Atalanta : The Huntress [BG]

Fierce but fragile. Dodge may make her somewhat more survivable. But with only 5 vitality I doubt it that she will be using her special power a lot and not instead mainly be utilized as a ranged unit on top of a hill (together with Artemis, for instance).

5 activations are nice, as are 2 AoW cards for only 2RP.

I don't get why she is so weak. She seems more suited to be a 3-4 points hero.

I think Atalanta will come with 1 AoW card instead of 2.

I remember Benoit saying that in one game demonstration.

If anything, she should be buffed!

Such a shame that Atalanta, who is probably the most accomplished of all female heroes of greek mythology is so weak.

She is known for her great speed, yet she only has 1 movement.

I totally agree Rhalius. She was the only woman that joined the Argnauts. That should put her at the same level as Heracles or Thesseus.

Aquiles10 wrote:I think Atalanta will come with 1 AoW card instead of 2.
I remember  Benoit saying that in one game demonstration.

But how can that be, as they have been playtesting the core box units for over a year!?!  

Aquiles10 wrote:I totally agree Rhalius. She was the only woman that joined the Argnauts. That should put her at the same level as Heracles or Thesseus.

In MB:P as a rule, there are no physically strong women. Nor fully armoured women.
Not meaning they can't be powerful (I believe Persephone is regarded as one of the best, if not best, Goddess), but not not what battle prowess is concerned. We have some strong female monsters but in the hero department they're mostly 2RP units, or in case of Penthesilea, a 3RP pure Troops booster without any fighting powers and skills.

But how can that be, as they have been playtesting the core box units for over a year!?!  Shocked

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Look, you will see (hear) Benoit sayig it.

It's a pity because with those 2 AoW cards and 2rp hero it wasnt a bad choice to close your army. Now...

I still don't get all this negativity. Atalanta has a very high (overall) attack and comes with 5 activation cards allowing her to attack and retaliate consistently. She is a glass cannon for sure (if you don't use her second ability), but she hits like a truck and can finish of a lot of units.

caibre wrote:I still don't get all this negativity. Atalanta has a very high (overall) attack and comes with 5 activation cards allowing her to attack and retaliate consistently. She is a glass cannon for sure (if you don't use her second ability), but she hits like a truck and can finish of a lot of units.

Sure, her 5/6 stats, the occasional double attack and dodge and 5 Activations are very nice features .. for a 2RP unit.

But why isn't she a 3RP (or even 4RP) unit? She has only 5 Vitality. Her double ranged/melee attack isn't that useful anymore if she attacks an enemy with Block; she basically has to melee herself out of it (she has no Block) and can't use the ranged/move/melee combo anymore. She has no Mobility either so she can't hit-and-run.
If you really want a 2RP hard hitter I'd pick the Eagle. 6/7, 6 Vitality, Fly with torment and re-roll blank dice.

As said, she is quite nice for a 2RP unit. She just shouldn't have been 2RP.

caibre wrote:I still don't get all this negativity. Atalanta has a very high (overall) attack and comes with 5 activation cards allowing her to attack and retaliate consistently. She is a glass cannon for sure (if you don't use her second ability), but she hits like a truck and can finish of a lot of units.

I don't really see how she "hits like a truck". 5 attack is pretty low for a hero. Yes, she can occasionally use 2 attacks in a single turn, but 2 5 dice attacks is still not that strong and her abilities don't really help her pack more of a punch with those attacks.

There are troops as strong as her pretty much.

I agree that she should at least have mobility or another third talent to help her out.

Her dodge ability only works when she is attacked so if she attacks and someone retaliates I assume it might not work, which would make her huntress ability a suicide charge against most units if they can retaliate.

To me the godesses seem just fine in power, most female characters are. It's just sadly the female heroes of the warrior type that get the shaft.

There just seems to be little reason to hire Atalanta, Penthesilea or Hippolyta, because there are so many better alternatives to get for the same points value.

Rhalius wrote:There just seems to be little reason to hire Atalanta, Penthesilea or Hippolyta, because there are so many better alternatives to get for the same points value.

Atalanta isn't bad for 2RP, she just should have been at least 3RP with corresponding stats. And yes, preferably an extra talent.
Pentehsilea is the one I really have my doubts about. Compared to Leonidas she hardly has anything to add.
Hippolyta as 2RP unit will see a lot of use in my armies. Strange enough she's even stronger than her 3RP sister and has a few very good skills.

I still disagree. Using 10 total dice on an attack is really good. And being a ranged attacker they have to reduce her stats to balance her. She can pile on 2-3 damage on a high defense unit and prime them to be finished off.

I really don't want this game to have a ton of heroes that are indistinguishable from each other. We have enough tanky, heavy hitters (Heracles, Achilles, etc.). It's nice to have a heroine that does some very cool assassin moves. And her abilities are by and large very thematic. She just needs good guards and you can build a strong team around her.

caibre wrote:I still disagree. Using 10 total dice on an attack is really good. And being a ranged attacker they have to reduce her stats to balance her. She can pile on 2-3 damage on a high defense unit and prime them to be finished off.

I really don't want this game to have a ton of heroes that are indistinguishable from each other. We have enough tanky, heavy hitters (Heracles, Achilles, etc.). It's nice to have a heroine that does some very cool assassin moves. And her abilities are by and large very thematic. She just needs good guards and you can build a strong team around her.

I agree that variety of units is important. Being tanky/powerful is clearly not Atalanta's stong suit, and as such shouldn't be used for those purposes. I see her mostly sitting on a cliff taking pot shots at range 3 until an enemy wanders close enough to land a double attack on them. She's there to ambush one, maybe 2 units throughout the whole game.

I agree that a total of 10 (or 11 if on cliff) dice is pretty good, but that's only if you can land both attacks on the same unit, which means it has to be in an adjacent area. That won't happen often within the same game, especially if your opponent has good blockers in place. It should also be noted that because of the statistics involved in boosting dice results, 2 x 5 dice attacks =/= a 10 dice attack and will on average be slightly worse than a single powerful attack. Luckily, not many 2RP units can muster 10 dice, so it's still pretty good.

As with everything, the in-game context of how you use a unit is the prime factor in determining how good it is. Don't expect consistant high-damage activations with Atalanta, and once she engages in melee combat, don't expect her to stay on the board much longer, even when using Dodge. Make troops and weak-ish units without Block your priority target for double attacks, or have a thrower on the ready to save her butt.

caibre wrote:I still disagree. Using 10 total dice on an attack is really good.

I don't really get this. She has to be at range 1 to be able to do her shoot-move-melee trick.

Ok, lets say this happened. Next turn. She is now at range 0, meaning she can't shoot anymore at her previous target. So she can't do her trick this turn unless there's another enemy at precicely range 1 and the enemy she attacked has no block. If that ideal situation isn't there, she is either bound to just a 5-dice melee or do a 5-dice bow attack on another enemy unit. Which is basically 1 damage.

So I wonder how often she will actually do her two attacks? If she had Block and also had the ability to do melee-move-shoot, well that would have been different and she would really be a harrassing striker, but she can't. So I can't but conclude that mostly she will be just doing a single 5-dice attack. Her skill is way too situational to be able to rely on it. In the core box I imagine she's quite a special 2RP unit with a range 2 bow attack; with the expansions I think you can get better DPS (Eagle, Lycaon) or a range 2 archer with more extraordinary skills (Paris) than Atalanta. Or if you really want a great archer invest 1RP more for Eurytus aka Eurytos aka Euryton.

Another thing is that Troops like Amazons or Toxotai have a 4 dice (5 dice when Bolstered) range 2 attack for just 1RP & recallable. And there's plenty of heroes and Gods that have the Leader and Bolster talents.
Atalanta really has to bring something extra, otherwise you may as well recruit these units instead.

Last thing is that it said that she will bring 1 AoW card, not 2. In the BoW gameplay vid Benoit seems to mention this.

Yes, seems like she even gets nerfed despite being very weak already.

Thing is, she should not go into melee. She is far too weak for that. Her dodge only works when she gets attacked so I presume not for retaliations. One retaliation from anyone strong could kill her.

And when blocked she can't escape.. that huntress ability pretty much only works to finish off enemies that she did not manage to kill with her ranged attack. And she should not even be that close to the fighting either way.

She seems to work best when climbing on a cliff and serving as an archer, but various other heroes and creatures are much better at it than her, even ranged troops are likely to outperform her. They seem slightly weaker or equal to her in power, but can be recalled.

On top of that troops can be boosted by bolster.

Sad if she gets nerfed to 1 AoW.
Actually bringing 2 AoW to the hand was my main incentive for picking her.
Trying to find the best way to exploit her abilities would have been fun : as described, I can see her on a cliff shooting enemies (+1 att, +1 range) then coming down when the weakened enemy is in an adjacent area.
With Initiative, she's not so fragile and can weaken the enemy before he attacks... but no dodge in this case - tough choice.

MaxC wrote:2 x 5 dice attacks =/= a 10 dice attack and will on average be slightly worse than a single powerful attack.

Actually I am wondering if anybody brought up any statistical data about the MB resolution...
(not so easy to do as there is a decision part)
What is the best tactic against a low defense, against a high defense ? create as much 5 as possible or keep some dice in reserve ?
Are 2 5-dice attacks weaker than a single 10-dice attacks ? Does the answer depends on the defense ?
...

Telgar wrote:Sad if she gets nerfed to 1 AoW.

Considering her "fragility" and her 5 AC, she may bring additional AoW after her demise

Telgar wrote:

MaxC wrote:2 x 5 dice attacks =/= a 10 dice attack and will on average be slightly worse than a single powerful attack.

Actually I am wondering if anybody brought up any statistical data about the MB resolution...
(not so easy to do as there is a decision part)
What is the best tactic against a low defense, against a high defense ? create as much 5 as possible or keep some dice in reserve ?
Are 2 5-dice attacks weaker than a single 10-dice attacks ? Does the answer depends on the defense ?
...

Defense (5-7): you try to get as much 5s as possible. The chance on a 1+ is 5/6, on a 2+ is 4/6. So most 5s will become hits, especially when you save a dice or 2. That said, I fought with Echo (4 attack against a fixed 5 defense) and you still only do a 1.5 damage on average (mostly 1s and 2s, sometimes 0, hardly 3).

And yes, of course 1x10 is better than 2x5. Because the results are rounded down - adding the unused rest values may often (not always) result in an extra hit.
Example with defense =5:
throwing twice {5 4 3 2 1} = 2 hits * 2 = 4 hits;
In one go with 10 dice: {5 5 4 4 3 3 2 2 1 1} = 5 hits.

You throw exactly the same - but the result is often better in one go. This is true regardless the defense value.

Defenses 8-10 are very hard. For every 5 you have a 3/6 to 1/6 chance to score a hit from your 5s. You want to save a lot of 1's - and even then you will miss a lot. With 9 dice against 9 defense you may do a ~2.3 damage on average (not maths, just an estimate from playtesting).
Defense bonusses are very tough, a +1 is a lot more significant than a +1 attack so I'd say Close Protection and Torment are better than Sneak Attack. Re-rolls are VERY good; sometimes you really roll a lot of blanks and every +1 you can get counts.

Telgar wrote:

MaxC wrote:2 x 5 dice attacks =/= a 10 dice attack and will on average be slightly worse than a single powerful attack.

Actually I am wondering if anybody brought up any statistical data about the MB resolution...
(not so easy to do as there is a decision part)
What is the best tactic against a low defense, against a high defense ? create as much 5 as possible or keep some dice in reserve ?
Are 2 5-dice attacks weaker than a single 10-dice attacks ? Does the answer depends on the defense ?
...

I've been trying to work out the probabilities for dice rolls, but the +1s make it a little harder to figure out. Teowulff's analysis above is pretty accurate, even though it's not perfect. I'd add that against 8+ defense, I tend to keep one die aside for each 5 when possible. Every reroll has at most 50% chance to succeed, so you want to be able to boost your results when needed. Depending on the circumstances though, I also like to turn as many 4s into 5s, because unless I'm mistaken, you can still use your reroll as a +1, so you have a chance for your 5 to hit, and if not you only used up 1 die to get that chance.

[quote="MaxC"]

Telgar wrote:I also like to turn as many 4s into 5s, because unless I'm mistaken, you can still use your reroll as a +1, so you have a chance for your 5 to hit, and if not you only used up 1 die to get that chance.

The dice statistics are a little bit more tricky as if you spend your 4 + 1 (dice >0) to get a 5, you may still roll a blank afterwards. So there is a 1 chance in 6 that you loose your 2 dices.