Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Just a few numbers I crunched. The top is AV, the top line of black numbers is the chance to kill outright (by deviation, not percent), and the bottom line is the inefficiency rating (points cost divided by chance to kill - or how many points you need to spend on that unit to kill something in a single round of shooting). No assumptions are made about anything except that the stormies land in melta range by deepstriking.



Yeah, I didn't include a lot of stuff, of course. The point is to kill lots of stuff, and kill it outright.

I think it's interesting just how well meltacide stormies and lascannon sentinels came out.

Edit: added manticores

melt storm?

Where's the column for "Captain's stupid-overwhelming Luck"?

On the serious, though; every guard player should skim over that. Quite interesting.

I have found that te manticore is the best armor killing. Option in te IG motor pool. Even though t might be designed as a horde killer, it kills those pesky land raiders and other vehicles well. I have taken out a two rhinos and a land raider during one round of shooting, first turn, three shots. It was satisfying.

 martin74 wrote:
I have found that te manticore is the best armor killing. Option in te IG motor pool. Even though t might be designed as a horde killer, it kills those pesky land raiders and other vehicles well. I have taken out a two rhinos and a land raider during one round of shooting, first turn, three shots. It was satisfying.

"Makes bold, sweeping statement, then cites an unusual instance of excellent luck as evidence."

Manticore isn't even slightly the best armor killer. Sorry bud. Does good for low AV parking lots, but that's it.

 TheCaptain wrote:

 martin74 wrote:
I have found that te manticore is the best armor killing. Option in te IG motor pool. Even though t might be designed as a horde killer, it kills those pesky land raiders and other vehicles well. I have taken out a two rhinos and a land raider during one round of shooting, first turn, three shots. It was satisfying.

"Makes bold, sweeping statement, then cites an unusual instance of excellent luck as evidence."

Manticore isn't even slightly the best armor killer. Sorry bud. Does good for low AV parking lots, but that's it.

The manticore is still a good all-rounder though. It might not be able to deal well against that AV 13 and up, but it can be punishing against hordes and punishing against that parking lot, which sums up a good number of armies: Nids, Eldar, Deldar, Orks, IG, Rhino-spam. That is a good fraction of armies it can handle. I like melta stormies, but if I was forced to choose between the two I would go Manticore.

I like the math here in that it tells you straight up what a unit can do on that initial turn of shooting, but there is still a lot of other factors that can determine a unit's success such as durability and what the opponent has brought (or can bring against the unit).


Though, mind doing the math on the Manticore, Ailaros? I am a bit curious how it ranks up with these units.

Manticore (direct fire):
10: 12.45% chance to kill
12: 11.11% chance to kill
13: 9.37% chance to kill


This is assuming LoS and that a scatter greater than 3" misses.

The manticore has a 2/3 chance of getting more blasts per shot. Assuming blast template is centered on the vehicle, and to scatter (on an axis) -45 degrees to 45 degrees, or 135 degrees to 225 degrees:

you have a 1/3 chance of getting another blast, with 50% chance to hit, and

1/3 chance to get two additional blasts, each with 50% chance to hit.

So every additional blast has 25% less of a chance to kill than the very first (because it has 75% chance to hit based on the previously stated parameters).

But when dealing with scatters, stuff like this is pretty abstract.

 TheCaptain wrote:
Manticore (1 blast direct fire):
10: 12.45% chance to kill
12: 11.11% chance to kill
13: 9.37% chance to kill


This is assuming LoS and that a scatter greater than 3" misses.

How about 2 blast or 3? I'm having trouble believing against av 10 you have a 12% chance of killing a vehicle...perhaps the scatter gods have indeed been kind to me.

 WhiteWolf01 wrote:

How about 2 blast or 3? I'm having trouble believing against av 10 you have a 12% chance of killing a vehicle...perhaps the scatter gods have indeed been kind to me.

You have to roll to hit (75% chance to hit if you assume a hit on the scatter die is a hit, a scatter and roll of 3 is a hit, and that scattering six inches minus BS3 will still hit)

You automatically pen (100%)

You have a 16.6% chance to roll an "Explodes" damage result.

75% X 100% X 16%

 TheCaptain wrote:

 WhiteWolf01 wrote:

How about 2 blast or 3? I'm having trouble believing against av 10 you have a 12% chance of killing a vehicle...perhaps the scatter gods have indeed been kind to me.

You have to roll to hit (75% chance to hit if you assume a hit on the scatter die is a hit, a scatter and roll of 3 is a hit, and that scattering six inches minus BS3 will still hit)

You automatically pen (100%)

You have a 16.6% chance to roll an "Explodes" damage result.

75% X 100% X 16%

Well, for some reason it still scares the ba-geegus out of people, might as well keep taking it for the psychological effect. Maybe I'll direct them to this thread and they'll stop shooting at it so much so I can kill more of their stuff.

Just shot yourself in the jimmy there, didn't ya lad?

Though if my math is correct, against necron vehicles it isn't too shabby compared to some other choices. 25% chance due to the open-topped rule if I am not mistaken.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Wait no, that's not right. My bad. Haha, I need sleep...

The IG have never really been a "one hitter quitter" army when it comes to tank busting. I think that kind of tactical thinking nullifies what makes the gaurd good at dealing with armor, cheap special weapons en masse.

I would be curious to see a chart with the percentages that show when these units completely whiff. I doubt it's very high for a lot of them.

 Blaggard wrote:
melt storm?

I think he means using 10 Stormtroopers with 2 melta guns

Blaggard wrote:melt storm?

A full-sized melta stormtrooper squad. As averse to a 5-man with two meltas.

martin74 wrote:I have found that the manticore is the best armor killing.

In this case, I'm looking at killing outright. Ap4 is bad for killing outright. Assuming that a manticore has the same accuracy as demolishers, we're starting with a .12 per shot, and that's before you roll for armor penetration. In the case of those annoying necron vehicles, we're looking at .09 per shot. 1 in 11 shots isn't very effective, and at an inefficiency rating of over 1800, it's not that efficient either.

Manticores are good at glancing several close-packed vehicles to death, but they're not the best at killing things outright.

WhiteWolf01 wrote:I like the math here in that it tells you straight up what a unit can do on that initial turn of shooting, but there is still a lot of other factors that can determine a unit's success such as durability and what the opponent has brought (or can bring against the unit).

Oh, of course. The demolisher looks less efficient, but that's because you're getting AV14, which isn't taken into account, and it also doesn't count things like cover. It's merely a baseline to begin.

Stormrider wrote:The IG have never really been a "one hitter quitter" army when it comes to tank busting. I think that kind of tactical thinking nullifies what makes the gaurd good at dealing with armor, cheap special weapons en masse.

So, I've been finding myself up against necron and mech BA recently (amongst other people showing up with heavier armor - there's a guy running 4 multimelta punishers in 1500 points). It's not only a matter of having enough firepower right away, it's a matter of having enough firepower AT ALL.

And I agree, meltaguns are nice, which is why I pack a lot of them myself. That said, they're a terrible offensive weapon (well, outside of, say, deepstriking stormies), because opponents will be able to shoot those meltaguns first.

Alright, I added manticores. When you get 3 shots, they're not half bad, but when you get one shot, they reek. It's a 160 point meltagun out of melta range. That's the problem, they're unreliable, and the range goes from incredibly inefficient/ineffective, and reasonably okay.

When you say HWS, you mean lascannons right?

Yeah

One interesting thing of note, the Medusa with bastion breachers is the only thing that's efficiency goes UP the higher the armor gets.

That's a neat thing to think about.

A few comments:

1) Add the 4x melta CCS (including giving BiD to itself). If you can deliver it into melta range it's the most reliable and point-efficient anti-tank unit you can get.

2) Your numbers for the Medusa (and I assume the other blast weapons as well) are off. Don't forget that a scatter is not a miss, you can scatter up to 6" and still hit a tank (BS 3 + 1.5" template + at least 1" wide hull), for a total of a 61% chance to hit. Then all of your to-kill numbers need to change to reflect it, for example the chance of killing AV 10 outright (automatic pen) would be 30%, not 24%.

3) Not including death by HP removal skews the results. Dead is dead, it doesn't matter how you get there. So, for example, a Manticore that lands three hits has a 100% chance of killing AV 10 or 11, a Vendetta that gets an average two hits against an AV 10 2 HP target doesn't even need to roll on the damage table, etc. Ignoring these cases favors high-power AP 1 weapons more than you should.

4) The Vanquisher should have the coax heavy stubber (I can't imagine taking a Vanquisher without one), and you should probably include the Pask upgrade that supposedly turns it into the god of tank killing.

MrMoustaffa wrote:One interesting thing of note, the Medusa with bastion breachers is the only thing that's efficiency goes UP the higher the armor gets.

It's also funny to note that the bastion breachers make the tank WORSE against AV10

Peregrine wrote: Add the 4x melta CCS (including giving BiD to itself). If you can deliver it into melta range it's the most reliable and point-efficient anti-tank unit you can get.

Sure, but how are you getting that in range? It's going to be top priority if it's on foot or in a can, and it's not exactly going to be a low priority in a bird. Plus, if they pile out, either the vendetta is hovering, or there's a decent chance that there won't be 4 meltaguns when it lands.

Peregrine wrote: Don't forget that a scatter is not a miss, you can scatter up to 6" and still hit a tank

I didn't. I was actually assuming 7" for a large scatter, and a 5" scatter for the smalls.

Peregrine wrote: Not including death by HP removal skews the results.

It's not a matter of skewing, it's a matter of scope. In this case, the only thing I'm caring about is the up-front killing.

Dead is dead, of course, but I've been having problems killing things FAST as of late. Having that land raider dead on turn 1 is much different than having that land raider killed by glancing to death on turn 7.

Peregrine wrote: The Vanquisher should have the coax heavy stubber (I can't imagine taking a Vanquisher without one)

Not everyone is willing to shell out the $80 needed to give a single vehicle a better main gun. Not everyone is quite so eager or able to reach outside the pages of their codex either.

 Ailaros wrote:
Sure, but how are you getting that in range? It's going to be top priority if it's on foot or in a can, and it's not exactly going to be a low priority in a bird. Plus, if they pile out, either the vendetta is hovering, or there's a decent chance that there won't be 4 meltaguns when it lands.

Chimera or Vendetta. And sure, it's a priority target, but so are the melta/plasma vets, the Medusas, and really every single unit in my list. It's probably a bad option in a foot list, but in a mech spam list there's such a high degree of AV 12 threat saturation that "it's a priority target" doesn't necessarily mean it won't get there.

It's not a matter of skewing, it's a matter of scope. In this case, the only thing I'm caring about is the up-front killing.

Dead is dead, of course, but I've been having problems killing things FAST as of late. Having that land raider dead on turn 1 is much different than having that land raider killed by glancing to death on turn 7.

Sure, but look at your Manticore results for example. Your list only gives a 36% chance to kill AV 10 outright from three hits, but the actual percentage is 100% because no matter what you roll on the damage table the target is dead from losing all hull points. I understand not caring about eventually glancing a target to death after it matters, but you're ignoring cases where it's faster to strip hull points than try for the one-shot kill.

Not everyone is willing to shell out the $80 needed to give a single vehicle a better main gun. Not everyone is quite so eager or able to reach outside the pages of their codex either.

$20 actually, since you just need the turret. Or $0 if you can figure out how to glue a spare heavy stubber barrel next to the main gun.

And so what if some people impose arbitrary limits on their options. Should we also ignore melta stormtroopers because some people don't like them? Should we pretend that Vendettas don't exist because some people feel they're too powerful and won't use them?

Just noticed, how come you didn't include AV 11 in the results?

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
Just noticed, how come you didn't include AV 11 in the results?

AV11 is a sissy's Armor Value

Peregrine wrote: in a mech spam list there's such a high degree of AV 12 threat saturation that "it's a priority target" doesn't necessarily mean it won't get there.

If, as you note, they're the best anti-tank the guard can bring, then they're going to be a higher threat than anything else. In the case of a medusa, it doesnt' matter because they can at least start shooting turn 1, or a vendetta which is hard to hit, etc. Not so with a CCS in a chimera. Plus, to give themselves orders, they have to get out of their ride...

Peregrine wrote: but look at your Manticore results for example. Your list only gives a 36% chance to kill AV 10 outright from three hits, but the actual percentage is 100% because no matter what you roll on the damage table the target is dead from losing all hull points.

Well, it's 100% with three HITS, which the manticore is not guaranteed to get, much less in a single round of shooting.

In any case, it's still a matter of scope. The study here isn't interested in how many turns it takes to kill something, it's interested in how effective/efficient it is at killing something NOW.

Peregrine wrote:And so what if some people impose arbitrary limits on their options. Should we also ignore melta stormtroopers because some people don't like them? Should we pretend that Vendettas don't exist because some people feel they're too powerful and won't use them?

Look, I know you're on a one-man crusade to convince us all that everything that forgeworld has ever made is printed on pages that fell out of our codices that we need to pay a nominal fee to restore, but not everybody agrees with you, and I don't need you AGAIN derailing one of my threads entirely off-topic.

MrMoustaffa wrote:Just noticed, how come you didn't include AV 11 in the results?

Mostly because anything that handles AV12 handles AV11.

I mean, in order to seriously handle AV11, you're going to need serious weapons anyways. Stuff that you can get by glancing AV10 to death generally is going to really stink against AV11 due to the specifics. I mean, you can make an argument for heavy bolters vs. DE skimmer spam, but not really for razorspam.

If we're in the world of taking stuff to handle real tanks, then AV12 will suffice. Really, the only reason I bothered including AV10 at all was just to balance things out a bit.

 Ailaros wrote:
If, as you note, they're the best anti-tank the guard can bring, then they're going to be a higher threat than anything else. In the case of a medusa, it doesnt' matter because they can at least start shooting turn 1, or a vendetta which is hard to hit, etc. Not so with a CCS in a chimera. Plus, to give themselves orders, they have to get out of their ride...

The point is that everything else is also the top priority. The CCS might be the most efficient pure vehicle killer, but the melta veterans next to it are a scoring unit, the Medusa behind it can blow away entire MEQ squads once it kills your tanks, etc. You probably don't see this very much since you play only foot lists, but in a mech list there are just so many other threats next to the CCS that sometimes you have to ignore it and let it get into range because you're too busy dealing with something else.

And as for orders, what I meant is that you should include two sets of numbers: without BiD (for example, from a Chimera) and with BiD (Vendetta, disembarked from Chimera for a top priority kill).

Peregrine wrote:In any case, it's still a matter of scope. The study here isn't interested in how many turns it takes to kill something, it's interested in how effective/efficient it is at killing something NOW.

And again, my point is that in many cases "kill something NOW" includes killing it through hull point removal, and the chance to kill is the chance of rolling "explodes" plus the chance of taking all of its hull points. For example, if a Vendetta hits AV 10 with all three lascannons that AV 10 is gone no matter what you roll on the damage table. And then you have to consider the option to combine multiple units. A single Manticore might not be very good at killing a target outright, but two Manticores are a lot better at it since the volume of fire has a high chance of stripping all of the target's hull points even if you never roll that "explodes" result.

And of course if it's reliable "KILL IT NOW" you want, hull point removal is the best method because it's so much more consistent than the damage table. You don't have to worry about rolling well on the table, you just add up three glances or better and take the model off the table. Your numbers ignore this and over-value AP 1 because of your arbitrary choice to exclude HP and only look at the damage table.

Look, I know you're on a one-man crusade to convince us all that everything that forgeworld has ever made is printed on pages that fell out of our codices that we need to pay a nominal fee to restore, but not everybody agrees with you, and I don't need you AGAIN derailing one of my threads entirely off-topic.

You're the one who brought up the issue of it being printed in the codex or not, I just pointed out that you missed a relevant option. And yes, you have right to only play with your personal favorite units, but you shouldn't pretend that you are presenting an objective analysis of all of the options when you choose to exclude units you personally dislike.

This chart would be good if it also showed the chances of HP removal, chance of 1HP removed and so on and so forth. Then we might see that some weapons although they have a mediocre chance at outright death, can reliably strip a HP more often. As guard we have a lot more stuff to throw at the wall. The whole quantity has a quality all of its own thing. At least that way we could count up guaranteed HPs stripped a turn based off what we include in our list. Only counting instant death negates a huge part of the weapon systems effectiveness. This data would be more useful for the 5th Ed ruleset since there was no glancing to death.

The op said the chart ignores scatter for the melticide stormies. That's a pretty big deal.

Also on a side note a 3 melta sws doing grav chute from a vendetta averages more hits than melta stormies.

How does the 10 stormtrooper squad differ from the 5 stormtrooper one?
In the 5 man troop, you have two meltaguns and one throwing grenades, leaving 2 with just lasguns.
In the 10 man troop, you have two meltaguns and one throwing grenades, leaving 7 with just lasguns.

Aside from spending a lot of points on it, it does't look like a huge difference.

loner wrote:
How does the 10 stormtrooper squad differ from the 5 stormtrooper one?
In the 5 man troop, you have two meltaguns and one throwing grenades, leaving 2 with just lasguns.
In the 10 man troop, you have two meltaguns and one throwing grenades, leaving 7 with just lasguns.

Aside from spending a lot of points on it, it does't look like a huge difference.

I think that mainly goes to working out the points efficiency statistic,

 Trickstick wrote:

loner wrote:
How does the 10 stormtrooper squad differ from the 5 stormtrooper one?
In the 5 man troop, you have two meltaguns and one throwing grenades, leaving 2 with just lasguns.
In the 10 man troop, you have two meltaguns and one throwing grenades, leaving 7 with just lasguns.

Aside from spending a lot of points on it, it does't look like a huge difference.

I think that mainly goes to working out the points efficiency statistic,

Exactly!