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Playing Chaos Marines I never actually have the chance to use this technique so I'm not very familar with it. My understanding is that the trick is basically to loadup a single guy with all the most damaging shots and spare the rest of the squad.

For example, say I have a LR Executioner with Heavy Bolter Sponons and a Heavy Stubber. This means I have AP2, AP4 and AP6 weapons.
If I fire all of these at your typical Nobz Biker squad, what I can expect that player to do is load the AP2 wounds (which he gets no save besides cover) onto one guy and spread the AP4 wounds out (since you get a cover and FnP save) and AP6 wounds out (with armor/FNP) and probably save the majority of them.

Is that right, or did I miss something?

Well, you still have to follow the rules for wound allocation, so you can't put more wounds on one guy until the rest of the unit until everyone has at least one wound.

Not quite.

Nob bikers have a permanent 4+ cover save, a 3+ cover save for turbo-boosting, a 4+ armor save, a 5+ invulnerable save, and 4+ Feel No Pain (presuming the basic tenets of the unit are upheld).

If I have 10 nob bikers, I have 10 wound groups - every nob biker is equipped differently. That means that if all your firepower drops 6 wounds onto my unit, 6 different nobs are each taking one wound. I place a dice by each bike, and roll it separately.

If you fire AP2 at me, I have a 3+/4+ cover save. If you fire AP3 or higher at me, I have a 4+ cover save or a 4+ armor save in addition to a 4+ Feel No Pain.

Killing Nob bikers is a matter of volume of fire and high strength shots. Nob bikers are T4(5), meaning that any STR8 or higher weapons will bypass all that wound allocation silliness. Take a demolisher or two. Fire your meltas into the unit.

meaning that any STR8 or higher weapons will bypass all that wound allocation silliness.

Not really.
If the 10 Nob Bikers have 11 wounds incl. 1 melta to consider,
I'd give each Nob Biker one wound to save and the 11th to one Biker facing the melta wound.

Or you can give a melta wound to the warboss which almost always accompanies these guys.

Since he's T5 he won't be insta-killed.

Yeah, if the Warboss has joined this unit, he can even soak up an S8 wound without getting instantly killed.

I appreciate the advice on how to kill the Nobz but I was more just using it as an example to understand the workings of the wound allocation trick better.

Put another way, is it ever in your best interest NOT to fire certain weapons at a unit for fear of getting less kills potentially?

minigun762 wrote:I appreciate the advice on how to kill the Nobz but I was more just using it as an example to understand the workings of the wound allocation trick better.

Put another way, is it ever in your best interest NOT to fire certain weapons at a unit for fear of getting less kills potentially?

I see what you're saying and yes, it's a goofy part of the game. Generally speaking, it's not in your best interests to not shoot, as you can't necessarily rely on the dice to do what you want.

For example, you're shooting at the 10 unit of nobz. In one round, you wound 15 times, 4 being instant death. Well, the smart ork player will assign one wound to all first, then double up the instant death wounds on two models so that only two might die.

But, let's say, you're shooting at the same 10 and only deal 10 wounds, 4 of which are instant death. Well, now the nobz can't shuffle their magic as much, as each nob must take a wound, so you'll possibly kill 4 since the instant-death must be spread around.

That's just the luck of the draw. You've actually dealt less wounds, but the nobz can't shuffle as much. They can still pick the ones they want to die, which is in their advantage, but at least you're getting kills. Really, there aren't many units that have that kind of wound potential and mix of weaponry to worry about. I wouldn't overthink it too much. Deathstar units like this die to concentrated volumes of fire, so just pour it on and don't worry as much about the wound shuffling. They do eventually run out of wounds and if you're getting to pound them with shooting, that's a good thing.

Or to give a simpler example (like not Nob Bikerz), say you fired that unit at a random Devestator squad in cover. Maybe he has 4 Lascannons, a Sgt, and 1 random dude in the unit. (Maybe they're just behind some fences or something, so it's only a 5+ too).

Say you deal 4 AP4+ wounds and 2 wounds at AP2. Then obviously the random dude and Sgt. will be stuck with the 5+ cover and the other guys (important ones) take armor saves.

On the other hand, maybe you do one more AP4 wound to the unit. Now, the random dude gets an AP2 wound, the Lascannons + Sgt take armor saves, and the random guy gets a 2nd AP2 wound. Now all of a sudden, that one extra wound you inflicted means you'll kill (on average) slightly less than you would have with one less wound. Instead of the Sgt. taking a 5+ (better chance to die than live) along with the regular dude, the Sgt. now has a better chance to live than die and the random dude who was probably dying is now definitely probably dying.

It's even more of a noticeable effect if they're totally out of cover. With the first case, he takes 4 armor saves and loses 2 guys outright. With the second case (which has more wounds!) he takes 5 armor saves and loses 1 guy outright.

So even without complex units, wound allocation can still occasionally try to protect more important models in a single-wound unit, when the wounds "wrap around" to the point where the low AP or high S wounds can be piled on less important people to spare more important ones.

Heres a situation i had earlier this week.
I was firing at 3 ork Nobz each equiped differenty, all had a 4+ armor save.

From my vehicle i had 3 weapons to fire.
Pulse laser S8 AP2 heavy 2
Missile launcher S8 AP3 heavy 1
Shuriken cannon S6 AP5 heavy 3

That equates to 3 shots that can insta-kill a nob with no save and 3 shots that wont and they get a save against.
Now assume i fired all my weapons and they all hit and wound (guide and doom helps) The ork play could put 2 of the IK shots on one nob, one IK shot and one cannon shot on another nob, and 2 cannon shots on the third. This would mean the first and second orks die, the third however has 2 4+ saves to make, on average, loosing a wound, but not giving me a KP.

As it turns out i decided to only fire the 3 IK shots, hitting 3 times, wounding three times, and managing to IK all three nobz, getting my precious KP.

So as it turns out... more dakka is not always the best course of action.

It makes a little more sense but its still confusing to me.
In Dayve110's example, I don't see how you could stack 2 ID shots onto a single Nob. Wouldn't you have to move it over to the next available Nob, even if it was in a different group?

Basically the notion is not to combine different effects in certain proportions, given that the effect will be minimized by the would allocation.

In Dayve110's example you roll to wound as a group. If everything wounded, then the the Ork player would have to allocate two wounds to each member of the Nob Mob.

Three of those wounds would deny armour saves and cause instant death, which is bad. Three of those wounds would not deny armour saves and not cause instant death, which is better but not that great.

Each model must have two wounds each, but which wounds are up to the choice of the defending player, so they can allocate two instant death wound to one Nob, one instant death and one normal wound to another Nob, and two normal wounds to the third Nob.

You're less likely to lose all three Nobs that way than if you even distributed one instant death wound and one normal wound amongst the unit.

minigun762 wrote:It makes a little more sense but its still confusing to me.
In Dayve110's example, I don't see how you could stack 2 ID shots onto a single Nob. Wouldn't you have to move it over to the next available Nob, even if it was in a different group?

You take all saving throws at the same time, from what I can remember. This is what allows this to work.

Ok I think I get it now (after some rereading).

In that example, its the 3 non ID shots that are messing you up, as they allow you to wrap the ID shost around and stack on the same guy.

If you only fired the 3 ID shots, you would have to assign one to each Nob regardless of how they are equipped correct?

If you fire the 3 non ID shots + the 3 ID shots, you have to assign 2 wounds to each Nob but the breakdown of what Nob gets what wound is up to you.