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 Ailaros wrote:

daedalus wrote:

HawaiiMatt wrote:
Is your opponent going to put everything at 2" dispersion because you brought a wyvern? Great! That means that 2/3rds of his army is further away than it would otherwise be.

Assaulty armies would not be very hurt by 2" spacing, and they're generally the horde armies you'd really want the wyvern for.

Right, the idea of "but it forces them to displace!" holds very, very little water.

Firstly, ANYTHING with a blast or template weapon will cause displacement. There is nothing special about the wyvern at all in this respect. Secondly, displacement isn't actually that serious of a disadvantage thanks to a little thing called the movement phase. Thirdly, a squad may very well want to be spread out anyways to soak up more field position, which is especially useful for super-scorers (the intended target of wyverns).

The best answer to the fact that wyverns cause stuff to be spread out is "so?"

 HawaiiMatt wrote:

Poly Ranger wrote:

MATHHAMMER TIME!

Wyvers have 4 blasts each. If you assume 2 hits per blasts, you are looking at TWICE as many blast kills as you calculated.
2 hits per blast is 7 MEQ killed.

Basically you need to double all the wyvern kills in your math

And yet the math is still off.

The math presented (corrected for the proper number of shots), says that three wyvern hitting 2 models apiece kills 29 models. I'll just let it sink in for a moment. How do you get 29 kills with, AT MOST assuming you roll completely perfectly, 24 hits?

In the world of reality, not every shot hits, and not every shot wounds. Even assuming that you get two shots per hit, the real amount of damage you're going to do is much closer to
(12 * 2) * ~.6 * .84 which gives us a number much closer to 12

If you need to waste an HS slot on a few bits of open-topped artillery just to kill a guard squad in a turn, I seriously question what's wrong with the rest of your list. Or your opponent's understanding of what 2" coherency means.

The maths is not off. The maths showed that with 2 models hit per blast against t3 5+ models would kill 10.67 with 6 blasts. Since it is 12 that will kill 21.31 with the blasts. The hbs kill 3.75. You DONT double the hb shots. So that leads to 25.06 kills NOT 28. Look at the maths. You will see it is correct.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Note again 24 covered by 12 blasts with my estimate. Maths says of those 24, 21.31 will die. Lets look at that:
Wounds on a 3+ with reroll so chance of making a kill is...
2/3 + 1/3 x 2/3 = 88.89%
24 x 0.8889 = 21.3336 (slight error due to early rounding)


Automatically Appended Next Post:
2/3 represents wounding on a 3+. 1/3 × 2/3 represents failing to wound and then wound on the reroll.
Multiplied by 0.8889 as this is the decimal equivalent of 88.89%.
Multiplied by 24 because I am calculating how many of the 24 hit are wounded on a 88.89% chance.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
If you want to say the maths is wrong please point to the part of the equation which you think is incorrect.

Poly Ranger wrote:If you want to say the maths is wrong please point to the part of the equation which you think is incorrect.

We can start with the part where you assume a 100% hit rate from what is essentially a twin-linked BS2 weapon.

 Ailaros wrote:

Poly Ranger wrote:If you want to say the maths is wrong please point to the part of the equation which you think is incorrect.

We can start with the part where you assume a 100% hit rate from what is essentially a twin-linked BS2 weapon.

I concur. You can't assume in mathhammer.

Well, you can, it's just that the results will skew based on the assumptions.

In this case, assuming that a wyvern will just hit with all it's shots is roughly akin to saying a guardsman will just hit with all its shots. You say 3 wyverns puts down 24 hits for 21 killed GEq, well, that's like saying that a 30-man guard blob with attending PCS will pass FRF for 93 hits which kills 31 GEq. And they score to boot!

But we know that you don't, in fact, hit with every shot. If you're going to assume that they do, though, then you need to compare it to other things with the same assumptions in place.

To be fair even if all you did by bringing the wyvern is cause your enemy to not hug cover and be easier to kill for your other none ignore cover big guns it has made back its points. Combining a wyvern or two with some Leman Russ main battles and you can make them have to decide if they want to optimize cover against the large blasts or risk being destroyed by the Wyvern. Points spent to disrupt deployment can still be worth it.

White Ninja wrote:To be fair even if all you did by bringing the wyvern is cause your enemy to not hug cover and be easier to kill for your other none ignore cover big guns it has made back its points.

But this is just psychology. You are hoping that by bringing a wyvern your opponents will make decisions that put them at more overall risk.

I don't know how much I'd rely on my opponents being that... generous.

 Ailaros wrote:

White Ninja wrote:To be fair even if all you did by bringing the wyvern is cause your enemy to not hug cover and be easier to kill for your other none ignore cover big guns it has made back its points.

But this is just psychology. You are hoping that by bringing a wyvern your opponents will make decisions that put them at more overall risk.

I don't know how much I'd rely on my opponents being that... generous.

Im not hoping that they will do anything. The wyvern basically still forces players to have to chose if they want a good cover save verses none blast shooting or if they want to let the wyvern be able to potentially do a lot of wounds to that unit. The point is that regardless of which choice they make I can gain from it.

I did a serious attempt at mathhammering the Wyvern when it first came out (6th ed rules), trying to make assumptions that give a pessimistic but useful result. I don't have a 7th ed rulebook handy at the moment, but barring rules changes I think the reasoning is still valid.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/590840.page

Even if my conclusion is that the Wyvern is a good unit I haven't started using one. Mainly for two reasons:

1) I feel it is not worth the hazzle.
2) I have other things that are good at killing infantry (like massed lasgun fire).

 Ailaros wrote:

Poly Ranger wrote:If you want to say the maths is wrong please point to the part of the equation which you think is incorrect.

We can start with the part where you assume a 100% hit rate from what is essentially a twin-linked BS2 weapon.

Yes, it is in fact impossible to compare a lasgun to an indirect fire blast, without making some big assumptions.
It's better to make basic assumptions, and that will tell you where both are good.
Wyverns want bunched up enemies, but have no problem with range (48"), line of sight (barrage) or cover (ignore cover).
Infantry squads have problems with all three of those. Orders can help with the cover, but does nothing for range or line of sight.

If your opponent has troops in transports, wyverns are golden.
Step 1, pop rhino.
Step 2, swivel battle cannon toward rhino wreckage and tell opponent to disembark within 3" of access points (opponent will usually hide behind rhino).
Step 3, drop 4-12 wyvern blasts on tight~ish cluster of guys behind rhino.
Step 4, profit.

A pair of wyverns seem to be enough. You can exploit where the enemy failed to spread out (or was forced to cluster, like when forced to bunch up in combat), without being too stupidly expensive.
Really, 130 for finishing a squad forced out of transport, or hitting out of sight enemies camping behind LOS blocking terrain, and so on.

Anyone who doesn't need effective long range, indirect fire is playing a different game than I am playing. Or maybe they are playing with a lot less terrain.

-Matt

Troops in general fear the Wyvern.
even those with good armor are vulnerable from the sheer number of wounds that can be stacked on. a 2+ save can only be made so many times before things start dieing.

There is a saying in the Guard.
"Oh you can make a 2+ armor save? MAKE THAT 50 TIMES!!!"

The Wyvern personifies that saying.

Are they the best on the planet? No, other units can do their job with more brute force, better AP, range ,blast radius and ST but fewer wounds (relatively). Like say a Basilisk will do fewer wounds (due to single shot) but its higher ST and better AP have a chance to do more/equal damage to troops but will hit at longer ranges to a Wyvern.

If you got FW, make a Trojan tag along and watch the hilarity ensue with Preferred Enemy (Everything) even though it can only give it to 1 Wyvern at a time.
I did it to an Ork player just today with a single Wyvern and a Trojan following it. Mauled every single Ork in a 20 man blob even with 'eavy armor on. stacked so many wounds that he simply couldn't save enough.

 Ailaros wrote:

Poly Ranger wrote:If you want to say the maths is wrong please point to the part of the equation which you think is incorrect.

We can start with the part where you assume a 100% hit rate from what is essentially a twin-linked BS2 weapon.

Ah so the maths is not incorrect then. You are now trying to cover the mistake you made in accusing me of a mistake. You told me that id calculated there would be 28 hits from the blasts which I've just shown is not true - nice deflection btw.
I said from the very start that I would be basing this on 2 hits per blast. The reasons: twin linked blast hits 5/9 of the time. If it scatters you will have a high chance of scattering onto other models as you are shooting at infantry. Furthermore it is barrage which give you further control. Lastly it is possible, especially with blobs, units in cover and units having deepstruck to get far more than two blasts. Since I was not going to use these direct scenarios I estimated the average to be 2 hits per blast. Some blasts would not hit. Some would hit more than 2. I estimated THE AVERAGE to be 2.
Without doing such the maths would have been impossible.
I put this disclaimer in at the start and said some people would not be happy or agree with this assumption. I then explained how to adapt the result if you thought it would only hit 1.5 models etc.
So do not try and deflect the issue that you accused the direct maths of being incorrect and have now tried to claim you meant something else which I covered from the very start of the post with the calculations.
That would be disingenuous.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Again: If you believe it to be more like 1.5 hits per blast then divide the kills per blast by 2 then multiply by 1.5 then add the hb kills.
I am not going to do this for every average model per blast people want to assume, as I have shown how people can do that themselves.
You're welcome for the effort of the statistics though.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
In fact, just realised, it is a 23/36 chance of a direct hit not 5/9. As you have bs3.

Okay, so, I have actually gone from simply abstract visualization to actually putting physical models down and grabbing a small blast.

I've also re-familiarized myself with the barrage rules.

The way you rob wyverns of their supposed effectiveness is to spread out. I've said that many times, but I haven't said how is the BEST way, because I wasn't sure of the best way to do it yet. An exact 2" grid like I suggested earlier is fast and easy, but it doesn't actually get you optimal results. Conga line means you get at MOST 2 hits per blast, and that's if you roll a direct hit. You have about a 90 degree arc with which to get one model on the scatter, from either side of the line around you. You can further bend the conga line at semi-regular intervals around the basis that you never let more than two other models get within 3" of each other, and you still have that magic 90 degrees. It requires a lot of spacing, but should be doable by the start of turn 2 for anyone who actually cared enough to do so. Just doing a quick test here at my desk, I can get two rows of people that would be impossible to get more than two on without meeting the above angle estimates, and it only be somewhat less compact than the 2" grid method. I could probably do this and still keep at least 15-20 models reasonably close behind an ADL.

So what're the odds of direct hitting/scattering conveniently? Well, your first shot can direct hit on, as Poly mentioned, at about 23/36, or 64%. That only gets you one unless you conveniently scatter the first shot between two models, but the odds are much greater you'll get the direct shot so we'll stick with that. Each additional barrage has about a 1-(2/3 * 2/3), or 55.5% chance of rolling a hit, because they're twin linked. The odds a resulting outcome of a scatter die roll scattering in the direction that gets you one wound is (1 - (270/360 * 270/360) * 2/3 [because you direct hit 1/3 of the time]) or 29.17%. You have roughly an 84.67% chance of hitting something altogether.

Based upon this, I think 1 model per blast is still accurate. Lets try to find out. If you have one wyvern, you get 4 blasts. Lets say you get a direct hit on the first one, so that we don't need to worry about those times where you scatter so far you miss everything, now 3 blasts left, 1 wound. From there, 55.5% of those blasts hit two models. Hurray. That's 3 * 0.555 * 2, or 3.33 more hits. What happened to the other 1.335 blasts? Lets find out. 1.335 * 0.2917 = 0.389 hits. Total hits are 1 + 0.389 + 3.33 = 4.719, or 1.180 hits per blast. Better than I thought, I'll give you that. Assuming space marines, you'd get 75% of those to wound, and they'd save 66% of them, so 3.539 wounds with 1.2 unsaved wounds.

That's pretty close to the math in Poly's mathhammering, with the general assumptions amended, so I think it's right. More work could probably be done on my scatter model, but I think it's reasonable at least for the conga line assumption. Feel free to correct me on something. I haven't had to do that much math since college. My head hurts, and I need coffee.

 Ailaros wrote:

White Ninja wrote:To be fair even if all you did by bringing the wyvern is cause your enemy to not hug cover and be easier to kill for your other none ignore cover big guns it has made back its points.

But this is just psychology. You are hoping that by bringing a wyvern your opponents will make decisions that put them at more overall risk.

I don't know how much I'd rely on my opponents being that... generous.

You know its easy to say that on forums but what I have found is that even the best generals know a touch of panic anytime a massive damage dealing weapon system like that shows up.

Part of it is that it disrupts the enemy deployment and some battle plans DO call for or at least certainly benefit from certain formations. Examples: the Dark Angels shield wall, assault forces wherein getting a larger number of models into the fight matters and of course line of sight blocking, which reduces the efficacy of fire power. All those things are factors when you can't be as close as you'd prefer.

No General wants his plan pinched and he may be willing to exert some real effort to alleviate those strictures on his movement. Choke points become very dangerous. If he's relying on transports to get him there then he ALWAYS must risk getting blown out and Wyverns are just flat out unforgiving when you get blown out. That 3" isn't as far as you'd think when the template is 3"! Of course you do your best but you KNOW some death is about to occur when you get popped.

Is it 3" from an access point or 3" from the hull anywhere?

 daedalus wrote:
Is it 3" from an access point or 3" from the hull anywhere?

Access point