A few days ago, we discussed the possibility of generating a rule of thumb on building a list in Runewars. Some of this stems from the fact that several of us also play Star Wars Armada and during wave-2, we developed something called a Motti rule, named after an Imperial Admiral, that became a guideline for knowing your list was not doing something strange and ultimately unwieldy. Church's first proposal was to look at a rule of 8, that is to say 8 width of melee trays, with an ability like Dispatch Runner or Brutal to extend their damage to 12. I say this in part because I've been number-crunching the past few days with a lot of different things, that may form the subject matter of future posts, and I noticed that it isn't really something special about the Zerkstar. It can win charges yes, but it doesn't have an outstanding on-charge damage. Once it is engaged, it basically does about the same damage as any other faction's star. Every faction can build a "star" that costs between 57-69 points, and contains upgrades that take it to an average damage of between 12-13 when engaged in full-on melee. The factions do not have access to the same upgrades, and they accomplish this feat in very different ways, but the end result is about the same with the exception that the Waiqar star has 12 additional figures and costs a lot more.
While I think such a concept has merit, it is probably too simplistic in the long-term to really work as a rule of thumb. In fact, it probably can only work in the present time with Uthuk, and may even disappear as a concept when we get the Uthuk ranged units.
Instead, I proposed at the time an idea of a damage/health index. Basically, I want to know how much damage a given list can do, and how much damage it can take back. This is probably easiest to see with Uthuk because they've put up some dominant wins recently, and they're pretty much a damage/health faction. They aren't blighting like Waiqar or dodging like Latari. This is a bit more involved and is probably too complicated to function as a rule of thumb, but for anyone who wants to take the time to calculate it out for their list and their opponent's list, it might very well say something fairly clearly about who won and why.
So taking Church's GenCon winning list, here's what I got
Charge damage: 30.6
Modified Engaged damage: 40.6
Total health: 102
I've put that list on the table for several games in the past few days against some new Latari lists I've built. When I punched up the numbers, I got this:
Charge damage: 41.75
Modified Engaged damage: 45.75
Total health: 75.5
That particular list, I was basically doing a Latari version of one that one of my good friends runs with Daqan, except when I ran the numbers, his numbers were just a touch higher, largely because Latari is meant to be fragile and dodgy, while Daqan features armor as one of their principle concepts.
The numbers make it clear why the results of the games have been varying, but solid Uthuk wins. During the early clash, it looked good for my Latari thanks to some hard Leonx hits with Dispatch runner, but the return damage adds up quickly, removes damage potential from the board, and there just isn't enough units (health) on the board to keep up the damage. Something different may live every time, and it is a blood-bath.
I was looking for numbers that would generate a snapshot. At some point, player skill is going to determine who lands charges first, who creates the best match-ups, who prevents a key enemy unit from engaging for a turn, who engineers a late charge and then an attack before the opponent can respond. The numbers are a way of saying that whatever else can be said about the game, your list is at least in the right ballpark and seems to be doing many of the right things. The numbers are easiest with Uthuk since they build in fairly straight-forward ways and it is easier to calculate how much they'll damage. Most upgrades can be reduced to an average. It gets more complicated beyond that. I have thus far decided to note such things as wildcards and leave them uncalculated. This would be Maegan splash damage, stun token generation, blight, or high difficulty morale checks. I decided to put ranged damage in both charge and modified engage damage to indicate that the unit can often shoot at an early point in the engagement. Something like Dispatch Runner can usually be represented by doubling a key unit in the list, since it is often built around at least one high damage unit. I tend to work off of averages myself. It is easy to look at 2 dice with a reroll and think "of course I'll have two hits," but then there are the times that it doesn't happen. The average was probably lower than 2 hits (1.75?).
Maybe this ends up having too much math or otherwise being too much work for those involved in a casual game, but I suspect it will fairly clearly explain the lists at the top of a tournament from those farther down.