Supreme Astromancers vs Goblin Oddnobs

Something I've seen come up but not talked about in depth is the 10 point difference between Cathay's new Lord level foot caster and Goblin Oddnobs so I went digging a bit to compare them more closely.

Now to start with the Goblin Oddnob has a point more in Weapon Skill and Toughness (4 for both), but the Supreme Astromancer has a pip more leadership (8 over 7).

So right away that means the Oddnob is harder to wound in melee than the Astromancer.

Now the Astromancer gets Battle Magic, Elementalism, High Magic, and Illusion while the Oddnob gets Elementalism and Waaagh Magic.

Both have hand weapons and no armor, and both get 100 points in magic items.

The Oddnob has no upgrades beyond the mount options (Giant Wolf (+10), Wolf Chariot (+53), or Araknarok Spider (+310)) and a level 4 upgrade but the Astromancer gets a 1/3 chance per round to have a situational +1 to cast certain spells depending on if they choose to be a Yin or Yang caster, a Cathayan Horse (+16), and a level 4 upgrade.

For special rules the Oddnob has Fear of Elves, Lore of Mork, and Warband. The Astromancer gets Magical Attacks, Magic Resistance (-1), and Mastery of the Elemental Winds (once per turn per army if you have 2 or more Wizards within 6" of each other one of them can have a +1 to cast to *a* casting roll).

So that looks pretty stacked in the Astromancer's favor but then we have to look at the Grand Army list building considerations to get the full picture: the Oddnob is unrestricted while the Astromancer is a 0-1 per 1,000 points choice that shares the same slot as Shugengan Lords, Gate Masters, and Lords Magistrate.

And it's that last thing along with the worse weapons skill and toughness that I think is what tips the scales just enough that GW decided to price them 10 points lower than an Oddnob, as when we look at the unrestricted level 1 Astromancer against the Oddgit we find that the script flips and the Astromancer becomes 5 points more expensive.

And of course if we look at the Night Goblin Shamans that points gap changes even further, with the Supreme Astromancer only being 5 points cheaper than the Night Goblin Oddnob, but the Astromancer being 10 points more than the Night Goblin Oddgit.

Of course this is assuming no points changes in the future, but I thought it was worth looking at a bigger picture.

Now do I think the Astromancers needed Magical Attacks and Magic Resistance baked in? No, not really. Maybe they were trying to justify why you can build the model with a sword by giving it Magical Attacks, but I don't want an Astromancer trying to fight things when they are that squishy.

As for the Magic Resistance my only guess is they were trying to give Cathay wizards a flavor of being harder to directly harm with magic as they channel the energy away from themselves Tai Chi style but honestly that's a guess. Maybe it has some kind of reference to a Total War mechanic I don't know about since my computer is too potato for that game but sure, if you target the wizard with magic directly it's slightly harder to cast on them.

Now I don't have enough games under my belt to say if the points cost is going to be an actual problem or not. I understand GW game design just enough to guess on how they got to a certain end result, but actual current meta is beyond my understanding since I've only picked the game up properly this year so I will leave that up for others to hash out. I just hope that with a bigger picture we have a better look at the comparison than just a vague idea that the Supreme Astromancer is 10 points cheaper than the Oddnob without any potential context for why that may be.