don't forget that most daemons can be just shot with pistols and bows as they have little to no armour, while chosen and other mortal units will survive a lot of low-quality shooting

Don't think daemons are overpowered. They trade armor for physical resistance, which makes them really cost effective against units whose damage is mostly armor piercing. The trade off is they're less cost effective against fodder like archers or empire swordsmen.

You should have used whirling death on the Bladesingers against the demons, their damage output with be drastically increased.

Did you turn off AP damage for bladesingers so they deal more non-AP? Damage would go from 10 nonAP, 26AP, 8 anti-infarty to 35 nonAP, 16AP. 8 anti-infarty. Roughly more than 10dmg per hit, even considering demonic armor.

I did kind of hope that the khorne bois would win, even against more expensive infantry. Considering the roster that the exalted bloodletters are found in, they'll always lack a lot of the support that other elite melee infantry can expect to have. They wont have missile or magic backup in a big battle. Even chaos chosen can expect axe throwing marauder support, or to have enemy threats deleted by a friendly chaos sorcerer. The swordmasters of hoeth have no real excuse, they're definitely punching above their weight. Reminder that they're also considered shielded so they can't be picked off as easily by gunpowder or arrows. The high elves are the real winners of this tournament, just remember to let your spellcasters pick off any exalted bloodletters you find.

So, the issue here seems to be AP. You're running light armor AP units with high offense and physical resistance vs heavy armor AP units, which means the points spent for AP on the traditional infantry are being wasted against the daemon units. Also, while the WH:II units may indeed need repriced, I'm not convinced that having a higher cost should automatically win against a lower cost one. Chosen, for example, should be a lot more missile resistant than exalted bloodletters or daemonettes. That's an asymmetry not being accounted for here.

It seems to me that you did not use the bladesinger's ability were they trade some ap for quite a substantial addition of weapon damage. The demons have low armor so the ability would be very useful against them. You pay for the ability so you should use it.

Chosen have high stats, but they don't have bonuses like magical attacks or bonus vs infantry. So it shouldn't be suprising that they lost to demonetts (they have physical res. and charmed attacks) and bloodletters (physical res. and bonus vs infantry), as for the swordmasters, I think it has more to do with bonus vs infantry than martial prowess.

Tbf, the mortal factions are paying for armor. Chosen, blorcs, and hoemasters are much more resilient against ranged fire, while the daemons lack armor. Things seem about right to me cost wise

1. Many times mentioned switch from ap to more no ap dmg on bladesingers. 2. Regular chosen would beat both demonettes and bloodletters due to same dmg profile and quite a bit better stats. All that Ap was wasted against demons

To be fair, units and their pricepoint don't exist in a vacuum, you have to take into account the rest of the roster's kit. For exmaple iirc Vampire Counts pay a premium for their elite infantry, but they have access to so much healing and mosh pit buffing, that it compensates. the Bladesingers are in a roster with tons of skirmishing power, while the Daemonettes/Bloodletters aren't really. Similarly the Blorcs are in a (surprisingly) well-rounded roster with lots of chaff. The Daemon rosters just don't have those options, so while their top melee infantry is cost efficient, they pay for it by those units by not having too much chaff options (in Khorne's case) or being incredibly fragile against anything ranged. Also, Daemonettes are meant to shred armored units like cabbage, so it makes a lot of sense for them to beat Blorcs and Chosen. You're essentially sending those boys into a unit that is designed to counter them. And yeah, let's be honest, Khorne *should* be the best at pure melee prowess. That's literally all his roster does, with the sole exception of the cannon. It seems pretty fair that if he's a one trick pony, he at least gets a discount on that one trick, or other rosters would just be objectively better as whole. Not saying the balance is in the right place, but it is worth taking into account, since these kind of 1v1 comparisons can strip away that kind of context.

This was a good test but I do think everyone needs to keep in mind that high AP units are not what you should be using to fight daemons anyway. There are chosen variants with weapons that would be more suited to fighting Daemons than the great weapon type. Shielded Chosen have much higher melee defense and most of their damage is non-AP and attack slightly faster. Similarly for the Bladesingers, they should've been in non-AP stance. Also we're not sure what this will do to their cost yet but there is also going to be marked Chosen for every god so that will be interesting how that changes things.

If I remember correctly, the Dawi hammers also have the splash attack hitting 2 enemies at a time

I think a major factor is, that the 'best' units from WH2 generally have to have a decent amount of armour-piercing because in the WH2 version they had to go up agaisnt such heavily armored units. Here the power of the demons is distributed away from armor, so anti-infatry units (dual weapons units etc.) would probably perform better than the armor-piercing units that were the best agaisnt WH2 infantry.

7:20 You didn't activate Bladesingers ability that makes them do unarmored piercing damage

Seems to be an asymmetric balance thing going on between AP and physical resistance

When you buy a GW chosen/black orcs you pay for armor and AP, which are both almost useless against the hoes and the bloodletters. Which are both designed yo be great against heavy infantry, and worse against everything else. So yeah the prices do make sense imo, and i bet regular chosen could do better against some of those matchups

I would think that the Chosen with shields would have a better chance of winning against bloodletters and daemonettes. Their great weapons are wasted on such light armor where they could have a better melee defense and more staying power against them. Bringing the wrong tool for the job.

For the daemonettes and bloodletters, I think they are vastly superior because their factions lacks any ranged infantry. In a real fight the greenskin ranged infantry can dmg them pretty badly (since they got lower armor) while the elves has some of the best ranged infantry before they come in contact with the demons. Its just a balancing choice i believe.

Bloodletters and daemonettes both want to fight against high armor infantry that deals physical damage, wh2 units almost all have high armor and deal ap physical damage, the ap is a complete waste on the low armor daemons. I feel like this is said everytime there is one of these videos but why does hs still sound so surprised about it?

Yeah, as others have said, this was just a really poor test, and illustrates one of the failings of this format. On the mortal side, you're paying for qualities that have very little utility in this match-up (Armor, against high AP units, and Armor piercing, against units that have almost no armor), and on the Demon side, you're using everything you're paying for. AP, Magick damage, physical resist...very useful against heavily armored units without magick attacks. The one exception is the Blade singers, and there you again failed to use an ability you paid for, to massivly increase their base melee damage against low armored infantry. There's just not much that can really be gained from these tests, other than some base entertainment. Which is perfectly fine, but we shouldn't be making balance decisions based off of it.

people should keep in mind Khornes superior stats are to make up for his lack of spells. Its a fair exchange if you don't want to make Khorne bottom tier.

I disagree that AP-Armored chosen GW should win against Exalted Daemonettes or Bloodletters. Both their advantages are negated by both the daemons also having high AP and no armor. Would regular chosen, or chosen dual-weapons if that existed, do better against daemons? Swordmasters also have an anti-infantry advantage on the chosen, no? Chosen-GW are armored, AP generalists, whereas swordmasters are anti-infantry specialists. If you put them both against anything large, the chosen should get more work done. Finally, Daemons are priced as part of factions without ranged units and without magic for khorne, so they don't have those big "balance of power pushers" as Legend puts it, so they need their regular units, especially infantry, to be better valued.

In the end its not a surprise, the daemons are just built different. Chosen are good, but its just stats and armor. Bloodletters have more going for them in passives, abilities and their nature as daemons.

Chosen have more hps to stay alive from non-melee attacks and are going to get Nurgle healing for WoC and Nurgle so that's something to consider if they plan on buffing them.

I'd say Green Skins went 2 -3 with Nurgle there. Even with the last unit Black Orcs getting shot in the back while fighting their opponent they still managed to wipe their plague bearer unit when they routed.

More of this please, love the unit testing videos!

Just found your channel and have been watching all the videos. Have learnt so much i thought i should know after over 1000hrs!

I'm not terribly concerned about the bloodletters and daemonettes being more cost effective since I figure it counterbalances their lack of missile infantry.

I think bladesingers would have better results if you turned on their non ap stance

your commentary turned my day around, love it! Thanks!!

Enjoyed every minute of it! Excellent video to watch during my lunch.

These videos are good, but the statements about the costs they should be, and the statement that wh2 units aren't ready to deal with demons are not sound. These units work in a greater context of their faction. Just like the nurgle units shoot poison missles before engaging, if you find yourself against bladesingers you will likewise be shot first because you're fighting wood elfs. These vids provide great information but it is very limited contextually and cannot be extrapolated out to determine what their costs should be. If they did balance the costs the way that you suggest then certain factions would be buffed to an insane level being able to afford OTHER pieces that swing the game. The cost of a unit should be determined by the cost of OTHER units in the same faction and the over all balance of power that they can bring vs other factions.

Should take in consideration that there is alot more than raw stats to the balancing of the units, the sinergies and race capabilities for example, so we do not need all the 1400 units to draw against eachother, that would be then pointless to have more than 2 factions, but interesting as always.

since these test are always in a vacuum, to get the full picture you need look at what roles the specific units play. ie Black Orcs are just a high value part of a large army, while swordmasters are essentially special forces

The commentary was spot on. Great video!

Hype for this! Hoping to see a ranged version at some point

One thing to consider with the cost effectiveness is that the chosen for example are paying more for the armour that the daemons don’t have. So the daemons are cheaper because they can be easily killed by cheap ranges units while the armoured units can’t.

I’ve been looking forward to this for quite some time!

I wonder how regular chosen with shields and axes would do against the low armor daemons, they might actually do better

When you pay extra for Armor-piercing of course there is gonna be a price mismatch when fighting against physical resistance.

Pretty amazing you can go through an entire video like this while willfully ignoring the concept of armour and armour piercing that completely distorts all your conclusions. Entertaining nevertheless.

this was great, thank you!

When a demon unit is about to break it hardly matters as opposed to a unit that will route and potentially return. Plus the extra armor of the chosen is negated (meaning they would kill more low tier units before dying)

Of course factions with no real ranged units should have better cost effectiveness for their melee troops!

I hope you will one day try testing grail guardians against units like tzar guard,iron breakers, plague bearers to see who can tank the most.

Oh bless up I've been waiting for this almost as much as the actual game

I have been waiting for this!

The demons have to be this powerful in melee because of their limited ranged options , all game 2 factions in this instance have access to powerful shooting capabilities .

I wouldn't really draw any conclusions about price from these analyses, or quite frankly anything other than which unit will beat which unit 1v1. Some units are paying for things that aren't relevant in these types of situations, for instance the armour of the chosen and black orcs makes them much more resistant to missile fire than any of the demons and take less chip damage from chaff infantry. In addition you have to view the price of units in the context of their wider rosters; Khorne, Nurgle and Slaanesh have fewer playstyles than say wood elves or high elves or orcs. That will change over time as more units get added and the addition of the mortal units will change things but will still have have deficiencies just by their nature, Khorne isn't really going to be making use of magic, none of the chaos factions with the exception of Tzeentch and the Chaos Dwarfs will be able to do a heavy missile playstyle. I wouldn't make any pronouncements about the cost effectiveness of units based upon tests like these.

On way back from the Commonwealth opening ceremony! This will be my night cap when I’m home

I love this type of video, keep it up!

I feel like its only fair that melee only factions like Khorne and Slaanesh have cheaper access to the best melee infantry, since melee is all they've got. If you wanna surprise your opponent with some sort of weird High Elf elite melee infantry build, then it seems only fair that you should have to pay a bit more for a bit less prowess. Still, Chosen seem in need of a cost reduction.

Daemoninc unis have no armor though and are much more susceptible to magic damage also they faction they are in means they do not get as much support from units

I feel like when it comes down to stat checks between the bloodletters and chosen. Complete roll of the dice between those two

Thank you, more videos like these please!

I think it's appropriate that Khorne should have the best melee infantry and regiment of renown melee infantry.

Oh ! Was waiting for it long time ago. I bet on Exalted Bloodletters. The question is about DLC units : Chosen of dedicated gods are here or no ?! I will found it very soon ! Edit : Yes they are the best, until Chosen marked come and destroy them ! Chosen (Dual Axes) of Khorne.

The elves marching in the intro looked cool.

Comments very on point, between AP vs Physical resist, as well as durability to missile play etc obviously not being reflected in their price point in a 1v1 melee. The results seem totally fine.

Honestly I'm more fine with Daemon faction infantry being better than most mortals. Maybe Chosen should get some adjustment, but the others is fine to me, mostly cause Daemon factions besides Tzeentch just don't get get many or any range units. Every single Warhammer 2 army has ranged options that can just wittle away a lot of the Daemons health before getting in combat. Tests like these are fun for individual comparisons but honestly don't seem to get the full experience of army vs army that would happen. Heck a lot of the test battles so far seem to go either way for daemons vs Warhammer 2 factions.

Swordmasters are way stronger in this competition compare to warhammer 2 because of the martial prowess buff by the way ! 25 percent instead of 50.

My favorite front liners are Dwarf Ironbreakers. I'm inspired to do my own test. The blasting charges are such a great opener.

Can You show us those vs chosen with different marks when You will be able to?

Due to ultra unit size theri hp stays for long hence martial prowess and martial prowess now last until its below 25% health Big buff

Daemons are completely fine. This is the match up Daemonettes and Bloodletters are made for. The real crime here is that broken buff to martial prowess. HE stats are going to be ridiculous for a long time in combat thanks to that buff. In no world should Hoemasters beat Chosen with GW.

Nice comparison! I didn't expect chosen will be lose...

Did you change the damage type of the blade singers?

You say wh2 units aren't ready but you're mistaken. Chosen have huge armor values that protect them from ranged and non ap, unlike the demons, and they have AP attacks, useless against non armoured demons. You're paying for all of that, it's normal and expected that they'd cost more. Chosen are the ideal target for high tier demons. High tier demons are literally the worst target for Chosen GW. Not to mention, if in the game you made the top tier Khorne melee unit isn't winning every 1v1 engagement, then your game is wrong. Khorne should win that fight, period. If anything, this test showed that the Swordmasters are the overblown ones. They get high armor, missile parry chance, good stats plus martial prowess, and are literally able to beat their hard counter (demonettes) all while costing 1200.

Don't just ignore your own rules. In WH2 you excluded blasting charges for the dwarfs and now you suddenly include Plaguebearers with a similar ranged ability. As well as a whole bunch of other issues: - not allowing blasting charges - claiming that black orcs should do better against a dedicated amor-piercing, anti-infantry unit. The result is exactly what should happen. - no usage of the bladesinger ability. It would probably swing a few battles. - waiting forever to mention the change to martial prowess - lying about crimson killers being the only one with splash attacks and conveniently ignoring Hammerers. You should seriously take that down and completely rework it. Just a bad and misleading video in the current state.

How do you attack all your units to the unit in front of them? Do you have to manually click each unit to attack or is there a mass attack for the units in front of them?

YESSSS. DO THE WHOLE SERIES ALL OVER AGAIN.

As ever, you can expect unarmoured infantry with AP infantry bonus weapons to trade favourably against armoured infantry with non-anti-infantry AP weapons, whose armour is wasted against the demon's AP, and whose AP is wasted against the demon's lack of armour. Bloodletters are can-openers designd for cracking open high-armoured infantry. If you ran a different test, like, say, 'which unit can kill the most low-tier infantry the quickest before it dies' or 'which unit can surivive the longest' or 'which unit can kill a large single entity the quickest' or 'which unit can survive a cavalry charge the best' then you'll get very different results for units more or less specialised for those kinds of things.

Man I love these videos you do. Please do a legendary lord list please I beg you

Its great, that you look into that. I bet CA will see this video. :)

I noticed with the daemonettes vs hoeth that the daemonettes were missing fairly often, maybe that elven speed is really coming in handy where.

Couldn't get enough of the Hoemasters puns, great video dude!

how do you simultaneously get multiple units to charge different targets? typically the one in front of them.

09:45 Lmfao pure brilliance that remark my friend

That banter is so just so on point 🤣

Are the units close enough to cause Leadership Penalties? It looks like there's more room that can be used, and that some close fights swung when the unit next to them fled.

I'm interested in seeing how khorne chosen fare against exalted bloodletters and undivided chosen. once they're available to test.

I wonder how the Temple Guard, especially the regiment of renown version, would have performed with their new buffs? Hopefully very well against daemons with their magical attacks.

Also another consideration for this; in warhammer 3 the chosen of chaos were reworked to have a variant for each chaos god, which could be better than just the undivided ones

i'm pretty sure hammeres also has a splash attack of 2, they were buffed in the Hammers & Herdstones update.

If the nugle units are allowed to use their ranged attack should Iron breakers not be here then considring the raw dmg output they have with the explosives ?

I know you're already aware of the weaknesses of this test, but it would be pretty cool to see some alternate test scenarios. Exalted daemonettes for example don't get to show off how severely they melt troops in a charge from behind, which puts them miles ahead of others' damage output. One test could be time to kill a routing unit. Another could be % damage closing the gap on an archer unit from max range. Getting more involved in these tests could make them interesting.

Be interested to see how the updated vampire count units hold up in these fights now.

I always thought that black orcs needed a LITTLE bit more melee defence.

“Can I get away with that?” “Yeah, probably be alright” lmao. We love you man haha

I'd like to see a test (and you copuld propably make it a double test): Wich anti-Large Infantry is best at taking down anti-infantry Large Units (I think that large groups, like monstrous infantry and cav should be checked speratly from single large entitys, but still, would be interesting)

Not gonna lie this battles are my favorite videos on the channel.

i would like to see tests where they statically receive a charge and charge a static target because the momentum of two units charging each other can cause models to be forced into bad positioning which undermines their effectiveness. look no further than cav for best example.

The change to Martial Prowess is tremendous for HE elite infantry - too often they end up bapped by artillery so hard they've lost it before entering combat, but keeping it all the way to 25% means they keep it almost up to when they're close to breaking anyway.

I swear I was just wishing you'd do a melee infantry unit test last night.

23:44 that fireball was so satisfying

I'm not sure a cost vs cost comparison at the unit scale should be given such weight. Some of the costing of units should reflect the larger context of the army that they are in.

I'll be honest, despite the fact it'd take a while I would love to see the full breakdown of WH1, WH2, and WH3 competitions.

Did you use blade singers more base weapon damage mode when comparing?

With the new DLC you need to compare the new chosens units,and the Chosen GW of Chaos Undivided,also you can add the bloodleeters