I'm surprised that nobody has started this thread yet, so here goes lets see if we can agree on any

Lets start with Barking Dog. I'm thinking 45pts

The nearest comparisson we have is the Pounder. The Barking Dog has a very powerful main weapon, better than twin 88's and only one dice short of twin 128mm, 8 dice against your common A4 & A3 walkers. The only downside is it has a 10 range and 6 shots, but in my experience this will rarely be a problem as the board is only 9 squares across and terrain will restrict ranges much further if shooting diagonally and as games only last 8 turns, the BD will probably be blown up before it can fire all shots anyway, as has been prooven when we have used it before with our own card.

If it were costed the same as Pounder at 40pts, I would definately choose the BD instead as the Allied force currently lacks a powerful long ranged weapon, so 45pts is what I value it at.

I would Say BD should be somewhere between 47-52. The M40 is very powerful, its got the same damage profile as the Punisher, and while it dose not have the range that is a moot point 90+% of the time. Also its slightly better then the Punisher's main gun vs infantry so in the end I would say 49 points as imo 45 is a bit too much of a bargain for such a power main gun even if it is a glass cannon.

Barking Dog can be summed up as a Pounder with 2 extra dice of damage to the main weapon. So the question is how much those dice are worth. It's funny how the shortcomings of the BD are mostly inconsequential (rarely any difference between range 10 and U, and you'll very rarely get to fire more than 6 times during a match). So my logic would be, find out what those 2 extra dice of damage are worth, and then just take the lowest range of your assessment to account for the BD's range and ammo limitations.

My shot: 46

can you post the card for the Barking Dog?

40-42 pnts for this one i think. it's like a slightly more powerful pounder. the limited ammo charges and lack of fast or self repair keep this one reasonable points wise.

Nah, it can't possibly cost 40, it's definitely better than the Pounder. I'd only go as low as 44.

Why are you guys putting the points value so low? The fire power for the BD is very hi for an allied unit I would say 47 points at least and its a bit of bargain for that price as well.

ReaverRandall said:

The Pounder which we are comparing it to doesn't have Fast or Self Repair either and BD has far superior firepower, not slightly more powerful. I don't think it should be over 50pts as it can be taken out fairly quickly. 45-50pts for me.

I'm going to say: 47 points

Perhaps it is an idea to have short list of points and put your vote behind the one you think is best (no polls on this forum).
This does mean you will have to quote the last post and change the quote by adding your vote.
And only vote once

Barking Dog AP Votes
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47 I
48
49
50

Or perhaps somebody is willing to keep track and only he/she posts how many people vote for what cost.
That way we can all talk about the cost and argue as much as we like while one person keeps track of what is most popular.

Perhaps this is where I can come in. Maybe we can figure out a range of points for each walker and I can make polls on my blog for everyone to vote on. Most wins very simple and we can see what the whole community thinks not just us arguing.

Barking Dog Points Poll is up on my blog on the side.

it only gets 2 more shots than pounder per turn, plus its limited. max it should be costed is 42-44. ludwig gets 7 shots and it is 40 points. this unit has jump and an extra machine gun over ludwig so you can add some to it but dont get crazy guys. plus that 10 range might not matter now, but what about when warfare comes out, could be a big difference berween U and 10 then...

Polls would be no more valid on another site than here, as not everyone would take the time to go simply to vote, and some simply would have little interest in going. Another site will not reflect the opinions of people on this site. It will simply reflect the opinions of people that visit that site.

Voting is meaningless, because values should have rationale, rather than arbitrary opinion, to set them. FFG has a way to assign values, and that is what people should consider. My son was able to reverse engineer a point cost value system that matched the assigned values for most of the units in the game. He hadn't finished figuring all of the values for abilities before he started a new job that stopped him working on them for now. Someone else could do the same and be able to develop a more logical value than simple guessing.

The approach of Warfare does add to considerations, but if the ground scale fits what we've been told, with 6" per Tactics space, that would give a range of 60", which would not cause much problem on most tables. Even if it were 4" per space, a 40" range when terrain is considered is not a major issue.

Two additional attack dice against most targets is very significant, because it comes close to adding another hit per attack on average. That's very important, especially against the heavies where there are fewer weapons with as much threat. Against the Armor 7 models, that's a 50% increase in firepower.

Self Repair is important, but not as much on medium walkers, as there are many ways to attack that can eliminate the model before Self Repair has a chance to come into play.

As for the assigned unofficial stats, it's rather odd that a single recoiless rifle round is more powerful than the dual 155mm howitzer. Recoiless rifles don't normally push that heavy a round. I say more powerful because it matches stats for the 155mm howitzer except for improved performance against Armor 2 infantry. Not a huge improvement, but we're talking about the most common infantry Armor currently in the game.

ReaverRandall said:

You can't compare the BD to the Ludwig like that, the variations between it and the pounder are the normal factional disparities so you cannot say: "since that faction has the better gun I can use it for the same points.".

Gimp said:

My suggestion was not to come to an "official" points value that you have to use. It was intended to give those players who can't wait to use the models a way to collect the views of others so they can decide what will work best for their gaming group.

Gimp said:

Again the vote is not intended to be a guessing game. Players can give their views and explain why they think value X or Y is suited best for a model.
My suggestion was intended to collect the views of the people who want to talk about the models.

A point cost value system only works if the table the games are played on is always the same so that would not work for a game with new missions in every expansion.

A walker with weapons that have U range would need to be more expensive than a Range 8 weapon on a table with no terrain but on a table with a lot of terrain the costs would be much closer because the extra range would not come into effect enough to matter. If a board is 9 squares long then a range 10 weapon is the same as a range U weapon. Points should be based on how effective a unit is on average instead of a math formula.

All seems a good idea FlorisH & Ark, you can only give a points cost for a models in an average situation or the points would need to change every game - obviously impossible. I've been chucking numbers at paper (comparing various models with each other) and recon an extra heavy weapon dice is worth 5pts, knock a couple of points of where its disabilities might come into play = 48pts, off to vote now

Most of us have the cost in the same sort of ball park, its up to you on what exact cost you want to use.

I never thought a forum discussion would be a valid basis for assigning official point values. I was pointing out that, since polls here have no statistical validity (as online polls never do), holding a poll on another site as suggested would not improve the results of the poll, nor would it reflect the opinions of this forum's members better than a poll held here.

Discussion with rationale to assign values would be a reasonable way to go, which was part of my point. Simply saying, 'Lets vote on points,' brings out the players who simply grab a number from the air or less desirable places because there is no debate to validate the numbers they vote for.

I'm all for players making suggestions and backing up their numbers with some rationale, because that allows discussion and debate of those points, but that isn't what's been happening with some posts.

I've dealt with several games that used a point system based on the math of how effective a unit can be. That can include the variables of terrain versus the weapon's capabilties. Part of an effective mathematical analysis includes variables that will affect performance. I'm not talking rocket science here; just basic statistics and probabilities, which are based on variable situations.

Players have to use their units wisely, or the point values always become an issue, but that's part of being a good commander; making the most of the capabilities, and mitigating the weaknesses of your units. Sometimes, you have to work harder to make the unit worth its points, and sometimes it's easier, but the capability stays the same regardless of terrain.

Gimp this wasn't official in the first place and all of us know this but something ballpark for players who want to play with thier models would be nice. Thats what this discussion is about and thats why i made a poll on my blog for it. It doesn't matter whether you think its right or not bc the very fact that this topic is against you for this discussion in every way.. Besides the fact the i get between 100 and 150 votes.

I would like to see these polls. I would be happy to participate in them and I would find the results useful.

Go over to Arkangl's blog and have yourself a vote. =)

The addy is in his sig.

For Pete's sake, chill out, Gimp!

YES! We all know that the best thing would be for the actual designers of the game to assign AP values to these units, using a cohesive scoring system that has its foundation on the core design of the game (although even that is not really foolproof, I'm still bitter about Lara). But guess what? That's not happening. So what's the next best thing, what can we as lovers of this game do? Well, gather the input of several fans who know and love this game. Collect different assessments of how each person views each unit's strengths and weaknesses and what cost they'd assign to it. Then anybody can decide what they want to do with that information, either calculate an average, go with the value given by the person who made the more convincing argument, or simply use other people's opinions to strengthen your own and arrive yourself at an AP cost. Whatever it is, it sure as heck beats waiting around for your son to "crack the code". So please, instead of going on and on about how polls are meaningless, about how discussing this has no value, why don't you either contribute to this, or stop derailing the thread?

A poll is just a quick way of assessing which values more people agree to be reasonable. If we could create polls in this forum, it would be here. But guess what? We can't, so arkangl was nice enough to create it in his site. And we're not just throwing darts at a board here, people are giving this serious thought and discussing why this unit would be more or less valuable.

And now back to the topic at hand, I was thinking that the whole "Range 10 is no different from U in a 9x9 board" is a bit erroneous, considering that a diagonal shot across the board would need a range of, what, 15?

Moving on from Gimp and thanks Loophole, what do you think the points range for the other walkers should be. So I can put up more polls.

Mickey AFV - I was thinking 40-45.

Bergeluther - Same as the Mickey.

LMC 46 - thinking 55-65

Ryu - Thinking also 50-60

Jagdluther - Thinking 45-55

Fury of Ivan - Thinking 45-55

Otto - 35-45

Loophole Master said:

I agree with you about range 10 vs. range U. However, I'm not sure that I'd give the BD too much of a discount on a 3x3/9x9 board. Since most (all) boards will have LoS-blocking features that will make the 15 range shot unlikely, I think that 10 vs. U isn't that much of a disadvantage.

Agree with Wombat. range 15 or even >10 is almost impossible to acheive because of terrain and even if it were, I bet that there would be a bigger target priority closer.

Ark, Id like to discuss one model at a time if we can please as it will give some continuity to the discussion (which is working very well I think) rather than jumping all over the place.

The results so far for Barking Dog is 45pts with 6 votes and 48pts with 4 votes being the most popular, if we average them all out it will give us 46pts. I think thats fair and will be going along with that. Now to playtest it

Ark, is there anyway of keeping these suggested points on your blog anywhere so they don't get lost within the thread or when the thread dissapears?

I think that all points have now been raised for BD, whats next? Micky, that should be a bit more problamatic as there is no close comparisson.

The ARV one right? This is a tough one. Did we ever figure out what the abilities do?