Erfworld 64, Page 58

[TiamatRoar]

Stanley hates losing dwagons, but he's already shown that he's willing to lose them or risk them if the gain is right. It's not the end of the world for him if he loses some of them.

[Overdark]

And why sacrifice 3 dwagons to set a trap in the middle hex if you can set the trap in the 'weak' hex?

Because there is no "Jelly" in the middle of the Dragon-Roll.
Its empty.
The Empty Hex is the Trap.
No warlord wants a fair fight. You hit your opponents soft-spots with something hard.

There is absolutely no reason to go for the big win. Ansom: upon discovering an empty hex if he's afraid of being attacked during Stanley's turn, can use his remaining move to "Fort Up" his remaining forces to protect himself like the Dragons seemed to do. Attacking an Ansom-Fort would be too much like a fair fight for Parson.

[Fillbert]

On page 56, Ansom says the weak hex has 3 warlords and up to two dozen heavily wounded dwagons... That would be a max stack of 8 dwagons per warlord, but does that mean that you can only have 3 stacks per hex?...

[abb3w]

Your lack of vision (and memory) does not equal Stanley: Mad. Stanley was ok with Trading a Blue for Julian's capture. Trading 2 more dragons, the "weaker" ones, for the entire colum of undefended Siege and Heavy Units is a No-Brainer.

Not to mention a serious shot at getting the ArkenPliers. If Parson can get Stanley Ansom's head and the Arkenpliers (plus a boopload of siege towers, a few woodsy elves and, er, seven bats?) for a mere three dragons, Wanda may have to resort to desperate measures to make Stanley stop humping Parson's leg.

That said... the 1.0 attack plan used three warlords; we've seen Lady Phat-Singh on a Pink Bubblegum Dwagon, Leeeeroy Jenkins on a Red Fire Dwagon, and (I think) Lord Manpower the Temporary on another Red. We know he changed the planned layout of the party platter... but did he also add a warlord? What's he planning for Archduke Ferdinand and Ensign Toast?

Which shell has it, where's the pea, where's the pea....

[pudgimelon]

Ranged Units and Forest-capable units, like the treants should be and the wood elves are.

I was looking at that comic again and I notice something.

Parson says that units heal at the start of the turn (dawn for Parson, start of turn for Ansom).

So even if Ansom punches through, kills some dragons (while the rest retreat to the outer circle), at the end of turn, he's going to be a sitting duck in the middle of a ring of dragons.

Next day at dawn, Parson's dragons heal FIRST, and then they jump in on Ansom's badly wounded (from the previous day) units and it's a massacre.

I can't imagine what Ansom is thinking by going in there. Yes, he has to hit the dragons before they burn the siege, but he's setting himself up to lose all his forest-capable units (and his own neck), which would allow the dragons to attack the column with impunity as long as they stuck to forest hexes.

Parson doesn't even have to set up a clever trap. The mere fact that his units will heal first sets up a HUGE disadvantage for Ansom. Whatever is in the center hex, I don't think really matters. Ansom is walking into a ring of fully healed dragons one way or the other.

Seems like a pretty stupid move on his part, if you ask me.

[abb3w]

Does that mean that you can only have 3 stacks per hex?...

Check by Ansom's left gauntlet; you can have at least four.

[Airshark]

Well, Vinny and Ansom know the rules, so I don't think that's possible. The way they acted is like you can't hide from view in a forest. Unless they have some tunnels there I would assume no hidden dwagons.

About the numbers, check this image:


Using Parson and the dwagon as scale, there are at least 20x80=1600 gobwins in that rectangle, and that's only one out of many (there were 4 seen in previous images, and this suggests at least one line of two more rectangles). The numbers are really huge.



??? Then how many gobwins would you assume in GK's parade?

In the images, in the siege attack one can estimate thousands of marbits on those hexes. I wouldn't say a million but something on the order of 100,000.

I say that's artistic license or some such. There's a lot. Further, I think it highly unlikely that each gobwin is equal to one "unit". To get "many thousands" of stacks, you have "many, many thousands" of units. If a unit contains 1,600 gobwins, what you have there is "many many millions" of troops.

I think what the artwork is trying to do is give the idea that "there's a lot of gobwins down there". Not "there's millions of troops involved in this battle". In a fight involving millions of anything, the combat power of any single small group is irrelevant - and so these 46 dwagons wouldn't even be noticed. Further, if 50 siege units (which I assume includes battlebears too) is 40% of Ansom's siege, then realize that 110 siege units are completely, totally inadequate for a force of millions of troops.

[Airshark]

I was looking at that comic again and I notice something.

Parson says that units heal at the start of the turn (dawn for Parson, start of turn for Ansom).

So even if Ansom punches through, kills some dragons (while the rest retreat to the outer circle), at the end of turn, he's going to be a sitting duck in the middle of a ring of dragons.

Next day at dawn, Parson's dragons heal FIRST, and then they jump in on Ansom's badly wounded (from the previous day) units and it's a massacre.

I can't imagine what Ansom is thinking by going in there. Yes, he has to hit the dragons before they burn the siege, but he's setting himself up to lose all his forest-capable units (and his own neck), which would allow the dragons to attack the column with impunity as long as they stuck to forest hexes.

Parson doesn't even have to set up a clever trap. The mere fact that his units will heal first sets up a HUGE disadvantage for Ansom. Whatever is in the center hex, I don't think really matters. Ansom is walking into a ring of fully healed dragons one way or the other.

Seems like a pretty stupid move on his part, if you ask me.

Unless Ansom can get in there with sufficient force to allow him to stand off a max stack of dwagons. That might only be eight dwagons plus a warlord. Will Stanley throw multiple stacks at him to finish him off, if he's losing dwagons eight at a time? Not if the alternative is smoking a lot more of Ansom's siege.

[Wender]

I'm starting to lean heavily toward the idea that Parson is not going to even try to engage Ansom on his turn. If the center hex is a forest hex, the gumps + Ansom + Jillian + 5 elite gwiffons + Charlie's Archons won't die easily. (We have no idea how powerful the Archons are, but I don't think it's unreasonable to assume they're in or near Jillian's league, especially if you're Parson and you don't have the luxury of underestimating your opponent, ever.) Any warlords he sends in have a very good chance of falling apart prematurely, which would hamstring GK. Any auto-attacking dragons won't fight with much in the way of tactical intelligence, or the majority of the stack sent to kidnap Jillian wouldn't have been distracted by the Orlys. A non-forest location moots the gumps (and whatever elves remain), but still leaves a very dangerous adversary. Parson is already pushing his luck by sacrificing three dwagons.

On the other hand, we know that if all of Ansom's air support flocks to this center hex, they'll be there and out of move, or nearly so, with lots and lots of dwagons between them and the column. Parson, having pulled the air support back away from column, gets to use every single dwagon to wipe out the remainder of Ansom's battle bears and siege and whatever else it occurs to him to wipe out (Webinar's heavy cav, left in that clearing by Jillian?). Oh, and he should take full advantage of the fact that Ansom left all the remaining bats undefended, and wipe them out.

This early on I can't see Parson picking any fights against more than token opposition if there is any way he can possibly help it. With a full flight of dwagons, able to retreat to GK at the end of any given turn, he can keep Jillian and the Archons squandered on recon (no bats!) and wild goose chases outside the caldera, or run them right into the teeth of a horde of dwagons if they try to fly over the city. The gross imbalance of battlefield intel in his favor should allow him to do this more or less indefinitely.

With two of Ansom's most mobile and powerful units mooted, and his siege units decimated, Ansom will have exactly two options: Take the tunnels, about which he knows nothing or less than nothing, or give up the siege. Besides whatever traps Sizemore has set, the tunnels bottleneck Ansom's forces, attenuating his overwhelming force and giving the defenders a badly needed advantage.

Ansom isn't an idiot, so I imagine that as soon as he realizes that he's being led like Ginger Rogers he'll stop trusting in his numerical advantage and start taking his adversary seriously. He's already changed the game somewhat by bringing the Archons on board. He might be able to buy recon and intel capabilities, even if they're just powerful, individual spells. If Stanley can do it, Ansom can as well; he just has to be backed into considering it as an option, just as Stanley was.

[teratorn]

About each gobwin or skelly not being a unit. Jillian reports 3 inf, so skellies are counted individually.

Further, if 50 siege units (which I assume includes battlebears too) is 40% of Ansom's siege, then realize that 110 siege units are completely, totally inadequate for a force of millions of troops.

Those 110 siege units (I don't think bears are included) would be able to carry something like 5,000 fighting units directly into the city walls (I see several platforms, each with a 8-unit stack), more if they use bigger stacks. If they are positioned on different hexes then the city would need to spread a comparable number of units over all those hexes. Then there's the tunnels. Call it artistic license or whatever you want, but for GB to survive the siege units, it would need something on the order of thousands of units.

In a fight involving millions of anything, the combat power of any single small group is irrelevant - and so these 46 dwagons wouldn't even be noticed.

Just 19 dwagons killed a few thousand units in the towers they burned, yet likely less than 1% of the total army. Dwagons are a huge and powerful weapon, and they would have been able to waste the entire column if it didn't have air support on its way to Gobwin Knob. Just give them something like 100 turns and a clear path.

But no doubt, Rob and Jamie will give us some numbers soon. This is a world war, the big western conflict.

[Haruspex]

Heh, heh. Gumps. I'm wondering what the approximate power level of those dwagons are. They easily took out the siege elements of the column and three of them massacred that woodsy elf unit. Have we actually ever seen a dwagon fall in this comic?

[Scientivore]

On page 56, Ansom says the weak hex has 3 warlords and up to two dozen heavily wounded dwagons... That would be a max stack of 8 dwagons per warlord, but does that mean that you can only have 3 stacks per hex?...

No, Ansom is just guessing the upper limit of how many dwagons hit him. He doesn't know the exact number because of their lack of anything like Stanleys linked Eyemancer setup. In the next to last panel of that same page, one of the women on the council says "a score of dwagons" so it looks they're expecting 20ish and no more than 24. Since it's actually 19, their estimate is very accurate which tells me that Parson is up against some really smart, experienced warlords.

I was looking at that comic again and I notice something.

Parson says that units heal at the start of the turn (dawn for Parson, start of turn for Ansom).

So even if Ansom punches through, kills some dragons (while the rest retreat to the outer circle), at the end of turn, he's going to be a sitting duck in the middle of a ring of dragons.

Next day at dawn, Parson's dragons heal FIRST, and then they jump in on Ansom's badly wounded (from the previous day) units and it's a massacre.

I can't imagine what Ansom is thinking by going in there. Yes, he has to hit the dragons before they burn the siege, but he's setting himself up to lose all his forest-capable units (and his own neck), which would allow the dragons to attack the column with impunity as long as they stuck to forest hexes.

Parson doesn't even have to set up a clever trap. The mere fact that his units will heal first sets up a HUGE disadvantage for Ansom. Whatever is in the center hex, I don't think really matters. Ansom is walking into a ring of fully healed dragons one way or the other.

Seems like a pretty stupid move on his part, if you ask me.

As long as Ansom re-croaks the three warlords, Parson will not be able to repeat his former tactic with selectively attacking just the siege units. Outnumbered 25 to 1 (with 1/4 as much as he would need to defend GK), Parson can't afford to attack whole hexes of the column; in fact, it would be so foolish that it's what Ansom was originally hoping Stanley would do.

Also, if Parson does give a repeat performance of his "puppet show" and destroy all of Ansom's siege then it will force them through the tunnels, which was originally just going to be a diversion from the main assault. As long as Ansom and Vinny have enough move to make it back to safety, almost any price would be worth re-croaking those three warlords.

[Airshark]

About each gobwin or skelly not being a unit. Jillian reports 3 inf, so skellies are counted individually.



Those 110 siege units (I don't think bears are included) would be able to carry something like 5,000 fighting units directly into the city walls (I see several platforms, each with a 8-unit stack), more if they use bigger stacks. If they are positioned on different hexes then the city would need to spread a comparable number of units over all those hexes. Then there's the tunnels. Call it artistic license or whatever you want, but for GB to survive the siege units, it would need something on the order of thousands of units.


Only 19 dwagons killed a few thousand units in the towers they burned, yet likely less than 1% of the total army. Dwagons are a huge and powerful weapon, and they would have been able to waste the entire column if it didn't have air support on its way to Gobwin Knob. Just give them something like 100 turns and a clear path.

But no doubt, Rob and Jamie will give us some numbers soon. This is a world war, the big western conflict.

Millions of units doesn't make sense. If each individual is a "unit", then the most effective stack is eight guys, i.e. a "squad" in normal real world terms. If Ansom is controlling tens of thousands of stacks, this is analogous to Zhukov giving orders to every corporal or sergeant in the entire Red Army. If Erfworld is a boardgame, that means there are thousands (no, tens of thousands) of counters in every hex. And if Ansom is attacking those three dwagons with eight guys at a time (or any reasonable approximation of that number), he's going to be there a long, long time - wouldn't you agree that he'd repeat the attack hundreds of times at least?

Each siege tower could not hold "thousands" of men. The towers appear to be in proportion to the infantry, and remember, each dwagon is only carrying at most one warlord, who sits astride the neck. Dwagons are what - no less than 10% as big as a tower, which means they would have to be the size of battleships if the towers hold thousands of marbits.

I think you're confusing artwork style with the kinds of numbers necessary to make Erfworld work. If the number of troops is even close to the range you're suggesting, how are Jillian and five birds going to do jack? Take the greatest swordsman in the world and set him free against an army of a million men, and you know what - that army won't even notice he's there.

[Aquillion]

OK, then do you agree that Ansom's attack has already failed? After all, he's got the 19 "A" dwagons in the center, and they have warlords - why can't they just retreat onto one of the other hexes of the ring?

Because it takes time to retreat, like I said, and the dragons (the ones Ansom assumes are there, anyway) are badly wounded. On top of that, the warlords are uncroaked--Ansom can toast them with the Arkenpliers before they can escape.

[teratorn]

Each siege tower could not hold "thousands" of men.

I never said that! Each tower carries 6 stacks of about 8 units, that is about 50 units, you can see that in the image. It's the 110 towers that carry around 5,000 units.

EDIT: I also like the way how you insist on the millions when I never suggested more than a few 100,000 units. Jamie and Rob will eventually tell us if I'm just "confusing artwork style."

[ag30476]

I'm starting to lean heavily toward the idea that Parson is not going to even try to engage Ansom on his turn...

With two of Ansom's most mobile and powerful units mooted, and his siege units decimated, Ansom will have exactly two options: Take the tunnels, about which he knows nothing or less than nothing, or give up the siege. Besides whatever traps Sizemore has set, the tunnels bottleneck Ansom's forces, attenuating his overwhelming force and giving the defenders a badly needed advantage.

Ansom isn't an idiot, so I imagine that as soon as he realizes that he's being led like Ginger Rogers he'll stop trusting in his numerical advantage and start taking his adversary seriously. He's already changed the game somewhat by bringing the Archons on board. He might be able to buy recon and intel capabilities, even if they're just powerful, individual spells. If Stanley can do it, Ansom can as well; he just has to be backed into considering it as an option, just as Stanley was.

Nice analysis.

[Scientivore]

There are many levels to Erfworld. Here are a few:

• Meta: Rob & Jamie
• Medium: Internet
• Meta: Forum
• Medium: Art
• Medium: Words
• Story: Alliance vs. Gobwin Knob
• Game: Mechanics
• Story: Each Person vs. His or Her Own Character Flaws

And so on. I believe Wanda about them being outnumbered 25:1 and having only 200 living men. I believe Ansom about having four times the army that he would need to win (not counting Parson). I believe that each individual is a unit in terms of the game mechanics.

I also believe that Jamie's art is attractively stylized. I believe that distance shots of indistinguishable hordes are like "wow a whole bunch!" and not like "at roughly five units/cm both horizontally and vertically that works out to about this many" (not actual quotes).

[SmartAlec]

I think you're confusing artwork style with the kinds of numbers necessary to make Erfworld work. If the number of troops is even close to the range you're suggesting, how are Jillian and five birds going to do jack? Take the greatest swordsman in the world and set him free against an army of a million men, and you know what - that army won't even notice he's there.

In the real world, maybe; in Erfworld, it's different, working like a hex-based strategy game and not like real life. If that army was spread out over several hexes, the 'greatest swordsman in the world' could move from hex to hex to hex, killing the occupants of each hex as he or she moves on.

In the real world, all the gigantic army would have to do would be to stand still and wait for the great swordsman to eventually die from exhaustion as he or she got swamped. In Erfworld, if the army did that, then the swordsman could quite happily annihilate the entire lot over a long series of turns.

[teratorn]

I also believe that Jamie's art is attractively stylized. I believe that distance shots of indistinguishable hordes are like "wow a whole bunch!" and not like "at roughly five units/cm both horizontally and vertically that works out to about this many" (not actual quotes).

Jamie said something to that effect about the column. But I think the parade is different. Jamie really wanted to show us thousands of troops (the exact number is not important). I was surprised for I expected Jamie to keep us thinking GK had a very limited army.

By the way, in the parade you can see a nice long sequence of skellies and some strange green units in the fifth panel in #29. What are those guys? They don't look like regular gobwin infantry, and they are not hobgobwins (those are orange).

EDIT: I can't resist to some more math. Page #23 shows many many dots on the inner walls. These are nice separate individuals, not a blur, more than 100. The outer walls have a radius about 6 times the length of the sides in the inner square. So they'll have about 10 times the extent. I accept a "many" effect in the art but I still get the feeling GB has many many thousands of units.

ANOTHER EDIT: Wow, I just noticed a big blur in #23 panel 8, outside of the inner walls and covering a huge area. Panel 9 shows a close view of that. Those are some kind of units. They are indeed "many" and I won't even advance an estimate. We know Stanley has 200 men. How many gobwins and undead?

[SmartAlec]

Zombies? Zumbies? Zuwmbies? I dunno. Basically, 'Uncroaked' - Erfworld doesn't seem to distinguish between skeletons and zombies, except to say that the Uncroaked who still have skin are fresher.

[Airshark]

I never said that! Each tower carries 6 stacks of about 8 units, that is about 50 units, you can see that in the image. It's the 110 towers that carry around 5,000 units.

EDIT: I also like the way how you insist on the millions when I never suggested more than a few 100,000 units. Jamie and Rob will eventually tell us if I'm just "confusing artwork style."

OK, far be it from me to put words in your mouth. Take a look at the map in Erfworld 56. Note the map markers on the road - presumably they make up the column. Now, what do you think each of those symbols represents? A unit? A stack? Note that dwagons are represented by individual symbols, which sorta implies that they are units - but perhaps they are stacks. Count the number of stacks visible. Question: what fraction of Ansom's total force do you think this represents? Hint: there are fewer than a hundred symbols visible on Ansom's side. If they are stacks, and Ansom has thousands of them, then this table represents what - 1-2% of his order of battle? See how many hexes are occupied - assuming the best possible case, that movement cost for flying dwagons is 1 move per hex, and given that 56 move is the breakpoint between "A" and "B" dwagon status, how long can this column be and still contain 40%+ of Ansom's siege? Answer: not the hundreds (or thousands) of hexes implied by "many thousands of stacks".

Purely as a guess here, though I think a reasonable one, I'd put a cap on the number of stacks Ansom can muster at a thousand, and probably far less. That makes the column roughly ten times as long as is seen on the table. Now, if we were to make the assumption that the 40%+ of siege that was destroyed would all fit within the boundaries of the table - not an unreasonable assumption given the assumed 56 average dwagon move, and further that the siege was somewhat dispersed throughout the column, we come up with a column between two and three times as long as the table. Even allowing that the siege was destroyed and therefore the remaining stacks on the table are somewhat sparser than the norm, we still end up with an estimate of less than five hundred stacks.

This is not an unreasonable number if we take that "25-1" outnumbering as being a measure of combat power (this assumes that gobwins, spidews, etc are weaker than their counterparts in Ansom's army, even if dwagons are stronger than the norm). This would mean that Stanley can muster perhaps 40-50 full stacks - certainly not an unreasonable number to be moving around in a game, and more importantly, much more in line with the number of warlords available (if Stanley has a thousand stacks, can he really manage that force with only five warlords?).

Think of how well these kinds of ballpark numbers work out in other ways. How big is Gobwin Knob? It's going to have to be pretty big to hold a thousand stacks, but fifty is certainly doable. It gives a very good "feel" for the amount of Stanley's force that Parson is committing - 46 dwagons is basically six full stacks, more than 10% of Stanley's forces (and since they are dwagons with warlords, probably 25% or more of his combat power). The destruction of 50 siege is basically six full stacks, and if your army is five hundred stacks strong, the destruction of six stacks of your most important troops is certainly worthy of Ansom's personal attention. More to the point, that 110 or so siege now looks a LOT more like the proper numbers to match the army size (still a little light, but not ridiculously so). Webinar's force, Jillian's force, the Archons, etc are all noticable fractions of Ansom's strength now - he should (and does) take a personal interest in their movement. And five gwiffons, twenty bats, or a dozen orlies now look a lot more important (though still light) as air cover.

And, of course in gaming terms, there are damn few games that have thousands of stacks of units on one side. A very few monster games, perhaps. Not at all in keeping with the RPG elements (warlords levelling, etc) that appear to exist in Erfworld.

[teratorn]

Think of how well these kinds of ballpark numbers work out in other ways. How big is Gobwin Knob?

Gobwin Knob as delimited by the outer walls is more than 100 times bigger (in area) than the inner citadel. There are 8 huge formations inside there, you could fit 800 like those inside Gobwin Knob. No room problems there, you can easily fit more than 1 million units inside the city.

[BarGamer]

Hey Airshark, what kind of Mathamancy/Luckamancy setup do you use in your faction? Would you sell your calculator watch for half a mil? XDDD

I'm just kidding, great analysis. The greatest swordsman in the world killing the army hex by hex analogy is especially humourous, because that's exactly what Wanda was talking about when she captured Jillian. Now, let us all calm down, shake hands, and imagine Parson going through Ansom's army, eating his marbits and gwiffons, hex by hex. :E *Nom-nom-nom.*

[Scientivore]

This is not an unreasonable number if we take that "25-1" outnumbering as being a measure of combat power (this assumes that gobwins, spidews, etc are weaker than their counterparts in Ansom's army, even if dwagons are stronger than the norm). This would mean that Stanley can muster perhaps 40-50 full stacks - certainly not an unreasonable number to be moving around in a game, and more importantly, much more in line with the number of warlords available (if Stanley has a thousand stacks, can he really manage that force with only five warlords?).

I got the impression on page 20 that Stanley was putting the best possible spin on things with his "ten to one" (by an optimistic reading of combat power) and then Wanda was being literal with her "twenty-five to one". Technically, they were both just asking rhetorical questions so it's not even good canon.

[teratorn]

This would mean that Stanley can muster perhaps 40-50 full stacks - certainly not an unreasonable number to be moving around in a game, and more importantly, much more in line with the number of warlords available (if Stanley has a thousand stacks, can he really manage that force with only five warlords?).

I hadn't payed attention to this part of the post. Stanley has 200 living men, that's 25 stacks. With 6 stack of dwagons that makes 31. The huge assembly of undead and gobwins in #23 represent thus only 19 stacks, that is 152 units? I don't buy that, maybe not thousands as I say, but why would Jamie give us the impression of "many" to show 152 units?

But no point in arguing further, I say that Stanley has about 20,000 units in his army. You talk about 400 units. We have a factor of 500 50 there. Wow!

[Airshark]

I think it likely that some "units" represent individuals, and some represent groups, possibly large groups. There is precedent for this in many board games, particularly fantasy games. For example, in Red Bear & White Moon a single unit might represent a thousand men; or it might represent Jar-Eel Razoress, great heroine. If I remember properly, that unit of men might have a combat factor of "4", but Jar-Eel's was "30", plus bonuses. She could theoretically take on a couple of thousand men and expect to win. This is also not out of line with straight RPGs, where a very small party of high-level D&D characters frequently finds itself faced witha "night of the long knives", where they systematically plow through hundreds (or thousands) of low-level throwaway monsters over the course of hours.

Also, think about that stack bonus, +1 per unit. Isn't it a little silly that adding one skinny elf to a stack adds the same bonus as adding a red dwagon? You can see where adding a unit of say, fifty elves might be a little more reasonable.

All this is just speculation, of course. Game rules are frequently quite unreasonable.

[Airshark]

I hadn't payed attention to this part of the post. Stanley has 200 living men, that's 25 stacks. With 6 stack of dwagons that makes 31. The huge assembly of undead and gobwins in #23 represent thus only 19 stacks, that is 152 units? I don't buy that, maybe not thousands as I say, but why would Jamie give us the impression of "many" to show 152 units?

But no point in arguing further, I say that Stanley has about 20,000 units in his army. You talk about 400 units. We have a factor of 500 there. Wow!

You're making a flat assumption that one gobwin = one "unit". All I'm saying is that there is absolutely no reason to make that assumption. Those 200 living men might make up a single unit. 152 "units" of gobwins and uncroaked (what are "undead"? ) might be 15,200 individuals for all I (or you) know. I think it very, very likely indeed that not all "units" contain the same number of individuals.

EDIT: and BTW, the factor is 50, not 500.

[teratorn]

All this is just speculation, of course. Game rules are frequently quite unreasonable.

Besides, what's a factor of 500 50? We're almost in agreement.

EDIT (sorry divided by the 40 stacks instead of the 400 units).

[Airshark]

Besides, what's a factor of 500? We're almost in agreement.

I don't know, what is a factor of 500? We differ by a factor of 50, not 500.

[Airshark]

Besides, what's a factor of 500 50? We're almost in agreement.

EDIT (sorry divided by the 40 stacks instead of the 400 units).

See, we've already come 90% closer to agreement.