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People seem to have spent a lot of time thinking about how to get as many command points as possible, but I haven't seen much discussion of how to actually use those points for maximum impact. Command re-rolls are particularly interesting because they're cheap and you're going to have countless opportunities to use them starting from turn 1. Now, while there will definitely be times when you can see that if you don't use one to reroll a missed bolter shot you'll lose the game, generally things are going to be a lot less clear. You'll be weighing the value of saving the CP for later against what you hope to get out of a successful roll right now. So how should we think about this? And how should the availability of command re-rolls change the way we think about strategy?

Effects of a re-roll:
One important thing to keep in mind is that rolls at the end of long sequences tend to be more valuable than rolls at the beginning. You get a lot more out of rolling for damage than you do out of rolling to hit. If you roll a 1 when rolling your d6 for a Lascannon's damage, using a re-roll there has an expected value of 2.5 unsaved wounds, regardless of the target's toughness or invulnerable save. That can be a pretty big deal. By comparison, using your reroll on the shot that you missed only has an EV of about 1.5 unsaved wounds (depending on what you're shooting -- if the target has a 3++ then it's just 0.5 unsaved wounds).

An important exception is when you're rolling to see how many shots you get. If you have a weapon with a Lascannon profile but d6 shots, rerolling a 1-shot roll has an expected value of 3.9 unsaved wounds (against something like T8 4+).

Probably the biggest-impact rolls people commonly see are for charge distance. This is kind of like rolling for a number of shots -- this roll determines whether you get to make a whole bunch of other rolls. But whether you should try to re-roll one of your charge dice will depend not just on how mean your unit is but also on how likely the re-roll is to put you over the top. This is actually pretty complicated. For almost every possible needed charge distance, there are many ways to fail to roll that distance, and then you have to decide whether to re-roll only one of the dice. If you need an 8" charge and you rolled a 6 and a 1, then your re-roll gives you a 5/6 chance of succeeding. But if you rolled a 4 and a 3 then you only have a 1/2 chance of succeeding.

Strategic implications:
The big strategic impact of on-demand re-rolls is that particularly important rolls are much more likely to go your way than basic mathhammer indicates. Unless you have a ridiculous number of Lascannons, they don't really do d6 damage. They have pseudo-melta. The first time you roll a 1 for damage in each shooting phase, you'll re-roll it. Most of the time you won't roll two 1s in the same shooting phase. Rerolling 1s gives your Lascannons an average damage of 3.92, up from 3.5. If you re-roll 2s also then expected damage goes up to 4.17. The melta rule (roll 2d6 and take the highest) gives an average damage of ~4.5.

Likewise you're actually a lot more likely to make your charges. You have a 58% chance of making a 7" charge on 2d6. If you were to always re-roll the lowest die for a failed charge, you'd have an 81% chance of making the charge. 9" is an important charge range with the new Deep Strike rules. On 2d6 that's only a 28% shot. With a re-roll it's 52%. 9" is the new 7".

Invulnerable saves get better on demand now too. Unless you're just drowning him in heavy weapons fire, Guilliman might as well have a rerollable 3++ against the biggest guns -- he's going to use a re-roll if he fails his 3++ against a weapon that expects to put multiple wounds on him. Don't count on mathhammer expected values to tell you how many Lascannons you need to bring down something that can make use of re-rolls to selectively protect itself from the best guns.

Yeah, i think you've pretty much hit the nail right on the head when it comes to the best ways to use the re-rolls.

I think saving one for an unlucky HQ transport casualty is a must for some, at least until you disembark

Perils and Explodes results - I've seen already just how crippling those can be.

Dionysodorus wrote:
...starting from turn 1.

Even earlier than that. I can see people re-rolling the Seize the Initiative roll. I know it is not the most likely roll to succeed but it can really turn the game around. As a Guard player with 12+cp, I will almost always go second. Blowing a point on a first turn chance seems like a good deal to me.

Huh, I hadn't thought about Seizing the Initiative, but that's going to be a pretty huge command point for the super fast first turn charge armies like some Nid builds or Harlequins.

 Nightlord1987 wrote:
I think saving one for an unlucky HQ transport casualty is a must for some, at least until you disembark

You roll dice equal to the number of people in the transport and then you can allocate casaulties freely.

Can even use it to re-roll the dice for who places the first obj right!

This sets off a chain of events you might wanna make sure you go first or last in for MoW missions.

e.g.
MoW have 6 objs
You roll off
Say you win - place obj 1
They place obj 2
place obj 3
They place obj 4
place obj 5
They place obj 6

Since they placed the last obj they get to pick the deployment style e.g. hammer an anvil etc and the side/quater to deploy in

Then you setup your first unit because they picked the deployment type and then you alternate, person who deploys first goes first.

If you know you have 2 less units than them to deploy then by wining the roll you ain't getting much from this, you'd maybe be better off using a cmd point to re-roll your roll off to try and losse so you can have control over the deployment type (which is a massive thing)

Think the ET missions ary a bit, but fro what i can see using a cmd point for these deployment re-rolls could be a key consideration

I used a command point to re-roll a 6+ armor save on the last lychguard in a unit. Ended up getting three of the four dead models back.

Math is for squares.

Trickstick wrote:

Dionysodorus wrote:
...starting from turn 1.

Even earlier than that. I can see people re-rolling the Seize the Initiative roll. I know it is not the most likely roll to succeed but it can really turn the game around. As a Guard player with 12+cp, I will almost always go second. Blowing a point on a first turn chance seems like a good deal to me.

As a fellow Guard player I agree. 2nd turn will be a distant dream for the majority of us will all those MSU. Re-rolling that 6+ just for the chance of going first, especially against some Turn 1 charge lists, is a must considering the crazy amount of CP we can accrue.


There will be a lot of math-hammer on the most appropriate point to use CP. However, there is always this...

Arachnofiend wrote:I used a command point to re-roll a 6+ armor save on the last lychguard in a unit. Ended up getting three of the four dead models back.

Math is for squares.

Command Points. Smoke 'em if you got 'em.