We all know by now how important is the initiative. But I wanted to measure exactly how much, and the conclusion is that the difference is huge.

I have programmed an ugly but functional excel file that simulates combats. It is not supposed to simulate the game (no moral for example) but the necessary damage, rerolls, impact of the remaining trays, etc.

I have 2 examples I would like to share now. First a combat between 50 pts of RuneGolems and 50 pts of Reanimates.

The Reanimates would win 88% of the combats. If we would give the Runegolems the Initiative (Magic!) , that 88% would become a 5%. Huge difference.

I have repeated this exercise with another case. 46 points of Oathsworn Cavalry against 46 points of Carrion Lancers. As before, no moral effects, No surges, No Blights.

If the Lancers attack on Initiative 3 with a bonus to Defence they will win 78% of the combats. With the following chart showing the remaining knights.

If we change to Initiative 7, and apply a+1 impact instead, the results are catastrophic. Only in 0,4% of the combats would the Cavalry win. Obviously the +1 to defense they also lose plays an important role, but as you see in the last graph, if we would keep that +1 Defence instead of the +1 Damage, the situation would improve slightly but only to about 1,6% of Victories to the OC.

Initiative is the single most important factor.

Nice data. I'd like to see a 2x2 Oathsworn and a 4x1 Oathsworn (34 pts each) vs a 3x2 Reanimate (35 pts) as well. Give a good breakdown of threat vs rerolls on the outcome. You should see much higher variance on the 4x1's results I'd imagine.

Ok, I had 15 min to spare.

The results are surprising. The 4x1 option is just better.

Those 13% of the fights that were won by the reanimates were just pure luck. One of those fights below. The "Unidad Rápida" is the Fast Unit. In this case the OC. They started fine, with a 12 impact hit. But were very unlucky in the Rounds 2 and 3. The reanimates even without any second Row were very very lucky.

The last turn, the Reanimates even increased their numbers in one.

Wow that's a much different result than I expected. Out of curiosity - what's your heuristic for deciding when to reroll a die? Are you maximizing damage?

Yes, maximize damage. If there are 3 or more full lines left, I will reroll all the Red and White one hits. If there is only one reroll left, only the zeros starting by the white dice, after the red, and last the blue.

Obviously if there are effects like surges or precisions in play, the program should behave differently but it wouldn't be very practical even if bothered with the programming .

That seems pretty sound for an algorithm. Thanks for posting these results, I didn't expect 4x1 to be THAT much better.

You keep saying "impact" but then you are ignoring panic results. Impact is a keyword that assigns panic tokens to an enemy unit after colliding with that unit during a charge. When you say "impact" are you talking about threat, then? Or are you referring to something else?

If you get more curious Liher, I'd also like to see 1x4 for th Cavalry -- I know some people are running that with Hawthorne, but I can't imagine the 'ultra' consistency does much at all compared to 4 damage per hit. I'm betting threat is king.

The sheer effectiveness of 4x1 is surprising, but considering that maneuvering it can be unwieldy, there are trade off. Which has nothing to do with your awesome simulations, and more to do with player strategy when using Hawthorne and seeing the state of the board and enemy deployment. Just a side note.

Solid work! Man, I need to get more games in.

Did you factor in the runes for fighting? And I don't like this data too much as it doesn't factor charges.

While the algorothmn and graphs are AWESOME, I believe the results are skewed as several factors are left out. I commend your efforts sir! Please, keep up woth the fine work!