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Hey everyone, I've been playing daemons a while, and I've been experimenting a bit, but haven't really come to any conclusion on when to use or not switch out the screamers attack for the single lamprey bite.
I know to use it against armor obviusly and against terminators or just 2+ armor in general, not sure about power armor though. For lower armor saves i just go for the regular CC hits, but yeah I think I'm just unsure
how the more hits compare to the fewer high AP hits have against power armor.

Thanks in advance.

The math is simple, will 3 S4AP- hits deal more damage than a single S5AP2 hit?
(we can ignore the to-hit part, as its the same no matter what attack you choose)


So, power armor blocks 2/3 of the AP- attacks, its like you hit once. so the higher S value of the bite gives a slight edge.
Assuming you didn't get extra attacks for the charge, if you did-its a tie, so you might as well get the extra attacks to curve the bell.

If the marine has an invul save for some reason, the math changes. against a SoB 6+ or combat shields, than the bite is till superior (unless on charge, than extra attacks win), against a 5+ or better, the flurry of attacks is better.

 BoomWolf wrote:
The math is simple, will 3 S4AP- hits deal more damage than a single S5AP2 hit?
(we can ignore the to-hit part, as its the same no matter what attack you choose)


So, power armor blocks 2/3 of the AP- attacks, its like you hit once. so the higher S value of the bite gives a slight edge.
Assuming you didn't get extra attacks for the charge, if you did-its a tie, so you might as well get the extra attacks to curve the bell.

If the marine has an invul save for some reason, the math changes. against a SoB 6+ or combat shields, than the bite is till superior (unless on charge, than extra attacks win), against a 5+ or better, the flurry of attacks is better.

thank you for the response, and yeah I'm terrible stats, so greatly appreciated

It is a little more complex than this. While the mean results are the same - there is a huge variation in the number of potential wounds you can inflict with each.

9 Screamers can kill at most 9 marines with their Lampreys Bite - they can take down (in a perfect world) 27 marines. So part of the equation is how many wounds you need to cause.

For example, you assault 10 marines sitting on an objective in the last game turn. You may not want to use the bite, since it will kill at most 9 marines and you need to wipe the unit.

In general, if the mean is the same - I would go for the higher volume of attacks too. It tends to reduce the variation of the result. It is not inconceivable to miss/fail to wound with all 9 attacks from a squad. It is much harder to fail that hard with 36 attacks. Same goes for vehicles - 36 attacks, netting 24 hits, strips 4 hull points from AV 10 rear armor, will not explode the vehicle and is more likely overall to net at least a single hull point in damage. 9 attacks with Armourbane have much more variations in the result (6 hits, ~4 Glances/Pens).

With a WS 3, Screamers will typically be hitting with half their attacks.

Lamprey's Bite gives 4.5 hits with 2.97 wounds with no saves.

Basic attacks. 27 swings, 13.5 hits, 6.75 wounds with 2.2 failed saves.
Charging: 36 swings, 18 hits, 9 wounds, 2.97 failed saves.

So in general, vs T4 Marines with a 3+ save the Lamprey's Bite is just as effective as charging.

Don't they also have a hammer of wrath attack, or do jetbikes not get that? In any case, my thing with 3+ saves is that if you pile the wounds on, your opponent can roll poorly and give you a great combat result. I would probably rather just use my regular attacks against power armor and let them fail their saves. The math does change also when you go up against higher toughness and the strength 5 matters more. In that case, you gain .25 wounds by using the lamprey's bite. The other thing to be wary of, however, is that the law of large numbers dictates that you know what you'll be getting more often when you roll a lot of dice. Meaning that you'll get closer to your expected number of hits and wounds when you roll a lot of dice. When you roll just the lamprey's, the swings (both positive and negative) will be greater. Meaning you could have a great round or a terrible round more often than with the regular attacks. Gamble as you will

Jetbikes do get HoW attacks. Those are almost impossible to figure since it requires BTB with enemy models.

luke1705 wrote:
The other thing to be wary of, however, is that the law of large numbers dictates that you know what you'll be getting more often when you roll a lot of dice. ...Gamble as you will

This was exactly my point, using expected values in these calculations really misrepresents the range of potential outcomes. Mathhammer generally uses EV for ease - but what you really want to look at is a probability curve, and determine the % chance of achieving your desired goal and to determine what variation you are willing to tolerate.