"Armies of Arcana and Missile Immune (Long)" Topic

Armies of Arcana and Missile Immunity

I've been thinking about this subject now for some time (years literally) and would like to present my case for NOT changing the Missile Immunity within Armies of Arcana.
As it stands right now, within the book there are officially only 7 monsters that have Missile Immunity that are not undead: Air Elemental, Earth Elemental Fire Elemental, Forest Titan, Phoenix, Treeman and Water Elemental. Of the Undead there are 6: Death Hound, Mummy, Reaper, Skeleton Vampire and Zombie (and the Character Models also, of course). Actually, in my own opinion, the Golems in the Monsters list should also have Missile Immune, but they don't.

Let's look at what Missile Immunity is and isn't:
Missile Immunity: Makes the model immune to normal missiles: Bows, Crossbows, Javelins, etc, anything that is not magical or artillery. That's it. It does not help the model in any way in melee combat.

Magical Missile Attacks: The armor of the model is considered to be a 5 and is reduced normally by the Strength of the weapon. Example: Goblin bow unit with a Flaming Arrows Spell (level 3) on it would be Magical, Str (2) Fire, at normal range and to hit, so a Skeleton's save would be a 3 or less.
There are all kinds of monsters that have magical missile attacks and every magic user has access to the General Spell: Enchant Missiles.

Artillery Missile Attacks: The armor of the model is considered to be a 5 and is reduced normally by the Strength of the weapon. NOTE that Missile Immunity does NOT mean it is fixed armor. Example: Dwarf Handgun is Str (3) so a Skeleton's save would be a 2 or less. I honestly think some people mistakenly believe that Missile Immune means a Fixed Armor save vs missiles. It does not.

Personal opinion/flavor time
I just can't realistically (and yes, I am fully aware of how that sounds used in this context) see arrows doing consistent damage to a skeleton or a zombie. To me, in my opinion, the use of Missile Immune adds to the flavor of the army and helps them to stand out just a bit from the others. It's a way to show a difference reasonably that fits within the context and story of the army. The basic undead models do not cause fear though they are Fearless. Elite Units are, by the book: Base 2 and smaller models costing 50 or more points and any model costing 100 or more points and some of those do cause fear.

"But what about my super shooty elf (Dark or High) army?!?"

One of the nice things about AoA is that other than the 60/40 rule for Normal/special troops (elites, characters, war machines, monsters and vehicles) there are NO limitations on what you are allowed to spend points on. Any super specialized army will be at a disadvantage if one's opponent can figure out ways to neutralize it. Lots of woods to block terrain and maxing out unit size could mean some interesting times for a shooty army. For grins and giggles: 78 Goblin Warriors and a Noble to lead them: 792 points. 17 Elf Archers is 782 points… Yes, this is an extreme example but I'm trying to show a point.
For every action within AoA there is a way to counter it. You want an all flying army? Do-able. Just remember that there are spells that can ground you.

I'm asking for other players to look at Missile Immune in relation to the whole.

In most other games, Skeletons are at the real bottom end of the pool for troops. In AoA, they have a distinct use and a distinct flavor with the use of one special ability. (2 if you want to count Fearless). Most all of the armies in AoA have a ‘special' rule that makes them unique.

Daemons: All units have Fixed Armor saves. (If any army would have my vote for being ‘cheese worthy' my own vote would be on this one) Every model can be hit by regular missiles but no Strength bonus at all count unless Magical or Artillery. This is for Melee also…
Dwarves: Highest Magic Saves of any base troops in the game, and the only one with a normal unit that is also artillery.
Dark and High Elves: Melee just as good as they shoot and they shoot real well.
Wood Elves: Shoot absurdly good, melee very well, and are Forest Walkers to boot.
Giant Kings: Are considered non-elites for army building purposes of the ‘normal' troops and can Negate First Strike from Long Weapons.
Goblins: Tied for largest grouping of non elite, non Cavalry troops with more than 1 wound.
Halflings and Centaurs: Regular troops with Evasion.
Graccans (Greeks): Pike type troops that has first 3 ranks able to fight (as opposed to only 2)
Empire of Marr (Romans): Testudo (armor 6 against missiles) and disciplined (as if Fearless when fail a break test)
Lizardmen: All can Swim. Even the cavalry.
Ratmen: They can all Swim also.
Snakemen: All of them Ignore Terrain (no terrain penalties), and Charmers as a regular troop type.
Orcs: Tied for largest grouping of non elite, non Cavalry troops with more than 1 wound.
Undead: Fearless and… Missile Immune.

Now, all that said and done, I present a fix for those who still don't like and won't play with Missile Immune troops:

Take away Missile Immune and give Undead models a Missile Armor Bonus +3, (+4 if they have a shield) for a net cost of -3VP point to every model (-1VP if using a shield). This will give all normal missiles a chance to wound, just not a very good one.

Examples of modified missile immune and point values:
A Skeleton with sword and shield, 17vp, Armor 2 Missile +4 is hit by an Elf Longbow = Armor save of 4.

Skeleton with 2 handed weapon: 14vp, Armor 2 Missile +3 is hit by same longbow = Armor save of 3.

This is the simplest and easiest fix I have come up with to date and I welcome any comments and or dialogue about this subject.

My undead never fared well against elves. My main opponent had created several units of archers with eldrich missile attacks as part of his 40% to soften the units up and the survivors could not compete in melee.

I of course countered this by reducing monsters and elite units a replacing the points with more necromancers to constantly replenish the units and buff the attack rolls.

My opponent then began increasing his cavalry and chariot numbers and rolling up my line from the flank.

I began swapping out my usually melee troops with more spear armed units.

I started painting up a dwarf army.

When I first started playing AoA the two armies we used the most were undead and high elves. After a couple of games we started using acolytes instead of archers for the eldritch attacks. Eldritch attacks are expensive and not super effective against the 2 or 3 magic save the undead got but at least they could hit them. We also saw tailored armies with pretty much no missile units when going up against undead. This meant that the undead had paid for and expensive ability that they didn't get to use making them much weaker in melee compared to similar vp armies. It always seemed to me that undead being totally immune was unfair to the player fighting the undead. On the other hand tailoring an army with less or no missile troops was unfair to the undead player.

I always thought that the fix Magokiron suggested in the other thread(missile immune could still be hurt on save roll of 6) was good. Plus the points cost actually matches what missile armour 5 would have been. Reducing undead's missile armour is a decent fix too and I like how you've done it.

People actually play AoA with the list armies? Half the appeal of the game in my circle was the build-your-own system, which encouraged making rounded forces that could answer multiple potential threats (which includes both missile-heavy and missile-immune armies). Playing to set pre-published list is too much like Warhammer for my tastes.

Zinkala,
Part of my point was that undead are not totally immune, just immune to 'normal' missile fire. I'll have to look back through the posts for Magokiran's post, thank you for the heads up on that.

Rich,
Most people at least start out with the list armies and undead are a popular army… I'm just trying to get people to think about it is all. I make lists based off of the range i'm using for the most part, especially the Demonworld minis line.

Rich, We mostly play with modified lists that are about 70% from the official lists and 30% addons. I have to admit list making is one of my favourite parts of AoA.

SCadian, I agree that there are ways hurt undead even with them being immune to normal missiles. But it requires the opponent to specifically design their army to fight undead which tips the balance against the undead. It's not really that hard to design an army that can handle them. By making them missile not quite immune it gives their opponents a reason to keep using missile troops even if they aren't as effective.

I like to see well rounded armies that can handle multiple threats like Rich mentioned above. I don't like playing 1 trick armies designed to crush their opponents without him having a fair chance to win. I don't think it's possible to come up with a perfect balance between so many different armies but I want it to be close enough that the game is winnable and fun for bth sides. When I get slaughtered I want it to be because of my own tactical mistakes and poor dice rolling, not because my army was severly handicapped from the get go. A big part of what I like about AoA is that weak, crappy troops still have a chance to take out powerful monsters. There aren't really any must take critters that can sweep the table without worrying about tactics and proper use.

Zinkala,
I very much agree with you and what you said. A lot of my reason for my initial post was that many people seem to have some misconceptions about Missile Immunity and i was trying to clear that up. Like you, i don't like one trick armies and I have seen more 'ultra shooty' armies than I have the undead.

One of the armies I'm currently assembling is a Demonworld Icelords of Isthak army that I'm pointing up and it does include undead units.
The Demonworld Goblins are about 1/2 complete. The whole series is filled with good minis and lower in cost than most.

what scale do you play in? Armies?

I play in 28mm scale because I switched over from Warhammer and had several armies for that. My 2 main armies are High Elves and goblins. I also have tomb kings, Empire, dwarves (technicallly my wife's) mostly from GW. Then I've added imperial romans from Warlord and medieval russian from Gripping Beast. I also have a good sized dark elf army that's still mostly in boxes.

@Zinkala--did you ignore the 25mm basing in the AoA rules, or did you rebase?

One of the things I'm not terribly happy with the latest edition of AoA is the way that the Basing section was worded.

AoA at it's core has always been system where as long as the armies are based consistently, there are no issues. It only becomes an issue if models are on 'miss-matched' bases 25mm for one army (base 1 models) vs 20mm bases for the other army.

Mismatched basing changes things a bit but doesn't wreck the game IMO. Most of the time it will only change a melee by one or two attacks per round. What I use are special movement trays from Terrain Warehouse/Battlezone that add space to make 20mm bases match 25mm. They let me make them under license. I never sold many because I didn't go into the gaming business I thought I might but I did make a ton for my own use. You can see some examples here
link