Armoured Clash Unit Evaluation

So I’ve been working on a Union overview but I first wanted to get my thoughts in order as far as the general structure of the game and how it pertains to evaluation of orbats and units first. This is a deep dive aimed at explaining how I evaluate units generally, as well as the roles they fill on the table.

This was written May-June 2025, after the Imperium release. (I keep fiddling with little things instead of just posting the damn thing)

Union Combined Arms

Orbat Analysis

Battlegroups

The first thing I’d look at is what bolstered slots your faction battlegroup gets. Full Strength units tend to be your main hitters, and you need to play at least 1 faction battlegroup. Furthermore, adding another just costs you a command platoon and any required slots, so these are going to be your most spammable full strength units. Battlegroup abilities tend to be more variable between factions, but are usually on the stronger end. Consider which ability you want to keep the most and assign your most durable commander there.

Required slots are more of a detriment, especially in your faction battlegroup because they make it harder to spam it. Armour especially is pricey and may not be what you want to take multiple units of. Infantry, on the other hand, is something you need to take anyway for objectives, so required slots there usually aren’t an issue.

Mainstay is much less important, primarily being interesting for small objective grabbing units or transports. Think basic cavalry, soar infantry, or cheap transports.

Units

When evaluating units, check the action dice delta between reinforcement levels (ie. How much it increases for each level) as well as how many hits it takes to degrade a reinforcement level (toughness). Horse Guard Cavalry for example only gain 2 dice going to reinforced, but 6 from reinforced to full strength. A unit might be good at one level but poor at another. 3-5-7 profiles are generally bad unless there’s a quality that fixes it, such as Penetrating or Devastating.

Toughness

The measure of how tough a unit is how many hits it will take to degrade one reinforcement level. This can be contrasted with how many hits you can expect a unit to produce in one attack or activation. Very roughly, at reinforced you can expect 10-12 and at full strength 15-20 (looking at more fire support focused units, not infantry, and barring Behemoths that can potentially hit a target twice). This gives you two soft thresholds for how long a given unit can expect to last relative to the level of attention your opponent pays to it.

Toughness is fairly common across categories. Most infantry, cavalry, field guns, transports, and artillery peak at 12, meaning there’s a good chance 1 activation will degrade them or remove a basic unit from the field entirely. Tanks have a broader range but roughly average at 24.

Units with higher than average toughness are thus quite valuable, especially if they can also hold objectives.

Combined with the above, we can see that average toughness units can be degraded by a full strength unit, but probably not by a reinforced. Again, being above these thresholds is valuable.

Added into the mix is the Light/Heavy/Aerial distinction. Most units will have a preference for one, or lack others entirely. This usually doesn’t make too much of a difference in the early game, but can be a problem once your force is degraded. Presenting a unified profile for the early game (usually via mechanized infantry) could potentially help keep your forces safe.

Aerial is still in an odd spot, since few factions really want to go heavy on it right now, except for Enlightened. Aircraft are basically a sidegrade on Indirect Artillery, useful but not gamebreaking if you ignore them. Soar Infantry is quite useful for blocking movement, jumping onto objectives late in the turn, and safe bully charges, but unless you’re going On Lookout anti-aerial doesn’t help you there either. And finally, there’s currently one rotorcraft unit in the game. If I’m bringing Anti-Air, I would keep it cheap or flexible, but you’re not at that much of a disadvantage if you don’t.

Speed & Range

From my games so far, 7” seems to be a good baseline for fast units. That lets you double time onto a mid-table objective easily from your deployment. If you’re looking at it more from a range or threat range perspective, I like 28”+ range for my backfield artillery (which I don’t expect to move forward), and 24”+ threat range for fire support units that expect to move into the midfield. These units can be used as early activations in the first round, to hopefully allow your shorter range units to shoot as well.

Cost

While there is some variety, there look to be 3 main bands. Infantry is the cheapest around 40-80-120, followed by cavalry/field guns at 80-140-200, and lastly Artillery/Tanks/Planes in the 120-220-320 range, though that last one tends to be the most variable. You can generally get some similar performance to the last tier from the middle, but usually with a downside (fragile, lack of range) and less flexibility. Infantry tends to be universally fragile, and generally limited to anti-light and melee profiles, making them very limited in damage output.

The conclusion here is that if you can work around the downsides of a medium (or even low) cost unit, you can generally get similar performance to a significantly more expensive one.

Melee

There’s upsides to melee (being able to hit light and heavy, forcing a 3” Withdraw move) but also an incredibly big downside (requiring LoS before movement). Playing melee only units well is going to require planning with at least a turn ahead in mind, and might end up as a high skill ceiling approach to the game. Things to look out for that make a Melee unit easier to use is a decent anti-light profile (letting you turn and blast a flanking unit that’s coming for the objective you’re sitting on) or hit and run (to let you reposition for another target after a charge).

While you can of course charge just to do some damage, the aim for melee is to win combat by destroying more enemy models than your opponent does. With proper positioning, you can then force your opponent to lose more models (or the whole unit) to the withdraw move. You can roughly calculate that with expected hits from each side, but as a rule of thumb, tanks are not going to lose combat unless you have already damaged them. Behemoths, as single model units, also can’t lose combat or be forced to withdraw.

Flank Charge!

Melee vs Impact: The only downside to an impact profile is not being able to defend yourself when charged. Not the biggest issue, so I’ll usually use them interchangeably. It does make Impact only units more fragile in the midtable, for example bikes.

Roles

These are the main things I’m looking for when building lists. Units that can hold objectives and still cover other roles are very useful. I’m going to try to keep this general, but there are quite a few wrinkles in the different orbats that can completely change how a particular unit type functions compared to this general overview.

I’m going to leave out Behemoths for now, because they look to be fairly varied in what they can provide for your list. Most tend to fall somewhere between Brawlers and Fire Support though.

  Crown Monarch Landship

 

Objective Holders

The poor, bloody infantry. Games are usually lost when one side runs out of objective holders, so you definitely need more than you think you do. The devs have stated that core to a faction’s identity is how it interacts with the objective game, and this has proven very true in my games so far. A good rule of thumb is at least 50% of your list contributing here (being able to hold objectives or transporting things that do).

I generally look at my objective holders in waves. The first wave has to be able to reach the objective round 1, and will usually die soon after. The 2nd wave can be slower, aiming to reach the objective round 2 and then hopefully holding it. Brawlers that can hold objectives usually fall here. Finally, there’s a theoretical 3rd wave, fire support units that could grab objectives in the late game once the previous waves are gone. While you have to be flexible during a game, having a plan ahead of time helps.

Union Federal Troopers

Soar Infantry (1st): the golden standard for cheeky objective play. You can jump in front of enemy units to block their movement, activate late in the round to grab an objective without possible counterplay, or smack something hiding out of LoS that thought itself safe. They do tend to be quite fragile, and also often have Irregular, which makes them easier to shoot off an objective.

Cavalry (1st or 3rd): While still fragile, there are some tougher options here, but their primary selling point is speed. It can help to play them as fire support in the early game and then jump on objectives once opposing forces have been thinned in later rounds. You can pull some of the same tricks as soar infantry, but lack the ability to ignore los/terrain/enemy units.

Transport Infantry (1st or 2nd): Transports are very much a double edged sword (except for Union). On the one hand, your infantry are now behind a heavy profile and faster. On the other, transports dieing take the infantry with them, and many aren’t actually that fast. There are also some interesting activation games you can pull (leaving infantry inside, or activating infantry first to waste an activation).

Assault Ramps are also interesting, primarily for letting you charge or jump into a building and shoot. However, since they take the transport’s attack action, you can’t double time and thus lose a good amount of movement from the transport. You also can’t play with activations as much, since the infantry will be sitting in the open.

 

Union Lakota Heavy Engine

Walking Infantry (2nd or 3rd): I’ve had a surprisingly good time with Infantry just walking up the field, but keep in mind they’ll take losses fast if any attention is paid to them. Try to use cover or your other units to foul enemy shooting when possible. They’re a good choice for a cheap 2nd wave, or for something coming in from reserves.

Brawlers

These are my midtable fighters, clearing objectives and units threatening objectives. Usually these can’t hold objectives themselves (though there are exceptions). You want units filling this role to be tough, with a good anti-light and melee profile (or anti-heavy). Having shooting, even with very short range, lets you turn to engage units outside your front arc, and a good melee profile makes it easier to push opponents off objectives (if you can, keep the unit pointed at the objective so they can charge next turn).

Union Arc Mechs

Small Mechs: These tend to be medium cost heavy units with a good melee profile, often Automata as well. I tend to throw these forward so that infantry can claim the objective behind them. Don’t be scared of losses, that’s what they are there for.

Heavy Infantry: objective holders with above average toughness. These make great specialists for fighting on and holding objectives. It’s a fairly narrow category at the moment, Assault Dragoons, Armigers and Heavy Constructs being pretty much it.

(Lancers): Melee only units fall here, though depending on how fragile they are they might end up playing more like fire support. Having to already face a target before moving is a problem to reliably doing damage, though aiming yourself at an objective can help. Try to have a target lined up for the next round, otherwise you might have to spend an activation repositioning.

Fire Support

The goal for my fire support units is to clear objectives and take out opposing units that can clear objectives (Mainly anti-light artillery). Taking out enemy units that try to take out my Fire Support is not the goal; if my opponent is wasting fire on my fire support I’m coming out ahead.

So primarily, I’m aiming to be able to remove Infantry, Transports, and Artillery (Artillery usually has Static, making melee units extremely good at removing artillery as long as you can win combat).

Indirect Artillery: generally the king of dealing with enemy infantry, though there’s a few counterbattery options. I usually bring at least one unit.

Direct Artillery: tends to be interesting for keeping heavy units out of a corridor, or for counterbattery fire in combination with hills. I’m generally not a fan of these because your opponent will be able to counterdeploy their transports or artillery elsewhere, and shooting at tanks tends to be a losing game.

Field Guns: Fragile, cheap artillery. Tends to work well from reserves, or played cagey round 1.

Tanks: tough, generally fast, and good damage. These options tend to provide flexible fire support without much babysitting or thought required. Their decent speed might also let them arc dodge against melee.

Shooty Cavalry: Fragile, but there’s some great fast options here. Usually these will also work for objective play in the late game, so playing these a bit defensively in the early game is a good idea.

Union Blazer Cavalry

(Rotorcraft): We only have one unit of this type so far, but it looks like they’ll be similar to shooty cavalry. Only being targetable by anti-air is balanced by being even more fragile.

Aircraft: Very flexible in where they can hit, but only being available Round 2-4 is a problem. I think you want to have a flexible target profile and use them as counter-battery or troubleshooting units.

Closing

Well that should be enough to get on with for now. Things will probably change once I get more experience with aerial units, or as new factions come out. So far, I’m really impressed with the game overall, except for some small rough patches. I think next I’ll either get the Union overview done, or get started on some more starting out focused stuff.