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Replacing Lance with ArmourBane, balance?
http://www.tacticalwargames.net/taccmd/viewtopic.php?f=69&t=34383
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Author:  lord-bruno [ Wed Nov 11, 2020 12:43 pm ]
Post subject:  Replacing Lance with ArmourBane, balance?

Hi everyone!

I find the rule Lance quite... all or nothing. Useless against well armoured vehicles like Dreadnoughts, Battlefortresses, Defilers, Hammerheads (a Rail Cannon should pierce through that armour easily)... and extremely powerful against anything with Reinforced Armour (well, that's exactly the rule - it gives MW against RA only).

How would affect balance/points just replacing it by -1 to armour saves (Armour Bane)? It would do something against normal armoured targets, and still being potent against RA targets (it imposes the -1 to two saves after all).

Author:  jimmyzimms [ Thu Nov 12, 2020 2:50 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Replacing Lance with ArmourBane, balance?

Can't say what that does to balance for any specific unit but I like the ability keyword and mechanics! Easy enough to be "added" to the lexicon and applied to units by the ACs. I'd leave Lance alone as is and where needed/desired, test to see if it fits better for specific weapons on units to approve the new one.

Author:  kingzog [ Thu Nov 12, 2020 3:18 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Replacing Lance with ArmourBane, balance?

I back jimmy on this one, test it first and that will show you how powerful it is. I also agree with jimmy that lance is where it should be rules balance. In particular to your idea, its seems a bit meta warping. Why play anything else when I can stack my list with just stuff gives -1 to ALL armor saves, like that is a terrifying list IMO. Also lore wise it doesn't make much sense to me, lance is supposed to represent something akin to a railgun, super accurate and deadly but if you miss you might as well as be shooting it in the air at nothing. On top of that tau would become unstoppable, they already get +1 to hit when in marker light range, now give all there tanks the ability to apply a -1 to all amour saves. No matter what you should test it out because I could be wrong in the end!

Author:  lord-bruno [ Fri Nov 13, 2020 5:40 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Replacing Lance with ArmourBane, balance?

jimmyzimms wrote:
Can't say what that does to balance for any specific unit but I like the ability keyword and mechanics! Easy enough to be "added" to the lexicon and applied to units by the ACs. I'd leave Lance alone as is and where needed/desired, test to see if it fits better for specific weapons on units to approve the new one.


It's not my idea!!! the rule already exists and has been used for years in the Epic Heresy rules (ArmourBane -1 to armour save against vehicles, and FleshBane, -1 to armour save against infantry).

kingzog wrote:
I back jimmy on this one, test it first and that will show you how powerful it is. I also agree with jimmy that lance is where it should be rules balance.


I wonder how that can be said of a rule that is "all or nothing", and useless against well armoured vehicles like I said before...

kingzog wrote:
In particular to your idea, its seems a bit meta warping. Why play anything else when I can stack my list with just stuff gives -1 to ALL armor saves, like that is a terrifying list IMO. Also lore wise it doesn't make much sense to me, lance is supposed to represent something akin to a railgun, super accurate and deadly but if you miss you might as well as be shooting it in the air at nothing. On top of that tau would become unstoppable, they already get +1 to hit when in marker light range, now give all there tanks the ability to apply a -1 to all amour saves. No matter what you should test it out because I could be wrong in the end!


Not my idea. Been in use for years in Epic Heresy ( I don't play it but they had amazing ideas).

Why play anything else? well, because there are more powerful weapons like Twin Fusion Cannons for instance, or cheaper ones like Ion Cannons. And because is just -1 to vehicles saves.

And what you describe as super accurate and deadly but if you miss... that's ALL AT weapons (lascannons, solid shot guns,....).

All their tanks??? only one of their tanks has the Lance rule :eh

Just for "completeness", the units with Lance are Eldar Prism Cannons & Bright Lances, Tau Hammerhead RailCannon, Squat's AT missiles on Iron Hawks (Iron Eagles?), Dark Eldar dark lances.

Author:  kingzog [ Mon Nov 16, 2020 11:11 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Replacing Lance with ArmourBane, balance?

so I did some quick stats using a leman russ as the prime target. With the lance rule as is, the leman russ has 50% chance of saving. with the armor bane rule that chance goes down to a 20% chance of saving. i will double check my math, but as is this seems fairly strong, I know it only apples to amour units, but i have feeling even without the stats on other AVs or LVS we will see the survival rate plummet. This could lead to possible unit stacking, and heavy move away from armor vehicles(due inpart to oppressive AT capabilities). that being said your comment about the units with lance, the only one that becomes problematic with this rule change is the tau hammerhead, it already outshines most of its gravtank equivalents, in my opinion, and this just gives even more incentives to just take the hammer head and nothing else. I think the idea of porting amour bane over form 30kAU is great, it just needs to be heavily tested because the arsenal of weapons and units is almost ten fold compared to epic 30k.

Author:  kingzog [ Mon Nov 16, 2020 11:12 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Replacing Lance with ArmourBane, balance?

so I did some quick stats using a leman russ as the prime target. With the lance rule as is, the leman russ has 50% chance of saving. with the armor bane rule that chance goes down to a 20% chance of saving. i will double check my math, but as is this seems fairly strong, I know it only apples to amour units, but i have feeling even without the stats on other AVs or LVS we will see the survival rate plummet. This could lead to possible unit stacking, and heavy move away from armor vehicles(due inpart to oppressive AT capabilities). that being said your comment about the units with lance, the only one that becomes problematic with this rule change is the tau hammerhead, it already outshines most of its gravtank equivalents, in my opinion, and this just gives even more incentives to just take the hammer head and nothing else. I think the idea of porting amour bane over form 30kAU is great, it just needs to be heavily tested because the arsenal of weapons and units is almost ten fold compared to epic 30k. That being said I could just be talking out of ass, so by all means prove me wrong!

Author:  lord-bruno [ Tue Nov 17, 2020 4:20 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Replacing Lance with ArmourBane, balance?

kingzog wrote:
so I did some quick stats using a leman russ as the prime target. With the lance rule as is, the leman russ has 50% chance of saving. with the armor bane rule that chance goes down to a 20% chance of saving. i will double check my math, but as is this seems fairly strong,


How did you work that out? it's totally wrong. 50% of saving against lance, correct. But against ArmourBane it's 55.5% of saving (so it's actually weaker).

kingzog wrote:
I know it only apples to amour units, but i have feeling even without the stats on other AVs or LVS we will see the survival rate plummet. This could lead to possible unit stacking, and heavy move away from armor vehicles(due inpart to oppressive AT capabilities). that being said your comment about the units with lance, the only one that becomes problematic with this rule change is the tau hammerhead, it already outshines most of its gravtank equivalents, in my opinion, and this just gives even more incentives to just take the hammer head and nothing else. I think the idea of porting amour bane over form 30kAU is great, it just needs to be heavily tested because the arsenal of weapons and units is almost ten fold compared to epic 30k. That being said I could just be talking out of ass, so by all means prove me wrong!


That's interesting. There are Tau in my gaming group, and they choose RailHeads because of range, not Lance - because Lance is useless against non-RA targets. And on average, how many RA AV are there per army? 1 type of unit? maybe 2?

Author:  kingzog [ Wed Nov 18, 2020 10:19 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Replacing Lance with ArmourBane, balance?

double checked my math you are right. now that being said you have swayed me in your argument. I would still test the idea, I'm a little hesitant, this is because I wanna see some power gamers get ahold of this rule and see how horribly they can break it, hopefully not by much.

Author:  Kyrt [ Sun Nov 22, 2020 4:34 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Replacing Lance with ArmourBane, balance?

It would have been neater if they'd split Sniper into two rules:
Sniper: attacker chooses how to allocate hits
Armour Piercing: -1 save

It could even be done now as it's backwards compatible: just give both rules to anything with current Sniper. No need to touch Lance.

I don't see the need to have two separate -1 rules (armourbane and fleshbane): just apply the rule onto the appropriate weapon type. It still works for weapons with two firing modes even if you don't want to apply it to both:
Code:
Hammerhead railgun    75cm    AP5+
OR                    75cm    AT4+   Armour Piercing

Author:  jimmyzimms [ Sun Nov 22, 2020 2:00 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Replacing Lance with ArmourBane, balance?

Absolutely agree with you there, Kryt. Apoc and I have kvetched about that very thing for a long while.

I'm very keen on seeing EA, via the ERC, adopt a set of redacted keywords. ACs can show balance on any units that they want to leverage these on in the future.

Author:  lord-bruno [ Mon Nov 23, 2020 1:35 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Replacing Lance with ArmourBane, balance?

Kyrt wrote:
It would have been neater if they'd split Sniper into two rules:
Sniper: attacker chooses how to allocate hits
Armour Piercing: -1 save

It could even be done now as it's backwards compatible: just give both rules to anything with current Sniper. No need to touch Lance.

I don't see the need to have two separate -1 rules (armourbane and fleshbane): just apply the rule onto the appropriate weapon type. It still works for weapons with two firing modes even if you don't want to apply it to both:
Code:
Hammerhead railgun    75cm    AP5+
OR                    75cm    AT4+   Armour Piercing


So well thought!!! perfect Kyrt, amazing idea for Epic in general.

Author:  Tiny-Tim [ Tue Dec 29, 2020 3:14 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Replacing Lance with ArmourBane, balance?

Interesting idea. I have no overall problem with it, except that we would be looking to change a core rule. This has issues on time to review all armies that it affects - i.e. all armies and that there could be issues with new/returning players that don't have immediate access to the changes getting confused/put off by the change.

Author:  jimmyzimms [ Wed Dec 30, 2020 1:02 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Replacing Lance with ArmourBane, balance?

No, you don't remove the existing keyword(s). You add NEW ones that are the indicated parts of the existing ability. In the future, ACs that want to leverage it for units, existing or new, can show the need and testing and get it approved. This has effectively already been done for ages via things like Improved Coms and Stubborn in individual lists. Adding them to the universal keywords really isn't an issue.

Author:  Kyrt [ Sat Jan 02, 2021 2:34 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Replacing Lance with ArmourBane, balance?

jimmyzimms wrote:
No, you don't remove the existing keyword(s). You add NEW ones that are the indicated parts of the existing ability. In the future, ACs that want to leverage it for units, existing or new, can show the need and testing and get it approved. This has effectively already been done for ages via things like Improved Coms and Stubborn in individual lists. Adding them to the universal keywords really isn't an issue.
I guess it makes sense to avoid doing it 'big bang' and avoids confusion if not renaming a rule yeah; need another term for what I had called "Sniper" above.

I suppose whilst at it might as well make the other rule Armour Piercing (-x) ;)

Author:  Le-Captain [ Tue Jun 22, 2021 4:18 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Replacing Lance with ArmourBane, balance?

Do not forget the "Lance" story.
It came to mirror the same name rule for 40 3rd Ed Eldars.
At this time, the rule counted any vahicle armour better than 12 as 12. the Falcon lance weapon was S8, so it needed never worst than a 4+ to pierce the armour.
The lore justification was the eldar tech is so advanced they didn't create weaponry that could be effiscient against their own forces. And indeed, no eldar vehicle had a better armour than 12 (even the super heavies).

So, the goal here is to level enemy armour to be average and no reduce everything. The difficulty of choosing the right target to benefit from it is very eldar-haughty, so lore friendly ^^
And, I think it has been smartly converted to Epic.

It is still a good rule but still a weird one.

No need to say there is no current counterpart since that rule disappeared with the 8th-9th Ed ruleset.

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