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  #133  
Old April 16th, 2020, 12:27 PM
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Re: Casters of Valhalla

It’s more of a general question than a specific one targeting a specific player’s rankings. It did come up based of OEAO’s rankings yes, but I was asking more as a generality.

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  #134  
Old April 16th, 2020, 12:41 PM
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Re: Casters of Valhalla

Personally I think you have to evaluate a unit, generally speaking, on its own. I mean what good does it do to evaluate a unit based on +1 defense that it *might* have during a battle? What about Raelin with +2 defense? Are you now going do more ranks based on that?

Suffice to say that adding defense to pretty much most units makes them more effective than they were but what does that really prove?
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  #135  
Old April 16th, 2020, 01:06 PM
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Re: Casters of Valhalla

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Originally Posted by Raider30 View Post
Personally I think you have to evaluate a unit, generally speaking, on its own. I mean what good does it do to evaluate a unit based on +1 defense that it *might* have during a battle? What about Raelin with +2 defense? Are you now going do more ranks based on that?

Suffice to say that adding defense to pretty much most units makes them more effective than they were but what does that really prove?
It lets you know how good it is in its best builds. This matters because Raelin is good for everything (even 4th Mass) but much more important for some builds than others. This is what OEA1 was talking about in his brief voice-over that replaced the discussion in the podcast.

For something like Knights of Weston, Raelin doesn't really help much - they work much better relying on their high base defense, and being able to swarm the map without being tethered to Raelin. In some extremely defensive matchups Raelin will help, but in most matchups it's not as significant. If given the choice between 4 squads and Raelin, or 5 squads, 5 squads is usually better. Of course, they're "A" already, but that's really not at all because of the presence of Raelin.

By contrast, Elf Wizards get an enormous benefit from having Raelin, to the point that the army would have to be at least one and maybe two ranks lower if you're not willing to consider how strong the Raelin-inclusive army is.

Again, it's just a question of the approach. I think it's more useful to ask "how valuable is the unit in its best army" than "how valuable is the unit on its own", because it tells people more about how competitive that unit truly is in tournament play.
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  #136  
Old April 16th, 2020, 01:59 PM
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Re: Casters of Valhalla

“Again, it's just a question of the approach. I think it's more useful to ask "how valuable is the unit in its best army" than "how valuable is the unit on its own", because it tells people more about how competitive that unit truly is in tournament play.”

I suppose to me the flaw in that logic is that people won’t always play a unit “in its best army”. So a ranking based on a best army scenario doesn’t really do much for anything but that scenario. I mean nagrubs would get a high rank using that logic in a tork and Raelin army. But remove them from a “best army” scenario and nobody plays them?

I get what you are saying to a point, but it feels more like you are ranking “best armies” rather than units.


Then again I sometimes look at things in an odd way so maybe don’t mind me.
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  #137  
Old April 16th, 2020, 02:11 PM
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Re: Casters of Valhalla

you're spot on @Raider30 . The rankings are designed for 500 point, 24 space, double blind, tournament map, tournament glyph, and competitive scenes. But most of the power rankings, if not all, are very explicit about this limitation of assessment. An 'army' power ranking would be more useful if being used to create a competitive army within that framework as it eliminate the guesswork you have to do to assume what the 'best' army being used is.

It loses value, sometimes wildly so, when applying the myriad of point totals, maps, glyphs, figure limits, competition levels, and formats that are played. But it still directionally accurate, taken as a whole, when applying those other options.

BUT it is much simpler than creating an all inclusive army style list for each unit. It is directionally correct for the most part and it leads to interesting debate and discussion about heroscape units, which gets a from me.
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  #138  
Old April 16th, 2020, 02:12 PM
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Re: Casters of Valhalla

Well, to a certain extent, anybody considers some version of an ideal army composition. You could play Greenscales without a Dragon, right? They'd be B- or C+ or something, because that would be a trash army. But nobody really ranks them that way, because their value comes from their combination with Nilfheim or Othkurik or Braxas.
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  #139  
Old April 16th, 2020, 02:23 PM
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Re: Casters of Valhalla

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Originally Posted by superfrog View Post
Well, to a certain extent, anybody considers some version of an ideal army composition. You could play Greenscales without a Dragon, right? They'd be B- or C+ or something, because that would be a trash army. But nobody really ranks them that way, because their value comes from their combination with Nilfheim or Othkurik or Braxas.
Right, you basically *have* to consider army context to some extent. It's just a question of how much you consider it.

I also want to push back on the idea that this turns it into an "army power rankings" of sorts. Because as I said, the idea is to measure the *value* the unit delivers in its best army. That doesn't necessarily tell you how strong the overall army is. This is why Arkmer can be a B+ while most of his elf wizard brethren sit at B.
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  #140  
Old April 16th, 2020, 03:13 PM
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Re: Casters of Valhalla

That’s kind of what I had in mind when I said generally. Evaluating a unit with a complimentary unit designed to boost them seems reasonable. So evaluating tork based on his interaction with nagrubs is more reasonable, or greenscales + dragon, or knights + Gilbert, than evaluating tork based what units you can pluck from the whole of heroscape to make him better.

Because then you aren’t really looking at his worth. You are looking at his worth based on if this or if that. Which, again maybe it’s my odd way off seeing this, but that doesn’t feel right.

Though perhaps it has some knowledge value if you were say drafting or playing in one of those events where you remove units. I can see the value in having those ‘if this or if that’ combination rankings in your knowledge base. But I’m old and that’s too complicated for me.
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  #141  
Old April 16th, 2020, 03:32 PM
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Re: Casters of Valhalla

I like @OrcElfArmyOne 's comment in the podcast that there are 3 types of armies:
  • Those that Raelin does not help and probably hurts: Melee bonding armies, Fast armies, some Pod armies
  • Armies that Raelin helps but is not necessary: Most Rage B&B based armies, Soulborg other Heavy Hitter based armies, other Pod armies
  • Amries that almost require Raelin to be effective: Greenscales+Dragon, Elf Wizards, TKN+Grubs

With this in mind I think units in armies that require Raelin to be effective should include Realin in mind when ranking. Phantom Knights and Dwarves should not. 10th, Stingers, Majors could maybe have Raelin affect ratings slightly. To their discussion on Sentinels or Minions, you can either play them with Atlaga and play fast, or you can play with Raelin and slow-roll, so Raelin should affect ratings slightly if that is the best way to play.
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  #142  
Old April 16th, 2020, 05:26 PM
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Re: Casters of Valhalla

Long post...

I don’t see how else you can rank the units if you’re not assuming they’re being played in armies that maximize their value. I understand that ‘best army’ for each unit is wildly debatable, and on top of that it varies depending on format, but I think any pretty good player has an idea of what a list of strongest (or at least strong) armies for a unit looks like. The best Blasts army is obviously going to have Glads, Greenscales are going to have a dragon, Drones and Zombies are going to have a lot of each, Marcus is going to have soldiers, etc. I don’t really see the point of ranking things like TKN without grubs or Gilbert without bonding melee other than theorizing about it.

If you want a list of units that are good no matter what army build you play them in and have nearly 0 dependence on the other units in your army, then it looks something like Q9, Q10, Kaemon Awa, MW, Hydra, Nilfheim, Isamu, Marcu, maybe Eltahale, maybe some lower stuff like Charos. I’m reluctant to even say any common squads if it’s not assumed you’ll run multiples. But I don’t see why a list that goes through every unit for that metric would be the way to go.

It would be nice if Heroscape had more restrictions in what army building and tournament play had to be, but there’s really almost no restriction on what you can and can’t have in your army. Other than point and figure/hex limit. You don’t have to stay within a faction, or general, or include a certain amount of heroes or squads. We as a community have essentially agreed that competitive discussion should assume around 400pt.-600pt. army builds, 16-24 figure (used to be 24, and hex), and on modern day competitive maps and glyph pool. Now there’s plenty of variants within that and some tournaments delve outside of that a bit, but keeping that as the landmark for competitive discussion I think is needed and I don’t think changing it would do any good. And I will say I personally don’t think the general rankings change that much for variants within those parameters. And I love the flexibility in army building, I’m was just saying it would be easier for competitive discussion if there were more restrictions and building rules, not that I necessarily want it.

(RtW has a competitive discussion around it too, that should be pretty separate imo)

@Kinseth Yeah, I think I understand what you’re saying. With my rankings where I rank units out of 10, I wanted to spread the units a bit more evenly down the list and lessen the top-heavy-ness. But I think that incentive might just be due to an overall problem I have with the bottom half of others’ rankings. And to be fair, when you discuss competitive play you tend not to give a crap about the bottom half of the units because they’re not viable or rarely seen lol, so it doesn’t bug me too much. I think the top half of Orc’s rankings and Dok’s VC rankings, and to a lesser extent Spider’s/Jexik’s original rankings (since they’re 10 years old), are solid and accurate. But I like trying to get any idea of what the bottom half looks like even though it’s almost taboo in competitive talk. Maybe you feel the same way.

As far as Raelin and how her inclusion in armies and rankings goes...I think most of the time she’s great but debatable how necessary she is regarding a unit’s rank, sometimes she’s actually not wanted for a unit to get its full potential (knights, 4th, Vipers) and actually makes the units worse (though I’m reluctant to say Raelin makes anything bad), and some units she’s definitely necessary for them to reach their potential (Elf Wizards, Mohicans, probably Ashigaru, maybe Trons). I personally don’t think Raelin is as necessary as most players probably do a lot of the time, and I also don’t really like/play Raelin as much as most competitive players do, but I think it’s pretty agreed she’s universally great and there aren’t many units/armies that don’t want her. But want and need are two different things.

I don’t think TKN/Grubs is as dependent on her as Mike thinks, I think you can do a lot with that army outside of Raelin, but Raelin’s obviously great. I can see the Nilf/Greenscales argument more although I’m still hesitant to say Raelin’s a must with it, I guess it depends on the number of Greenscales, the higher the numbers the more I see her as a necessity. Mike’s probably in the right there, but I don’t want to jump and say Nilf/Greenscales doesn’t work without her. Greenscales are always a tricky discussion because there’s so much flexibility and many army types with them, a lot of which are unexplored.

(Speaking of Raelin necessity and that whole discussion, there’s a similar discussion to be had about the Rats I’d say. They are also near-universally helpful and enhancing, I even put them over Raelin personally, but it’s stupid close. But this post is getting long enough and that’s a whole other topic...)
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  #143  
Old April 16th, 2020, 06:05 PM
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Re: Casters of Valhalla

I don’t think anyone is saying rank Gilbert without knights or vice versa.

It’s more, “but with Raelin they have 5 defense.” That’s what I’m referring to. Do my chain fighters get better because they have 7 move with the Warden? Sure but that’s not a reason to rank them higher is it? But wait they have 6 defense with Raelin and 7 move with the Warden and only need an 8 with Lodin for chain grab and on a dungeon map they only need a 9 for hide in darkness. Oh and if you throw in the Nakitas and Arkmer they can chain grab into an engagement strike. That’s at least A- right there. All of that for 25 points! What a bargain!

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  #144  
Old April 16th, 2020, 08:18 PM
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Re: Casters of Valhalla

I think the best way a figure can be rated is "how much does a figure contribute to winning competitive games in their best builds". And best builds and contribution are gradients. Like Kyntela's best build is obviously Raelin Rats Q9 20 points short, but she's contributing nothing there, she contributes more to a winning build in elf wizards so that's how she's rated. Likewise WWL contributes a lot to a Wolves of Badru army, but you'll struggle to win games with that against good armies so he's rated lower than Kyntela.

So I don't see how you can completely throw Raelin out, since she definitely does disproportionately benefit particular figures. I don't know if you guys are right about which ones she benefits (melee bonding is great with Raelin if you have MBS: Romans, Deathchasers) but that's a different debate. GladBlast is a top tier army, but it always fares poorly in general wars because it can't bring Raelin there. General Wars works as a format because Raelin disproportionately doesn't benefit Jandar figures actually.

Anyways. Whether TKN is B+. He's hard to theoryscape because games with and against TKN are actually pretty skill intensive in terms of the importance of well placed figures on both sides. He doesn't really have auto win or auto lose matchups either. I do think B+ is right.
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