Editing Warmachine/Tactics/Advanced Tactics (section)

====Stats and Averages====

The first thing you'll notice when looking at any given unit card is its stat line. This is a big part of understanding the unit's capabilities. It isn't the ''only'' part, and for some units it's not even the most important part, but you still need to be able to look at it and understand what it means.

Every unit in Warmahordes has the following stats:

* '''SPD''': Speed. How far the unit can move, in inches, when taking a normal turn. Moving your SPD is called making a "full advance", and is the first part of any given model's activation. A model can also choose to forfeit its action to "run", moving double its SPD, or forfeit moving at all in exchange for a +2 aiming bonus to ranged attacks. When charging, you can move up to your SPD + 3". 
* '''STR''': Strength. How strong the unit is. This is ''mostly'' unimportant, especially for infantry, as your damage in melee is equal to your STR + your weapon's POW, and this value is almost always printed separately for each melee weapon as "P+S", so you don't have to stop and calculate it for yourself. A few special rules make use of it, though, particularly when warjacks or warbeasts make Power Attacks.
* '''MAT''': Melee Attack. How accurate the unit is in melee combat. This stat is important for any mainline infantry, particularly if you intend to use them as a tarpit, since it plays a large part in determining how effective you'll be in a brawl. Having incredible P+S doesn't count for jack if you don't connect. On the other hand, this is largely unimportant for a lot of primary ranged units, since getting into melee usually means that you've already screwed up.
* '''RAT''': Ranged Attack. How accurate you are at range. Important for any unit with a ranged attack, obviously.
* '''DEF''': Defense. How hard you are to hit. Anything trying to hit you has to beat your DEF first, which makes this stat your first line of... well, [[Derp|defense]] in combat. Having a high DEF makes you very hard to kill with standard weaponry, whether in melee or at range. On the other hand, it offers no protection against explosions and other auto-hit damage sources, and being knocked down or made stationary will effectively nullify any DEF you have.
* '''ARM''': Armor. How hard you are to hurt once something actually connects. Having high ARM means that a lot of attacks will simply glance off, whatever the source. However, high ARM will only get you so far against massed fire; eventually, [[Natural 20|''something'' will get through]], and there are a lot of attacks in Warmahordes which can hit with devastatingly high POW. Be sure to avoid these if you want to survive.
* '''CMD''': Command. How well-coordinated the unit is. This is primarily used for determining how far apart models in a unit can spread out; every member of the Winter Guard Infantry has to stay within a certain number of inches of the unit leader, equal to that model's CMD rating. If a model in a unit is outside of its leader's CMD range, it basically loses a turn and has to try to get back into it, you also cannot target a unit with friendly spells or make free strikes while a unit has a member out of formation.

Each weapon a model has will also have its own statline printed on the card. Ranged weapons are denoted by a pistol icon, and have the following stats:

* '''RNG''': The weapon's range, in inches. You can't pre-measure this before committing to an attack, and if the target is out of range, you automatically miss. Get good at eyeballing.
* '''ROF''': Rate of fire. The maximum number of shots that the weapon can take per turn. Most of the time, this is 1, particularly for infantry. The only way to get extra attacks is via some sort of special rule, like Dual Shot or Reload, This means that weapons with a ROF greater than 1 are usually restricted to warcasters, warlocks, warjacks, and warbeasts.
* '''AOE''': The diameter, in inches, of any blast template used by the weapon. Many weapons are single-target and do not cause explosions, so their AOE will be denoted with a "-" symbol. Those that ''do'' cause explosions have the size of that explosion marked here. If this weapon misses, the explosion ''deviates'' (travels a little bit in a random direction), so it might still catch somebody in the bang. If the attack hits, the primary target takes a full-damage hit and everyone, friend or foe, caught under it takes a half-damage one, called ''blast damage''. If it misses, then everyone, whether they were the original target or not, only takes half damage.
* '''POW''': The damage rating of the weapon. Roll 2d6 + POW to find out how hard you hit.

Melee weapons only have three printed stats: POW, Range, and P+S. Of the three, you'll be using P+S the most. It stands for "POW + STR", and is the total damage dealt by the weapon (since you add your STR to the weapon's POW in melee), pre-calculated for you. Its POW is only printed in case some special rule needs you to use it. all melee weapons come in one of 4 ranges. 0.5" for most ranged infantry and light jacks/beasts, 1 inch for all heavy warjacks/beasts and most melee infantry, 2" for models with spears/polearms. There are also a handful of models that have a 4" reach but that is only during their activation.

Every model also has a health stat, also referred to as "hit points", "wounds", "boxes", etc. This is usually printed at the bottom of the unit card as a row of little boxes that can be filled in when the unit is dealt damage. When all boxes are filled, the unit is destroyed. If no boxes are printed, the unit has only one health point and is destroyed as soon as it takes damage. Most infantry models have only one health point. These are called "single-wound infantry".

Warjacks and warbeasts track their health a little differently. The details aren't important right now. Suffice to say that they tend to have a shit-ton of health, but as they take damage, they will become gradually less and less effective. They may become less mobile, lose the ability to make special attacks, or just hit much more weakly.

Warcasters and warlocks will also have a FOCUS or FURY stat (note that, when this is typed in ALL CAPS, it denotes the stat, while anything else refers to the points of focus or fury acquired and spent during the game). This determines how much [[mana]] they start the game with, the maximum size of their pool, and how far their wizardly influence reaches. Every warcaster or warlock has a control area - a bubble of influence - around themselves, with a radius equal to twice their FOCUS or FURY. This is the maximum distance at which the warnoun can manipulate the focus/fury fueling/generation of his/her warjacks/warbeasts. If you made it through that last sentence sane, congratulations. It is also the greatest distance at which they can use arc nodes. Warcasters refill their focus pool, up to their FOCUS, at the start of every turn; warlocks don't generate FURY on their own, and can only handle a number of fury points equal to their fury stat at once.

The final stat that you will see in Warmahordes is exclusive to warbeasts, and is called Threshold, or THR. This represents the warbeast's ability to deal with fury; any fury points that the warlock doesn't manage to take away mean that the warbeast has to make a roll against its THR, with each fury point left making it harder to succeed. Fail the roll, and the 'beast goes crazy, chomping down on the nearest model, whether friend or foe.

Now that you know what each stat is, it's time to learn how to judge a unit's capabilities by its stat line.

The first thing to know: '''in Warmahordes, an "average" stat means "bad at this".''' This isn't ''always'' true, but it's so common that it might as well be. An example "average" stat line is as follows:

'''GENERIC INFANTRYMAN'''
{| class="wikitable"
|SPD 
|STR 
|MAT 
|RAT 
|DEF 
|ARM 
|CMD
|-
|6 
|5 
|5 
|5 
|12 
|12 
|8
|}

'''GENERIC RIFLE'''
{| class="wikitable"
|RNG
|ROF
|AOE
|POW
|-
|10
|1
| -
|10
|}

'''GENERIC SWORD'''
{| class="wikitable"
|POW
|P+S
|-
|3
|8
|}

This is about as bog-standard as it's possible to get, though no unit in Warmahordes actually ''has'' this specific statline. Most of your infantry will be a variation on it, though. The "average" FOCUS or FURY stat is about 6 or 7, depending on your army of choice, with 6 being slightly towards the lower end of the scale but a bit more common (5 is rock-bottom low). 

All of the above are about the benchmark for your average human foot soldier in the world of Warmahordes. Specific armies will favor some stats at the expense of others, of course; Cygnar likes to focus on shooting, so its units tend to have higher RAT at the expense of lower MAT. In contrast, Menoth's Exemplar infantry are heavily armored and well-trained, so they have higher ARM and MAT, but lower SPD, while their Holy Zealots (which are just random fucks who decided to grab a couple Molotovs and ALLAHU AKHBAR) have even ''lower'' MAT and RAT. Despite all this, though, the above is what is generally accepted as "average" stats.

It's also what is considered the basis for ''bad'', at least as far as combat stats (MAT, RAT, DEF, ARM) go. Its SPD is good (6 is solid, 5 is slow and where most warjacks clock in, 4 is painful, and 7 or higher is great), its CMD is fine (though not spectacular), and its weapon POW is fine for anti-infantry work, but any unit with this combat statline would be chucked in the bin immediately, barring some seriously redeeming special rules. Seriously. Your average human ''sucks''. The above statline is bad. But ''why'' is it bad?

Because of dice.