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Part I: Damage.

People mathhammer wrong. They just look at the stat blocks of their targets. They should examine the stratagems and synergies available to the other armies. They measure damage against the Avatar, not against the Avatar with -1 to wound from a farseer and with a fate die 4++ available. They measure damage against oblits, not against oblits who can't be shot outside of 12" and who may be behind a wall.

Shooting involves 5-6 checkpoints:
A) Ability to attack (lone op, out of LOS or range, fights first)
B) to-hit roll (-1 to hit mods, plague -1WS/BS)
C) to-wound roll
D) saves (2+ or 4++)
E) damage mods (-1D, halfing, or auto-saves/auto zero damages)
F) wasted damage (a la D2 vs. 1 wound models)
G) Total wounds (counting FNP)

One unit popular early in the edition was the space marine Gladiator Lancer. Mathhammer said great things because it was great at B, C, & D, but it was particularly vulnerable to targets with A, E & F defenses, all the things that mathhammer doesn't consider. The best marine players (i.e. recent world championship lists) don't take any now.

The really good units contest several of these defensively at once.
Yncarne: A (teleport), C, D, E.
Wraithguard: A (phantasm, shooting back), C, D, F, G.
Nurgle oblits: A (lone op nurgle strat & indirect fire), C, D, F
Giant tanks/monsters: usually C, D & G
Tau crisis suits: A (jump-shoot-jump), D, G.
Land raider redeemer: A (don't get within 12" or ouch), C, D.
Necron warriors: B, D, F, G
Arco-flagellants: F, G
The changeling (A!!!)
Note that each case of A is different. For some you have to be close, for some far away, for some, mobile or precise. My favorite tool, fragile but capable of dealing with most cases of A, is the librarian dreadnought.
Other popular tools include rapid ingress, deep strike, long range, speed, and indirect fire, but they're all good against some but not all types of 'A' challenges.

An older, wiser player once told me that a balanced list needs both long and short range anti-infantry, and long and short range anti-tank. This was like 5 editions ago, but it still rings true, sort of. In this edition, anti-tank vs. anti-infantry is a bit simplistic. Sisters of battle are infantry, but so are arco-flagellants. Grav cannons will work well against only the latter, power swords against only the former. Land Raiders and Exorcists are both tanks, but one is vulnerable to the Gladiator Lancer while the other, between miracle dice and hiding, isn't.

I feel like a TAC list in this edition need to be able to take on any reasonable combination of those checkpoints, but especially the first - how do you get your unit where it needs to be? And that's the aspect of Warhammer that mathhammer most often neglects (and why top marine players like inceptors). But another is the large variety of defensive profiles in the game. I think that a good list needs a variety of damage output profiles to avoid being slammed by something with an odd profile they weren't prepared to deal with, like Mozrog (Get rekt, eradicators with thunderstrike, I'm not a vehicle or monster!)

I have more to say about damage than anything else. As a math dork it's my specialty. But here are some other thoughts.



Part II: Objectives.

There's six methods I see to deal with objective markers.
1) The Necron/Custodes way: put all your dudes on the objectives and watch them TRY to remove you.
2) The Tau crisis suit way: Shoot your opponent off the objectives and then tag it with something small (like a pirahna or rhino) if your secondary objectives call for it. You may not be able to hold it and score much primary, but neither will your opponent, and they'll hopefully run out of forces before you do.
3) The combi-weapon lieutenant way: Use a lone op and keep your opponent too far away to shoot it.
4) The Aeldari way: Use a distraction carni-Yncarne. If they're too busy shooting the deadly things, they won't have time to stop your trashy scoring units.
5) The old-fashioned way: table your opponent.
6) Abandon that objective, focus on others.
You can of course use different methods on different objectives. Can anyone think of other methods I've missed?



Anyone else have any theoryhammer kicking around in their brains that they want to share?

It's why, when you type up Mathhammer, you should state your assumptions.

The numbers are useful, but they're not the end-all be-all. They're a point of data, not the whole set.

The problem with the op post is the assumptions as a player skilled enough to have top 8 with Sisters are wrong. I didn't really have any long range. What I did was take enough infantry to flood the objectives and tell my opponent to chew.

The value of units is therefore determined by formula survivability/pts /OC

So many units are valued for their utility not there statline and your strategy determines what you what you prioritise

I admit I always struggle with theory like this. I just want to roll dice, play games and most importantly have fun. My daughter just looked through this thread and said and I quote "and you wonder why they call wargamers geeks".

Glad I could amuse your daughter, Jaxmeister. My son isn't old enough to be amused yet. For me, Warhammer gives me an outlet for all sorts of creative energy, both as an art project and as a mental exercise. Plus it's fun to get together with people and play a game full of twists of the dice all day. You can tell your daughter that a math teacher turned statistician wrote it. Bona fide geek!

Yes, U02dah4, that's another side of theory to explore, resilience. I'd love to hear your take on it. Especially if you think resilience outplays damage period in this edition. In my view, sisters are well-placed for infantry spam, since as I mentioned the anti-infantry type of firepower that works against sisters is nothing like the anti-infantry that works against arco-flagellants. I didn't want to speak on the topic, since I basically only play marines (at least this edition so far), and I don't think they make a good resilience style army. Might I ask how big the tourney in which you got in the top 8 was?

Note that the other player I quoted was speaking of building a balanced list. U02dah4, sounds like you were running a skew list archtype. I didn't say one HAS to build for balance, or that his advice was always correct. I brought it up to compare that simple old fashioned advice to what I was trying to say about a variety of firepower types and delivery options being necessary if you don't want to bump into a hard counter one of these days. My thoughts are basically focused on whether it's possible to build a list that doesn't have a hard counter.

When you say people mathhammer wrong I think it depends on what you want to find out.

Tier 1 Mathhammer is usually is just a comparison. If you look at your codex and can pick two units that have same sort of role - i.e. anti-tank and yet for the same points, one would expect to do 50% more damage than the other, then odds one of those is better than the other one. Stratagems and other synergies undoubtedly count for this but its still the same premise.

In the same way, if one Codex is getting X damage output for 100 points and another is seemingly having to pay 150 on their equivalent unit, it may be why that codex is dominating tournaments and the other is not. Clearly once the points is close enough this doesn't matter as much.

And as people have said - the game isn't just pure damage versus damage. But it applies much the same way. Maths is what makes chaff units efficient.

The second stage of mathhammer is usually second order statistics - because in reality dice don't always produce the average result. So you can say if I were to shoot unit X with unit Y and Z, how unlucky would I have to be not to wipe it? And also perhaps how lucky would I have to be to clear it with just unit Y so unit Z can do something else with its firepower - and this can inform me how I want to position.

I mean this is a dated reference - but I remember calculating Coldstar Commanders into Ravagers back in 8th or early 9th (I can't quite remember which). What I found is that the Coldstar had something like a 20-25% chance (if it advanced) to one-shot the Ravager. It also had about a 25% chance to do nothing. The rest of the time it would roll somewhere in the middle (doing a few wounds, but not killing the vehicle). Which by the standard of the time didn't seem especially reliable/good. You'd have games where it worked - and have games where the Coldstars effectively did nothing and were left sitting in the wind to be relatively easily deleted.

In any case - its surely reasonable to say that a balanced list wants to be a toolbox. You want some units which are efficient into every type of unit, and if you get the right units into the right targets and deny this to the opponent, you should come out ahead. But as said, if you run into a hard skew you may not have enough of the right tool.

I feel the issue is that "the meta" will tend to be a product of comparable mathhammer - but that doesn't necessarily inform how you should build your list for a given opponent's list.

don't look at the raw stats to get a deterministic outcome, use Monte-Carlo or similar for a probabilistic outcome

and then apply a range of modifiers across multiple runs

not only do you get the sensitivity of the probability curves and the shape, but also see how likely modifiers are to change the outcome

Celerior wrote:
Glad I could amuse your daughter, Jaxmeister. My son isn't old enough to be amused yet. For me, Warhammer gives me an outlet for all sorts of creative energy, both as an art project and as a mental exercise. Plus it's fun to get together with people and play a game full of twists of the dice all day. You can tell your daughter that a math teacher turned statistician wrote it. Bona fide geek!

Yes, U02dah4, that's another side of theory to explore, resilience. I'd love to hear your take on it. Especially if you think resilience outplays damage period in this edition. In my view, sisters are well-placed for infantry spam, since as I mentioned the anti-infantry type of firepower that works against sisters is nothing like the anti-infantry that works against arco-flagellants. I didn't want to speak on the topic, since I basically only play marines (at least this edition so far), and I don't think they make a good resilience style army. Might I ask how big the tourney in which you got in the top 8 was?

Note that the other player I quoted was speaking of building a balanced list. U02dah4, sounds like you were running a skew list archtype. I didn't say one HAS to build for balance, or that his advice was always correct. I brought it up to compare that simple old fashioned advice to what I was trying to say about a variety of firepower types and delivery options being necessary if you don't want to bump into a hard counter one of these days. My thoughts are basically focused on whether it's possible to build a list that doesn't have a hard counter.

Well the first tourney was a 30 something player with a very high calibur of player. However last weekend I won a 22 player but the calibur of player was more normal. I don't think resilience works for all factions I do think resilience can work for some if that is your strategy. My point is more that your strategy dictates what is good and that can mean efficiency, damage or utility.
Iast weekend at the tourney i won and this weekend I'm not trying to kill my opponent working stats based on damage output you wouldn't consider half these units equally some like the Missionary/Penitent engine/Demonifuge/junith are really about utility
The Arco-flagellants and possibly the triumph are the only CC units and gun wise I have about 7 meltas and 6 multimeltas 7 flamers none of which are that efficient (unless I have a spare 6 on an md)

Demonifuge
2 imagifiers
3 hospitalliers
Junith
Triumph of St Katherine
2x Missionary extra md enhancement
6 x battlesisters
3x novitiates
2 x Arco-flagellants
1x Penitent engine
1 x Crusader
1x voidsmen
1x navy breacher
1x rouge trader enterage