Call It Shadespire!

Decision: Should you play Awakened Weapon?  TL;DR: Helpful Whispers grants a larger bonus to most attacks if you can meet its requirements .  Exceptions include attacks that gain a benefit from rolling criticals and those that roll 1 die to start.  You should probably be playing both. Factor: Basic Reroll Strategy For the purposes of this article, we'll be using a basic reroll strategy that optimizes accuracy.  For any number of dice X, we will elect to use Awakened Weapon on any roll in which the number of successes is less than X.  Essentially, unless all of your dice come up successes, we'll reroll one of the failures.  Later on, we'll discuss some advanced rerolling options. In the case of Awakened Weapon, all of our rerolls will be "blind" - meaning we won't know our opopnent's defense roll before we must decide whether or not to use the reroll it provides.  Factor: Raw Accuracy The ability to reroll a single attack die represent

Decision: Which Sigmar support characters best fit in a defensive deck? TL; DR:  Steelheart's Champions are the clear winners, with Cursebreakers a distant second and Farstriders a very close third. Factor: Bottom Line Stats These models are very easy to compare in terms of bottom line stats - uninspired, they are all exactly the same.  Even when inspired, the models have very little variance, with only the Cursebreakers breaking from the 3-2-4 mold.  Unfortunately for the Cursebreakers, their 1 die "on-guard" defense can't stack up against the other Sigmarites' double block.  Cursebreakers will fail defense on about 8% more rolls than their counterparts.  One minor upside to the Cursebreakers' defense - they succeed on defense against Cleave about 3% more of the time when inspired than the other models.  Still, in this category, the Cursebreakers remain solidly underneath the other two warbands. Factor: Attacks To begin, the Farstriders are the

Decision: Which Sigmar leader best supports a defensive deck?     TL;DR:   Steelheart's unparalleled card access puts him head and shoulders above the other two.  Stormsire's versatility and better inspire condition allow him to narrowly edge out Farstrider for second. Factor: Movement This may seem to be an odd place to start, but with these models all having identical front and back defenses and wounds, it stands out as the only variance on the bottom stat row.  Farstrider shines here, with 4 move to begin the game.  Movement is key to winning defensive games against aggro, so the ability to outpace Orcs and keep up with most of the inspired Fiends is definitely high value.  Additionally, Farstrider's repeatable ranged attacks couple well with a high movement score, giving him an impressive 8 hex charge range late game. Factor: Melee Attacks While uninspired, Farstrider's Shock Handaxe is the worst of the lot, losing out on damage to Steelheart'

Decision: Should I play Horrifying Armour? TL;DR:   Probably Not. Factor: Wounds vs. Hit Chance Horrifying Armour reduces an enemy fighter's chance to hit, while increasing the chance that the hit will kill your fighter.  In order to be playable, the upgrade must provide a net benefit - opponents' fighters must miss your fighter enough times to make up for the lost wound.  Additionally, this benefit must be great enough to justify spending a glory point on. The table linked below calculates the average damage output for every basic attack (those printed on fighters) in the game, before defense, at the time of the Eyes of the Nine/Gitz release. Basic Attacks vs. Dice Loss Some key points that can be gleaned from the raw data: -There are 7 basic attack actions that can't be affected by Armour at all - 1 die attacks are quite rare. -There are 33 basic attack actions that have a range of more than 1.  For the purposes of this calculation, it was assumed that

Decision: Should I play Ethereal Shield      TL;DR = Against warbands that lack cleave and roll relatively few attack dice (especially Swords), Ethereal Shield is a good option if most of your fighters dodge.  Against warbands with cleave, or those that roll very high numbers of attack dice (especially axes), there are better defensive options. Factor: Warband Ethereal Shield only benefits warbands with fighters who use dodge on defense. The following is a representation of the fighters in each warband that use dodge; each parenthetical represents a single fighter - the numbers represent the number of defense dice they roll for dodge before and after inspiration.  Garrek's Reavers: (1/1) (1/1) (1/1) (1/1) (1/1) Steelheart's Champions: None Sepulchral Guard: (1/1) (1/1) (1/1) (1/1) (1/1) (1/1) (1/1) (1/1) Ironskull's Boys: None Chosen Axes: None Spiteclaw's Swarm: (1/2) (2/2) (1/2) (1/2) Farstriders: None Magore's Fiends: (1/2)