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Hey all,

Asked this a while back with the old codex, wondering if the new Dex brings anything new to the table.

Obviously, for Pathfinders with an Accelerator Drone, Carbines got a nice buff, but I still cannot see taking Carbines for FW. There seems to be far too many Fearless or high LDs to make them worth it all, especially considering FW fragile nature. '

Anyone have any counter arguments for using Carbines?

Well, Carbines are much better than Pulse Rifles from 15-18" and are slightly better within 0-15" as long as you don't have an Ethereal. This means that they may be well-suited for mechanized Tau armies, who can reliably get inside those close ranges. One thing to note is that a Carbine-equipped squad should still take at least one Pulse Rifle in order to increase the threat range of the other weapons-- adding the lone Rifle allows you to remove enemy models as far as 30" away rather than only 18".

If you're running an assault squad in a devilfish, then you may as well run them with carbines. It lets you alphastrike from a little further away and with a transport you're less likely to need the longer fifle range for single shots. Sure the pinning benefit is unlikely to go off that often, but it can be a game changer if it does.

Even with meched up FWs, I still go with Rifles. Mainly because running up and gunning down a blob with a Storm of Fire enhanced Fish of Fury can easily leave the other FW units out of Rapid Fire range. Having that extra 12" reach means there's a greater chance of doing something rather than being stuck with nothing to do.

Moreover, after that initial volley, you've got a 36" threat range instead of a 24" range. That's critical if you're dumping them on a flank instead of in the middle of the board.

As I don't consider Pinning to be anything more than a nice bonus due to it's unreliability, I generally run Rifles over Carbines on all my FW squads.

If you go EMP, give them Carbines

9 FW with EMP grenades and 9 Carbines. One throws an EMP then they charge your opponent's LR/Tank/Whatever with their other EMPs.

The reason Carbines are good here is that if the vehicle is light - a squad of 3 war walkers for example, you can do some damage before you get into assault.

9 carbines is 18 shots.

You hit 9 times, you glance 1.5 times and pen 1.5 times - enough to take out a war walker and hurt another. You then charge, taking the brunt of only 2 war-walker's fire power on overwatch, then hit them with EMP grenades - you hit on 4's, meaning you should hit 4.5 EMP grenades; enough to glance 3 times and pen .75 times.

You know how much that squad cost? 99. What did it kill? 180~ish.

Not as much use against a LR (an EMP squad's target), but hey, who cares, right?

There's only a 3" band that the carbine gets an additional shot over the rifle, and a 12" band the rifle gets one shot over the carbine. The Pulse rifles are going to have the greater versatility and damage profile. Personally I think it was a half-hearted effort to bring the pulse carbing up in performance. Things that buff pulse weapons are generally geared towards the rifle as well. Fireblade lets you shoot one more shot if you don't move, and really who takes static carbines? Ethereals give you an additional shot at half range, which the rifle takes much better advantage of.

The pathfinders are the only unit I can imagine would make the carbines work, since you could put the pulse accelerator drone to give them 24" range weapons.

Any numbers you throw out into this question are rather pointless though because you're sacrificing a lot of range for a 3" band where the perfomance is marginally better.

 Savageconvoy wrote:
There's only a 3" band that the carbine gets an additional shot over the rifle, and a 12" band the rifle gets one shot over the carbine. The Pulse rifles are going to have the greater versatility and damage profile. Personally I think it was a half-hearted effort to bring the pulse carbing up in performance. Things that buff pulse weapons are generally geared towards the rifle as well. Fireblade lets you shoot one more shot if you don't move, and really who takes static carbines? Ethereals give you an additional shot at half range, which the rifle takes much better advantage of.

The pathfinders are the only unit I can imagine would make the carbines work, since you could put the pulse accelerator drone to give them 24" range weapons.

Any numbers you throw out into this question are rather pointless though because you're sacrificing a lot of range for a 3" band where the perfomance is marginally better.

I just gave you a perfectly valid, effective unit that makes use of Carbines. Maybe you shouldn't skim over passages about weapons with equal performance under close range conditions.

"Throwing out numbers" is the closest thing we can get to tactics discussion; if you can't accept that, is Tactics where you should take your comments?

Furthermore, you do realise that that little pinning rule is very overlooked, right? IF you're getting charged and you have 18 shots going out, you SHOULD hit 3 times and wound twice - if the squad fails a save, there's a chance they simply won't charge! IF they don't charge, you do realise that gives you all the time in the world to annihilate that squad, right?

Right?

Pinning is a joke. It's like planning your game around seizing the initiative.

It's nice when it happens but I'd never plan on it.

 SlaveToDorkness wrote:
Pinning is a joke. It's like planning your game around seizing the initiative.

It's nice when it happens but I'd never plan on it.

Coteaz with Imhotek

Pinning is not a joke. The mere fact that it may happen is all that I need to hear; I never said anything about planning a game around it.

Are you one of those people who says "I'm not going to shoot 3 lasguns at a trygon, because it probably won't do anything?"

You do realise 3 lasguns will wound a trygon 1/6 of the time, right? Worth a shot.

Here's some math for you.

A Tactical Marine Squad is LD9.

You fire overwatch, 18 Pulse Carbines

3 hit, 2 wound - Tacs fail 4/6 times (.667% of 1 wound.)

Now, if they do take a wound (a tall order, yes, but 4/6 chance), they take a pinning test at LD9.

This fails on a result of 10, 11 and 12, correct?

6,4 4,6 5,6 6,5 and 6,6 all cause pinning. This is equivalent to 5/36.

This is the same as

(4/6)[the chance of wounding once]*(5/36)[the chance of failing a leadership check for pinning] which is 5/54, or .9259 - 9.25%.

Now, I don't know about you, but a 9.25% chance of a charge simply failing is not bad to me.

Don't tell me something is a joke unless you have the math to back it up. This is a numbers game, tactics. Nothing else.

 Scipio Africanus wrote:

I just gave you a perfectly valid, effective unit that makes use of Carbines. Maybe you shouldn't skim over passages about weapons with equal performance under close range conditions.

The ability to charge a vehicle and use EMP grenades is hardly something to count on, especially with the abundance of high S shots in the army. The only thing that you'd really need EMP grenades will more than likely ignore the pulse carbine shots anways. You use a specific example, while I prefer more generalizations. Run into a non mech list and the carbines are now hindering your army.

"Throwing out numbers" is the closest thing we can get to tactics discussion; if you can't accept that, is Tactics where you should take your comments?

The stats are the same, with the only exception being assault2 vice rapid fire and a 3" difference between the 2 shots. It's the same roll to hit and to wound. The unit is very rarely going to find a target worth assaulting, if any, and the grenades are not carbine exclusive. Yeah. I think numbers on this issue are kinda pointless unless you're going to throw out a very specific example.

Furthermore, you do realise that that little pinning rule is very overlooked, right? IF you're getting charged and you have 18 shots going out, you SHOULD hit 3 times and wound twice - if the squad fails a save, there's a chance they simply won't charge! IF they don't charge, you do realise that gives you all the time in the world to annihilate that squad, right?

Right?

It's like fear. Most peole don't even remember the rule because it has so little effect on the game. It's something nice when it goes off, but 9 times out of 10 you'll be wondering why they even included it.

Even on EMP FWs, I still feel the Rifle is the better option. You're getting the majority of your anti-armor from the EMPs, not the carbines. Moreover, it requires you to get the assault off against War Walkers in the first place - and eating a round of shooting from a WW squadron means you're not likely to get nearly the same results. You can't assault out of a DFish as it is, since it's not an assault vehicle. Thus, the number of scenarios being able to fire Carbines before charging with EMPs actually gets you a significant benefit is really really small. Given that, I'd prefer to take the Rifles, which are more likely to have an impact in a larger number of scenarios.

Pinning has no effect during Overwatch. You can cause charges to fail by killing chargers, sure, but they'll never fail due to being pinned while charging. A better way to look at it is that 9 Pulse Carbines have an 88% chance of causing at least 1 unsaved wound during a shooting phase, and SM have a 14% chance to fail their Ld check and be pinned. So you've got a 12% chance per shooting phase to pin a SM squad with Sergeant using 9 Pulse Carbines. Which is a nice bonus, but not something that's worth counting on. Whether that makes pinning a joke or not is a matter of opinion, but let's face facts and acknowledge that the math shows that even in the best of circumstances it's a long shot.

 Savageconvoy wrote:

It's like fear. Most peole don't even remember the rule because it has so little effect on the game. It's something nice when it goes off, but 9 times out of 10 you'll be wondering why they even included it.

Yet as I've shown, 9 times out of a hundred, you love pinning. (Psst! that's the 1 time out of ten you're wondering why they even include it.)

Also, I am NEVER going to pass up causing a fear test - if it means there's a chance I'll hit 16.67% more often, why would I?

You seem to think "there's such a large chance that nothing will happen" is valid argument. There's such a large chance that a boltgun won't kill a terminator, yet it can.

There's such a large chance that a lascannon won't kill a land Raider, yet it can.

Stop thinking "this isn't going to come up" and start thinking "it may come up". The core of good tactics is knowing what to do where. IF you can't run the numbers for damage potential, you're putting yourself at a serious disadvantage. While Pulse Carbines may be lacking performance wise, if you're taking them you don't want to use them at 18" range - you want to use them to come to grips with an opponent. There's a time and a place for Carbines, and there's a (much larger, I don't try deny this) time and place for Rifles.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

Veskrashen wrote:
Even on EMP FWs, I still feel the Rifle is the better option. You're getting the majority of your anti-armor from the EMPs, not the carbines. Moreover, it requires you to get the assault off against War Walkers in the first place - and eating a round of shooting from a WW squadron means you're not likely to get nearly the same results. You can't assault out of a DFish as it is, since it's not an assault vehicle. Thus, the number of scenarios being able to fire Carbines before charging with EMPs actually gets you a significant benefit is really really small. Given that, I'd prefer to take the Rifles, which are more likely to have an impact in a larger number of scenarios.

Pinning has no effect during Overwatch. You can cause charges to fail by killing chargers, sure, but they'll never fail due to being pinned while charging. A better way to look at it is that 9 Pulse Carbines have an 88% chance of causing at least 1 unsaved wound during a shooting phase, and SM have a 14% chance to fail their Ld check and be pinned. So you've got a 12% chance per shooting phase to pin a SM squad with Sergeant using 9 Pulse Carbines. Which is a nice bonus, but not something that's worth counting on. Whether that makes pinning a joke or not is a matter of opinion, but let's face facts and acknowledge that the math shows that even in the best of circumstances it's a long shot.

Congratulations.

You didn't actually read anything did you?

You kill a War Walker to Carbine fire. You then charge, taking a third less of the overwatch you would've otherwise. How can you not see the value in this? You only take one squad of EMP firewarriors and they're there as a reserve anyway - it doesn't matter if they die or do nothing the whole game, it's only 99 points.

 Scipio Africanus wrote:

Yet as I've shown, 9 times out of a hundred, you love pinning. (Psst! that's the 1 time out of ten you're wondering why they even include it.)

10% chance, but losing almost half the range of the weapon compared to the rifle. I still think that on average the rifle will provide the more beneficial outcome.

Also, I am NEVER going to pass up causing a fear test - if it means there's a chance I'll hit 16.67% more often, why would I?

I agree. I wouldn't mind if it was free, but you're trading a longer range weapon for a shorter range one. That's not a beneficial trade.

You seem to think "there's such a large chance that nothing will happen" is valid argument. There's such a large chance that a boltgun won't kill a terminator, yet it can.

generally it wont. That's why volume of fire is generally the more appropriate response to taking down terminators with bolters. No matter how many carbines you fire, it's still just one test. Which is kinda funny. You were all for mathhammer a few posts ago, and this seems to imply you don't care about it.

There's such a large chance that a lascannon won't kill a land Raider, yet it can.

Again, it's volume that helps here. Even then, it's the reason why melta is so popular, because S8 + 2d6 has a better chance to penetrate than S9 +1d6.

Stop thinking "this isn't going to come up" and start thinking "it may come up". The core of good tactics is knowing what to do where. IF you can't run the numbers for damage potential, you're putting yourself at a serious disadvantage. While Pulse Carbines may be lacking performance wise, if you're taking them you don't want to use them at 18" range - you want to use them to come to grips with an opponent. There's a time and a place for Carbines, and there's a (much larger, I don't try deny this) time and place for Rifles.

I didn't say I ignore pinning all together. I just don't count on it. If it happens, it's a bonus. Just like I never plan on my opponent rolling more than the average number of failed saves.

I don't even understand the last half of your statement really. As I stated, and you apparently agree, the pulse rifles will be far more versatile and well suited while the carbines have a 3" window of higher performance. Under that window they are the same and 12" above the window the carbines don't even compete against the rifle. The scenario you gave offers a very specific example of 9 firewarriors getting an extra shot before assauling war walkers with emps. That's really the only difference is that the carbines can fire at a lightly armored vehicle before assaulting with grenades. The problem is that it's a very very specific scenario requiring that the vehicle in question is able to be affected by S5 shots to the point where it affects the very outcome significantly more than rifles and grenades. In this case it's against lightly armored walkers that are in a squadron. It's a very specific case, and not one I'd suggest for an army that has some of the most versatile units available.

@Scipio Africanus

Main rules page 21, bold face: "Overwatch cannot cause Moral checks or Pinning tests."

Unless there is an override in the Tau codex that part of your argument is invalid.

@SavageConvoy is right on this one. You're giving up the huge advantage of the additional range of the rifle for a 10% chance of making a unit less effective for one turn. That's a massive tradeoff in threat range and flexibility for a 10% chance of influencing 1 unit during 1 turn of the game. I don't believe the value of that effect, with the frequency it occurs, to be worth the loss of that additional threat range and flexibility.

I didn't ignore the fact that you kill a WW with Carbine fire before charging. You seem to ignore the fact that in order to get the PFs within charge range of the WWs in the first place, they're going to eat a turn's worth of shots from those WWs. Assuming that they're going to eat 18 S6 AP5 shots with no casualties is a rather huge leap of faith. Even if you assume that you do get within charge range unscathed, those 2 remaining WWs are going to kill 2 PFs on overwatch, on average. They will then stomp 1.5 PFs to death, on average, at I3 before you get to strike. So you're basically going to have 5.5 PFs with EMPs left, causing about 2.3HP on average with about a 8-10% chance of causing it to explode. That means you don't kill another walker, leaving 2 walkers to your 5.5 PFs.You're better off not assaulting at all, and not taking the additional casualties from melee and from overwatch.

Now, using EMPs against something like a AV12/13 Dreadnought - something like a Psyfleman, for instance - is another prospect entirely, since they'll take fewer casualties going in and have a better chance of inflicting 3+ glances. For those instances though you're not going to be causing additional HP damage with your pulse shots, so you won't be shooting them before assaulting anyway. Squadrons of AV10/11 are about the only case where a Carbine would make sense over a rifle, and that's a pretty narrow set of circumstances. Again, I don't think it's worth the tradeoff.1

 Scipio Africanus wrote:


Now, I don't know about you, but a 9.25% chance of a charge simply failing is not bad to me.

Don't tell me something is a joke unless you have the math to back it up. This is a numbers game, tactics. Nothing else.

Pinning doesn't work in the Assault phase 100% of the time. Units out of 18" cannot be fired upon 100% of the time. For Fire Warriors you want the enemy within 12" of them 0% of the time.

There's your numbers.

 SlaveToDorkness wrote:

 Scipio Africanus wrote:


Now, I don't know about you, but a 9.25% chance of a charge simply failing is not bad to me.

Don't tell me something is a joke unless you have the math to back it up. This is a numbers game, tactics. Nothing else.

Pinning doesn't work in the Assault phase 100% of the time. Units out of 18" cannot be fired upon 100% of the time. For Fire Warriors you want the enemy within 12" of them 0% of the time.

There's your numbers.

But guess where the enemy wants their units? If you're using a mobile reserve in a devilfish they are unlikely to ever get the chance to use long range shooting as you want them in the deep end backing up your other units. Pinning is a useful addition to this role. You could use rifles in this role, and this would give you different tactical options, but it doesn't alter the fact that carbines are useful in this role.

zoat wrote:
@Scipio Africanus

Main rules page 21, bold face: "Overwatch cannot cause Moral checks or Pinning tests."

Unless there is an override in the Tau codex that part of your argument is invalid.

My argument is unsound by that, not invalid.

But, since that's the case you're right; doesn't make carbines less worthy as a weapon.

 SlaveToDorkness wrote:


Pinning doesn't work in the Assault phase 100% of the time. Units out of 18" cannot be fired upon 100% of the time. For Fire Warriors you want the enemy within 12" of them 0% of the time.

There's your numbers.

Pinning doesn't work because it's illegal in the rules (something I was not aware of, I'll admit.)

I've already shown that were it available, it would work 9.25% of the time. So there's your numbers.

You have to use math to make good tactical decisions in 40k. 40k is based on random dice rolls and the closest thing we get to certainty is statistical averages.

.16667
.33333
.50000
.66667
.83333
and
1.00000

are not hard numbers to remember. They even follow a pattern. I don't see why statistics are such an anathema to such a large part of wargaming.

Also, I believe that having LR choices within 12" is fine. Anything that can be shot to bits at 72" range can be shot to bits at 12" range - even more efficiently.

If you honestly think your enemy is not going to get within 12", and that tau Gunlines (the main users of pulse rifles) will never have an enemy within 12" reasonably, that's you're fault. It's going to happen and if you're not planning for it, that's your business. Don't think that it's bad playstyle to have a unit that'll die under WOF within 12".

Terminators die under WOF within 12".

Paladins die under copious WOF within 12".

Dark Eldar beasts die to combined fire, with a darkstrider fire warrior squad to finish them off.

Veskrashen wrote:
@SavageConvoy is right on this one. You're giving up the huge advantage of the additional range of the rifle for a 10% chance of making a unit less effective for one turn. That's a massive tradeoff in threat range and flexibility for a 10% chance of influencing 1 unit during 1 turn of the game. I don't believe the value of that effect, with the frequency it occurs, to be worth the loss of that additional threat range and flexibility.

I didn't ignore the fact that you kill a WW with Carbine fire before charging. You seem to ignore the fact that in order to get the PFs within charge range of the WWs in the first place, they're going to eat a turn's worth of shots from those WWs. Assuming that they're going to eat 18 S6 AP5 shots with no casualties is a rather huge leap of faith. Even if you assume that you do get within charge range unscathed, those 2 remaining WWs are going to kill 2 PFs on overwatch, on average. They will then stomp 1.5 PFs to death, on average, at I3 before you get to strike. So you're basically going to have 5.5 PFs with EMPs left, causing about 2.3HP on average with about a 8-10% chance of causing it to explode. That means you don't kill another walker, leaving 2 walkers to your 5.5 PFs.You're better off not assaulting at all, and not taking the additional casualties from melee and from overwatch.

Now, using EMPs against something like a AV12/13 Dreadnought - something like a Psyfleman, for instance - is another prospect entirely, since they'll take fewer casualties going in and have a better chance of inflicting 3+ glances. For those instances though you're not going to be causing additional HP damage with your pulse shots, so you won't be shooting them before assaulting anyway. Squadrons of AV10/11 are about the only case where a Carbine would make sense over a rifle, and that's a pretty narrow set of circumstances. Again, I don't think it's worth the tradeoff.1

I never said anything about Pathfinders. I was talking about Fire warriors.

Pathfinders are far too expensive for this role. 117 points for a unit that should be doing markerlight support is not reasonable.

You're talking about an outflanking unit. I am not. I am simply talking about a reserve unit - you can put darkstrider in the unit and have him man a quad gun so that they can do something while they're waiting for the heavy armour to come.

If I am going to be assualting with FW, then the carbine makes more since. You can get the shots and still charge vs no shots and charge. FW's are frequently going to be less vulnerable to over watch thanks to now always have defensive grenades.

I would still say Rifles, with Mech or non Mech, as getting out and rapid firing 15" is still far enough away from the enemy and you need to be 9" away to benefit from storm of fire with pulse carbines if you're running an ethereal, compared to 15" with Rifles, so its easier to bring more shots to bear without being assaulted by your opponent, also if you're going mech, devilfish have gun drones as standard if you don't want to be spending 10pts per SMS on each fish and you want something pinned.

Just my £0.02

 Scipio Africanus wrote:

Pinning doesn't work because it's illegal in the rules (something I was not aware of, I'll admit.)

I've already shown that were it available, it would work 9.25% of the time. So there's your numbers.

You have to use math to make good tactical decisions in 40k. 40k is based on random dice rolls and the closest thing we get to certainty is statistical averages.

The real problem with relying on mathammer is that most people doing the mathammering have a week's worth of high school knowledge of probability and statistics. Relying on average results to make your tactical decisions is pretty damned stupid, because average results do not give you a true sense of probability.

First off, for some one trying to shove d6 numbers down our throats, you should probably learn your 2d6 numbers. Failing leadership 9 happens 6/36 times, making you average result inaccurate. Second an average result does not accurately represent the actual probability. The actual probability of (for the sake of argument assume this is legal) a tac squad failing a pinning test from 18 pulse carbine overwatch firing is about 8.21%. At BS 3 it's only about 14.67% chance to pin.

It's also not hard to make this calculation. All you need to know is the chance of failing a pinning test, 6/36 or 1/6 for ld9, and the probability of causing at least one unsaved wound. The latter bit is a bit of work to calculate straight up, but it is diabolically simple to figure out its complement (the probability of all the shots missing) and subtracting that from one.

So to figure out the actual probability of pinning follow this formula:

CHANCE_PIN =PROB_TESTFAIL * ( 1 - PROB_FAILTOWOUND^#OFSHOTS)

So for the 18 shots vs marines example (during normal shooting not overwatch)

1/6 * [ 1 - (8/9) ^ 18 ] = 1/6 * 88% = 14.67%

So about 85% of the time you leave your transport to pin a tac squad your opponent gets to have his way with your unit, without your unit accomplishing it's job.

In a 5 turn game you only have about 54.75% chance of pinning at least one tac squad, assuming you fire all your shots every turn. I would not be one to call a coin flip reliable.

What if your objective is just to blow the crap out of the unit in a fish of fury and the pinning is a nice bonus if it happens?

3 Devilfish (typical for a mechanized list, if you run that sort of thing) with 6x3 pathfinders and 2x3 gun drones vs tactical marines.

This loadout will kill 7.333 marines on average with everybody firing.

Each carbine shot has a 8.3% chance to kill, so the odds that you kill nobody is (91.6)^12 = 35.2%. This means you have a 65% per squad to force a pinning check which fails 1/6 of the time, or 10.8% chance to pin per squad. The drones have a 6.8%.

You have 3 squads each doing this, so the chance that none of them succeed in pinning is (89.2%)^3 * (93.2%)^3 =57%. 43% chance to pin at ld9 and even if you aren't pinned, you're expected to die (combat squad) or be ineffective (10 man). Don't forget the break check you forced either!

I think the tau won the objective that the marines were guarding, don't you? Hell you might even charge the one sucker still alive the next turn with your assault weapon. And keep in mind that the cost of doing this is a free swap from rifles to carbines because you're objective was to blow the crap out of people, and the pinning is a nice-to-have feature.

I think carbines are standard issue for a fish of fury assault from combined devilfish. If you want to role a flank at a pivotal moment with scoring troops, that's the way to do it.

What about a mix? I've been pondering a combination of rifle and carbine - drop each in their proper place, fire the carbines first, then the rifles can fire afterwards at the same target (likely) or a different, probably nearby target (if you pin the enemy/kill more than you expected).

One bonus that's overlooked is how 3" difference in two-shot range affects counter-charge opportunities on the FW. A 9" charge is possible, though not totally likely. A 12" charge is just free overwatch/no charge most of the time. If the carbines kill enough enemies to put them at 18.001 Inches away, then the carbines should be immune from any normal infantry assaulting or even rapidfiring back at them.

This would run in a fish of fury style list with 4 FW troops fish, in pairs with an ethereal (or two) somewhere in the mix. Admittedly, this is also a barrelful of points, so EMP nades and seeker missiles help the FW to cover other bases that the list would otherwise be lacking in.