Classic Heroscape Power Rankings

[EternalThanos86]

Originally Posted by Mr Migraine

That's probably why it won. I saw very few Marvel armies with Stingers.

Wrong. The one and only reason that army won (as you know) was because of 15+ failures to bring Thanos back from the dead. The stingers did nothing for that army.

[Darkmage7a]

Originally Posted by EternalThanos86

Wrong. The one and only reason that army won (as you know) was because of 15+ failures to bring Thanos back from the dead. The stingers did nothing for that army.

I guess it averages out if you count some of the other games where he came back more than once.

[IAmBatman]

Originally Posted by EternalThanos86

Wrong. The one and only reason that army won (as you know) was because of 15+ failures to bring Thanos back from the dead. The stingers did nothing for that army.

Well, he only has a 1 in 20 chance, so it's not like 15 failures is really surprising.

[Mr Migraine]

Originally Posted by IAmBatman

Well, he only has a 1 in 20 chance, so it's not like 15 failures is really surprising.

I thought it was 1 in 10.

[Vydar]

Speaking of D20 rolls, I'm wondering why Sir Hawthorne is ranked so high.

If you activate him 6 times, he has a 1-(0.95)^6 = 26.5% chance of deserting you. Adding 26.5% of his cost to his value means you're paying an equivalent of 114 points for him.

Or thinking of it another way, assume that you'll get 6 turns with him. If he betrays you on the first round, you got 0 points out of him, on the second you got 1/6th of his value out of him:

0.05*0 + 0.95*0.05*15 + 0.95^2*0.05*30 + 0.95^3*0.05*45 + 0.95^4*0.05*60 + 0.95^5*0.05*75 + 0.95^6*90 = 75.5 of his points. Normalizing this, makes him cost 107 points.

These calculations assume that your opponent does absolutely nothing with him once he betrays you. They also assume that all turns are equal, whereas, in reality it will generally take you 2 or 3 activations to get him into position. If he turns on the 3rd or 4th activation, you've gotten 0 points out of him AND lost all those orders you could have been using on someone else.

Wouldn't you rather have Denrick (similar stats with no risk) or Finn (if you need to stay under 90 points)?

EDIT: Fixed probability calculations.

[1Mmirg]

I think it is his special attack--something that the Knights particularly benefit from--that give him his place. It's nice to have that special in play for rats, samurais, etc. when you are running a Knight army.

(Not defending the specific grade; I haven't used Hawthorne much, honestly, but pointing to one thing at least that makes him distinctive. Now that I finally have a real Hawthorne (yeah!), I'm going to have to give him some more play.)

[Matthias Maccabeus]

Originally Posted by 1Mmirg

I think it is his special attack--something that the Knights particularly benefit from--that give him his place. It's nice to have that special in play for rats, samurais, etc. when you are running a Knight army.

(Not defending the specific grade; I haven't used Hawthorne much, honestly, but pointing to one thing at least that makes him distinctive. Now that I finally have a real Hawthorne (yeah!), I'm going to have to give him some more play.)

Don't do it.... it's not worth it. Trust me!

~Matthias who has been stabbed in the back more times than he cares to say

[Jexik]

Originally Posted by Vydar

Speaking of D20 rolls, I'm wondering why Sir Hawthorne is ranked so high.

Hawthorne is one I'll likely revisit. He has a very high chance of deserting you at least once over 5 games. Will that be a game where you are way ahead and it doesn't matter, or will it cost you a close match?

On the 14th, I was going to a 475 point tournament for melee (405 if any ranged), and I wanted to use something new to me from Wave 10. I opted to go with the Orc army, largely because I was worried about Hawthorne.

[1Mmirg]

Originally Posted by Matthias Maccabeus

Don't do it.... it's not worth it. Trust me!

~Matthias who has been stabbed in the back more times than he cares to say

Nice. Well, thanks for bursting my hopes and dream .

Seriously, one of the guys here brought him to a mini-tourney we did a few months back. He backstabbed the very first round of the first--and the second!!--games. Nice...

Still going to give him a whirl, but, yeah, not likely at a tourney .

[IAmBatman]

Originally Posted by Mr Migraine

I thought it was 1 in 10.

You're right, it is. I was thinking you had to roll a 20 for some reason, but it's 19 or higher.

[Bonecrusher]

So Thanos would fail 15 rolls about 1 out of every 5 times. Not likely, but definitely within the realm of significance.

[dok]

Originally Posted by Vydar

Speaking of D20 rolls, I'm wondering why Sir Hawthorne is ranked so high.

If you activate him 6 times, he has a 1-(0.95)^6 = 26.5% chance of deserting you. Adding 26.5% of his cost to his value means you're paying an equivalent of 114 points for him.

Or thinking of it another way, assume that you'll get 6 turns with him. If he betrays you on the first round, you got 0 points out of him, on the second you got 1/6th of his value out of him:

0.05*0 + 0.05*15 + 0.05*30 + 0.05*45 + 0.05*60 + 0.05*75 + 0.7*90 = 74.5 of his points. Normalizing this, makes him cost 109 points.

From a mathematical perspective, these numbers are a bit off. There's not a 5% chance of betrayal on activations 2-6, because you only get there if the previous activations didn't result in a betrayal. However, the difference is fairly trivial. For example, the chance of betrayal after activation #4 is .95^3 * .05 = 4.3%. Still, it has some impact on these measurements (it makes Hawthorne look a little better). However, obviously, there's the chance that Hawthorn gets killed before he betrays you, and also a chance that he's useful into his 9th or 10th activations. All in all, I think this approach is a decent way to approximate his value. All the factors I list above more or less cancel out.

My main non-mathematical quibble, though, is that you're assuming a non-betraying Hawthorne (or at least, a Hawthorne that goes 6+ activations before betrayal) is worth 90 points. Hawthorne's value to a knight army is situational, and can easily exceed 90 in the right spot. Imagine for a moment that you're facing a rat army. In that army, getting two or three turns at the front with Hawthorne may be all you need to clear the glyphs or punch a hole in the screen - at that point Hawthorne has basically done his job. So, the numbers might look more like:

0.05*0 + 0.05*40 + 0.05*80 + 0.05*120 + 0.05*130 + 0.05*140 + 0.7*150 = 130.5

In that situation, Hawthorne seems like he's undercosted by a good margin.

Originally Posted by Vydar

These calculations assume that your opponent does absolutely nothing with him once he betrays you. They also assume that all turns are equal, whereas, in reality it will generally take you 2 or 3 activations to get him into position. If he turns on the 3rd or 4th activation, you've gotten 0 points out of him AND lost all those orders you could have been using on someone else.

Unless your opponent has knights or MacDirks, the betrayal really only hurts in endgame. It's the rare opponent who's going to invest a lot of OMs in Hawthorne before that. And depending on the situation, you might be able to kill Hawthorne with figures that are on their way up before your opponent puts any OMs on him. So, in general, losing Hawthorne hurts more than giving him to your opponent does.

Originally Posted by Vydar

Wouldn't you rather have Denrick (similar stats with no risk) or Finn (if you need to stay under 90 points)?

As I said above, it's really a situational thing. Hawthorne gives you a bonding figure with a special attack, and that can be really valuable in a knight army, particularly if you expect to face rats. When you look at Hawthorne's very good base stats and throw in that he has a special attack, he looks like a real steal. It's only when you consider stab in the back that his price makes sense.

I'm not disagreeing with you overall; I'm just noting that SITB was definitely built into the cost.