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So dropping a unit of firedragons into Melta range on an imperial knight with a Blaster toting archon, eliminating the knight's shield from the equation, how many firedragons do I need to reliably exterminate the knight?

I don't have the Codex, so feel free to correct me if any of these assumptions are wrong:

BS 4, with 1 shot per guy (and the fast shot upgrade for the archon I assume?)

I assume that by "reliably" you mean to have at least a 50% chance of killing it.

I should note that I don't know the profile for the archon's blaster profile. I believe it's the same str 8 melta as the dragons, but let me know if that's incorrect.

And just FWIW, I don't know why you wouldn't take the shield into the equation. Unless you can jump from one facing to another during the shooting phase with Eldar trickery, he's going to face towards that unit.

But going forward, you want to strip 6 hull points. So the odds of a single melta hit stripping a hull point would be 91.6% for AV 12, and 83.3% for AV 13.

Of course, it could get a 6 on the pen table and get more hull points, so on average every pen would net you an additional .61 hull points. Against AV 12, chance to pen is 83.3%, whereas against AV 13, chance to pen is 72.2%.

Say you have a unit of 10 Fire Dragons (or 9 + exarch, so 11 total shots)

7.33 hits

VS AV 13:

.81 glances
5.29 pens
3.23 additional hull points from the explodes table

A very dead knight, having lost 9.33 hull points in a single turn.

VS AV 12:

.61 glances
6.11 pens
3.7 additional HP

You then have 10.41 HP lost, meaning an even more dead knight.

So you see that 11 shots will take out 9.3 hull points. You want 6, so you have to solve the equation 11/x = 9.3/6. In this case (AV 13) x = 7.09 for 50% odds to kill the knight. Let's call that 7 shots.

The equation becomes 11/x = 10.41/6 for AV 12. Solving for x we get 6.34 to reach the 50% threshhold. So 6 won't quite cut it but 7 will be somewhat of overkill. (Like you'll be looking at a 55 or so percent success rate)

Thanks! It's more complicated than that. The Archon's blaster is str 8 - Lance. One shot and BS5. I'm looking for an 80% chance of killing the knight, I guess. How close does 7 firedragons and the archon get me?

Yes. Shenanigans takes care of the shield. :-)

Kholzerino wrote:
Thanks! It's more complicated than that. The Archon's blaster is str 8 - Lance. One shot and BS5. I'm looking for an 80% chance of killing the knight, I guess. How close does 7 firedragons and the archon get me?

Yes. Shenanigans takes care of the shield. :-)

Well 7 fire dragons alone would do it against AV 12, although we can assume that your opponent might see through your Eldar trickery and shield AV 12, regardless of what side you're currently on in an attempt to make you go up against the AV 13.

So for the archon, he will hit 86% of the time, glance 14% of the time, and pen 28% of the time. His shot will result in an additional .17 HP of damage (it's AP 1, right?), in addition to the .14 glances and .28 pens. So on average he does .6 HP of damage per turn

So 7 dragons in addition to him, vs AV 13:

4.66 hits

.51 glances
3.37 pens
2.24 extra HP

....This is causing me to question the extra HP step that I did for my earlier calculations haha. I don't know what I did last time but this one is correct (and slightly more beneficial for the tricky Eldar lol). In any case, you're looking at an average of 6.12 HP, plus the .6 done by the archon, so 6.72 HP per turn vs AV 13.

Against AV 12,

4.66 hits

.38 glances
3.88 pens
2.58 extra HP

6.85 HP per turn. Add in the .6 from the archon, cause he don't care bout no AV and you get 7.45 HP per turn.

In terms of percent success rates, that should be roughly in the high 50's for AV 13 and mid 60's for AV 12. So I mean, it's by no means a guarantee (especially in a dice game) but you will knock that thing around pretty seriously.

Kholzerino wrote:
Yes. Shenanigans takes care of the shield. :-)

You can't battle focus the fire dragons while the archon is still attached to the unit.

 greyknight12 wrote:

Kholzerino wrote:
Yes. Shenanigans takes care of the shield. :-)

You can't battle focus the fire dragons while the archon is still attached to the unit.

You Deep Strike the Raider on the corner between two of the Knight's facings, it doesn't scatter due to the WWP. The Knight player nominates the facing of his shield, then as an open-topped vehicle you can shoot from any point of the Raider's hull, thus hitting the facing without the shield.

Also, will only take a tiny bit of difference to the above calculations but Archon is BS7 and Blaster is AP2.

ryuken87 wrote:

 greyknight12 wrote:

Kholzerino wrote:
Yes. Shenanigans takes care of the shield. :-)

You can't battle focus the fire dragons while the archon is still attached to the unit.

You Deep Strike the Raider on the corner between two of the Knight's facings, it doesn't scatter due to the WWP. The Knight player nominates the facing of his shield, then as an open-topped vehicle you can shoot from any point of the Raider's hull, thus hitting the facing without the shield.

Also, will only take a tiny bit of difference to the above calculations but Archon is BS7 and Blaster is AP2.

This. And you are a hundred per cent right on the tactic. And my misquoting of the DE stats.

How many fire dragons do you think I need in there?