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We also posted an interesting article about the idea of variance as opposed to average. There is a tool within the article that can be used to help determine the variance of various attacks.

Hopefully this is a useful article for the community here!

https://www.grimdarkfilthycasuals.com/going-above-the-average-understanding-variance/

A good article. Thanks!

 wannabmoy wrote:
We also posted an interesting article about the idea of variance as opposed to average. There is a tool within the article that can be used to help determine the variance of various attacks.

Hopefully this is a useful article for the community here!

https://www.grimdarkfilthycasuals.com/going-above-the-average-understanding-variance/

This is a great article (and tool!) that is very helpful to the community. If I may offer some feedback?

The final paragraph is the crunchy bit that most readers will probably find the most enlightening. I would suggest that you may want to expand on this with two elements:

An explanation of how to calculate the variance
Demonstrating this calculation at work using the lead-in example of the Heavy versus Cleave

Finally, whilst you do discuss the benefits/dangers of variance, it might be worth expanding slightly on this with the general strategy point you allude to:

(A) given a choice, don’t rely on statistically likely outcomes with low variance, if the outcome is unlikely to succeed and success underpins victory, and
(B) vice versa: given a choice, don’t rely on statistically likely outcomes with high variance, if the outcome is likely to succeed and success underpins victory.

(I.E. don’t try a short play at the 50 and 10 with 15 seconds on the clock, but also don’t Hail Mary at the 1 yard line on 1st down...)

Great feedback and thanks all!

Appreciate taking the time to read and to share your thoughts. We will expand on this in the future!

Its a good article.
This is why lots of weaker guns are typically better than one powerful one. (Although to a degree it comes down to points).

Imagine you had say a lascannon,
or a new weapon, which was D6 shots, but each was S9, AP-3, 1 damage.
Shoot them at say a Rhino, so you need 3+/3+ and they get a 6+ save.

Mathematically on crude X*Y averages they would look the same - you just have the D6 at the start rather than the end. In practice, the single lascannon has a high chance (about 62%) to do nothing. Whereas the D6 shot weapon does nothing only about 20.5%~ of the time.

But the Lascannon has about a 6~% chance to do the full 6 damage. Wheras the D6 shot weapon has the same potential, but the chances are incredibly low - sub 0.1% or something. You have a bit over 1% chance to do 5 damage.

What this means is you will have games where you lascannons on form and your opponent is crushed. But you will also have a lot where they do nothing and you lose. By contrast the D6 shot gun is much more reliable at doing "some damage", so you can more reliably predict what you will kill (as you chip stuff down) unless the dice go stone dead.