With any game, be it board, video, card or miniature, one invariably stumbles upon tactical discussions of every nature.Most of these topics are filled with pro- and anti- voices, each jockeying for the attention of you, the good reader.Sometimes the arguments hold water, sometimes they don’t.Today, we’ll be discussing the merits of the Sun Fighter for the Shadow Sun Syndicate, and whether or not you should use them.
I’ve witnessed numerous debates on the merits of the Katana versus the Sun Fighter, most of which ended with the consensus victory going to the Katana.Numerous reasons are cited, but the majority whittle down to unit speed and the bonus Blue die gained by fielding a Shadow Sun Syndicate monster.In all honesty, I can’t say that my disagreement lies with said reasons: speed is maneuverability (and distance covered is damage drawn closer), and Blue dice are always nice.
What I would do, however, is propose that the Sun Fighter is every bit the unit a Katana claims to be.Yes, the Katana is slightly faster, but the Sun Fighter has much to offer the gamer willing to look beyond the instant sex appeal of the Katana.There are some out there who would see the Sun Fighter put out to pasture: a wooden toy to the Katana’s Xstationboy.
Funny thing about wooden toys, though.They may not be hip, the may not be the new hotness, but when you plunk someone in the head with one, it’s going to hurt.
Alone, the Sun Fighter is a decent unit: average defense, good speed, a solid attack and Flight.The most obvious advantage to the lowly Sun Fighter comes when your opponent bring an army to the table with Flight enhanced units.Once that occurs, you’re picking up free B-Dice, and, as has already been stated, is a good thing.
Overall, a 2+1 unit is standard fare.But let’s look into what, exactly, makes the Sun Fighter worthy of the Katana’s status.One-on-one versus a flying unit with a defense of 2, the Sun Fighter, using both Action dice in the attack, has a 50% chance of destroying said unit.An Elite Sun Fighter’s percentage of solo victory leaps to nearly 80%, and, holds a 50% chance of destroying a flying unit with a defense of 3.Solo.By comparison, the Katana, against the same foe, has a mere 20% of success.The Elite Katana does slightly better, clocking in at about 50%.Yes, the Sun Fighter uses one additional Action Die than the Katana, but we’ll address that soon enough.
Traditional logic would pair a Sun Fighter with an Elite, then send off the duo in hopes of gathering up some P-Dice.Against individual units, there’s no grunt or elite that stands much of a chance against this attack.Using all available dice in the attack, non-fliers with a defense of 4 have a 50-50 chance of escaping intact, while fliers have virtually no chance of surviving the encounter.Units with less than 4 defense have all but no hope of lasting against this pair.Additionally, flying monsters with a defense of 5 have an 80% chance of sustaining damage.
Yes, if you field three Katana units against one enemy, you’ll gather a 50% chance of taking out a unit with a defense of 4, and yes, the cost effectiveness is equal, should you be forced to move both groups to firing distance and attack with all available Action Dice, but what about that monster mentioned?The same monster would have a slightly better than 50% chance of ignoring the attack, and you’ll potentially just given your opponent three P-Dice with nothing to show for the effort.At the very least, if the Sun Fighter team gets taken off the board, your opponent will only gain two P-Dice for his effort.Already, you’re seeing an advantage in the pair versus the trio.
But, that’s not the only advantage in taking two units to combat.The more units you force to the frontline, the fewer units hold the line for your monster.Every unit committed to advancing becomes one fewer blocker, and in a game where one point of damage can mean victory or defeat, I’d take a stratified wall of defenders any day.
Convinced that the Sun Fighter isn’t a poor man’s Katana yet?In case you’re still undecided, let’s throw one or two more options into the mix.
What if we didn’t just toss Sun Fighters at our enemy?What if we actually used the sum of two parts to create a greater whole?I’m speaking, of course, of utilizing the Sun Fighter’s air superiority and coupling it with a Katana.A roaming pair of Sun Fighter/Katana creates a rather dangerous mini-platoon, and becomes even more dangerous when used against a flier.
The Katana has Red High Impact, giving your teamed Sun Fighter another Blue Die, pushing him (against fliers) to a 2+2.Taken together, the pair is a 3+3, which is exactly the same as if you’d pushed three Katana units into combat, with a savings of 1 Action Die.Not only are you controlling the firepower of a larger group in a smaller package, but you’re bringing with it Chain Reaction, which will can, and has, turned many a tide.Why drop one enemy unit when you can push two from the board?If you’re controlling two sets of Sun Fighter/Katana pairs, you have a four unit destruction potential.Not bad for an over-the-hill unit.
If we look at the percentages mentioned in this article, you’ve got quite a few numbers to consider, but they all fall into one category: causing damage.A well-run pair of Sun Fighters can create chaos on a battlefield, but a well-run pairing of a Sun Fighter and a Katana will win you games.My intention was never to say that the Sun Fighter should replace the Katana; rather, I sought to prove that the Katana has in no way, shape or form, replaced the Sun Fighter.
Should you be interested, here’s a quick and dirty table to reference, should you decide to give my advice further testing.TMV is the total mean value, which is basically the overall chance to roll hits with the dice provided by the listed units, in this case one Sun Fighter and one Katana.“Your target” indicates the defense you are attempting to hit.
This table lists the chance to hit versus the TMV:
If your TMV is 4.5 less than your target, you have virtually no chance of hitting.
If your TMV is 1.5 less than your target, you have about a 20% chance of hitting.
If your TMV is Even, you have about a 50% of hitting.
If your TMV is 1.5 more than your target, you have about an 80% of hitting.
If your TMV is 4.5 more than your target, you have virtually a 100% chance of hitting.
This table shows the various possible pairings and their respective TMVs:
Katana + Sun FighterTMV of 3.67
Katana + Sun Fighter vs FlierTMV of 4.5
Elite Katana + Sun FighterTMV of 4.5
Elite Katana + Sun Fighter vs FlierTMV of 5.33
Katana + Elite Sun FighterTMV of 4.5
Katana + Elite Sun Fighter vs FlierTMV of 5.33
Elite Katana + Elite Sun FighterTMV of 5.33
Elite Katana + Eliter Sun Fighter vs FlierTMV of 6.16
Sun Fighter + Sun FighterTMV of 2.68
Sun Fighter + Sun Fighter vs FlierTMV of 4.34
Sun Fighter + Elite Sun FighterTMV of 4.34
Sun Fighter + Elite Sun Fighter vs FlierTMV of 6
Sun FighterTMV of 1.34
Sun Fighter vs FlierTMV of 2.17
Sun Fighter EliteTMV of 2.17
Sun Fighter Elite vs FlierTMV of 3
KatanaTMV of 1.5
Katana EliteTMV of 2.33
What the above table simply shows is that by fielding both units, your army can function in pairs, rather than trios, and have a high degree of success against the vast majority of units in play.
Zach Bunn says: Fantastic. Forget just posting news... we want you to be a writer! I gave you a rank of 5, because the content was original and creative. Instead of thinking either or you thought why not both. I applaud this blog!
Zach Bunn says: Do you think the blog feature would be cooler if we added the ability to 'add' products to the blog? What would probably happen is you would pick an image (like you do for decks), but then a list of products talked about in the blog would be at the bottom of the blog or under the image. What do you think?
Jason Miller says: I think that would be incredibly useful for me, actually, as I would have placed a picture of the Katana beside where I was discussing it, then a picture of the Sun Fighter.
Andrew Brannan says: Interesting article, however, it's a bit non-representative of actual game scenarios. How often do people actually throw more than one Action Die per unit into an attack? Maybe it's just my local meta, but that rarely happens, unless you're attempting an attack against a monster, and you happen to have a single action die left over that really doesn't do you any good anywhere else.
Now, re-working the math to assume that in most cases you'll only be committing one A-die to each unit, the picture changes. On one hand, you've got the Sun Fighter, which is flying (doesn't have to worry about non-blast attacks from enemy sloggers, but you can't secure objective spaces, either), and has anti-air (mighty useful against G1s, and 80% of any martian army). On the other hand, you've got the Katana, which is 1 speed faster, grants adjacent units an extra blast b-die, and has chain reaction for taking out clumps of enemy units.
You're building an army to take into an unknown tournament, and you have no idea what armies you'll be facing. Which of the two options do you choose? The situational Sun Fighter? Or the generalist Katana? The smart money goes to Katana over Sun fighter in at least a 2:1 ratio.
