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What do you guys think of Scourges with 4 splinter cannons for some anti-horde defence? 8 Scourges with 4 splinter cannons are 208 points. 2 x 10 Dark Eldar Warriors with 2 splinter cannons each are 200 points. The scourges give me more mobility so I can put the fire where I want it, but the 20 guys are 20 extra guys (and they do have splinter rifles as well). Are Scourges even worth trying out or are they destined to be the suck until DE get a new codex?

Thanks!

Ozymandias, King of Kings

You could try it, but 8 T3 5+ guys are just too easy to kill. At least 20 (or 21 to be completely even on pts.) models takes a bit longer to go through, and 10 man squads requires slightly more models to be killed that first time around before they might run (3 vs. 2).

Sure, they're easy to kill unless they've killed or neutralized whatever can attack them. I usually have two such squads in my Dark Eldar army and they eat Orks alive. It helps to give the Sybarite a Terrorfex (the model comes with one) just in case you don't wipe them out, and you need to land them well behind the particular unit you're scheduling for extermination - in front should be a Warrior Squad or a Raider Squad. Basic hammer and anvil stuff.

Let's see, 16 shots, 12 hits, 6 dead orks. If its a 30 strong Shoota mob, thats 24 shots coming back! If its a 12 man Trukk boyz mob, then that squad is effectively neutralized.

Hmm... I may have to try them out in a few games.

Ozymandias, King of Kings

Yeah, 24 shots coming back, 8 of which hit, 6 of which wound, and 4 which don't save, if you're applying the same standard to the Shoota Boyz.

Of course, if you engage that Shoota Boyz mob from between 24" and 19" away then you get 0 Shoota shots coming back, which is a step up from how it was in the 3rd edition...

Ozymandias wrote:Let's see, 16 shots, 12 hits, 6 dead orks. If its a 30 strong Shoota mob, thats 24 shots coming back!

Isn't it 48 shots? I thought the new shootas were assault 2. If you're within 18" then I think it's 16 hits, 10.66 wounds, 6.3 dead scourges.

Nurglitch:

Of course, if you engage that Shoota Boyz mob from between 24" and 19" away then you get 0 Shoota shots coming back, which is a step up from how it was in the 3rd edition...

How so? A survivor would need to be just 24" away from you to return fire the next turn.

And as Dead Horse points out, 48 shots come back at you, not 24.

Lets look at it this way. Ork hordes are a poor matchup. However you could get very good mileage against stealershock.

Basically the maths suggests that Scourges will perform very poorly against Shootas. Take a unit that is very overpriced and pit it against a rather underpriced unit and that's what you get i suppose. If they have a KFF Mek then you will kill 4 a turn on average which is 24 pts i.e. You could shoot all game and not make your pts back even if you were ignored.

Scourges are still overpriced. Always have been.

A Ravager is a better buy, especially against Orks.

Love the scourge models though.

tegeus-Cromis: Orks aren't always moving towards you, and remember that Orks take up space, so if the Scourges are at most 24" away then only a few Orks will get in range even if they move towards you. You won't be getting the full 48. Indeed, if you get 24 shots incoming from Shootas, then you need to stop dropping your Scourges in range of an enemy they outrange (unless, of course, there's a good chance of pinning them). That's why I Deep Strike my Scourges behind advancing Orks - they can either reverse and attack the Scourges with a couple of Orks, in which case they're sitting ducks for my Raider and Warrior Squads, or they can keep moving forward and suffer further casualties from my Scourges.

On thing I'm pretty excited about in the 5th edition rumours is the ability to cause casualties anywhere in the unit. One would, initially, be annoyed that it won't be the closest Orks that get killed, but having four Orks in range of 16 Splinter Cannon attacks that can cause 16 casualties can be absolutely Golden. Four casualties on average with a possibility of sixteen, with less than 100 dice being rolled? My experience is that between 9 and 12 Orks die when there's a Kustom Force Field around, but I guess I'm just lucky.

Incidentally, you're better off using your Scourges to hunt expensive stuff like Lootas. They die as easily as Boyz, they're easily pinned, and they tend to lurk in the Ork backfield. But I've found shooting Boyz can be pretty useful. Sod "getting your points back", I'm talking about preventing them from killing any more Dark Eldar and capturing objectives. You know, strategically relevant stuff.

Scourges are way over priced. I'd rather have jetbikes if I am paying those kind of points.

Capt K

I was thinking of DS'ing them behind lootas and stuff, then I have a good chance of forcing the break test and having them run.

But then part of my goes, 208 points for a suicide squad?! I'll try some games both ways (I have a lot of warriors...). I'll post an army in the Army List forum.

Ozymandias, King of Kings

Sweet.

The truest test is always to play the game.

Capt K

Ozymandias wrote:I was thinking of DS'ing them behind lootas and stuff, then I have a good chance of forcing the break test and having them run.

But then part of my goes, 208 points for a suicide squad?! I'll try some games both ways (I have a lot of warriors...). I'll post an army in the Army List forum.

Ozymandias, King of Kings

Capt. K: Jetbikes is what I usually field. The problem is they're just not that good against Hordes IMO. Otherwise, they rock as tank hunters and against MEQ.

Ozymandias, King of Kings

Nurglitch:

Orks aren't always moving towards you, and remember that Orks take up space, so if the Scourges are at most 24" away then only a few Orks will get in range even if they move towards you.

Which doesn't contradict my claim that "A survivor would need to be just 24" away from you to return fire the next turn" (the fact that he could choose not to do so any move in another direction does not alter this), nor does it prove your claim that "if you engage that Shoota Boyz mob from between 24" and 19" away then you get 0 Shoota shots coming back" (simply a false claim, strictly speaking).

You won't be getting the full 48. Indeed, if you get 24 shots incoming from Shootas, then you need to stop dropping your Scourges in range of an enemy they outrange (unless, of course, there's a good chance of pinning them).

Since Ozy talked about 24 shots coming from a mob of 30 after 6 were killed, I think it is safe to say that his working assumption is that all the survivors will be able to get in range. In correcting him, Dead Horse and I simply followed the same assumption. I'm sure everyone is aware that this will not always or even often be the case on the tabletop.

Here's a likely scenario. 8 Scourges DS'ing near 15 Lootaz in 4+ cover. I will assume that I land within 12".

16 Splinter Cannon shots, 12 hits, 6 wounds, 3 saves, 3 dead Orks.
8 Splinter rifle shots, 6 hits, 2 wounds, 1 dead Ork.

That still leaves 11 Orks so they are still Fearless and I failed. If there were only 12 lootas, then 8 are left and have a decent chance at breaking.

If the lootas choose to shoot at me, I'm pretty much dead but prevented them from firing at my vehicles for a turn. The problem is, that the lootas will still get 2-3 turns of firing at my Raiders/Ravagers until the Scourges even arrive.

Maybe if Splinter cannons on Scourges weren't 20 (!) points a piece they might be better.

Ozymandias, King of Kings

tegeus-Cromis: Yes, yes it does. If a Shoota has 18" range and a survivor from the Ork unit would need to be in range to attack the Scourges, then being 24" away puts them out of range and thus makes it true that their retaliation would be 0.

The fact that the Ork would need to move 6" toward the Scourges alters the situation quite significantly. What it means is that the survivors of an Ork unit need to be within 24" to have any chance of retaliation on the condition that they move towards the Scourges, that they need to be within 18" to have any chance of retaliation on the condition that they do not move, and within 12-18" away to have any chance of retaliation if they move directly away.

If, in moving towards the Scourges, the Orks do something against the player's interests such as move into charge range of Dark Eldar Wyches, for example, or away from an important objective they won't be able to reach in time otherwise, for another example, then landing one's Scourges between 24" and 19" away from a unit of Orks will allow them to shoot that unit with impunity because dealing with the Scourges will be less important than not dealing with the Scourges.

Likewise shooting the Orks with your Scourges to thin them out for the Wyches when the latter assault that unit of Orks may also prevent the Orks from returning fire.

Causing these situations to come about is called "using tactics".

Ozymandias: So what do you do when the dice don't real their mean average? Three dead Orks from a round of shooting by Scourges is, at least in my experience, an extremely poor showing. Perhaps it would be better to take the number of casualties that you could cause and multiply that number by the probability of causing them. That will yield an expected value curve that will be more useful in appraising the actual battlefield performance of units in Warhammer 40k.

That requires math I can't do in my head. If I can't do it in my head then I won't do it in a game.

Ozymandias, King of Kings

Calculating an expected value curve for a unit's shooting is going to be mathemathically 'fun'. It's late at night, but if the odds of killing a target for any given shot is p, the odds of killing R targets in n shots is nCr.(p)^R.(q)^(n-R).
So to figure out the odds of killing R or more targets, you would have to figure out the odds of killing 0,1,2,..., R-1, and R targets, then subtract all of those from 1.

Considering that the values p,n and R are going to vary in a game depending on what you are shooting at with what, I'd love to see the person who figures that out in a game!


The better method would be using the normal distribition function and college-level statistics theory to get an approximation. The approximation will only be accurate for values of np and n(1-p) greater than 10 though!
The expected distance from the mean (standard deviation) would be (np(1-p))^(0.5).
82% of results would be greater than (mean - standard deviation). 97% of results would be greater than (mean - 2.standard deviation).
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/68-95-99.7_rule for where that came from.

You could *just about* do that at the table, though your time may be better spent on other things ^^
My apologies for maths-geeking.

Wow....

Did I mention my only "C" in college was in Stats?

Ozymandias, King of Kings

So, did you notice that DE jetbikes get JSJ now according to GW? i.e. they are treated exactly like Eldar Jetbikes for assault moves?

So move to 12", open fire, back up 6". You'll undoubtedly get shot eventually, but at least you should be able to 'skip' over terrain in between you and a horde unit and chip away at it.

Still not great, but it is something.

Nurglitch:

If a Shoota has 18" range and a survivor from the Ork unit would need to be in range to attack the Scourges, then being 24" away puts them out of range and thus makes it true that their retaliation would be 0.

I said: "A survivor would need to be just 24" away from you to return fire the next turn"

Obvious implication: 24" away this turn, before he moves and shoots next turn. [Edit: Okay, I realise this is not actually obvious. Though I did intend this meaning, the actual meaning of my statement is ambiguous. My bad.]

You said: "if you engage that Shoota Boyz mob from between 24" and 19" away then you get 0 Shoota shots coming back".

Which is clearly false: there are situations when you will engage a mob from 19"-24" away and still have a non-zero number of shots returning.

Yes, and there are situations where you will engage a mob from 19"-24" away and have zero shots returning.

If you were to say: 'There are situations where you will engage a mob from 19"-24" away and it moves towards you in the next turn, you will get 0 Shoota shots back' then that would be false.

But without stating that the Ork Boyz will move towards you in the following turn it is true that they will be out of range, and thus true that they will be able to return 0 Shoota shots, because the direction in which those Boyz move is not assumed and has been ignored. That is because assuming that the Boyz will always be moving towards you is, much like assuming that the dice will follow the mean average, a false assumption when considering a universe in which the Boyz can move in any direction, and the dice are random.

The moral of the story? Explicitly state your premises, because the trouble with the obvious is that it can make you overlook the evidence.

My point was that assuming that the Orks are always moving towards the Scourges is a bad assumption. It is a bad assumption because it does not cover all the situations where the Orks do not move sufficiently directly towards the Scourges. If the Orks do not move sufficiently directly towards the Scourges, then the situation where the mob guns down the Scourges does not happen - this situation is not representative of the situations in which Scourges are effective and shows a situation wherein they are ineffective. The proper conclusion then would be that landing Scourges where-ever an Ork mob might survive to return fire is a bad use of Scourges, not that Scourges themselves are ineffective as that would require them to be ineffective in all the situations in which they could be used.

Nurglitch:

Yes, and there are situations where you will engage a mob from 19"-24" away and have zero shots returning.

That does not make an "If X then Y" statement true. A situation "where you will engage a mob from 19"-24" away and it moves towards you in the next turn" is surely a subset of all situations where you engage a mob from 19"-24" away. In order for your original statement ("if you engage that Shoota Boyz mob from between 24" and 19" away then you get 0 Shoota shots coming back") to be true, there would need to be no case in which you engage a Shoota Boyz mob from that distance and get shot at in return. You as a logician should know this very well.

Yes, it does make a conditional statement ("an 'If X then Y' statement") true. A conditional statement is only false when the antecedent is true and the consequent is false. If the antecedent is false and the consequent is false, the statement itself is true, classically speaking of course (not intuitively speaking).

The situation "where you will engage a mob from 19"-24" away and it moves towards you in the next turn" is not a subset of all situations where you engage a mob from 19"-24". If it is a subset of all situations where you engage a mob from 19"-24" and of all situations where the mob moves towards the unit in the next turn.

In the terms of a Venn diagram my sentence takes two circles defined by the range of the weapons involved and notes that while the centre of circle O intersects with the circumference of circle S, the centre of circle S does not intersect with the circumference of circle 0. It's a simple statement about range. Now, you've added movement and direction to this statement about range, noting that when extended along that axis the statement about range becomes false.

In order for my original statement to be true, there would need to be 0 situations in which the Scourges shoot at the Ork Boyz armed with Shootas from a position between 19"-24" and in which the Ork Boyz could shoot back with their Shootas. Since Shootas have a range of 18" they could never shoot back at an enemy 19"-24" away (ye olde empty set) and thus taken as a set of situations this would mean there are 0 situations in which the Scourges shoot at the Ork Boyz armed with Shootas from a position between 19"-24" and which the Ork Boyz could shoot back with their Shootas.

Now, suppose I had said that: "If you engage that Shoota Boyz mob from between 24" and 19" away, and in the following turn that mob moves 6" towards you having had a survivor begin its move 19" away from the closest Scourge, then you get 0 Shoota shots coming back." then in that possible world I would have said something false. But I did not.

Incidentally I'm not a logician, but if I'm saying:

1. If A then B proves true

And you're saying:

2. If A and C then B proves false, then 1 false by 2.

Then pointing out that 1 lacks a conjunction of A and C such that 2 does not prove 1 false is accurate. There is no hidden C (where C = "the mob moves 6" directly towards the Scourges") in statement A (where A = "You engage that Shoota Boyz mob from between 24" and 19" away"). C is not a subset of A either, because A is not affected by C; however far an Ork moves his Shoota always has a range of 18" (had Shootas still been rapid fire weapons, with their range dependent upon their movement the semantic model would have rendered my statement false because for rapid fire weapons range is a function of movement).

But, of course, that was my point: That assuming there is an implicit statement C substitutes "using Scourges" for "using Scourges badly" and casts Scourges in an artificially bad light.

So I'm holding up a model strictly concerned with range and make a statement about it, which is true because all my statement mentions is range. Then you, tegeus-Cromis, say that this is false because you seem to think that models strictly concerned with range are concerned with range and movement, which would make my statement false (concerned, as it is, with a subset of the model of range and movement: namely range). But it is not false where range is the sole variable at issue, and it is not universally false where range and movement are the variables at issue. Indeed it is true where the direction of movement is not directly towards the Scourges, and thus it is true where the Dark Eldar player plays well and convinces the Ork player that moving the Ork unit towards the Scourges and returning fire is worse than doing something else.

But let's take the bull by the horns for a second and suppose that the worst-case scenario, wherein the statement that I made is actually false, and the entire Ork mob (24) can return fire. If you model this in a drawing program (MSPaint, for the win) you will notice something bizarre: the Ork Mob will form a crescent around the Scourges. I'm not sure about you, but I find it downright difficult to Deep Strike anything that accurately and into carefully formed crescents of Shoota Boyz. Certainly one could also Deep Strike within a few inches of an Ork Mob so that all of them had range and line of sight to the unit, but I think tactically speaking we can suppose said action is stupid because reducing the Ork unit to a pinnable mass is highly unlikely without the co-ordination of several units.

Remember that in order to shoot at an enemy unit in the presumed 5th edition pdf a model needs to be in range and line of sight, while to be a casualty a model needs to merely be in the unit being attacked. That means that if all four Scourges are in range and line of sight of a single Ork then they can cause up to 16 casualties on a single unit. That means all but one Ork will be over 24" away from the Scourges and only one Ork will attack back is the mob moves towards the Scourges with murderous intent. Truly 1 ≠ 0 so this best case scenario runs the risk of a Scourge being killed.

More relevantly in the 4th edition models must be within range and line of sight of the attackers to be a casualty, and since this is the case a couple of Scourges armed with Splinter Rifles usually goes in front of the Scourges with Splinter Cannons to act as a meat-shield. In this case being within range to cause maximum casualties requires that the Scourges run the risk of having 16 Boyz marching forward and shooting for 32 shots. That would be 11 hits, 8 wounds, and 5 kills approximately. But, supposing the averages worked for the Scourges as well, rather than assuming complete failure we'd have 10 hits, 5 wounds, and 5 kills approximately (3 for cover or Kustom Force Field), which would mean 13 Boyz marching forward and shooting for 26 shots - 9 hits, 6 wounds, and 4 kills. Of course if we're going to show that complete failure by the Scourges might result in 5 casualties in return from the Shoota Boyz we should show that complete success by the Scourges would result in 16 casualties for none in return.

Knowing that the worst case scenario where the Orks advance directly towards the Scourges (kills/casualties) is 0/5, the best case scenario where they advance on the Scourges is 5/0, and the mean average is 3/4, then we should check the likelihoods of these exchanges coming about. Then given the expected value of them coming about we need to what tactics would help avoid the worst case scenario and promote the best case scenario.

Yes, it does make a conditional statement ("an 'If X then Y' statement") true. A conditional statement is only false when the antecedent is true and the consequent is false. If the antecedent is false and the consequent is false, the statement itself is true, classically speaking of course (not intuitively speaking).

I am quite aware of how this works, and that the mundane and formal usage is not always the same. Tell me, then, how you would like to formalise your earlier claim:

X Y

or

Y X?

(Where X is "you engage that Shoota Boyz mob from between 24" and 19"" and Y is "you get 0 Shoota shots coming back".)

If there is a case in which you can engage a shoota mob from 19"-24" away and still get shot, then the first statement is false.

If there is a case in which you do not get shot, yet did not engage a shotoa mob from 19"-24" away, then the second statement is false.

Your statement is false however you slice it.

The situation "where you will engage a mob from 19"-24" away and it moves towards you in the next turn" is not a subset of all situations where you engage a mob from 19"-24". If it is a subset of all situations where you engage a mob from 19"-24" and of all situations where the mob moves towards the unit in the next turn.

Your objection makes no sense. The set of red apples is a subset of the set of things that are red and the set of things that are fruits (and the set of things that are apples, and other sets besides. . .), but that does not make it incorrect to say that the set of red apples is a subset of things that are red. In order for a set to be "a subset of all situations where you engage a mob from 19"-24" and of all situations where the mob moves towards the unit in the next turn", it must necessarily be a subset of each of the two sets individually as well.

It should be obvious that the antecedent is X and the consequent is Y if we take X to be the statement that "the Scourges engage the Ork Boyz mob from between 24" and 19"" and we take Y to be "The Ork mob returns fire with 0 Shoota shots". Taking Y to be the condition for X does not sense make. Besides, since both atomic statements are true, the conditional statement is therefore true as well. The only problem is when you start adding information.

Hence why my objection makes sense. All situations where you engage a mob from 19"-24" is a subset of the set of both all situations where you engage a mob from between 19"-24" and all situations where the mob moves towards you in the next turn, rather than the other way around.

What you're confused about, it seems, is that taken together the set [all situations where Scourges engage a mob from between 19"-24", all situations where the mob moves towards the Scourges in the next turn] seems to be like the sets of red and apples. But the subsets mentioned above are exclusive of each other. Adding the second subset does not make for a narrower product of both subsets, but a broader set, the union of two rather than the product.

All I'm saying is that landing Dark Eldar Scourges 19"-24" away from a unit of Orks lands them out of range of the Ork Shootas. I'm not saying it lands them outside of movement and shooting ranges combined. That's why I didn't mention the Ork movement range of 6" - it's not assumed, implied, whatever.

It quite misses the point: "No, you're wrong because of this counter-example: Suppose the Scourges land 19"-24" away from the unit of Orks and then the Orks move towards them in the next turn. Then they would be in range!" The situation of moving to get the Orks in range is not a subset of a statement solely restricted to range.

It's as if I said: "Well, if you land the Scourges 19"-24" away from the Orks they'll be outside Shoota range" and got the response: "You're wrong, they'll be inside Big Shoota and Rokkit range!" It's a good point, but it's not about Shootas and does not show my statement about Shootas to be false. It does show my statement to be badly expressed however.

So let me restate my point more exactly and introduce a term (one that I don't like, incidentally, because it assumes that one is always moving towards what one is shooting at....): 'Effective range'. A unit is in effective range if and only if it is within the movement range plus the shooting range of the attacker.

So, if the Scourges land 19"-24" away from a unit of Orks, then those Orks will be out of range of their Shootas and their return fire will be 0. They will, however, still be within effective range of the Ork Shootas, in which case the Ork return fire will be > 0. Furthermore the Scourges may still be within range of the Ork Big Shootas and Rokkits. The Big Shootas, at least, will make a mess out of the Scourges. So landing your Scourges 19"-24" away from a large Ork mob will not ensure their protection from retaliation, but it will minimize it. What will ensure their protection from retaliation will be (1) giving the Orks a reason to move away from the Scourges, or (2) to shoot at something else, or (3) assaulting that unit with something tenacious to deny the Orks a shooting phase, or (4) concentrating fire on the Ork unit so that it is either broken or destroyed.

Out of these four options obvious the 4th is the ideal, particularly for Dark Eldar who should be concentrating their units on those of their opponents and wiping them out to save wear and tear on their own troops, who can't take a shooting phase. Then there is the 3rd option, which I don't personally use because I don't use Wyches, but I've seen it used quite successfully. The Scourges land and cut lose on the Orks, and depending on how their shooting goes the Wyches either shoot and then pile in, or they use their Fleet of Foot to find another target. The second option only really tends to work if you're pulling Grotesques, Talos, or something similarly threatening to Orks that mitigate the effect of all those Shootas. The first option, the billy-goat-gruff option, only really works in objective-oriented games where you can use the Ork unit size against them - they've taken a few big units to protect them against Dark Eldar shooting but in taking so few units you know where they're going if they want to win the game (it's the objectives, which you can reach easily because you're Eldar so you can spend time exterminating Orks).

And they say 40k is too simple!

...

So it boils down to Scourges have their uses for hunting small units of Orks (Lootas, Truk Boyz, etc) and can also be used to distract Large Mobs away from my mail line (in a WHFB style tactic, one that I am really used to with my Wood Elves). I'll give them a shot and see if I can get the hang of them.

Thanks.

Ozymandias, King of Kings

It should be obvious that the antecedent is X and the consequent is Y if we take X to be the statement that "the Scourges engage the Ork Boyz mob from between 24" and 19"" and we take Y to be "The Ork mob returns fire with 0 Shoota shots". Taking Y to be the condition for X does not sense make.

I wonder why you bothered "correcting" me then, since I was clearly not misconstruing your original constuction in any way.

Besides, since both atomic statements are true, the conditional statement is therefore true as well.

When you have an "If X then Y" statement, X being true and Y being true does not make the sentence true ("If a person is hungry, then that person is a Space Marine"--perhaps John is both hungry and a Space Marine, but the sentence remains false). Rather, Y needs to be true every time X is true. "Since both atomic statements are true, the conditional statement is therefore true as well" is a false assertion.

What you're confused about, it seems, is that taken together the set [all situations where Scourges engage a mob from between 19"-24", all situations where the mob moves towards the Scourges in the next turn] seems to be like the sets of red and apples. But the subsets mentioned above are exclusive of each other. Adding the second subset does not make for a narrower product of both subsets, but a broader set, the union of two rather than the product.

They're exclusive of each other? Prove it.

All I'm saying is that landing Dark Eldar Scourges 19"-24" away from a unit of Orks lands them out of range of the Ork Shootas. I'm not saying it lands them outside of movement and shooting ranges combined.

You seem to be conflating "what you said" with "what you meant to say". If you had actually said this, I would never have replied, because you'd have been perfectly correct. What you said is that they would not take return fire ("you get 0 Shoota shots coming back"), not simply that they would be outside of weapon range.

It's as if I said: "Well, if you land the Scourges 19"-24" away from the Orks they'll be outside Shoota range" and got the response: "You're wrong, they'll be inside Big Shoota and Rokkit range!" It's a good point, but it's not about Shootas and does not show my statement about Shootas to be false. It does show my statement to be badly expressed however.

The person giving you that response would be guilty of an irrelevancy. The fact that you'll be inside special weapon range does not contradict the fact that you'll be out of shoota range. In the actual situation that arose here, however, said only that the Scourges would not get shot at in return. "They'll get shot at if the Orks move towards you next turn and shoot" is a fine counter-example in this case.