Reverse engineering AoS stats pt8 – Special rules and Gold
For the last part of our series (for now) we’re looking at calculating the special rules and final Gold score of our monsters.
For the special rules, it will be a case of looking at the AoS profiles and identifying where similar rules already exist in WQ. These would then become part of the profile. At this point I’m not sure we should be looking at creating new rules, but this may change as we go through the new unit types as there have been big changes to how it all works.
Calculating the Gold value was quite simple with 4th edition WFB as it was simply a case of multiplying the points value by 10. We know from some of these that the gold values are not exactly scientific as there are some quite powerful creatures with gold values lower than some much weaker ones. Even looking at these few examples, there are some that don’t quite match their own calculations, like the Pink Horrors… so I imagine there was playtesting involved in some of these to try and balance them out
– | WFB | WQ | AoS | AoS x10 | Notes | |
Goblin Stabba | 2.5pts | 20 Gold | 7pts | 70 | up | Goblins seem to have become a lot more expensive over time, so this one would definitely need a lot of manual intervention to scale down. |
Swamp troll/Fellwater Troggoth | 65pts | 650 Gold | 53pts | 530 | down | Trolls seem to have become cheaper, despite becoming a lot better at hitting (or vomiting over) things |
Ghoul | 8pts | 80 Gold | 10pts | 100 | up | Ghouls work out a bit more expensive, but still within a tolerance, given the scope creep over the years |
Squig | 20pts | 200 Gold | ~14pts | 140 | down | Squigs have become a lot cheaper here as well, despite remaining about the same in terms of stats. |
Beastman | 10 | 100 | 7 | 70 | down | Beastmen have become a little cheaper, but remain within a reasonable tollerance |
Bloodthirster | 800 | 8000 | 280 | 2800 | down | Bloodthirsters do seem to have dropped a lot here, but their stats have also decreased a lot across the board as we saw earlier with the strength/toughness/wounds etc. so you would hope the cost decreased. |
Pink Horror | 35 | 200 | 25 | 250 | up | Given that the original cost doesn’t match up, I feel we’re not doing too badly here with this one, especially when we consider that it will also split into the Brimstone horrors as well now. |
Stormvermin | 9.5 | 95 | 13.5 | 135 | up | taking the base scores, this seems odd, but a wider comparison of the points show that the original WFB stats do not include the heavy armour or halberds that AoS includes by default. Adding on the extra points for those actually gives a good match. |
Savage Orc | 7.5 | 65 | 18 | 180 | up | I’m not at all sure what’s happened here. Like the goblins, the savage orcs have become a lot more expensive in AoS |
Doing simple comparisons of the scores is one thing, but it needs to be taken as a view on the larger pattern. At present I’m tempted to remain with the original rules to multiply the score by 10 and just see how it goes. The full instructions for defining the stats for a new creature are over on https://endtransmission.co.uk/index.php/converting-from-other-systems/