What to Boost and When

February 24, 2012 by dignity

Andy and Vishal discuss one of the key points of playing Warmachine, boosting your dice rolls and the pro's and con's of boosting your attack rolls over your damage rolls.

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Content: Game Tips Content: Video Model: Walker Proportions: Heroic Scale: 28mm

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havok

15 years ago

With the Butcher I can’t resist booting damage rolls on his feat turn, just beacuse rolling a fistful of d6 is what he’s made for. Nothing like dropping a Heavy warjack in 2 attacks and have focus left over to cast/boost arm, not many casters, if any at all, can do that as reliably as Butcher.

dignity

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Reply to havok

15 years ago

Im not a fan of him i’d rather take Kommandant Irusk or his epic version 🙂
BoW Justin

havok

Reply to dignity

15 years ago

Yea odds on most of the time I’d go with eVlad myself, but I love the big guy regardless, he’s probably the best wrecking ball in the game

praetormarius

15 years ago

In general, I tend to spend more focus on buying attacks, or for high def targets, boosting attack. Butcher being a mat 9 weapon master means I always buy more attacks rather than boost attack or damage.
That said, as Havok meantioned, rolling 5d6 on a charge on his Feat turn is really fun. 🙂

mageknightkevin

15 years ago

Hmmm, it’s nice to see a video on this subject, but I don’t believe you’ve given the Warmachine player good guidance on the decision making process. Here are a couple of rules to follow:

1) Boost the attack roll if you need ~6 or more to hit. Three dice to get a 6 is pretty good odds. Two dice to get a 5 or less is pretty good odds under most circumstances.

2) Boost the damage roll if your P+S is ~6 or more less than your target’s arm. Boosting at this point gives you a good likelyhood of at least scoring some damage with three dice. If your P+S is ~5 or less under the target arm, then two dice will likely score some damage and you may not want to boost.

3) Finally use your focus to buy an attack when you have extra focus left over after any boosting for initial hit(s) and damage rolls.

Boosting and buying extra attacks is very situational, depending on how close you are to killing what you’re hitting…however, at least here are some basic guidelines to help your initial decision making.

praetormarius

Reply to mageknightkevin

15 years ago

You’re not far off, but as you say, it’s terribly situational, and I’ve never met a plan that dice couldn’t ruin 🙂
There was a post on the PP forums about this topic last month, and I happened to sticky it.
One poster (a forum mod named Not_Dice) made a handy chart, describing a Khador Kodiak heavy jack trying to hit a Cygnar Lancer light jack.
I dunno what BoW’s policy is on linking to other forums, so I’ll just copy/paste the relavant post here:
“Really, you just have to math out each situation. It’ll vary depending on how much fury/focus is available to you, and the likelihood of your hit factored by your likelihood to damage.
In your example, the Kodiak attacking the Lancer does so at MAT6 vs DEF13, with damage at 2d6-2.

Buying attacks with 3 focus:
Probability to hit= 58%
Average damage= 5 per hit
Number of attacks= 5 (two initial, three purchased)
.58*5*5= 14.5 damage

Boosting attack rolls:
Probability to hit= 91%, 58%
Average damage= 5 per hit
Number of attacks= 3 (two initial (boosted), one purchased (unboosted))
.91*5*2 + .58*5*1= 12 damage

Boosting damage rolls:
Probability to hit= 58%
Average damage= 8.5 per hit
Number of attacks= 3 (two initial (boosted), one purchased (unboosted))
.58*8.5*2 + .58*5*1 = 12.76 damage

Now mind you, these are on long enough curves and rarely reflect what actually happens. It’s not unusual to see two, three or even four of the unboosted 5 hits miss, and you end up with little or no damage at all. Plus it doesn’t factor in current conditions. If the Lancer only has 6 points of damage left, you’ll just want to spend two focus to get one boosted attack and damage roll, or two boosted attack rolls.
Use the math to give you a guideline and gauge that against current conditions and what your desired outcome is, and make decisions from there.”

toxik

15 years ago

Average roll: 2 dices: 7
3 dices: 10
4 dices: 14
So if you are at -7 you would score on average 3 damage on the Ironclad, with 4 dice this bumps up to 7. With 4 focus you can do: charge attack+buy 1, boost damage+buy 1 boost damage. So this makes on average (assuming you hit every time, shouldn’t be hard with butcher) 7+7+7=21 damage compare to 7+3+3+3+3=19 if you buy extra attacks. Difference is not that great but honestly I wouldn’t have given 2 focus to the destroyer if Striker feated, P+S 14 is not going to hurt.
So if we add two more attack or one more boosted we get up to 28 and 25 on average roll. Not sure how many damage the ironclad has, but 28 should probably wreck it.
Also it is good time to pop butcher feats, in which case the damage gets crazy!

Usually if the difference in armor is 5 or lower I do not boost damage, otherwise I do boost. Another factor to take in account is how hard it is to hit? if the target is hard to hit it might be worth boosting damage as it might get you a better return on your focus.

incinerationpainting

14 years ago

hmmm. i used to play Cygnar and Khador alot a couple of years back. though if i were in this sticky situation as Butch, and wanted to take a leap and risk. i would load up two Focus on the Juggy and Destro and have them slam the Ironclad and the Lancer to try and knock down Stryker and boost the attack rolls. No damage would be done obviously. this is all bread and butter if the Khador heavies were closer. though it seems that are not.

best thing to do is “burn out” Strykers Feat and move away with run movement while Butch sits on all Focus. Also they are squaring off against a Charger and not a Hunter, so minimal ding and dent would be an outcome.

…man i havent played this game in a while. good to see PP taking off.