Hello Kevin,

Here's my situation regarding unit banners and the mob rule.

Army Maximum Unit Size = 10
Mob rule allowing unit size to double is in effect

Base Unit
10 figures
Troop Quality=Regular
Minimum Unit Size=5
Minimum Unit Size with a unit banner=4

Mob Unit
20 figures
Troop Quality=Regular
Miniumum Unit Size=5
Minimum Unit Size with a unit banner=3

The unit banner helps out mob units more than non-mob units.  Why?

Is there some rational for this that's not obvious to me?  Or, when applying the mob rule doubling, should the minimum unit size also have been doubled?  Then, a doubled Unit Banner modifier for mobs would make more sense.

Kyle

Well, I may be wrong, but at say, Regular discipline with a max squad size of 8 and Mob Option:

If minimum squad size was doubled, a minimum mob would be two LARGER than a squad at full strength. Now, a mob already loses one point of leadership, or one point of command, or both if available, and ALSO can't receive command cards from the Primary Commander. The loss of Leadership and Command levels is roughly 30-40PV for the Leadership and 30-60PV for the Command if you're silly enough (IMO) to put a Commander with a Mob.

So by this stage, for the privilege of having a very large and unwieldly unit you've paid 2-3 troopers' PV worth of Leadership and at least an additional 2 troopers to keep the unit from breaking early.

So, IMO only, doubling minimum squad size is overly harsh: to do so renders Mobs useless even before the already established penalties. You pay 2  Strat points for Mob: for example the same can get you Pie Plate of Doom IF weapons (4 inches, woohoo!) plus Reserves or access to Field Saves AND Phase weapons, or the Cool Head individual morale rules, or 25 frames. 25 frames versus 15 is a big advantage and much more forgiving!

Anyway, back to the question: I think the Banner is a specific Doesn't Suck With Mobs option. It has to be specific because all other Leadership explicitly Sucks With Mobs.

A question, tnjrp: did your group decide that Mobs needed nobbling because they repeatedly proved overwhelming, or did they just not  LIKE the idea of a unit of 20 with minimum size of 4?

In about 3 minutes Demian will show up and bat aside my intuition with solid numbers. Till then, I'll take any other option at the Strategic/Frame level before Mob (unless I take Banzai Charge).

Guys,

Here's what started all this.  On the MJ12 website, Defiance page, there's a PDF file you can download called “Demo Army Lists.pdf”.   The 3rd army in that document is called Space Thugs which is another way of saying Orks.

I was making up some units the other night for the figures I already have and came up with this.

Basic Thug (Ork) Unit
405 points (10 figures x [17 per figure +20 per weapon] +35 level 1 leader)
Minimum Unit Size = 4 (5 for regular quality -1 for leader)

Mob Thug (Ork) Unit with Unit Banner
855 points ((20 figures x [17 per figure +20 per weapon] +35 level 1 leader +80 unit banner)
Minimum Unit Size = 3 (5 for regular quality – 2 for unit banner)

The only reason I took the leader in the mob unit was so I could take the unit banner.

Now, what's a better deal, 2 basic Ork units or 1 large Ork mob?

2 Basic Ork Units, 810 points, and combined the units can lose 12 figures before they have to start taking unit morale tests.  This assumes the leaders are still alive.

Mob Ork Unit, 855 points, and it can lose 17 figures before it has to start taking a unit morale test.  This assumes the banner bearer is still alive.  That's 5 more figures to lose for the price of about 1 extra figure.

The unit banner -2 minimum size modifier for mobs just seems like it makes difficult units even harder to break.  The mob without a banner already has more figures to lose than 2 basic units; this just allows mobs to lose even more.

However, upon further consideration I don't think I'll ever use a unit banner with a mob.  It's more cost effective to just purchase 20 Orks for 740 points and not include a leader or unit banner.  This unit can lose 15 figures before it has to start taking unit morale tests and costs 70 points less than the two basic Ork units which can only lose 12 figures.  The extra points can then be used to purchase support weapons instead which will put the basic units at an even bigger disadvantage.

Now that I see how expensive it is to purchase a leader & unit banner for a mob, I agree with the rules as written.  It should be -2 for a mob.  It's not normally a good points cost decision but if you want to do it the -2 at least makes it somewhat beneficial.

Kyle

Mobs do indeed get extra benefits from the banner, though, as noted, this is mostly to make up for their poor leadership and command performance.  In original playtesting, doubling mob minimum sizes was considered, but there is a real initiative disadvantage to having big mobs.  They are best used, in my experience, as one large grouping among many smaller units, able to soak more fire than a normal unit.  They are certainly hard to break, even if they are a bit inflexible tactically.

In Reaper's game, Warlord, which has a slightly similar initiative system to Defiance, taking too few units (and hence getting too few initiative cards) is considered a significant error. In that system, individual heroes (called Solos) are used to pad out the deck. In Defiance the idea is not to go first, or last, but to manipulate initiative so that your opponent is always reacting to you and conversely to be able to react quickly yourself if your opponent gains the upper hand; to have more cards in the deck increases uncertainty for HIM while offering finer granularity in tactical decisions for YOU.

Damn, this is hard to express clearly. It's subtle in concept but can be violently and lethally obvious in (make believe) combat.

Flexibility doesn't SOUND important, but try fielding the Devastating Marines from the Black Watch (and Demian's Star Marines I think, originally). The simple fact of two solid, single task, long range weapons falling into Primary and Support roles makes for a unit with no serious, exploitable weakness in a toe-to-toe fight (I refer to Heavy Riveter Pri., Laser Cannon Supp.) Scary bastards.