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Talk about killing the fun in a thread guys. Good lord.

Yeah, sorry man. The topic of discussion IS Flayed Ones though. cowmonaut and I are just discussing it a little more thoroughly then most.


There is a wealth of information to be had though. I think anyone would find the read both educational and thrilling

ShadarLogoth : It's clear we have very fundamentally opposed opinions. I feel I must not be explaining things clearly or you aren't understanding what I'm arguing. For example this response of yours:

ShadarLogoth wrote:Since 5th edition and ubiquitous cover saves, the general tendency is to assume cover saves...because they are ubiquitous...AND, you have quite a bit of control over them.

This response completely ignores what I was saying and misses the point of what I was saying entirely. Similarly, this happens with other things I've argued.

There also seem to be some conclusions that you leap to that A) I can't understand how you could possibly get to them or B) I can't understand how you can possibly say what you did with a straight face. For example, here is something you said:

ShadarLogoth wrote:That is not what the math says. It says you will average .93 wounds/salvo (and of course each wound=2). Completely different concept.

But here is what you were replying to:

Cowmonaut wrote:Instant Death is definitely an effect to worry about, but you need to keep in mind that there won't be a large volume of S8+ weapons usually. A Long Fang Pack with 5 Missile Launchers, a fairly common unit to face, is only causing 0.93 unsaved wounds. That means, with Instant Death factored in, a Long Fang Pack has a 93% chance of killing one Wraith.

Related concepts and backed up by math, contrary to what you say. 0.93 unsaved wounds would be a 93% chance to cause a wound, and thus a 93% chance to kill a single Wraith thanks to Instant Death. If you think otherwise, I suggest you learn how the math actually works. To elaborate: The formula you use to determine wounds is all in percentages: %ToHit * %ToWound * %FailedSave etc. BS 4 means you need a 3+ to hit. On a 6 sided dice you need a 3, 4, 5 or 6. So you have 4 unique events out of 6 possible outcomes. Your percentage to hit can thus be represented by the fraction (4/6). Since a fraction is basically just division, 4/6 equates to roughly 0.67, which when turned into a percentage is 67%.

So I'll just drop out. It's clear, possibly several posts back, that you won't be swayed in your opinion because you have had good luck personally with Flayed Ones and you run a list specifically tailored to take advantage of them. What you don't seem to grasp is that that does not necessarily make Flayed Ones a good unit or even a strong option for the Codex. Going back to a previous argument, its much similar to (but obviously not exactly like) some Space Wolves players swearing by Blood Claws even though they are technically inferior in every way to Grey Hunters, for the same slot and same price. Can they work? Yes. Does that make them a good choice? No.

Best of luck.

What i want to knoiw....bottom line... is whether they are working.

theory Hammer is math in a vacuum that ignores the battlefield realities utterly. If I listened to that stuff, I'd never win a single game.

People love to say that things are "anecdotal" if you are doing something and doing it well... But thats assinine. The combination of REASONS why something might work is HARD to tell on paper.
In the cae of Flayed ones, I have seen them crunch a Tau force enough and for LONG enough that it gave the entire Necron force the time it NORMALLY doesn't have to approach.

Have others evebn TRIED this unit? I know all of ONE person who has even attempted this and all the rest just ignored the unit, nevr bought any and never will.

So I find it pretty unberleivable that i can pull off infiltrating turn 1 kroot charges and feel "okay" about how many points it took me to try... and the Flayed ones which are loads better in all the impotant ways get no love AT ALL?

I'm really curious to hear ACTUALIZED experiences with these. Could maybe a few of you just play with a pair of these units and see how well you can make it work, then report back on how you did it?

Cause I'd be interested. I dont play Necrons (other than the 20 games I always play to test a codex out) but I am very interested in what is possible. Not so interested in doom saying.

cowmonaut wrote:
ShadarLogoth : It's clear we have very fundamentally opposed opinions. I feel I must not be explaining things clearly or you aren't understanding what I'm arguing. For example this response of yours:

I feel the exact same way .

This response completely ignores what I was saying and misses the point of what I was saying entirely. Similarly, this happens with other things I've argued.

I guess then I don't really know what you are saying. My argument is that in normal circumstances, on average, the major tendency is, Flayed Ones are more efficient bullet eaters then Wraiths. I think we've proved that.

There also seem to be some conclusions that you leap to that A) I can't understand how you could possibly get to them or B) I can't understand how you can possibly say what you did with a straight face.

Look man. You ran the math between TH/SS terms and Flayed Ones, which clearly shows the Flayed Ones basically cannot lose that fight. It doesn't matter what the starting situation is, who charges who, whether anyone is in cover, etc. No matter what, it is extremely unlikely that Flayed Ones lose the equal point TH/SS Termies. You ran the math that should have proven this to you...and came away saying the Flayed Ones would get rocked. That's just one example where what you are saying doesn't match the evidence. I'm sorry if I find that a bit perplexing.

Related concepts and backed up by math, contrary to what you say. 0.93 unsaved wounds would be a 93% chance to cause a wound, and thus a 93% chance to kill a single Wraith thanks to Instant Death. If you think otherwise, I suggest you learn how the math actually works. To elaborate: The formula you use to determine wounds is all in percentages: %ToHit * %ToWound * %FailedSave etc. BS 4 means you need a 3+ to hit. On a 6 sided dice you need a 3, 4, 5 or 6. So you have 4 unique events out of 6 possible outcomes. Your percentage to hit can thus be represented by the fraction (4/6). Since a fraction is basically just division, 4/6 equates to roughly 0.67, which when turned into a percentage is 67%.

I understand your confusion here, because it is very common, but that is not what the math actually says. Yes, you start with percentages, but the final "answer" you are finding is the average wounds caused per salvo. The actual results fit a bell curve, and on the bell curve you will not see the Wraiths taking a single wound 93% of the time. You will see 0 wounds, for instance, more then 7% of the time. You will also see multiple wounds (before ID) more then 7% of the time. It's just, if you shoot that same salvo 100 times, the average shot will be .93 wounds (before calculating ID of course).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expected_value

^^ This is what you are calculating. The expected amount of wounds is .93, which is generally in the direct center of the probability curve. Just like the expected value of a D6 is 3.5, which is technically impossible, but if you roll a D6 100 times and average it out, you get 3.5. In general, when possible, the expected value gets the plurality of the results, but only in very small samples does it even get the majority of results. IE, you may have a 26% chance to score exactly one wound, a 20% chance to score 0, a 20% chance to score 2, etc... But you definitely don't have a 93% chance to score one, or even "one or more," which would be more likely, but still not encompass 93%. This is what some people prefer a monte carlo approach, or other similar statistical evaluations.

Consider this. If you added a 6th missile to the salvo, it would raise to 6(2÷3)(5÷6)(1÷3)= 1.11 wounds per salvo. Would it make since to say you will cause a wound 111% of the time? Of course not.

So I'll just drop out. It's clear, possibly several posts back, that you won't be swayed in your opinion because you have had good luck personally with Flayed Ones and you run a list specifically tailored to take advantage of them. What you don't seem to grasp is that that does not necessarily make Flayed Ones a good unit or even a strong option for the Codex. Going back to a previous argument, its much similar to (but obviously not exactly like) some Space Wolves players swearing by Blood Claws even though they are technically inferior in every way to Grey Hunters, for the same slot and same price. Can they work? Yes. Does that make them a good choice? No.

Best of luck.

I appreciate the candor, but for the record, I don't build my list around Flayed Ones. I wanted to make a CC/short range dominant Imotehk list, and a large Flayed One pack fits that list so well that the list is better with it then without it. I don't think your Blood Claw example is relevant at all. For one Flayed Ones aren't technically inferior to other Necron choices in every way, as I have repeatedly proven to you with math and facts. As I have demonstrated, they fulfill one role in particular, a very important role, better then any other unit. They are not to only way to accomplish this role, but I feel, because of the inherent intricacies of the unit, they accomplish it with less chance of variability, as they have the flexibility to react to your opponent (they have the most flexible deployment), they eat bullets extremely efficiently (making them superior to all other Necron CC options), they can actually defend themselves against an assault (making them superior to Warriors) and aren't relying on 5 Warriors clinging to an objective late game and praying the game actually ends (the most common way this roll is currently fullfilled in most lists). To clarify, I'm not saying "universally superior in all cases" , just superior at performing this one specific task. A task every good general should have some plan for, IE, denying opponent objectives.


Thank you for joining the thread cowmonaut . I invite you to reread some of the analysis and really think about what I'm saying. Also, I've got a thousand dollars waiting for you if you ever want to take 5 TH/SS termies against my 15 Flayed Ones. I'll even give you 10 to 1 odds .


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Jancoran

I feel ya man. If you've noticed, the internet hive mind doesn't like Infiltrate or Deep Strike mechanics at all, so most units who take advantage of these mechanics are generally looked at pretty poorly. One of these days I'll get a few BR's together to highlight what the FOs can do for a list. It won't convince the unconvincible, but there are enough open minded people in the 40k community for it to be a worth while endeavor.

Baronyu wrote:

 Badablack wrote:
Can any other unit in the 40k universe accurately reenact Michael Jackson's Thriller video better than a 20-man squad of Flayed Ones led in a synchronized dance by a vinyl red jacket wearing jerry-curl wigged Overlord?

Your argument is invalid.

That depends on your conversion skill, and the base model or green stuff skill. I'm sure someone could make a bunch of space marines moonwalk into assault or something, I'm also sure that person won't be me.

I would!

ShadarLogoth wrote:

I feel ya man. If you've noticed, the internet hive mind doesn't like Infiltrate or Deep Strike mechanics at all, so most units who take advantage of these mechanics are generally looked at pretty poorly. One of these days I'll get a few BR's together to highlight what the FOs can do for a list. It won't convince the unconvincible, but there are enough open minded people in the 40k community for it to be a worth while endeavor.

Oh yes, I've noticed. though the FOC slot may be more a hindrance to people appreciatingtheir possibilities than the actual analysis. Like tau who have a goodly number of excellnt FA choices, the Necrons can get log jammed there as well.

I hope I don't get the ban hammer for threadcromancy but I agree with the internets, flayed ones in a vacuum compared to almost anything in the codex are bad, but this is 40k and nothing happens in a vacuum. I agree with shadarlogoth that if played in a list were flayed ones have a purpose they can be quite good. People seem to forget that necrons are meq units with bad initiative but trade that off for the extremely important mechanic of RP which wraiths lack. Wraiths are still good if not broken, I'm not contesting that but that's what makes TP and flayed ones viable. They stand back up. Flayed ones allow you to smash those long fangs on the back table edge or the fire warriors on the table side. Oh and because I outflanked with a beat stick of an overlord, he helps them in close combat or breaks off and pounds the land raider, riptide, wraith knight or what ever is fat and juicy and needs a a warscythe rammed up its arse.

I can honestly say as a necron player I would rather my 13 point herp derps get shot than my wraiths, and that in itself is worth the points. Second point when do you even see heavy flamers? And at that when do I care about ap? Necron units stand back up! Stand ups make your opponent rage and make necrons most basic troops scoff at lascannons

As soon as a FO thread dies it makes it's rp roll and another onepops back up. This topic is seriously unkillable in a necron sort of way.

I will sum up previous threads as follows. A giant 20 block of fo is a terrible idea. They don't score, and lack fearless. The key to survival of a big 20 block cc horde is to be fearless, an attached astknf ic, or be ld10 stuborn with a reroll. Ld10 non fearless will fold and get swept if it loses cc, and it's an expensive unit to lose.

A small block of 5 FO I will defend. It's cheap, expendable, and won't easily give up 1st blood if it ds or outflanks. It's not in a contested force org slot. It has 15 attacks which is enough to bully vulnerable units such as sabers, earth shaker carriages, vaul's support, unsupported fire warriors, pink horrors, lootas, the list is huge. LD10 and rp means it can tarpit durable units that are weak in cc such as a tfc, war walkers, long fangs, psyfleman dreads, broadsides, exc...

5 of them are an excellent distraction unit. 20 of them are 1 morale check from disaster.

Is the forge world rumor true? ie moved to troops, same stats, and entire unit has shred for 10 points? 20 of them with shred as troops for 270 would be another story...

 Dumah12 wrote:
Oh and because I outflanked with a beat stick of an overlord, ...

Too risky of a tactic. This would only work if you got the Outflanking Warlord Trait and then rolled the same table edge as your Flayed Ones. Since Flayed Ones have Infiltrate, an OL cannot join them during deployment. He would have to join them at the end of the movement phase as if a standard IC joining a unit. Unless my understanding from IC and Infiltrating units is incorrect, attempting to get a Overlord to outflank along with Flayed Ones just is not tactically feasible in most circumstances.

I would argue that because infiltrate confers outflank and infiltrating is different than outflank during reserves its still a viable tactic but I don't have my brb with me at the moment unless we can get some pages to quote.

 schadenfreude wrote:
As soon as a FO thread dies it makes it's rp roll and another onepops back up. This topic is seriously unkillable in a necron sort of way.

I will sum up previous threads as follows. A giant 20 block of fo is a terrible idea. They don't score, and lack fearless. The key to survival of a big 20 block cc horde is to be fearless, an attached astknf ic, or be ld10 stuborn with a reroll. Ld10 non fearless will fold and get swept if it loses cc, and it's an expensive unit to lose.

A small block of 5 FO I will defend. It's cheap, expendable, and won't easily give up 1st blood if it ds or outflanks. It's not in a contested force org slot. It has 15 attacks which is enough to bully vulnerable units such as sabers, earth shaker carriages, vaul's support, unsupported fire warriors, pink horrors, lootas, the list is huge. LD10 and rp means it can tarpit durable units that are weak in cc such as a tfc, war walkers, long fangs, psyfleman dreads, broadsides, exc...

5 of them are an excellent distraction unit. 20 of them are 1 morale check from disaster.

Is the forge world rumor true? ie moved to troops, same stats, and entire unit has shred for 10 points? 20 of them with shred as troops for 270 would be another story...

It's not really a rumor, lol.

In a Dark Harvest list, Flayed ones are troops. They start at 10 man, and can purchase Flensing scarabs for the unit, for 10 points. This grants them shred on the first round of CC in the game.

Due to this thread....I keep swaying! I don't know what to believe anymore. Perhaps I'll buy them.

 poppa G wrote:
Due to this thread....I keep swaying! I don't know what to believe anymore. Perhaps I'll buy them.

Green stuff and conversion!

They have their place in the army, provided you know what to do with them, they certainly aren't as easy-to-use as the other units in the army, I'd say try and build a list you think they can fit in well, and have some sorta tactic to go with it before buying those expensive models.

 Sasori wrote:

 schadenfreude wrote:
As soon as a FO thread dies it makes it's rp roll and another onepops back up. This topic is seriously unkillable in a necron sort of way.

I will sum up previous threads as follows. A giant 20 block of fo is a terrible idea. They don't score, and lack fearless. The key to survival of a big 20 block cc horde is to be fearless, an attached astknf ic, or be ld10 stuborn with a reroll. Ld10 non fearless will fold and get swept if it loses cc, and it's an expensive unit to lose.

A small block of 5 FO I will defend. It's cheap, expendable, and won't easily give up 1st blood if it ds or outflanks. It's not in a contested force org slot. It has 15 attacks which is enough to bully vulnerable units such as sabers, earth shaker carriages, vaul's support, unsupported fire warriors, pink horrors, lootas, the list is huge. LD10 and rp means it can tarpit durable units that are weak in cc such as a tfc, war walkers, long fangs, psyfleman dreads, broadsides, exc...

5 of them are an excellent distraction unit. 20 of them are 1 morale check from disaster.

Is the forge world rumor true? ie moved to troops, same stats, and entire unit has shred for 10 points? 20 of them with shred as troops for 270 would be another story...

It's not really a rumor, lol.

In a Dark Harvest list, Flayed ones are troops. They start at 10 man, and can purchase Flensing scarabs for the unit, for 10 points. This grants them shred on the first round of CC in the game.

Found it, not a bad list. The problem is it's a forge world army not forge world units, so it's even less likely to be tournament legal. It's not BAO legal because it's requires a separate army/it's a forge world list.

Looking at the Dark harvest it is interesting. The flensing scarabs seem especially vicious having both shred and rend at the loss of entropic. I would say the strength of flayed ones in that list is flayed ones troops + scarabs + wraiths + dlord + spyders=pure cc army. It would really throw people off, but like it said it's a forge world army so it's not legal in any GT (even BAO)

Standard codex necrons, my opinion still stands. Even as elites 5 flayed ones is a good unit that becomes less and less good as you add more flayed ones. Almost every army would be well off with 5 of them, and any army that has 5 gets less and less of a return from additional fo.

Baronyu wrote:

 poppa G wrote:
Due to this thread....I keep swaying! I don't know what to believe anymore. Perhaps I'll buy them.

Green stuff and conversion!

They have their place in the army, provided you know what to do with them, they certainly aren't as easy-to-use as the other units in the army, I'd say try and build a list you think they can fit in well, and have some sorta tactic to go with it before buying those expensive models.

I really wish I knew how to do conversion :(

 poppa G wrote:
I really wish I knew how to do conversion :(

It won't be as hard as say, converting a hatstand, a space marine's left arm and a teapot into a looted wagon. Just look for some tutorial online for making cloaks and apply them to warriors, get some spare weapon bits from friends or bits shops to convert them into those weapon-hands(chop fingers/gauss rifle off, stick blades where fingers/hand should be), and you'd probably be able to get 12 flayed ones by spending just a teensy bit more than an official box.

Baronyu wrote:

 poppa G wrote:
I really wish I knew how to do conversion :(

It won't be as hard as say, converting a hatstand, a space marine's left arm and a teapot into a looted wagon. Just look for some tutorial online for making cloaks and apply them to warriors, get some spare weapon bits from friends or bits shops to convert them into those weapon-hands(chop fingers/gauss rifle off, stick blades where fingers/hand should be), and you'd probably be able to get 12 flayed ones by spending just a teensy bit more than an official box.

ooooo, Okay
And..what am I aloud to add? What if he wants two warscythes cos my flayed ones are just a little extra crazy??

Well, conversions won't change the unit's rules, so they won't have AP2 attacks, but sure, you can give them warscythe hands if you like!

 schadenfreude wrote:
As soon as a FO thread dies it makes it's rp roll and another onepops back up. This topic is seriously unkillable in a necron sort of way.

I will sum up previous threads as follows. A giant 20 block of fo is a terrible idea. They don't score, and lack fearless. The key to survival of a big 20 block cc horde is to be fearless, an attached astknf ic, or be ld10 stuborn with a reroll. Ld10 non fearless will fold and get swept if it loses cc, and it's an expensive unit to lose.

A small block of 5 FO I will defend. It's cheap, expendable, and won't easily give up 1st blood if it ds or outflanks. It's not in a contested force org slot. It has 15 attacks which is enough to bully vulnerable units such as sabers, earth shaker carriages, vaul's support, unsupported fire warriors, pink horrors, lootas, the list is huge. LD10 and rp means it can tarpit durable units that are weak in cc such as a tfc, war walkers, long fangs, psyfleman dreads, broadsides, exc...

5 of them are an excellent distraction unit. 20 of them are 1 morale check from disaster.

Is the forge world rumor true? ie moved to troops, same stats, and entire unit has shred for 10 points? 20 of them with shred as troops for 270 would be another story...

I recognize the utility and limited investment of the 5 man group, but my biggest problem with them has that almost never get their RP roll. When the opponent wants to make 5 guys disappear, he can generally do it with a minimal dedication of shooting. 20 guys is a whole other matter. Similar to your reservations with the 20 man getting swept, but particularly in a shooting edition where there are a lot more guns then swords out there, I'd rather have the guarunteed bullet resiliency over the once in a blue moon your opponent actually has a CC unit in their DZ they can handle Flayed Ones contingency.

I'm telling you right now, my Flayed Ones get swept about as often as a Land Raider gets one shot by a Las Cannon. Is such an extremely rare occurrence that the second some one posts that it tells me that they have never really used the unit that way or did something tragically wrong with them when they did. Of course, I have a heavy CC army, so, particularly if reserving them, it's just extremely rare for me to ever get out CCed by my opponent. That may be what effects my perception.

I do love how you said you would "sum previous threads" and then proceeded to actually "sum up your particular position in previous threads" . I remember some very salient points being made in those previous threads that do not fit your summary.

I used to use flayed ones from time to time before the new codex came out as mainly a counter attack squad. I'd have them behind the bigger blocks of warriors and run them out once combat was joined. It worked fairly well for me.
Since the new codex, however, I use Wraiths along with a couple of Ctan as my CC arm. Not a lot gets through it, and it's ripped the hell out of most armies it's gone up against.