So the new codex comes out and there have been very few changes to the heavy weapons in the Eldar codex. Or have there?
In the last edition, the Scatter Laser was king. With laser lock the others rarely got a look in. However times change, laser lock has been resigned to the bin of history and so everyone gets to have another chance. In this article I will compare the Scatter Laser (SL) with both the Shuriken Cannon (ShC) and the Starcannon (StC).
The reason for this article is that I read somewhere on a popular blog that there is no point in using starcannons because they are flat our inferior to scatter lasers still. I am not so sure that is the case, so lets run the numbers shall we? I will take several basic statlines and compare the damage each weapon does against them. We will use GEQ, MEQ and finally TEQs.
GEQ - Toughness 3 5+ saves
SL 4 shots, hit on 3s, wound on 2s, saves on 5s. 1.49 kills
ShC 3 shots, hit on 3s, wound on 2s, no saves (bladestorm irrelevant here) 1.66 kills
StC 2 shots, hit on 2s, wound on 2s, no saves. 1.11 kills.
In a surprise to me at least, the Shuiken Cannon comes out on top here. Saving one in three wounds really hurts the Scatter lasers damage output. It will likely only get worse from here on out for the previous king.
MEQ - T4 3+ saves
SL 4 shots, hit on 3s, wound on 2s, saves on 3s. 0.73 kills
ShC 3 shots, hit on 3s, wound on 2s, saves on 3s (bladestorm kicks in) 0.64 kills
StC 2 shots, hit on 2s, wound on 2s, no saves. 1.11 kills
So unless my maths is wrong, the Starcannon is the best performer here. Against the most common, popular models in the game. Now obviously cover saves do matter, but that will only reduce the Starcannon to 0.74, still leaving it the strongest performer here.
TEQ - T4 2+/5++
SL 4 shots, hit on 3s, wound on 2s, saves on 2s. 0.37 kills
ShC 3 shots, hit on 3s, wound on 2s, saves on 2s (bladestorm kicks in) 0.46 kills
StC 2 shots, hit on 2s, wound on 2s, saves on 5++. 0.74 kills
As the armour improves, the Scatter laser really loses out. The only time the scatter laser may be the optimal weapon is against a target with an armour save of 6+ or worse. Outside of orks, I don't think there are a great many of those around.
Showing posts with label Comparisons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Comparisons. Show all posts
Friday, 22 May 2015
Saturday, 17 November 2012
Tankbusting 101 - Weapon comparison - BS4
For the last couple of weeks I have been quite busy not getting around to writing anything more on the chaos book. It seems anything I can do to avoid writing I seem to do instead.
What I thought I would do instead is write an updated 6th edition anti tank capability comparison between various weapons in both Space Marine and Imperial Guard lists including as many of the different types of guns as I could think of, seeing how bs 3 and 4 affect the various weapons and equally importantly looking at how the changes to how AP affects armour harms your chances of a kill.
Firstly lets look at common anti tank weapons available to marines using BS4 adjusted for 6th edition AP values, bearing in mind anything with ap 3+ is actually 50% worse at tank killing now;
What I thought I would do instead is write an updated 6th edition anti tank capability comparison between various weapons in both Space Marine and Imperial Guard lists including as many of the different types of guns as I could think of, seeing how bs 3 and 4 affect the various weapons and equally importantly looking at how the changes to how AP affects armour harms your chances of a kill.
Firstly lets look at common anti tank weapons available to marines using BS4 adjusted for 6th edition AP values, bearing in mind anything with ap 3+ is actually 50% worse at tank killing now;
ML Chance of
Glance Chance of Pen Chance of kill
VS AV 10 11.11% 44.44% 7.41%
VS AV 11 11.11% 33.33% 5.56%
VS AV 12 11.11% 22.22% 3.70%
VS AV 13 11.11% 11.11% 1.85%
VS AV 14 11.11% 0% 0%
Lascannon Chance of
Glance Chance of Pen Chance of kill
VS AV 10 11.11% 55.55% 18.52%
VS AV 11 11.11% 44.89% 14.81%
VS AV 12 11.11% 33.50% 11.05%
VS AV 13 11.11% 22.11% 7.30%
VS AV 14 11.11% 10.72% 3.54%
TL Lascannon Chance of
Glance Chance of Pen Chance of kill
VS AV 10 13.88% 69.44% 23.15%
VS AV 11 13.88% 55.55% 18.52%
VS AV 12 13.88% 41.67% 13.88%
VS AV 13 13.88% 27.76% 9.25%
VS AV 14 13.88% 13.88% 4.44%
Autocannon* Chance of Glance Chance of Pen Chance of kill
VS AV 10 11.11% 33.33% 5.56%
VS AV 11 11.11% 22.22% 3.70%
VS AV 12 11.11% 11.11% 1.85%
VS AV 13 11.11% 0% 0%
VS AV 14 0% 0% 0%
TL Autocannon* Chance of
Glance Chance of Pen Chance of kill
VS AV 10 13.88% 41.67% 6.67%
VS AV 11 13.88% 27.76% 4.63%
VS AV 12 13.88% 13.88% 2.22%
VS AV 13 13.88% 0% 0%
VS AV 14 0% 0% 0%
Assault Cannon** Chance of Glance Chance of Pen Chance of kill
VS AV 10 11.11% 22.22% 3.70%
VS AV 11 11.11% 11.11% 1.85%
VS AV 12 0% 11.11% 3.70%
VS AV 13 3.70% 7.41% 2.46%
VS AV 14 3.70% 3.70% 1.23%
VS AV 10 11.11% 22.22% 3.70%
VS AV 11 11.11% 11.11% 1.85%
VS AV 12 0% 11.11% 3.70%
VS AV 13 3.70% 7.41% 2.46%
VS AV 14 3.70% 3.70% 1.23%
TL Assault Cannon** Chance of Glance Chance of Pen Chance of kill
VS AV 10 13.88% 27.39% 4.57%
VS AV 11 13.88% 13.28% 2.21%
VS AV 12 0% 13.28% 6.64%
VS AV 13 4.43% 8.86% 2.93%
VS AV 10 13.88% 27.39% 4.57%
VS AV 11 13.88% 13.28% 2.21%
VS AV 12 0% 13.28% 6.64%
VS AV 13 4.43% 8.86% 2.93%
VS AV 14 4.43% 4.43% 1.48%
Melta under half range
Chance of Glance Chance of
Pen Chance of kill
VS AV 10 1.83% 64.84% 33.03%
VS AV 11 3.66% 61.17% 31.20%
VS AV 12 5.49% 55.68% 28.76%
VS AV 13 7.32% 48.36% 25.40%
VS AV 14 9.15% 39.21% 21.14%
Melta over half range
Chance of Glance Chance of
Pen Chance of kill
VS AV 10 11.11% 44.44% 24.07%
VS AV 11 11.11% 33.33% 18.55%
VS AV 12 11.11% 22.22% 12.96%
VS AV 13 11.11% 11.11% 7.41%
VS AV 14 11.11% 0% 1.85%
* has two shots, this is a per shot comparison, so you get two chances of this
** has four shots, this is a per shot comparison, so you get four chances of this
Friday, 6 July 2012
First read through, the main differences between 5th and 6th.
Psychic powers have changed, but you can optionally use the normal ones
you have access to in your book. That is is you get any. I suspect
people will use the normal ones in their books for the time being in my gaming group at least.
Vehicles and power weapons are most changed. Vehicles now have a number of hit points. You lose one hit point on a glance, and on a penetrate you lose 1hp and roll on the death chart. Most tanks, execept landraiders and monliths have 3 hit points, so glance, glance dead occurs. Power weapons are now divided into four different types. They all cost the same and have different stats.
Random charge ranges are in though jump troops and fleet troops get rerolls on their 2d6 charge dice. This is combined with premeasuring which should help somewhat in combating failing a charge with actual close combat troops.
All heavy weapons which are not blast or flamer can move and fire at Bs1. This is called snap shot. You can also snap shot as a stand and shoot reaction, flamers work here inflicting d3 hits automatically. Rapid fire weapons like bolters can fire their 1 long range shot even if they move now, two still within 24 inches. Tanks while moving get to fire 1 gun with normal bs, but other guns have to be fired as snapshot [bs1] so twinlinked guns are where its at. Flamer/blast weapons not being able to use snapshot will obviously need to be fired using the main BS.
All characters including sergent types get look out sir. They also have a great rule that if the character rolls a 6 to hit with shooting or combat you choose who gets hit.
Wound allocation is now far more sensible. Basically you make your saves and the nearest models die, no miraculous survival of heavy weapons if they are stood at the front. There are complications due to terrain, because you can choose to just shoot those in the open, or in lesser terrain, but then you can only kill those models. This is much better IMO.
Flyers and flying monsters have the same rules as before as well as an alternative much faster, but less manuverable method of flight. Monsters will probably overtake dreadnoughts in importance due to the changes to tanks. Monsters can be attacked by anti vehicle grenades, but they typically are tougher with armour/wards so shouldn't get bogged down too much.
Deployment is different. You now choose sides, mission etc before setting terrain up to facilitate the addition of fortifications. You can also now take allies from a list, which depends a lot on what army you play as. A lot of alliances you would expect are in there, eg marines with each other and other imperial forces, but some are more unusual, eg marines and tau.
Vehicles and power weapons are most changed. Vehicles now have a number of hit points. You lose one hit point on a glance, and on a penetrate you lose 1hp and roll on the death chart. Most tanks, execept landraiders and monliths have 3 hit points, so glance, glance dead occurs. Power weapons are now divided into four different types. They all cost the same and have different stats.
Random charge ranges are in though jump troops and fleet troops get rerolls on their 2d6 charge dice. This is combined with premeasuring which should help somewhat in combating failing a charge with actual close combat troops.
All heavy weapons which are not blast or flamer can move and fire at Bs1. This is called snap shot. You can also snap shot as a stand and shoot reaction, flamers work here inflicting d3 hits automatically. Rapid fire weapons like bolters can fire their 1 long range shot even if they move now, two still within 24 inches. Tanks while moving get to fire 1 gun with normal bs, but other guns have to be fired as snapshot [bs1] so twinlinked guns are where its at. Flamer/blast weapons not being able to use snapshot will obviously need to be fired using the main BS.
All characters including sergent types get look out sir. They also have a great rule that if the character rolls a 6 to hit with shooting or combat you choose who gets hit.
Wound allocation is now far more sensible. Basically you make your saves and the nearest models die, no miraculous survival of heavy weapons if they are stood at the front. There are complications due to terrain, because you can choose to just shoot those in the open, or in lesser terrain, but then you can only kill those models. This is much better IMO.
Flyers and flying monsters have the same rules as before as well as an alternative much faster, but less manuverable method of flight. Monsters will probably overtake dreadnoughts in importance due to the changes to tanks. Monsters can be attacked by anti vehicle grenades, but they typically are tougher with armour/wards so shouldn't get bogged down too much.
Deployment is different. You now choose sides, mission etc before setting terrain up to facilitate the addition of fortifications. You can also now take allies from a list, which depends a lot on what army you play as. A lot of alliances you would expect are in there, eg marines with each other and other imperial forces, but some are more unusual, eg marines and tau.
Friday, 23 March 2012
List building 101
One of the things newer gamers often struggle with is creating a balanced list. Many more experienced gamers can fall into this trap as well without a bit of self analysis on their list after completion.
I am primarily a gamer who plays with moderate strength lists. I acknowledge what makes a strong list and I have designed, on paper at least strong lists. I have studied many tourney winning lists and I have taken the time to understand what makes them tick.
The first thing to consider when building a list is a general one. How do I want this army to play? Some armies are capable of being designed to play in different ways, others not so much. This is what leads to tags like Nidzilla where the general design of the list is around monstrous creatures, or Imperial Guard Leafblower lists designed to blast your opponent off the table before he gets to you.
With a concept in mind, you need to first look at the HQ and troops choices available to you. At this stage you don't need to buy them lots of gear, just buy the units with the minimum equipment needed to complete your assigned role. For example you may want to do a Tyranid horde style army, so you buy two large units of gaunts and a HQ who fits what you want him to do. This might be a Hive Tyrant with wings and Old adversary. Do not spend points on other upgrades at this point unless the Tyrant has a specific designated role eg tank disruption, so you buy him a heavy venom cannon.
Once this minimum requirement is dealt with you can turn your attention to the units which you are employing to actually win you the game. This is not a concept many people actually follow. Many people just blindly add units because they would like to use them. That is also fine, but you risk losing the focus of the list. You often have a choice of units to fulfill what you want to do, and these will often work in different ways. Taking the Nidzilla list as an example, you have a choice of which monsterous creatures to use, be it Carnifex, Trygon, Hive Tyrant, Tergivon, Harpy or Mawloc. You need to consider how each unit will interact with the army. Fast moving monsters will typically need fast moving support units such as gargoyles, ravenors or shrikes, where as the slower ones can be supported with slower moving Tyranid units.
Once you have worked out the focus of the list you next need to turn your attention to two other areas, scoring and supporting. These are both equally important so you need to balance your list with both in mind. Obviously where a scoring unit can fulfil a supporting role, by means of including special/heavy weapons or bringing extra transports to the table, this should be encouraged. In a typical 2000 point game, it is always worth including at least three troops choices to ensure you have enough troops to fulfil the objectives which occur in 60% of the games. Remember those gaunts I mentioned earlier? This is when you equip them for their specified role.
Support elements are the other units which you include to help your army work in its intended play style, and more importantly help you win, by filling in glaring gaps in the checklist I am going to present later on. Typically multiple units can fill this same role. The best example of this is found in the space marine book. You can bring four extra missile launchers on Landspeeder typhoons or Devastator squads for roughly comparable prices, but in totally different slots and functionality. Which you include should be based around how you want your army to behave. There is no point including a single landspeeder in an army with no other vehicles because it becomes a priority target. You need to include multiple units with roughly the same armour band, eg light armour 10-11 to hopefully split the enemies fire. In this situation you would be better to include foot devastators so not to present a lone target. It is the support stage that you should further equip your Hive Tyrant I mentioned earlier.
Once you have completed your list, you need to compare it against the following list of requirements;
Can you deal effectively with the following?
Light infantry: Typically Imperial guard, eldar guardians, tyranid gaunts etc
Heavy infantry: Typically marines and their equivalent
Elite infantry: Typically terminators and other troops with good saves, invulnerable saves and/or multiple wounds/high toughness often with power weapons
Light armour: Typically transports. Armour 10/11 vehicles, typically transports such as rhinos.
Medium armour: Typically tanks. Armour 13/12 in primary facings often with weak rear armour, eg predators, falcons
Heavy armour: Typically heavy tanks. Armour 14 in the front arc. Includes Landraiders, Monoliths, Leman Russes etc
Monstrous Creatures: Large creatures which have multiple wounds, attacks and a generally high statistic line.
Against some of these unit types, you will be able to use the same weapons:
Light infantry: small arms. Most troops will come with small arms like bolters, lasguns, fleshborers etc
Heavy infantry: small arms en-mass can work, but typically they will still have a save. Ideally you need ap 3 or greater weapons to remove these.
Elite infantry: small arms en-mass can work but you will typically need anti tank weapons to remove their saves, and even then they will often have an invulnerable.
Light armour: rapid-fire heavy weapons are best used here, typically autocannons, multi-lasers, scatter lasers
Medium armour: you need higher strength heavy weapons to deal with these, usually strength 8 upwards Krak missiles and melta weapons are typical examples
Heavy armour: ideally melta weapons, otherwise strength 10 or lance weapons will suffice.
Monstrous creatures: rapid fire heavy weapons are best used. Monsters can absorb individual high strength shots due to their high wounds characteristic
If you have a list that can't deal with all of these, it is not necessarily a problem if you know the army you are playing against as some most armies do not have the luxury of all of these types of unit.
I am primarily a gamer who plays with moderate strength lists. I acknowledge what makes a strong list and I have designed, on paper at least strong lists. I have studied many tourney winning lists and I have taken the time to understand what makes them tick.
The first thing to consider when building a list is a general one. How do I want this army to play? Some armies are capable of being designed to play in different ways, others not so much. This is what leads to tags like Nidzilla where the general design of the list is around monstrous creatures, or Imperial Guard Leafblower lists designed to blast your opponent off the table before he gets to you.
With a concept in mind, you need to first look at the HQ and troops choices available to you. At this stage you don't need to buy them lots of gear, just buy the units with the minimum equipment needed to complete your assigned role. For example you may want to do a Tyranid horde style army, so you buy two large units of gaunts and a HQ who fits what you want him to do. This might be a Hive Tyrant with wings and Old adversary. Do not spend points on other upgrades at this point unless the Tyrant has a specific designated role eg tank disruption, so you buy him a heavy venom cannon.
Once this minimum requirement is dealt with you can turn your attention to the units which you are employing to actually win you the game. This is not a concept many people actually follow. Many people just blindly add units because they would like to use them. That is also fine, but you risk losing the focus of the list. You often have a choice of units to fulfill what you want to do, and these will often work in different ways. Taking the Nidzilla list as an example, you have a choice of which monsterous creatures to use, be it Carnifex, Trygon, Hive Tyrant, Tergivon, Harpy or Mawloc. You need to consider how each unit will interact with the army. Fast moving monsters will typically need fast moving support units such as gargoyles, ravenors or shrikes, where as the slower ones can be supported with slower moving Tyranid units.
Once you have worked out the focus of the list you next need to turn your attention to two other areas, scoring and supporting. These are both equally important so you need to balance your list with both in mind. Obviously where a scoring unit can fulfil a supporting role, by means of including special/heavy weapons or bringing extra transports to the table, this should be encouraged. In a typical 2000 point game, it is always worth including at least three troops choices to ensure you have enough troops to fulfil the objectives which occur in 60% of the games. Remember those gaunts I mentioned earlier? This is when you equip them for their specified role.
Support elements are the other units which you include to help your army work in its intended play style, and more importantly help you win, by filling in glaring gaps in the checklist I am going to present later on. Typically multiple units can fill this same role. The best example of this is found in the space marine book. You can bring four extra missile launchers on Landspeeder typhoons or Devastator squads for roughly comparable prices, but in totally different slots and functionality. Which you include should be based around how you want your army to behave. There is no point including a single landspeeder in an army with no other vehicles because it becomes a priority target. You need to include multiple units with roughly the same armour band, eg light armour 10-11 to hopefully split the enemies fire. In this situation you would be better to include foot devastators so not to present a lone target. It is the support stage that you should further equip your Hive Tyrant I mentioned earlier.
Once you have completed your list, you need to compare it against the following list of requirements;
Can you deal effectively with the following?
Light infantry: Typically Imperial guard, eldar guardians, tyranid gaunts etc
Heavy infantry: Typically marines and their equivalent
Elite infantry: Typically terminators and other troops with good saves, invulnerable saves and/or multiple wounds/high toughness often with power weapons
Light armour: Typically transports. Armour 10/11 vehicles, typically transports such as rhinos.
Medium armour: Typically tanks. Armour 13/12 in primary facings often with weak rear armour, eg predators, falcons
Heavy armour: Typically heavy tanks. Armour 14 in the front arc. Includes Landraiders, Monoliths, Leman Russes etc
Monstrous Creatures: Large creatures which have multiple wounds, attacks and a generally high statistic line.
Against some of these unit types, you will be able to use the same weapons:
Light infantry: small arms. Most troops will come with small arms like bolters, lasguns, fleshborers etc
Heavy infantry: small arms en-mass can work, but typically they will still have a save. Ideally you need ap 3 or greater weapons to remove these.
Elite infantry: small arms en-mass can work but you will typically need anti tank weapons to remove their saves, and even then they will often have an invulnerable.
Light armour: rapid-fire heavy weapons are best used here, typically autocannons, multi-lasers, scatter lasers
Medium armour: you need higher strength heavy weapons to deal with these, usually strength 8 upwards Krak missiles and melta weapons are typical examples
Heavy armour: ideally melta weapons, otherwise strength 10 or lance weapons will suffice.
Monstrous creatures: rapid fire heavy weapons are best used. Monsters can absorb individual high strength shots due to their high wounds characteristic
If you have a list that can't deal with all of these, it is not necessarily a problem if you know the army you are playing against as some most armies do not have the luxury of all of these types of unit.
Wednesday, 21 March 2012
What makes a good unit?
For the last couple of weeks I have been discussing with my gaming group what makes a good unit. More specifically, what makes a unit useful to the codex that it resides in. This is quite an important distinction. A unit may be poor on paper but be an armies only significant threat against certain units, or it may be generally pretty useless but bring along some useful utility ability which make it useful in certain build combinations.
There are usually a lot of different choices but these can boil down to a three distinct unit types:
Scoring
Fighting
Utility
First of all we need to consider scoring units. In 66% of all games played by the core rulebook, you will be playing for some objectives. This means first and foremost you need to look at what troops choices, or other scoring units you can take. Different armies have different amounts of troops choices. Some, such as chaos marines have five troops choices, other such as grey knights only have two troops choices. Most armies fit between these two extremes, usually towards the grey knights end in number. Some units are primarily just scoring units and bring virtually nothing else to the table. Some examples of these are plaguebearers in the daemon army and grots in the ork army. These units will typically be either very cheap so you can take a lot of bodies or very tough but offer virtually nothing else apart from parking on an objective.
Fighting units are those which have been purchased to inflict and take damage. A unit can be a fighting unit as well as a scoring unit, in fact this is quite common. Most scoring units will be fighting units in some way or another. The distinction between just scoring and fighting and scoring is that the fighting unit can inflict reasonable damage on other fighting units. Most scoring units will just be able to score, and will fold in short order if charged by anything half way competent. Tactical marines are a good example of a scoring fighting unit, being able to take a heavy weapon, special weapon and equip their leader to have a selection of other items.
Utility units are the third and final part of the jigsaw. These cover a myriad of different things, but it can be more or less summed up by something that doesn't inflict damage, take damage or score. Now you may be thinking why on earth would I want to take one of these units. The answer is often quite simple. They allow you to influence the game in a different way. I am including all fast moving units in this section as well as transport tanks. A rhino is a great example of utility. It offers no scoring ability and has just about the poorest weapon for its points value that I can think of. Yet it is a brilliant unit because it can protect your troops, move them around and your opponent doesn't know what you have inside until you reveal it, so he has to assign it an unknown threat rating. Other examples of utility are Eldar Farseers. They have a fairly poor statistic line but come able to be equipped with a selection of powers which boost directly or indirectly their units, be it by allowing them to reroll to hit, wound or save. Some people may call utility units force multipliers or support units, but the name really doesn't matter.
Having considered the different types of unit we now need to look at what makes them good. For any unit to be considered to be a good unit, it needs to fulfil one of the following criteria. It needs to either be powerful, cheap, survivable or flexible. Ideally some combination of the four. Often a unit can be cheap and powerful, such as ork boys, but they have poor armour saves. Tactical marines on the other hand are very flexible in terms of equipment and have good saves, but are only average on power and quite expensive.
You need to weigh up the various pros and cons of each unit against what other units in your codex can do. Taking some of the units I was discussing with a friend of mine recently as an example, we consider Ork buggies vs dethkoptas and normal nobz vs Mega armour nob units. I was trying to convince him he would be better to take ork buggies and mega armour over dethcoptas and normal nobz units. In the case of dethcoptas they have scouting and bikes, compared to armour ten and being cheaper on the buggies. The buggies are around 8% cheaper with rokket launchas than the dethkoptas, and armour value tends to make the unit far more survivable than toughness and a save. As both units are in the same codex and fighting for the same fast attack slots you can make this comparison. The same goes for mega nobz vs regular nobz. The mega nobz have a good armour save and come equipped with a power claw and areasonable gun with options of combi weapons. The eavy armour nobz can take a huge selection of wargear, including invulnerable saves and feel no pain and indeed bikes to exploit the wound allocation rules. However in terms of points the mega nob is cheaper than a regular nob if the nob just buys itself a power claw. Once you start stacking on feel no pain, cybork bodies and eavy armour their prices rocket upwards. You would therefore expect the regular nobs to be better, simply due to the much higher points cost per model.
If they were in different slots or a different codex, it can be a lot more difficult to ascertain if a unit is better than another one.
There are usually a lot of different choices but these can boil down to a three distinct unit types:
Scoring
Fighting
Utility
First of all we need to consider scoring units. In 66% of all games played by the core rulebook, you will be playing for some objectives. This means first and foremost you need to look at what troops choices, or other scoring units you can take. Different armies have different amounts of troops choices. Some, such as chaos marines have five troops choices, other such as grey knights only have two troops choices. Most armies fit between these two extremes, usually towards the grey knights end in number. Some units are primarily just scoring units and bring virtually nothing else to the table. Some examples of these are plaguebearers in the daemon army and grots in the ork army. These units will typically be either very cheap so you can take a lot of bodies or very tough but offer virtually nothing else apart from parking on an objective.
Fighting units are those which have been purchased to inflict and take damage. A unit can be a fighting unit as well as a scoring unit, in fact this is quite common. Most scoring units will be fighting units in some way or another. The distinction between just scoring and fighting and scoring is that the fighting unit can inflict reasonable damage on other fighting units. Most scoring units will just be able to score, and will fold in short order if charged by anything half way competent. Tactical marines are a good example of a scoring fighting unit, being able to take a heavy weapon, special weapon and equip their leader to have a selection of other items.
Utility units are the third and final part of the jigsaw. These cover a myriad of different things, but it can be more or less summed up by something that doesn't inflict damage, take damage or score. Now you may be thinking why on earth would I want to take one of these units. The answer is often quite simple. They allow you to influence the game in a different way. I am including all fast moving units in this section as well as transport tanks. A rhino is a great example of utility. It offers no scoring ability and has just about the poorest weapon for its points value that I can think of. Yet it is a brilliant unit because it can protect your troops, move them around and your opponent doesn't know what you have inside until you reveal it, so he has to assign it an unknown threat rating. Other examples of utility are Eldar Farseers. They have a fairly poor statistic line but come able to be equipped with a selection of powers which boost directly or indirectly their units, be it by allowing them to reroll to hit, wound or save. Some people may call utility units force multipliers or support units, but the name really doesn't matter.
Having considered the different types of unit we now need to look at what makes them good. For any unit to be considered to be a good unit, it needs to fulfil one of the following criteria. It needs to either be powerful, cheap, survivable or flexible. Ideally some combination of the four. Often a unit can be cheap and powerful, such as ork boys, but they have poor armour saves. Tactical marines on the other hand are very flexible in terms of equipment and have good saves, but are only average on power and quite expensive.
You need to weigh up the various pros and cons of each unit against what other units in your codex can do. Taking some of the units I was discussing with a friend of mine recently as an example, we consider Ork buggies vs dethkoptas and normal nobz vs Mega armour nob units. I was trying to convince him he would be better to take ork buggies and mega armour over dethcoptas and normal nobz units. In the case of dethcoptas they have scouting and bikes, compared to armour ten and being cheaper on the buggies. The buggies are around 8% cheaper with rokket launchas than the dethkoptas, and armour value tends to make the unit far more survivable than toughness and a save. As both units are in the same codex and fighting for the same fast attack slots you can make this comparison. The same goes for mega nobz vs regular nobz. The mega nobz have a good armour save and come equipped with a power claw and areasonable gun with options of combi weapons. The eavy armour nobz can take a huge selection of wargear, including invulnerable saves and feel no pain and indeed bikes to exploit the wound allocation rules. However in terms of points the mega nob is cheaper than a regular nob if the nob just buys itself a power claw. Once you start stacking on feel no pain, cybork bodies and eavy armour their prices rocket upwards. You would therefore expect the regular nobs to be better, simply due to the much higher points cost per model.
If they were in different slots or a different codex, it can be a lot more difficult to ascertain if a unit is better than another one.
Monday, 9 January 2012
Tactical marines vs Grey Knight strike squads
This is the first in hopefully a series of comparisons between similar troop’s choices in different armies. I hope to show that not all is as it seems between units which at first glance seem to be a poor option.
As space marines of various flavours are Games Workshops highest selling ranges, I think we can safely assume that they are probably the most popular. Let us take a look at a common choice amongst players, the tactical space marine squad. I hear quite a lot that all space marine armies should be based around three to four tactical marine units. So I thought I would take a look and do a compare and contrast with grey knight strike squads
You can have five to ten space marines, who come with all the normal rules and basic equipment space marines generally do. They have a sergeant and optional special and/or heavy weapons. They can't take either of these options unless you have ten models, but then you get them free/discounted. Therefore logic suggests you are paying at least part of these costs in the models you buy for the squad.
These compare badly to grey knight strike squads. These come with a storm bolter and a power weapon for only a small amount of points more than tactical marines. If they were paying the going rate for their weaponry they would be around ten points a model more than they are currently paying. They can also upgrade their guns strength and field a supremely decent heavy weapon in the form of the pyscannon cheaply.
The next question you have to bear in mind is how important each unit is to the army it is included in. Space marine tactical marines compete directly with scouts and bikes (if you have a biker captain) whereas strike squads compete against terminators and henchmen (with Coatez). This is probably why the strike squads are cheap. If they were more expensive, they would just be too uncompetitive against terminators in the same slot. Tactical marines are unfortunately constrained by decades of being equipped the same, much like godhammer land raiders. It is highly unlikely that tactical marines will ever change in their weapon choices, even in a new book.
Does this mean that tactical marines are miles worse than grey knights? Not really. They actually perform a slightly different role in the armies they are assigned to. Space marines generally are a cheaper, therefore higher model count list than the grey knights. Tactical marines can take the ever popular meltagun and multimelta combo, which is useful against mechanised armies which tend to dominate 5th edition.
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