7th Ed. Battle of the Oldbloods: Resurrected! (WoC)

[Foolie]

I was a big fan of Caneghem's "Battle of the Oldbloods" series. Since they've stopped, I wrote a small python script to emulate his results.

The idea here is to compare various Oldblood weapons against different targets. The weapons considered here are: nothing, Scimitar of the Sun Resplendent, Blade of Revered Tzunki, Blade of Realities

Caneghem's original posts can be seen here:

http://www.lustria-online.com/threads/battle-of-the-oldbloods-volume-3-skaven.1100/
http://www.lustria-online.com/threads/battle-of-oldbloods-vol-2-high-elves.1090/
http://www.lustria-online.com/threads/battle-of-the-oldbloods-vc.1078/

Since the next set was going to be on Warriors of Chaos, I decided to continue in his steps and present the results here. As before, against single wound targets, I look at the number of models killed. Against multiple wound targets, I look at the chance to kill the target and the average number of wounds inflicted.

Lords:
I consider 3 cases:
Lord0 has no items of any kind
Lord1 has regeneration and a shield
Lord2 has regeneration a shield and is mounted on a juggernaut

Enemy           vsBase         vsBoRT         vsSotSR       vsBoR
Lord0           6.45% (1.04)   20.99%(1.67)   22.17%(1.67)  39.45%(1.73)
Lord1           1.02% (0.56)   5.74% (1.11)   3.66% (0.89)  35.94%(1.42)
Lord2           0.02% (0.14)   5.75% (1.11)   0.10% (0.22)  35.29%(1.15)
Chaos Dragon    0.00% (0.56)   0.00% (1.25)   0.00% (0.89)  52.65%(3.42)

Core:

Enemy           vsBase         vsBoRT         vsSotSR       vsBoR
Warrior+Shield  1.73           2.78           1.78          1.73
Marauder        2.78           2.78           4.44          3.01
Warhound        2.78           2.78           4.44          3.18

Rare:

Chosen+Shield   0.83           2.08           1.33          1.30
Chaos Knight    0.74           2.78           1.19          1.46
Ogre*           39.67%(2.22)   60.33%(2.78)   77.02%(3.56)  88.15%(2.85) 
Troll*          10.40%(1.48)   14.91%(1.85)   15.72%(2.37)  98.45%(2.97)

Special:

Enemy           vsBase         vsBoRT         vsSotSR       vsBoR
Giant           0.00% (1.04)   0.00% (2.22)   1.97% (2.67)  24.86%(2.74)    
Chaos Spawn     20.99%(1.67)   39.67%(2.22)   53.18%(2.67)  40.63%(2.00)
Shaggoth        0.00% (1.0)    0.00% (1.67)   0.15% (1.67)  35.28%(2.79)

*Since Ogres and Trolls will be seen in units rather than as single models, the handling of "Average Number of Wounds" doesn't work quite properly with the blade of realities, which assumes that a target can be killed by the blade only once.

The ability to instakill means that the Blade of Realities shines against multi-wound targets, even those with high leadership. It performs even better against high wound, low leadership models (generally monsters), but doesn't need to be put up against them to do well. The Blade of Revered Tzunki does well against the tremendous armor saves fielded by Chaos Warriors (and in general cavalry of any race), and the Scimitar still cuts down rank and file without peer.

 

[strewart]

Great, thanks for posting that! Probably a silly question, but what are the two values for multi wound creatures? % to kill and average number of wounds?

And how come we see 0% on a few things? Surely there is always at least some chance unless they have more wounds than attacks, but scimitar gives extra attacks.

 

[Foolie]

Yup, the two numbers for multi-wound targets are % chance to kill and avg # of wounds. Most of the 0% chance to kill entries are simply because a target has more wounds than the attacker has attacks. In the case of the scimitar, the chance to kill isn't strictly 0, it's just small enough that it rounds to 0. (The chance that a scimitar + maiming shield oldblood will kill a chaos dragon in 1 round is .00431%)

 

[Caneghem]

Wow, what an amazing coincidence... just today got my old hard drive hooked up to the new computer and lo and behold, someone has beaten me to the punch!

I had pretty well finished the WoC, but I was holding off because I thought my % chance to kill might be the wrong formula... and it looks like I was quite possibly wrong since your percentages make more sense! We got the same kill numbers though. I'm perfectly content to hand the reins over to you, since you seem to have a more sophisticated program running than just an Excel spreadsheet.

For multi-wound creatures that like to hang out in units, I just figure out the average number of kills usually. This really I think gives the most useful info.

Anyhow... here is what I came up with for my numbers! All of my percentages have been replaced by a #of expected kills... until my % formula can be fixed.

BoR / BoRT / SoSR+MS

Mounts
Manticore 2.52 0.56 0.67
Chaos Dragon 0.69 0.21 0.15

Core
Chaos Warriors(with shields) 1.73 2.78 1.78
Chaos Marauders(LA + SH) 2.74 2.78 3.70
Chaos Warhounds 3.18 2.78 4.44
Marauder Horsemen 3.01 2.78 4.44

Special
Chosen(with shields) 1.30 2.08 1.33
Forsaken 2.53 2.78 3.56
Chaos Chariot 1.13 0.56 0.44
Ogres(Chaos Armor) 1.75 0.93 0.99
Dragon Ogres(Light Armor) 1.26 0.69 0.74
Trolls 2.84 0.46 0.59
Chaos Knights 1.46 2.78 1.19

Rare
Chaos Spawn 0.79 0.74 0.89
Chaos Warshrine 1.01 0.21 0.19
Hellcannon 2.81 0.33 0.30
Dwarf Crew 2.41 2.78 3.56
Dragon Ogre Shaggoth(Light Armor) 0.42 0.28 0.28
Giant 0.28 0.37 0.44

The hellcannon and warshrine are worthy of note, just because of how incredibly easily they can be neutralized by the BoR (relative to the other weapons).

EDIT: Also, I have no idea how to format things to look good at all on the site. All the more reason to pass along the torch. Although I'd be glad to do them of course.

 

[Foolie]

I'm really impressed with how huge of a threat the blade of realities can be to any multi-wound target, even high leadership ones.

Honestly, putting together the code to do this was probably easier than doing it in a spreadsheet. Python is very nice like that.

 

[Caneghem]

I'm really impressed with how huge of a threat the blade of realities can be to any multi-wound target, even high leadership ones.

Honestly, putting together the code to do this was probably easier than doing it in a spreadsheet. Python is very nice like that.

It really just started with a few calcs here and there, and then I went out of control. I really should port over to an actual program, though it has been quite a while since I've done any true coding. I never used Python in college but I hear it is easy to work with.

The big problem I ran into was only really being able to use if/and/or statements, which turned into clunky streams of parentheses.