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Joined: Thu Feb 13, 2003 10:52 pm
Posts: 9617
Location: Nashville, TN, USA
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(zombocom @ May 24 2008,00:00)
QUOTE
(nealhunt @ May 23 2008,21:46)
QUOTE I wouldn't consider them for 100 points, even with 3 shots. That's +50% to cost compared to a Chosen. You'd get 3 Chosen versus 2 Obliterators. That's the same ranged firepower, more FF and more toughness for the Chosen, not to mention about 5x the CC ability, which is oh-so-effective with the Teleport. The Chosen would outperform them by a huge margin, regardless of AA or Fearless. You're not factoring in the fact that they are Fearless, which is worth a significant number of points on its own on such a difficult to kill unit.
The opponent has to kill 5+ Chosen, with 1+ being via hackdown hits before Fearless has any effect whatsoever. At that point, the formation is toast. Once all the Chosen are gone, it's a paltry matter to keep the Obliterators broken and there aren't enough of them to impede objectives. The only thing it's good for is a Fearless nuisance or maybe to keep BTS in play.
Also, more units is better. 2 Obliterators are easier to suppress and break than 3 Chosen. Better not to break in the first place than have Fearless.
The ranged firepower of the obliterators is better in your example, because they have AA, and better AT. A point of AT improvement is worth more than losing a point of AP. The obliterators are more survivable due to being fearless with an invulnerable save, and not that much worse in a firefight; 1.66 hits average instead of 2 hits.
I pulled the AA out separately in my comparison. It doesn't work anything like other ranged fire, so trying to lump it in doesn't make sense. As pointed out, in a Chosen formation the AA is simply a token ability.
I strongly disagree with the "AT is better" comment as well. As many people have pointed out, in actual game play a focused role is always better as long as it can be used, and in this case, it almost always can be. Dedicated AP4/AT6 is better than even AP5/AT5 unless you know for a fact you can't find a target with infantry (which shouldn't be the case when you teleport). Even if you end up in that situation which makes the Obliterators better, you're looking at a very modest difference. At something like 2 Chosen/2 Oblits versus 5 Chosen (figure a couple casualties or suppression), you're talking 1.0 versus .83 average hits. In contrast, if you put them in any situation with infantry present, all-Chosen dish out +50% hits on a per-unit basis, with more units.
The extra range on the Obliterators means almost nothing because 1) the bulk of the formation is still only 30cm so it's little more than BM placement and 2) they are easily suppressed to prevent even that.
Chosen provide better ranged fire by a wide margin.
Also an important consideration, ranged fire is only a modest portion of the formation's abilities. Even if I were to grant your premise that Obliterator ranged fire is marginally better (even though it's clearly not), so what? The majority of the power of Chosen comes from assault and support, in which case they beat the Obliterators marginally in FF and by a huge margin in CC. They will fire, at most, 1-2 times in a game, and that's only if the formation doesn't have Summoning. In contrast, counting support fire, they will usually participate in 2-5 assaults, at least one of which is CC. Even if it the Chosen have "only" 20% more FF hits on average, when you FF and/or support in 2-3 assaults, that adds up.
The 3 Chosen count more in assaults for outnumbering. The assault bit may not sound like much but when outnumbered, which is likely with a small formation like Chosen, each extra model makes it twice as hard for the enemy to claim that double-outnumber bonus. A difference of +/-1 on resolution can easily translate into +/- 20% on the chance to win, which is huge.
I'd take 2 Obliterators over 3 chosen any day.
This is so lopsided on paper that I didn't want to playtest it the first time. But it was playtested and it was found that the "theoryhammer" was correct. 100 points was too expensive. This wasn't a controversial bit with split opinions like the Decimator discussions. It was just too expensive.
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Neal
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