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 Totalwar1402 wrote:

If you hit less often then your benefit from re rolling ones to wound won't be a flat 16 percent buff. Plus you have to still actually succeed in making the re roll to wound. A flat buff on the first roll that you get automatically is just better. What you have done is get one dice roll divided by 6 to get 16 percent that isn't accounting for all the factors as it's only the chance of a re roll not a successful extra wound. With a bolter you only have an 8 percent chance of wounding and you only had a 2 in 3 chance o hitting him in the first place. So really this re roll only creates a 5 percent increase in effectiveness.

Just jumping in to say that this is totally not how maths works and you are badly downplaying the effectiveness of rerolling those 1's.
Imagine you have inflicted 36 hits against a target:

Wounding on 4's? You'd expect 18 wounds. Rerolling 1's results in 21, or a 16.7% increase.
Wounding on 2's? You'd expect 30 wounds, or 35 with rerolling 1's (16.7% again)
Wounding on 6's? You'd expect 6 wounds, or 7 with the 1's. Again 16.7%. I'm sure you get the picture by now.

Even the horrifying Imperial Fists BS5 superbolters are 'only' a 25% increase, applied to a single category of weapons. While they make better Bolters, the Ultras make better overall use of the entire arsenal. Those Imperial Fists aren't seeing the improvement to Volkites, Plasma, Kraks etc. that the Ultramarines enjoy. It is a case of higher output from specific weapons, or lower output across the board. Overall I'd expect the Ultramarines to outshoot them which is exactly why it has to be 'rewarded' by following fire.
Regarding the Night Lords, again I think this is because combat is generally allowed to be 'better' than shooting simply because it's much harder to assault somebody than it is to shoot them.

As an aside, you can totally unlock the firepower with a Rhino, Drop Pod or indeed any MSU unit. You don't need to be leading with full Tactical squads or wounded stragglers.

Drop pods are only unlocked via a restrictive rite of war.

Rhinos are extremely vulnerable and would be knocked out before they ever got close enough. Plus most players at my club use outflanking and deep strike so they can avoid the unit very easily.

A small unit is more points expensive than a large one. HH is built specifically to encourage big units and discourage small ones. At high points games you rapidly run out of slots on the force org chart.


Again why are you assuming that you have hit 36 times. You have worse BS than a imperial fist. Less hits means less chance to even get a re rolls. You would have to have shot far more bolt rounds at the enemy to get that bonus. So it's not a flat 16 percent buff. It's actually very unlikely to happen and to have to have shot them with another unit.

Other legions have it much better with no downsides.

I wanted legion rules which made my tacticals viable, not rules that provide minor buffs to special weapon squads.

It is exactly a 16.7% buff and exceedingly likely to occur. You seem to be under the impression that hits are worth more than wounds, or that the sequence of a shooting attack matter at all.
It does not. An increased chance to-hit has an identical effect to an equal chance to-wound. Both are worthless unless combined and allowed to pierce armour.
I have used 36 because multiples of 6 are easy to work with dice. So I'm going to continue that trend with 216 shots for a complete attack sequence.

The Imperial Fist:
216 shots -> 180 hits -> 90 wounds -> 30 dead

The Ultramarine:
216 shots -> 144 hits -> 84 wounds -> 27 dead

Everybody else:
216 shots -> 144 hits -> 72 wounds -> 24 dead


It is completely irrelevant how many hits or wounds you inflict; what matters is the total number of kills at the end of the sequence. In this regard Ultramarines are almost level with the Imperial Fists favourite weapon, and outclass them in every other shooting match. Mix in some special weapons to those 216 Bolters and you'll see the Ultramarines pull ahead, which is exactly what you'll see at an army-wide level rather than pure Tactical spam.

Ultramarines reward special weapons and MSU tactics, where Imperial Fists want blobs and Bolters. It really is that simple; play to your strengths, and you'll see Ultramarines as a valid contender on equal footing. Play to the Fists strengths and you'll be bashing your head into an opponent that is straight up superior, so build your army like an Ultramarine and not an Imperial Fist.



EDIT: Fun ways to get the reroll at minimal expense:
- Rapier
- I'm still counting Rhino's here.
- Attack Bikes
- Land Speeders
- Deathstorm Drop Pods (My personal favourite!)
- Javelins
- Predator
- Tarantula
- Scorpius

All of these come in with easy application (Range / Deep Strike) and low costs (Scorpius at 115 is the most). Many of them lack the Legion rule so lose nothing by firing first. Get a big enough template and you might even catch multiple squads at once. Remember that the conditions for 'marking' a unit are far more lenient than the rules to benefit from it. Generally speaking, if it's blue and it hit something, you're all good. So carpet bomb everything and mop up with your infantry.

No I ll just 20 fulmintarous terminators. Or twenty suzerains.

Yes. They're all about synergy to get their Op re roll one rule. Not their rite of war and unique units. Right.

Why in gods name do you think I would spend outrageous sums of money and hours my life building and painting thirty plasma gunners for a simply laughable boost when I can just take the ultra special units? There are much more effective ways of using my points.

You really have misunderstood my original post. The armies rite of war and unique unit are good. But the legion rules are crippling for no obvious benefit.

Plus you seem to have difficulty grasping that I'd be irritated by FW making some very expensive tactical squads I spent a lot of time and money on redundant and have a low opinion of being told to get special weapon squads instead.

They're not redundant units.
They just aren't as good as the Legions built around Tactical-spam. Other armies will reward you for spamming out Bolter bodies, Ultramarines reward you for shooting in general. It's a smaller increase that applies to everyone, so you want to take a balanced mix.
Ultra-Tacticals are still good value, and indeed better value than most other Legions. They just aren't as good as the Legion who are fundamentally based around applying Bolters.

Nobodies saying you need to play 30 Plasma Gunners to be effective, we're suggesting that if you want to play 'All Tacticals all the time' you might be better suited for team yellow.

Oh in hindsight I think I absolutely should have collected Imperial Fists or World Eaters.

As a rule I like having a good number of bodies on the board. I don't like this 2k armies with 15 models none sense. Even my tau army has lots of big fire warrior squads an pathfinder teams. So I just completely detest MSU and un fluffy army builds.

Because I invested very heavily in my ultra army having a large body count Iam non pluses that this investment hasn't paid off. Obviously it's doubtful that I'll ever be making another HH army anytime soon and if I did I doubt I would have the time to make a similar number of models.

TIL that you can totally refute math by simply saying "no" when people explain it to you.

The legion rules are hardly 'crippling'. Don't NL have the same drawback for all their characters dying? The UM rules are decent. Sure, they don't make bolters as good as IF bolters. But that's not what they're meant to do

So at the risk of appearing condescending, I made a graph for everybody.



Here we see how each Legion matches up relative to everybody else. Take '1' as your default value- this is your effectiveness assuming no special rules. After that, each Legion has had any bonuses considered relative to this. For example, going from BS4 to BS5 with a Bolter is a 25% increase in overall damage, so an Imperial Fist Bolter is effectiveness 1.25.
In this regard, the number of hits per-template is automatically equal between factions.

The important thing to note is that Ultramarines never dominate any particular field, but they are above-average in every single instance except combat. That reroll to wound is rarely going to make or break a shot, but it is consistently applied over everything for a very real increase in army damage. You won't be outBoltering Fists, or outstabbing Night Lords, or outFlaming Salamanders. But you will be in the top 3 every single time outside of combat.

The second thing to note is that when World Eaters hit combat, they win combat.

Night lords get an impressive set of boosts to compensate. Ultramarines don't.


And I will repeat what I was saying. You are ignoring the rules of probability. In order to have a chance to roll to wound you have to have actually hit in the first place. Saying it is a flat 16 percent buff on all shooting is incorrect because you're assuming you have already successfully hit. This is why you have to multiply the percentage by 2/3 to reflect that actual chance of you getting to re roll a one in the first place. So hand waving a 36 hits and saying your shooting is 16 percent better because it's a one in six chance of a re roll as you're presuming you've made 36 hits and skipped a whole chain.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:

And I will repeat what I was saying. You are ignoring the rules of probability. In order to have a chance to roll to wound you have to have actually hit in the first place. Saying it is a flat 16 percent buff on all shooting is incorrect because you're assuming you have already successfully hit. This is why you have to multiply the percentage by 2/3 to reflect that actual chance of you getting to re roll a one in the first place. So hand waving a 36 hits and saying your shooting is 16 percent better because it's a one in six chance of a re roll as you're presuming you've made 36 hits and skipped a whole chain.

And I will repeat what I was saying, in that you are mistaken about how probability works.
You can't wound something until you've hit it- this is absolutely true. But in the same sense, hitting something is pointless if you cannot wound it. You have to consider the whole attack chain for anything to happen and in this case, bonuses to hit or to wound are exactly the same thing.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
And I will repeat what I was saying. You are ignoring the rules of probability. In order to have a chance to roll to wound you have to have actually hit in the first place. Saying it is a flat 16 percent buff on all shooting is incorrect because you're assuming you have already successfully hit. This is why you have to multiply the percentage by 2/3 to reflect that actual chance of you getting to re roll a one in the first place. So hand waving a 36 hits and saying your shooting is 16 percent better because it's a one in six chance of a re roll as you're presuming you've made 36 hits and skipped a whole chain.

No, you are simply wrong about this. Please stop talking about probability before you embarrass yourself any worse than you already have.

Really?

So by your logic you have a one in three chance of killing a marine because he fails his armor save on a one and a two.

In order to get a roll to wound you have to have made a successful role to hit. So to get a re roll on one to wound you have to have made a 2 in 3 chance of hitting. Otherwise by your logic the same benefit would exist on units that instantly hit as those which have to roll to hit.

You are ignoring an entire stage of calculating the probability of getting a re roll. You remember GCSE where they got those big branching tree diagrams with all the fractions? It's one of them.

I really, definitely am not the one making maths errors here.

You need to hit, then to wound, then to break armour. If you fail at any one of these points, the whole attack fails.
Hitting without wounding, is a failure.
You cannot wound with a shot that has already missed.
You are considering the second point, but completely ignoring the fact that not all hits translate to wounds. You see an increased accuracy as great, without considering that it is hitting with less force.






You can work in fractions if you like:
Imperial Fist:
(5/6) hits, multiply by (1//2) wounds. You are causing an armour save for every (5/12) shots, or 42% effectiveness.

Ultramarine:
(2/3) hits, (7/12) wounds, gives (7/18) or 39%.

Everyone else:
(2/3) hits, (1/2) wounds, gives (1/3) or 33%.


Please trust me here. Don't throw away 3000pts of expensive Forge World based on a maths mistake.

So they're marginally worse with bolters than IF but better with other guns? And that somehow works out as them being rubbish..?

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
Night lords get an impressive set of boosts to compensate. Ultramarines don't.


And I will repeat what I was saying. You are ignoring the rules of probability. In order to have a chance to roll to wound you have to have actually hit in the first place. Saying it is a flat 16 percent buff on all shooting is incorrect because you're assuming you have already successfully hit. This is why you have to multiply the percentage by 2/3 to reflect that actual chance of you getting to re roll a one in the first place. So hand waving a 36 hits and saying your shooting is 16 percent better because it's a one in six chance of a re roll as you're presuming you've made 36 hits and skipped a whole chain.

As long as the chance to hit doesn't change, if can be ignored in calculating the % increase in effectiveness. Why? It cancels out.

Chance of getting a wound with 3+ to hit and 4+ to wound...
= (2/3) * (1/2)

Chance of getting a wound with 3+ to hit and a 4+ to wound with a reroll of 1's
= (2/3) * (1/2 + 1/6*1/2) = (2/3) * (7/12)

The increase in effectiveness is the "new" divided by the "old".
= {(2/3) * (7/12)} / {(2/3) * (1/2)}

You notice that both the numerator and denominator have the "2/3" factor which is what was required to hit, thus it cancels out. So the increase in effectiveness is simply...

{7/12} / (1/2) = 1.167 = 16.7% increase.

You'll also notice that it doesn't matter if you write it (2/3) * (1/2) or (1/2) * (2/3)... that is, it doesn't matter if you get a buff to hitting or wounding, the order you roll them is irrelevant.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
Really?

Yes. Seriously, go review basic probability and math before you keep talking about this. You're just embarrassing yourself right now.

The probability of inflicting an unsaved wound is equal to several probabilities multiplied together:

P(hit) x P(wound) x P(failed save) = P(unsaved wound)

Now, as you should know, which order you do the multiplication in is irrelevant. IOW:

{A x 1.5} x B x C = A x {B x 1.5} x C

Adding a re-roll/bonus/etc means multiplying one of those probabilities by some value. Improving BS 4 to BS 5 means multiplying 0.66 by 1.25, re-rolling 1s on a 4+ to wound means multiplying 0.5 by 1.165, etc. And, as we've just discussed, which order we do multiplication in is irrelevant. So a 1.5x multiplier on the probability of hitting is exactly identical to a 1.5x multiplier on the probability of wounding. The only thing that matters is the magnitude of the bonus. And for that we see that IF get a 25% increase but only for bolters, while Ultramarines get a 16.5% increase on a wider range of weapons. And so it's just a question of a larger but more limited bonus vs. a smaller but more frequently used bonus.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ImAGeek wrote:
So they're marginally worse with bolters than IF but better with other guns? And that somehow works out as them being rubbish..?

What's hilarious about this is that the OP has simultaneously claimed that bolter tactical squads suck, infantry-heavy armies suck, and 30k is all about tanks and LoW. But somehow a bonus to bolter tactical squads is supposed to be better than a bonus to "useful" weapons.

Ugh no.

You will very rarely be rolling the same number of dice on your second role as you are with your first roll to hit. You have less dice so will get less potential re rolls.

This can't be discounted because units which are better shots benefit significantly more from the re roll 1 to wound.

So a tactical marines has a 2/3 chance and then a 1/6 re roll. Multiply te probabilities and you the get the real bonus per shot.

A unit of fulmintarius however with a bs of five has five in six chance of hitting and the 1 in 6 re roll. His benefit is this greater than the tactical marines.

If you have a flamer and you ignore rolls to hit completely then and only then can you say that you have a 1 in 6 benefit.

Discounting it doesn't give you the whole picture. Ignoring shooting is not reflective of the benefit.

Except IF don't have reroll 1's so... Before you were saying the IF bonus is better, now you're saying that other units in the UM benefit more from their rule than Tac marines do? That seems obvious, and doesn't mean IF are better..? I'm not sure your point.

Well everyone agrees the IF bonus is better.


The problem is that these trolls are saying its a flat one in six bonus to all Ultramarines and are ignoring the fact that to need to roll to hit first entirely and that he benefit is greater with high BS units.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
TIL that you can totally refute math by simply saying "no" when people explain it to you.

I wish I could exalt this more than once.

OP, if you're so upset about the Ultramarine rules, then just dunk your whole army in Simple Green and go buy some yellow paint. It'll be way less effort than trying to convince the entire world that their math is wrong and your wrong math is right, trust me.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
Ugh no.

You will very rarely be rolling the same number of dice on your second role as you are with your first roll to hit. You have less dice so will get less potential re rolls.

This can't be discounted because units which are better shots benefit significantly more from the re roll 1 to wound.

So a tactical marines has a 2/3 chance and then a 1/6 re roll. Multiply te probabilities and you the get the real bonus per shot.

A unit of fulmintarius however with a bs of five has five in six chance of hitting and the 1 in 6 re roll. His benefit is this greater than the tactical marines.

If you have a flamer and you ignore rolls to hit completely then and only then can you say that you have a 1 in 6 benefit.

Discounting it doesn't give you the whole picture. Ignoring shooting is not reflective of the benefit.

Dude, you're wrong. I gave you the mathematical reason you can ignore it. Because even if you don't ignore it... it cancels out when you do the calculation.... which is why you ignore it.

If you wrote out the entire probability distribution for rolling X number of dice with 2+ to hit and then rolling the successes with 4+ to wound.... you will get the EXACT same number as if you swapped the order, rolling the same X dice but instead taking the 4+'s first and then rolling them again and taking the 2+'s.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
continuing to be wrong

Seriously, just stop. Go back and read my previous post where I explain how the math works. You are completely wrong about this, and someday you're going to look back on these posts and be embarrassed about how stubborn you were about your mistakes.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
The problem is that these trolls are saying its a flat one in six bonus to all Ultramarines and are ignoring the fact that to need to roll to hit first entirely and that he benefit is greater with high BS units.

Yes, all us trolls who mathematically proved ourselves

Everyone agrees that IF bonus is better when dealing exclusively in terms of Bolter damage. As soon as you move your horizons beyond bolterspam, you'll see that Ultramarines actually pull ahead in every single other bracket of the game. Unless your plan is unloading box after box of Tacticals to drown the enemy in S4, the Ultramarines offer better output across a wide spectrum of units.

And once you start including Wikipedia in your list of 'trolls' you might want to reevaluate your position in the argument.
Please, explain to us your thought process with numbers. Can you actually give us a fraction / percentage / any mathematical standard by which to compare units?

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
Well everyone agrees the IF bonus is better.


The problem is that these trolls are saying its a flat one in six bonus to all Ultramarines and are ignoring the fact that to need to roll to hit first entirely and that he benefit is greater with high BS units.

They aren't trolls. They're correct, and they've even explained how the maths works.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
Well everyone agrees the IF bonus is better.

It's better when shooting with bolters.

The problem is that these trolls are saying its a flat one in six bonus to all Ultramarines and are ignoring the fact that to need to roll to hit first entirely and that he benefit is greater with high BS units.

A x B x C x 1.5 = B x A x 1.5 x C = (C x B x A) x 1.5 = (1.5 x A) x (B x C)

 j31c3n wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
TIL that you can totally refute math by simply saying "no" when people explain it to you.

I wish I could exalt this more than once.

OP, if you're so upset about the Ultramarine rules, then just dunk your whole army in Simple Green and go buy some yellow paint. It'll be way less effort than trying to convince the entire world that their math is wrong and your wrong math is right, trust me.

No I am stating an opinion and you guys are trying to knock it down because you're a bunch of trolls. I don't care what you faceless people think. You would only ever reply to such a post if you were trying to be deliberately argumentative.

IF are mark 2 and 3. I have a mark 4 army with all the ultra legion stuff. Re painting ain't gonna happen.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
No I am stating an opinion and you guys are trying to knock it down because you're a bunch of trolls. I don't care what you faceless people think. You would only ever reply to such a post if you were trying to be deliberately argumentative.

IOW, "1+1=3, STFU ALL OF YOU TROLLS IM RIGHT AND UR ARGUMENTATIVE 1+1=3!!!!~!!!!!!@!1!1!!!"

Also, math is not something you get to have an opinion about. You're either right or wrong, and in this case you're indisputably wrong.

'I find Imperial Fists better suited to my playstyle' is an opinion. 'I am unhappy with the bonuses applied to Ultramarines' is an opinion.

'The wound bonus depends on BS' is not an opinion, it is wrong.