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Dakka formatting will butcher the following table. Just skip it for now:
T3 Models ppm tot pts shting wnds attks wnds tot ppw
vanilla 1 6 6 0.333333333 2 0.75 1.083333333 5.54
toxin 1 7 7 0.333333333 2 1.333333333 1.666666667 4.20
sacs 1 7 7 0.333333333 2 0.888888889 1.222222222 5.73
tox/sacs 1 8 8 0.333333333 2 1.333333333 1.666666667 4.80

T4 Models ppm tot pts shting wnds attks wnds tot ppw
vanilla 1 6 6 0.25 2 0.611111111 0.861111111 6.97
toxin 1 7 7 0.25 2 0.75 1 7.00
sacs 1 7 7 0.25 2 0.75 1 7.00
tox/sacs 1 8 8 0.25 2 1.333333333 1.583333333 5.05

T5 Models ppm tot pts shting wnds attks wnds tot ppw
vanilla 1 6 6 0.166666667 2 0.472222222 0.638888889 9.39
toxin 1 7 7 0.166666667 2 0.75 0.916666667 7.64
sacs 1 7 7 0.166666667 2 0.611111111 0.777777778 9.00
tox/sacs 1 8 8 0.166666667 2 0.75 0.916666667 8.73



Points spent per Wound inflicted with the following gargoyle config (including shooting, and assuming the unit charges)

against T3
Vanilla garg - 5.54 ppw
toxin - 4.2
adrenals - 5.73
toxin and adrenals - 4.8

Toxin-only is the most efficient config

Against T4
Vanilla garg - 6.97
toxin - 7
adrenals - 7
toxin and adrenals - 5.05

Toxin and Adrenals is the most efficient config

Against T5
Vanilla garg - 9.39
toxin - 7.64
adrenals - 9
toxin and adrenals - 8.73

Again Toxin alone is the most efficient config

Conclusions:

Against T4, and only against T4, toxin+adrenal is the most efficient config due to rerolling wounds. Against any toughness value higher or lower than that, toxin-only is going to give a better yield, not only in points spent per wound dealt, but also for total wounds (in general it ties with adrenal and toxin due to the wording of Poisoned Attacks in the BRB). Now, your sample distribution is going to impact this quite a bit because if 90% of the stuff you fight is T4, then tox/adrenals will indeed give you a superior performance. This does disregard the initiativ bonus of Furious Charge, however. If the extra init is enough to go from after to simultaneously with an assaulted unit, then that will also come into play. In general, there's not a whole lot of I5 combatants so I ignored it for now.

A further thought is that anything that gives them Preferred Enemy will of course cause their number of wounds dealt to go up, but will also considerably increase their points:wound ratio. So taking a Tyrant, for example, for the sole purpose of boosting little bugs loses its luster unless the boost is of absolutely negligible cost. Naturally they will perform better, but whether it's enough to justify the cost will be entirely up to you.

Your adrenals under T3 is transferred over wrong. You put a 0 instead of a 9, making it the best option.


Im curious what the actual wounds are...

T4

Vanilla - 1 - .5 - .165
Adrenal - 1 - .5 - .25
Toxin - 1 - .5 - .25
Both - 1 - .5 - 0.375

So essentially they do 50% more wounds, but only on the charge. Im not sure if its worth it.

Taking a squad of 10 marines (and disregarding shooting) being charged by 10 gargs:

Vanilla - 1.08 dead
Adrenal - 1.65 dead
Toxin - 1.65 dead
Both - 2.48 dead

This is a pretty tough decision. I have a winged tyrant I was planning to send with them, and youre right, im not sure if furious charge on him is worth it (he's I5 S6 already). For now Im going to go Toxin only, but Im not sure.

sourclams wrote:Against T4, and only against T4, toxin+adrenal is the most efficient config due to rerolling wounds. Against any toughness value higher or lower than that, toxin-only is going to give a better yield, not only in points spent per wound dealt, but also for total wounds (in general it ties with adrenal and toxin due to the wording of Poisoned Attacks in the BRB). Now, your sample distribution is going to impact this quite a bit because if 90% of the stuff you fight is T4, then tox/adrenals will indeed give you a superior performance. This does disregard the initiativ bonus of Furious Charge, however. If the extra init is enough to go from after to simultaneously with an assaulted unit, then that will also come into play. In general, there's not a whole lot of I5 combatants so I ignored it for now.

What I think you are missing is that there are a lot of I4 combatants, and going ahead of them will let the Gargoyles unleash a lot of damage without taking as much in return. Also worth keeping in mind - Adrenal Glands give a chance to glance many transports, which can be very useful for such a fast moving group.

I'd definitely always take Toxin before AG (if I had to choose one or the other). But I suspect we'll see a lot of Gargoyles with both, given how cheap the upgrades are and how effective the combo is.

To me, Adrenals are more about the Int increase than the Str. Being able to strike before your opponent is key. The killing tanks thing is a bonus.

Night Lords wrote:Your adrenals under T3 is transferred over wrong. You put a 0 instead of a 9, making it the best option.

It was actually a lot worse than that, I assumed that every attack hit. Terrible job of it.

But the conclusion for T3 is still correct. Toxin sacs will wound on 3/4th of successful attacks. Adrenals will wound on 2/3. Toxin is still going to be the more efficient option.

The upgrades are so cheap, I suspect it'll often be worth going for both. I might go for only toxin, or even nothing, if that unit of gargoyles' main purpose in the army is to be a screen.

The upgrades are cheap but they add up quickly. I would like to see how genestealers perform following the same exercise in math hammer. Genestealers don't need adrenal glands with rending and the high initiative.

Thanks for posting up the results of your analysis. It's quite interesting.

G

Did you redo the maths accounting for only hitting on 4+? The reason I ask, is that since you always wound on a 6+ to hit then really your upgrades ONLY count for when you roll 4's and 5's. This makes your upgrades count for less.

My quick ghetto maths when hitting on 4+ indicate (only looking at close combat not shooting)
naked: t3 .333 + .333 = 9 ppw t4 .333 + .222 = 10.8 ppw
toxin: t3 .333 + .5 = 8.4 ppw t4 .333 + .333 = 10.5 ppw
adrenal: .333 + .444 t4 = 9 ppw .333 + .333 = 10.5 ppw
both: .333 + .5 = 9.6 ppw t4 .333 + .5 = 9.6 ppw

With this data, I show that the difference between groups in combat much smaller than your table indicates, thanks to the fact that each gargoyle starts with .333 wounds versus anything, making some of the upgrades redundant. Since the cheaper the model, the better the shooting and more durability (aka you have more shots/bodies with similair costed broods) the only reason I see to taking all the upgrades is for heavily metagaming versus marines (not a bad idea however)

A real world example using the above expected maths versus marines.

7 fully upgraded gargoyles. 1.75 shooting wounds, 2.33 blinding wounds, 3.5 regular wounds, total = 7.58 wounds
8 adrenal gargoyles. 2 shooting wounds, 2.66 blinding wounds, 2.66 regular wounds, total = 7.33 wounds

% difference for cheap gargs= -3.3% less t4 wounds
% wound difference = 12.5 more wounds
% glance on vehicles = 12.5 more glances to av10 (both in shooting and in assault)

My advice? Take adrenal only gargs. You can glance vehicles for cheaper, and while adrenal is only good on the assault, IMHO if your gargs are getting charged or stuck in long combats they wont hold up very well, toxin or not.

Since someone mentioned stealers, toxin genestealers versus my adrenal gargs versus meq (stealers are optimised versus MEQ btw)
17 adrenal gargs, 4.25 shooting wounds (we will ignore these for now), 5.66 blinding wounds, 5.66 regular wounds, total 3.77 meq casualties with 1.4 potential shooting casualties in addition. (super gargs will do ~4.15 cc meq kills when equal pointed to 7 toxin stealers, still less than the 5.833 stealers)
7 toxin stealers, 14 hits, 3.5 rends, 7 regular wounds, total 5.833 meq casualties

Thus, with shooting the gargs are close to the stealers in terms of damage output. However, for combat results, the gargs deal only 60% of the damage, and with t3 and 6+ save, the gargs are gonna lose combat by larger margins, causing many fearless saves thanks to synapse. Meanwhile, stealers operating outside of synapse have that lovely ld10, thus if they lose combat it will be by a smaller margin, they most likely will either make their ld check or succede their sweeping advance with the base init of 6.

Morale of the story? Toxin Stealers rock the house versus MEQ! However, if you are worried about small arms fire the much smaller stealer squads take horrendous damage compared to the more than twice the size gargoyles.