Thursday 5 November 2015

Intent and Starting Point

     Introduction
The intent behind this blog/project/whatever is to look at the Age of Sigmar Warscrolls, and attempt to establish a point or 'comp' system with a decent mathematical basis rather than opinion and iteration based on performance, or excessive simplification.

    Establishing a Baseline
In hopes of establishing a baseline for point and comparison metrics, 'core' infantry units will be analysed, and metrics will then be applied to more powerful units to ensure that they scale appropriately.

    Starting Metrics
Initially, metrics will be developed to compare survivability, mobility, and offensive strength. Survivability will start as number of wounds required on average to remove one model. Mobility will begin very simply as average movement including a run or charge per turn, with a modifier applied for teleportation or flight. Offensive strength will start as average wounds caused per turn with all attacks. These may or may not change based on experiences in development and application.

    Predicted Difficulties
Some special abilities may be very difficult to account for mathematically. First, accounting for terrain-passing movement abilities is incredibly subjective - not only is it difficult to assign a value to the ability relative to 'normal' movement, but the value will change based on the terrain on the table. Second, many units have situational bonuses - being in terrain, having large numbers, being against specific enemy types, or synergies between specific units. Third, accounting for spells and similar abilities will be difficult, especially due to the number of options - a value will likely have to be placed on a single spell 'slot' which can then be added to any of the overall metrics. To settle these issues, metrics will have to be compared with different assumed levels of 'uptime' for situational abilities, and levels of effect for synergistic abilities, likely related to the gap between the affected unit without the buff, and their level of performance with.