Power from Paint: Raider 'Rithmetic Revisited

Hello once again! It's time for another post, and whilst I have a lot of potential topics to blog about at the moment (so plenty of content to look forward to, yay!), I've decided to write a follow up to the Maths Hammer post about shooting Land Raiders.

Shoddy WIP Land Raider. This really needs starting again.

A piece of feedback on the first post was that I'd glossed over the Power of the Machine Spirit rule. That's a fair point and well worth spending some time on. Power of the Machine Spirit lets the Land Raider ignore the penalty for shooting with heavy weapons if the vehicle has moved; so what difference does that make?

We've previously established a formula for working out how many Hits to Kill (on average) are required to kill a model with a particular weapon. There's a second formula to be applied to work out how many Shots are needed (on average) with that weapon to generate that number of hits; lets call this Shots To Kill.

Shots To Kill (STK) = (1 / Probability of Hitting (PH)) * Hits to Kill (HTK)

Probability of Hit is based on the shooting Model's BS statistic, modified by bonuses/penalties (such as move and fire), and it is this number that Power of the Machine Spirit affects.

Let's work through an example; a Land Raider and Predator are going to shoot at a Rhino with Lascannons for target practice.

Invoke the Canticles of Targeting

Using our formula we need 5.15 Lascannon Hits To Kill a Rhino. Both the Predator and Land Raider start with the same BS statistic (3+) and so if both are stationary need ((1/0.66) * 5.15) = 7.8 Lascannon Shots To Kill the Rhino.

What happens if both the Predator and the Land Raider move? The Predator suffers a -1 to hit penalty, which the Land Raider can ignore courtesy of Power of the Machine Spirit.

• Moving Predator vs Rhino STK = ((1/0.5) * 5.15) = 10.3
• Moving Land Raider vs Rhino STK = ((1/0.66) * 5.15) = 7.8

The Predator needs 2.5 more Lascannon shots than before! Let's take this one stage further, and assume the poor Rhino has had the foresight to deploy smoke which results in another -1 to hit penalty to anyone targeting it. Power of the Machine Spirit won't help the Land Raider in this case.

• Moving Predator vs Smokey Rhino STK = ((1/0.33) * 5.15) = 15.6
• Moving Land Raider vs Smokey Rhino STK = ((1/0.5) * 5.15) = 10.5

Blimey! Now the Predator needs twice as many  shots compared to the original scenario, and 50% more than the Land Raider in the same scenario. 

What this example is really doing is showing the effect that -1 to hit modifiers have, particularly if they can be stacked. A lot of popular armies have an innate -1 penalty so anything that can be done to mitigate such penalties or generate hit bonuses is well worth considering.

I conclude that Power of the Machine Spirit is a valuable benefit, and certainly swings the Land Raider versus double Predator debate one notch back towards the Raider.  

A scenario where Smoking won't damage your health!

I was also asked what I think of the other Land Raider variants? I'll cover the Codex examples as I'm less familiar with the Forge World patterns.

Both the Land Raider Crusader and the Land Raider Redeemer have a larger transport capacity than the basic Land Raider. This is an important difference for me; it means the vehicle can transport both a decent sized squad and some supporting characters which is something the Land Raider struggles with.  

The other differences are in the Dakka that the tanks carry. Both variants have Twin Assault Cannons (12 S6 AP-1 shots, yummy) whilst the Crusader carries two hurricane bolters and the Redeemer two flamestorm cannons.

I'm a big fan of the hurricane bolter; its Rapid Fire 6 and has good synergy with the Assault Cannons (given they have the same range) for anti-infantry duty. In total the Crusader is putting out 24 shots at long range (24") and 36 at close range!

Drop a squad of Close Combat Terminators with a Captain and Lieutenant from a Crusader near something you want to charge and shoot the Crusader's guns at something else (which will benefit from the Hero's aura buffs). Sound like a perfectly reasonable plan for a Land Raider!

Flamestorm cannons look OK at first glance; each generates d6 S6 AP-2 D2 automatic hits. But the cannon only has an 8" range! That looks sub-par to me; in the scenario above I'd probably want my assault unit smacking an opponent that close.

A good comparison is the Imperial Guard Hell Hound Tank's Inferno Cannon; it's only D1 AP-1 but does 2d6 hits and has a 16" range (and is a lot cheaper points wise than the Flamestorm cannon). Giving the Flamestorm cannon an equivalent range (16") is a simple fix and would make the weapon a lot more attractive. It could also be a good counter to those some of those annoying units/armies with the -1 to hit we discussed earlier (because automatic hits don't care about penalties!)

My closing thoughts after all this number crunching is that the Land Raider is perhaps not so inefficient as I first thought, however its main issues continue to be a vulnerability to "lucky shots" (the 3 dark lances rolling 5s and 6s scenario) combined with "too many eggs, one basket" (i.e. that Land Raider has just died leaving an expensive assault unit and supporting character in the middle of nowhere).

I hope you've enjoyed my musings and perhaps they'll encourage you to experiment with a Land Raider or two in your future games. And as a bonus you'll have a method to work out how many guns you need to point at one if I field my Land Raider against you!