D’s thoughts of Some Efficiencies

[D_acolyte]

Well something finally got caught in my mind and now it will become a post. How efficient a model is always debatable and there are multiple forms of efficiencies. I will be talking about a few of them, as well as a lot of gremlins….. I will defining how I am looking at each one as I go through this, feel free to disagree with my definitions but this is needed so that this can be understood how I see them. All of these are enemy faction independent, the enemy does not factor in to this overview except in a general idea. This is also not as thought out as some of my other posts.

Ap efficiency: this is simply the amount of Ap you have can spend to do as you wish. This includes things such as being reckless, charging as 1 actions or extra action types such as nimble. The thing about Ap efficiencies is that you can trade it for deck in the form of focus or defensives. Some examples are most non character pigs, any reckless model (most are gremlins) and Barbaros.

You might wonder why I have Barbaros, well that because a large amount of the time when I do have fast just moving so in many ways fast and nimble work much the same to me. Yes, I know with fast you can do anything so it is better but by how much: take the number of time you have an extra general ap and then subtract the number of times it was not used to do the action of interest and then you do one minus (dived used in that action by extra general ap). For me and nimble it is 1-(40 walk actions made with extra general ap/50 extra general ap) is .2 or 20%; this is a crude extra utility that a general ap is to me over say just being nimble. This is not going to be the same for you and as I stated this is a crude assessment meant to be a quick way of thinking about it and there is better math for a more exact measure.

Deck efficiency: When I talk about deck efficiency I am mostly talking about flip efficiency or the ability to cheat. This is less intuitive then Ap efficiencies as it varies from action to action based on positive flips, rules, Tn or triggers. The Mature Nephilim is a great example, with a skill of 6 and a positive flip you can normally flip multiple cards that will work and possible get one of the triggers you want and those time you are at a negative to hit you go to an even/strait flip and can cheat.

Hand efficiency: Come up with a number above 13 and now subtract your action value and that the card you need to play from your hand to make it work, the more cards the more efficient the model is. The reason for choosing a value is to have an idea of what something cost between models and coming up with a cut off card; is this shot really worth a 13. This is very much like deck efficiency with the exception that you control this. I could point to the mature again but instead I will shine a light on Hans, he does not randomize into melee, has a good value, trigger for every suit if you want to use it and is often focused; this means I can often cheat with a middle if needed and then put down high in the damage. It is also good to think with hand efficiency how often do I need to cheat to do x action as another measure.

Of these there are 2 factions that seem more efficient than most in one or more of these 3 efficiencies. First is gremlins as they have a lot of ways to get a general ap which can then turn into deck efficiency and some models have a high enough skill to make it into hand efficiency or a lot of ways to skim actions. Such as the gators: 0 action push then focus once and melee expert attack finally I have 1 general action left. The next is 10 thunders which have a lot of ways from aura buffs to extra focus to buff their ability to top deck what they want or be able to cheat what they need. A fair number of 10 thunders also seem to be 6 skills on their minions, but they also started as a very expensive minion organized faction. Most factions have models/masters that can help in these efficiencies.

I could probable go on about some very good examples of each but I feel that it is less productive. These models are the opposite of eater models that I talked about a while ago. What are some of your thoughts on efficiencies or models that fall under these efficiencies?