D.R.A.I.C.H. Statistics on our elite troops (updated 6/10)
Posted: Wed Oct 05, 2011 9:01 am
Hi folks!
Lately I have seen plenty of topics on weather BG or Witches are better troops. This is naturally very dependent on what you are fighting, but more importantly, many people seem to miss that executioners cost roughly the same points, they become stubborn with the cauldron and against many unit types they perform very similarly. Therefore I did the math (as I tend to do when no one is watching, lol) and I will try to present it here in a way that should be easy to understand.
In these calculations I will assume that you have a unit 20 man strong (because of the limitations of BG) that is deployed 7 guys wide, and you have full command group. I did NOT count on any magic items/gifts on the champions, since that is very customizable. Also I assumed that you have Banner of Murder on all units. You could skip this on the executioners, and use the flaming banner instead, and it wouldn’t change the result in any big way. This will of course allow them to murder anything with regeneration without reducing their ability to murder normal troops in any meaningful way. Putting flaming banner on witches or BG will however reduce their usefulness substantially against other units, and therefore it is very uncommon. I did not calculate (yet) for larger units of WE or Executioners, but I will probably make a comparison between a horde of WE and one of Executioners. Also, remember that these results do not show everything. The enemy will usually get to hit you back, and then the Witches are usually more vulnerable than BG or executioners.
The calculations are made by calculating the number of wounds each unit would cause against the intended target and then dividing the results by the number of points they cost. This becomes a tiny number, but it will show in a very good way how the different elites compare to each other on a “points for points” basis.
I did not include any buffs on the units, such as the cauldron or magic buffs. This is because there are just so many possibilities to combine the two, but all in all you can say that the cauldron buff will benefit executioners the most (+1A for them is stronger than KB or +1A for Witches/BG in most reasonable cases) but witches will benefit the most from magic buffs such as mind razor because of their huge number of attacks. If you want the exact numbers you will have to crunch them yourselves
Also, I did not include any ward saves the foe may have. The reason is simple. Ward saves do not affect the relative results. Yes your unit will do less wounds, but the reduction is the exact same for all alternatives.
I did however include our special rules, such as hatred, poison and killing blow. Also I calculated for the first round (with hatred) and subsequent rounds (without hatred, except for BG). In short you can say that a big bar in the diagram means good, and a small bar means bad Now, on to the results!
First up we have infantry. I chose to test against 4 common versions of enemy infantry, and here are the results:
Next, we have Cavalry. There are many different types of cavalry, and I chose 4 of the more common ones. Here are the results:
Last and definitely not least we have the monstrous types. I included ogres here since they are now a real threat to everything. People might actually choose to play them! Here are the results. Remember that the hydras regeneration is not included, so most of the time you will only cause half the number of wounds, but again, the relative results will not change.
I will not draw any conclusions myself here, but I hope this data will help you guys to draw your own conclusions on what to chose against different opponents. I hope I will find the time to update these results with hordes as well in the future. We shall see. Thank you for reading.
/T
EDIT/UPDATE:
I have now made the calculations for a horde. Since BG has a limit of 20 soldiers, i have not included them here. I am still assuming Banner of Murder on both units, and I am assuming that you have a cauldron to buff them with (it would be silly to take a horde of khainites and no CoB). Surprisingly(to some maybe?) It is not a good idea to buff witches with Killing blow unless they are fighting against targets with a very high Armour Save. These results are for executioners always buffed with +1A and Witches buffed with +1A against infantry and monsters, but with killing blow against cavalry (yep, i can actually calculate for how poison and killing blow interacts). I am also assuming that you have at least 30 models alive to strike. As you can see the diagrams are now turned the other way, and sorted a bit differently. The red bars are now executioners, and the blue are for WE. 1 and 2 on the x-axis stands for round 1 and round 2(and on).
First we have fights against other infantry. The results may be surprising to some. Witches only beat the executioners against WS3, T3 targets!
Next we have cavalry. It should come as no surprise that executioners stand out here. Next!
Last we have the monsters. It is not reasonable to assume that the monster has a wide enough base for all your horde to strike, but the relative results will not change if less than a 10 model frontage can make contact since witches and executioners have the same base size.
As you can see, executioners scale very very well when they are deployed as a horde. They also scale better with the CoB buff than Witches do. the reason for this is very simple. Executioners go from having 2 attacks per "file" to having 4 attacks per file. That is an increase by 100%. Witches on the other hand go from having 4 to having 6 attacks per file, a measly 50% increase when deployed as a horde with the CoB buff.
Lately I have seen plenty of topics on weather BG or Witches are better troops. This is naturally very dependent on what you are fighting, but more importantly, many people seem to miss that executioners cost roughly the same points, they become stubborn with the cauldron and against many unit types they perform very similarly. Therefore I did the math (as I tend to do when no one is watching, lol) and I will try to present it here in a way that should be easy to understand.
In these calculations I will assume that you have a unit 20 man strong (because of the limitations of BG) that is deployed 7 guys wide, and you have full command group. I did NOT count on any magic items/gifts on the champions, since that is very customizable. Also I assumed that you have Banner of Murder on all units. You could skip this on the executioners, and use the flaming banner instead, and it wouldn’t change the result in any big way. This will of course allow them to murder anything with regeneration without reducing their ability to murder normal troops in any meaningful way. Putting flaming banner on witches or BG will however reduce their usefulness substantially against other units, and therefore it is very uncommon. I did not calculate (yet) for larger units of WE or Executioners, but I will probably make a comparison between a horde of WE and one of Executioners. Also, remember that these results do not show everything. The enemy will usually get to hit you back, and then the Witches are usually more vulnerable than BG or executioners.
The calculations are made by calculating the number of wounds each unit would cause against the intended target and then dividing the results by the number of points they cost. This becomes a tiny number, but it will show in a very good way how the different elites compare to each other on a “points for points” basis.
I did not include any buffs on the units, such as the cauldron or magic buffs. This is because there are just so many possibilities to combine the two, but all in all you can say that the cauldron buff will benefit executioners the most (+1A for them is stronger than KB or +1A for Witches/BG in most reasonable cases) but witches will benefit the most from magic buffs such as mind razor because of their huge number of attacks. If you want the exact numbers you will have to crunch them yourselves
Also, I did not include any ward saves the foe may have. The reason is simple. Ward saves do not affect the relative results. Yes your unit will do less wounds, but the reduction is the exact same for all alternatives.
I did however include our special rules, such as hatred, poison and killing blow. Also I calculated for the first round (with hatred) and subsequent rounds (without hatred, except for BG). In short you can say that a big bar in the diagram means good, and a small bar means bad Now, on to the results!
First up we have infantry. I chose to test against 4 common versions of enemy infantry, and here are the results:
Next, we have Cavalry. There are many different types of cavalry, and I chose 4 of the more common ones. Here are the results:
Last and definitely not least we have the monstrous types. I included ogres here since they are now a real threat to everything. People might actually choose to play them! Here are the results. Remember that the hydras regeneration is not included, so most of the time you will only cause half the number of wounds, but again, the relative results will not change.
I will not draw any conclusions myself here, but I hope this data will help you guys to draw your own conclusions on what to chose against different opponents. I hope I will find the time to update these results with hordes as well in the future. We shall see. Thank you for reading.
/T
EDIT/UPDATE:
I have now made the calculations for a horde. Since BG has a limit of 20 soldiers, i have not included them here. I am still assuming Banner of Murder on both units, and I am assuming that you have a cauldron to buff them with (it would be silly to take a horde of khainites and no CoB). Surprisingly(to some maybe?) It is not a good idea to buff witches with Killing blow unless they are fighting against targets with a very high Armour Save. These results are for executioners always buffed with +1A and Witches buffed with +1A against infantry and monsters, but with killing blow against cavalry (yep, i can actually calculate for how poison and killing blow interacts). I am also assuming that you have at least 30 models alive to strike. As you can see the diagrams are now turned the other way, and sorted a bit differently. The red bars are now executioners, and the blue are for WE. 1 and 2 on the x-axis stands for round 1 and round 2(and on).
First we have fights against other infantry. The results may be surprising to some. Witches only beat the executioners against WS3, T3 targets!
Next we have cavalry. It should come as no surprise that executioners stand out here. Next!
Last we have the monsters. It is not reasonable to assume that the monster has a wide enough base for all your horde to strike, but the relative results will not change if less than a 10 model frontage can make contact since witches and executioners have the same base size.
As you can see, executioners scale very very well when they are deployed as a horde. They also scale better with the CoB buff than Witches do. the reason for this is very simple. Executioners go from having 2 attacks per "file" to having 4 attacks per file. That is an increase by 100%. Witches on the other hand go from having 4 to having 6 attacks per file, a measly 50% increase when deployed as a horde with the CoB buff.