2 hours ago, QuickWhit said:

To answer your question, a 4 tray unit of Oathsworn Cavalry reformed by Hawthorne, with MOI and TS can throw 32 damage with a perfect roll and only costs 42 points.

I don't know that the best possible scenario is all that important to consider when considering the balance of a unit. A solo rune golem can potentially throw 12 damage for 17 points, but nobody is making the case that they are overpowered.

This isn't really a balance discussion, it is a rules discussion. FFG is perfectly capable of making overpowered units (COUGHspinedthreshersCOUGH)...

Great points on the value of having 3 dice and having to remove one. The resilient to betrayal thing is something I hadn't previously considered.

I do think the wraith argument is the best one towards this interpretation of the rule. It's the reason I think they should always remove one die.

All this said: Is there anyone that ran Darnati in an official tournament where the rule was discussed. Was there any controversy at all or was it just accepted that the dice is removed every time?

It's not a balance discussion, but balance can give us a hint. I play them, and I always remove a die. Even removing dice, I find them very effective for the cost. If I got to keep the dice, I think they would be too good.

As for stupid combos of damage, the worst offender I've seen is Spearmen. Block of 6 with weapon master and Eagle-Banner Bearer. Hawthorn was on the table and so was the Latari Memorial. By the end of turn 3, they had 9 inspiration tokens. Turn 4, they collided and rolled up hit-hit, hit-surge and hit-surge. Spent the surges to gain an inspiration token and dealt 12 damage + 10 WOUNDS.

The D Wars can pull off a fantastic combo too.

Picture the scene. .

You collide with their flank due to a charge March action + Charge modifier and a handful of tactical brilliance. Smirking and preparing the quote you have been dying to try out all game, you reach for your dice. . this is your moment, your time to shine. .

But wait, why is the Latari player not panicking? Can he not see the destruction you are about to unleash??

They push their glasses back up with one finger . . a white flash rapidly passes across their face as their previously poker face like expression turns to one of vicious joy. .

The Latari Player:
1. Reforms to face you due to Banner of Twisting Gale, cancelling the flank bonus and returning to them their rank re-rolls.
2. Performs an attack due to File Leader.
3. As their dial is revealed, the hit modifier is active. Naturally, they roll hit + hit + hit/surge, as they were natties, no re-roll needed. #trollface
4. Tempered steel is used to put 15 damage in the damage pool.
5. Front Line Scion is exhausted to provide a stun token.
6. Stun token gets spent to cancel the charge modifier.
7. Your unit receives a panic token for colliding with an enemy unit without a charge modifier as well as cancelling your attack.
8. You drop your dial in disgusting slow motion as you are blown away by their tactical genius.

(Personally I don't think steps 5 - 7 are legit due to the order of operations and the requirement for File Leader but I have heard compelling argument that the above is legal and as funny as someone saying that Maro is a well balanced, competitive hero and a lynch pin of Waiqar meta.)

1 hour ago, Viktus106 said:

(Personally  I don't think steps 5 - 7 are legit due to the order of operations and the requirement     for File Leader but I have heard compelling argument that  the above is legal and as funny as someone saying that Maro is a well balanced, competitive hero and a lynch pin of Waiqar meta.)

Yeah not legal. The stun gets spent when the dial is revealed. That opportunity passed before the stun got put on the charging unit.

2 hours ago, Viktus106 said:

The D Wars can pull off a fantastic combo too.

Picture the scene. .

You collide with their flank due to a charge March action + Charge modifier and a handful of tactical brilliance. Smirking and preparing the quote you have been dying to try out all game, you reach for your dice. . this is your moment, your time to shine. .

But wait, why is the Latari player not panicking? Can he not see the destruction you are about to unleash??

They push their glasses back up with one finger . . a white flash rapidly passes across their face as their previously poker face like expression turns to one of vicious joy. .

The Latari Player:
1. Reforms to face you due to Banner of Twisting Gale, cancelling the flank bonus and returning to them their rank re-rolls.
2. Performs an attack due to File Leader.
3. As their dial is revealed, the hit modifier is active. Naturally, they roll hit + hit + hit/surge, as they were natties, no re-roll needed. #trollface
4. Tempered steel is used to put 15 damage in the damage pool.
5. Front Line Scion is exhausted to provide a stun token.
6. Stun token gets spent to cancel the charge modifier.
7. Your unit receives a panic token for colliding with an enemy unit without a charge modifier as well as cancelling your attack.
8. You drop your dial in disgusting slow motion as you are blown away by their tactical genius.

(Personally I don't think steps 5 - 7 are legit due to the order of operations and the requirement for File Leader but I have heard compelling argument that the above is legal and as funny as someone saying that Maro is a well balanced, competitive hero and a lynch pin of Waiqar meta.)

Also, I am 99+% certain they don’t get the hit modifier. The attack from file leader has no stance. So it cannot be paired with the red stance modifier.

From a rules consistency POV, the wraiths comparison works.

From balance POV: Personally, Darnati have never really felt weak in any of my games and we play them with always removing a die. They aren’t a straightforward derp-derp-smash-smash infantry unit, so Blue-Blue is plenty.

3 hours ago, Church14 said:

They aren’t a straightforward     derp-derp-smash-smash infantry unit, so Blue-Blue is plent  y   .   

Yeah. If their intent were to be the Latari option to actually stand up to something like Death Knights or do big damage on a charge, Blue-Blue would be underwhelming.

But it seems like Latari are just fated to not have anything that does chunky damage reliably, so they're meant to be another tool for consistent chip damage in MSU configurations.

I’m baffled by some of the previous remarks. The remove a die mechanic makes them the highest base damage from infantry and it cuts the variance down in the rest of their formations. The blue die is there to boost their surge bonus damage.

There’s also plenty more competition for upgrade slots, so maybe you don’t run MoI, which pairs well with adding a hit and perhaps fishing for a double hit or hit/surge.

They either want to built to take the charge or to win the movement game possibly picking up a flank die from it.

Run the math on the Darnati, they compete with the other factions on damage when compared builds to build.

The Latari have plenty of big hitters,

3 hours ago, Vergilius said:

I’m baffled by some of the previous remarks. The remove a die mechanic makes them the highest base damage from infantry and it cuts the variance down in the rest of their formations. The blue die is there to boost their surge bonus damage.

There’s also plenty more competition for upgrade slots, so maybe you don’t run MoI, which pairs well with adding a hit and perhaps fishing for a double hit or hit/surge.

They either want to built to take the charge or to win the movement game possibly picking up a flank die from it.

Run the math on the Darnati, they compete with the other factions on damage when compared builds to build.

The Latari have plenty of big hitters,

Meh. They are slightly better, but also cost more than any other infantry. They don't have the option for a siege or unit champion that increases their damage output at all.

No Weapon Master, Executioner or Cacophony Reaver.

Blue dice give more lethal 1 instead of hits. At 2 or 3 wide, red dice would be dealing more damage.

I haven't run the math yet, but I think reanimates with 2 red dice actually out damage the 3 die drop of darnati on the charge. It's once they can dial up a hit that they become good.

5 hours ago, Vergilius said:

I’m baffled by some of the previous remarks. The remove a die mechanic makes them the highest base damage from infantry and it cuts the variance down in the rest of their formations. The blue die is there to boost their surge bonus damage.

There’s also plenty more competition for upgrade slots, so maybe you don’t run MoI, which pairs well with adding a hit and perhaps fishing for a double hit or hit/surge.

They either want to built to take the charge or to win the movement game possibly picking up a flank die from it.

Run the math on the Darnati, they compete with the other factions on damage when compared builds to build.

The Latari have plenty of big hitters,

They may compete when compared build to build, but their ceiling is lower. Other factions can make "bigger" stars that are more likely to blow out whatever faces them, and still be dangerous. Darnati cap out at either expensive builds that trade poorly, or mid-range builds that trade with another mid-range unit and then peter out if there's a little bit left.

As Darth Matthew says, they have no siege upgrades or non-Hero champions that increase their damage at all. Their surge-for-lethal incentivises keeping them small where they benefit from remaining efficient light-damage dealing units at 2-tray threat, and there's very little that makes taking them at large sizes worthwhile, because their damage doesn't scale up well.

I think I'm objecting mostly to the flamboyant rhetoric.

7 hours ago, kaffis said:

But it seems like Latari are just fated to not have anything that does chunky d   amage reliably

For example, this goes well beyond just speaking of the Darnati. And as a primarily Latari player, it goes so completely against my experience with the faction that I find it baffling. But perhaps we're just talking past one another on definitions. How much is chunky damage?

I think beyond that, we're likely to agree on some points. I like the 2x1 and 3x2 for Darnati, but haven't found a 3x3 that I really like. But that's more a function of having a lot of great units, and points sunk into a star are points that are not sunk into something else. But that's not because I think the 3x3 can't compete with other 3x3s, but more that there are just other things I like to do. Usually when I see 3x3s on the table, except for maybe Church's Zerkers, they seem to be on their way to getting torn up.

11 hours ago, Church14 said:

Also, I am 99+% certain they don’t get the hit modifier

Agree, the attack action is activated by the card not the dial. The dial is a requirement to trigger the card. Card actions are colorless.

Yup, if you put file leader on darnati, dial in melee/reform or melee/skill if viable.

4 hours ago, Vergilius said:

How much is chunky damage?

Reliably dealing 12 is chunky damage. You need to reliably kill a thresher, or 2 trays of deathknights on the charge.

I want a consistent 12 damage out of a big block.

My vantala do this, my darnati dont.

45 minutes ago, Darth Matthew said:

Reliably dealing 12 is chunky damage. You need to reliably kill a thresher, or 2 trays of deathknights on the charge.

I want a consistent 12 damage out of a big block.

My vantala do this, my darnati dont.

I agree on 12 being considered a strong attack.

However, a 3x2 darnati with tempered steel on a perfect roll does 10 damage, with hit mod 13. On a flank, it gets to 17. With MoI it does up to 19. With embedded meagan and MoI and 3 green runes they can hit 22, or surge a massive amount of splash damage.

Darnati swing just fine, but it's not what they are all about. They are a technical infantry.

Like all latari, they need to be mindful of when to engage, as they are glass cannons. This can be nullified by hedge shroud, which situationally makes them really good tarpits. Darnati are excellent at sweeping small units, but will not go toe to toe with another star. The vast amount of upgrades available to them lets them fill a lot of different roles in builds, but they seem best suited to play defensively and wait for the right moment to strike, aiming for a wounded unit, or a flank.

Twelve was what I was thinking. I had to ask because you never know what someone else is thinking. And that's what's so baffling, the remark not merely about the Darnati not being able to do that, but pretty much the entire Latari Elves not being able to do that.

So my joke posts aside. . .

What is the common ruling here, I just want to be sure people are playing it consistently both sides of the pond.

On 12/13/2018 at 1:45 PM, Church14 said:

Also, I am 99+% certain they don’t get the hit modifier. The attack from file leader has no stance. So it cannot be paired with the red stance modifier.

I've had someone debate it mid game that it's possible. The reasoning I was told was that File Leader asks you to perform a melee attack IF your dial is already revealed and with the melee action dialed, essentially saying - You revealed your dial too early and got nothing for it but NOW it's OK for you to use it.

This is different from say Dispatch Runner, which doesn't care about your dial, it just tells you to make a melee attack.

I'm happy with it either way, mainly because this was the first and only time I have actually seen someone use it. :)

19 minutes ago, Viktus106 said:

essentially  saying - You revealed your dial too early and got nothing for it but NOW it's OK for you to use it.

Except that File Leader enables your unit to attack all units that charge in while the unit has melee revealed - not just the first. It's not a delay to the attack.

The melee might have been activated (with the modifier hit) when revealed plus enabling further attacks against all other units that later charge in on the flanks.

15 hours ago, Jukey said:

I agree on 12 being considered a strong attack.

However, a 3x2 darnati with tempered steel on a perfect roll does 10 damage, with hit mod 13. On a flank, it gets to 17. With MoI it does up to 19. With embedded meagan and MoI and 3 green runes they can hit 22, or surge a massive amount of splash damage.

Darnati swing just fine, but it's not what they are all about. They are a technical infantry.

Like all latari, they need to be mindful of when to engage, as they are glass cannons. This can be nullified by hedge shroud, which situationally makes them really good tarpits. Darnati are excellent at sweeping small units, but will not go toe to toe with another star. The vast amount of upgrades available to them lets them fill a lot of different roles in builds, but they seem best suited to play defensively and wait for the right moment to strike, aiming for a wounded unit, or a flank.

Darnati need to get lucky to get into the 12 range. Other comparable units can average that.

Take berserkers, Red + Blue, + hit on the modifier. Add in Cacophony Reaver, serrated spines, and blood rage conduit and you have 1 to 4 hits (3 to 12 damage) + lethal 2-4 every turn, lethal 0-2 by taking wounds and lethal 1+ for banners.

Even if you roll up blanks, you're looking at 8 damage minimum on a miss, 19 on the higher end.

What Darnati do well is dish out a low level of damage very consistently.

13 minutes ago, Darth Matthew said:

Darnati need to get lucky to get into the 12 range. Other comparable units can average that.

Take berserkers, Red + Blue, + hit on the modifier. Add in Cacophony Reaver, serrated spines, and blood rage conduit and you have 1 to 4 hits (3 to 12 damage) + lethal 2-4 every turn, lethal 0-2 by taking wounds and lethal 1+ for banners.

Even if you roll up blanks, you're looking at 8 damage minimum on a miss, 19 on the higher end.

What Darnati do well is dish out a low level of damage very consistently.

"Lucky"---3 threat by 4 hits is not very lucky. Lucky is when you need a hit/hit on the red or white die for some reason. The blue dice with rerolls are consistent. What they aren't is spikey. You won't have an amazing roll. But you're also not likely to have a bad one either. As I mentioned above, the variance with Darnati is pretty low. So with the outfit Jukey described, its going to be 12-14 depending upon how much Lethal you pick on the dice.

Bezerkers: earlier in your reasoning, you were arguing about a unit doing 12 damage on a charge. You then provide a counterpoint to Jukey's comment by citing an example of Bezerkers getting the hit mod. Presumably, they also have a front-line Thresher, will average 2 hits, so 8 damage on the charge, plus 1.7 average for Cacaphony and 1.5 for Serrated. Blood rage depends upon how you run the rest of your list. I personally haven't bought a bunch of packs to do so. Stilll, let's give it credit for 1. So that's 12.2 damage with the possibility of 14.2 average off the lethal-wound. I'd also add that there's a question of when enough is enough. Church didn't bother with Cacaphony Reaver in his Worlds winning list. He did have TS instead of Serrated, which allows for some interesting possibilities of rerolling aggressively for either red double hits or blue hit/surges. It isn't as automatic as the Lethal damage, but it does hit that 12 threshold damage spike.

Other than repeatedly saying "what Darnati do well is dish out a low level of damage very consistently," I haven't seen evidence to back up the assertion. Certainly the 2x1 does that, but the 3x2 and 3x3 builds are in line with what other 3x2s and 3x3s do.

Does the Lethal damage for the Darnati Warrior's surge ability stack?

The card says "[surge]: Gain Lethal 1 for this {Melee}"

If I were to roll hit/surge, hit/surge would the two surges end up causing the attack to gain Lethal 2? Or does the wording of the card imply that spending multiple surges would only cause the unit to gain lethal 1 (essentially wasting the second surge spent to activate the same ability)?

I ask because of some crossover discussion that was had concerning Baron Zacareth's Runic Augmentation ability. This ability states - "After setup, choose up to 3 allies. Each of those allies receives 1 vitality token." It was concluded that if you picked the same ally multiple times they would only receive 1 vitality token because of the explicit wording of the ability; receives 1 vitality token.

It would seem to be the same case for the Darnati's ability. Even though you can spend multiple surges to activate a surge ability, that surge ability (for each activation) only adds Lethal 1 to the damage pool. An example:

2 tray Darnati attacks and rolls - hit/surge, hit/surge, (third dice removed). (Step 1-5: Attack)

(Step 6): Spend Surge: Darnati elects to spend both surge results to gain Lethal 1. Is this redundant? Have you added 1 to the damage pool or 2? Would the result look like:

[Hit]*threat + [Hit]*threat + Lethal 1 + Lethal 1 (keep adding lethal 1)

or

[Hit]*threat + [Hit]*threat + Lethal 1 (lethal one has been added. replace lethal 1 with second surge spent)

2 minutes ago, Steel82 said:

Does the Lethal damage for the Darnati Warrior's surge ability stack  ?

The card says "[surge]: Gain  Lethal 1 for this {Melee}"

Lethal, Brutal, Protected, and Precise are all keywords which are specifically defined as stacking additively in the rules. So, yes -- each surge grants Lethal 1, but any time Lethal is gained front multiple sources (in this case, multiple expenditures of a surge) you add the number after the Lethal together to get a total.

6 minutes ago, kaffis said:

Lethal, Brutal, Protected, and Precise are all keywords which are specifically defined as stacking additively in the rules. So, yes -- each surge grants Lethal 1, but any time Lethal is gained front multiple sources (in this case, multiple expenditures of a surge) you add the number after the Lethal together to get a total.

This was the direction I needed. I checked the Keywords section and this rule covers the question:

RRG 45.7: If an upgrade or other game effect causes a unit to have one or more instances of a keyword that has an “X” value, treat the unit as having a single instance of that keyword with an “X” value equal to the sum of the “X” value of all of that unit’s other instances of that keyword.

Thanks for the quick reply kaffis!

18 hours ago, Steel82 said:

This was the direction I needed. I checked the Keywords section and this rule covers the question:

RRG 45.7: If an upgrade or other game effect causes a unit to have one or more instances of a keyword that has an “X” value, treat the unit as having a single instance of that keyword with an “X” value equal to the sum of the “X” value of all of that unit’s other instances of that keyword.

Thanks for the quick reply kaffis!

Just to chime in: Steadfast and Overgrow are exceptions stated in FAQ. You take the highest value and do not add them together. AFAIK these are the only two exceptions.

You do not get Steadfast [Fear 2] if you embed a figure with Steadfast [Fear] into a unit with Steadfast [Fear]. I believe Ravos embedded in Threshers is the only situation this applies to so far.

Thanks for all the input. We agree on the terminology and are also playing faolan the same way.

Btw Faolan with spirit sword is pretty great.