SFR, Inc.

[syntaxerror111]

Continuing my crusade against marginal SAIs, today's victim is:

Surprise: Late Special (melee action)
During a melee action, the defending army cannot make its counter-attack roll; however, it may make its save roll.


So what is this SAI about?
Surprise represents a stealthy and/or cunning unit that can sow confusion in the enemy's ranks during a melee attack. From a flavor standpoint, I think this SAI does a great job of representing that by denying the enemy a counter-attack. It appears on 4 monsters: the Cannibal, Crocosaur, Darktree, and Yeti.


How is this SAI to be used?
1. Alpha Strike: armies that focus on maneuvers and melee exclusively benefit most from Surprise. In theory they always attack first and try to wipe the opponent's army out fast.

2. Hit-and-Run: using Path/Teleport to drop in a few heavy melee units and assault an 8th face. Your small force can penetrate their defenses with Smite and then retreat to the safety of the reserves without fear of retaliation with a successful Surprise result.

3. Soft-counter to Necromantic Wave: Lava Elf rare mages can cantrip a Necromantic Wave on their melee, save, or counter-attack roll to devastating effect. By preventing the counter-attack, a successful Surprise result reduces the threat of Necromantic Wave by about half. This is a corner case, and is only relevant if this is part of your local metagame.


What are it's failings?
1. Does not generate damage when attacking: When performing an alpha strike, the goal is to overwhelm the enemy as quickly as possible. Surprise does nothing to help kill enemy units, and is really only beneficial if your attack fails spectacularly. In the case of a hit-and-run attack, the Surprise is not helping to put any units in the DUA. It solely exists to mitigate risk, but does so at the cost of melee consistency. In both cases wouldn't it be better to simply generate melee SAIs/results, ensuring that your opponent takes casualties? It seems that Surprise is anti-synergistic in these roles.

2. Does not contribute when not attacking: Surprise was designed specifically as an attacking-only SAI because of what it represents. Its effect is fairly marginal, and yet it contributes nothing during a counter or dragon attack. This makes this SAI fairly weak when compared to Smite, Counter, Rend, and other melee SAIs that also contribute any time melee results are called for, and that have a strong effect on melee combat. In order to give up contributing to melee half of the time, any SAI should be twice as good when it actually contributes. Surprise falls well short of this goal, and I contend that 4 normal melee results is actually preferable to Surprise in most cases.

3. Duplicate results are wasted: If trying to plan an army around the effects of Surprise, it becomes necessary to run multiple units that can generate it to ensure consistency. But what happens when more than one unit generates a Surprise result? Absolutely nothing, thats what! The most damning feature of Surprise is that it doesn't stack with itself. If the effect was worthwhile (Trumpet anyone) then it would be a balancing factor, but this drawback is simply compounded with its other shortcomings.


Proposed changes:
So how do we make Surprise worth considering? Whatever is done, it is important to preserve the flavor behind this SAI. The following are some ideas to generate discussion.

Surprise #1: Delayed/Late Special (Acting Player Melee Attack)
During a melee action, Surprise generates melee results. The defending army cannot make its counter-attack roll this turn; however, it may make its save roll. This SAI has no effect during the counter attack phase.

This variant increases the effect by adding melee results, and preserves the offense-only nature of the SAI. The wording has been modified to make it more clear how it is works.

Surprise #2: Late Special (melee action), Normal (individual save)
During a melee action, the defending army cannot make its counter-attack roll; however, it may make its save roll. When saving against an individual targeting effect, generates four saves. This SAI has no effect during the counter attack phase.

This conservative variant adds a small beneficial effect that still fits the overall image of what this SAI represents about its unit. The idea of a stealthy/cunning creature being hard to single out or track down on its own works well. This could be taken a step further and generate saves all the time, but some may cry foul at this power increase.


Summary:
Surprise has been shown to be an intersting but unacceptably weak SAI. In most cases any other melee SAI, or even 4 normal melee results, would be preferable to Surprise. Further action is necessary in order to make Surprise become an asset instead of a liability.
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-Fortune favors the bald

[DialFforFunky]

*gets Water of Life'd*

While I agree that Surprise Attack isn't the strongest SAI in the game, I disagree on it being unacceptably weak. The description I'd be going for is 'occupying a very specific niche'. The power to attack without retaliation is immensely powerful in not too uncommon circumstances.

The main issue with the SAI seems to me to be reliability. Initially, the SAI seems to invite players to drop saves in favour or more melee power. But what happens to such an army when the inevitable counterattack comes? Disaster seems quite likely. So, ehen including a die that has Surprise Attack, the question usually isn't 'how do I make use of this die', but rather 'what do I do when I don't?'

One possible answer is to simply back up your army with magic. Open grave seems like the ideal candidate. Though this doesn't make the fullest use of the defensive capabilities of Surprise Attack (Open Grave doesn't actually do that much when you do get the SAI), it does allow you to shift some of your focus away from saves, and put power elsewhere (melee, maneuver, etc.).

A second possibility is to combine the SAI with a few re-rolling dice, like Leopard Riders. Fill in the rest with ordinary melee units that also carry a decent amount of saves, and wait for the army to 'spike'. Granted, this is not the most creative solution.
Funny enough, most of the Surprise-Attacking dice seem to have chosen this route already. Five out of the six dice that have the SAI also have at least one face that allows them to reroll. Three of them even have multiple rerollable faces. It is only the poor Darktree that is left out in the cold. My suspicion is that this design of added re-rolling SAIs isn't accidental.

Another solution seems somewhat counter intuitive at first: Surprise Attack can be used to siege an 8th face. In this case, you'll want a part of your forces to be a largely self-reliant melee army that has very strong defensive capabilities. Prime candidates would be Scalders and units with the Counter SAI. Add in one unit that can take out specific targets, and get ready for attrition by means of burying. In this way, you have maximum chances of denying your opponent effective rolls. In his turn' he'll rather not run into all your counters, and during your turn, you get a chance to deny his rolls as well. After your attack, you repair the damage done by means of magic, and bury your opponents dice along the way. This way you can slowly chip down your opponent while having a significant denial advantage. (Interestingly enough, both the Wave Rider and the Cannibal have additional SAIs that do quite well in sieges, e.g. Swallow, Wave and to Poison)


So, all in all, I think Surprise Attack holds up pretty well. It might take a bit of effort now and then, but certainly has its ways to shine. (Now, if you really want to tear something apart, I highly suggest looking at the Leaving spell).


F


*Fails to duck a Firestorm, goes back to lurking from beyond*
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717

[syntaxerror111]

Thanks for your comments. Even though I still feel that Surprise is under-powered, I am glad to have an conversation about it.

The question about reliability is one of my sore points about Surprise. Without multiple units that carry this SAI, you can't plan on it actually working all that often. And if you do, there becomes a significant risk of duplicate results being wasted. You suggest running a fairly normal melee army by adding back in some saves... but if running a balanced melee list, then why are we including this unit in the first place?

As far as using Surprise to siege an 8th face, there are better options. Its a good idea to bring at least a few units with Smite to punch through the double saves. Rend can also overcome double saves through sheer number of results generated. Targeting SAIs can pick off troublesome units and get a few kills as well. But Surprise won't help you generate enemy casualties to tip the scales in your favor. If you are attacking a mage or missile army, then you don't fear the counter-attack to begin with. In addition, if you are running units with Counter you actively want them to counter-attack, which Surprise prevents!

It just seems to me that Surprise doesn't do enough to actively help you win when it works to justify its inclusion. It sounds like a powerful effect, but in play testing I haven't found an army that can use it effectively, and I have never seen it potentially save an army in a bad position. When it does comes up, I usually wish it was 4 normal melee results instead
_________________
-Fortune favors the bald

[DialFforFunky]

(this post ended up becoming a bit of a train-of-thought thingy, I hope you can follow my rails)

Reliability is a bit of a weird thing with Surprise. On the one hand, I agree that is quite unreliable: getting a 2/7 chance at best with a single die is not that great, especially when considering that you want to avoid doubles.
On the other hand, it is incredibly reliable, in that there are no ifs or buts when you do roll it. It is an army-wide disable with no remedy. That is pretty massive, considering that you can easily deny 18+ health worth of rolls. Sure, it is 'negative value', but its lots of it, without any counters.
Because of this huge negative worth, I'd actually recommend it mostly in a 'standard' melee force, as opposed to an all-out, no defence army. Perhaps even in a more defensive force. Though it is through some additional funky 'sniping' SAIs that Surprise shines, as its these SAIs that love small skirmishes and not ongoing brawls with massive results (not to mention Regenerates and Gold Medallion-logos).

(Another small thing to touch on in regards to Surprise: I suppose it is best left somewhat unreliable. In terms of experience, its certainly no fun playing a die-rolling game in which you don't get to roll dice)


As for the siege-situation: it does require a bit of a set-up. The best case is where the opponent groups all his dice on his captured 8th face (something which does tend to happen quite a bit - most notably the 8th face stalemate). In this case, trying to spike through saves with re-rollables usually comes down to hoping for very small chances to occur. Most of the time, doubling saves simply beats re-rollables.
In this case of the 8th-face group-up, Surprise works at it best, as it is able to deny the most rolls in a single go. Just try to grab a sneaky kill along the way. Smite, as you mentioned, is perfect for this.
Bonus is that people like Cantrips, which now have settled on the 8th. Since Cantrips are so flexible, and therefore powerful, denying them as often as possible seems preferable. Part of Cantrips power is, however, reactive, so you can snag that along the way nicely, getting even more value from your rolls.


The more I think about it, the more I think I can summarize Surpise this way: Its not a defensive tool for an offensive army, but rather an offensive tool for a defensive army.
Offensive armies have their own defence: you hit first, and make sure the opponent doesn't have enough to retaliate. You don't need a Surprise for that. Instead, the SAI fits a control-theme: it allows you to controle the flow of the game. This allows armies to attack that really didn't really want to get involved in attacks otherwise. By allowing a significant chance of denying your opponent rolls, you can substitute raw power for targeted force. This way, you can maintain the upper hand by controlling the game and slowly grinding your way through the opponent, taking small chips and bits rather than large chunks.
The mental conversation that plays in my head for such an army is "You want to hurt me? Nope, you can't. Want to hurt me again? Still nope. Oh, what do you know, I snagged a key die from under your nose, without you being able to do anything about it! And you still can't hurt me!"


If, after all this, you still want to go for something very offensive-minded, you might like this:

2x Crocosaur,
1x Charkin
2x Dragonne Knight
+ mages

Reasonably fast, able to hit like a truck, and even able to drag something down with them as they die. Mages might be Swamp Stalkers (Black rain is particularly offensive, though recursion and magical saves might be sufficient) or Goblins (TRtM helps).


While for a siege, perhaps this might work:
3x Darktree
2x Dragonne Knight/Lady Nereid/Bodyguard
+ mages

Attacking the Melee-part of the army isn't particularly attractive, as it has plenty saves and Scorching Touch. On the other hand, the Smother still helps picking off targets. Mages could be Coral Elves or Eldarim to combat summoned dragonkin. Elves have the advantage of bloat Corpses for additional attrition (burying is crucial), an Eldarim Champion might help if you fear Dragons. A single Ashbringer for Flash Fire (even cast during a 2nd March) might be smart.


F
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717

[syntaxerror111]

When I boil down my thoughts on Surprise, this is where I end up:

"If I am worried about my opponent's counter-attack, then what business do I have attacking in the first place?"
also
"In what situation would I rather deal less damage to prevent a counter-attack?"

However, I see how running a unit with Surprise works well with Scalder melee units. They aren't all that resistant to damage, and their damage reflection only works when being attacked.

[jedijon]

What about swapping the counter attack and save effects?

What's a REAL surprise attack about?? About doing damage that can't be saved.

So this would read:

"Surprise: Late Special (melee action)
During a melee action, the defending army cannot make a save roll, however it may counter attack as normal."

[shoesan]