Dagger fuel consumption

[Sulla]

[Mod]Mod's note:
split from thread "biggest nerf -- biggest buff -- opinions" due to becoming an interesting topic but completely off-topic from the initial thread.
Calisson
[/Mod]



...Sounds like someone relied on the sac. dagger a little too much before?

Look at the sac. dagger from the point of view of someone coming into the book totally new and it's not too bad; the option to kill a trooper to 50% of the time get an extra dice is great compared to what most armies get. It's only when you compare it to the old book and its underpriced infantry and guaranteed success that make it look bad.

PoD on the other hand is a poor spell. A pair of poor buffs that rely on the mage being able to heal him/herself.

Magic is fine now IMO. The ability to spam soulblight or doombolt without spending hero or lord slots. The ability to take lvl1s with wyssans wild form or light councils ora lvl4 with heavens to force gunlines to come towards me and avoid the comets I call down on them. Yes we are just as starved of dice as other armies at times, but in return we have far more options and far less need than the last army which lived of mindrazor or throwing purple suns down the enemy flank. I like what they've done.

[Liquidedust]

...Sounds like someone relied on the sac. dagger a little too much before?

Look at the sac. dagger from the point of view of someone coming into the book totally new and it's not too bad; the option to kill a trooper to 50% of the time get an extra dice is great compared to what most armies get. It's only when you compare it to the old book and its underpriced infantry and guaranteed success that make it look bad.

PoD on the other hand is a poor spell. A pair of poor buffs that rely on the mage being able to heal him/herself.

Magic is fine now IMO. The ability to spam soulblight or doombolt without spending hero or lord slots. The ability to take lvl1s with wyssans wild form or light councils ora lvl4 with heavens to force gunlines to come towards me and avoid the comets I call down on them. Yes we are just as starved of dice as other armies at times, but in return we have far more options and far less need than the last army which lived of mindrazor or throwing purple suns down the enemy flank. I like what they've done.

Well on average it will cost you 1.5 models over time per dice when using the dagger, which isn't -that- bad really. Though individual castings and battles this will of course vary a bit.

[Calisson]

Well on average it will cost you 1.5 models over time per dice when using the dagger, which isn't -that- bad really. Though individual castings and battles this will of course vary a bit.

Not 1.5 average, that's 2 average.
Old dagger: kill 6pts model, get 100% +1PD, in average 6 pts worth per PD
New dagger: kill 9pts model, get 50% +1PD, in average 18 pts worth per PD... and 3% of the time, even 5 kills won't be enough =>

[Liquidedust]

Technically depends on if you count the diffrent rolls as individual sets or part of a set in regards to probability really

Though I did my math wrong, it is closer to somewhere around 2.3~2.5 models per PD over time.

[Canadianguy]

so we have a good idea of the cost now look at the benefit. It allows you to increase your magic efficiency,which is huge.
You can go for 2 level 4 s and if one has death you get even more efficiency. I think it is a no brainer in a heavy magic list and the synergy with life is to good to pass up.

[Setomidor]

Technically depends on if you count the diffrent rolls as individual sets or part of a set in regards to probability really

Though I did my math wrong, it is closer to somewhere around 2.3~2.5 models per PD over time.

We're dealing with a binomial distribution, with the probability (p) of a successful stab being 0.5. the finite mean is 1/p which is 2, and the probability of a successful stab occuring in the n:th attempt is given by a geometric distribution p(1 - p)^(n-1). However, the expected number of attempts before being guaranteed an additional die is represented by the binomial sum of this distribution, which is actually infinite.

To give a meaningful answer you have to consider a specific percentage, like the 95% percentile (i.e., in 95% of the cases you would have gotten an extra die by now). A small table follows:

Code: Select all

+-------+---------+
| Rolls | Chance  |
+-------+---------+
|     1 | 50%     |
|     2 | 75%     |
|     3 | 87.5%   |
|     4 | 93.75%  |
|     5 | 96.875% |
+-------+---------+

However, over time this will converge towards the mean, which is 2.

As I'm more of a CS geek than statistician, I ran the numbers also using monte-carlo simulations:

Code: Select all

rounds: 1000000, rolls: 2002389, avg rolls needed: 2.002389

[Liquidedust]

Concede my point then, not a statistician either so just cheat and dabble in statistics on occasion

Though a million occurances is a really really large set for a single general in regards to the dagger I'd say

[Dalamar]

I always recognized dagger as a last ditch effort to preveng your level 4 from losing concentration. Its new rules still fulfill that role nicely, you just can't go around stabbinv your own troops with impunity.

[Liquidedust]

I always recognized dagger as a last ditch effort to preveng your level 4 from losing concentration. Its new rules still fulfill that role nicely, you just can't go around stabbinv your own troops with impunity.

We're Dark Elves though, of course we can!

[Jolemai]

They also respawn before the next battle so...

[Canadianguy]

With life the now can come back!

[Dalamar]

Except life is a pretty bad lore aside from maybe two spells.

[harshey]

Except life is a pretty bad lore aside from maybe two spells.

Throne is good too. Good for your opponent.

Life is only good if you have a lot of dice, which I would never want to bank on.

[Archamedius]

I think life is great for 4 spells, 5 if you include Dwellers.

Think on this:

A level 4 Life Sorc with the Sac dagger:

I average 7 dice on my roll, 3 and 4. My opponent has 4 dice to dispel.

I start with Throne of Vines. I use 1 dice. It's an 8+ to cast, and I get +4. I have a 50% chance to get it of on 1 dice, and if I don't, I can reasonably guarantee I will get it off with the sac dagger.

THen I cast Earthblood, another 8+ cast with the same chances to succeed.

Then I cast Flesh to Stone, again another 8+ cast with the same chances to succeed.

That still leaves me dice left over to cast regrowth on the unit to cover back the casualties from sac dagger and perhaps some combat casualties as well.

Your opponent on the other hand is forced to use his dispel dice sparingly. If he is saavy, he may throw two dice at your throne of vines in an attempt to mitigate the other spells effectiveness, saving the other two for regrowth. But then he only has two dice left, and you can still sac dagger the smaller buffs and throw everything else at regrowth. And with perhaps 5 dice against his two, you will almost certainly get regrowth off through his dispel dice.

So even in poor circumstances through this scenario, you still have a unit that is toughness 5, either the same unit or another with 5+ regen, and healed through some combat casualties and the sac dagger. And if things go your way, its T7 elves and 4+ regen. How is that not good? Oh, and your wizard has 2+ ignore miscast protection.

[Dalamar]

I let you cast all of it except flesh to stone. Unless I expect dwellers then I keep my dice for that.

Flesh to stone or earthblood? I'll pick on a different unit. Regrowth? I'd probably try and stop it on PG anything else isn't that hard to kill. Throne, knock yourself out. It's a spell you have to cast to even have a reasonable lore so I can save my dice for actual threats.

[Helle]

As the Throne of Vines is RiP, you can only ignore it on your opponent's first turn. The turns after he will be casting great spells. If you use your power dice to dispell it on your turn, the Throne has achieved some decent magic defense (plus additional effects on opponent's turn).

I don't like the lore either and think that the Throne is a bad spell, but you cannot ignore it as easily as just described.

[Dalamar]

Yeah, I'll just use a couple dice to dispel it in my magic phase evening it out. Not an issue.

Light magic is dangerous
Shadow magic is dangerous
Death magic is dangerous
High magic is dangerous
Dark magic is dangerous
Life magic is meh

[TheGrayMist]

My other army is Lizards and Life was the lore of choice in the old book. Most people didn't bother with Throne and threw their dice at dwellers, flesh to stone or regrowth. I have to say that is most annoying having played Life solidly for 12 months.

The biggest spell is going to be flesh to stone. T7 Elves that put out that much damage (with all the rerolls) but take very little back can really turn a combat in your favour and if it's the main combat, it can turn the game in your favour.

Although I love Life as a lore, I dont think it synergises well with our army because DE's are designed to hit quickly and cause max damage. Life is very defensive. It might be useful for making sure units get into combat, but as a personal preference I prefer that there be less enemy when I reach them. If you were taking a deathstar of something you'd stick your wizard in it with a ward and Life would probably be a better choice. That's why it worked for Lizards, because the Slann and Temple Guard block became an unmovable object. If you are doing that, you probably want the maximum protection so you'd be taking corsairs for the save if they did manage to make it through the T7, you then have a 4+ armour and then you'd have the 4+ regen. That's what life is designed to do.

Could it work on Executioners? Absolutely. It's just that if you don't get your toughness spell off it might hurt more than when compared to other options eg. hexes for less hits and wounds. At least Lizards had T4 to fall back on.

[Lysanthyr]

My biggest problem with Life is that I face Skaven on a somewhat regualar basis and the Bell has the chance of destroying anyhing with T7 or higher. I watched an Empire player lose an entire unit of Greatswords, who hadn't even seen combat yet, due to this. After that, I swore off Life, or at least even thinking about making units T7. Would much rather run a couple of Lvl1's and o out of Beasts for sig spell and get +1S and T. Have two of the go off on WE and all of a sudden, S5 T5 becomes very good indeed, especially with poison and the Razor Standard.

[Archamedius]

My biggest problem with Life is that I face Skaven on a somewhat regualar basis and the Bell has the chance of destroying anyhing with T7 or higher. I watched an Empire player lose an entire unit of Greatswords, who hadn't even seen combat yet, due to this. After that, I swore off Life, or at least even thinking about making units T7. Would much rather run a couple of Lvl1's and o out of Beasts for sig spell and get +1S and T. Have two of the go off on WE and all of a sudden, S5 T5 becomes very good indeed, especially with poison and the Razor Standard.

How do you get two signature spells? I thought you could not have the spell on more than one wizard at a time, due to the spell selection rules.

[Calisson]

How do you get two signature spells? I thought you could not have the spell on more than one wizard at a time, due to the spell selection rules.

You can get as many sig spells as you wish. They are exempt from "no duplicate". See BRB p.490, § "SIGNATURE SPELLS".