Waaaghpower wrote:Your rounding errors are hugely noteworthy once added together.
You round 28 sword attacks from 18.64 hits to 18, but then round 13 sword attacks from 8.65 hits to 9, so that's fine - Only off by .2 hits.
But, then, you round 19 Spear hits from 3.16 wounds to 3 wounds (not a big deal) and 9 Swords hits from 1.5 wounds all the way down to 1 - And that IS a huge deal. Especially since, a moment later, you round .66 wounds down to 0.
The swords deal an entire wound that you're not counting.
Your math on the pure swords, though, is very accurate, with no errors - It does result in 3.5 wounds. (3.53, to be precise.)
So, unless you make very large rounding errors in order to intentionally screw up the results in your favor, the difference is by half a wound. Barely anything.
And by the way, this isn't hyperbole: When we're comparing small variables in order to determine the results, a 50-60% difference is massive. Claiming it's 1 wound against 4 when it's really 3 wounds against 3.5 is a very, very large difference. Claiming 21 wounds to 27 when it's really 22 to 24 is also a pretty huge gap.
I also wouldn't mind your mistakes so much if every single error didn't lean in your favor. Regularly leaving off wounds for the spears while giving extras to the swords doesn't look like random mistakes, it looks like you took a dive and asked to end the game just after your team took the lead.
(Also, on a minor note: You're wrong about the captain. Anyone in the custodes squad can issue and accept challenges. Winning a challenge gives no specific benefits, so nine times out of ten you want your tank to accept, but your stronger model to be fighting elsewhere. I can't think of any instance where you'd have a need for someone with I5 Ap3 while facing an enemy who threatens you with AP2 and couldn't be dealt with by a regular shield custodes at I4.)
Your math appears to be off. I followed a standard mathematical convention for rounding: .5 or less is rounded down and .6 and up is rounded up. At least when I was in school, you also don't look farther than 3 decimal places for rounding. Your attempts to infer some type of bias are misplaced.
So for instance, your missing sword wound from the spear squad. I believe you're referring to the 1.5 wounds they deal before Feel No Pain. Feel No Pain negates 1/3 of wounds. 1.5 divided by 3 is .5. That gets rounded to 0.
kingbobbito wrote:Audustum wrote:You call this marginal, but it's huge. A sword squad can expect to kill a Wraithknight in 2 rounds of combat (assuming no losses). A spear squad will take 3 (assuming no losses) and has much higher odds of taking 4 compared to the lower odds of a sword squad taking 3. That's an entire extra round of stomping and if it's a Forgeworld Wraithknight (
that we're somehow reliably catching and charging every turn) it's an entire extra round of shooting with Deathshroud/Inferno weapons. That's massive. Even just tying down the Wraithknight in melee combat without killing it isn't a beneficial trade because a 10-man Custodes squad costs more than Wraithknight
Why, that's an excellent point you've made! As you've pointed out we're never going to catch the wraithknight to begin with, so the one time that swords are marginally better won't ever happen anyways. The only thing we'll ever catch up with are slow slogging troops, where the spear is about the same (tacticals) or better (plague zombies, any 2+).
Well, there are times it can happen. It's not impossible, just unlikely and if you're running a pure Custodes list (remember the
OP?) you'll want to bring a sword squad to press that advantage if you know you're facing a Wraithknight. This is why I dislike mathammer in a void, however, because all this kind of stuff doesn't get taken into account.
For instance, if you knew you were going to fight a Windrider host with a Wraithknight and Jetbike Farseers, you're gonna want swords. The spears do marginally better against bikes in melee, but you're more likely to be shooting (though if you do have something in charge range you won't want to give up precious shooting in order to try and catch it either). The swords also work better for the Wraithknight.
The point being, which is what I have reiterated from the start, both loadouts have a place and you should consider your opponent rather than blindly always slotting one or the other.
