Wednesday, April 13, 2011

[40K] IG/Eldar vs GK/BT (with a question)

My camera is MIA! No pictures! Suckage.

My partner and I played against our local Bat-rep extraordinaire dude and his partner, the Jet-Bike Eldar of DOOM. (Seriously) The IG guy who writes glorious reports has decided to take a break from writing (apparently it took him scads of work) and so we were going to be left with my and my notoriously less-than-stellar reporting abilities. AND, of course, my camera goes missing. GAH.

So we faced an army composed of something like:

Seer Council on Jetbikes
Autarch on Jetbike
3 Squads of Jetbike Guardians w/ 2 Shuriken Cannon/squad
2 of the Hellhound variants with the Multi Meltas, forget the name…
3 Leman Russ Demolishers with LC and Plasma Sponsons

and we brought something like:

EC, AAC
Terminator Squad w/ 2 CML and Tank Hunter
Large squad of CCW/Pistol Marines
2 Line Squads, 1 ML, 1 Las Cannon
Vindicator
Librarian
10 man Terminator squad w/ 2 Psycannon, Banner
DN w/ 2 TLAC and Psybolt ammo
Dreadknight w/ Teleporter and Heavy Inferno

We got Spearhead with Annihilation - and they got first turn.

Knowing this was KP was sort of a kick in the teeth for me.I brought extra feet because so many of our battles have been close due to not enough troops, and now I have a LOT for them to shoot at. Can't win 'em all, right?

I'm skipping ahead to my usual wrap up chatter here, for reasons explained shortly.

What I learned:  Having dedicated fire squads actually can and does work. Also, hiding Termies is MUCH better than leaving them in the open.

What I need to work on: I'm addressing that later on in this post.

About my opponents: One of them has smoked me right off the board before. The other has consistently been at the top of the league for months. I was not super confident, especially when they had so much mech and I had a ton load of dudes. However, they are fun players and I enjoyed seeing certain parts of the game in action,


My partner did a pretty effective write up here . Rather than repeat his efforts, I'm going to cover an issue that came up in the game a lot.

I do not understand how damaging vehicles works. Every time I think I have a handle on it, I am wrong. Something about the strength and armor and facing just confuses the crap outta me. Help a girl out, will ya? 

6 comments:

  1. It can be confusing. It uses different mechanics than the regular rules for hurting units, and has some conditional situations and modifiers.

    Might be something worth making a flowchart for...hmm, maybe later. But flow of events something like:

    Roll to hit as normal.

    If hit, are there special extra penetration bonuses (melta, ordnance, etc)? If so, apply those rules to get penetration total. If normal, take strength of weapon and add 1d6.

    Compare this total to the vehicle's Armor Value (AV) in the appropriate facing. If the total is under the AV, no effect. If exactly equal, glancing hit. If greater than AV, penetrating hit.

    If glancing or penetrating hit, roll 1d6, apply modifiers, and consult vehicle damage chart. (modifiers include -2 for glancing hit, +1 for open topped, +1 for AP1 weapon, etc.)

    Determine all results from the attacking unit (at particular initiative step, if assaulting). Apply them.

    If stunned, ignore further shaken/stunned results.

    If shaken, ignore further shaken results.

    If weapon destroyed and no more weapons, becomes immobilized.

    If immobilized and already immobilized, becomes weapon destroyed.

    If no weapons left and already immobilized, further results for either turn into "wrecked".

    Once get wrecked or explode, ignore further results. If both happen simultaneously, apply explode. Vehicles only explode once, no matter how many damage results (so don't do d6 explosion multiple times!).

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  2. So, you've decided to target your enemy's Hellhound, and you are lining up your shot with your tank-hunting terminators.

    First, determine what arc your firing unit is in. Do this by drawing imaginary lines through the opposite corners of the Hellhound, making an X that divides it into four pieces. Extend the imaginary lines until you determine what piece your termies are in. For our example, let's say the side armor.

    Side armor on a Hellhound is 12, so you fire your missiles and get 3 hits out of 4.

    Your krak missiles are Strength 8, Tank-Hunters gives you a boost of 1, so the hits are strength 9.

    You now have to overcome the armor of your target by making your armor penetration rolls. For each hit, roll a d6. Let's say you roll a 1, 3, 5.

    The 1 + 9 = 10, no effect. You did not tie or beat the target's armor value.

    3+9 = 12, a glancing hit! Your armor penetration roll equals the armor value of your target.

    5+9 = 14, a penetrating hit, as you have beaten the armor value of the target.

    ---

    Now we have 2 results on the damage table, a glance and a pen.

    Roll a d6 on the glancing table, you get a 4. This is NORMALLY an immobilized result, but because it's a glance, subtract 2 from your table result. Now the Hellhound is STUNNED.

    Roll for the penetrating result, getting a 5. Penetrating hits have no modifiers unless you are using an AP1 weapon (like melta-anything) or the target is open-topped (like Dark Eldar and Ork vehicles, mostly). The hellhound is not open-topped, and your missiles are not AP1, so just apply the 5 you rolled, and now you wrecked the Hellhound.

    Well done.

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  3. :-) What they said... Only other major step is the cover save that may be taken via smoke launchers, hull down, etc... Notice both the DN and DK started hidden, as did your Vindicator, knowing they likely were going first... The cover save is taken after you get the # of penetrating or glancing hits...

    Other than that, it gets confusing due to some (at least locally) uncommon vehicles being used there... Most of "our" vehicles like the LR or Rhino hulls are fairly simple with "It's AV 14" for any facing on the LR, or 11/10 on the Rhinos...

    Oh yeah, and HtH against a vehicle is usually especially effective with the hits going against the rear armor... So, the Dreadknight's armor penetration of 10+2d6 against anything short of a Necron Monolith or Land Raider (though LR's are still in a lot of trouble on an average roll) will probably punch through... Marine Power Fists, Krak grenades, etc. all have decent chances against most armor in the game...

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  4. Roll to hit

    Spread hits out amongst a vehicle squad
    - track which hits go where if there are different weapons or special rules involved.

    Determine facing (what front/side/rear can you see most of)

    Roll to glance/penetrate ("wound")
    - weapon str + D6 vs armour value
    - modify for special rules like tank hunters (+1), monstrous (2D6 instead of D6), rending (+D3 on a roll of a 6), etc
    - if you equal the AV, then it's a glance
    - if you exceed the AV, then it's a penetrate

    Roll saves
    - if half the side you're shooting at is obscured, vehicle gets a cover save
    - if the vehicle moved (?) inches, it gets a cover save.
    - this is generally the only save a vehicle can get.

    Roll for damage
    - roll on the damage table for every shot that at least glanced. (keeping track of each vehicle if this is against a squadron)
    - modify that roll depending on things like glancing, open topped, AP1, etc
    - that damage result is what happens
    - some damage results will say something else happens if the vehicle is already damaged as such. (immobilized = blows up)
    - otherwise, damage results just stack and are wasted.
    - in a vehicle squad, the damage result that causes them to be unable to move for a turn is ignored
    - in a vehicle squad, the damage result of immobilized is instead destroyed. (but not blow up)

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  5. hmmm, maybe I will make a flow chart...

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  6. It's never been so confusing man, read carefully and you will get the real picture..
    http://topkapi-palace.org/

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