Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

This post is about how the darkshroud helps to improve the resilience of units, and its potential abuse. It will also cover rad gernades and their effect on units.


Unit Resilience
Resilience and “damage dealing” behave differently. Think of “damage dealing” as heat and resilience as cold. You can raise the heat as much as you like, but you can only drop the temperature to absolute zero. In a similar fashion, when Resilience reached 100%, the unit is invulnerable while “damage dealing” can continue to increase indefinitely.
Simply put, the higher a units Resilience, the greater it’s overall effect. For the purposes of this document, this effect will be described as the “Rule of Resilience”


Time to Live
The best way to determine Resilience is to take a page from MMO tanks and determine “Time to Live” This is how long the same number of damage can be directed at a unit until it dies. For example, it takes 203 MEQ bolter shots to kill 10 Plague Marines, while it takes 31 MEQ bolter shots to kill 10 orks not in cover. The “Time to Live” value for Plague Marines is significantly more than orks when shot at by bolter fire.
There are many elements that effect “Time to Live”. Let’s focus on the most direct – the armor save. Notice how the “Time to Live” value increases as the armor save increases.
10 Scouts……………….61 MEQ Bolters
10 TAC Marines……..91 MEQ Bolters
10 Terminators………181 MEQ Bolters
This illustrates the concept of Resilience. While the armor save may got from a 4+ to 3+, resulting in a change of 50% save to 66.66% save, the end result is a “Time to Live” increase of 50%!



Strength/Toughness Alteration
Altering the STR/Toughness of a unit can have dramatic changes on the “Time to Live” value. Even one pip change can have significant changes.
10 TAC Marines….....…..91 MEQ Bolters
10 Marine Bikes…...…..…136 MEQ Bolters
10 MoN CSM Bikes…......271 MEQ Bolters
5 MoN Nurgle Spawn.....135 MEQ Bolters
There are a few takeaways here. One of which is that a single pip of toughness increase on the same model gives a 50% increase in Resilience when taking attacks from a weapon whose strength matched the previous pip!

Also notice how increasing the toughness to 6 changed the “Time to Live” to 200% of the C:SM bikes. The first pip change increased “Time to Live by 50% while the next increased by 100%. The nurgle bikes are nearly 300% as resilient as the TAC marines.

Also look at the spawn. 15 wounds of T6 chaos spawn are as difficult to kill with MEQ bolters as 10 marine bikes – and half as difficult as the MoN bikers. This is due to the lack of armor save.



RavenWing DarkShrouds
The RavenWing Darkshroud gives all units within 6” the ‘stealth’ special rule, and have the ‘shrouded’ special rule themselves.

By itself, this special rule does not provide much effect, but combined with other save modifications, it can have dramatic effect according to the “Rule of Resilience”

Look at the Darkshroud itself. If it moves, it has a built-in 5+ jink save. If it moves flat out, that save increases to 4+. Shrouded increases the jink save to a 2+.

Vehicle damage is more difficult to determine. Any one shot can destroy a vehicle, so the best way to determine resilience is to count hull points until destruction. Since we are modifying saves, the difference in this value is what will be used to determine the net gain in “Time to Live”

For example, an autocannon shot has a 2/3 chance of hitting, 2/3 chance of inflicting a hull point, and 1/3 chance of saving on a stock speeder. This means that 7 autocannon shots can be expected to destroy a land speeder through hull points alone.
Stock Speeder……..……...7 MEQ Autocannon Shots
Stealthed Speeder….......9 MEQ Autocannon Shots
Shrouded Speeder…....….14 MEQ Autocannon Shots
Darkshroud Flat Out….....28 MEQ Autocannon Shots
Chimera (no cover)........14 MEQ Autocannon Shots

Notice how the Darkshroud moving flat out – with a 2+ cover save – has twice the Resilience as the Darkshroud not moving flat out. Also note how a Chimera with no cover is as resistant as a shrouded speeder – even though the speeder has AV 10 and only 2 hull points. This is due to the 4+ cover save, and its huge impact on Resilience.



How can this be abused?
We need to follow the “Rule of Resilience” and use the RavenWing Darkshroud to push saves as great as possible. Ideally we want to push from a 3+ to a 2+ save, as that increases durability by 200%. At the time of this writing, the only way I can think to do this is to bolster ruins.
First, notice how the RavenWing Darkshroud works on any unit within 6”. This means that a squadron only needs one model within range, vastly increasing the overall possible coverage of the speeder.

The best starting point is to ensure that a 4+ cover save is available as a base. The easiest way to do this is to bring an aegis defense line. It’s easy to put 6 rhinos and one land raider behind the aegis line.
Stock Rhino….……..……...9 MEQ Autocannon Shots
Rhino behind aegis……...18 MEQ Autocannon Shots
Rhino w/aegis + stealth..27 MEQ Autocannon Shots
Rhino bolstered ruins + stealth….54 MEQ Autocannon shots

It is important to note, I am not saying it takes 9 MEQ Autocannon shots to kill a rhino. The first shot might penetrate and cause an explosion. This ratio is to demonstrate the increase in “Time to Live”

The takeaway here is that by sticking a darkshroud near your aegis line, you can increase the “Time to Live” by 50% of the majority of your tanks.



That's great, what about the bikes?
Following the “Rule of Resilience”, Ravenwing Bikes can be made much tougher by a RavenWing Darkshroud. In order to do this, one needs the following modifies.
Jink – 5+
Flat Out – 4+
Skilled Rider – 3+
Stealth – 2+

This alters the save chance for bikes from a 3+ to a 2+, which increases “Time to Live” by 100%. See how the effect is shown below. This sets the durability of the bikes to be the same as MoN bikers.
10 Marine Bikes………136 MEQ Bolters
10 Skilled/Sealthed/Flat Out Bikes………271 MEQ Bolters
10 MoN CSM Bikes…..271 MEQ Bolters

The real advantage of this is, as a cover save, that ignores AP values for anything but template weapons. This means that your squad of bikes are –not- going to die, not matter what is tossed at them with few exceptions. (Helldrakes, Land Raider Redeemers, Daemon Flamers)


Resist This!!
The “Rule of Resilience” can also be applied offensively. By increasing your strength, or decreasing your opponent’s toughness you can shift the damage equation into your favor.

A great example of this is the RavenWing Grenade Launcher utilized by the Ravenwing Command Squad/RavenWing Knight Squad. This weapon can shoot a ‘Rad Shell’ that loweres the toughness of the target unit when hit by -1 until the end of turn.

This shifts the “Rule of Resilience” into the favor of the shooter, by increasing the number of wounds the same amount of shots will deliver.
10 TAC Marines………91 MEQ Bolter Shots
10 ‘Radded’ Marines……. 68 MEQ Bolter Shots
As you can see, the “Time to Live” value for the TAC Marines is 35% less by altering the toughness of the target.


Hammer Time
Ravenwing Knights/Command bikes also have a weapon which futher increases their assault strength by one, so they will wound a ‘Radded’ MEQ on a 2+.
10 TAC Marines………121 MEQ CCW attacks
10 ‘Radded’ Marines……. 91 MEQ CCW attacks
10 ‘Radded’ Marines….. 73 MEQ ‘Hammer’ Attacks.

By lowering the toughness, and increasing their strength the ravenwing knights have effectively increased their attacks effects by 66% vs. Toughness 4.

Even more importantly, they have increased the effect of their attacks on tougher creatures. For example, a toughness 6 MC will be wounded 50% of the time instead of 16.66% of thet time. That is a dramatic change by using the “Rule of Resilience” offensivly.


Built in Limits
The “Rule of Resilience” can only be applied when modifying STR/Toughness within 2 pips of each other. A STR 7 and STR 9 weapon are the same for a MEQ. This means that the Ravenwing Knights are not that scary to guard than normal bikers.

Awesome post, great work.

Brilliant

Bumping this because it might not get the attention it deserves otherwise...

Great effort.

Exalted, well done

As others have said, this is an excellent post. It works with a complex idea, and just as importantly, it organizes and presents the idea very clearly.

Allow me to add another layer:

LIMITS OF RESILIENCE
You present Resilience and "Time to Live" as a single value, representing pure statistical probability to kill the model. When taken in a vacuum, this is entirely accurate, because each weapon's killing power can be reduced to its simple probability of killing a given model. You can even get complicated and represent "Time to Live" as a combination of different attacks, e.g. 10 Tac Marines..........72 MEQ Bolters + 4 MEQ Plasma Shots. In this sense, all weapons are created equal, because they all contribute varying but straightforward amounts to a single metric.

However, 40k games do not take place in a vacuum. At the beginning of your post, you mention that resilience has an absolute zero, while firepower can always be turned up. This is not the case. Your opponent has a hard upper limit on her firepower, due to a limited number of guns and limited turns in which to shoot them. In this environment, a second metric is introduced, which complicates discussions of Resilience. This metric can be called Efficiency, and represents the portion of the opponent's strength that must be dedicated to achieving a given "Time to Live" metric.

For example:
10 Tac Marines............90 MEQ Bolters
10 Tac Marines............18 MEQ Plasma Shots

Let's say we have all these guns in our army. How do we know which to shoot with? Or, conversely, which should be more wary of as the defender? "Time to Live" doesn't give us this information, because it can't. This is where Efficiency comes in.

EFFICIENCY
Let's look at Efficiency for this example of bolters vs. plasma against Tac Marines. For the moment, let's assume that the attacking Marines are bought individually from C:SM, to avoid complicating the example with things like special weapon count and so on. This lets us compare straight point values of attackers. Efficiency can be calculated for any time period (X number of turns), but let's pretend we want to kill these Tac Marines in 2 turns, so we end up with a straightforward number. Let's also hold range constant at 24", so nobody is rapid firing. We start with the "Time to Kill" for each group (90 bolters and 18 plasma shots) and a timeframe (2 turns) and go from there.

90 MEQ Bolters.................................45 Marines over 2 turns.
Then, 45 x (16pts per Marine)...........................................720 points of C:SM bolter-armed marines are tied up for 2 turns to kill 10 Tac Marines.

18 MEQ Plasma Shots.....................9 Marines over 2 turns.
Then, 9 x (31pts per plasma-armed Marine).................279 points of C:SM plasma-armed marines are tied up for 2 turns to kill 10 Tac Marines.

In this hypothetical example, the attacking player needs to commit less than half as many of his (limited) resources to killing the target squad while using plasma guns, leaving proportionately more of his army to shoot at other things. We can say that the Efficiency of the plasma guns is much greater than the bolters in this situation. This gives us a logical, objective reason to shoot 18 plasma shots instead of 90 bolter shots, which "Time to Kill" does not provide. Seeing these numbers, we know that shooting plasma is hands-down better.

PROBLEMS
The problem with Efficiency is it's so dang complicated. First, it's entirely dependent on a large variety of subjective circumstantial variables - are those 10 Tac Marines in 4+ cover? You now need to devote twice as many plasma shots to killing them, bringing the Efficiency of the plasma guns much closer to that of the bolters. As if that wasn't complicated enough, we can't just buy 90 MEQ with bolters and 18 MEQ with plasma guns and divvy them up at the optimum targets - these models come in units, usually with mixed weaponry, and need to be allocated to targets as such, making the calculations much more difficult. Furthermore, what if only some of your weapons are Efficient against the enemy, and you must choose between multiple priority targets? This is why spam works, it overloads a subset of the opponent's weaponry and deprives everything else of an Efficient target. Hell, this metric even brings in army composition! Efficiency can be added at the army building stage by choosing more cost-effective units. This also means an army like IG with cheap, plentiful plasma guns will be objectively more Efficient at killing TDA than an equal-points army filled with, say, autocannons.This is why IG is so commonly regarded as a hard counter to Draigowing and similar armies.

BACK TO RESILIENCE
Sheesh, maybe we should just stick with "Time to Live." It doesn't tell the whole picture, but it does a good job of approximating it. The other variables, those represented by Efficiency, are so complicated and difficult to count on that they're probably better off left out. Also, in this particular situation with the Darkshroud and Knights, the presence of high cover saves inverts the efficiency of otherwise effective weapons, which is why the combo seems so promising. A plasma gun is exactly as useful as an autocannon against the Darkshroud, which makes it less Efficient because it costs more.

However, as Labmouse mentioned, there are certain units like the Heldrake or Colossus that can really throw a wrench in your works - you're expecting the Darkshroud to tie up a substantial portion (1000+ points) of your opponent's shooting for at least a turn, thanks to a 2+ cover save, and a 140-point Colossus nails it in one go. A savvy opponent will have at least one solution for the Darkshroud, and you can expect her to use it.

But I digress.

It's a good start, but you forgot one very important factor: resilience per point.

It's nice to have each model be more durable, but those upgrades aren't free. For example, if an upgrade gives 50% more time-to-live in exchange for 100% more points it's not worth it since spending those points on buying a second unit would give 100% more time-to-live and give you more offensive power at the same time. Even if the point cost is reduce to 50% it's still a bad upgrade choice since buying more units gives you equal durability but greater offense. To make a defensive upgrade viable it has to be significantly cheaper than just buying more units.

So, with that in mind, let's look at your bike example. First of all flat out is removed, since bikes want to be moving and shooting (and eventually assaulting) every turn, not moving flat out and throwing away all of their offensive threat just to stay alive. Second, skilled rider is not an option. It's available on the single HQ unit you can take (if you use dual HQs you're taking a librarian), but not on the troops that make up the majority of your bikes (and, since they're scoring, the majority of your threat). So what we're really looking at is improving a 5+ cover save to a 4+ cover save. So:

Against AP 4 or worse weapons the abomination speeder does nothing, since the bikes' armor save is better than their cover save.

Against AP 3 or better weapons you're getting a 33% increase in time-to-kill for X points. That means that justifying the Uglyshroud requires you to have enough bikers within range that 33% of their point cost is significantly greater than X. Otherwise you're just throwing away points, and you should buy more bikes instead.

 Peregrine wrote:
It's a good start, but you forgot one very important factor: resilience per point.

This is another important factor, and kind of the inverse of the attacker's Efficiency as I mentioned earlier. Peregrine's point about moving flat-out is quite valid - the Darkshroud doesn't increase protection against AP4+ unless the bikers turbo-boost for the 2+ save (otherwise their 3+ cover save is no better than their armor save). This leaves the bikers just as vulnerable to the weapons they were already most vulnerable to (high-Strength, high-RoF weapons like scatter lasers and autocannons). Turbo-boosting could be an important Turn 1 move, but after that it (and the Darkshroud) lose potency. Furthermore, 50% of the time Night Fighting will do the Darkshroud's work for it in that all-important first turn.

Peregrine does, however, seem to forget that Black Knights exist, that they have Skilled Rider, come in squads of up to 10, and that they would likely be the primary recipients of the Darkshroud's aura. Furthermore, given how expensive Black Knights are, and how much they benefit from being able to get in close, 80 points to protect (say) two squads and a Command Squad seems like a bargain.

Still, what if you go second? Skilled Rider means you can afford to place your bikes in cover, but they have a big footprint and Focus Fire works. This type of army (as in, elite enough to justify spending points on a Darkshroud) will end up being very finesse-oriented regardless of the Darkshroud's potential benefits.

My apologies in advance for the wall of text.
Thank you all for the compliments. It was a slow day at work and I had time to think on this topic.

 Roboute wrote:
You can even get complicated and represent "Time to Live" as a combination of different attacks, e.g. 10 Tac Marines..........72 MEQ Bolters + 4 MEQ Plasma Shots.

That is an excellent point. Many units have varied weapons, so the "Time to Live" calculation can become difficult quickly -- as you illustrate with bolters and PGs in a TAC squad.

 Roboute wrote:
However, 40k games do not take place in a vacuum. At the beginning of your post, you mention that resilience has an absolute zero, while firepower can always be turned up. This is not the case. Your opponent has a hard upper limit on her firepower, due to a limited number of guns and limited turns in which to shoot them.

My illustration was a simple point increase in the games in mind. You can add infinite guns by adding infinite points. Unit resilience is capped regardless of point levels.

 Roboute wrote:
We can say that the Efficiency of the plasma guns is much greater than the bolters in this situation. This gives us a logical, objective reason to shoot 18 plasma shots instead of 90 bolter shots, which "Time to Kill" does not provide. Seeing these numbers, we know that shooting plasma is hands-down better.

Correct. Since we play in a game where one squad shoots at another squad, I calculate the "Time to Kill" for each squad to specific targets, including the special/heavy weapons. In your example, if you had a ML and PG in the squad, that would lower the required bolter shots to kill the target squad. The overall Efficiency of the TAC squad would be increased.

 Roboute wrote:
This is why spam works, it overloads a subset of the opponent's weaponry and deprives everything else of an Efficient target.

Absolutely. It is a staple of solid army list building. An example is the army I am playing today -- in this army I bring 40 plague marines and 10 havocs. The resilience of PMs to bolters is so high, that they are nearly ineffective. By fielding PMs, I have removed the most common weapon of my opponents out.

Similarly, one can bring AV13/14 spam. In this fashion, you have removed the effect of any anti-infantry firepower. Given the strong shift in today's meta to anti-infantry firepower, I am suprised more people are not bringing this.

 Roboute wrote:
"Time to Live." It doesn't tell the whole picture, but it does a good job of approximating it.

"Time to Live" and Efficiency are closely matched. You can define the Efficiency of a unit as the "Time to Live" values for common targets (TH/SS termies, MEQ, GEQ, PM). Most army units will fall into one of those categories -- rarely do we see a model with a 4+/5++ save.

 Roboute wrote:
A plasma gun is exactly as useful as an autocannon against the Darkshroud, which makes it less Efficient because it costs more.

Ding! Weapons that are high STR/high AP are also short in number in comparison to the anti-infantry guns. With few exceptions (chosen armies where everyone carries a PG), armies will need a lot of bodies to bring those few high STR/AP weapons. By turning those weapons into autocannon values, you have removed part of your opponents shooting. The bikes derive a greater beinifit from this due to the higher toughness. Bikes are 50% more durable to STR 4 shooting than TAC marines.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:
It's a good start, but you forgot one very important factor: resilience per point.

That's intresting you brought that concept up. I discussed it in this post last month.
http://the11thcompany.freeforums.org/plague-marine-awesomeness-t4616.html

The formula we derived is this...
Base resilience = 1/(((To Hit) * (To Wound) * (Fail Save) * (Fail FNP)) / (Wounds))
Base resilience per point = ((Base resilience)/(Point Cost)) * 100

Using this value, we could determine which units are a better --per point-- buy for purposes of resilience.

 Peregrine wrote:
It's nice to have each model be more durable, but those upgrades aren't free. For example, if an upgrade gives 50% more time-to-live in exchange for 100% more points it's not worth it since spending those points on buying a second unit would give 100% more time-to-live and give you more offensive power at the same time.

That is very true. There are some cases where the increase to resilience out-weighs the cost -- such as with fateweaver. Even though fateweaver costs 333 points, it can increase the resilience of specific units to astronomical values. For example, a bloodthirster with a collar of khorne has a 35/36 chance of making saves near fateweaver from force weapons.

As you mention, often there is an opportunity cost with firepower when your buying more durable units. A great example of this would be Plague Marines. A plague marine has 4/81 chance of dying a bolter shot -- where a normal MEQ has a 1/9 chance of dying from the same shot. Its much more point effective to buy PMs, yet your bringing less bolters/special weapons to the table if you do.

This is also partially countered by effective zones of influence. Sure you can bring 80 MEQ with bolters, but your not going to be able to shoot them all every turn. You will find that the zones of control are limited on bolters, so there are only so many you can bring to bear at any one given time. This is one area where models with higher resilience are better, as they can stay where you need them to be.

 Peregrine wrote:
First of all flat out is removed, since bikes want to be moving and shooting (and eventually assaulting) every turn, not moving flat out and throwing away all of their offensive threat just to stay alive. Second, skilled rider is not an option. It's available on the single HQ unit you can take (if you use dual HQs you're taking a librarian), but not on the troops that make up the majority of your bikes (and, since they're scoring, the majority of your threat). So what we're really looking at is improving a 5+ cover save to a 4+ cover save. So:

You are incorrect here, good sir. You want to use knights, so they come with skilled rider. You want to flat-out them so they are about 15" away from your targets. This is the turn you will be taking a lot of fire. If you can survive this round of fire, then you move up 12" on the following turn, fire your plasma guns, and then assault the survivors. On the following turn, you flat out again to the next target. I played bike armies for years, and that is the most effective way to use them.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Roboute wrote:
the Darkshroud doesn't increase protection against AP4+ unless the bikers turbo-boost for the 2+ save (otherwise their 3+ cover save is no better than their armor save). This leaves the bikers just as vulnerable to the weapons they were already most vulnerable to (high-Strength, high-RoF weapons like scatter lasers and autocannons).

This is why you need to lower the cover save to a 2+. Remember, a 2+ save gives 100% more resiliance than a 3+ save. When your talking about 42 point models, that's an important difference.

 Roboute wrote:
Still, what if you go second? Skilled Rider means you can afford to place your bikes in cover, but they have a big footprint and Focus Fire works. This type of army (as in, elite enough to justify spending points on a Darkshroud) will end up being very finesse-oriented regardless of the Darkshroud's potential benefits.

I was thinking of reserving them and then bringing a comm relay for 20 points. That gives a 8/9 chance of them coming in on turn 2. Of course, the drawback is that you lose another round of effect.

 labmouse42 wrote:
You are incorrect here, good sir. You want to use knights, so they come with skilled rider.

No, you want to use regular Ravenwing squads because they're troops. Over-investing in fancy elites is a great way to lose the game, so the basic Ravenwing squads are going to form the core of your army.

I've been playing with similar analysis myself for my Tau but never quite organized it into such an easily understood manner.

I think I will try my analysis again using your model and see if that changes the way anything looks.

Rather than respond to everything you've said that I agree with (most of it), I'll stick to the points where I disagree.

labmouse42 wrote:This is why you need to lower the cover save to a 2+. Remember, a 2+ save gives 100% more resiliance than a 3+ save. When your talking about 42 point models, that's an important difference.

I agree that the boost in resilience is huge, but this boost is entirely dependent (as Peregrine mentioned) on turbo-boosting, which completely negates your offensive power, making it really only viable for Turn 1. It is easy to imagine a first turn in which your attack force turbo-boosts with the Darkshroud, drawing enemy fire, while your various support units take out key enemy threats, leaving the entire force poised to close the trap. However, it's just as likely that you get second turn, or the Darkshroud gets neutralized early by a lucky hit, or the enemy has brought some unit that circumvents cover saves. It's a strong combo, but I think it will play out as an unreliable one.

labmouse42 wrote:I was thinking of reserving them and then bringing a comm relay for 20 points. That gives a 8/9 chance of them coming in on turn 2. Of course, the drawback is that you lose another round of effect.

I'm even less a fan of this option. Without the option of full reserve, this just gives the enemy more time to take down your support units unmolested. Army lists like this one need to hit fast and hard.

Peregrine wrote:No, you want to use regular Ravenwing squads because they're troops. Over-investing in fancy elites is a great way to lose the game, so the basic Ravenwing squads are going to form the core of your army.

A full Ravenwing army will have plenty of regular bikes too. They will probably want to let the Knights take the lead, but they will still be there. A less tightly themed list will have even better troops, because they can access cheap Scouts with camo cloaks as objective holders. While I don't disagree with your general sentiment (I believe less elite armies are more versatile and stronger), elite armies are cool, and Black Knights have the potential to make a good elite list. They dominate all three phases of the game with their fast movement, ignoring terrain, twin-linked plasma, ranged debuff, and Str 5 rending hammers. Their only weakness is durability (it's a big one), and this can be somewhat redressed by the Darkshroud. It will be a finesse instrument, and susceptible to hard counters, but it will be effective and fun.

Dark Shroud has stealth so it doesn't have to flat out to get 2+ cover for itself. This makes the Assault cannon upgrade on it worth the point cost.

ADL is great for non-moving defense. But why ADL when you can power generator 3x Vindicators + 2x LasPlas BA Razor from an IC in Rhino for 4+ invulnerable on the move?

leohart wrote:
Dark Shroud has stealth so it doesn't have to flat out to get 2+ cover for itself.

Sadly not.
http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m2960142a_Dark_Angels_v1.0A_JANUARY13.pdf

Now combine this with the Banner of Devastation...

Cmd Squad with Banner 215
Darkshroud 80
1 RW Bike squad 161

So for 450 points I can put out

24 TL bolter shots... about 22 hits causing 11 wounds killing 4 marines (@60 pts in damage)
Meanwhile they have to fire almost 14 bolters to kill one bike (@27 pts in damage).
Now using your bubble, add 3 RW squads so that you are putting out 96 bolter shots for 900 points. You have a potential to put down 16 marines every turn. For the same 900 points a SM can put out about 5 Tac squads. Averaging a little over 3 dead bikes each turn. Drop a rad grenade on the target and you are going to average 1 more dead marine per bike squad shooting at them.

Through speed and concentration of fire, RW should be able to dominate any non-pie plate army. of course that is what the MM attack bikes are for.

Great thread guys. Exalted

No, I think people misunderstand. Just drive into cover and let the darkshroud hiding behind do its business. What is this crap about only getting cover on turbo boost? If you have plasma you have 24" range. You're not gonna drive into someone's face every game. Think like fast cav armies back in the day.