(TFT) The year is 20XX...

[Edmund Nelson <edmund.nelson.b@gmail.com>]

... And everybody uses spears to absolute perfection. I really don't see
how there is any counter at all to spears without armor other than getting
very lucky, the general rule in melee is be 1 Dexterity higher than them or
8 Dexterity lower and be invulernable to their attacks. unfortunately
spears have an amazing properties in being pole weapons, The user can
disengage from the slower enemy and instead of dealing many weaker shots
they can deal one double damage attack every 2 turns rather than having 1
double damage attack followed by a string of weaker ones. this makes most
heavy armor characters weak to spears.  one needs to have an odd amount of
armor to beat spears reasonably, so they avoid getting knocked down by the
spearman on rolls 2 or greater.  this provides us with the following
configurations as potential candidates to beat spearmen
Cutless Small shield No armor- 14 Dexterity lets him  hit spearmen turn 1
and survives on a roll .less than 3, however still is very weak to just
taking damage and unfortunately just can't cut it
Broadsword small shield Leather armor 10 Dexterity vs 13, unfortunately you
Still suffer from the problem of losing to the initial charge quit often,
sure spearmen hit the initial charge a little less than 50% of the time,
but when they do you die 2/3rds of the time, so the amount you are favored
in the mid game does not make up for the disfavor early

The only candidate I find that might be a spear counter is
Cutlass with Chain and a large shield
the strategy is to defend on the turn of charge and then to counterattack
on the retreat, though just how good that is is hard to know because it is
hard to simulate,
The best I can come up with is
Charge attack turn (turn 1)
Spearman has a 40% chance (rounded) of hitting the cutlass user
If they hit they do
1 1/6 times
3 1/6
5 1/6
7 1/6
Instant kill 2/6
Note that the spearman needs to deal 9 damage to get a kill and not 10,
also note that there are a neat set of permutations that lead to kills,
they have about a 13% chance to instantly kill the cutlass user every
combat, and 2/6ths of the time deal significant damage and 2/6ths of the
time deal marginal damage (though 3+7=10 and thus = dead cutlass)


The cutlass user is more complicated  they hit 50% of the time but they go
second, they also deal less damage overall, I'd give this matchup to the
spearman for now until more data is gathered about spear vs armor.

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