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This is something I have read a few times with no real answer, so where better to ask it than here!

When building an army, do you go for higher strength or just choose the multiple shots route. I'm constantly changing my ming when building my Tau army, as it's more fun to roll vast amounts of dice, but it's probably more sensible to go for the 'killer' weapons.

I'm sure there is a mathmatical way of deciding the best course of action, but I really am too lazy for all that. I just want to know what to give my riptide!

A healthy mixture of both is the best option when creating a balanced list.

The Division Of Joy wrote:
This is something I have read a few times with no real answer, so where better to ask it than here!

When building an army, do you go for higher strength or just choose the multiple shots route. I'm constantly changing my ming when building my Tau army, as it's more fun to roll vast amounts of dice, but it's probably more sensible to go for the 'killer' weapons.

I'm sure there is a mathmatical way of deciding the best course of action, but I really am too lazy for all that. I just want to know what to give my riptide!

Because 40K is based on a d6 system, more shots will always trump higher strength.

If i have to kill an AV11 vehicle, do i want 4 S7 shots, or 1 S9 shot? Well given the odds to hit followed by a damage result to kill the tank, having more shots is far more reliable than 1 strong shot. Not to discount the 'hail mary' rocket launcher/lascannon that can take out a vehicle here and there, the overall more reliable choice is more shots.

Vs infantry and monstrous creatures the answer is the same - even if the weapons with more shots don't ignore the armor saves of the targets in question, it's typically better to force terminators to take a handful of armor saves, rather than killing 1 or 2 outright with AP2 weapons. Again, ap2 weapons have value here because they do kill better, but in an overall list I like to build towards volume of shots so that I can engage a wide variety of targets.

The Division Of Joy wrote:

I'm sure there is a mathmatical way of deciding the best course of action, but I really am too lazy for all that. I just want to know what to give my riptide!

Unfortunately the real answer is that it depends on the probability of everything. To play with the example from the previous post consider trying to penetrate AV11 with either 1 Str9 shot or 2 Str 7 shots. For S9 you have a 2/3 chance of penetration, and S7 you have a 1/3. The expected value of either approach is 2/3rds of a pen (whatever that means.) So from a really simple mathhammer approach either one is as good as the other. Simple mathhammer sucks though (and not just because tactics.) Look at it from the other direction; what's the probability of NOT getting a pen? With S9 you have a 1/3 chance of not getting a pen, but with 2 S7 shots you have a 4/9 chance, so if your main concern is getting at least one pen, the single S9 shot is slightly better. Now, what about 4 S7 shots or adding in tankhunters? Then the single S9 shot is probably worse. What if we're looking at AV12 or 13? Gotta work out the math.

In general, however, rolling more dice will lead to a more predictable distribution, which is helpful for minimizing risk. If I roll 60 dice, it's pretty reasonable to assume I'll get somewhere around 10 6s. If I roll 6 dice, there's really no good reason to expect that I'll roll a six.

This is a purely mathematical problem. However, if cover is available, wound spamming has a tendency to be more efficacious than weapons with good AP.

Well you still need high str/ap weapons for damaging high armour vehicles, so obviously you're gonna need some S7+ weapons in your army.
But otherwise, purely from a statistics point of view, more dice rolls usually yield more results.
This might either be template/blast weapons or weapons with high number of shots (heavy bolter, etc.) and the question itself is partially the answer to why I like missile launchers so much.


What I do is I look at who I'm playing against, then fit out the army accordingly.
If it's a tournament or some game where you don't get to know who you will face, then it is back to the age old tradition of balancing it all out smoothly among your ranks

With the hull point mechanic, S7 AP 4 ROF 2 is almost always better than S8 AP 3 ROF 1. In fact, it IS better against any vehicle you would actually use these weapons against. These weapons are both ineffective vs AV 13 and above. You need melta and lascannon for those AV.