Gametheory - MathHammer 2/6/08

I was reviewing an older post about mathhammer and my orks vs plague wing and was curious about what the new orks would do to plague marines.

Orks are now striking at +1I and +1S on the charge.
Still 2 base attacks, +1 for 2 hand weapons, +1 for charging.

1 Plague marine strikes 3 time on the charge @ I3 (1 base, +1 for 2 hand weapons, +1 for charging)
WS4 means 3 strikes @ 50% to hit = 1.5 hits
S4 means 50% to wound = .75 wounds
Ork 6+ save is 16% to save = .63 unsaved wounds
Meaning that 2 Plague Marines (46 points) are needed to kill 1 ork (6 points).

on the other hand...is a different set of fingers...

1 Ork strikes 4 times on the charge @ I3 (furious charge) (2 base, +1 for 2 hand weapons, +1 for charging)
WS4 means 4 strikes @ 50% to hit = 2 hits
S4 (Furious Charge) means he's wounding on 5's, 33% to wound = .66 wounds
Plague marine 3+ save means 33% chance to miss save = .22 unsaved wounds
4+ Feel No Pain then drops that 50% more to .11 wounds
Meaning 10 Orks (60 points) are needed to kill 1 Plague Marine (23 Points)

More Math Hammer

So, in my drive to work this morning I got to thinking. how would my orks fare against my new plague wing.
SO i thought up the following scenario:

how many basic troops would it take to drop a single model of the opposite army?

So I used Slugga Boyz vs. Plague Marines.
1st up Plague Marines charging a Slugga Boy.
Plague Marine gets 2 swings on the charge and with a higher initiative. 50% of those will hit making 1 hit.
with that 1 hit we have 50% chance to wound making for 0.5 wounds.
with their measely save 16% of those wounds will be saved for a remainder of 0.41 kills.
by that we know that we would need 3 Plague Marines (5 swings) to drop one Ork in one round of close combat. Making 69 points to kill 9 points of orks.

On the flip side:

Orks get to double their initiative with Power of the Waaagh! to 4 on the charge. two attacks base +1 for the charge, +1 for the 2nd cc weapon. however, Plague Marines have blight grenades which negate the charging bonus.
1 Ork gets 3 attacks @ 50% to hit = 1.5 hits
1.5 hits @ 33% to wound = 0.50 wounds
0.50 wounds@ 33% chance to miss the armour save = 0.16 missed saves
0.16 missed saves @ 50% chance on Feel No pain = 0.08 kills.
From this we can determine that we need 36 Ork hits to kill one Plague Marine. This comes to 12 Orks (108 points) to kill 23 points of Plague Marines.

What this works out to is you need 11.99 points of Orks to kill one point of Plague Marines while you only need 2.39 points of Plague Marines to kill one point of Orks

Winner: Plague Marines

Strategum Plague Wing

Plague Marines -
+ Make dead hard objective holders.
+ In cover with 3+ armour saves. being assaulted means striking @ I10 and the opponent loses the charging bonus attacks due to Blight Grenades.
+ T5 means MEQs wound on 5's. (33% chance to wound)
+ 3+ save means 66% chance to wound (Down to 21.78% wounds)
+ Feel No Pain means 10.89% dead Plague Marines per attack (9.1827 hits = 1 kill)
+ Keep together in order to reinforce overlapping fire lanes

Rhinos -
+ Move footslogging plague marines up the board
+ smoke makes the tin-foil armour of the rhinos a little more survivable
+ once troops unload Rhinos provide mobile cover
+ two rhinos can funnel enemy into a turkey shoot

Terminators -
+ Deep strike off of plague marines icons
+ provide close support to plague marines
+ T5 again means 33% to hit from MEQs
+ 2+ armout save means 10.89% dead termies (9.1827 hits = 1 kill)

Daemon Prince -
+ Not insta-killable
+ Strength + 2D6 armour penetration
+ Wings allow it to keep up with the rhinos
+ Psychic power - Wind of Chaos to kill masses of enemies shooting-style. May use Nurgle's Rot instead as the DP will most likely be in hand-to-hand and kill as many enemy as possible.

Basically, roll the rhinos up to an objective and "camp" it. Unload plague marines then deep strike the termies in the area. Termies provide close support and some assault punches. Daemon prince to tie up squads (squishy-squishy) who may be too much for my Plague Marines and Termies to handle. Essentially "turtling" on the objective while the enemy comes to me.

I've been toying with the idea of a Chaos 2nd army for a while now and really like the Deathwing SM army, but don't want to play SM.
I drew up a quick list of what I would need for a PlagueWing army:
1.) Termies
2.) Delivery system (Chosen, Raptors or Bikers)
3.) Nurgle on everything (it's not ChaosWing, it's PlagueWing!)
4.) Keep unit sizes at 7 (keep it somewhat fluffy, not a HARD requirement)

With those parameters I drew up the following 1,000 Point list:

HQ - Chaos Lord - Termie Armour, Mark of Nurgle, Daemon Weapon - 155pts
Troops - Plague Marines x7 - Champ w/pfist, plas gun x1 - 216pts
Troops - Plague Marines x7 - Champ w/pfist, plas gun x1 - 216pts
Elite - Chaos Terminators x7 - Icon of Nurgle, Champ - 260pts
Fast - Chaos Bikers x3 - Icon of Nurgle - 149pts ==================================================
996pts
25 models
39.84 points per model
43.37% Troops
26.10% Elite
15.56% HQ
14.95% Fast Attack

Issues raised with this list:
1.) Bikers are too vulnerable. With only 3 of them if one dies they *may* run.
2.) Not enough delivery systems. Only icon is the bikers.
3.) Basic troops not defended enough. Was suggested to bring rhinos for each Plague marine squad in order to work as mobile terrain and get them in range faster.
4.) Termies need upgrades. I know a reaper autocannon would be nice, but can't squeeze it in points-wise.

Possible fixes:
1.) drop termy squad to 4 or 5, freeing up points for upgrades of termies and rhinos.
2.) change 3 bikers (who will be testing after the first kill) to 5 raptors with an icon who will have to take 2 kills before a test is needed.
3.) specialize termies. not sure how, close combat or shooty? one would say that a CC termy would really benefit from his 2+ save, but a shooty termy would benefit from being able to move + shoot heavy weaps.

Thoughts on PlagueWing

Thoughts on a PlagueWing army...
Basically a unit or 2 (in big games) of bikers with homing beacons (or chosen with beacons infiltrating) which can call forth the Nurgle icon'd Terminators. There would be some Nurgle and/or plague marines as well as some sort of HQ. POSSIBLY a rhino, but most likely footsloggers, however footsloggers would not fit well into the army and wouldn’t make a lot of sense.

My question is this: would deep striking and biker Nurgle troops be SUPER cheesy? I know you said in a game we had played that they don't generally use transports or fast attack, but with the new codex would it be conceivable that while not Death Guard, they could be a Nurgle worshipping chapter who happens to use those elements?

So with that said army concepts:
1.) Fast deployment of 2+ squads of Terminators
2.) All squads are marked by Nurgle
3.) If infiltrating homing beacon, then footslogging troops
4.) If biking beacon, then transport troops (Rhino)

Infiltrating the homing beacons:
+ Cheaper, points-wise, more models on the table.
+ Slower moving (walking troops up the field)
+ Heavy weapons available close to target

Biking the homing beacons:
+ Fast
+ REALLY cool looking models
+ Low model count = lower financial commitment
+ Possible late game objective grabbers

2 Losses

So far I've got two consecutive losses with the new adjusted 750 point list. Too much armour penetration in it and not enough rounds going downrange. I think it's time to turn back to the original 750 points list or adjust this list to include more dakka. perhaps lowering the number of boyz in order to fit in another killer kan and arming both with big shootas.

still want to keep the wartrukk with 9 boyz as-is and included in the list. the burst of speed and 21" assault is amazing to catch people off guard. perhaps in 750 points dropping from 20 man strong squads to 15 each, saving 90 points. if i drop 90 points of boyz for 2 more kans i can march up behind the kans and not necessitate the extra ablative wounds needed for walking up the field.

hrm...

Thoughts on Orks and prolonged battle

Just did the math out.  Without adding any additional reinforcements to a group of 10 orks (sluggas) vs. a unit of 10 MEQs the orks will lose in 5 rounds of combat (barring any morale breaks).

Points-wise, a standard marine is 6 points more expensive than a slugga (15points vs 9 points) so in 5 rounds of combat the orks will have removed 135 points of marines vs 90 points of orks.  The 45 point difference will allow more bodies on the battlefield.  If the units were equal in point cost say 15 sluggas vs a unit of 10 MEQs.

In 3 rounds of combat points-equal orks will (statistacally) kill a points-equal force of MEQs.  This result does not take into account any sort of special weapons or characters (sergeants, etc.)