The Book of Nameless Wolves

[Lord Pyre]

Oh yes I’m sorry I didn’t update. 3 attack! And nothing in particular no! Just want to make sure they’re not TOO powerful! Bring along Vassago at least once so see how well they help him out.

[Ronin]

Cool. I'll tackle em at some point during the week if I get time, but more probably over the weekend.

[Lord Pyre]

Cool, no issue. I won't get to finish Ernie's initial until later this week anyway !

[Ronin]

Ended up on a call with some friends for the whole afternoon, so didn't get to the HS time I had planned today; there's still some time left in the day, but it might be that I don't hit these guys until tomorrow.

[Ronin]

C3G STANDARD PLAYTEST FEEDBACK FORM

NAME OF THE PLAYTEST UNIT: @80 points

Army Test
Map: Custom
Units: @80, Vassago, Lady Death (540) vs Black Canary, Green Arrow (Ollie), Robin (Dick), Ragdoll (540)

Spoiler Alert!

This was a rout for the Hell Lord team, mainly on the back of a chain of really great defense rolls. Like early on here, Canary used her SA and hit Vassago, Lady Death and a Wolf all with 3 skulls. They all came up with 4+ shields to block. And those huge defense rolls continued for 1-2 more turns before their luck evened out. That's not a crazy long time, but it's enough to dismantle a couple low-mid level guys, which the Hell Lord team did. Canary and Arrow dropped without doing any damage at all, and Robin and Ragdoll didn't do so hot in clean-up.

The Wolves didn't have a huge damage output, but they got some key wounds in to finish off Ollie and gave Vassago a couple chances to roll for auto-wounds, which was how Lady D's team managed to take out Robin pretty efficiently.

Unit Summary:

• Damage Done (Normal Attack): 2 wounds to Green Arrow in 4 attacks (destroyed), 2 wounds to Ragdoll in 4 attacks, 0 wounds to Robin in 1 attack
• Hell Lord Loyalty: bonded with Lady Death throughout.
• Ferocious Distraction: activated 2 times; allowed Vassago to roll for auto-wounds against Canary and Robin (he wounded both), then allowed him to go after Robin and Ragdoll (he wounded only Robin, destroying him)
• Damage Taken: 0 wounds from Black Canary in 1 special attack, 0 wounds from Green Arrow in 1 normal attack

Who won? List figures remaining in the winning army (include life remaining for heroes): Lady Death with 1 wound, Vassago unwounded, both Nameless Wolves

___________________________________________________________

Army Test
Map: Custom
Units: @80, Vassago, Pluto (595) vs Hand Ninja x3, Cheshire, Elektra (595)

Spoiler Alert!

This one took an extremely long time to play out, because the Hand weren't rolling so hot; their bonding heroes did some damage, but the Ninja themselves felt lucky when they got 2 skulls, and that just wasn't enough to crack the 6 defense that the whole Hell Lord team had with any regularity.

Ferocious Distraction didn't get to really shine in this one because one wolf got destroyed early. The other one... actually still lived long enough to make up his points just in damage dealt (even setting aside the value of attacks absorbed), but the ninja managed to cut him off from Pluto and keep him from setting up the Vassago auto-wounds he would have liked.

Anyway, despite it taking longer than I would have liked, the ninja team did eventually take down Pluto and company, and win the day.

Unit Summary:

• Damage Done (Normal Attack): destroyed 3 Hand Ninja in 8 attacks
• Hell Lord Loyalty: bonded with Pluto throughout
• Ferocious Distraction: not used
• Damage Taken: 1 destroyed by Elektra in 1 attack, 0 destroyed by Hand Ninja in 5 attacks, 0 destroyed by Cheshire in 1 attack, 1 destroyed by Ruthless Seduction (yikes)

Who won? List figures remaining in the winning army (include life remaining for heroes): Cheshire with 1 wound, 2 Hand Ninja

THOUGHTS ON THE TESTED UNIT'S COST, BALANCE, & DRAFTABILITY: Six defense makes them pretty tough to crack for low/mid-level guys. I feel like they're a decent value just for the bonding, in that context, but their value might diminish against someone who has the tools to really dispatch them quickly (heavies or auto-wounders).

Probably good that they also have the Vassago stuff to play around with. I don't think it's a surefire thing that they'll pull off their trick in every game, but again, the cheap bonding ain't bad by itself.

[Yodaking]

Reading these play test reports makes me want to revisit the defense value here once more. I brought it up once before testing started, now after seeing test results my thoughts are returning to it. I 100% on board with them being more than regular Earth wolves, but if I were designing some basic Earth wolves (Snake Eyes has a pet wolf named Timber) I would give him 3 or maybe 4 defense. The Wolves of Badru have just 3 defense and 1 life in classic, so maybe 4 def. for a C3G themed squad of wolves. Thus 5 defense still says, these guys are tougher than your average wolf. Admittedly, Timber would be a unique hero with 2 or 3 life though as his named pet. That's why I mentioned earlier the idea of somehow giving them 2 life each as a unique squad. A simple 3rd power that states they may each ignore 1 wound per game would be that hard to track with just 2 of them. Easier to hit, yet has some staying power vs. small attacks. Big attacks will still drop them at the same rate.

[Lord Pyre]

Nah I like them as is, sorry. If they were common, a 3-4 man squad rather than just 2, or if we kept the attack at 4, I would consider it, but as is I'm very happy with how they've turned out. If we want to dig deeper, lets look at Bud & Lou (The obvious comparison!).

Wolves have more move, but Bud and Lou have climbing, so basically a wash, if not an edge to B&L on most maps. Range and attack are the same, with Wolves having one additional defense (Being magical hell wolves rather than normal earth hyenas). Bonding power is the same.

B&L are more offensive focused, with their shield subtraction. Wolves are support focused. Mechanically wise I also want to focus on their defense because of their role in the game. They're SUPPOSED to stick around longer and be tougher/annoying to kill. I would rather just raise their points than lower their defense! But it looks like they've been pretty balanced (4 wins/5 losses!) with Ronin stating that the blowout was because of dice rolls.

I'm happy and they're playing just as I imagined, so unless someone wants to rally for a point bump..

I propose we move to Final Editing!

I'll grab some pics of the wolves in a few days!

[Yodaking]

I'm a little confused, Bud & Lou have a def. of 5.

[Lord Pyre]

Originally Posted by Yodaking

I'm a little confused, Bud & Lou have a def. of 5.

They do. I'm confused about your confusion.

[Soundwarp SG-1]

Yea

[Yodaking]

Originally Posted by Lord Pyre

They do. I'm confused about your confusion.

Your post comparison made it sound like they also had 6 def as a unique squad of 2. My proposal is for 5 def. and 2 life here, which is better than 5 def & 1 life for Bud & Lou. Advantage Nameless Wolves.

[Lord Pyre]

Originally Posted by Yodaking

Your post comparison made it sound like they also had 6 def as a unique squad of 2. My proposal is for 5 def. and 2 life here, which is better than 5 def & 1 life for Bud & Lou. Advantage Nameless Wolves.

I mentioned in there that the wolves have one additional defense, and being magical hell wolves it thematically makes sense they're tougher than normal hyenas. Not interested in turning these into uncommon heroes, sorry.