Slann Platest 4/28/00

From: dardman <dardman_at_...>
Date: Sat, 29 Apr 2000 00:33:33 -0400

Hellreich and I play tested the Slann tonight. We used 3000 pt armies. We only upped the prices and did not do anything major except reduce the Necron field. The outcome was, well decide for yourselves.
Space Marines vs Slann
14 to 32 after 2 full game turns
Space Marine army consisted of 2 Battle Companies, 1 Landraider company, 2 bike squads, a vindicator squad, a medic and a tarantula battery. The Slann consisted of 1 company of Bullfrogs, 2 squads of Chaos dreads, 1 necron squad, 1 exodus spawn and 1 great mage. The space marines had a total of 88 units and the slann a mere 22 units. Seems lopsided but read on. Turn 1 slann won initiative and captured 2 ob jectives as did the space marines (we only used 4 because of a 4'x4' area). By the end of turn 1 space marines had lost 27 units slann only 3 necron dreads. The space marines fast assault stopped dead, score 14 vps each. Second turn objectives were held and lost so no change just a shift in troops but the space marines lost another 25 units while the Slann lost 2 bullfrogs. Score 32 to 14. ! battle co broken, 1 landraider co broken, medic lost, 2 bike squads destroyed and vindicator lost (bikes and vindicators broken in turn 1). We called it quits because their wasn't much of a poin to continue. Decided for yourself. Points aren't the issue here but the Slann fixed warp save. We thought if you up the price of the Bullfrogs it would change things but not much. Check out the math below (being trained as an economist I often look at probabilities which often invole risk). Here is the model I came up with.

#of hits x shield save fraction x armor save after target mod

1 devastator squad fires everything it has at bullfrog mechs. Look at the math.
5+ to hit = 1/3 so 1/3 x 12= 4 (4 hits)
Warp shield failure probability is 1/3 (3+)
Armor save is +1 (TSM is -1) so this is a 2+ or 1/6
4 x 1/3 x 1/6 = 2/9 or roughly 22% to to destroy 1 bullfrog
Same devastators against Frogs.
4 x 1/3 x 1/3 = 4/9 or 44% to destroy 1 mech
Same devastaors against Tadpoles.
4 x 1/3 x 1/2= 2/3 or 66% to destroy 1 mech.
Now lets change the warp save to 4+ and sees what happens.
Bullfrog: 4 x 1/2 x 1/6= 1/3 or 33.3%
Frogs: 4 x 1/2 x 1/3= 2/3 or 66.6%
Tadpoles: 4 x 1/2 x 2/3= 4/3 or 133%

One more example: a Warlord titan armed with 4 turbo laser destructors (3+ to hit 2 attacks and -2 TSM). 3+ Warp shields
8 x 2/3 = 16/3 or 5 hits
Bullfrog: 5 x 1/3 x 1/3= 5/9 or 55% to destroy 1 mech
Frog: 5 x 1/3 x 1/2= 5/6 or 83% to destroy 1 mech
Tadpole: 5 x 1/3 x 2/3 (it has to be this way because the model is inverse at this point)=10/9 or 110% to destroy a mech

Now up the shield to 4+ With the Warlord titan example:
Bullfrog: 5 x 1/2 x 1/3= 5/6 or 83%
Frog: 5 x 1/2 x 1/2= 5/4 or 125%
Tadpole: 5 x 1/2 x 2/3= 5/3 or 166%
You can equate the % into number of mechs destroyed. Less than 100% is less than 1 more than 100% is more than 1 or more like 1.25 or 1.66. These are all based on averages. So luck will have a definite roll in play but one can see that upping the points for the Slann mech's is not the solution. The solution is to make the warp shield weaker from 3+ to 4+. Sorry to bore you with the math. as for the other units raising them by 25 or 50 points at the most may also balance out the army but definitely rethink the warp shield save.

Darius
Received on Sat Apr 29 2000 - 04:33:33 UTC

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