GMorts Chaotica

2 shots, 1.33 hit, 0.89 wound, 0.59 dead Bloodletters after 5+ inv. saves.

2 shots, 1.33 hit, 1.1 wound, 0.73 dead Bloodletters after 5+ inv. saves.

4 shots, 2.67 hit, 2.23 wound, 1.49 dead Bloodletters after 5+ inv. saves.

Your most likely to be facing either 4 Storm Bolters and a Psycannon from a Combat Squad or double that from a full unit. Which means a Combat squad is going to kill between 2.53 and 3.85 Bloodletters depending on upgrades and a full 10 man unit is going to kill between 5.06 and 7.7. In addition, the combat squad has probably jumped out of a Razorback with Psybolt ammo and will most likely kill another 1 or 2.

I never take Bloodletters in less than 10's and I wouldn't recommend it to anybody else either.

Lets see how the Bloodletters do if they survive long enough to charge.

Against a Grey Knight without a Halberd you'll be going first if you charged and last if you didn't due to Psyk-out grenades.

3 attacks on the charge, hitting on 3's equals 2 hits, resulting in 1.33 dead Grey Knights or less if they happen to be Terminators, lol.

As a basic rule of thumb one Bloodletter kills one Grey Knight or half a Terminator. 

So Bloodletters have the killing potential, but are somewhat lacking in speed. If we take them then they'll need a decent sized unit and something in front to give them a cover save would be nice as well.

Faster than Bloodletters but somewhat squishier and weaker in combat as well due to the fact that they need the Rending rolls to do the damage. They're 2 points cheaper each though as well as having both defensive and assault grenades which the Bloodletters obviously do not.

They have Fleet so they have a 'threat' range of between 13" and 18" (the turn after they've landed obviously). However their Toughness of 3 is going to have them sliced to pieces by torrents of small arms fire.

2 shots, 1.33 hit, 0.89 wound, 0.59 dead Daemonettes after 5+ inv. saves.

2 shots, 1.33 hit, 1.11 wound, 0.74 dead Daemonettes after 5+ inv. saves.

2 shots, 1.33 hit, 1.1 wound, 0.73 dead Daemonettes after 5+ inv. saves.

4 shots, 2.67 hit, 2.23 wound, 1.49 dead Daemonettes after 5+ inv. saves.

Which means a Combat squad is going to kill between 3.09 and 4.45 Daemonettes depending on upgrades and a full 10 man unit is going to kill between 6.18 and 8.9.

So we need a few more Daemonettes in the unit to make it viable. Lets see how it does in assault,

Standard guidelines about charging apply. We'll presume we do...

4 attacks on the charge, 2 hit, 0.67 wound, 0.23 dead Grey Knights after 3+ saves and there's a 0.33 chance of rending. So we need to outnumber the Knights at least three to one to defeat them in combat and even more if they happen to be Terminators.....

So those are our two 'offensive' choices for troops. Daemonettes need to be taken in much larger squads than Bloodletters due to their relative toughness's and the Daemonettes lower damage output in combat. If you want to use your troops to kill stuff then you'll need to pick one of these, if however your planning on killing things with your other unit choices then we can use our troops more defensively,

Pink Horrors of Tzeentch.



Horrors are there to give some anti-infantry firepower as well as to give you access to a cheap Bolt of Change. They don't do combat.....at all.....If they get assaulted then they're dead.

As they've been selected presumable for their shooting abilities lets see what they are.

Warpfire, which they get as standard has the following profile :  Range 18", S 4, AP 4, Assault 3. Unfortunately Horrors are only BS3 which is a bit of a let down. Also the more observant of you will have noticed that they're out-ranged by the average Grey Knight by 6".

3 shots at BS 3 equals 1.5 hits, vs. T4 that's 0.75 Wounds of which 0.5 will be stopped by a 3+ Power Armour save. That means it takes 4 Horrors worth of shooting to kill a single Marine. Of course we might have a single Bolt of Change to fire as well...

0.5 chance to hit, 0.42 chance to kill a Marine or 0.28 to kill a Terminator. Now I know this is designed to kill vehicles but your still allowed to fire it at infantry if you like ;-)

Of course it's not brilliant against vehicles either due to the Horrors low BS (3).

Vs. Armour 10
0.5 chance to hit, 0.33 chance to pen, 0.165 chance to wreck/explode. A glance followed by a 6 can still wreck but it's not very likely. You can work out the odds of that yourself.....Or e-mail Purgatus as his mathshammer is usually more thorough than mine.

So we have a shooty unit that's not very good at shooting.....

Plaguebearers of Nurgle.


These hold objectives really well and.....they hold objectives really well.....

For 75 points you get 5, T 5 models with Feel no Pain and a 5+ inv. save. They're pretty survivable against small arms fire and can hold up a moderately proficient unit in combat*. Of course their Feel no Pain is negated by Power Weapons but T 5 is some measure of defence against those, though Hammerhand somewhat negates that in turn.

* That's hold up as in 'tarpit' don't expect them to be winning any combats.....well maybe against Fire warriors.....

There's not much else to say about this unit really. You drop them on an objective (hopefully one that's in or near cover) late game and go to ground as soon as anything shoots at you.

Nurglings.


Are Nurgly.....

That conclusion section again.
Take at least 2 units of Plaguebearers to hold and/or contest objectives and then decide whether your Elites are killing things or your troops are (or a combination of the two). If your attempting to kill things with your troops then Bloodletters are generally better at killing Marines than Daemonettes.
Your going to need at least 2 units moving forward and if you want to reach combat they'll need to be at least 10 strong. The following is (imo) a decent starting point for your troops selections in both an all comers and anti-Grey Knight list..


Troops: Plaguebearers of Nurgle (5#, 75 pts)
   5 Plaguebearers of Nurgle @ 75 pts

Troops: Plaguebearers of Nurgle (5#, 75 pts)
   5 Plaguebearers of Nurgle @ 75 pts

Troops: Bloodletters of Khorne (10#, 160 pts)
   10 Bloodletters of Khorne @ 160 pts

Troops: Bloodletters of Khorne (10#, 160 pts)
   10 Bloodletters of Khorne @ 160 pts

That's 470 points total for that section and we can expand on that 'core' at higher points values.

Next time we'll cover Fast Attack and possibly Heavy Support as well depending on how long each entry ends up.

Thoughts and Comments are (as usual) most welcome.

So it's been theorised by Mike that the Lightning Claw Terminators are actually the best unit for killing Thunderhammer Terminators.

Lightning Claw Terminators get 4 attacks each on the Charge.

20 attacks, 10 Hit, 5 Wound + 2.5 with re-rolls so 7.5 in total. After 3+ invulnerable saves that's 2.5 dead Terminators. We'll call that 3 dead then.

The two remaining Thunderhammer Terminators get 2 attacks each.

4 attacks, 2 Hit, 1.67 wound, 1.11 dead Lightning Claw guys after 5+ invulnerable saves. well have to call that 1 dead then.

An average roll will see them pass a Leadership test even at -2 so we'll presume they do.

12 attacks, 6 hit, 3 wound + 1.5 from re-rolls is a total of 4.5. That's another 1.5 Dead Thunderhammers. Rounding up that's one dead unit of TH/SS with only 1 casualty in return.

I suppose we should see how much difference Furious Charge makes...

An average roll will see them pass a Leadership test even at -2 so we'll presume (like last time) they do.

Round 2 is going to be the same as last time so we'll skip that. So it still takes 2 turns to do the job and the Lightning Claw casualties are exactly the same. Note though that first time round the 3 dead could easily have been 2 as we rounded up from dead in the middle (2.5) whereas with the benefit of Furious Charge it was a far more conclusive 2.96.

Lets rob the Lightning Claws of a few attacks and let the Thunderhammers have the charge.

Not going quite so well for the Wolverines this time is it?

A win for the Thunderhammers!!!

So I'm afraid Mike was both right.....and wrong, lol.

Charging Lightning Claw Terminators either with or without Furious Charge beat the crap out of Thunderhammer Terminators in 2 rounds but don't exactly come out unscathed.

On the other hand if they don't get the charge then they're not going to have a fun day at all.

5th edition 40K, where the guy who goes first usually wins....

Thoughts, Comments and other mathematical input is (as usual) most welcome.

Carrying on from this article

So except in a few circumstances we had decided that Thunderhammer + Stormshield was better than a pair of Lightning Claws on Assault Terminators.

To be honest I'm not sure.

To the Maths Cave.....

We'll pick on some Tactical Marines like last time or the results won't really tell us anything now will they ;-)

We'll just do the Maths for units charging as that's the only time that Furious Charge will make a difference.

20 Attacks, 10 Hit, 6.67 Wound + 2.22 from re-rolls means 9 dead Marines.

1 Marine attacks back (presumably this is the Sergeant whom we gave a Power Weapon)

3 Attacks, 1.5 Hit, 0.75 Wound, 0.5 dead terminators after 5+ inv save.

That's 1.5 more than the non Furious Charge version and 4 more than the Thunderhammer guys in case your too lazy to check the last post ;-)

That would also be 9 dead Orks or 12 and a bit dead Guardsmen...

I suppose we might as well see how they do against our other test opponents the Rhino and the Tervigon.

Now there's a vague chance that they might penetrate the Rhino rather than attempting to glance it to death.

20 attacks, Auto-hit, 3.33 hits penetrate of which 1.11 causes the desired wrecked/exploded result.

20 attacks, 10 hit, 1.67 penetrate of which 0.56 result in wreck/explode results.

20 attacks, 3.33 hit, 0.56 penetrate of which 0.19 result in wreck/explode results

So we do a lot better Vs. Rear Armour 10 but still are nowhere near the damage output of the Thunderhammers.

20 attacks, 13.33 hit, 4.44 Wound + 2.97 from rerolls

So that's one very dead Tervigon.

So they did 4 more wounds than the non BA lot which was enough to kill the Tervigon outright. This would however leave them out in the open during the Tyranid Players turn but as 90% of Tyranid guns are AP 4 or above that shouldn't worry them a great deal unless there's a lot of stuff pointing at them.

So the Tactical squad is still dead, The Rhino is relatively unscathed and the Tervigon is dead in a single round of combat (which might not necessarily be a good thing as I stated above). Also any extra benefits we get will only be available if were doing the charging...

I'd still give the Blood Angels Thunderhammers even with the extra 5 point tax they have to pay because of the extra difference that 3+ inv. makes. Also those Thunderhammers would become S9 on the charge ;-)

Thoughts and Comments are (as usual) most welcome.

I got involved in a debate.....It started with a simple question.....

After my article on Ranged Tyranid anti-tank options was re-posted on Messanger of Deaths blog I realised I'd promised to talk about destroying vehicles in assault but had never got around to it.

Of course there are lots of units with 'rending' attacks or that get extra damage dice (for being a monstrous creature for example) so that would also need to be taken into account....

Then it occurred to me that many units can only glance a target vehicle so we'd need to calculate how many 'Immobilised' and 'Weapon Destroyed' results it would take to glance a vehicle to death and also vehicles inconsiderately have different numbers of weapons on them as well.....

So to cut a long story short it became a more time consuming process than I thought so I didn't bother.....

Which seems like a lame excuse so I have got off my arse and done some of it. This article won't be particularly biased towards Tyranids as the principles are the same for every army.

So to make it up to you all...Mathshammer.....Featuring Imperial Guardsmen.....

Sometimes I'm just too good to you all...

I've decided to go with the 'Blob' of Imperial Guardsmen as the bit of my army that moves forward. It's going to be set up like this,

So that gives me,

23 Standard Guardsmen,

3 Guardsmen with Meltaguns,

1 Guardsmen with a Voxcaster,

3 Sergeants with Power Weapon and Meltabombs,

1 Commissar with Power Weapon,

1 Priest with Eviscerator.

Creed is going to be hiding at the back ready to yell 'For the Honour of Cadia!'* and make those units Fearless and give them Furious Charge.

The Priest also gives the unit re rolls to hit on a turn they charge so that's pretty cool too. He has an Eviscerator to help up the number of armour ignoring attacks the unit generates and also as an extra safeguard if I end up in combat with a Dreadnought of some description.

The Sergeants all have Power Weapons so that's 3 armour ignoring attacks each which isn't bad for a Guardsmen. Their Meltabombs are another anti-Dreadnought precaution though they obviously work against any vehicle (The Priests 're-rolls to hit after charging' ability is a big help here).

Guardsmen with Meltaguns aren't particularly reliable at BS3 but I need some ranged anti-tank and they'll just have to do. One guy gets a Vox to help increase the likely-hood of Creeds order going off by quite a lot (Ld 8 with a re-roll gives pretty good odds).

The Commissar adds a 4th (well 5th if you count the Priests Eviscerator) Power Weapon but more importantly makes the unit Stubborn with a re-roll (unfortunately that re-roll results in a dead Sergeant but that's better than a dead squad).

So well be using our 'Default' testing enemy the Space Marine Tactical Squad and presuming that both the Guard and the Marines are at full strength when the fight begins. We'll start with worse case for the Guardsmen and gradually weight the odds in their favour as we go. At the end we'll have a look at their shooting a bit as well.

21 attacks, 14 hit, 9.33 wounds, 6.22 dead Guardsmen after 5+ saves.

21 normal attacks, 10.5 hit, 3.5 wound, 1.17 dead Marines after 3+ saves.

12 Power Weapon attacks, 6 hit, 2 wound and kill, 2 more dead Marines.

2 Eviscerator attacks, 1 Hits. 0.83 wound and kill, 0.83 dead Marines.

4 dead Marines in total. we lose combat by 2 which is pretty much irrelevant as the Commissar makes us Stubborn at his Leadership of 9. That gives us an 83.33% chance of passing.

The same scenario against a 30 man Ork unit with the obligatory 'Nob' with Power Klaw would have resulted in the Guardsmen Squad killing 6 or 7 Orks and losing 28 or 29 guys in return in the first round of combat...

Lets give the Guardsmen the charge vs. the Marines this time but without Creed helping out just yet.

If the Marines escape we can most likely consolidate into a position that will allow us to make them run again. Either way the Marines (sorry, Marine) are (I mean is) Fucked...

Again, running the same scenario against a 30 man Ork unit with the obligatory 'Nob' with Power Klaw would have resulted in the Guardsmen Squad killing 11 Orks and losing 12 guys in return. Not as bad but still quite bad...

This time Creed will give them Furious Charge as well.

As were pretty much certain that Marine Squad is doomed and the Guardsmen are getting a bit cocky now we'll give them a bit more of a challenge soon.

But first let's make sure of those Marines...

First we'll have a go at those poor Marines again, just to be sure ;-)

Since this particular weapon is only available on the Tyrannofex for free* all of you people who still think that the Tyrannofex is rubbish can go an sit in the corner till I've finished.

...is unlikely to be your opponents deployment unless your very, very lucky or all your opponents suffer from mental disorders ;-)

So our template options are,

a) Electroshock Grubs : S 5, AP 5, Assault 1.

b) Sheddershard Beetles : S 3, AP -, Assault 1, Rending.

c) Desiccator Larvae : S1, AP -, Assault 1, Wounds on 2's Vs. non-vehicle units.

So lets see which is best then,

Vs. Armour 10, 0.17 chance of a Rending hit, 0.057 chance of pen, 0.01 chance of wreck.

So it's worse against everything, lol.

As we're wounding everything on 2's anyway we'll look at effectiveness based on target save.

0.83 chance of wounding,

No Save, 0.83 dead (Is there anything with 1 wound and no save?).

6+ Save, 0.69 dead (Orks).

5+ Save, 0.55 dead (Guardsmen, Guardians, Rangers, etc.).

4+ Save, 0.42 dead (Ard Boyz, Dire Avengers, Fire warriors, Marine Scouts, etc.).

3+ Save, 0.28 dead (Blue Marines, Grey Marines, Red Marines, Spiky Marines, etc.).

2+ Save, 0.14 dead (Terminators).

1+ Save, sorry wrong game system...still 0.14 dead though...

So the Larvae work better against everything except Guardsmen who are slightly more vulnerable to Beetles and can do nothing to vehicles.

Desiccator Larvae is the best overall despite it's inability to hurt vehicles. I'm sure the fucking great MC it's attached to can sort out the vehicles, especially if it's got a S10, Assault 2 gun of some description ;-)

So I got slightly distracted by my new Imperial Guard list idea, but I suppose I better finish off posting some of the Tyranid Mathshammer I threatened you with earlier in the week ;-)

Termagants are cheap, scoring and can have access to a number of upgrades some of which are fairly cheap, others which well... aren't...

So lets see what we have...

Pretty much essential if you want your Termagants to be of any use against vehicles, allows you to hit Marines before they hit you and allows you to wound those same Marines on 4's rather than 5's.

Obviously you need to get the charge but that applies to any unit that has Furious Charge...

There is an alternative however.....Tervigons...If your Tervigon has 'Adrenal Glands' then any Termagants within 6" get them for free and as spawned Termagants don't get any upgrades it's pretty much a no-brainer upgrade for the Tervigon.

So Termagants need this upgrade but personally I run Tervigons with Adrenal Glands so I get it for free*, if I didn't I'd pay the one point per guy ;-)

Another essential upgrade which allows you to wound anything (that isn't a vehicle) on 4's whether you've charged or not.

Also, as the Poison rule says 'If the strength of the wielder is the same as or higher than the toughness of the victim, the wielder must re-roll failed rolls to wound in close combat' if you are Strength 4 at the time that the poison rule comes into effect (due to 'Furious Charge' from whatever source) then imo you get the re-roll to wound as there's no mention of 'base' strength in the poison entry anywhere, only strength. Some people have disagreed with that interpretation but as far as I'm concerned it's 'Rules As Written' so that's the way I play it.

So, take everything I said about Adrenal Glands in the last 2 paragraphs of their entry and replace the words 'Adrenal Glands' with 'Toxin Sacs' as the same things apply ;-)

So that's the 'special rules' upgrades out of the way...onto the weapon upgrades...and the Mathshammer...

First as a baseline, this is the weapon that the Termagants get for free

Fleshborer - Range 12", S 4, AP 5, Assault 1...Yes, It's a Bolt Pistol, lol.

We'll take a squad of 10 Termagants armed with the above and shoot at some Marines and then just for a change of pace we'll shoot at some Guardsmen as well.

Vs. Marines - 10 shots, 5 hit, 2.5 wound, 0.83 Marines dead after their 3+ saves

Vs. Guardsmen - 10 shots, 5 hit, 3.3 wound and kill as standard Guardsmen only have a 5+ save

Okay that was fairly indifferent (unless your one of those 3 Guardsmen I suppose) but what did you expect for free?

Okay then, onto the stuff we have to pay for.

So we've done exactly the same damage to the Marines with a negligible increase in damage to the Guardsmen. for the 10 points we've spent we could get another 2 Termagants which would make the following difference using the free Fleshborer.

So for the same points as the Spinefists we get 2 extra Termagants which actually give us better results and that's before we even take into account the extra attacks in assault or the extra 2 ablative wounds the unit gets.

It's also useless against vehicles**

So we've killed 1 less Marine or the same amount of Guardsmen but have an extra 20 attacks on the charge and an extra 10 ablative wounds.

I'd rather have an extra 10 scoring bodies than an (almost) extra dead Marine and a slight increase in chance of the unit running away as I probably wanted to charge it anyway.

And finally the Strangleweb, which is a Strength 2?!?!?! Flamer Template.

They're shit.

They're really shit.

Still not detailed enough?

If you insist then...

Vs. Marines, 0.167 chance to wound, 0.056 chance of killing each Marine caught under the Template after their 3+ save.

Vs. Guardsmen, 0.333 chance to wound, 0.222 chance of killing each Guardsmen caught under the Template after their 5+ save.

If you don't have Tervigons, give the Termagants Adrenal Glands and Toxin Sacs.

If you do have Tervigons, give the Tervigons Adrenal Glands and Toxin Sacs.

So that's episode one of Mathshammer week done.

Any comments are (as usual) most welcome...