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NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:


Why can't it work on Earthshakers? They're "vehicles", and can be Catachan.
Edit: Sorry, Earthshaker CARRIAGES are vehicles, whereas the regular ones aren't. Hmmm... would an extra 9pts per Earthshaker be worthwhile in exchange for gaining the Catachan shooting buff?

Which is probably an error. Manticore Batteries (the ones without crew) are also vehicles.

RogueApiary wrote:

Razerous wrote:

 ross-128 wrote:
What would a Hellhound use re-rolls to hit on though, its storm bolter? All its weapons auto-hit. I guess it'd be useful on the devil dog at least.

It would be nice to have more than three tank orders though, and the ability to issue them to any tank.

Catachan regiment bonus;

Brutal Strength
When rolling die for weapons which have a random number of *attacks*, you can re-roll one dice.

Works great on double-tapping LRBT BC and auto-hitting Hellhounds. Also good on Manticores and Wyverns. Less good with Basilisks.

I'd argue it's still good on Basilisks. 2D6 pick the highest rerolling the lowest will make them a super consistent weapon. Though the fact this doesn't work on Earthshaker platforms is kind of a bummer.

Earthshakers benefit less than almost anything else from the Catachan doctrine.

If you only use your re-roll if there's a die with a 1, 2, or 3 on it (or a 1 for d3s, or just always re-roll the lowest for 2d6-drop-lowest) then:
d6 guns do 21% better
2d6 guns do 18% better
d3 guns do 17% better
4d6 guns do 13% better
2d6-drop-lowest guns do 11% better

Dionysodorus wrote:

RogueApiary wrote:

Razerous wrote:

 ross-128 wrote:
What would a Hellhound use re-rolls to hit on though, its storm bolter? All its weapons auto-hit. I guess it'd be useful on the devil dog at least.

It would be nice to have more than three tank orders though, and the ability to issue them to any tank.

Catachan regiment bonus;

Brutal Strength
When rolling die for weapons which have a random number of *attacks*, you can re-roll one dice.

Works great on double-tapping LRBT BC and auto-hitting Hellhounds. Also good on Manticores and Wyverns. Less good with Basilisks.

I'd argue it's still good on Basilisks. 2D6 pick the highest rerolling the lowest will make them a super consistent weapon. Though the fact this doesn't work on Earthshaker platforms is kind of a bummer.

Earthshakers benefit less than almost anything else from the Catachan doctrine.

If you only use your re-roll if there's a die with a 1, 2, or 3 on it (or a 1 for d3s, or just always re-roll the lowest for 2d6-drop-lowest) then:
d6 guns do 21% better
2d6 guns do 18% better
d3 guns do 17% better
4d6 guns do 13% better
2d6-drop-lowest guns do 11% better

So here's a question: For Baneblade chassis vehicles, do you think the Catachan or Valhallan doctrines are the best?

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

So here's a question: For Baneblade chassis vehicles, do you think the Catachan or Valhallan doctrines are the best?

I don't actually have a great feel for the Valhallan one. People seem to be impressed, but my impression has always been that you don't get very many opportunities to shoot with damaged vehicles. Granted, I haven't run into many super-heavy tank companies. But, like, obviously this does nothing for you on turn 1 if you go first. It does nothing for you if your tank has taken up to 12 wounds. It's a +1 to hit if your tank has taken 13 to 22 wounds. And then it's not helping you again if you've taken 23 to 25 wounds. It's pretty much only ever going to benefit a single tank per turn, at most -- nobody is bringing multiple Baneblades down to 10 wounds instead of focus firing. So I feel like the benefit here is pretty limited. Apparently the Vostroyan stratagem (ref: reddit summary of warhammer tv stream) gives any unit +1 to hit for a turn, so if you have a little extra CP you should just be using this instead, and the extra range on demolisher cannons is a nice bonus.

On the other hand, I also don't think the Catachan doctrine is a huge deal for most of the Baneblade variants. It's basically meaningless for Shadowswords -- as-is if you roll a 1 or a 2 on your volcano cannon you're just going to spend a CP to re-roll it. If you have 3 Shadowswords you expect to do this once per turn. A doctrine needs to be worth a lot more than 1 CP per turn. It's about twice as good on Baneblades and Hellhammers which are rolling 2d6+d3. Catachans may still be the way to go just because you can bring Harker, though.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

So here's a question: For Baneblade chassis vehicles, do you think the Catachan or Valhallan doctrines are the best?

this is a really important question, since they're almost always in their own detachment.

All else being equal, i think Harker's existence tips the balance.

Razerous wrote:

 ross-128 wrote:
What would a Hellhound use re-rolls to hit on though, its storm bolter? All its weapons auto-hit. I guess it'd be useful on the devil dog at least.

It would be nice to have more than three tank orders though, and the ability to issue them to any tank.

Catachan regiment bonus;

Brutal Strength
When rolling die for weapons which have a random number of *attacks*, you can re-roll one dice.

Works great on double-tapping LRBT BC and auto-hitting Hellhounds. Also good on Manticores and Wyverns. Less good with Basilisks.

I was referring to using a Trojan on the hellhound, not the catachan doctrine. What would a Hellhound need with a Trojan? Or a Salamander's +1 to hit, for that matter. :p

 axisofentropy wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

So here's a question: For Baneblade chassis vehicles, do you think the Catachan or Valhallan doctrines are the best?

this is a really important question, since they're almost always in their own detachment.

All else being equal, i think Harker's existence tips the balance.

See the issue is I always bring Trojans - which are re-roll all failed to hit rolls for one <REGIMENT> Vehicle within 6", so Harker's not that helpful.

I like the analysis of the Valhallan doctrine only helping 1 tank though - people do tend to focus fire.

Vostroyan is alright but not all of my tanks have short-ranged guns... and I don't have nearly as much CP as most IG armies.

Well Conscripts are changing, which I do not mind as they still will be in my order of battle, but receive less comments/complaints from my opponents. My Conscript squad was 30 models already.

"Conscripts have seen some changes in the new Astra Militarum codex, designed to make them fit their background more appropriately. If you’ve got loads of these guys on hand, don’t worry! They’re still a very handy unit (particularly in the Valhallan army). Firstly, Conscripts can only be taken in units of 20-30, reducing the effectiveness of stacking orders on a block of 50. Secondly, orders only work on Conscripts on a 4+, and, should they fail, no more orders will work on the unit for the rest of the turn."

GW Regiment Focus Page

Cheers,

CB

If I'm reading correctly, Valhallans can fire into combat and cause enough casualties so that no enemy model is within one inch. Thereby allowing the engaged unit to shoot and declare a charge that turn.

Dionysodorus wrote:

RogueApiary wrote:

Razerous wrote:

 ross-128 wrote:
What would a Hellhound use re-rolls to hit on though, its storm bolter? All its weapons auto-hit. I guess it'd be useful on the devil dog at least.

It would be nice to have more than three tank orders though, and the ability to issue them to any tank.

Catachan regiment bonus;

Brutal Strength
When rolling die for weapons which have a random number of *attacks*, you can re-roll one dice.

Works great on double-tapping LRBT BC and auto-hitting Hellhounds. Also good on Manticores and Wyverns. Less good with Basilisks.

I'd argue it's still good on Basilisks. 2D6 pick the highest rerolling the lowest will make them a super consistent weapon. Though the fact this doesn't work on Earthshaker platforms is kind of a bummer.

Earthshakers benefit less than almost anything else from the Catachan doctrine.

If you only use your re-roll if there's a die with a 1, 2, or 3 on it (or a 1 for d3s, or just always re-roll the lowest for 2d6-drop-lowest) then:
d6 guns do 21% better
2d6 guns do 18% better
d3 guns do 17% better
4d6 guns do 13% better
2d6-drop-lowest guns do 11% better

How do you do math for 2D6 drop the lowest?

Also, with my rolls, the Catachan buff is going to be massive for me! Plus, those %s are across the board, which are going to ADD UP so fast. You got a hellhound with a hull flamer, boom, immediately more reliable. You have 3 LRs with battlecannons, each shooting twice per turn, and each shot can get its D6 re rolled? That is going to be huge. Then all of my arty? Plus I have 3 heavy mortars and a quad mortar, 9 regular mortars, a wyvern, and a basilisk. All frag missile shots, I just thought of that. That is going to be epic. So useful.

 Colonel Cross wrote:

How do you do math for 2D6 drop the lowest?

Also, with my rolls, the Catachan buff is going to be massive for me! Plus, those %s are across the board, which are going to ADD UP so fast. You got a hellhound with a hull flamer, boom, immediately more reliable. You have 3 LRs with battlecannons, each shooting twice per turn, and each shot can get its D6 re rolled? That is going to be huge. Then all of my arty? Plus I have 3 heavy mortars and a quad mortar, 9 regular mortars, a wyvern, and a basilisk. All frag missile shots, I just thought of that. That is going to be epic. So useful.

2d6 taking the highest with the ability to re-roll one die is exactly the same as 3d6 taking the highest. Whatever 2d6 combination you roll, you pick a die which is not higher than the other and roll it again. I pulled the actual average value from anydice.com, but otherwise the easiest way to find this is simple enumeration with a computer: there are 216 possible triples and the result for each triple is just the maximum value of each. Or visualize the 3D space of triples and observe that there's 1^3 way to get a 1, then 2^3 - 1^3 ways to get a 2, then 3^3 - 2^3 ways to get a 3, and so on.

Note that you don't get the re-roll on infantry, only vehicles. So your regular mortars, frag missiles, etc., aren't going to benefit.

You didn't actually take the average for 3d6, did you? Because there are 216 outcomes, not 216 triples.

But your original statement should still be correct, Basilisks benefit less (because they had less room for improvement). But they also give a risk free reroll, so they will benefit from a 5 to 6 upgrade, where a single d6 will probably never take the chance of rolling.

xmbk wrote:
You didn't actually take the average for 3d6, did you?

No, anydice accepts commands like "X: [highest 1 of 2d6]". It gives 4.47 for that (which is the correct average). And then "highest 1 of 3d6" yields 4.96, which is plausible and is an 11% improvement.

Ah gotcha, thanks for correcting me.

xmbk wrote:
If I'm reading correctly, Valhallans can fire into combat and cause enough casualties so that no enemy model is within one inch. Thereby allowing the engaged unit to shoot and declare a charge that turn.

I don't see why not.

This could be sometimes handy if you play a valhallan-esque regiment.

Dionysodorus wrote:

RogueApiary wrote:

Razerous wrote:

 ross-128 wrote:
What would a Hellhound use re-rolls to hit on though, its storm bolter? All its weapons auto-hit. I guess it'd be useful on the devil dog at least.

It would be nice to have more than three tank orders though, and the ability to issue them to any tank.

Catachan regiment bonus;

Brutal Strength
When rolling die for weapons which have a random number of *attacks*, you can re-roll one dice.

Works great on double-tapping LRBT BC and auto-hitting Hellhounds. Also good on Manticores and Wyverns. Less good with Basilisks.

I'd argue it's still good on Basilisks. 2D6 pick the highest rerolling the lowest will make them a super consistent weapon. Though the fact this doesn't work on Earthshaker platforms is kind of a bummer.

Earthshakers benefit less than almost anything else from the Catachan doctrine.

If you only use your re-roll if there's a die with a 1, 2, or 3 on it (or a 1 for d3s, or just always re-roll the lowest for 2d6-drop-lowest) then:
d6 guns do 21% better
2d6 guns do 18% better
d3 guns do 17% better
4d6 guns do 13% better
2d6-drop-lowest guns do 11% better

Hey... an 11% buff to a unit that was already too efficient for its points, is fine by me. :-p

Sounds good. Still need to factor in the fact that Basilisks will always roll, while others will likely stick with 4/5.

xmbk wrote:
Sounds good. Still need to factor in the fact that Basilisks will always roll, while others will likely stick with 4/5.

No, the numbers I gave account for this.

Here's a question for folks with more experience. I'm considering running 5-6 Leman Russes in the new edition, and was thinking four vanilla, and two (one of which would be a Tank Commander) in Demolishers (since they'd get a half-move and still retain double-fire)

Do we think, or from your experience, is it worth decking out Russes with the mounted Lascannon, and say, Plasma Sponsons (i'll be running them as Catachan so every weapon bar the Las would get the #of shots reroll).

Essentially... is it better to have another Russ bare-bones, or cannibalize one for points to make the remaining ones significantly more shooty?

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:
Here's a question for folks with more experience. I'm considering running 5-6 Leman Russes in the new edition, and was thinking four vanilla, and two (one of which would be a Tank Commander) in Demolishers (since they'd get a half-move and still retain double-fire)

Do we think, or from your experience, is it worth decking out Russes with the mounted Lascannon, and say, Plasma Sponsons (i'll be running them as Catachan so every weapon bar the Las would get the #of shots reroll).

Essentially... is it better to have another Russ bare-bones, or cannibalize one for points to make the remaining ones significantly more shooty?

Right now I only run a hull Las Cannon because the moving and shooting penalty makes the Russes too static (10" is nothing to sneeze at).

Since they're removing the move and fire penalty I will re-think them. However, this is going to depend on what the point costs end up being for sponsons. If they stay the same then Plasmas are decent. I never roll them on full blast no matter what, because the penalty is just too severe on them. Heavy Bolters are really good now and often overlooked for their cheap points. They wound almost anything in the game on a 5+ and the -1 save it hard to come by.

For the hull the LC is always worth while.

Demolisher will be good for a commander with his BS 3+, consider MM sponson for them, the S8 -4 and D6 is a worth it since you have to get inside 24" anyways.

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:
Here's a question for folks with more experience. I'm considering running 5-6 Leman Russes in the new edition, and was thinking four vanilla, and two (one of which would be a Tank Commander) in Demolishers (since they'd get a half-move and still retain double-fire)

Do we think, or from your experience, is it worth decking out Russes with the mounted Lascannon, and say, Plasma Sponsons (i'll be running them as Catachan so every weapon bar the Las would get the #of shots reroll).

Essentially... is it better to have another Russ bare-bones, or cannibalize one for points to make the remaining ones significantly more shooty?

I'm not sure how much experience matters. A barebones Russ now shoots almost twice as well and costs 7 points less (155 total including the 8 point heavy bolter). So how many lascannons is a double-firing battle cannon worth? Against T7 3+ it's about 3.2 times as good, before doctrines. Against T8 2+ it's 2.25 times as good. So let's say that it's worth about 2.75 lascannons overall, or about 3.33 for Catachans, and 5 if you're moving and shooting. Doing something similar for the plasma cannon gets that the battle cannon is worth about 2.7 PCs (assuming you're overcharging and ignoring the mortal wounds) if you sit still and 4 if you move and shoot. Plasma cannon sponsons up the Russ' cost by 30 points, or about 19%, while increasing its firepower by 74% if stationary, ignoring the heavy bolter. This seems well worth it -- you'd generally be happy to pay up to about 32% more (sqrt(1.72)) for this kind of increase unless the platform is already relatively fragile for your army. The front lascannon likewise looks good if you're stationary. Of course, at this point you're looking at almost 200 points for 12 wounds, so you want to take a look at your list and see if you're just giving your opponents a really tempting turn 1 target relative to everything else.

If you're planning on having your Russ move around a whole lot, the extra guns look a lot worse and I'd probably leave them off.

If you're not overcharging the plasma then I think I'd probably leave off the plasma cannons. Just bring the ~4.33 lascannons' worth of shooting for 167 points. You expect about as much damage per point as a quad-las Predator and you're far more durable (and you're a lot better against infantry).

Interesting to see the optimizations vary so dramatically based on moving at all vs. being stationary. Thanks Dionysodorus for the nicely mathed out data.

I'm thinking stationary (optimally) with Plasma Sponsons will probably be the way we go, especially with Harker, and other sources of re-roll 1's, preventing the Plasma Overcharge from being quite as scary.

Lots of cheaper russes, surely?

So I tried searching for this answer but couldn't find it. Are we firing both lasguns in our heavy weapons teams these days?

 Colonel Cross wrote:
So I tried searching for this answer but couldn't find it. Are we firing both lasguns in our heavy weapons teams these days?

unless it's changed, heavy weapon teams only have one lasgun, so they can fire the lasgun and the heavy weapon, not multiple lasguns.

Dionysodorus wrote:

xmbk wrote:
Sounds good. Still need to factor in the fact that Basilisks will always roll, while others will likely stick with 4/5.

No, the numbers I gave account for this.

Did they account for the loss from rolling 3's and getting 1 or 2?

xmbk wrote:

Dionysodorus wrote:

xmbk wrote:
Sounds good. Still need to factor in the fact that Basilisks will always roll, while others will likely stick with 4/5.

No, the numbers I gave account for this.

Did they account for the loss from rolling 3's and getting 1 or 2?

Yes. I got the average shots on a d6 gun with a re-roll by taking (3.5 + 3.5 + 3.5 + 4 + 5 + 6)/6 = 4.25, which is a ~21% improvement over a simple d6 roll (average of 3.5). What's going on here is that the results you would re-roll are replaced with the average value you'll get on the new roll. The same basic approach works for a 2d6 (or 4d6) gun. There are 36 possible outcomes on 2d6, and you'll use a re-roll with 27 of them. 11 out of 36 times, you replace a 1 with a 3.5 and add 2.5 to your EV, 9 out of 36 times, you replace a 2 with a 3.5 and net 1.5, and 7 out of 36 times you replace a 3 with a 3.5 and net 0.5. So the average on 2d6 with a re-roll is the average on 2d6, which is 7, plus (11*2.5 + 9*1.5 + 7*0.5)/36. A d3 gun with a re-roll is just (2+2+3)/3 = 2.33, compared to an average of 2 without a re-roll. And as I explained you can do 2d6-drop-lowest with a re-roll as 3d6-keep-highest since in this case you'll always re-roll an otherwise-irrelevant die.

I apologize for questioning your diligence. Thanks for the data!

xmbk wrote:

Dionysodorus wrote:

xmbk wrote:
Sounds good. Still need to factor in the fact that Basilisks will always roll, while others will likely stick with 4/5.

No, the numbers I gave account for this.

Did they account for the loss from rolling 3's and getting 1 or 2?

It's not a forced re-roll. You're not going to long bomb a 3+ and try to get a 6, especially since almost every D6 based weapon is rolling 2 dice now.

If you're doing this on LR turrets then you're doing it wrong, especially since you're typically going to fire the turret twice. Say you get 2x 3's, keep them, it's just below the average but not terrible in terms of effectiveness. Any time you roll a 2 or less re-roll it.

For the artillery this doesn't really matter because you're either rolling 2D6 for a Manticore and re-rolling a single dice (a 2 or a 1) or with a Bassy you're going to Roll 2, re-roll 1 and drop the lowest.

Well remember with the LRBT it's not rolling 2d6, it's rolling 1d6 on 2 separate occasions.

So it's waaay better than you're making it out to be.