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Im still looking over what to make my renegade knight as, and im curious if the RFBG is as bad as I think it is. It has high stats, but 2d6 is SUPER random.

It sort of sucks, for how many points it is. The 100 pts on top of a Knight chassis hurts. You do however, get a Leman Russ shooting, with better movement and 3+ to hit (usually).

A bit of a points drop would help it, but even in the Knights 'Dex, it remains 100 points.

I was pretty shocked they dropped the cost of the Avenger and not the RFBC.

It's a lemon russ - that costs 3 times as much...it sucks.

It’s ubiquitous if nothing else.

2D6 shots can at tackle a horde.

It’s Strength and Damage can at least worry a given (not Super Heavy) tank.

The Big Melta lacks the rate of fire against infantry, and the Avenger lacks oomph against Tanks and their ilk.

It’s by no means my first, but when points are tight, and a decision must be made, I find it hard to fault precisely because it’s ubiquitous. So equipped, there’s little that Knight can’t deal with, even if it doesn’t have a clearly defined preferential target.

On mine, I settled on the Thermal cannon and the Avenger since you only get two chaos weapons shields in the kit. The cost of the battlefield cannon doesn't justify the randomness to me. If I want a BC I'd just field a defiler for less than half the cost.

It's worth it when you roll a 10, 11 or 12. It's overcosted but functional when you roll 7-9. It's complete trash when you roll 6 or less.

There's an expected damage comparison chart on 1d4chan.

The Avenger Gatling Cannon beats the Rapid Fire Battle Cannon against every single standard defense profile except T7, and even then it's not a massive difference. Higher or lower Toughness and the Gatling Cannon wins, against some things very significantly.

Also, does 72" range provide genuine benefits in a game? That's more or less the entirety of a 6'x4' board with a minor exception of corner to corner (in which case you can still move). There's something to be said about having the ability to shoot anything on the table within sight.

 Elbows wrote:
Also, does 72" range provide genuine benefits in a game? That's more or less the entirety of a 6'x4' board with a minor exception of corner to corner (in which case you can still move). There's something to be said about having the ability to shoot anything on the table within sight.

Yeah, I mean that's it really. That's the only thing that the gun really has going for it.

If you plan to camp in the corner and be a gun platform then it's not a bad gun to do that. Except at that point you might as well just take a Spearhead full of Basilisks or something of course!

 Elbows wrote:
Also, does 72" range provide genuine benefits in a game? That's more or less the entirety of a 6'x4' board with a minor exception of corner to corner (in which case you can still move). There's something to be said about having the ability to shoot anything on the table within sight.

72" inches on paper is a hilarious length, you pretty much get whatever you want...But how often is that REALLY important? I can count the number of times a weapon needed more than 48" to hit it's target on one hand in the year i've played.

Sure, but the Avenger is 36" right? I'm just saying that mathhammer etc. should account for the "always in range" portion of the battle-cannon over both the Avenger and Thermal cannons which are half it's range.

I also tend to play in larger games, and on tables which are occasionally 6x5 etc., so I'm quite surprised how often I wish to engage something which is beyond 36" or 48" distance. It's just something to consider based on what you play and how.

 vaklor4 wrote:

 Elbows wrote:
Also, does 72" range provide genuine benefits in a game? That's more or less the entirety of a 6'x4' board with a minor exception of corner to corner (in which case you can still move). There's something to be said about having the ability to shoot anything on the table within sight.

72" inches on paper is a hilarious length, you pretty much get whatever you want...But how often is that REALLY important? I can count the number of times a weapon needed more than 48" to hit it's target on one hand in the year i've played.

It depends what you are playing and what your opponents are playing.

It is relevant in the artillery castle mirror. Such lists commonly bunch up in a far corner, to be as far as possible from the enemy army. In the mirror match where both armies are doing this the difference between 48 and 72 would be very important.

Of course, an Imperial Knight doesn't want to be castling up, so for the purposes of using the Rapid Fire Battle Cannon, it's a fairly moot point.

That the Avenger maths out to be better against almost every possible target in the game makes the new points disparity between the two all the more confusing. I guess Games Workshop are just gently nudging hold-outs to embrace the gatling goodness?

The other thing to remember of course is that it isn't always a competition between the RFBC and the AGC. On an Imperial Knight you can't take two AGCs, so taking the RFBC as your secondary weapon isn't too bad. There can be more reason to take it over the Thermal Cannon, depending on what you expect your opponent to field. So yeah, not totally useless.

Renegade Knights would probably love to dual wield Gatling Cannons though, if it wasn't such a pain to get a second separately!

Stux wrote:
There's an expected damage comparison chart on 1d4chan.

The Avenger Gatling Cannon beats the Rapid Fire Battle Cannon against every single standard defense profile except T7, and even then it's not a massive difference. Higher or lower Toughness and the Gatling Cannon wins, against some things very significantly.

I mean that's the point, right? It's a big cannon that's better at taking on bigger things.

As for how much better - this accounts for D3 damage in real terms:



RFBC vs AGC
1 Turn - 3% vs 0%
2 Turns - 25% vs 13% (this is precisely why you take it)

The RFBC is twice as likely to kill that tank by turn 2.

Honestly I wouldn't think shooting at a T7 vehicle would be in my priority for the AGC. I'd use it for mowing down infantry or light vehicles. However it would be the opposite if I were running the BFBC.

 Daedalus81 wrote:


I mean that's the point, right? It's a big cannon that's better at taking on bigger things.

Except it's not really. The RFBC is ONLY better Vs precisely T7. T8+ (up to T11 anyway), the Gatling Cannon is better again.

And that would be fine, except the difference on T7 is fairly slim, so taking the Gatling is extremely more versatile for only a minor penalty against one specific profile.

Also, I'm pretty certain your maths is wrong there. Peak damage output for a Gatling Cannon is 24 wounds, so it's definitely not 0% to kill a Pred in one turn. It's not very likely, but it's definitely possible.

A gatling cannon will on average deal 3.04 wounds to a predator.

The Raven stratagem Order of Companions affects the RFBC more than any other questoris class weapon.

Re-roll 1s increases your number of successes by 1/6. So instead of having one success you would have 7/6 success. Using this we can determine the effect of Order Of Companions stratagem on different weapons. Because, number of shot roll, hit rolls, wound rolls and damage rolls are sequential they all feed into each other (so we can multiply them).

Note as we are using ratios number of shots, ballistic skills, strength and damage become irrelevant.

Heavy stubber/avenger: rolls to hit and to wound. So its base output is 100% or 1. With re-roll 1s to hit and to wound it becomes 7/6 * 7/6 = 49/36 or 136%.

Ironstorm pod: rolls for number of shots, to hit and to wound. So its base output is 100% or 1. With re-roll 1s for number shots, to hit and to wound it becomes 7/6 * 7/6 * 7/6 = 343/216 or 159%.

Stormspear pod/melta gun: rolls to hit, to wound and damage. So its base output is 100% or 1. With re-roll 1s to hit, to wound and damage it becomes 7/6 * 7/6 * 7/6 = 343/216 or 159%.

Thermal Cannon: rolls for number of shots, to hit, to wound and damage. So its base output is 100% or 1. With re-roll for number of shots, to hit, to wound and damage it becomes 7/6 * 7/6 * 7/6 * 7/6 = 2401/1296 or 185%.

The Rapid Fire Battle Cannon is a bit different. a 1d6 number of shots weapon with re-roll ones does increase its output by 16.66%. However, 2d6 re-rolling 1s means you go from 58% chance of rolling 7 or more to a 73% chance of rolling 7 or more. That's a 25% increase.

Rapid Fire Battle Cannon: rolls for number of shots, to hit, to wound and damage. So its base output is 100% or 1. With re-roll for number of shots, to hit, to wound and damage it becomes 5/4 * 7/6 * 7/6 * 7/6 = 1715/864 or 199%.

So depending on the weapon Order of Companions stratagem can give you between 36-99% increase in damage output (assuming my maths is right).

So the avenger gets a 35% increase, and the RFBC gets a 99% increase. Obviously all these calculations assume you are shooting a target with unlimited wounds and theirs no damage getting wasted on overkill.

So with Order of Companions RFBG is pretty brutal.

I’m pretty sure that’s bad math. The chance of success of a re-roll is the same as the chance of success of the original roll, which means it’s not an automatic +16.6% chance to hit.

SJ

 jeffersonian000 wrote:
I’m pretty sure that’s bad math. The chance of success of a re-roll is the same as the chance of success of the original roll, which means it’s not an automatic +16.6% chance to hit.

SJ

My understanding is re-roll 1s always results in a 16.6% increase in success, regardless of the roll required to hit/wound.

Chance to hit on a 3+:

4/6

Chance to hit on a 3+ with a re-roll 1s:

4/6 + 1/6*4/6

So let X be your percentage chance to hit:

X + 1/6 * X

(1+1/6) * X

Which is exactly a 1/6 increase over X. Therefore re-roll 1s always equals a 1/6 or 16.6 percent increase in success, regardless of what you need to roll to succeed. If that makes sense?

 Elbows wrote:
Sure, but the Avenger is 36" right? I'm just saying that mathhammer etc. should account for the "always in range" portion of the battle-cannon over both the Avenger and Thermal cannons which are half it's range.

I also tend to play in larger games, and on tables which are occasionally 6x5 etc., so I'm quite surprised how often I wish to engage something which is beyond 36" or 48" distance. It's just something to consider based on what you play and how.

Thing is 36 and 12 range means you threaten anything. Los will also stop sometimes. I rarely find 24 plus 5 move unable to shoot due to range


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 jeffersonian000 wrote:
I’m pretty sure that’s bad math. The chance of success of a re-roll is the same as the chance of success of the original roll, which means it’s not an automatic +16.6% chance to hit.

SJ

18 shots hitting on 3+ with reroll. Average is 14 hits. Over 12 normally that's 1/6.

12 shots hitting on 4+. 7 hits over 6, 1/6 boost.

18 shots hitting 5+, 7 hits over 6. Again 1/6

Stux wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:


I mean that's the point, right? It's a big cannon that's better at taking on bigger things.

Except it's not really. The RFBC is ONLY better Vs precisely T7. T8+ (up to T11 anyway), the Gatling Cannon is better again.

And that would be fine, except the difference on T7 is fairly slim, so taking the Gatling is extremely more versatile for only a minor penalty against one specific profile.

Also, I'm pretty certain your maths is wrong there. Peak damage output for a Gatling Cannon is 24 wounds, so it's definitely not 0% to kill a Pred in one turn. It's not very likely, but it's definitely possible.

"Math" is correct (it's a simulator that rolls the dice over 100,000 iterations). It's not 0%, but low enough to round down to 0%.

"Peak" damage on the RFBC is 42. You keep saying the difference is slim, but being twice as capable to get the job done in 2 turns or less is incredibly important in a game that goes 4 or 5 turns.

Having looked at the codex, the AGC to me feels the weapon your going to go to most which means its less AGC vrs RFBC its more RFBC vrs TC. The RFBC at Xpts feels like it needs to be alot better than the TC at 3/4Xpts to be worthwhile. It does have a more all comers option to it, but with carpace weapons you can make your knight very take all comers.

Ice_can wrote:
Having looked at the codex, the AGC to me feels the weapon your going to go to most which means its less AGC vrs RFBC its more RFBC vrs TC. The RFBC at Xpts feels like it needs to be alot better than the TC at 3/4Xpts to be worthwhile. It does have a more all comers option to it, but with carpace weapons you can make your knight very take all comers.

Thermal Cannon is going to be better just by sheer will from the AP.

TC shooting for a 5 round game for 10 games:
2,2,3,2,1,1,2,1,2,2,2 (number of predator equivalent kills)
3,3,3,2,1,2,2,2,2,2,1 (half range)

RFBC shooting for a 5 round game for 10 games:
1,1,2,1,1,2,2,1,1,1

But when they face a 5++...

TC
0,1,2,0,1,2,1,0,1,0
0,3,1,1,0,2,2,1,1,2 (when in half range)

RFBC
1,2,1,1,1,1,1,2,0,1

Those zeroes are what people remember. Sometimes the threes, too, but not as often.