Extremely Hard to Kill! They were on the Right Path with this One ... [Part 4/5 of the Hard to Kill Series]

** PART 4/5 in the Hard to Kill Analysis Series **

OK, it seems like they were on the right track with this rule - but just didn't take it far enough. In fact, if you look at the rule updates for the "Hard to Kill!" rule and the "Very Hard to Kill!" rule, you should notice that they look very similar to the existing "Extremely Hard to Kill!" rule ... since it was actually one that was relatively "hard" to kill.

Using the existing EH2K rule and running it through the simulator produced an average of about 9.67 rounds to achieve the "Death Blow" result for the monster.

From part 2/5 and 3/5 of this series of posts, we found that using the updated rules a monster with the new "Hard to Kill!" rule should need about 5-6 rounds to be killed and for the new "Very Hard to Kill!" it should take like 8-9 rounds. In fact, running these through the simulator 120 times gave the following distributions for the new rules:

This says that a monster with the new "Hard to Kill!" rule will last anywhere from 3-9 rounds (with the most probable being about 5 rounds). In fact, over 1 out of 4 monsters played will have about 5 rounds of lasting value during a Fight Phase, and less than 10% will be outside of the range of 4-8.

This says that a monster with the new "Very Hard to Kill!" rule will last anywhere from 4-15 rounds (with the most probable being about 8-9 rounds); and 1 out of every 5 will fall in the 8 to 9 round range - and less than 10% (1 out of every 10) will be outside of the range of 6 to 11 rounds.

We updated the "Extremely Hard to Kill!" rule as follows and re-ran the simulator with these values:

The simulator provides 11.6 rounds for the average of this new table. That seems a lot better.

This says that a monster with the new "Extremely Hard to Kill!" rule will last anywhere from 7-18+ rounds (with the most probable being about 10 rounds); and 3 out of every 5 will fall in the 9 to 12 round range - and less than 20% (1 out of every 5) will be outside of the range of 9 to 15 rounds. The really interesting one is the 22 Rounds to Kill outlier ... looking at the rolls ... the hang-up was getting over the first two hurdles of the 1-4 range and 5-8 range that provide 0 and 1 counters, respectively. Once the compilation of counters starts, though - the progress through the remaining ranges goes relatively quickly.

Under the modification to the rule, the EH2K monster is now effectively twice as durable as the H2K monster ... we think it makes sense to count the EH2K rule as 30 Points instead of 10 for the Special Rule.

The only three monsters within the rule book that have the EH2K rule are within The Misty Mountains (Moria) army list:

1. Stone Giant [Monster]
2. Dragon of Ancient Times [Monster Hero]
3. The Balrog of Morgoth [Monster Hero]

Sorry Good, you don't get any such cool behemoths to play with - I guess that is the price of being the good guys!

The "take home" message appears to be that the more "hard" to kill the rules become ... the larger the swath of ranges of number of round to kill increases (i.e., the more the dice play a role in the killing of the monster). We have played a game with the Balrog once, using the new rules ... and it was definitely worth the 315 points that were paid to field the Monster Hero. I'm still itching to get him back on the field and have another go at it!


LINKS TO OTHER PARTS OF THE HARD TO KILL SERIES

1. Overview of the Problem [Part 1/5]
2. Hard to Kill! Rule [Part 2/5]
3. Very Hard to Kill! Rule [Part 3/5]
4. Extremely Hard to Kill! Rule [Part 4/5]
5. Ridiculously Hard to Kill! Rule [Part 5/5]