vegie's C3V/SoV Power Rankings

[OEAO]

Originally Posted by vegietarian18

I think Mohicans do have some bad matchups. Like Mimring is especially terrible for them but any other ranged figure that bypasses concealment is brutal. That's the obvious counter but I think Mohicans really struggle killing heroes period. I got handed Dad Scaper's Mohicans in the Main Event this year and Major X17 went off against them because they just couldn't pump damage on to him fast enough.

I think the best game I've seen from Mohicans was Bring 2 2014 when Major Q23 picked Mohicans x5, Brave Arrow against my Deathchasers x4, MBS, Nerak, Raelin. They were able to contend against Deathchasers, but the game didn't ever get super close.

I don’t disagree that they struggle into bigs. However, I think they have a decent enough matchup spread into a lot of other things. They’re certainly not top tier, but they can do work. (I also think Hounds and Dividers are both better than Minions and Warforged though, so I doubt we’ll agree on any of that...)

[vegietarian18]

Minions have kind of fallen out of favor but they used to be pretty potent back in the day I think. I don't know if people have just gotten better since then, or if they're just kind of boring and no one wants to play them for four or five straight games. They have very solid matchup against Stingers and Stingers used to be really popular.

Warforged I think are similar: they were one of the hot squads that people were trying to make work out of the gate after they were released so people had some success with them. We do use a lot weaker of glyphs nowadays. Warforged immensely benefit from Gerda and can steal it from an opponent but Gerda doesn't see play too often. Tactical Switch is still really good though and they have some good builds despite being a bit pricy.

Dividers I've had as B+ with Warforged and Minions, and I think they're pretty good and about the same level as those guys. Hounds I think are a step down because failing pack rolls can lose games.

[dok]

I'd probably rank those four as Dividers>Hounds=Warforged>Minions.

Dividers - cheap, easy to splash, not painful if you lose, work as a screen or a bread and butter. Not elite but just overall really solid. If you build around them you live and die by the divide rolls, but hey, nobody is arguing they belong in the A range.

Warforged & Hounds- effectively the same defense but Warforged have more consistency which is usually very slightly better. Hounds are (on average) faster, which also helps, but tactical switch helps more and the inconsistency of hound movement can bite you in the butt. Single spaced is better than double spaced, but large size is really nice for expensive squad figures to avoid several sources of autowounds (as well as other stuff like tactical switch). Marro Plague is the one thing that just has no equivalent on the Warforged side, but hey, Warforged are a little cheaper. All in all it's super close. Warforfed are probably easier to build around.

Minions - too expensive, too vulnerable to autowounds or just getting tied down by figures that are substantially cheaper. I think Mohicans are significantly better than they are.

Unrelated but you have Talingul and Boreos down at B. I'll grant that my A- may have been slightly hyped up - as I said in the "state of the metagame" thread they are one of those armies that does really well against mid-tier stuff but might struggle against elite common armies. But I think this is an overreaction the other way. The Talingul army would probably be favored against armies built around most of the figures you have listed in the B+ range.

[Dysole]

#JusticeFor7K
#HopsLetYouThreatenWithHim
#ProbablyStillTerribleJustNotFMaterial

~Dysole, who also thinks Sudema should be higher

[Cleon]

Cool rankings vegie, I always love seeing rankings/tiers and people’s personal lists (whether it’s scape or smash or whatever). This is prompting me to finish the 2nd update on my official one, and I’ll have to revisit my VC one now that they’re are a lot of new units and I’ve played some more VC thanks to online. I think I’ll get my (unordered) list up in the next few days/week.

There are quite a bit of Q9 counters now with Marutuk, Heracles, Augamo, and Nhah Scir. But I think Q9+rats or Q9+rats+Raelin takes more of the hit and less so Q9 in general, since you’re investing points to protect him and the build is going to struggle with those figures. Which is good, Q9+rats (+Raelin) is kinda too powerful in the official game. But you can play Q9 with anything, and Heracles and Marutuk don’t seem that great against bread and butter squads (of course their armies can run things that are, too). He still takes a hit though. I don’t know, Q9 is worse in VC but it’s hard for me to bump him down from A+ he’s still pretty stupid good.

It also might just be a testament to how good Marutuk is. Heracles and Augamo are great figures, but I think they’re more deal-with-able. Marutuk basically just goes up to any large/huge figure on the board and kills it, or any figure you want for that matter. Positioning almost doesn’t matter, the only limitation really is she’s double-spaced. She might take quite a few disengages (half of which she takes damage) yeah, but she’s got 9 life. She doesn’t want to go up against bread and butter hordes but still, she’s 6/4 9 life for 195. A little Charos-esq. For 195 you get to take out pretty much whatever you want on the board, probably a few things. Like, should Grimnak/Nerak go down because she exists? Heavies are great enough on their own I don’t see them dropping but I don’t know what Grimnak (or Nerak) is supposed to do. Greenscales? TKN? Depends on her popularity (I think she’s amazing), but she throws a serious monkey wrench at a lot of established competitive builds. I guess just hope the map isn’t great from double spacers.

The Nhah Scir Cultists I think you have too low. Not as hard a counter against Q9 as the other three mentioned, but they’re still good into him (notably him with rats) and they’re nasty into dragons. Quahon’s basically another Nilfheim, and from what I can tell plenty popular in the VC tournaments. That should help their rank. And a good counter to Q10/SAers with screens. Outside of SAers, they’re still a fast 3/3 4-squad with near-disengage for 80. I don’t think that’s all that bad in your off matchups. They feel like B+/A- to me.

Looking at the other high/top tier VC units...

Quahon, Vulcanmechs, and Cathar are all great and where they belong. B-11 Resistance Corps are just a great unique range squad and give the AE a run for their money to fill a 110 spot. A- is appropriate, same with the Microcorp Troopers; bread and butter range squad that harnesses it’s own SA/strong swing. Rygarn/The Varja/Azazel are units I’m really not sure about as I really haven’t played them, but there’s a lot of potential in those three. There’s been some rave about Rygarn and he has a huge mechanic, but what you said about him might’ve hit the nail on the head, maybe he’s not as potent in top, top play. He does let you juggle oms between hydras though. I don’t know. A- is fine. The Varja I have no idea about, I could see anywhere between B and A+ lol. But I’ve never played it and I haven’t heard much since its release. Your guess is as good as mine. Azazel is no Thanos so him coming back isn’t as big a deal, but 4 attack Whirlwind Assault is nice and Rejected by Death is still busted so....maybe he is up in the A range somewhere. All in all I really need to play those three to get a better idea. Azurite, Ulfrid, and Gothlok I think are each A- bonding heroes (Gothlok I want to experiment with still, there’s a lot you can do with him). Bol I’d move up but I get how ranking filler units can be. The Havech Eradicators are great in my opinion but that might be the Stinger affection in me. I think the Brute Gruts are really really good for 65pt., but they’re still new to me.

That’s all I’ll comment on for now. Cool list.

Edit: MacDirks at C+?! I don’t know how ‘cool’ this list is anymore...

[DanieLoche]

Talking about the Warforged Soldiers made me think about the Varkaanan Blade Dancers.

I am quite surprised they are 2 ranks away.
For me Warforged and Blade Dancers are part of the units that carry a really great potential, but you have to take as much as possible from their powers to make them work.
Easy to play, hard to master.

I already ran a lot of game with them successfully against good armies at French tournaments. I remember an online game where I have to fight against Q9 + Blast/Glad (+ Marcu) army, I played VBD + Raelin V2 + Krav Maga.
I managed to almost kill Q9 twice (we get rid of Sturla glyph for the rest of the tournament... it resurrected Q9 and 2 glads. in this game !!), and loosed leaving only a 1-life Q9, Marcu and a single Blastatron in the opponent army.


Well that was just for the fun story, I strongly believe that in the correct army (to compensate their weaknesses mainly), we can do a lot with Warforged and VBD.
Defense 2 + auto shield is better than Def 3, as you just can't do completely bad rolls, it's almost like you were always getting off a skull from the attacker, and consequently leaving him with the "bad" remaining of its dice roll.
Tactical Switch gives easily high ground to reach a pretty good Atk 4, defense 3+auto shield + glyph stealing... But you need to play them really carefully to avoid bad fights and reduce the opponent power force with distance before going in the middle of the battle !

Concerning the VBD, they really lack defense from distance, but protected by a well placed Raelin (I prefer V2 here to avoid giving up too much mobility) you can do pretty nice results.

[dok]

Yeah, it's the vulnerability to ranged attacks that hurt the VBDs. They are a bit like more expensive, more offensively oriented Warriors of Ashra. I should really reclassify them as sharks in my rankings - the fact that their defensive bonus is dependent on being engaged means you need to keep feeding them OMs or they become vulnerable. But this same facet means it's harder to use them in combined arms armies, which is where Warforged really shine.

[vegietarian18]

I think the VBD's are substantially easier to play around than the Warforged. I remember back in the olden days of OHS I beat VBD's with Anubian Wolves in a rangeless army. It's pretty easy to stop their defense from ever getting above like 5 with melee, and they're pretty expensive.

Talingul pod probably could be B+ but I really just haven't seen it in action that much.

Q9 takes more of a hit because you can play Rats and Raelin with other things too and those things are still good. I don't see any way Rats and Raelin can ever fall from A+ tbh as they help literally every army. Q9 kind of does, but when you combine him with Rats and Raelin he is the army and I think that's a little worse now.

Nhah Scirh I think aren't that good. 80 points for 4 3 attack 3 defense 6 move is pretty terrible actually, you can roll that with any melee bonding or even Mohican caliber range. Phantom Knights having flying and 4 defense makes them much more useful in their noncounter matchups. My other problem is I see Nhah Scirh lose even games they should win. I've seen them lose to Braxas, to Quahon, to Q9. Dragons can often just hit through their autoshield, and Q9 they lack the firepower to crack, they really just ignore him. Maybe if someone comes up with a really good pairing that can cover up their weaknesses they could be viable, but at the moment I think they're way overpriced.

I definitely want to see the Varja in action more and I'm surprised we haven't. It's so hard to theoryscape how good he is since his big power is so risky but so high reward. He's very initiative dependent, he's pretty fragile if he's goes deep to roll more OM removal chances, but if he gets it against certain armies your opponent can't even play anymore. And he's maybe broken against 4th Mass with the grey hitzone.

Over in the Online Bring the Cheese event, Sir Heroscape played a great game against me to diffuse Marutuk from smashing Nilfheim, and Marutuk was kind of self-diffused in an earlier game when he was forced to only attack Incendiborgs after he had already crippled them. His powers are kind of annoying to work with and I'd much rather have Heracles. It's tough whether he should be a B+ or a B. I think I'll leave him at B+, because I do think that Long Strides helps a lot. I think if I would have had Raelin in my build instead of a 4th squad of Cathar (just didn't even realize that was an option, didn't think of Mar as 195) then the build (Cathar x3, Raelin, Marutuk) would have been top tier competitive. Marutuk as a 6 defense meatshield for Cathar in non-large huge games is pretty wicked.

Otherwise I feel pretty good about my ratings from that event. Spiders at A- I think is right, they were just held to lower ratings as they're quite mediocre in normal Heroscape, but they are mediocre because even their best bonders are mediocre. Quahon is very good so they become very good.

[vegietarian18]

So the Bring the Cheese Event is over, with kevindola's Spiders x4, Quahon, Raelin, Marro Warriors, Marcu triumphing over Sir Heroscape's Greenscales x3, Nilfheim, Raelin, Marro Warriors.

I moved up both Greenscales and Spiders to A. I don't know exactly why I had left them at A- before: Greenscales were A- in the dok power rankings and I actually moved up Fyorlags from B+. But both of these squads can contend with the best, obviously, so I put them up with the big boys. They have an interesting dynamic where I think Nilfheim is better than Quahon, but Spiders are better than Greenscales. So I think the two pairings sharing the A ranking makes sense.

Really what this event showed is how good the Marro Warriors are though, and that they deserve the A+. These were the only Marro Warriors armies and they met in the finals and the Marro Warriors did a ton of work in the finals and in the games leading up to it. They are very safe and very good. Adding another dimension to your army is really helpful.

[caps]

Before Quahon I never would have thought that Spiders are better than Greenscales.

[SuperSamyon]

Glad to see the spiders at A. Been saying for a while that they are one of the most underrated squads.

[vegietarian18]

Spiders being so good alongside Quahon I think is pretty instructive of how subtle some of these balancing things are. Spiders have just fine stats for 40 points, and Entangling Web is actually really good. Their bonders in Classic are just both way overpriced. Giving them one of the best options in the game in Quahon shoots them up because all they needed was something good.

That's why I'm pretty confident that these rankings are not finished, and there's a few other subtle armies that can easily compete against the best.

It's a bit sad that squads like Sacred Band and Armoc Vipers who also have fine stats but no great options can't be similarly launched up the rankings with a top tier bonding hero because the Romans have a bonding umbrella that encompasses both of their options and are already better.

Death Knights got Morgoloth who is really good but don't feel that much better in C3V. Like Morgoloth is probably just better off on his own than with his bonding squad, which not a lot things can say. Death Knights actually have gotten a ton of great C3V options with Azazel and Skull Demons, but they haven't seen similar boost to Spiders. I'm not sure if that's just because they're a 2 man squad, or because they're overpriced, or if 2 attack is too inconsistent, but they feel very hard to save.