The Book of Sacred Band

[goodhueq]

exactly

Heroscape seems more offensive than defensive so I don't like how the SB need to huddle with Parmenio like he is their mommy. The Romans go off and fight their own war and Marcus can fight his own battles while actually helping when they are adjacent. Romans > Greeks. Period.

 

[Hero Hot Hatch]

First, the possibility of surviving allows further attacks down the road.

vs the possibility of just killing something in the first place and moving on to other targets.

NecroBlade. Your contributions add value to this forum. You've helped me before when I misundertood some rules. I remember it and I really appreciate that, and I have respect for everybody here who help others like myself. I try to see things for what they are, and I have been proven wrong many times. Maybe, this is one of those times, but as of now I still hold my point. If proven wrong on this, I'll admit it when and if it happens.

In HeroScape you do want to be the one doing the attacking, but defense is as crucial. Otherwise, Raelin will be totally useless. If your comment makes Raelin totally useless, we'll never agree on strategy. What do you need if you end up taking second in turns on most rounds? Is it something called Defense? In this case, we are discussing the possibility of getting killed even when it was your turn to attack. What in combat can be worse than that? The 30% probability of surviving any attack that does not destroy you immediately with a special power is being overlooked and underestimated.

As an example in addition to Samurai's Counter Strike, who has a potential 30% of surviving Kee-Mo-Shi's Toxic Skin after a successful roll by Kee-Mo-Shi? A Roman adjacent to Marcus DG? No. A Greek adjacent to Parmenio? Yes. I play the Romans more than I play the Greeks, but believe me, there are scenarios in which you wish that you had the Greeks and not the Romans. As such, the Romans cannot be considered absolutely superior athough they are in fact more versatile.

 

[Hero Hot Hatch]

Re: exactly

Heroscape seems more offensive than defensive so I don't like how the SB need to huddle with Parmenio like he is their mommy. The Romans go off and fight their own war and Marcus can fight his own battles while actually helping when they are adjacent. Romans > Greeks. Period.

I don't completely disagre with you. However, if you pay attention to the details in some situations, you'll wish sometimes that you recruited the Greeks and not the Romans. That's all the argument. The Romans are not absolutely superior to the Greeks. There will be times you wish you had the Greeks instead of the Romans. That's all period or not.

 

[ThrasherDarkrai]

Before I say anything, let me say that if Kee-Mo-Shi is engaged with Sacred Band, you're doing something wrong. I don't think I would draft her against many bonding armies, to be honest, unless I had a way to plow through forces and make a hole for Kee-Mo-Shi to slip in... like Brunak carrying Kee-Mo-Shi.
I didn't want to enter this argument, because I get the feeling I'm going to offend someone. But I digress.
Hot Hero Hatch, what I think you're missing is that your Defy Death chance is miniscule. 30% chance might seem impressive, but in reality, it isn't. While 3 defense is certaintly better than 2, you're going to have to pair them up with Marcus or Parmenio anyways to get any real worth out of them. This makes you just as vulnerable to clusters as the Romans. Leaving Parmenio even slightly undefended makes him an incredibly easy kill, ruining your chances of splitting up. As you said, you won't always be adjacent to Parmenio, and the way this game works punishes you for it by making a gargantuan opening for Parmenio to die in.
But honestly, if I saw a Sacred Band army, I would just let Parmenio live, because chances are that by the time you rush to reinforce him, I'm killing your Sacred Band that are now helpless without his help. At least with the Romans I get more attack so I actually stand a chance.
So, in summary, a massive defense doesn't help a melee unit. Keeping Parmenio adjacent to your Sacred Band AND being able to attack with the Sacred Band doesn't happen very often, especially not against Samurai. Raelin works because you can send a screen out, and then reinforce them. You can fit her in most any army, and she helps anyone. However, the Sacred Band don't even get her, as she screws up the Disciplined bonus, and if I use Parmenio to make her disciplined, then I have two cheerleaders (three with Marcus!) to work with, and that's too much. Thus, they have to rely on a power that limits their attacking poweress. I'm all for Raelin, because 2 defense all the time is major. However, a saving throw that happens about 10% of the time factoring in terrain, ability to attack, and practicality isn't worth it.
I am sorry if I offend anyone with this post. I really am. If I do, tell me what offended you, and I will take it into account.

 

[Sisyphus]

First, the possibility of surviving allows further attacks down the road. You can't deny the value of that.

I am not denying that. Quite the opposite in fact since the Romans have a better chance of navigating counterstrike risks than the Greeks.

You don't even need to play test with Greek's Disciplined Army Defense Bonus, which gives the Greeks 3 defense vs. the Romans paltry 2.

You seem to forget saying this:

I could add the Disciplined Army Defense Bonus, but then you'll add the Shield Wall and that's another set of numbers.

For now, without resulting in detailed statistics: assuming that a Greek attacks a Tagawa Samurai and gets only 1 skull. The Tagawa samurai can get two shields, but the Greek adjacent to Parmenio still has a 30% chance of survival, while a Roman will immediately be toast. 30% is no peanuts after literally being dead, which is what in fact a Roman would be.

You forget that the Romans are less likely to roll only 1 skull then the Greeks are.

The additional attack that the Romans get (assuming the Greek does not have it too) falls short in all scenarios of counter strike. They would need TWO additional attacks to have superior staying power against the same counter strike consistently. Just ONE will NOT do it.

How do you get that idea?

To put it in the other extreme:

The Greek gets three skulls, which maximizes the base Greek attack and has a probability of (feel free to refresh my Stats 101 that I took 20 years ago) 0.5*0.5*0.5 = 12.5%.

You are correct.

The Roman gets four skulls, which maximazes the boosted attack and has a probability of 6.25%. The probability of a Roman getting 4 skulls is half the probability of a Greek getting 3 skulls.

You are correct.

You are staking your survival ability on a half probability under this particular example?

I don't need to roll all skulls to prevent counterstrike. If any melee figure rolls 3 skulls against a samurai it is very unlikely it will be counterstruck. A Greek(as you said) has a 12.5% chance of rolling 3 skulls but a Roman boosted by Marcus has a 31.25% chance to roll AT LEAST 3 skulls.

The Tagawa samurai gets 4 shields. The Greek would be dead, but it still has a 30% probability of surviving. Whether the Greek got 1, 2 or 3 skulls in the initial attack becomes automatically meaningless. However, your Roman is praying for a 6.25% chance of getting 4 skulls.

Another example, the Tagawa samurai gets 5 shields (admittedly a very low probability). The Greek would be dead, but it still has a 30% probability of surviving. Your Roman is dead. And on and on and on. The Romans end up dead under more scenarios against Counter Strike than do the Greeks. Defy Death is 30% chance of survival under any successful Counter Strike scenario.

You are right that the Romans end up dead under more scenarios but those scenarios happen less frequently. For instance, a Tagawa will roll 4 shields 4% of the time and 5 shields less than 0.5% of the time. For comparison purpose, you are more likely to mindshackle with Ne-Gok-Sa then roll 4 or 5 shields with a Tagawa.

There are many different ways of looking at this. The Romans have a 50% chance of getting one skull and a 25% chance of getting two, a 12.5% of getting three and a 6.25% of getting 4. The 30% probability that the Greeks have of Defying Death after an effective Counter Strike is superior to three of those four possibilities.

Well part of the problem is that in actuality the probability of the Romans rolling 0-4 skulls is 6.25%, 25%, 37.5%, 37.5%, 25%, and 6.25%.

This is interesting and intellectually stimulating discussion. That's what I love about HeroScape. I rarely take anything personal. I want to know the truth. It's not simply a mindless game. If and when I get the statistics run in Excel or something like that, I'll post them here.

I love HeroScape for the same reason. I think the Greeks are good but I know that Parmenio doesn't help over Marcus against Samurai.

 

[Hero Hot Hatch]

Sisyphus:

Thanks for your feedback. It's more food for thought. You have some good points there.


Bloody The Marro Stinger:

You have some good points there, too. I don't see how your comments can offend anybody. At least not me. You wrote nothing offensive so you don't have to worry about writing constructuve criticism like you did.

I like this forum because I learn a lot and more about HeroScape and spend a lot of time pondering possibilities and probabilities, which is entertaining. There is now way in which I would take offense to constructive criticism, which is what I believe we've all been doing so far. There is no need to get personal or to take things personally.

 

[NecroBlade]

This is the kind of discussion that should go on in all the Books. I just want to point out that I don't think the Greeks are strictly inferior, just in most cases. Really, the most useless unit here is Parmenio, and he can only get worse with time. The more disciplined units that are released, the less the Greeks need his ability to make others disciplined. I will always prefer the Romans, though, because they don't need someone else's Warlord to make them useful.

 

[pinche_guey]

It seems that the only situations where the greeks would be better than romans would be in a map where spreading them out would be better than clumping them together (against DW9K or shotgun cowboys). Parmenio just doesn't seem to be useful in this scenario as much as Marcus, unless you must absolutely have his disciplined influence, and still a move of 5 seems necessary for utility. Attack 3/ Defense 3 insn't too bad for skirmishers at 50 points for 4.

 

[Jexik]

I think that the Sacred Band will see a significant boost when wave 8 and 8.5 come out.

Like most Einar units, the Redcoats will most likely be Disciplined. This will give the Sacred Band a Soldierific™ counter to the 4th Mass. Forget about Parmenio and just get Marcus. With those bayonets, they'll likely get a bonus in Melee instead of standing around holding their guns.

Zelrig is going to really hamper some popular squads like Romans, Orcs and 'trons, but Marcus-led Sacred Band won't have the same weakness.

 

[Tyrnix]

First, the odds a def 5 samurai's counter strike will kill a roman boosted by mdg:
211/3888+524/3888+306/3888+44/3888+1/3888=1086/3888=.2793

Now, the odds a def 5 samurai's counter strike will kill a greek next to parmenio:
211/1944+393/1944+153/1944+11/1944=768/1944*7/10=.2765

As you can see the odds are ridiculously close.

Now, for the fun of it, let's throw in Taro:

Then the odds become:
First, for the romans:
31/512+104/512+96/512+24/512+1/512=256/512=.5

Now, the greeks:
31/256+78/256+48/256+6/256=163/256*7/10=.4457

Still close.

Thing is, as the number of defense dice increase, the chances that the romans will survive drops significantly faster than the greeks. Plus, the added boost on the offense that the romans have over the greeks doesn't really matter much in the long run. Your odds of rolling 4 skulls with the romans is 6.25% which is extremely low, and if you don't roll this, the romans will have roughly just as poor of a time taking out any samurai with taro and a good defense glyph, height advantage, or raelin as the greeks do making it pointless to melee attack any samurai in a solid samurai army with anything less than a 5 attack. In other words, it's a poor comparison: both armies suck at taking out samurai. Bottom line: you use ranged attackers to take out samurai (especially after Katsuro comes out) or you lose, horribly.

If I were you, I'd be more scared of zelrig than samurai. Zelrig takes complete advantage of roman army's ability to cluster: romans become like flies to a bug zapper. Zelrig's majestic fires takes out your adjacent romans knocking the defense of the remaining ones down to 1 or 0 against majestic fires whereas the greeks have survivability with parmenio allowing at least some of your greeks to survive to get to the dragon. Plus, the greeks don't have to cluster forcing more attacks from zelrig.

 

[Oyhedwig]

Has anyone tried the Sacred Band with Tagawa Archers? I'm trying to come up with a good army, but I'm not that experienced with the Band.

 

[rdhight]

Has anyone tried the Sacred Band with Tagawa Archers? I'm trying to come up with a good army, but I'm not that experienced with the Band.

I've never played the Greeks, but a little theoryscape nerver hurt anyone, right? Greeks x2, TSA x2, and Marcus are all but mandatory. That's 330 points right there. Kaemon Awa gets you to 450, and you can slot in a third Sacred Band for an even 500. It's all-Einar and all-Disciplined with no single commons, a good special attack, and a reasonable three places to put order markers.

Disclaimer: theoryscape can in fact hurt anyone.

 

[Oyhedwig]

Funny, about an hour after I made that post, that was the exact army that I ended up using.

Sacred Band x3
Marcus
Tagawa Archers x2
Kaemon Awa

The opposing team:

Major Q9
Krug
Airborne Elite
Deathreavers x2

My opponent won. Krug was the last figure remaining, but he only had two hit points left. My friend and I are trying to make good "tournament armies" and I wanted to see if the Band could be used competitively. In general, I think my army was good. However, this is not an army I would use against the one above with Krug.

Something I should add: I was on a hill with one remaining Samurai Archer. Krug was advancing and it would have taken him at least three moves to get to me. Since it wasn't a tourney, I came charging down the hill at him to expediate the game (I was tired). If I had stayed on the hill, I probably would have killed him before he got to me.

Still looking for Sacred Band armies. I'm wanting one that is 500 points, uses three squads, and has both Marcus and Parmenio. If anyone has any more suggestions, I'm all for them. Thanks for the response, rdhight.

 

[killercactus]

Sacred Band x3 - 150
Marcus - 100
Parmenio - 90

That only leaves 160 points..... here are my suggestions for the 160 points:

Airborne Elite or Ninjas of the Northern Wind - 110
Marro Warriors (Parm'ed) - 50

Valguard (Parm'ed) - 110
Sacred Band - 50

Major Q10 or Cyprien Esenwein (Parm'ed) - 150
Isamu - 10

Krav Maga Agents (Parm'ed) - 100
Izumi Samurai - 60

Kaemon Awa - 120
Guilty McCreech (Parm'ed) - 30
Isamu - 10

Ashigaru Yari x4 - 160

 

[Oyhedwig]

On second look of killercactus' list and your post, NecroBlade, I gotta go with the AE/MW. Wow. That army was right there in front of me, like it was slapping me in the face. I think this is a Sacred Band army that could really do some damage. I love it.

killercactus, I was just really holding out some hope for Sonlen. He's my favorite figure to use. I feel like everytime I mention him in the forums, I should put some sort of cool emoticon.

 

[killercactus]

Sonlen

I like Sonlen a lot too, I just don't think he would excel here. I don't like him as the only ranged figure in an army because if he's swarmed, he just doesn't survive that long and doesn't have the firepower to fight everyone off.

And I also agree with you and Necro, AE + MW definitely seems like the way to go. The AE are a perfect fit being both Soldiers and Disciplined., and the Marro Warriors are just the best 50 points available. Plus, you want to make use of Parmenio's Influence (his best ability IMO) on a strong unit. If you didn't really want to use 3 squads of the Sacred Band, I would've said go with AE + Krav instead. But I think both are strong armies.

 

[NecroBlade]

Or if you didn't want to use 3x SB you COULD use Sonlen:

160 Sonlen
100 MDG
100 SB x2
090 Parmenio
050 MW

 

[LongHeroscaper]

The army that I recently used:

Sacred Band x2 100
Marcus 100
Parmelio 90
Raeline 80
Tagawa Archers x2 130
Total 500.

Quite effective .

 

[Oyhedwig]

LongHeroscaper, I like that team too. In what order did you send that army out to fight? How was order marker placement? Who were you trying to use Raelin to protect the most? Sorry for all the questions here, but I'm curious for a good strategy with that team.

Necro, one problem with that team with Sonlen is that it has two units that aren't disciplined, and I'm wanting to keep that Sacred Band defense bonus.

 

[LongHeroscaper]

LongHeroscaper, I like that team too. In what order did you send that army out to fight? How was order marker placement? Who were you trying to use Raelin to protect the most? Sorry for all the questions here, but I'm curious for a good strategy with that team.

Necro, one problem with that team with Sonlen is that it has two units that aren't disciplined, and I'm wanting to keep that Sacred Band defense bonus.

My first order marker of the game is usually Raelin (of course, it depends on the opponent army). I find Raelin to be usually the most difficult unit to put an order marker on because her protection range is only 4. So I try to put her in the best spot possible right at the beginning of the game, not too far into the field, but enough to have her aura cover the central area.
Then I advance the Sacred Band with Parmelio to create a line in front of Raelin. The Sacred band can wander off Realin's aura, but Parmelio should be adjacent to them, and Parmelio should not be put out of Raelin's aura.
Then my order markers would alternate between the Band and the Archers. The nice thing is the Archers, with Raelin's protection, can do range as well as melee fight. In the middle of the game, the Band is mainly to protect Raelin, and remember to bring Marcus up to help out the Band.
So, I use Raelin to protect the Archers the most. But for Raelin to survive, I use the Band to protect her. Fortunately, by doing that, the Band is usually within Raelin's aura too, so they also get some beneficial. The Archers can attack, but can also protect Raelin. But the key point is to protect Raelin with all cost.
Of course, it is just theoscape. It depends a lot on the map and the opponent you play with. I have had fun with this army until I played a McDirk army. I was winning until Alistar got 5 wounds and retreated back to the starting zone. Then the McDirks just simply ate my units up, one by one. And I missed killing Alistar by an initiative .
I consider this army a not-cheesy army. Example of a cheesy army would be Q9+Rats army, because there is not much about it. It is effective, but it's too simple to play. Again, I am not saying it's a bad thing, I am just saying it is cheesy .

 

[spiteofthedice]

If the Band are on NGS's team, and Gok-face mindshackles a non-disciplined figure, does the Band lose the bonus?

 

[Revdyer]

Yes.

 

[Rÿchean]

If the Band are on NGS's team, and Gok-face mindshackles a non-disciplined figure, does the Band lose the bonus?

Rev is correct, but NGS is tricky anyway. The only way you would be enjoying the bonus in the first placye is if Parmenio was in your army and he made NGS disciplined. Lastly, NGS doesn’t bond with the Band but you may have known that. I thought it was worth mentioning.

 

[spiteofthedice]

If the Band are on NGS's team, and Gok-face mindshackles a non-disciplined figure, does the Band lose the bonus?

Rev is correct, but NGS is tricky anyway. The only way you would be enjoying the bonus in the first placye is if Parmenio was in your army and he made NGS disciplined.

Which is what I had in mind. I just didn't explain myself well.

NGS doesn’t bond with the Band but you may have known that.

I realize that, but thanks, I was just wondering. Greeks and Armocs are actually the only set of which I currently own zero. It just happened that there was always another set next to them on the shelf that I was more excited about. Now I've gone and missed my chance. Waiting for a re-release . . .

 

[Obsidian]

I wanted to see if Defy Death was worth it. I know some of you have crunched some numbers, but I wanted to take it all the way.

A sacred band figure dieing from an attack with two defense:

Att    Normal    Defy Death
1    0.2222    0.1556
2    0.4444    0.3111
3    0.625    0.4375
4    0.7569    0.5299
5    0.8472    0.5931
6    0.9063    0.6344
7    0.9436    0.6605
8    0.9666    0.6766

A sacred band figure dieing from an attack with three defense:

Att    Normal    Defy Death
1    0.1481    0.1037
2    0.3333    0.2333
3    0.5093    0.3565
4    0.6551    0.4586
5    0.7662    0.5363
6    0.8461    0.5922
7    0.901    0.6307
8    0.9376    0.6564

Dieing from counter strike. The attack + 1 is coming from Marcus:

Def    Normal    Defy Death    Att + 1    DD and Att + 1
3    0.1991    0.13937           0.1227    0.03681
4    0.2963    0.20741           0.1968    0.05904
5    0.3951    0.27657           0.2793    0.08379
6    0.4897    0.34279           0.3652    0.10956
7    0.5766    0.40362           0.4502    0.13506

And finally, dieing from counter strike with Heroic Defense:

Def    Normal    Defy Death    Att+1    DD and Att + 1
3    0.3438    0.10314          0.226    0.0678
4    0.5       0.15             0.3633  0.10899
5    0.6367    0.19101          0.5     0.15
6    0.7461    0.22383          0.623    0.1869
7    0.8281    0.24843          0.7256   0.21768