At 04:14 PM 16/1/97 -0500, you wrote:
>
>Excerpts from Epic: 16-Jan-97 [Epic] Re: by Aaron P Teske_at_...
>> Yo! (And I might just do some practice runs of my own, given a little
>> time....)
>
>Actually, since I don't want to work on homework right now (it's not due
>'till Monday anyway), let's do a theoretical run. Take your standard
>board setup, 120cm wide, and ignore the width for now. Deploy three
>Reavers and two Colossi on opposite sides. For the sake of arguement,
>we assume both players knew what was up here, and set themselves up
>accordingly: the Colossi on their front line, the Reavers at the back of
>their deployment zone, about 20cm apart.
>
>Two Reavers have 1x Quake Cannon (1 shot, 100cm, 3+ to hit, -3 save mod)
>+ 1x Volcano Cannon (1 shot, 100cm, 3+ to hit, -4 save mod) + 1x Gatling
>Blaster (4 shots ea, 75 cm, 5+ to hit, -1 save mod). The third has 3x
>Quake/Volcano Cannon. (If you want to arm them with one-shots, the
>battle is either over very quickly or, if the Reavers are unlucky and
>miss, very tight on the Reavers. Arming them all with 3x Volcano Cannon
>also turns the balance more to the Reavers, but is a somewhat
>"unrealistic" loadout IMO -- they have no even moderately effective
>anti-infantry capability.) The Colossi, being Colossi, have 8x
>battlecannon (75cm, 4+ to hit, -2 save), one Doomsday Cannon (long
>range, d6+3 BPs, -3 save) and four missiles (100cm, 6 BPs (4+ to hit),
>-1 save). We ignore the 50cm Thunderer and 15cm bolters.
>
>Now then, the Squat have 25cm to cover, three turns of movement, before
>their main guns -- the Battlecannon -- come into play. Before that,
>they're likely to get only two hits a turn out of four shots/turn, one
>missile each and one DoomsDay blast. If the Squats are quite lucky, the
>receiving Titan doesn't recover any void shields and might actually die
>on the third turn, but I doubt it; on the other hand, if the Squats are
>*really* lucky they could hit with all four shots each turn and knock
>out one Titan on the second turn and another on the third, leaving the
>mopping up quite easy. However, that's ignoring the Reaver's fire....
>
>Now then, the three Reavers have seven Quake/Volcano Cannon between
>them, which is seven 3+ shots each turn. 7 * (4/6) = 4.67 hits a turn,
>so in the first two turns (when all three reavers *will* get to fire)
>they'll get an average of 9-10 hits. Since the odds favor one, maybe
>two shields regenerating, all those will go onto one Colossus, which is
>very likely to die. (5+ saves, if you fire the guns intelligently.)
>Then it's one unwounded Colossus vs. three Reavers, one of which is
>likely at 1-2 void shields. Then the Gatling blasters open up, possibly
>dropping multiple void shields, which makes the work of the Q/V Cannons
>much easier.
>
>If the Reavers have all Quake & Volcano Cannon, one Colossus is dead at
>the end of the second turn, and the other is likely down some shields --
>an even worse situation. The possibilities of one-shots aren't really
>worth commenting on, though if all the one-shots miss the Reavers are
>down significantly in terms of firepower. (Which is why I don't like
>one-shots to begin with....)
>
>Refutations?
Yes, please...
(Although I'm still stunned by the widespread agreement as to the lack of a
void shield saving throw against the one shots. This whole conversation is
pretty much moot as only a very brave player would field squats against
imperial or chaos armies...)
I have never seen a Reaver deployed on the back line before, but for the
sake of argument we will assume that the Imperials do this. The Units are
100cm apart. The squats drive off to the side or even advance in a rearward
direction to make the range a little over 100 cm and rain barrage death upon
the helpless imperial idiots. When the Reavers decide to advance, the
squats close the extra 10 cm and crush them with their range 75 weapons (and
since the imperials cannot advance and then first fire, I would expect two
titans to bite the biscuit before they get a shot off!)
IF the forces start at a more reasonable separation of 80 cm, AND there is
no cover to break line of sight to one or more of the titans (which will
probably have FF orders) things will be a little different.
The squats advance to within 75 cm and open up with a single one shot
missile, their 8d6 range 75 hit on a 4+ and finally their save at -3 barrage
weapon.
Of course the Iron Eagles advance to somewhere that they can get side shots
on the reavers...
(If we ignore the presence of support units, the gyrocopters can advance the
full 80cm and be behind the titans fire arcs, or if we include support units
in the equation, a detachment of 3 iron eagles charges closer to the enemy
than the COMMAND iron eagles from the Collosi...)
Initiative plays a decisive roll as will dice karma. Two reavers packing
optimum weapon packs for squat busting (2x Gattling blasters or 2x
Turbolaser and a Volcan or Quake cannon) will only score about 7.5 hits, and
if the final Volcano/Quake cannon misses, or if the squats win initiative,
(or if the Reavers pack 3 of the 100cm weapons) it looks pretty sad for the
reavers.
Obviously, the squats pack enough fire power to down the Reavers shields,
and if the -3 barrage doesn't do a hit (I would target the titan's largest
weapon, but there is a good argument for the "groin" leg location) the
gyrocopter popping the reactor from the side is reasonably likely to finish
the poor thing.
If the squats win initiative they could reasonably expect to kill (or remove
the biggest weaon from) two titans before the third titan may or may not
kill one SHV. On turn 2 it is all over for the remaining titan.
If the Titans win initiative, they will probable still lose 1 titan while
killing 1 SHV and on turn 2 they will probably lose another before maybe
killing the other SHV. If the (lone) titan fails to kill the SHV in turn 2,
the titan dies in turn 3.
(And the gyro copters have a chance of killing the titan in turn 3 anyway.)
Agro
Received on Fri Jan 17 1997 - 07:17:47 UTC
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