-percentages" might swing a game.  But in my opinion, swingy dice rolls or what cards get drawn when will probably have a bigger impact in that event.

It reminds me of what I saw Daniel Negreanu (a profession poker player) say in an interview one day:  when you watch the world series of poker or some other televised event that isn't massively edited, you're seeing masters play.  In situations like that, the game seems to be all about luck, but in fact the difference between the two skilled players is so tiny that the percentages from luck of the draw seem magnified.  Similarly, most the armies in BGFW are probably close enough that dice and what order you draw the card can override any innate win-percentages, which means the biggest variable is the player.


One of the things not touched on in the tier system, IMO, is the meta-effect of units.  What makes the Dark Elves so nasty, IMO, isn't that they have uber combinations (although they have some good ones).  Its that they can run the gamut:  they have everything from 100 pt crap units, to decent 200 pt units, to big thump Dusk Blade units, to good cavalry, to a shooty Lord of Dusk.  You simply have no idea what you're going to face when you play them, because they simply can take any combination of units.

Similarly, what makes Hawkshold continue to be a strong contender (IMO), despite the fact that it was the first faction released is that you have a huge variety of units.  You can uber shooty, have lots of twerps, have big beefy Greatswords, or use a Cavalry alpha strike. 

What makes Dwarves and Monsters & Mercs near the bottom of the heap is that you have almost no variability.  Monsters & Mercs you have a little more, and can go crazy with a Dragon-build, but your opponent pretty much knows its not a bad idea to load up on Pow guys and spears.  With Dwarves...heck, you can usually predict down to the unit what your opponent will take, and you know that unless he cheats he's going to be building an infantry line.

The variability keeps Lizardmen from joining those two on the bottom of the heap.  They don't have a terribly efficient points expenditure, but they do have the advantage of having a couple of builds.  Someone can go with the "Raptor flank attack" or the "T-Rez smashing up the middle" builds, which are two very different builds and preparing for one makes you vulnerable to the other.

[Uriel Doombringer]

I think Hannibal is on the right track here. For example, last Friday Niko and I played a couple games:

1) Niko's High Elf Mongolian shenanigans army vs. my ogres and hydra Monsters and Mercs. Mercs ultimately win after weathering the cavalry charge to crush his knights and chariots, eventually leaving too few units to get a enough of a pinch on the hydra who just started eating the world.

2) Seth with the new Underworld Faction and Niko with Mercs. Mercs win again as the wildman line overwhelms crappy goblins and lava trolls and hobgoblins can't get there against the hill giant.

So two pro players, in both cases Mercs (who are maligned as a low tier army) win. Big contributing factors were mainly some dubious army building decisions (noted at the time), crazy dice (I don't think the mercs failed a single courage check in the first battle), and card draw (I got ordered retreats, he got oathbounds).

And I think this is the big lesson of trying to tweak the balance. I think the low tier factions (dwarves, lizzies, and mercs) are actually fine and player quality and luck (dice and cards) will tip the edge with equally skilled players.

Like those who saw my dark elf win in the tournament: I don't think it was the dark elves per se. I know the dark elves very well, I trained with them extensively, and I only survived the quarter finals by a razor's edge due to some very poor dice luck. Skill and luck kids - that's where it's at.

[Niko White]

No way man, you failed two rout checks!  Of course, they were the ones you wanted to fail because they were precombat when I pinched your Ogres and you had Ordered Retreats 

[Kevin]

Like those who saw my dark elf win in the tournament: I don't think it was the dark elves per se.

I agree completely...with the little caveat that the Dark Elves got a couple of special downgrades for that tournament--one of which has subsequently become an official rule.  So while I agree that Seth's win was all about him playing excellently in essentially even fights, the playing field used to be, IMHO, a bit tilted.

[Hannibal]

I think the low tier factions (dwarves, lizzies, and mercs) are actually fine and player quality and luck (dice and cards) will tip the edge with equally skilled players.

If I may offer a polite counter, I'd say that in fact these two battles border on being an outlier result due to extreme circumstances.  To wit:

Big contributing factors were mainly some dubious army building decisions (noted at the time),

That's a big deal right there.  I'd argue that at that moment, the opponent to the M&M wasn't playing at a pro level.  This is not to take anything away from either you or Niko as I'm willing to bet you guys are better players than me.  But you're still human (well...close enough in Niko's case ), and so clearly made either bad decisions or took a gamble on army builds that really didn't pay off.  Again, this isn't taking away anything from you guys as I myself have documented battle reports of me making bonehead 'rookie' mistakes.  But in this case, the opponent to the M&M wasn't playing at the pro level during the army design phase and so that tilts things in favor of the M&M faction.

crazy dice (I don't think the mercs failed a single courage check in the first battle),

Okay, well, when you pass all of your Courage Checks, you win.   Period.  End-of-story.  You Win, Full Stop. 

I mean that's some crazy freakish dice because the vast majority of Monsters & Mercs are Cge 11, so that's passing a 50/50 check far more than half the time.  Then, because most M&M units only have 2 Yellow boxes, you'll be taking a second Cge check (at Cge 9) pretty quicklu.  And passing a check you should fail 2/3s of the time is like passing a Cge check on a 16 or less, rolling a 17, then playing a reroll w/+1 Cge command card and rolling an 18:  yeah it happens, but its pretty far out on that bell curve.

So while this is a case of dice influencing the game, there does hit a point where they influence the game so severely as to not be a good data point.  Meaning that not only do they not provide good information from which a person can draw a valid conclusion, they actually incline the person to drawing the incorrect conclusion.  In simple terms, you wouldn't advise a person that "this faction is awesome, if you roll three 1s with your Courage Checks 90% of the time."  Similarly, I'd say its incorrect to base opinions of the power ranking of a faction based on a game where you had freakish dice.

and card draw (I got ordered retreats, he got oathbounds).

This one is almost certainly legitimate.  If you draw the best cards in your deck, that's where the card draw can influence the outcome of a game and negate any innate discrepancies in power ranking between two factions.




Again, none of this is to say that you're wrong that the vagaries of the game can make the factions that are paper less weak not be so in practice.  I still think there are some issues on those factions that should be addressed, but also agree that its not as much a crisis as has been made out here on the forums (by me included, not absolving myself  ).  I'm just saying that these particular games you played probably aren't the best evidence that everything's fine.   

[Uriel Doombringer]

I'm not persuaded. Actually - I think everything is fine. (though I agree with Niko that the meta really strongly favors cheap chump units right now and that the HE's not having any is a tremendous weakness)

The point is that dice and generalship and card draw and deployment will 90+% of the time matter more than which particular army you brought. And that means the game is fine. There is no mythical game where all the dice rolls come out statistically average, where you've always got the best card for the situation, where all players deployments and command options have been optimized and arbitraged to some sort of weird two player pareto optimum command situation. Never gonna happen. And honestly - that would be a shitty game it it were possible. Why play a game that can be predicted up front?

I don't disagree that Mercs are an uphill struggle much of the time, but that's why I like playing them: they are a bit like the halflings of Blood Bowl. Sure you're not gonna win often, but it's awesome when you do. And that's OK.

[Niko White]

Also to be fair all of Seth's merc guys with courage stats were ogres, who have quite nice courage.  Odds weren't bad he'd fail one of the important routs, but they certainly weren't great.