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With 9th edition which defense stat offers the most "value"?

Example: Is a Gravis Armor model with Toughness 5 / 3+ armor BETTER than a Bladeguard Vet with Toughness 4 / 2+ armor and 4+ invul?

At what point is the other preferable?

I would think with all the AP in the game an invul is best. But where does the line fall? Can a T5 be more valuable? I am seeing people plotting all T5 armies with Heavy Intercessors. But limiting yourself to only T5 and up seems to miss out on the very durable Bladeguard Vets and Terminators with Stormshields!

What you think? Am I missing something here?

This is not really a rules question.

That being said the answer is "depends". It always depends on what you are being attacked by.

That high toughness and fancy Invulnerable Save don't mean jack against S 3 AP 0, but Toughness 5 is pretty good as S 10 is very rare while S 4 is very common.

That Save 2+ doesn't mean anything when a Meltagun is pointed in your direction.

Thanks for the reply. I looked at the many forums and wasn't sure where to put this topic. Is there a better forum that i missed?

This could potentially go in the tactics thread, but even here it isn't really out of place.

To answer your question.
8th was dominated by invul saves. You could get them quite high and cheap, and toward the end of the edition, the AP had reached really high values.

After the SM doctrine nerf, and the release of the new SM codex, the AP has been reigned in quite a lot and the invul saves have been reduced. Armor saves are getting increased, and we are starting to see more rules that tamper with enemy invul saves.

Additionally, the popular high AP weapons used to be damage 2 or single shot high damage. The damage 2 ones now have a lot of counters out there, and have lost popularity

The result is that at the present moment, invul and armor are quite balanced IMO.

If we're talking actual tanks, I'd rather have a 2+ instead of a 3+ 5++. The 2+ is equal against AP-3, better against AP0, 1, and 2, and only falls behind against AP-4 or better. So as long as you can keep your tank away from actual AT weapons, it's more durable, whereas something with a 3+ 5++ defensive profile will be easier for your opponent to chew up with mid-strength mid-AP weapons like heavy bolters or autocannons. But that's just my opinion. YMMV.

When I make most tactical decisions there really are only a few types of different targets:

- Chaff. Has one wound, bad armor or low toughness or both, usually has strength in numbers.
- Elite. Has two wounds and good saves.
- Light armor. Everything with 3-9 wounds, 5+ toughness. Bikes, gravis, landspeeder, daemon prince, dreadnought, all the same to me.
- Tanks. T7/8 3+ armor, 10+ wounds, no invulnerable safe.
- Heavy armor. Large number of wounds, invulnerable saves or other damage reducing abilities. Usually requires a good chunk of your army to kill.
All these categories have weapons which are especially good at killing them, if you brought a TAC list and aren't facing heavy skew, you should be able to handle them.
Which brings me to my last category:
- Annoying gak. This stuff should belong in one of the above categories but has abilities which reduce the efficiency of weapons good at killing them. Dark Angel terminators are a great example of this, as inner circle and storm shields neuter overcharged plasma, but so are plaguebringers, blightlord terminators, Thrakka or c'tan. Essentially you need to improvise to kill them, but often mortal wounds still work good enough.

Back to the OP - bringing gravis armor instead of blade vets changes what weapons are good at killing them. If you bring an army with all gravis, most S8/2 damage weapons will be only wounding your army on 3s and lose damage to overkill. On the other hand, most weapons which are good at killing gravis usually have low number of shots and high AP, so the are bad at killing 4++ bladeguard.
The idea behind gravis spam is to eliminate the "Elite" category completely, so any weapons your opponent brought to handle chaff or elite units don't have any good targets. At that point bringing bladeguard just increases your damage output, as 4++ by itself isn't powerful enough to put them into the "annoying gak" category.

Thanks all. So I am thinking that a blend will work best. 5 Heavy Inter paired with 3 bladeguards to march up together and hold objectives. Then outriders or Inceptors for speed and punch. And Eradicators to mop up...

 CuJotheWolf wrote:
Thanks all. So I am thinking that a blend will work best. 5 Heavy Inter paired with 3 bladeguards to march up together and hold objectives. Then outriders or Inceptors for speed and punch. And Eradicators to mop up...

Eradicators would be your main anti tank option, they're not there to mop up, that would be more for you intercessors who are also there to hold objectives.

 CuJotheWolf wrote:
With 9th edition which defense stat offers the most "value"?

Example: Is a Gravis Armor model with Toughness 5 / 3+ armor BETTER than a Bladeguard Vet with Toughness 4 / 2+ armor and 4+ invul?

At what point is the other preferable?

I would think with all the AP in the game an invul is best. But where does the line fall? Can a T5 be more valuable? I am seeing people plotting all T5 armies with Heavy Intercessors. But limiting yourself to only T5 and up seems to miss out on the very durable Bladeguard Vets and Terminators with Stormshields!

What you think? Am I missing something here?

The only thing that matters is pts. Sometimes units with good armour saves are undercosted, sometimes the units with good invulnerable saves are undercosted. Simply picking the units with good armour saves or with an invulnerable save will get you nowhere. Putting an exact value on a pt of toughness, invul or regular save is hard and there are other factors that come into play. It'd be more useful to ask about individual units whether they are worth bringing and what the best loadout is for them.

If we take T4 3+ Sv as the base, adding 1 to T increases survivability against S4 50%, S5 33%, S8/9 25%. Adding getting a 2+/4++ increases survivability against AP- 100%, AP-1 50%, AP-2 33%, AP-3 67%, AP-4/-5 100%. Having a 2+/4++ is much better than having an extra point of Toughness to a unit with a 3+ Sv. https://1d4chan.org/wiki/MathHammer

Edit: linked the wrong 1d4chan article https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Warhammer_40,000/Tactics_(9E)#Combat_101.

 vict0988 wrote:

 CuJotheWolf wrote:
With 9th edition which defense stat offers the most "value"?

Example: Is a Gravis Armor model with Toughness 5 / 3+ armor BETTER than a Bladeguard Vet with Toughness 4 / 2+ armor and 4+ invul?

At what point is the other preferable?

I would think with all the AP in the game an invul is best. But where does the line fall? Can a T5 be more valuable? I am seeing people plotting all T5 armies with Heavy Intercessors. But limiting yourself to only T5 and up seems to miss out on the very durable Bladeguard Vets and Terminators with Stormshields!

What you think? Am I missing something here?

The only thing that matters is pts. Sometimes units with good armour saves are undercosted, sometimes the units with good invulnerable saves are undercosted. Simply picking the units with good armour saves or with an invulnerable save will get you nowhere. Putting an exact value on a pt of toughness, invul or regular save is hard and there are other factors that come into play. It'd be more useful to ask about individual units whether they are worth bringing and what the best loadout is for them.

If we take T4 3+ Sv as the base, adding 1 to T increases survivability against S4 50%, S5 33%, S8/9 25%. Adding getting a 2+/4++ increases survivability against AP- 100%, AP-1 50%, AP-2 33%, AP-3 67%, AP-4/-5 100%. Having a 2+/4++ is much better than having an extra point of Toughness to a unit with a 3+ Sv. https://1d4chan.org/wiki/MathHammer

You are the man. This is what I was looking for and google was failing me. I knew all units are different and hold different value in themselves and skill. BUT was wondering if it was more valuable to have +1T over the 2+/4++ at T4. And this shows that obviously a Heavy Intercessor survivability is better for hold and shoot (if you can afford the points) over a regular Intercessor (as long as you keep them out of melee). This just shows that having a ton of T5+ over taking T4 with saves doesn't mean better survival against most or everything.

 CuJotheWolf wrote:

Spoiler:

 vict0988 wrote:

 CuJotheWolf wrote:
With 9th edition which defense stat offers the most "value"?

Example: Is a Gravis Armor model with Toughness 5 / 3+ armor BETTER than a Bladeguard Vet with Toughness 4 / 2+ armor and 4+ invul?

At what point is the other preferable?

I would think with all the AP in the game an invul is best. But where does the line fall? Can a T5 be more valuable? I am seeing people plotting all T5 armies with Heavy Intercessors. But limiting yourself to only T5 and up seems to miss out on the very durable Bladeguard Vets and Terminators with Stormshields!

What you think? Am I missing something here?

The only thing that matters is pts. Sometimes units with good armour saves are undercosted, sometimes the units with good invulnerable saves are undercosted. Simply picking the units with good armour saves or with an invulnerable save will get you nowhere. Putting an exact value on a pt of toughness, invul or regular save is hard and there are other factors that come into play. It'd be more useful to ask about individual units whether they are worth bringing and what the best loadout is for them.

If we take T4 3+ Sv as the base, adding 1 to T increases survivability against S4 50%, S5 33%, S8/9 25%. Adding getting a 2+/4++ increases survivability against AP- 100%, AP-1 50%, AP-2 33%, AP-3 67%, AP-4/-5 100%. Having a 2+/4++ is much better than having an extra point of Toughness to a unit with a 3+ Sv. https://1d4chan.org/wiki/MathHammer

...And this shows that obviously a Heavy Intercessor survivability is better for hold and shoot (if you can afford the points) over a regular Intercessor (as long as you keep them out of melee). This just shows that having a ton of T5+ over taking T4 with saves doesn't mean better survival against most or everything.

I linked the wrong 1d4chan article in my previous post. https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Warhammer_40,000/Tactics_(9E)#Combat_101.

This doesn't show that Heavy Intercessors are better for anything, as I pointed out the only thing that matters is points, you can never afford the points, every time you pay for something you are choosing not to pay for something else. It doesn't matter when you put Heavy Intercessors into your list, if it's at the start where it seems you have all the pts in the world or at the end where you need to squeeze, you always have to think about how effectively you are translating every point in your list to Victory Points on the battlefield. Knowing that Toughness is not as impactful as you might have thought is nice but I don't want you to take away the wrong knowledge from the math.

The extra wound on the Heavy Intercessor can be a huge deal, less so if people build to counter Death Guard (they reduce Damage characteristics of weapons used against them by 1), but against Damage 2 weapons that third wound Heavy Intercessors get will increase survivability by 100% compared to regular 2W Intercessors for only 40% more pts. Getting an extra Strength on your ranged weapon increases damage by 33% against T4, 50% T5, 100% T8. But at the cost of 40% more points you will probably lose damage efficiency more often than not.

I can also see you are playing Blood Angels and you say you want Heavy Intercessors to camp objectives for you, that might be a fine plan, but I wouldn't underestimate the value of punching things with regular Intercessors given that you can stack a nice few bonuses on them with your Chapter Tactic, Assault Doctrine and Super Doctrine. I recommend you either proxy and test this yourself at least a couple of times before investing or ask in the Blood Angels thread if Heavy Intercessors are worth it.

This was mainly asking for a custom chapter for fun. My blood angels are set with regular intercessors for objectives. I am playing with the idea of iron hands or salamanders successor chapter for a pain in the butt to kill imperial SM list. Rather than start a Deathguard army too.

Thinking mostly T5+ armor. Inceptors, dreadgnoughts, outriders, ect. with small groups of Heavy Intercessors to deal with objectives.
Just frustrate people who gear up for T4 SM and maybe a little more to hit harder targets.

I think toughness is the most valuable of the three. Forcing an opponent's roll from 3+ or 4+ to 5+ for success is an enormous gatekeeping advantage in protecting your units.

Invulnerable save is next. Armor saves are fairly 'eh' in desirability.

Not mentioned, but I would put number of wounds after toughness and invulnerable saves but above armor saves UNLESS you have the character keyword. Then 9W or less makes is one of the most protective stats in the entire game.