Heavy Warbeast survivability

"None of you seem to understand. I'm not locked in here with you. You're locked in here with ME!"  Rorschach

First off, Warbeast are more complicated than their Metal Mickey counterparts. Animi (plural of Animus?) and lots of other tricks make these results a little less solid than the Warjack set. 

The Animus "Bump" is a perfect example. If you hit the Skorne beast Tiberion once with "Bump" up, you get pushed away 3". This would prevent any further attacks. There are way to prevent "Bump" working but it all gets complicated. I decided to ignore "Bump" for this test.


On top of that, Warbeast are more expensive than Warjacks because of Fury mechanic and the extra utility they usually bring. 


I feel you would be better served comparing the Survivability rating within faction, rather than across faction.


That being said, on with the test.




Test:


How many hits would it take to destroy different Beasts per cost point of the model?
To explain further, if a model costs 7pts and needed 7 hits to be destroyed, then the survivability rating would be 1.00.

Assumptions:

1. Attacking model has Mat 6, P&S 17, and can perform as many melee attacks as needed to complete the job.
2. All defensive buffs the Beasts possess are up (Spiny Growth, Warping etc).
3. Things that occur in melee, like Unyeilding are on, but things that break the combat, like the animus "Bump" are off.

Example: 


I do not want to get into hot water with PP for publishing a list of Def, Arm, Pt cost and Damage boxes for its models and so will give as an example the Legion Carnivean, whose rules are freely available as part of the Quick Start Rulebook.
The Carnivean has Def 11, Arm 20 (with Spiny Growth), has 30 boxes and costs 11 points.
He will be hit 83.3% of the time by MAT 6 and will take 4 damage on average when hit by P&S 17.
This runs to 3.33 damage taken per attack and so the Carnivean will be destroyed after 9.00 attacks.
The Carnivean costs 11 points and so dividing 9.00 by 11 gives you the value 0.82, it's survivability rating.




Results: 


Table 1.1:

Rank	Faction	Model	Survivability
1	Skorne	Sentry	1.33
2	Circle	Feral	1.24
3	Circle	Ghetorix	1.22
4	Skorne	Archidon	1.17
5	Skorne	Tiberion	1.09
6	Skorne	Gladiator	1.04
7	Skorne	Cannoneer	1.00
8	Circle	Pureblood	0.99
9	Legion	Angelius	0.95
10	Legion	Seraph	0.94
11	Skorne	Bronzeback	0.91
12	Circle	Wold Guardian	0.86
12	Circle	Stalker	0.86
14	Circle	Shadowhorn	0.84
15	Minion	Blackhide	0.83
16	Legion	Carnivean	0.82
17	Minion	War Hog	0.81
18	Skorne	Rhinodon	0.77
19	Circle	Gnarlhorn	0.75
20	Troll	Earthborn	0.74
21	Skorne	Molik Karn	0.73
22	Troll	Blitzer	0.72
22	Troll	Mauler	0.72
22	Minion	Road Hog	0.72
25	Circle	Woldwarden	0.71
26	Circle	Megalith	0.69
27	Troll	Mulg	0.68
28	Legion	Scythean	0.67
29	Troll	Bomber	0.65
30	Minion	Ironback	0.61
30	Legion	Typhon	0.61
32	Legion	Ravagore	0.60
33	Troll	Rok	0.59
34	Legion	Proteus	0.55
35	Minion	Swamp Horror	0.53

The table 1.1 shows the outcomes for each Warbeast up to Domination releases.

• Skorne take the Khador role and are dominant in this category with half the top 10.
• A big surprise however, was how good some Circle models appear to be, 3 of the top 8 are Wolfs.
• Trolls seem a bit lame but if you factor in Krielstone bearers. They get quite a bit better.
• Legion have problems and the Flying models have clearly the best Survivablilty, followed by the Carnivean (due to it's Animus).
• Minions came off badly.
  

Conclusions:


Skorne has the clear advantage in this catergory, but for the rest, good Def seems to be better than good Arm.