A Melee Perspective on the HeroScape Power Rankings

[Matthias Maccabeus]

Originally Posted by yagyuninja

Quick question, Matthias. Have you played much against Silver Surfer with pure melee? How did it work out? I see you put him down in the Bs so it must not have been too frightening.

I would say probably not, however please remember that a B is a good ranking. Just because a certain unit is not an A doesn't mean it sucks. I was happy to get Bs in College.

[MattserTruckRally]

Adding more fire to the 10th >=< 4th debate. I do find it interesting that the 4th are rated a little low here. While 10th/Raelin/Marcus is Matthias poison wouldn't 4th/Raelin/Marcus be in the same vain if someone tried it? It's a decent option at a lower point format like 460 or even opens up the door at 530 by adding a 5th set of 4th.

[jschild]

A slow spread with Knights will corner him on virtually any map. It's worked for me vs. my wife.

[Matthias Maccabeus]

Originally Posted by MattserTruckRally

Adding more fire to the 10th >=< 4th debate. I do find it interesting that the 4th are rated a little low here. While 10th/Raelin/Marcus is Matthias poison wouldn't 4th/Raelin/Marcus be in the same vain if someone tried it? It's a decent option at a lower point format like 460 or even opens up the door at 530 by adding a 5th set of 4th.

That's an excellent point. I think in today's metagame (sans Ohio) it's mostly about valiant 4th. It's funny that I don't think I've ever lost to 4th with a melee bonding squad and I only know of one loss with just a melee (non-bonding) squad which was an extremely close game. Is that 5th defense and bayonet charge the deal breaker is the question I guess?

[The Champion of Weston]

Wow this thread was made for me, I'm love melee units. Almost none of my armies have a ranged unit. Glad to see another Knights of Weston fan. I will definitely keep track of this thread.

[yagyuninja]

Originally Posted by Matthias Maccabeus

I would say probably not, however please remember that a B is a good ranking. Just because a certain unit is not an A doesn't mean it sucks. I was happy to get Bs in College.

Right. Lots of other strong nasty stuff there in the B+ arena. Thanks.

[ElvenEnvy]

Originally Posted by Matthias Maccabeus

That's an excellent point. I think in today's metagame (sans Ohio) it's mostly about valiant 4th. It's funny that I don't think I've ever lost to 4th with a melee bonding squad and I only know of one loss with just a melee (non-bonding) squad which was an extremely close game. Is that 5th defense and bayonet charge the deal breaker is the question I guess?

I find most people play Valiant Mass or Mass+Suicide Unit. Valiant Mass is a no brainer. Mass+Suicide Unit helps in bad match-ups and makes opponents choose between manuevering around a potentially powerful Suicide Unit or playing against Valiant Mass. When you start to play 4th and several other units (eg. Raelin, Marcus, and filler), your completely giving up Valiance and not getting the benefit of suicide units. When Raelin, Marcus, and the filler die, most of your 4th will probably be gone, that's going into Non-Valiant Mass. If you're giving up Valiance for 90% of the game, you might as well be playing 10th.

That said, I suppose it would be interesting to try 4th/Raelin/Marcus at 530. Not having to take the filler and getting the extra squad might do the trick.

[Devil's Advocate]

Originally Posted by Aldin

Sure there is, all I do is click your name and voila! Add Devil's Advocate to Your Ignore List is an option.

More to the point, melee has plenty of reasons to both fear and appreciate Theracus more than Stingers. Theracus provides mobility which can be difficult for melee to counter or which can be very appreciated by melee in getting important units into useful positions sooner.

~Aldin, ascendingly

Adding someone to a list is not an Ignore Button. An Ignore Button would be a button with the word Ignore on it.

[Killometer]

Originally Posted by Devil's Advocate

Adding someone to a list is not an Ignore Button. An Ignore Button would be a button with the word Ignore on it.

We've already had this conversation. Please do not clutter up another useful thread with the same idiotic semantic arguments.

To add something useful to this thread, you've created a very nice looking bell curve, MM. I charted it in Excel along side Jexik's ratings, but I'm to computer illiterate to port it here.

[Devil's Advocate]

Originally Posted by dok

DA's snark aside, I guess I'm confused as to exactly what perspective you're writing from here.

My comment is not snarkie at all. He is saying that Theracus is more tournament competitive than Stingers, TKN, Zombies, and Red Wyrmlings against Melee armies despite their being literally no results to support this claim and with evidence to the contrary being abuntantly clear.

[dok]

Originally Posted by Devil's Advocate

My comment is not snarkie at all.

Your comment was snarky. You were trying to make a reasonable point, but that doesn't change that you were making your point in a snarky way.

This reminds me of a line from one of my favorite movies...

Originally Posted by Devil's Advocate

He is saying that Theracus is more tournament competitive than Stingers, TKN, Zombies, and Red Wyrmlings against Melee armies despite their being literally no results to support this claim and with evidence to the contrary being abuntantly clear.

I think he explained his point of view reasonably well in his response to me:

Originally Posted by Matthias Maccabeus

It's more (and perhaps I should change the title) from the perspective of a melee enthusiasts players perspective. Does that make sense?

I figured my Stinger rating would be the most controversial with players. In my experiences with melee, especially melee bonding Stingers just lose almost every time. If it weren't for the back-stab of Hawthrone I think my tourney record against stingers with melee bonding armies would be like 15-0 (or something very close to that).

So, he's not saying "armies with Theracus are going to win as many events as armies with stingers". What he's saying is, "stingers don't scare knight and orc armies, and Theracus is handy for knight armies".

I think that's a reasonable viewpoint. I am not sure I really agree, since it seems like a good rats+stingers build could beat a good knight army on most maps a decent percentage of the time. But the important thing to realize here is that Matthias is not using the same approach to make his power rankings as Jexik/spider_poison used to make theirs.

[killercactus]

I think all that Matthias is saying about Stingers is that they suck against bonded melée. That's true. They only attack 3 times, have short range and their extra attack is often wasted.

That being said, I'd think that Heavies might be a bit afraid of them since they can potentially kill Grimnak so fast. Of course, one turn of misses and they're probably tied down by heavies.

I don't really get how the 4th are so much worse than the 10th here. Maybe it really is the ability to make better use of Raelin against them, who knows. I'd still think continous WTF attacks from height on the way in would suck. What's the play against that, Matthias? Build up just outside their range so that you can quickly reinforce the charge?