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So? You took a statistic that fit a particular case and applied it across the board. Surely you can see this is unsound and counter-productive?

Well, let's take stock of the "regularly encountered" assault units in normal play that can reliably beat Tactical squads (since units that can't reliably beat Tac squads probably aren't assaulting them):

Orks at I2-3
Blob IG at I3
Other MEQ at I4+
MCs at I4+ (Wraith Lords, C'tan, Daemon Princes, Hive Tyrants)
Carnifexes at I1
Eldar at I5+
Little Tyranids at I4-6 (avg is probably 5)

Orks and Carnifexes (and any other I1-2 models that I've neglected) are the only combatants that you can expect to run from. I think you'll agree that this doesn't cover a very wide range.

Blob IG and Plague Marines, as well as some Sisters of Battle I suppose, you'll escape from 50% of the time.

The bulk of models being MEQ or I4, you have less than 50% chance of escaping from...

And against Eldar and most Tyranids reliably escaping is a very dim prospect.

If we were to draw a bell curve, I think the 'reliably escape' category would be a surprisingly low percentage, unless all you fight is Carnifexes and Orks.

It might be something to consider how reliably Tactical Marines would escape from those units if they had to fail a Leadership test, and then compare the two to check for an increase in reliability in escaping the enemy.

Take a Wraithlord, for example. They have what, three attacks on the charge? You'll get one or two dead Marines, and the likelihood is that they'll maybe get a wound on the Wraithlord if lucky, so they'll have to fail a Leadership test on 7 or 8 even before attempting to evade a Sweeping Advance.

Considering that in many cases you want to lock an enemy unit with a fast-moving but otherwise lousy friendly unit so that you can bring in a friendly assault unit to mop up, having that increased reliability to escape such situations is good.

I can't recall a time where this has actually happened to me.

All it takes is 3 models in a 5 man squad getting killed. At that point you're taking, at most, 3 No Retreat wounds, which means you should fail one.

This has NEVER happened to you?

Let's Mathhammer up what happens when you're charged by 10x CSMs with a Fist.

9 Marines: 27A, 13.5 hits, 6.75 wounds, 2.25 dead
AC: 3A, 1.5 hits, 1.25 dead
= 3.5 dead

So, getting 3 killed on a charge from this unit, particularly if it's lost a model or two to shooting beforehand, is actually pretty close to the expectation.

The same numbers hold for 10X Assault Marines with Fist. Etc.

Please do not pull out numbers like this that are inaccurate. You took a value that is true only for I4 versus I4 and made a statement like it was true for all I values.

There's nothing inaccurate about it. He specified I4 vs I4. Even if he hadn't, the vast majority of serious assault units are AT LEAST I4. Need we even mention Genestealers, who you will have very little chance at all of running from?

It might be something to consider how reliably Tactical Marines would escape from those units if they had to fail a Leadership test, and then compare the two to check for an increase in reliability in escaping the enemy.

This is exactly what I was talking about previously, Combat Tactics is only useful to the extent that it's better than just relying on the dice to fall as you hope.

It's not really possible to do a truly "valid" calculation of this, since you'd need to know how many Marines "normally" die, and then how many are "normally" in the unit (for No Retreat wounds), etc. etc.

But you could just calculate the odds of falling back given 10X Marines losing by 1 wound, 2, etc. etc. Then average it all out. Of course that would assume it's just as likely to lose 1 model as 9, which probably isn't accurate at all.

having that increased reliability to escape such situations is good.

Again, there's no question that there are many situations where you'd love to be able to escape combat. There are even many situations where you'd love to just kill your own unit to end the combat. In NO WAY am I contesting that one would want to do this. I see this situation at least once per game.

What I am contesting is:
1) That these situations are so common that they outweigh the merits of having +1A or counter-Attack.
2) The idea that Combat Tactics does reliably end the combat.

IMO it's an ability that's useful only about once a game, and when it is useful it works less than half the time.

why all this "math hammer" stuff, i find it ridiculous to base gaming choices on "math hammer" its taking it abit too far isn't it??? i mean thats all great info and what not, but its like you taking something based entirely on LUCK of a dice roll, applying a formula and making the formula law..... the truth of the matter is ANYTHING can happen when you roll dice, you can roll all 1's on four dice, Its highly unlikely but i've seen it happen THREE times in ONE game, I did it once and my opponent did it TWICE. I think using some general math is fine, but think this "math hammer" thing is a little much.

Math hammer is a valuable tool. It helps us determine the reliability of certain tactics.

It does not necessarily show what WILL happen, but what is likely to happen. I would sooner make decisions based on real numbers of what is likely than on an estimation of "well this might work".

Its like in poker. You want to know what the chances are of winning/losing with any given hand in order to determine if the hand is worth playing. Same thing here, only replace hand by "tactics".

Dracos wrote:Math hammer is a valuable tool. It helps us determine the reliability of certain tactics.

It does not necessarily show what WILL happen, but what is likely to happen. I would sooner make decisions based on real numbers of what is likely than on an estimation of "well this might work".

Its like in poker. You want to know what the chances are of winning/losing with any given hand in order to determine if the hand is worth playing. Same thing here, only replace hand by "tactics".

right but in poker i can bluff you out with a pair of twos if you think i have aces... theres no math hammer formula for bluffing. I'm just saying its alittle much, and is maybe taking a game to a level it shouldn't be taken too.

Phryxis:

Actually, given that there will be, at most, ten Space Marines in any unit, then it should be an easy matter to index the odds of each amount of damage against the likelihood of the Space Marines falling back. By my calculations there would be nine of these situations in a ten-man unit (if 0 wounds, then they don't lose the combat, and if 10 wounds, then they don't fall back!) and four of these situations in a five-man unit.

We can then index this against the likelihood of any particular result (say, four killed per round of combat) against units likely to do so. Because remember, that we are not trying to see whether they would lose combat, but what would happen if they lost it by such-and-such an amount, against a unit with such-and-such an Initiative rating.

In fact, I think you could simply do it by indexing Morale Checks at [8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 2, 2] against the functions of Sweeping Advance where the enemy's Initiative is: [6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1] and comparing the same indexed to a threshold of 1 for all Morale Checks, since 2D6 trying for 1 or less is automatic failure and thus the same as Combat Tactics.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
hcordes:

Actually, there is a mathematical 'formula' for bluffing. You construct a payoff table and find the equilibrium for however many iterations or rounds of the game you're planning on playing...

Nurglitch wrote:Phryxis:

Actually, given that there will be, at most, ten Space Marines in any unit, then it should be an easy matter to index the odds of each amount of damage against the likelihood of the Space Marines falling back. By my calculations there would be nine of these situations in a ten-man unit (if 0 wounds, then they don't lose the combat, and if 10 wounds, then they don't fall back!) and four of these situations in a five-man unit.

We can then index this against the likelihood of any particular result (say, four killed per round of combat) against units likely to do so. Because remember, that we are not trying to see whether they would lose combat, but what would happen if they lost it by such-and-such an amount, against a unit with such-and-such an Initiative rating.

In fact, I think you could simply do it by indexing Morale Checks at [8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 2, 2] against the functions of Sweeping Advance where the enemy's Initiative is: [6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1] and comparing the same indexed to a threshold of 1 for all Morale Checks, since 11 or 12 is automatic failure and thus the same as Combat Tactics.

See this just makes my head hurt...... but please do not mistake this for not understanding the math, i get it.
I guess i am just too casual for this "math hammer" crowd.... i just like to have "fun", when you bring math and solid numbers into it, your brain WILL think things should be going different when its not... thus dissapointment....and then at least for me the game becomes no fun.

On Math Hammer:
There is nothing wrong with it at all. Knowing your odds of success is a powerful tool that can help you make decisions. Is it a hard and fast Law? Not really. But in cases like the above it can sway you to make certain choices. For example knowing how useful combat tactics is might sway you to take Lysander or Vulkan as their benefit might seem more benefitial to you.
Admittedly I'm not very good at math hammer and only utilize it on a basic scale. That said I do use it all the time when I choose the units for my list as I want to know what they are capable of on an average basis.
I'm enjoying the breakdown of these units in reguards to each other. Its been pretty informative and a good read. keep up the good debate folks.
Cheers
~Volkan

hcordes wrote:right but in poker i can bluff you out with a pair of twos if you think i have aces... theres no math hammer formula for bluffing. I'm just saying its alittle much, and is maybe taking a game to a level it shouldn't be taken too.

If you don't like this facet of the game, then don't do it.

I play chess too and that is just a game, but I study positions etc to improve my game.

I hardly see how discussing the game in detail is a bad thing.

Volkan wrote:On Math Hammer:
There is nothing wrong with it at all. Knowing your odds of success is a powerful tool that can help you make decisions. Is it a hard and fast Law? Not really. But in cases like the above it can sway you to make certain choices. For example knowing how useful combat tactics is might sway you to take Lysander or Vulkan as their benefit might seem more benefitial to you.
Admittedly I'm not very good at math hammer and only utilize it on a basic scale. That said I do use it all the time when I choose the units for my list as I want to know what they are capable of on an average basis.
I'm enjoying the breakdown of these units in reguards to each other. Its been pretty informative and a good read. keep up the good debate folks.
Cheers
~Volkan

i am not dissing its usefulness or its quality of work.... rather and sure i may be lazy, it also requires knowing quite a bit about not just the other armies, but their units as well....? am i wrong in this? I just have horrible visions of guys staying awake to 4am poring over codex's and plugging numbers into a spread sheet..... its alot to digest. I like knowing, hey I have a 2/3 chance of hitting, and i have a 2/3 chance of saving, and I have a decent leadership when the average roll on 2d6 is 7 and I start off with an 8. Thats about as tricky with the math I am going to get.

This of course stems from something else.... I got HEAVY HEAVY into M:tG and we built our decks on fractions/math and probibility it got to a point where I wasn't having any more FUN, and it got boring...

hcordes wrote:i am not dissing its usefulness or its quality of work.... rather and sure i may be lazy, it also requires knowing quite a bit about not just the other armies, but their units as well....? am i wrong in this? I just have horrible visions of guys staying awake to 4am poring over codex's and plugging numbers into a spread sheet..... its alot to digest. I like knowing, hey I have a 2/3 chance of hitting, and i have a 2/3 chance of saving, and I have a decent leadership when the average roll on 2d6 is 7 and I start off with an 8. Thats about as tricky with the math I am going to get.

This of course stems from something else.... I got HEAVY HEAVY into M:tG and we built our decks on fractions/math and probibility it got to a point where I wasn't having any more FUN, and it got boring...

Thing is... this is the "40K Tactics" forum. Probability theory and statistical analysis are extremely relevant to any discussion regarding 40K tactics. If you think that math-hammer makes the game "boring", then not to be a dick, but why are you reading / posting in this thread?

I, for one, am enjoying the discussion. Keep it up.

Phryxis wrote:

I can't recall a time where this has actually happened to me.

All it takes is 3 models in a 5 man squad getting killed. At that point you're taking, at most, 3 No Retreat wounds, which means you should fail one.

This has NEVER happened to you?

Not that I can remember, no. Keep in mind that I don't think I'm the maneuver king or anything, I just think that situation happens less often than you'd expect, especially given the high chance that your unit will be whittled down somewhat before it gets assaulted.

Phryxis wrote:9 Marines: 27A, 13.5 hits, 6.75 wounds, 2.25 dead
AC: 3A, 1.5 hits, 1.25 dead
= 3.5 dead

So, getting 3 killed on a charge from this unit, particularly if it's lost a model or two to shooting beforehand, is actually pretty close to the expectation.

3.5 dead, remaining 1.5 models take 3.5 saves, you end up with 0.333 Marines left. Doesn't sound so bad to me.

Phryxis wrote:This is exactly what I was talking about previously, Combat Tactics is only useful to the extent that it's better than just relying on the dice to fall as you hope.

True, but Counterattack is only useful to the extent that regular attacks matter. My army, for example, has no assault units besides Dreadnoughts. My Combat Squads aren't going to assault anytime soon. Thus, Counterattack is useless or close to useless against me on most models.

Phryxis wrote:Again, there's no question that there are many situations where you'd love to be able to escape combat. There are even many situations where you'd love to just kill your own unit to end the combat. In NO WAY am I contesting that one would want to do this. I see this situation at least once per game.

I've heard rumors of people with Vindicare Assassins having them shoot their sole survivors out of combat in these sorts of cases, but that seem crazily low-percentage. I certainly haven't seen any need for stuff beyond basic Combat Squads and Combat Tactics. I guess your mileage may vary, but I stand by my Combat Tactics.

Okay, someone check my work:

The likelihood of Failing a Morale Check at a Particular Loss Threshold (assuming Veteran Sergeant always survives):
8 is 10/36 or 28%
7 is 15/36 or 42%
6 is 21/36 or 58%
5 is 26/36 or 72%
4 is 30/36 or 83%
3 is 33/36 or 92%
2 is 35/36 or 97%
2 is 35/36 or 97%
2 is 35/36 or 97%

Combat Tactics is always 1 is 36/36 or 100% of failing a Morale check.

Assume a 3% margin of error for the actual roles and Combat Tactics will only be insignificant when the Space Marines suffer 6 or more casualties, so it will always reduce the risk of a Combat Squad being trapped in a losing combat, where they survive the initial round of combat (i.e. less than five casualties).

So if they are running away from an I4 unit than they have a 40% chance of evading the Sweeping Advance, right, because they have to roll more than their opponents (assuming their opponents can engage in a Sweeping Advance and haven't been cannily locked in place), so they have the following chances to escape at the following loss rates if they don't have Combat Tactics (figured as chance of failing a Morale check as above multiplied by the likelihood of successfully evading a Sweeping Advance):

1 - 11%
2 - 17%
3 - 23%
4 - 29%
5 - 33%
6 - 37%
7 - 39%
8 - 39%
9 - 39%

With Combat Tactics, they have a straight up 40% chance. The really significant digits seem to be when the Space Marines have suffered 1-5 casualties, which is really in the zone where you don't want them bogged down in a protracted combat and providing cover to an enemy like a Dreadnought, Wraithlord, or similar murder machine.

Something to remember is that the loss rate isn't always the casualty rate: a unit of Tactical Marines may lose four members but only lose the combat by 1 point and thus otherwise only have an 11% of exiting the combat without the aid of Combat Tactics.

PS, Rule-check: do units really get a Furious Charge bonus to their Sweeping Advance?

Phryxis wrote:This is exactly what I was talking about previously, Combat Tactics is only useful to the extent that it's better than just relying on the dice to fall as you hope.

Provided you can reliably make your escape-CC-I-test

It's not really possible to do a truly "valid" calculation of this, since you'd need to know how many Marines "normally" die, and then how many are "normally" in the unit (for No Retreat wounds), etc. etc.

I think it'd actually be pretty easy. Just do the table for comparative I values, another table for failing leadership values, and cross compare as necessary.

For example, Marines escaping Genestealers based on Initiative 4 vs 6 is going to occur on 6/36 combinations of 2d6.

So auto-failing leadership and attempting to run will work 1/6 times. Leadership 9 will turn into Ld 8-5 for a combat squad if the sergeant is alive, or Ld 7-4 if the sergeant is dead depending on whether you lose 1 Marine or 4 Marines.

So at the very best case for a combat squad where 1 Marine dies out of a squad of 5 and the Sergeant is alive to provide Ld 9, Combat Tactic's "value" is the 72% of the time that you would have passed that test using normal d6.

So versus Genestealers, combat tactics is useful 16.7% of the time versus the 4.6% of the time that you could "reliably" have gotten away without it.

In other words, it's a dramatic improvement over the baseline, but versus I values of 4+, your odds are still quite poor of actually getting away.

Cacophonous wrote:
Thing is... this is the "40K Tactics" forum. Probability theory and statistical analysis are extremely relevant to any discussion regarding 40K tactics. If you think that math-hammer makes the game "boring", then not to be a dick, but why are you reading / posting in this thread?

i started reading/posting because i liked the ImpGaurd Special unit vrs. SM tactical squad, but the thread turned into..... well.... a back and forth word problem..... and chimed in with my opinion of the "math" sorry to offend, and i never said it makes the game boring.. just no fun.

Actually, given that there will be, at most, ten Space Marines in any unit, then it should be an easy matter to index the odds of each amount of damage against the likelihood of the Space Marines falling back.

I think you misunderstood my point. Yes, it's easy to do the Mathhammer against each possible number of wounds. But it's of limited value, since we don't really know what the "average" number of wounds would be, and thus we weight the odds of losing 9 models the same as losing 3. But I'm betting 3 is a lot more common in actual play.

So, you could do it for, say, losing by 3 wounds, no problem. The issue is that we don't know how many wounds it "normally" is. What's the "average victory margin for an assault against Space Marine Tacticals?" Nobody knows that.

3.5 dead, remaining 1.5 models take 3.5 saves, you end up with 0.333 Marines left. Doesn't sound so bad to me.

Well, as you know, there are no actual fractions in real life. That 3.5 figure basically tells us that 3 or 4 are the most likely results (knowing this is a bell curve). So, we know that 3 is quite common. Not the plurality, but one of the two most common.

Thus, Counterattack is useless or close to useless against me on most models.

The problem with this argument is that it also works against you. If your army is never going to assault anybody, then nobody will ever use Combat Tactics when they play you either.

The same might be said of playing against Tau, Mech-Vets, or any army that seeks to avoid CC.

I guess your mileage may vary, but I stand by my Combat Tactics.

AGAIN, I'm not saying it's BAD. I'm not saying it doesn't work. I'm just saying it's not surefire at all.

With Combat Tactics, they have a straight up 40% chance.

Thanks for running the numbers.

Now that we have them, I'll make the point more concretely: Take the situation of 3.5 wounds we were talking above. 40% vs ~26% (averaging the result of 3 and 4). Clearly Combat Tactics is more reliable. But how much? In this case, it's only about 50% better than just trusting in the dice.

While that's certainly useful, it's nothing at all to write home about.

Is it better than, say, Acute Senses? Absolutely. But Counter-Attack? Or +1A? No.

PS, Rule-check: do units really get a Furious Charge bonus to their Sweeping Advance?

Don't think so, I think it's their base I.

Phryxis wrote:

Thus, Counterattack is useless or close to useless against me on most models.

The problem with this argument is that it also works against you. If your army is never going to assault anybody, then nobody will ever use Combat Tactics when they play you either.

Not true-- I have 4 Dreadnoughts, and Dreadnoughts are one of the best possible units to use Combat Tactics against.

Phryxis wrote:The same might be said of playing against Tau, Mech-Vets, or any army that seeks to avoid CC.

I find that Combat Squads does well in such cases, and the duck/fallback trick with Combat Tactics can still be useful against these armies, whereas Counterattack and even ubergrit provide no real benefit.

Okay, now that we have an idea of what Combat Tactics can do for a unit of Tactical Marines that has to escape combat on its own, without the assistance of a friendly unit to lock down its antagonist(s) and prevent a Sweeping Advance.

How about we calculate what the addition of a Close Combat Weapon does for both Chaos Space Marines and Grey Hunters?

Given ten in a unit and suppose they likewise attack a unit of Tactical Marines, since we've figured out the likelihood of those Tactical Marines getting away.

Suppose some ideal set-up where all ten get in combat and let's ignore the numbers for both the Powerfist and Power Weapon the Aspiring Champion might have because those don't benefit from having a Close Combat Weapon like the men they're leading do.

So 9 Chaos Space Marines, 27 attacks, ~13 hits, ~6 wounds, ~2 unsaved wounds. That's at the same I4 as the Tactical Marines so 9 attacks, ~4 hits, ~2 wounds, ~0 wounds. Had it been the other way around, with the Tacticals charging, we would have seen 18 attacks, 9 hits, ~4 wounds, 1 unsaved wound for either side.

This seems to give Chaos Space Marines a considerable advantage: why worry about losing when you can win? Well, I'd say it's moreso the combination of And They Shall Know No Fear, Combat Tactics, and Combat Squads that evens out the extra wargear and Leadership available to the Chaos Space Marines.

TBH, I think Combat Squads has a greater impact on games than Combat Tactics. I run Ultras (everyone can /groan now), and while there have been times that Combat Tactics have proven useful, Combat Squads have been key in almost every game. Being able to go MSU with scoring units (including ones packing cheap heavy weapons) or stick together as the scenario needs is not something to be scoffed at.

However, that doesn't mean I wouldn't trade my Tacticals with Combat Tactics/Squads for Grey Hunters in an instant. What Grey Hunters and to a lesser extent CSM have over Tacticals is the ability to perform special weapon drive-bys in Rhinos until they either get bored and decide to charge with 3 attacks each, or hop out and RF, knowing that they can inflict some serious hurt even if they get counter-charged. Veterans do the drive-by part even better, but suffer more when they have to get out of the vehicle.

I find that combi-weapons admirably negate the Tactical Marine special weapon deficiency. Like you said, though, Combat Squads is definitely another underappreciated ability. When the Codex first came out, people seemed to conclude that Combat Squads make your units less resilient and less powerful. I have found that the opposite is true. Combat Squads allow me to use my special and heavy weapons much more efficiently, and killing both Combat Squads is more difficult than killing a single Tactical Squad, especially given the excellent synergy between Combat Tactics and Combat Squads.

So I see all this talk about combat tactics and usefulness, and the mathematical analysis is nice, but what about factoring in the enemy's consolidation as well. For example, if the enemy can consolidate and still be within 6" of your unit, they won't be able to regroup.

Nurglitch wrote:
So if they are running away from an I4 unit than they have a 40% chance of evading the Sweeping Advance, right, because they have to roll more than their opponents (assuming their opponents can engage in a Sweeping Advance and haven't been cannily locked in place), so they have the following chances to escape at the following loss rates if they don't have Combat Tactics (figured as chance of failing a Morale check as above multiplied by the likelihood of successfully evading a Sweeping Advance):

1 - 11%
2 - 17%
3 - 23%
4 - 29%
5 - 33%
6 - 37%
7 - 39%
8 - 39%
9 - 39%

Maybe it's the format I don't understand.

Against an opponent with I6, having lost combat by 1, a squad of Tactical Marines (with Sarge) without Combat Tactics has a 4.6% chance of escaping the combat.

This is 6/36 (dice combinations for beating I6) multiplied by 10/36.

Putting it in table format, losing by 1 with Sergeant alive results in "x" % chance to escape at the following I values:

I6 - 4.6% without CT vs 16.7% with
I5 - 7.7% without CT vs 27.7% with
I4 - 11.6% without CT vs 41.7% with
I3 - 16.2% without CT vs 58.3% with

So combat tactics does dramatically increase your chances of getting away for all initiative values, but when you look at the actual odds versus specific opponents, unless you're running form I3 or lower your odds are certainly better, but still not very good. Your odds of escaping MEQ are about equivalent to rolling 4.5 or better on a d6 (so a little better than 1/3 of the time), from Eldar rolling 5+, and from Genestealers rolling a natural 6.

I wasn't a big fan of CT before, but after running the numbers, I think this is truly a marginal ability.

Edit: And this is the "best case" scenario, or the one putting the most possible weight on having the CT ability. If the Marines are losing by more than 1 or the sergeant is dead, then CT rapidly loses ground in terms of improvement over baseline.

why worry about losing when you can win? Well, I'd say it's moreso the combination of And They Shall Know No Fear, Combat Tactics, and Combat Squads that evens out the extra wargear and Leadership available to the Chaos Space Marines.

No question...

Ultimately what it comes down to is that Tacticals are a survivor unit with a barely moderate amount of anti infantry shooting.

They certainly have a place in the game, but the place they fill is a lot more pessimistic and reactive. Clearly people don't want their Tacticals getting assaulted, but they have abilities to help deal with it. Liking this combination is something of an admission that you're not going to be able to keep from getting assaulted.

Now, that might be a totally realistic assumption. It might be that no matter how good a player you are, your Tacticals WILL get assaulted. But there is a certain "admission of failure" in being a fan of Combat Tactics. It's a power that bails you out of situations you didn't want to be in, but still got stuck in.

In general, it seems to me that in most competitions the guy that's reacting is the guy that's losing. If your army is geared around being reactive, to me it's a strike against it being a top tier list. That's all meta type thinking, but still...

Like you said, though, Combat Squads is definitely another underappreciated ability. When the Codex first came out, people seemed to conclude that Combat Squads make your units less resilient and less powerful.

I dunno, I think people clearly understand how useful it is. Also, the negative reception had more to do with the loss of the 6Man Las/Plas squad than anything else.

Recall that in 4e, there was no such thing as KPs, so the max number of small units was best, and maxed firepower density of 15 point Lascannons.

Realistically, 5 Marines per Heavy/Special weapon is higher than you'd like. In general, people seem to prefer something closer to 2:1. So, I think really what's going on here, is that people have absorbed the nerf into their thinking, they no longer remember the 6Man Las/Plas days, and now they're just dealing with Marine Combat Squads and what they do well (adjust to KP and Objective missions).

For example, if the enemy can consolidate and still be within 6" of your unit, they won't be able to regroup.

I mentioned this earlier. You're falling back 2D6", he's moving 1D6", plus you need to be 6" away. The odds are in his favor, actually, of walking you off the table.

That said, the whole "turn the tables and win" with Combat Tactics isn't really what it's about. It's not going to save the Tactical squad. What it's for, is getting the combat over during the opponent's turn, so you can shoot the assault unit.

The unit using Combat Tactics is basically just giving up, and trying to do it at the best moment. If they happen to live, bonus.

Let's say they added an ability "For The Greater Good" or something, that let a Tau unit kill itself during the assault phase. This would, IMO, actually be BETTER than Combat Tactics. Those already doomed Fire Warriors could just *poof* and let your Fireknifes shred the enemy they're locked with.

Phryxis wrote:
I mentioned this earlier. You're falling back 2D6", he's moving 1D6", plus you need to be 6" away. The odds are in his favor, actually, of walking you off the table.

Even MOAR math!

1d6" + 6 is going to average you 9.5". So on your 2d6 fallback you have to reliably get values of 10 or higher. This is a 16.7% chance, or the same odds as rolling a 6 on 1d6.

And it could actually be even less in your favor if models are interlocked or you're trying to preserve a particular model toward the front of the assault.

Edit: To put it all into context, losing combat against a unit of Chaos Marines and successfully falling back out of rapid fire range with Combat Tactics should reliably succeed about 1 time out of 6.

TBH, I think Combat Tactics (and to a lesser extent Combat Squads) works much better with Biker Armies.

I would agree with you. Higher toughness means fewer wounds and therefore fewer casualties, so more leadership tests taken at a 'high' LD where CT has more impact.

3d6 fallback distance means it's much more likely to outstrip the consolidating enemy, thus you gain more reliably there as well.

However, since bikes are still I4, your odds aren't *that* much improved. It turns the aforementioned 1:6 success ratio for footsloggers into something closer to a 1:3 for Bikers. Still not great.

I wanted to mention something about bikers, but the topic was focusing on Tacticsl vs. Vets......sooooo...

Anyway, even with bikers I would only consistantly use CT in the shooting phase and not really for combat. I actively avoid it and should they get caught up, it really doesn't matter.

And it could actually be even less in your favor if models are interlocked or you're trying to preserve a particular model toward the front of the assault.

Yup. It's actually quite common that the Pile In move takes some of the defender's models and moves them around the side/back of the blob of CC. These models might be pulled as casualties, but no question, there will be models closer together than the distance of the Fall Back.

Combat Tactics is not a good way to live through a combat. It's a good way to get it ended faster.

To put it all into context, losing combat against a unit of Chaos Marines and successfully falling back out of rapid fire range with Combat Tactics should reliably succeed about 1 time out of 6.

Well, it'll happen 0 times out of 6 if the winning unit elects to move their D6" directly after the fleeing Marines.

Also, as I mentioned before, the D6" move happens after the Fall Back, so they know how far you went, and what they roll for their consolidation, before they move.

So, not only can they run you off the table, but if you roll really well, they can then elect to step back and put you out of Rapid-Fire range as well.

It's all bad for the unit using Combat Tactics, really, their day was over when they got assaulted.