Having a "who is the best" where all the calv gets ran into an infantry unit and the winner is the one who routs them the fastest/takes the least damage would be awesome!
and if they didn't compare 2 different types types of cavalry using the ones strength (sustained combat) and the others weakness (sustained combat when they're a cycle charge type.)
@@thrall1342 yeah it makes me sad that the Longmas are getting embarrassed when they’re amazing units that are just completely out of their element in this
I could imagine Crushers (GW) chopping enemy riders clean in half, off the top of their mounts. I'm expecting at least a couple new tricks from the Blood DLC..
the biggest thing that helps crushers with GW, is they have about 25% faster attack speed than MOST units in the game. same with gorgers. so better in the charge, AND much better in sustained combat than the stats would have you believe.
skullcrushers do indeed need a price reduction. They are a top preformer in campaign especially vs infantry but as you see lose vs anti large tools. Bloodcrushers are simply better value for money most of the time.
I wish they had integrated anti large to distinguish them. Armor is nice but it doesn't make up for the cost. A dedicated anti cav unit would be nice for khorne.
Strictly speaking, a physical damage meele unit would have to have 98% of it's weapon damage be armor piercing to do more damage to a unit of Skullcrushers than to a unit of Bloodcrushers. Even then it would likely still take them longer to kill the unit of Skullcrushers because the Skullcrushers have 14 more health per model.
@@sixe9095 So they are LABELED as anti-infantry, but if you mouse over their weapon strength they don't actually do extra damage against infantry. Compared to bloodcrushers where it actually shows a 18 bonus to damage and melee attack vs infantry. A unit being labeled as anti-infantry without an explicate damage bonus usually means it has some slash damage and splash damage is usually bad, even against infantry.
From testing, it seems that a huge advantage of Ogre crushers is that they're very hard to stagger but they stagger every other cavalry very easily. They're way more massive than any other cavalry unit in the game and non-monstrous cavalry is so brutally stunlocked by the Ogre's sheer thickness they may as well not bother even trying to fight them. Monstrous cavalry gets staggered less but still is barely able to stagger the Ogres in return while the Ogres can frequently stun them with a solid chunk of every hit they land. It's a hidden advantage the game doesn't really advertise but it plays a large part in why Ogre cavalry just rolls over most other cavalry in cavalry duels. Especially their great weapon cavalry. It also means they're extremely powerful monster hunters because SEMs cannot reliably stun the Ogres but may often get staggered by Ogre hits and with the sheer amount of brute power Crushers with GWs have; most SEMs will melt in short order.
I wonder how these match up against Demigryphs and Dragon ogres. I think the Crushers (GW) might be the new number 1 cavarly in the game. Fair since they're so large and an easy targert.
Fairly sure Crushers >>> Bears > Heartseekers > Demis in a 1v1 setup, not too sure about Dragon Ogres but probably lose to Bears and have a really close matchup vs Seekers
@@TheGlenn8 given how close the matchup was vs Bears who are quite a bit stronger than Demi Halberds, I don't think Demis could really win vs Seekers. Demis also pay a lot for their 100 armour which isn't going to be useful at all in the matchup (which was part of the reason why Skullcrushers performed so poorly). Yeah the Royal Altdorf Gryphites are amazing for terror, but they're not 1v1 specialists and still lose to Companions for example.
In real battle cav because in real battle anti large infantry will not just stand around braced 24/7 Also anti infantry cav is shit, because infantry is pretty harmless and even mid tier anti large cav can usually easily wipe out infantry with cycle charging.
Kind of a weird way to compare cavalry. Charging cavalry straight into each other is not a scenario I come across often. Their ability to handle infantry or large units, harass ranged units, cycle charging, capturing points, and rear charging are more practical uses for cavalry. Also, not all cavalry is built for the same purpose, so I don't think it's very valuable to put them all into a single rank based on just one use case. I think cavalry can be ranked overall, but it's going to be based on their value in relation to cost to recruit/upkeep, the unit slot they take compared to non-cavalry, whatever their focus is, all of the aspects listed above, how they synergize with other units, etc..
It’s not a weird way to compare them, because it gives you a decent sense of how cost effective they are in just a few quick tests. The video you want would probably give you a better picture of their strengths but it would also be at least 2 hours long, take weeks testing and the results wouldn’t matter that much anyway because the game will probably get patched heavily in the near future.
@@LaplaceDaemon This doesn't say anything about how cost effective they are because none of them are being used for what the cavalry is really used for. Head-to-head charges and just sitting in melee is a terrible use of most cavalry. Like, Slaanesh units are known for their speed, so why would you just have them run straight into another unit and sit there? That wastes two of their advantages: Speed and their flanking charge bonus.
@@jordanclock Slaanesh got 3. place, beating more expensive units. If you actually think about it that allows you to draw the conclusion that they are really strong because they have a flanking bonus, are fast but were still able to brawl in a straight fight. If they got last you could draw the conclusion that they are more situational and you really need to make use of their speed and bonus to get your money worth. You might get a lot more out of videos like this if you try to interpret the result of an imperfect test, rather than just fully dismissing them. Most youtubers don’t have the time for a university dissertation on TWW3 cavalry, so this is likely close to the best you will get.
@@jordanclock as with most things in life, you get what you take. you aren't seeing the value of the video, but, as laplace pointed out, there is much value here, all you have to do is take the information given, and extrapolate
Doom knights have anti infantry and far fewer models. I would make the argument that the normal Tzeentchian cavalry on horses would fare much better than the Doomknights.
Honestly cant wait to see how WH2 (and WH1) units compare to the WH3 units. At Launch of "immortal empires" and at the final stages of the game. I just find it interesting how things progress.
Crushers absolutely would shit on any of the prior two games' cavalry at least. But that's to be expected because they handily and unquestionably beat literally every other cavalry unit in the game on the tabletop.
I think Crushers will still be the best in a head to head like this. On the filed there's a million factors like Blood knights being able to resurrect models healing.
@@rob5541 On the field, given the Vampire Counts' difficulties with monster spam or high impact charges from enemies with the mass to pull out and cycle charge again as well as how much they dislike dealing with artillery not easily shut down by bats; the Ogres seem like a pretty terrible match up for them. About their one saving grace is that because they don't rout, ogres can't rack up their army abilities that well. But VCs struggle a lot with monster dense builds and Ogre lists are like 90% monster. I do hope we get Grave Guards with halberds as a free pack and an eventual Vampire Count Lord Pack because their roster is like; the oldest in the entire game. Even the WoCs got three new units late in TW:WH1's lifespan (manticores, aspiring champions and horsemasters). They're still very competitive but they feel overly one note, especially compared to the two newer undead factions. Though on the note of Lord Packs, I fully expect the eventual ogre crusher ROR to probably be the most hilariously overkill cavalry unit ever.
i noticed cathay have been really getting the short end of the stick in these videos, but it makes me wonder how much of a difference the yin yang bonus does, i really want to know how much, if any better cathay would have done with their ying yang bonus, but awesome video as always mate, keep em coming these vids are like crack to me
But we must agree that Longma are pretty underwhelming. They have the armour piercing weaponry on them.but they don't have armour piercing damage? That's pretty weird with or without harmony
Well, in campaign, they are the best race imo. These tests don't show their strength. They are good at combined arms approaches with good artillery, good ranged, decent frontline units, and decent monstrous units. Their roster doesn't have any real weaknesses, a bit like the Empire.
Because cathay is built as a jack of all master of none race. They have armored heavy high tier anti large infantry for defence, jezzails, artillery including a hellstorm like piece, light and armored cav, flying cav, amazing SEMs, mages, SEM lords who are good in melee and mages and can transform to hide in units, Crossbow on oar with or better than shades, flying ranged, flying artillery and flying monsters. Every other race in game 3 has a noticeable hole in their roster, cathay doesn't. If any of there other units performed really well it would unbalance things
I think Cathay needs to keep their Great Longma riders up in the sky to protect their archers and deal with flanking and use them to counter charge, this way they can sandwich their enemies and get the harmony bonus. That or they're used to attack archers/mages/artillery then come back to counter charge and flank.
Thank you for this video. I would love to see a video where you confront the best anti-large infantry vs anti-infantry cavalry; basically, to conclude which is best to use, as that is one of the typical questions I often have: can I send these guys against their supposed counter or not?
Heartseekers, absolutely. Heartseekers make absolute mincemeat out of pretty much anything, even things often meant to beat cavalry. In a lot of ways, Heartseekers behave a lot more like really fast infantry or warhound units, except with crazy damage output. It's better for them to go after things that can't hit back first, but, especially if they can get that flank charge, they can absolutely trade well against most spear units. The Ogre Crushers also definitely punch up their counters, but that's just Ogres in a nutshell. On the flip side, Slaaneshi Marauder Spears don't really do that well against cav, but you more use them against single entities and such as a sort of prickly tarpit, rather than a traditional spear cav deterrent. They do better than normal marauders, and probably do better for their cost than hellscourges against cav, but really, as Slaanesh, your own cav, or good ol' Daemonettes are the best answer to enemy cav.
At best you might be able to get the harmony bonus when you rear charge units that are engaged with your front line (and you ranged units aren't too far back) or could move one of your balloons over to where they are fighting. But in most situations, your cav are likely to be fighting too far away from your main lines to use the bonus.
Nothing unfair about it. No other faction gets to have any of their mechanics in play unless they are provided by the actuall unit without any external influence, accommodation or support. Would you say that Nurgle should have plagues in play because they are balanced around it? Or that Slaanesh should have their rear charge? The unit is either inherently able to make use of their abilities and traits or they are not. Some units are not well suited for 1v1 and that's fine. This is a 1v1 matchup trial, and those are the results.
@@carlchristianlindalen9311 nah, this is just CA’s shitty design, the yin yang system is fuking lazy and too restricting for the player. Even the name yin yang was a straight up copy and paste from Chinese culture, zero creativity on CA part.
And khorne is build around getting enough kills, but there aren't enough models hear for that so it's not fair to khorne. Ogres are built around killing routing units, but again not enough so it's nor fair to them. Nurgle is built around the whole army taking damage unlocking healing and damage abilities, but not enough damage is caused so its not fair to them.
Being able to summon 6 units of Crushers on top of the Demon Princes and Be'lakor when they appeared really took the challenge out of the campaign battles ha
Yeah, between the Tier IV towers and immediate Tier V unit summons, I found all of the 'Survival' battles extremely easy. Instant heals too, if you select a unit and click the small button to the bottom right. Lord, don't they give you a lot of supplies!
I'd be really curious to see you do some asymmetrical comparisons in the future. Specifically something like "who's the best anti-large?" where you choose one cav unit and one single entity and have each factions best anti-large unit tackle them to see who does best. Also might be cool to see a "who's the best flanker?" video where you pit two tanky line holding infantry like tzar guard head to head and then hit one of them from behind with each faction's best flanking unit to see which one ends the fight fastest compared to the baseline time of the infantry battle on its own. I know those tests would be less "scientific" but I still think the results would be very interesting and would highlight some different unit types and roles.
which is a legitimate weakness for cavalry to have, when, a decent amount of time, you'll be using your cav to intercept enemy cav/single entity monsters at opportune times
@@Seraphic_Radiance You'll be using your cav to counter enemy cav, but at the same time you normaly wont be headon charging them. Normally you wait for them to engage your infantry, and then counter charge.
He’s always said to take these videos with a pinch of salt since they don’t account for varying situations of battles. It’s more a bit of fun and thought exercise then directly applicable (as shown by units that don’t fit the roles like Cathy)
Unsurprising, honestly... Ogre Crushers are pretty much an avalanche of muscle and mass. Nothing is suppose to be able to stand in front of it on the charge, and it makes sense that this was the outcome. Go Ogres!
yeah they gonna nerf ogres because "not so sillent minority" aka multiplayer dudes complain about balance - balance in multiplayer. But units in multiplayer work differently in multi than in campaign - bonuses from generals, traits, researches etc. It always pisses me off that units sometimes get buffed or nerfed based on multiplayer community - and taking huge piss on majority of players - aka campaign players. I'm not saying we should ignore multiplayer ... but at least take into consideration that changes to units stats also affect campaign fun. And my point is that Ogres atm are ONLY faction I really have fun with ... soon with no faction. I can already see all around nerfs to Gorgers, Crushers, Stonehorns,Ironblasters and Leadbelchers to make sure "not so silent minority" can have "balance" where only for multiplayer not taking into account campaign economy/mechanics . Yet it will affect both.
What’s interesting is that on paper, the Skullcrushers should win against the Heartseekers. They have higher weapon damage even with poison, a much higher charge bonus, frenzy, and extremely high armor. When I tested them both on paper against each other, the Heartseekers lost both at the height of the charge bonus and at the end of it. This leads me to assume that it might be a combination of things. One is that the skullcrushers might have weaker animations in comparison to the Heartseekers. Another is that the Heartseekers’ Slaaneshi charge bonuses kicked in when they surrounded the Skullcrushers. I would also assume that my data didn’t properly account for the Skullcrushers being surrounded by Heartseekers and thus losing large chunks of their melee defense early on.
I think it's just model count and size. Animations may play a part, but there are just a lot of Heartseekers, and they're a bit more able to pack in on targets than most cav, so there's more heartseekers fighting, and fewer waiting for the model in front of them to die.
@@Welkor I mean, that certainly helped, but I don't think that makes up the entire damage difference. Even if the Skullcrushers were magic damage, I think they'd still lose. Just less badly.
@@Welkor Nah, I had accounted for that by reducing the Skullcrushers' average damage by 20%. They still on paper were winning. I think it comes down to the difference in model numbers (Plus the Skullcrushers' formation isn't the tightest so more Heartseekers can sneak around models) as well as their animations being slower.
Love these videos! One thing i'd say is, Heartseekers can often get their flanking bonus even when they have attacked head on, depending on the size of the enemy. Try sending them against a stonehorn and watch it disintegrate
I'm quite perplexed at seeing the longma riders and doomknights here due to them being flying cavalry, and thus not allowing their opponent any form of counter-charge. Last competition like this you did in TW2, you excluded Pegasus knights from it because you found that advantage far too unfair, but now they're allowed ?! What changed ? And you even put bear riders here, which are considered MONSTRUOUS cavalry, while you previously excluded Hyppogryph riders for that very fact ! Is it because of the ogres having only monstruous cav and you didn't want to exclude them from the competition ? And then, why did you pick the froggies, that you said yourself are completely inadapted for this kind of competition instead of the rotfly drones ? If you allow flying cav, that wouldn't have been an issue to add them into the competition.
He did the same thing last time with the infantry with the Cathay units barely qualifying in the competition. It didn't make any sense. If he was going to allow flying cav, Rotflies should have been the Nurgle unit. The Doom Knights and Longmas should have been excluded since they are primary flyers.
Because if he stuck to those rules he'd have no content for a long stretch. This is the early months of the game and no factions have had any dlc, ogres are all monstrous, and there aren't very many factions
It's difficult to compare those cavalry, all units don't have their special feature. War Bears have their temporary unbreakable buff but Heartseekers don't have their rear/flank bonus damage.
the skull crusher vs heart seekers one felt so odd. this makes me apprechiate the "RedTerror's Khorne Chosen & Reskin" mod even more. you not just get 3 different khorne chosen units, but it also gives skull crushers 7 points of anti large and a bit more speed.
think you should do a separate video based purely on a units for their role, like how much siege/missile units can chip off an enemy before the enemy line approaches, or which shock cav/chariot units are the most effective hammer and anvil, best linemen/tank unit, best armour piecing infantry/monster, best anti large unit, halberdier or non halberd. best damage dealer, best Legendary lord buffs. idunno spitballing a new segment
Eh its just the bladesingers all over again. Really good stats with terrible survivability. In a clean 1v1 they trade really well but any missiles,magic, or flanking will make them disappear faster than my dad when he went out for milk.
@@jj_ai382 Wrong This kind of unit should be a glass cannon and that means this unit should only be good at flanking opponents not fighting and beating a super heavy opponent who are armed and armored from head to toe and riding on leaving metal This is an absolute bullshit you know bullshit There is no chance for some naked chicks in bikinis riding on top of some weird animals to be able to beat this metallic monsters
Heartseekers would make all this guys disappear in a second if they charged their rear or flank. They are not design for frontal charges and you Can see they do a ton of damage but get wrecked everytime. Glass canons still need to va canons and they will die extra fast to anything with a little shoot. Peasant horse archers will make their worth in 2 volleys on them
@@alirezarezaei2976 slaaneshi demons are murder machines even without penetrating the enemy from the rear. their whole arms are repurposed for the sole reason of being better at killing things ;)
This style of competition doesn't make much sense for determining the best cavalry or infantry since you take units that are meant to serve wildly different roles on the battlefield and then force them all into performing a very specific role. Because of the way the competition is set up, the anti-large damage dealers are always going to win, just like the anti-infantry damage dealers did in the infantry contest. But that doesn't mean they are actually better than an anti-infantry cavalry or shock cavalry unit. To really determine what the best unit in the game is, you should not just have them fight each other, but also measure how good they are at fighting infantry and how good they are at cycle charging. The unit that has the highest average score is the best unit in the game.
Nice video Zerk, I'm glad to see Heartseekers perform so well, as well as the Crushers. The price anomalies are quite staggering, as well as the rock-paper-scissors situation with the tied #3 contestants.
The seekers performing as well as they did was a surprise. They are by far the most reliant upon cycle charging and getting those tasty flanks and rears of any cav.
Heartseakers are made for flanking, they really shouldn't rank this high without their devastating flanker. I guess it does explain why slaanesh is getting such good winrates, with such great cav.
Really impressed by the Heartseekers. I know they didn't win, but I didn't expect them to stand a chance at all against really heavy cavalry. They really duked it out with the big boys
Ogre is the most OP race in WH3. Their monstrous mass renders them so thick against cavalry charges. Moreover, they are strong in almost every unit type be it infantry or cavalry , melee or missile.
That seems about what I’d expect! I do think some of the prices may need a little tweak, but this is also a vacuum experiment. A very fun one, at that! I cannot wait to see this video redone once all the units from WH1 and WH2 are in! 🤩
Love the video. Next time, let every single unit run into the same infantry unit and see which one kills it the fastest. Cav vs. Cav can be skewed a bit...
Skullcrushers having a similar skull taker ability as the daemons would make sense to me. Something that would give them good staying power so to reward their use as a shock cav. They charge in and if they get enough kills can stay in the fight for that much longer. Bears do this already and quite well because of their animation set, like some monstrous infantry, while other cav don't have that liberty.
With skullcrushers, you are paying for armor piercing damage, which is wasted against heartseekers, you are also paying for heavy armor which is wasted against heartseekers, and you are also paying for shields, which is wasted against heartseekers. Is 130 armor and shields worth the 400 gold increase compared to heartseekers? Maybe? Maybe not? Skullcrushers are comparatively slow and don't have poison damage. So there's already a tradeoff there.
If only there was like a fusion of skullcrushers and these Khornate Javelin throwers in tabletop with anti-large bonus that can also kite their large targets a bit...
Considering Cathay this kind of test is actually deeply flawed. Cathay is designed to have their harmony buff active which of couse is not the case when you send them in fighting alone. Give them their harmony buff and that's a completely different matter. +6/+12 Melee defence are a complete gamechanger for infantry and cavalry fights. Speaking about Multiplayer: Cathay struggles in Domination. They don't struggle in land battles. It's the game mode that troubles Cathay, not the units. The problem is that in Domination games it is very hard for Cathay to keep the Harmony buff active - not so much in land battles though (and of course not in campaign). In these battles it is actually quite easy to keep the Harmony buff active.
Skullcrasher deserve a buff, something in the like of cost reduction, a increase in melee stat across the board, but CA should probably start with small step though, like 150 cost reduction or +2 melee attack and defend and armor piercing damages.
for me I'd raise their melee defense into 50 and their charge bonus to 75 to encourage players to use them like as a frontline infantry smasher instead of a traditional flanking cav if I were to keep the Skullcrusher as an anti-infantry unit. It would definitely help differentiate them more properly from the Bloodcrushers who are indeed more like a proper flanking cav compared to the more tanky Skullcrushers...
Skullcrushers are fine as they are. They are designed to be missile resistant heavy armor cav. Heart Seekers are _designed_ to murder them because they are can openers. You could ride the Skullcrushers through a hail of missiles to get to their targets and expect almost no damage. You can't do that with the Heart Seekers and they will be damaged by contact with pretty much anything or missile fire. Details: They have twice the unit count and 32 armour piercing damage for about 64 damage plus what single digit normal damage gets though. The Bloodcrushers will be poisoned down to about 50 damage on model parity. Factor in lower Slaanesh HP and you would expect them to give out around the same time. Add the slightly higher Melee attack on the Heart Seekers and that should give them the edge.
Skullcrushers have way more survivability to missile fire (and non-AP damage in general) than the heartseekers, so they'd massively outperform them against missile heavy armies (or at least would take a lot less micro to keep alive). OTOH they are way slower and thus are much more vulnerable to artillery and harder to maneuver. I kind of wonder if something is wrong with their animations though, in the video most of the models in one SK unit seemed to stop charging and just mill around before they actually contacted the enemy.
Not having any Harmony bonuses for the Cathay tests seems pretty bad. Longmas will often be a reactive/defensive unit and may often get the harmony bonus.
Skullcrushers definitely need either a buff or a decent cost decrease. They cost the same as the shielded Ogre Crushers but have half the weapon strength and either the same or worse stats in everything else.
Not exactly a very fair competition, it doesn’t look at the strengths of the units. Most cav is anti infantry (either with a direct bonus or just in general because they’re cav) cav is often not very useful against other cav. Additionally this only looks at their combat prowess and not anything else they might bring to the table. Cathay and Tzeentch both fly so they can rear charge more easily and can get out of sticky situations better. Slaanesh has amazing speed and can lead units away from the main force before charging the rear lines for an increased charge bonus. Still a fun video to see what happens, but in no way does it find out who the best cav unit is, only which one is best against other cav Edit: in my opinion every single one of these units should have something where they specialize. Both Cathay’s and Tzeentch’s elite cav don’t even have armor piercing, which is pretty bad to be honest. Also bloodcrushers are actually better because of magical attacks
I wonder how much attack and stagger animations play a part in the Warhammer series compared to some of the older Total War games. Old memories from the original Rome of multiple legionnaires catching single pikemen out of formation spring to mind.
Harmony bonus is something the unit receives because it has the required support. No other unit get's the same treatment to improve their 1v1'ness, so no reason to do so for Cathay. Plenty of units, if not all of them, are balanced around what they could do if supported. Cathay just has their gimmick on the unit card instead of being provided by a campaign mechanic or some other "faction flavor". Regardless of why, it is simply not something the unit provides for itself on its own.
please keep doing these once we have mortal empires the expanded pool will allow all sorts of interesting comparisons like chariots and various monsters.
Cathay relies too much on its Harmony mechanic, as a result they're either sitting ducks or massively underpowered. Let's just hope they get a glow up in the DLCs
They're fantastic in campaign tho, so not really in any need for improvement. Both LL's are solo doomstack lords, they have great economy, easy starts and an answer for pretty much any scenario. If anything, so long as they have tools to take out dangerous aoe casters and artillery (which they do) then it's more down to the player doing a good job.
@@carlchristianlindalen9311 Cathay suffers from the Jack of all Trades syndrome. They have a lot of good answers, but not really any great ones. I personally think that they need more tools to activate harmony apart from proximity.
@@havyn88 I agree that they have a Jack of All trades syndrome, but I don't see that as an outright disadvantage. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't, and other times it is why they win. I personally think the range is a bit too short, because it barely allows repositioning and intelligent deployment, but I'm also wary of it being too wide and thus taking away the other factions ability to negate it. Best version I've come up with is to increase the range a fair bit but if a missile unit is engaged in melee it no longer counts as a harmony provider. That would at least allow good formations and a fairly achievable way to remove it that's not too simple.
@@carlchristianlindalen9311 I personally want a harmony switching support unit. It's usually quite detrimental to have ranged units so close to the front line, and long ranged units usually need a melee unit just idling there at most times to get the harmony benefit.
@@havyn88 I'm not sure about a specific unit doing the job. It might well end up being that Cathay is then foced to only have 19 or less effective units to facilitate one or more mechanic inducing units. Depends on how you imagine it I guess and how well it performs in the slot it takes up. If not then it's just as bad, or the exact same, as having to backline a unit just to have it idle with the arty battery.
Who's the Strongest anti-infantry Cavalry and anti-cavalry Infantry maybe? Example like. The Empire: Halberdiers and Demigryph Knights(Lance or Halberds) Bretonnia: Men-at-Arms(Polearms) and Grail Knights Basically it became a test where Halberdiers is fighting Grail Knights while Men-at-Arms(Polearms) is fighting Demigryph Knights. and it has a scoring system that dependent on the value they get so a weak unit that loses might still win because they managed to score more damage to value score.
A thing to note about Longma Riders is that they didn't benefit from their harmony bonuses in this competition. They may perform somewhat better in an organic scenario, could beat Pox Riders at least. Also, I was pretty shocked by the Skullcrushers' turnout, as someone who doesn't play the game much. In a head-on fight, you would really hope they could beat Heartseekers, since Heartseekers are significantly faster, and have magical attacks. I get that the physical resistance vs. armor-piercing discussion weighs in heart-seekers favor, but still... if Khorne can't even win melee fights, what's the point?
The Heartseeker are amazing, considering they are not using their flanking bonus, nor their massive speed, nor have stacked their attack buff. They die/get chunked vs low tier units, tho
I agree completely. Plague Drones are tier 3 while Pox Riders are tier 2. They also have armor piercing and higher damage stat. The best version (Death's Heads) also have a precursor missile while having the same stats otherwise. I did the test, however, and got the same result as with Pox Riders. They only get the best of the Longma's and loose against everything else. With only 10 models in the unit they simply don't perform. The precursor missile does do OK'ish damage on the way in, but nowhere near enough to turn the tide or change the outcome. Not like satchel charges. If you let them sit and shoot their load empty against the things that can't catch them however, they definitely change the outcome.
Pretty clear to me why Heartseekers beat Skullcrushers. Heartseekers have poison, and they have physical resistance while the Skullcrushers do not deal magical damage, so the Heartseekers actually got some damage mitigation despite the AP while the Skullcrushers got basically none.
Crushers were by far the best cavalry on the tabletop too. Grail Knights, Blood Knights, Skullcrushers, Dragon princes, Demigryphs etc all ate shit and died when fighting Rhinox Riders as they were called on the tabletop. You just don't try to beat them with cavalry because it's not happening, you tarpit them with spear infantry and try to win elsewhere.
To be honest, Doom Knights are by far the best cavalry of the game, when you take advantage of their barrier. Getting them in and out of the fight is essential but they can profit from the charge bonus and barrier a lot if you micro manage them well.
Crushers not only winning this but also win "fun" factor too. Those dudes under Greasus and with feast get 35% more mass and they literally each have mass of smaller Single entity . Throwing infantry all around great distance causing really huge disruption. And still not slow at all especially with pre battle feast. And it is not IRRLEVANT ... you can push them through many units and cycle charge into next units - which bear cav or any other here is uncapable off. Crushers by far my favourite CAV in entire trilogy and super strong on top.
Having a "who is the best" where all the calv gets ran into an infantry unit and the winner is the one who routs them the fastest/takes the least damage would be awesome!
I absolutely agree, Cav is both about deterring other cav and dealing with Infantry.
and if they didn't compare 2 different types types of cavalry using the ones strength (sustained combat) and the others weakness (sustained combat when they're a cycle charge type.)
I would love for this to happen.
I love that idea.
@@thrall1342 yeah it makes me sad that the Longmas are getting embarrassed when they’re amazing units that are just completely out of their element in this
I could imagine Crushers (GW) chopping enemy riders clean in half, off the top of their mounts. I'm expecting at least a couple new tricks from the Blood DLC..
I hope
I’m not getting my hopes up.
Unlikely
@@jakandaxter1 and Bears getting their heads lopped off
@@nerve_0702, "Keep your expectation low, and you will not be disappointed"
the biggest thing that helps crushers with GW, is they have about 25% faster attack speed than MOST units in the game. same with gorgers. so better in the charge, AND much better in sustained combat than the stats would have you believe.
skullcrushers do indeed need a price reduction. They are a top preformer in campaign especially vs infantry but as you see lose vs anti large tools. Bloodcrushers are simply better value for money most of the time.
I still dont like them, bloodcrushers are much better for what they do when I look at the price tag I had to pay every turn.
Skullcrushers need anti large
We need another variant with Halberds.
They might just have better armor letting them tank more arrow fire in a real fight than the competish.
I wish they had integrated anti large to distinguish them. Armor is nice but it doesn't make up for the cost. A dedicated anti cav unit would be nice for khorne.
I already knew from the start Cathay was going to straight up be last place on account of both being flying cavalry and not having harmony active.
tbh they usually wont have harmony active anyways given they are most of the times flanking or chopping down ranged units
Skullcrushers need Anti Large or Anti Infantry, bloodcrushers are better just cause the physical resistance and magic damage
Strictly speaking, a physical damage meele unit would have to have 98% of it's weapon damage be armor piercing to do more damage to a unit of Skullcrushers than to a unit of Bloodcrushers. Even then it would likely still take them longer to kill the unit of Skullcrushers because the Skullcrushers have 14 more health per model.
But they already have anti infantry no? It says so in game when you hover over them
@@sixe9095 So they are LABELED as anti-infantry, but if you mouse over their weapon strength they don't actually do extra damage against infantry. Compared to bloodcrushers where it actually shows a 18 bonus to damage and melee attack vs infantry. A unit being labeled as anti-infantry without an explicate damage bonus usually means it has some slash damage and splash damage is usually bad, even against infantry.
Cav only needs anti large, anti infantry for cav is a garbage trait
Weird that SkullCrushers have those spears or lances but aren't considered anti large
From testing, it seems that a huge advantage of Ogre crushers is that they're very hard to stagger but they stagger every other cavalry very easily. They're way more massive than any other cavalry unit in the game and non-monstrous cavalry is so brutally stunlocked by the Ogre's sheer thickness they may as well not bother even trying to fight them. Monstrous cavalry gets staggered less but still is barely able to stagger the Ogres in return while the Ogres can frequently stun them with a solid chunk of every hit they land.
It's a hidden advantage the game doesn't really advertise but it plays a large part in why Ogre cavalry just rolls over most other cavalry in cavalry duels. Especially their great weapon cavalry. It also means they're extremely powerful monster hunters because SEMs cannot reliably stun the Ogres but may often get staggered by Ogre hits and with the sheer amount of brute power Crushers with GWs have; most SEMs will melt in short order.
I wonder how these match up against Demigryphs and Dragon ogres. I think the Crushers (GW) might be the new number 1 cavarly in the game. Fair since they're so large and an easy targert.
Kind if hard to test in campaign too isn't it.
as things stand right now. Demi's > skullcrushers because of anti large and otherwise comparable stats.
Fairly sure Crushers >>> Bears > Heartseekers > Demis in a 1v1 setup, not too sure about Dragon Ogres but probably lose to Bears and have a really close matchup vs Seekers
@@Zhudac
Demis could probably beat Heartseekers. And the Royal Altdorf Gryphites might still be the best cav in the game.
@@TheGlenn8 given how close the matchup was vs Bears who are quite a bit stronger than Demi Halberds, I don't think Demis could really win vs Seekers. Demis also pay a lot for their 100 armour which isn't going to be useful at all in the matchup (which was part of the reason why Skullcrushers performed so poorly). Yeah the Royal Altdorf Gryphites are amazing for terror, but they're not 1v1 specialists and still lose to Companions for example.
Which one wins best anti-infantry cavalry or best anti-large infantry?
With or without cycle charge
In real battle cav because in real battle anti large infantry will not just stand around braced 24/7
Also anti infantry cav is shit, because infantry is pretty harmless and even mid tier anti large cav can usually easily wipe out infantry with cycle charging.
In pure 1v1 the infantry wins hands down Anti-large always trades better vs their targets than anti-infantry.
Lost it at the "Khorneflakes" 😂 Great video as always!
Kind of a weird way to compare cavalry. Charging cavalry straight into each other is not a scenario I come across often. Their ability to handle infantry or large units, harass ranged units, cycle charging, capturing points, and rear charging are more practical uses for cavalry.
Also, not all cavalry is built for the same purpose, so I don't think it's very valuable to put them all into a single rank based on just one use case. I think cavalry can be ranked overall, but it's going to be based on their value in relation to cost to recruit/upkeep, the unit slot they take compared to non-cavalry, whatever their focus is, all of the aspects listed above, how they synergize with other units, etc..
It’s not a weird way to compare them, because it gives you a decent sense of how cost effective they are in just a few quick tests. The video you want would probably give you a better picture of their strengths but it would also be at least 2 hours long, take weeks testing and the results wouldn’t matter that much anyway because the game will probably get patched heavily in the near future.
@@LaplaceDaemon This doesn't say anything about how cost effective they are because none of them are being used for what the cavalry is really used for. Head-to-head charges and just sitting in melee is a terrible use of most cavalry. Like, Slaanesh units are known for their speed, so why would you just have them run straight into another unit and sit there? That wastes two of their advantages: Speed and their flanking charge bonus.
@@jordanclock Slaanesh got 3. place, beating more expensive units. If you actually think about it that allows you to draw the conclusion that they are really strong because they have a flanking bonus, are fast but were still able to brawl in a straight fight. If they got last you could draw the conclusion that they are more situational and you really need to make use of their speed and bonus to get your money worth. You might get a lot more out of videos like this if you try to interpret the result of an imperfect test, rather than just fully dismissing them. Most youtubers don’t have the time for a university dissertation on TWW3 cavalry, so this is likely close to the best you will get.
@@jordanclock as with most things in life, you get what you take. you aren't seeing the value of the video, but, as laplace pointed out, there is much value here, all you have to do is take the information given, and extrapolate
The test is useful because cavalry duels are important part of some matchups. It obviously does not tell you everything.
Doom knights have anti infantry and far fewer models. I would make the argument that the normal Tzeentchian cavalry on horses would fare much better than the Doomknights.
Pretty sure he’s said in previous videos that he does an in-faction tournament first and the winner from each faction goes into the main tournament
Honestly cant wait to see how WH2 (and WH1) units compare to the WH3 units. At Launch of "immortal empires" and at the final stages of the game. I just find it interesting how things progress.
I'd be interested to see how cold one spears match up. At the price you can bring two for the price of one chaos cav.
Crushers absolutely would shit on any of the prior two games' cavalry at least. But that's to be expected because they handily and unquestionably beat literally every other cavalry unit in the game on the tabletop.
I think Crushers will still be the best in a head to head like this. On the filed there's a million factors like Blood knights being able to resurrect models healing.
@@rob5541 On the field, given the Vampire Counts' difficulties with monster spam or high impact charges from enemies with the mass to pull out and cycle charge again as well as how much they dislike dealing with artillery not easily shut down by bats; the Ogres seem like a pretty terrible match up for them.
About their one saving grace is that because they don't rout, ogres can't rack up their army abilities that well. But VCs struggle a lot with monster dense builds and Ogre lists are like 90% monster.
I do hope we get Grave Guards with halberds as a free pack and an eventual Vampire Count Lord Pack because their roster is like; the oldest in the entire game. Even the WoCs got three new units late in TW:WH1's lifespan (manticores, aspiring champions and horsemasters).
They're still very competitive but they feel overly one note, especially compared to the two newer undead factions.
Though on the note of Lord Packs, I fully expect the eventual ogre crusher ROR to probably be the most hilariously overkill cavalry unit ever.
i noticed cathay have been really getting the short end of the stick in these videos, but it makes me wonder how much of a difference the yin yang bonus does, i really want to know how much, if any better cathay would have done with their ying yang bonus, but awesome video as always mate, keep em coming these vids are like crack to me
But we must agree that Longma are pretty underwhelming. They have the armour piercing weaponry on them.but they don't have armour piercing damage? That's pretty weird with or without harmony
Well, in campaign, they are the best race imo. These tests don't show their strength. They are good at combined arms approaches with good artillery, good ranged, decent frontline units, and decent monstrous units. Their roster doesn't have any real weaknesses, a bit like the Empire.
Because cathay is built as a jack of all master of none race.
They have armored heavy high tier anti large infantry for defence, jezzails, artillery including a hellstorm like piece, light and armored cav, flying cav, amazing SEMs, mages, SEM lords who are good in melee and mages and can transform to hide in units, Crossbow on oar with or better than shades, flying ranged, flying artillery and flying monsters.
Every other race in game 3 has a noticeable hole in their roster, cathay doesn't. If any of there other units performed really well it would unbalance things
I think Cathay needs to keep their Great Longma riders up in the sky to protect their archers and deal with flanking and use them to counter charge, this way they can sandwich their enemies and get the harmony bonus.
That or they're used to attack archers/mages/artillery then come back to counter charge and flank.
Seeing spear calvary without bonus vs large throws me off.
I love these videos, Zerk! They give a lot more insight into a unit's performance than you would think!
I can't wait for him to re-do these after we get regiments of renown
Thank you for this video. I would love to see a video where you confront the best anti-large infantry vs anti-infantry cavalry; basically, to conclude which is best to use, as that is one of the typical questions I often have: can I send these guys against their supposed counter or not?
Heartseekers, absolutely. Heartseekers make absolute mincemeat out of pretty much anything, even things often meant to beat cavalry. In a lot of ways, Heartseekers behave a lot more like really fast infantry or warhound units, except with crazy damage output. It's better for them to go after things that can't hit back first, but, especially if they can get that flank charge, they can absolutely trade well against most spear units.
The Ogre Crushers also definitely punch up their counters, but that's just Ogres in a nutshell.
On the flip side, Slaaneshi Marauder Spears don't really do that well against cav, but you more use them against single entities and such as a sort of prickly tarpit, rather than a traditional spear cav deterrent. They do better than normal marauders, and probably do better for their cost than hellscourges against cav, but really, as Slaanesh, your own cav, or good ol' Daemonettes are the best answer to enemy cav.
I know you can’t have 2 of the same faction in this competition but would of love to see the winged Lanchers in it plus 8 in total is a better number
Gryphon legion are just all around worse than bears so it's a moot point. They probably fall in the 3 wins category.
these compatitions are a bit unfair to Cathay given they are built around the ying and yang units being close to each other for buffs.
True for infantry, but it would be damn hard for shock cavalry to reliably take advantage of the balance mechanic given how small the radius is.
At best you might be able to get the harmony bonus when you rear charge units that are engaged with your front line (and you ranged units aren't too far back) or could move one of your balloons over to where they are fighting. But in most situations, your cav are likely to be fighting too far away from your main lines to use the bonus.
Nothing unfair about it.
No other faction gets to have any of their mechanics in play unless they are provided by the actuall unit without any external influence, accommodation or support.
Would you say that Nurgle should have plagues in play because they are balanced around it? Or that Slaanesh should have their rear charge?
The unit is either inherently able to make use of their abilities and traits or they are not.
Some units are not well suited for 1v1 and that's fine. This is a 1v1 matchup trial, and those are the results.
@@carlchristianlindalen9311 nah, this is just CA’s shitty design, the yin yang system is fuking lazy and too restricting for the player. Even the name yin yang was a straight up copy and paste from Chinese culture, zero creativity on CA part.
And khorne is build around getting enough kills, but there aren't enough models hear for that so it's not fair to khorne.
Ogres are built around killing routing units, but again not enough so it's nor fair to them.
Nurgle is built around the whole army taking damage unlocking healing and damage abilities, but not enough damage is caused so its not fair to them.
Bretonian's Royal Hippogryph Knights standing in the corner like _"They don't know im the ultimate cavalry"_
those pox riders attack has a wind effect like crypt horrors. means they do mini-splash attack?
Khorne looks so cool
Slaanesh too tho :-3
Being able to summon 6 units of Crushers on top of the Demon Princes and Be'lakor when they appeared really took the challenge out of the campaign battles ha
Yeah, between the Tier IV towers and immediate Tier V unit summons, I found all of the 'Survival' battles extremely easy. Instant heals too, if you select a unit and click the small button to the bottom right. Lord, don't they give you a lot of supplies!
@@willfeen And those heals can revive dead models. Works well on crushers, and basically the rest of the Ogre Kingdoms roster too.
just wait until cathay inevitably get temple dog cavalry
A test against their intended targets for comparison would be a good follow-up.
I'd be really curious to see you do some asymmetrical comparisons in the future. Specifically something like "who's the best anti-large?" where you choose one cav unit and one single entity and have each factions best anti-large unit tackle them to see who does best. Also might be cool to see a "who's the best flanker?" video where you pit two tanky line holding infantry like tzar guard head to head and then hit one of them from behind with each faction's best flanking unit to see which one ends the fight fastest compared to the baseline time of the infantry battle on its own. I know those tests would be less "scientific" but I still think the results would be very interesting and would highlight some different unit types and roles.
I wonder, wouldn't a good test will be to check how each unit do against 3 tiers of infantry?
Do one with Bretonnia joining the party!
Really appreciate these videos, but I do question the value of this one when a lot of cavalry isn't really designed to fight other cavalry.
which is a legitimate weakness for cavalry to have, when, a decent amount of time, you'll be using your cav to intercept enemy cav/single entity monsters at opportune times
@@Seraphic_Radiance You'll be using your cav to counter enemy cav, but at the same time you normaly wont be headon charging them. Normally you wait for them to engage your infantry, and then counter charge.
He’s always said to take these videos with a pinch of salt since they don’t account for varying situations of battles. It’s more a bit of fun and thought exercise then directly applicable (as shown by units that don’t fit the roles like Cathy)
Unsurprising, honestly... Ogre Crushers are pretty much an avalanche of muscle and mass. Nothing is suppose to be able to stand in front of it on the charge, and it makes sense that this was the outcome. Go Ogres!
yeah they gonna nerf ogres because "not so sillent minority" aka multiplayer dudes complain about balance - balance in multiplayer.
But units in multiplayer work differently in multi than in campaign - bonuses from generals, traits, researches etc.
It always pisses me off that units sometimes get buffed or nerfed based on multiplayer community - and taking huge piss on majority of players - aka campaign players.
I'm not saying we should ignore multiplayer ... but at least take into consideration that changes to units stats also affect campaign fun.
And my point is that Ogres atm are ONLY faction I really have fun with ... soon with no faction. I can already see all around nerfs to Gorgers, Crushers, Stonehorns,Ironblasters and Leadbelchers to make sure "not so silent minority" can have "balance" where only for multiplayer not taking into account campaign economy/mechanics . Yet it will affect both.
I can't shake off an idea of a daemonette coming home for Christmas.
What’s interesting is that on paper, the Skullcrushers should win against the Heartseekers. They have higher weapon damage even with poison, a much higher charge bonus, frenzy, and extremely high armor. When I tested them both on paper against each other, the Heartseekers lost both at the height of the charge bonus and at the end of it.
This leads me to assume that it might be a combination of things. One is that the skullcrushers might have weaker animations in comparison to the Heartseekers. Another is that the Heartseekers’ Slaaneshi charge bonuses kicked in when they surrounded the Skullcrushers. I would also assume that my data didn’t properly account for the Skullcrushers being surrounded by Heartseekers and thus losing large chunks of their melee defense early on.
I think it's just model count and size. Animations may play a part, but there are just a lot of Heartseekers, and they're a bit more able to pack in on targets than most cav, so there's more heartseekers fighting, and fewer waiting for the model in front of them to die.
The heatseekers have physical resistance, skull crushers don't do magic damage. Honestly I think it's that simple
@@Welkor
I mean, that certainly helped, but I don't think that makes up the entire damage difference. Even if the Skullcrushers were magic damage, I think they'd still lose. Just less badly.
Don’t forget heartseekers have really high AP damage so all that armour isn’t actually doing much.
@@Welkor Nah, I had accounted for that by reducing the Skullcrushers' average damage by 20%. They still on paper were winning. I think it comes down to the difference in model numbers (Plus the Skullcrushers' formation isn't the tightest so more Heartseekers can sneak around models) as well as their animations being slower.
Love these videos! One thing i'd say is, Heartseekers can often get their flanking bonus even when they have attacked head on, depending on the size of the enemy. Try sending them against a stonehorn and watch it disintegrate
I'm quite perplexed at seeing the longma riders and doomknights here due to them being flying cavalry, and thus not allowing their opponent any form of counter-charge.
Last competition like this you did in TW2, you excluded Pegasus knights from it because you found that advantage far too unfair, but now they're allowed ?! What changed ?
And you even put bear riders here, which are considered MONSTRUOUS cavalry, while you previously excluded Hyppogryph riders for that very fact ! Is it because of the ogres having only monstruous cav and you didn't want to exclude them from the competition ?
And then, why did you pick the froggies, that you said yourself are completely inadapted for this kind of competition instead of the rotfly drones ? If you allow flying cav, that wouldn't have been an issue to add them into the competition.
Don't be a kevin
He did the same thing last time with the infantry with the Cathay units barely qualifying in the competition. It didn't make any sense. If he was going to allow flying cav, Rotflies should have been the Nurgle unit.
The Doom Knights and Longmas should have been excluded since they are primary flyers.
not to mention Logma riders are designed to support other units, thus getting a harmony buff
Because if he stuck to those rules he'd have no content for a long stretch. This is the early months of the game and no factions have had any dlc, ogres are all monstrous, and there aren't very many factions
And he ignored the better flying unit from Nurgle as well and brought the shitty plague toads instead.
Need to pot the rot knights in on this now
It's difficult to compare those cavalry, all units don't have their special feature. War Bears have their temporary unbreakable buff but Heartseekers don't have their rear/flank bonus damage.
the skull crusher vs heart seekers one felt so odd. this makes me apprechiate the "RedTerror's Khorne Chosen & Reskin" mod even more. you not just get 3 different khorne chosen units, but it also gives skull crushers 7 points of anti large and a bit more speed.
think you should do a separate video based purely on a units for their role, like how much siege/missile units can chip off an enemy before the enemy line approaches, or which shock cav/chariot units are the most effective hammer and anvil, best linemen/tank unit, best armour piecing infantry/monster, best anti large unit, halberdier or non halberd. best damage dealer, best Legendary lord buffs. idunno spitballing a new segment
Heartseekers seem slightly overtuned and Skullcrushers are definitely undertuned from a TT and lore perspective.
Heartseekers are extra vulnerable to missiles and magic though
Eh its just the bladesingers all over again. Really good stats with terrible survivability. In a clean 1v1 they trade really well but any missiles,magic, or flanking will make them disappear faster than my dad when he went out for milk.
@@jj_ai382 Wrong
This kind of unit should be a glass cannon and that means this unit should only be good at flanking opponents not fighting and beating a super heavy opponent who are armed and armored from head to toe and riding on leaving metal
This is an absolute bullshit you know bullshit
There is no chance for some naked chicks in bikinis riding on top of some weird animals to be able to beat this metallic monsters
Heartseekers would make all this guys disappear in a second if they charged their rear or flank. They are not design for frontal charges and you Can see they do a ton of damage but get wrecked everytime. Glass canons still need to va canons and they will die extra fast to anything with a little shoot. Peasant horse archers will make their worth in 2 volleys on them
@@alirezarezaei2976 slaaneshi demons are murder machines even without penetrating the enemy from the rear.
their whole arms are repurposed for the sole reason of being better at killing things ;)
This style of competition doesn't make much sense for determining the best cavalry or infantry since you take units that are meant to serve wildly different roles on the battlefield and then force them all into performing a very specific role. Because of the way the competition is set up, the anti-large damage dealers are always going to win, just like the anti-infantry damage dealers did in the infantry contest. But that doesn't mean they are actually better than an anti-infantry cavalry or shock cavalry unit.
To really determine what the best unit in the game is, you should not just have them fight each other, but also measure how good they are at fighting infantry and how good they are at cycle charging. The unit that has the highest average score is the best unit in the game.
Heartseekers beat Skullcrushers, Skullcrushers beat Doom Knights, Doom Knights beat Heartseekers
Feels right
Nice video Zerk, I'm glad to see Heartseekers perform so well, as well as the Crushers. The price anomalies are quite staggering, as well as the rock-paper-scissors situation with the tied #3 contestants.
The seekers performing as well as they did was a surprise. They are by far the most reliant upon cycle charging and getting those tasty flanks and rears of any cav.
Heartseakers are made for flanking, they really shouldn't rank this high without their devastating flanker.
I guess it does explain why slaanesh is getting such good winrates, with such great cav.
Really impressed by the Heartseekers. I know they didn't win, but I didn't expect them to stand a chance at all against really heavy cavalry. They really duked it out with the big boys
Our Master-Mistress Slaanesh really blessed them!!!!!
The insane thing is how well they did against the bears. One of the units legit would have won without the unbreakable thing.
"They didn't have their Korn flakes " XD
Ogre is the most OP race in WH3. Their monstrous mass renders them so thick against cavalry charges. Moreover, they are strong in almost every unit type be it infantry or cavalry , melee or missile.
Their biggest weakness is archer. Even weak archer like simple goblin archer could decimate them really fast.
That seems about what I’d expect! I do think some of the prices may need a little tweak, but this is also a vacuum experiment. A very fun one, at that!
I cannot wait to see this video redone once all the units from WH1 and WH2 are in! 🤩
Each Calvary either needs targets specific enemy units or work in conjunction with other units in the army
Except Heartseekers, apparently.
Love the video. Next time, let every single unit run into the same infantry unit and see which one kills it the fastest. Cav vs. Cav can be skewed a bit...
Skullcrushers having a similar skull taker ability as the daemons would make sense to me. Something that would give them good staying power so to reward their use as a shock cav. They charge in and if they get enough kills can stay in the fight for that much longer. Bears do this already and quite well because of their animation set, like some monstrous infantry, while other cav don't have that liberty.
Love my big ogre cav
With skullcrushers, you are paying for armor piercing damage, which is wasted against heartseekers, you are also paying for heavy armor which is wasted against heartseekers, and you are also paying for shields, which is wasted against heartseekers. Is 130 armor and shields worth the 400 gold increase compared to heartseekers? Maybe? Maybe not?
Skullcrushers are comparatively slow and don't have poison damage. So there's already a tradeoff there.
If only there was like a fusion of skullcrushers and these Khornate Javelin throwers in tabletop with anti-large bonus that can also kite their large targets a bit...
I did this test and Bone Crushers Korne came on top each time.
That's the power of adding a Bonus vs Large to a unit.
Considering Cathay this kind of test is actually deeply flawed. Cathay is designed to have their harmony buff active which of couse is not the case when you send them in fighting alone. Give them their harmony buff and that's a completely different matter. +6/+12 Melee defence are a complete gamechanger for infantry and cavalry fights.
Speaking about Multiplayer: Cathay struggles in Domination. They don't struggle in land battles. It's the game mode that troubles Cathay, not the units. The problem is that in Domination games it is very hard for Cathay to keep the Harmony buff active - not so much in land battles though (and of course not in campaign). In these battles it is actually quite easy to keep the Harmony buff active.
Skullcrasher deserve a buff, something in the like of cost reduction, a increase in melee stat across the board, but CA should probably start with small step though, like 150 cost reduction or +2 melee attack and defend and armor piercing damages.
for me I'd raise their melee defense into 50 and their charge bonus to 75 to encourage players to use them like as a frontline infantry smasher instead of a traditional flanking cav if I were to keep the Skullcrusher as an anti-infantry unit. It would definitely help differentiate them more properly from the Bloodcrushers who are indeed more like a proper flanking cav compared to the more tanky Skullcrushers...
this feels like it should really be seperated by type a bit more. Monstrous, shock, melee, light and flying
There’s not enough currently in the game to do that style of break down. Maybe once old races are in the game and/or some DLC are out
Skullcrushers are fine as they are.
They are designed to be missile resistant heavy armor cav.
Heart Seekers are _designed_ to murder them because they are can openers.
You could ride the Skullcrushers through a hail of missiles to get to their targets and expect almost no damage.
You can't do that with the Heart Seekers and they will be damaged by contact with pretty much anything or missile fire.
Details:
They have twice the unit count and 32 armour piercing damage for about 64 damage plus what single digit normal damage gets though.
The Bloodcrushers will be poisoned down to about 50 damage on model parity.
Factor in lower Slaanesh HP and you would expect them to give out around the same time.
Add the slightly higher Melee attack on the Heart Seekers and that should give them the edge.
Warbears stomping skullcrushers convinces me I choose the right faction to main
Skullcrushers have way more survivability to missile fire (and non-AP damage in general) than the heartseekers, so they'd massively outperform them against missile heavy armies (or at least would take a lot less micro to keep alive). OTOH they are way slower and thus are much more vulnerable to artillery and harder to maneuver. I kind of wonder if something is wrong with their animations though, in the video most of the models in one SK unit seemed to stop charging and just mill around before they actually contacted the enemy.
Not having any Harmony bonuses for the Cathay tests seems pretty bad. Longmas will often be a reactive/defensive unit and may often get the harmony bonus.
Nurgle may often have plagues in play, and Slaanesh usually gets their flank/rear charge.
What a unit might have if supported isn't part of the test.
I'd be interested in seeing how various cavalry perform against infantry and monsters in future videos
Skullcrushers definitely need either a buff or a decent cost decrease. They cost the same as the shielded Ogre Crushers but have half the weapon strength and either the same or worse stats in everything else.
no way it is not dwarfs
First time i saw the skullcrushers i though "what did they do to Queek armor?"
Not exactly a very fair competition, it doesn’t look at the strengths of the units. Most cav is anti infantry (either with a direct bonus or just in general because they’re cav) cav is often not very useful against other cav. Additionally this only looks at their combat prowess and not anything else they might bring to the table. Cathay and Tzeentch both fly so they can rear charge more easily and can get out of sticky situations better. Slaanesh has amazing speed and can lead units away from the main force before charging the rear lines for an increased charge bonus.
Still a fun video to see what happens, but in no way does it find out who the best cav unit is, only which one is best against other cav
Edit: in my opinion every single one of these units should have something where they specialize. Both Cathay’s and Tzeentch’s elite cav don’t even have armor piercing, which is pretty bad to be honest. Also bloodcrushers are actually better because of magical attacks
Skullcrushers are doing way better now. +10 antilarge !
From far they only lost to crushers of the ogres. So 2 place for them ?
I wonder how much attack and stagger animations play a part in the Warhammer series compared to some of the older Total War games. Old memories from the original Rome of multiple legionnaires catching single pikemen out of formation spring to mind.
The bears are who we thought THEY WERE.
Yesss best monsters and best SEM next!
Skullcrushers look like red painted chaos knights riding Squeek Headtaker!
would it be worth testing cathay's harmony mechanic for these fights? archer unit no fire?
sky junk/lantern would also work here and ensure they dont become targets. only would matter if Zerk is testing vs AI , instead of with 2 accounts.
@@bigrockwall8700 not 100% sure about the lantern but the junk has auto fire snipers. Was trying to avoid that. But fair point is fair.
Though for that the enemy should have the same. They won't get a harmony bonus of course, but they would get a leadership bonus.
@@bobbychiken12345 Could use sky lanterns and disable fire at will.
Harmony bonus is something the unit receives because it has the required support.
No other unit get's the same treatment to improve their 1v1'ness, so no reason to do so for Cathay.
Plenty of units, if not all of them, are balanced around what they could do if supported.
Cathay just has their gimmick on the unit card instead of being provided by a campaign mechanic or some other "faction flavor".
Regardless of why, it is simply not something the unit provides for itself on its own.
What I got from this is that the Ogres have the best Anti-Cav Calvary, not counting money cost.
Hey Zerkovich, anywhere I could spot your graphic settings? Your game is looking fantastic. Thanks!
Did anyone else see those Khorne mounts just run away after loosing their rider during the doomknight fight? Never seen that since attilla
It's in all the Warhammer games, just uncommon.
please keep doing these once we have mortal empires the expanded pool will allow all sorts of interesting comparisons like chariots and various monsters.
I absolutely love these types of videos
Me with free bloodcrushers: I just think they're neat
Cathay relies too much on its Harmony mechanic, as a result they're either sitting ducks or massively underpowered. Let's just hope they get a glow up in the DLCs
They're fantastic in campaign tho, so not really in any need for improvement. Both LL's are solo doomstack lords, they have great economy, easy starts and an answer for pretty much any scenario. If anything, so long as they have tools to take out dangerous aoe casters and artillery (which they do) then it's more down to the player doing a good job.
@@carlchristianlindalen9311 Cathay suffers from the Jack of all Trades syndrome. They have a lot of good answers, but not really any great ones. I personally think that they need more tools to activate harmony apart from proximity.
@@havyn88 I agree that they have a Jack of All trades syndrome, but I don't see that as an outright disadvantage. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't, and other times it is why they win.
I personally think the range is a bit too short, because it barely allows repositioning and intelligent deployment, but I'm also wary of it being too wide and thus taking away the other factions ability to negate it.
Best version I've come up with is to increase the range a fair bit but if a missile unit is engaged in melee it no longer counts as a harmony provider. That would at least allow good formations and a fairly achievable way to remove it that's not too simple.
@@carlchristianlindalen9311 I personally want a harmony switching support unit. It's usually quite detrimental to have ranged units so close to the front line, and long ranged units usually need a melee unit just idling there at most times to get the harmony benefit.
@@havyn88 I'm not sure about a specific unit doing the job. It might well end up being that Cathay is then foced to only have 19 or less effective units to facilitate one or more mechanic inducing units. Depends on how you imagine it I guess and how well it performs in the slot it takes up.
If not then it's just as bad, or the exact same, as having to backline a unit just to have it idle with the arty battery.
Who's the Strongest anti-infantry Cavalry and anti-cavalry Infantry maybe?
Example like.
The Empire: Halberdiers and Demigryph Knights(Lance or Halberds)
Bretonnia: Men-at-Arms(Polearms) and Grail Knights
Basically it became a test where Halberdiers is fighting Grail Knights while Men-at-Arms(Polearms) is fighting Demigryph Knights.
and it has a scoring system that dependent on the value they get so a weak unit that loses might still win because they managed to score more damage to value score.
Cathay troops "pay" for their harmony mechanic, too, looking at them in a vacuum is even worse for them than it is anyways.
As of 1.2 skullcrushers have the armor piercing they needed
A thing to note about Longma Riders is that they didn't benefit from their harmony bonuses in this competition. They may perform somewhat better in an organic scenario, could beat Pox Riders at least. Also, I was pretty shocked by the Skullcrushers' turnout, as someone who doesn't play the game much. In a head-on fight, you would really hope they could beat Heartseekers, since Heartseekers are significantly faster, and have magical attacks. I get that the physical resistance vs. armor-piercing discussion weighs in heart-seekers favor, but still... if Khorne can't even win melee fights, what's the point?
i always thought skull crusher and blood crushers were going to be monstrous calvary from all the lore and artwork of them.
This takes combat into account, not other even more important aspects like mobility.
The Heartseeker are amazing, considering they are not using their flanking bonus, nor their massive speed, nor have stacked their attack buff. They die/get chunked vs low tier units, tho
Arent the mounted rotflies better than poxriders? Maybe then nurgle had a better chance
I agree completely. Plague Drones are tier 3 while Pox Riders are tier 2. They also have armor piercing and higher damage stat. The best version (Death's Heads) also have a precursor missile while having the same stats otherwise.
I did the test, however, and got the same result as with Pox Riders. They only get the best of the Longma's and loose against everything else.
With only 10 models in the unit they simply don't perform.
The precursor missile does do OK'ish damage on the way in, but nowhere near enough to turn the tide or change the outcome. Not like satchel charges.
If you let them sit and shoot their load empty against the things that can't catch them however, they definitely change the outcome.
The only reason I want to play as tzeentch is for the Frisbees of Tzeentch
Pretty clear to me why Heartseekers beat Skullcrushers. Heartseekers have poison, and they have physical resistance while the Skullcrushers do not deal magical damage, so the Heartseekers actually got some damage mitigation despite the AP while the Skullcrushers got basically none.
Ah yes, Longma riders, the distant cousins of Ligma riders.
This felt like how they announce sports games, very surreal lol
In animations, it's rare see the ogres using 90% of time only using his animals for attack, they dont seem to use his BIG WEASONS so often.
their khorn flakes ... i was crying with laughter
Really should do this with cav infantry as well.
Ogres are so strong overall. Will be interesting to see how they ultimately get nerfed.
Crushers really should be the strongest cav in the game though. I mean they're Ogre's riding Rhinos... nothing else should come close.
Crushers were by far the best cavalry on the tabletop too. Grail Knights, Blood Knights, Skullcrushers, Dragon princes, Demigryphs etc all ate shit and died when fighting Rhinox Riders as they were called on the tabletop.
You just don't try to beat them with cavalry because it's not happening, you tarpit them with spear infantry and try to win elsewhere.
To be honest, Doom Knights are by far the best cavalry of the game, when you take advantage of their barrier. Getting them in and out of the fight is essential but they can profit from the charge bonus and barrier a lot if you micro manage them well.
sit a unit of peasant archers next to the longma cav and see what happens, fire at will off of course
Crushers not only winning this but also win "fun" factor too. Those dudes under Greasus and with feast get 35% more mass and they literally each have mass of smaller Single entity . Throwing infantry all around great distance causing really huge disruption. And still not slow at all especially with pre battle feast.
And it is not IRRLEVANT ... you can push them through many units and cycle charge into next units - which bear cav or any other here is uncapable off.
Crushers by far my favourite CAV in entire trilogy and super strong on top.