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On paper he looks capable of wiping units single handedly by himself without breaking a sweat.
However, this reminds me of an old saying.

In theory, there is no difference between practice and theory.
In practice, there is...

So Dakkaites, is Vect the man, or a sham?

Haven't used him myself. But I hear he is a beast in cc. His Dias of Destruction however doesn't seem as good. It can't move and fire like a ravager, and it can't take upgrades like the flicker field. Once I get enough points together to play bigger games, I will definitely want to try out Vect.

I play Blood angels, I have watched Vect assault my assault marines and they didn't get a turn. he's crazy. I would not field him in the Dias though, that get's expensive FAST (420 point hero plus about a 100 point guard, or a 200 point guard of Incubi: yay 1/3 of your army is in one giant target!)

He is great and the fact that you can go first 75% of the time is a game changer, but that being said you get the same killing power with 9 Wracks and a Haemonculi thanks to poison and furious charge, and so it really depends on your list if the points are worth it.

He, himself is extremely good, your chances of going first skyrocket.

The Dias, however, is a pile of junk. It can't get Ravager upgrades, and can't move and shoot like the Ravager.

The Dias fricking needs:

-Ravager's Arial Attack
-Raider upgrades like flickershields & night shields

Otherwise its a COMPLETELY junk waste of 200 points.

You stink GW.

Vect is a double edged sword. He is great with a retinue or by himself, but he has an easy chance to get IDed if you send him solo. I recommend him with either a 9 man wych squad or a 9 man trueborn squad.

While he is a beast in CC, with that trueborn squad, it opens his second set of awesomeness abilities, in making a shooty unit completely capable of wiping a 30 man boyz squad in a single turn with or without an assault.

Vect drops that lovely blast template of his, takes out a good 7 or 8(if not a few more) boyz, and then the trueborn open up with their 29 poison 4+ shots on the move. If anything lives, and doesn't fail the check, you assault it if its still in range and wipe it for an easy pain token. Works EXTREMELY well against any kind of marines, and anytime you charge into assault with him and the trueborn, the majority of the time, you wont need the trueborn to even swing as he is such a high initiative.

L'Etat C'Est Moi wrote:He is great and the fact that you can go first 75% of the time is a game changer, but that being said you get the same killing power with 9 Wracks and a Haemonculi thanks to poison and furious charge, and so it really depends on your list if the points are worth it.

Hmm, so going to hammer this one out when I have a jiffy

My thoughts on this.....Vect looks good at first glance, but in a take all comers list, and for a player looking to win consistently, he's a bad choice.

Dark Eldar remain a glass cannon army - they shine when getting the alpha strike. I either win the roll to go first and deploy accordingly, or lose the roll to go first and reserve everything - doing my best to alpha-strike from reserves.

Against a good opponent, particularly one playing Mech IG, Razorback spam BA, or SW.....if you lose the roll to go first and deploy like you're going to go first and fail to seize, you're going to lose the game, and it will be a terrible turkey shoot. He is a beast in close combat, but so are a lot of other things in the DE codex that cost less points.

Dashofpepper wrote:My thoughts on this.....Vect looks good at first glance, but in a take all comers list, and for a player looking to win consistently, he's a bad choice.

Dark Eldar remain a glass cannon army - they shine when getting the alpha strike. I either win the roll to go first and deploy accordingly, or lose the roll to go first and reserve everything - doing my best to alpha-strike from reserves.

Against a good opponent, particularly one playing Mech IG, Razorback spam BA, or SW.....if you lose the roll to go first and deploy like you're going to go first and fail to seize, you're going to lose the game, and it will be a terrible turkey shoot. He is a beast in close combat, but so are a lot of other things in the DE codex that cost less points.

But you could take the Baron AND the Vect and now you will almost ALWAYS get the first turn. Vect's roll to seize the initiative is 50% so it would catch your opponent off as he deploys like he is moving first. So its a equal gamble on the Seize the initiative.

DorianGray wrote:But you could take the Baron AND the Vect and now you will almost ALWAYS get the first turn. Vect's roll to seize the initiative is 50% so it would catch your opponent off as he deploys like he is moving first. So its a equal gamble on the Seize the initiative.

Thats an awful lot of points to sink into HQs at anything less than 2000 pts though.....

Vect is well worth his weight in death. I have used him and he. just. kills. everything. Any space elf that can take Mephiston and bend him over is ayeokaye in my book!

I love the little guy.

DorianGray wrote:
But you could take the Baron AND the Vect and now you will almost ALWAYS get the first turn. Vect's roll to seize the initiative is 50% so it would catch your opponent off as he deploys like he is moving first. So its a equal gamble on the Seize the initiative.

What would be the point? If you're taking Vect, that means if you roll to go second, you need to set up as if you're going first to make maximum use of seizing the initiative. But its only 50/50 on that roll. Meaning you could end up left badly out of position.

It's far too risky for most lists. I could see it working with a Dark footdar list with webway support, but nothing else would be worth it in a competitive setting.

Ok Vect + Baron means you're going first 80 or 85% of the time right?

If you FAIL that, you get a second chance of seizing the initiative 50% of the time.

(85% + 50%) / 2 = you're going first 67.5% of ALL games. Those are pretty good odds.

And the seizing the initiative you might get extra juicy out of cover targets because the opponent thought he was going first for you to epic Alpha Strike if you seize the initiative OR if he know you have a 50% chance of going first ANYWAY then he/she might reserve things making his first turn a lot less devastating.

All in all it evens out to YOUR FAVOR. I am going to use Vect + Baron in a 3 razorwing Alpha Strike DE leafblower list. Sometimes you have to bet big and go all in to win.

Assuming there's proper cover available, or your opponent is spread out nicely, you could concentrate in one corner out of site, and then start chewing up their flank whether you win the seize or not. It still comes out much better than coming in piecemeal to be torn apart; a combination of target saturation and limiting the number of enemies that can reach you should mean you get an actual alpha strike, leaving them progressively less able to respond to you.

Vect is still extremely expensive though. He only has 7 attacks on the charge, will will hit on a rerollable 3+ against most things, wound on a 3+, rerollable against any Eldar or T3 model (T4 on the charge after getting two pain tokens), and ignores armor saves. For 240 points. The only thing that'll really work well against is terminators (against which 10 incubi would work even better: they'd inflict seven wounds, for 220 points, instead of something like four for 240) or MCs. Most other things will just laugh off the damage and proceed to hammer him with enough attacks to break his shadow field. I don't think he's quite worth the points damage wise, unless one was just trying to pad an army list's points for lack of models, in which case he's not too bad, even if you get more value elsewhere, especially with the "seize on 4+" rule.

DorianGray wrote:Ok Vect + Baron means you're going first 80 or 85% of the time right?

If you FAIL that, you get a second chance of seizing the initiative 50% of the time.

(85% + 50%) / 2 = you're going first 67.5% of ALL games. Those are pretty good odds.

Huh?
If one's already going first 85% of the time, how can the % of the time actually drop? When one trys to seize it's in the 15% of games that one didn't win the inital roll right?

So if it is say a 80% chance to win the inital roll with the Baron, in 1/6th of these game your int will be stolen or -13.33%, still going first in 66.66%, factor in your 50% seize for the game in which one didn't win the roll +7.5%, so 74.16% of the time you'd be going first.

I don't think the Barons skews the roll that much (80+%) but I haven't done the maths.

I've taken my standard brute force RNG approach to solving probability problems, and gotten a consistent 67.7% result (with one million repetitions; computers are fun that way ). You have to consider, though, that there's a 1/6 chance of getting seized too, which negatively affects you more than it does your opponent at that point, meaning you have about a 62% chance of going first with Sathonyx. Throw Vect in there, and... it ends up at something like 73% of the time. Let's test this too... Yep, 72.6%. I'd include the script I used, but apparently you can't spoiler code blocks, the code block is giant, white, and full of syntax highlighting, and so would probably be a nuisance, and it's trying to close a less than comparison with a greater than sign, leaving it obnoxiously mangled.

Haha thanks. I don't understand your leap from the 62 to 72.6.
If one's going first ~62/100 then from the remaining 38/100 one's going to seize half, 38/100/2=19. So in 19 of the 38 remaining games you'll be going first, giving a total of 81/100 games?

seize on a 6 or 16.6%
vect seizes on a 4+ or 50%
deployment roll two dice vs one die. more tricky .... (note that 1/36 return a re-roll so its actually out of 35) odds are 125/210 or 59.5%

So ... 125/210*5/6 + 85/210*1/2 ... 880/1260 or 69.8% chance of winning ....

Lady Malys a better choice; you fail throw the the expensive units into reserve.

corrections (massive miss read NVM)

barron 21/35 or or 60% (.5% difference)

105/210 + 42/210 = 147/210 = 70%

Deployment with baron is D6 vs D6+1 not two die

ChrisCP wrote:Haha thanks. I don't understand your leap from the 62 to 72.6.
If one's going first ~62/100 then from the remaining 38/100 one's going to seize half, 38/100/2=19. So in 19 of the 38 remaining games you'll be going first, giving a total of 81/100 games?

The ~62% chance of going first is with Sathonyx alone, the 72.6% is with both Sathonyx and Vect. In the first case, you'll win the initial roll 67.7% of the time, assuming both you and your opponent always try to seize then 1/6th of that you'll have your initiative seized, so ~11% of the time you'll have won, but your opponent will seize, in contrast, you'll lose the initial roll ~32.3% of the time, and seize 1/6th of that, or ~5% of the time overall. So, overall you have a ~62% (67.7-11+5) chance of going first. Throw Vect in and instead of seizing 5% of the time, you seize ~16% of the time, so it's instead ~73% (67.7-11+16).

Tri wrote:seize on a 6 or 16.6%
vect seizes on a 4+ or 50%
deployment roll two dice vs one die. more tricky .... (note that 1/36 return a re-roll so its actually out of 35) odds are 125/210 or 59.5%

So ... 880/1260 or 69.8% chance of winning ....

Lady Malys a better choice; you fail throw the the expensive units into reserve.

They FAQed that, you redeploy before rolls to seize. Which is sad, because that makes it so much less useful.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:They FAQed that, you redeploy before rolls to seize. Which is sad, because that makes it so much less useful.

... do wonder who works these things out ... there's almost no point in her powers now. And the game start on the first turn, so it should be before that ...

ChrisCP wrote:Deployment with baron is D6 vs D6+1 not two die

corrected ...

barron 21/35 or or 60% (.5% difference)

105/210 + 42/210 = 147/210 = 70%
... so not much in it and still not worth risking a game on.

I'm not sure why you would ever deploy as if you have the first turn even with Vect. Dark Eldar are mobile enough that even from a conservative deployment they can get a very scary alpha strike going. Even if you are running a very aggressive assault based list I would get into the habit of deploying very carefully (as in assume they are going to seize and that you aren't) as things can go downhill so quickly otherwise.

For me the main problem with Vect is getting him across the field and into enough stuff to get his considerable points back. He is comparable to someone like Lysander or Gaz, essentially he is a beatstick and he is probably the best in the game in this role (and his points reflect that). The problem is that unlike Marines, Dark Eldar do not have a) Terminators (to provide a very durable bodyguard until he hits home) and b) Land Raiders (to drive him most of the way across the board safely). Raiders are just too fragile even with Flickerfields and giving each other cover, unless your opponent gives you a first turn charge you are always going to get stuck in the midfield (or worse) when your Raider gets destroyed T2. The Dais would have been a good way to make this tactic viable, but not being able to take any upgrades makes it pretty meh and basically pushes Vect into the 'not worth it at 2000pt' category. I certainly expect to see some lists based around him + the Baron are 'Ard Boyz though.

Tri wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:They FAQed that, you redeploy before rolls to seize. Which is sad, because that makes it so much less useful.

... do wonder who works these things out ... there's almost no point in her powers now. And the game start on the first turn, so it should be before that ...

ChrisCP wrote:Deployment with baron is D6 vs D6+1 not two die

corrected ...

barron 21/35 or or 60% (.5% difference)

105/210 + 42/210 = 147/210 = 70%
... so not much in it and still not worth risking a game on.

Hmm, the barons roll are still wrong I think.
*Goes and draws a sample space*
Okay...
There are 5 possible results that will cause a re-roll. (2,1) (3,2) (4,3) (5,6) [opponent is x] so we can count these as null, leaving 31 possible results.
Of those only 10 will gain an opponent the first turn (bear with me here) ie. DE have 21/31 or 0.6774193548387096... chance of winning the first roll.
Reduced by 1/6th (*5/6) gives 0.56451612900~ (this one is irrational afaict)
Take 1, multiply by 0.5=0.217741935blah chance the opponent will still go first
Therefore 78.22580% of the time DE will go first when feilding The Baron and Vect.

Did I miss a step?

ChrisCP wrote:Therefore 78.22580% of the time DE will go first when feilding The Baron and Vect.

Did I miss a step?

no i didn't change the fraction to 31, it was still 35... I'm half asleep this morning ...
105/186 + 42/186 = 147/186 = 79.0%
So it looks like they match (difference is a rounding error I hope). This is why maths teach says show your workings out ... so when you up you know why.

Still that's 1/5 you're going to be screwed over; I would still rather use other methods to win then trying to go first.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
... wait ... that sill not it

21/31*5/6 + 10/31*3/6
105/186 + 30/186
135/186
72.5%

....
ChrisCP you missed out the chance that veck would not steal. still taken me all morning to get this right ...

Hahaha, yes. That is why we ask for full working, that and so we can try to give you partial credit till it goes 'boom'
I would attribute ~.78 diff to rounding, I never had less than a MScalc worth of places and I think you've rounded twice, once with decimals and possibly with your fractions too.

One in 5 isn't actually too bad. It's always better to win the roll obvs and obvs one's going to go first half the time after that, but I feel (finally, can't belive I didn't do this before) having a number helps put the idea of a truly alpha strike deigned list not beyond imagination as a circuit army (after all if it's that strong on turn one...) while 1/5 of the time one's going to rn damage controll, it's not even a gaurenteed loss. The real question, is the potential damage of a T1-Alpha worth the sacrifice of a 'body'.

From what I've read of other (last codex) DE players, the Alpha or reserve tactic is still in high use, at 2500... The damage, oh the damage. If this type of goal is commonly used by people, or even used by one capable commander. I can see the bomber or raven being used not only in addition to ravages but over.

ChrisCP wrote:
Hmm, the barons roll are still wrong I think.
*Goes and draws a sample space*
Okay...
There are 5 possible results that will cause a re-roll. (2,1) (3,2) (4,3) (5,6) [opponent is x] so we can count these as null, leaving 31 possible results.
Of those only 10 will gain an opponent the first turn (bear with me here) ie. DE have 21/31 or 0.6774193548387096... chance of winning the first roll.
Reduced by 1/6th (*5/6) gives 0.56451612900~ (this one is irrational afaict)
Take 1, multiply by 0.5=0.217741935blah chance the opponent will still go first
Therefore 78.22580% of the time DE will go first when feilding The Baron and Vect.

Did I miss a step?

Up until the point where you're trying to factor in the chance of stealing with Vect that's correct. Remember that the percent of the time you're going to try to seize is 100 minus the original 67.7, or 32.2. Half of that is 16.1, which you then add onto the 56.4 figure, ending up with around 72.6%. The script I used to test the math there ends at the same conclusion.

In pseudo-code to avoid the giant white box and mangled lines of the code block:

1) Import the random function needed to generate integers, and the seed function to ensure the randomness of the results.
2) Create a tally of wins for each player.
3) Begin a loop through a set number of iterations (in this case, one million to ensure satisfactory precision).
3a) Begin a loop that will continue until either of two simulated die rolls (random integer between one and six) is larger.
3a1)Roll the two dice, A and B, adding one to A to represent Sathonyx's bonus.
3a2) If A is larger, roll another die, if it's six then B goes first, adding one to its respective tally.
3a3) If B is larger, roll another die, if it's four or higher then A goes first, adding one to its respective tally.
3a) If neither is higher, repeat the rolls, otherwise continue. (This line doesn't actually exist in the code, instead being part of the original 3a, added to clearly delineate the end of the loop in pseudocode)
3) If there are still iterations left to run, loop through the process again. (Neither does this line, being back in 3)
4) Display the number of player A's wins as divided by the total number of iterations run.

As this matches the predicted numbers down to the hundredths (and within about one and a half thousands, too, but that varies between runs), I'm confident that there's no bias introduced by the RNG it's running on, and that the numbers are solid.

Assuming that the above math is correct, it changes nothing. Why?

Let's explain this as a simple scenario. I'm running a standard DE list, so 3 ravagers, trueborn with blasters, some combat units, etc. Opponent is Mech Guard. We roll off for first turn, and my opponent wins, despite me having Sathonyx. My opponent sets up. I now have the choice of either reserving everything, or starting off as far forward as possible, and praying to God I seize the initiative.

I have a 50/50 chance of seizing the initiative with Vect. The problem is, if I start off in reserve, I don't WANT to seize the initiative. And if I start off deployed like I'm going to go first, with my units positioned forwards, and I miss the roll, I'm screwed. I'll be subjected to some horrible amounts of firepower before I can do anything. And odds are, I'll have lost the match before I've even begun.

Am I willing to risk that much on a 50/50 roll? Sathonyx is irrelevant, because his power takes place before deployment, and thus does not affect my setup strategy.

The answer for a competitive player would be no. You wouldn't want to risk the possibility of the whole match on a single die roll.

This is not to say there are not combinations where Vect does not work, as already said, a dark footdar list, or a DE leafblower do give him some potential. For for most DE lists? The risk is too great.

Nah, your maths is dodge

One must calculate the number of times one doesn't need to steal 21/35 **attachment here

Remove the 1/6 from that (21/31)*(5/6)=105/186=35/62=56.4 chance of going first while considering you opponent seizing and not considering your seizes.
*Thank you Sir Pseudonymous, turns out when one running numbers again and again, after work, one make errors. Always show your working so poeple can point them out kids!*
Your opponent wins the initial roll 10/31 times, with Vect you seize half the time, so that ends up at 5/31 for you to seize. 5/31*6/6 = 30/186, 105/186+30/186=135/186=.7258 or 72.6%.
*Thank you again for the working *

I'm faily sure you've somehow managed to add a 21.77 to 43.55 or close to (thanks to our gratuitious rounding) as that gives 65.32... if you aren't using incorrect process (I don't program and it's hard for me to follow your steps atm.)

As was said, you don't deploy forwards. You cluster behind cover and use your mobility to inflict an alpha strike on one flank of the enemy, taking care to stay out of range of the other flank. Cripple everything that can shoot you, forcing the rest of their line to either sit in place and wait to be destroyed at your leisure, or move and abandon their positions. The most you're likely to see are 48" guns, which have a large blindspot in at least one corner, even if in the center of their deployment zone, made larger with nightshields. As compared to coming in piecemeal to be torn apart where you can't apply overwhelming strength, this looks pretty good, especially when you have a good chance of still going first.