Vindicare Assassin: Tank Hunter Extraordinaire?

[thor1234]

not to mention the shot annoyingly bouces off wave serpants.....

that aside i have fielded one in every game with the new dex so far and he either dies quickly, whle the rest of my arm advances unscathed OR he blasts the hells outta tanks, the only other units he as killed are Sang Priests in a squad, ( or stripping nasty characters of their invuls.....)

 

he is awesome!!!!!!!!!!

[SamaNagol]

The armour penetration is very clearly listed as 4D6. Not Strength plus 4D6

[Brother Valerius]

Armor penetration is always strength + 1d6, therefore saying "it has an armor penetration of 4d6" implies strength + 4d6 in my book.

[StormTAG]

I'm still kind of confused. It's a Strength of X. Can you cite where you get that X means 3 and not... Umm... Confusion?

[Kay]

Actually the average is not 14, but 14+3 (sniper rifle Str) so 17. Rolling 4 dices the odds are more likely you get a 6 than u dont, so count an extra D3 for the rending.

 

Add to all that the fact that it is AP1...

[Brother Valerius]

I'm still kind of confused. It's a Strength of X. Can you cite where you get that X means 3 and not... Umm... Confusion?

 

BRB. I don't have the book so can't cite a page, but it's in the section where sniper rifles are described. In there it says that all sniper rifles are strength 3 when rolling for amor penetration.

[StormTAG]

So, does the X make it a sniper rifle...? Or is the Exodus Rifle defined as a Sniper Rifle (I don't have my rule book in front of me)?

 

As a side note, can you do all the same things with his Exodus Pistol? I'm trying to remember the exact wording, but I don't remember it specifying which gun you fire to benefit from the special ammo?

[Darkchild130]

It says exitus weapons use the ammo,which means both to me.

 

Darkchild

[Brother Valerius]

So, does the X make it a sniper rifle...? Or is the Exodus Rifle defined as a Sniper Rifle (I don't have my rule book in front of me)?

 

As a side note, can you do all the same things with his Exodus Pistol? I'm trying to remember the exact wording, but I don't remember it specifying which gun you fire to benefit from the special ammo?

 

The weapon's profile says "heavy 1, sniper" which means it is rending, pinning, wounds on a 4, and has S3 when firing at vehicles.

[StormTAG]

Gotchya, thanks. :D

[Techmarine Harkus]

@Brother Valerius

 

You did a table for all the permutations of 4D6? That would have 1296 fields. How long did it take? As far as working out rending goes, you'd be better off working out what results involve 6s, and DONT penetrate, because so, so many of them do. As I mentioned above, even a poor roll of 1,1,1,6 + 1 is going to give you 13. So the vast majority of the 670 odd permutations are going to result in a penetrating.

 

If anyone wants to know the full mathhammer of what I've said, I can include it, but for those of you with some knowhow who just cant be doing with all the permutations, you should check out Small Roller. You should be able to just google that and get the application. It's a dice roller with probability calculator. Obviously you cant tell it to work out anything complicated, but with some fairly straight forward maths you can use some of its numbers to reach a more meaningful answer.

 

Also, if someone is really desperate for actual odds of penetrating an AV14 vehicle WITH rending included, I will work it out provided a few people would like to know. If someone else wants to suggest an answer to that also, I'd be more than welcome to accept the result.

 

So yeh, apart from a monolith, which everyone struggles with, the Vindicare is definitely dangerous. In that case, you'd be better off trying to get a librarian close enough to cast warp rift with its ap - auto penetrate... Or hit it with a lance strike. The odds of actually hitting a Monolith as your intended target are about as good as they come for most normal 40k sized targets... Requiring probably a double 1 on the scatter :)

[Brother Valerius]

It took like 10-15 minutes. It's easier than it looks at first glance, because I used Excel and sections are the same. What I mean is, once you have established the table for 3d6, you can do 4d6 by putting a bunch of 1s in the first column, then copying and pasting the table next to it (this is a roll of 1 + every permutation of 3d6). Then a bunch of 2s, then copy and paste the 3d6 table again. And you can save work in the same way with the 3d6 table, and 2d6 table, of course.

 

Still fairly tedious, which is why when I discovered I forgot to take rends into account I said "Ahhhhhh, screw it".

[StormTAG]

Remind me, and I'll whip up a script for it: Do you get an extra d3 for each 6 or just 1 extra d3 for at least one 6?

[Ashe Darke]

Based on the Nid FAQ I'd say D3 per 6.

[Chengar Qordath]

Remind me, and I'll whip up a script for it: Do you get an extra d3 for each 6 or just 1 extra d3 for at least one 6?

d3 per 6 is how it works with the old Vindicare, so in the absence of anything that contradicts that...

 

Of course, if you have two sixes on your penetration roll, then the base result would be at least 17 anyway before taking rending into account, so it's kind of a moot point for anything other than bragging rights.

[SamaNagol]

No, ranged weapons have an armour penetration of their Strength plus 1D6 unless another rule contradicts that such as Rending, Melta or Ordnance.

 

HOWEVER, it very specifically says that a Turbo Penetrator round has an armour penetration of 4D6. That's it. Not 'an additional 3D6 on top of its base penetration'. Just 4D6. It circumvents and excludes the original armour penetration rules and replaces them with just the 4D6 roll.

 

Having a 4D6 pen score is pretty over powered already. Having 4D6+3 would be OBSCENE. If you are going to rules lawyer, do it to the letter of the rules.

[AoC]

Every dice have 1 in 6 chance to get average +2 to armor penetration. Odds of getting rending is quite high as 216 + 197 + 178 +159 = 750 results out of 1296 include at least 1 rending. Still, it's mostly moot as only few results are below 14 for penetration, basically everything below 11 on 4 dices that have no '6'. If we try to enforce just 4d6,it's harder but still doable.

[Gentlemanloser]

So yeh, apart from a monolith, which everyone struggles with, the Vindicare is definitely dangerous

 

Living Metal didn't reduce the old Turbo Penetrator, it should still have no effect on the new one.

 

Vindicares were and reiian the best thing in the game to pop Monoliths. It's just now, they aren't limited to one try per game! ;)

[Techmarine Harkus]

I don't personally know the exact wording of Living Metal, but I'd always thought the gist was 'if you were going to get anything but Strength +D6, you get S+D6'. Thought I suppose that if it discusses extra dice (eg for melta weapons) then it'd be true that Turbo Penetrator dosen't get 'extra' dice, it gets 4 so no interaction of rules there.

 

I'm pretty sure that its supposed to include the strength 3 for being a sniper rifle. Since the wording is literally just "has an Armor Piercing of 4D6" I would read that as '...instead of the usual 1D6'. In the rulebook it says 'take the weapons strength and add a D6' which to me does not seem to say anything that should stop you doing the same but with 4D6. In the old rules Turbo Penetrator definitely did only do 4D6 for armor penetration because sniper rifles were strength X, which meant 0 as far as shooting at tanks were concerned. Now, sniper rifles state that they use S3 when shooting at vehicles. An example I'd use would be perhaps a melta ordinance weapon. You would probably be quite happy to suspect it would get 2D6 ap pick the highest (plus strength) plus an additional D6 if it is within half range. So relating this to the Vindicare, why should the rules for Turbo Penetrator overwrite the 'sniper' rule from the gun it's being fired from? Another more pertinent example: Hellfire Rounds from the Vindicares rifle... "Wound on a 2+" ... says nothing about whether the shot is conducted at AP1 or not as per the guns profile, only the 'difference' from a normal shot. Clearly however, its supposed to follow the same profile barring the change. If you were going to RAW the hell out of that, you couldn't even assume it's fired at any given range or anything else, which is clearly foolish. Obviously in the case of Turbo Penetrator, the outcome is less clear, but I can only see it as being 'the difference' from a normal shot, ie retaining the rules for sniper etc.

 

A counter point ... I know for certain the grenades are listed in a table as armor penetration S6+D6 for krak for example. Which suggests that the phrase '4D6 amor penetration' literally means just that. Without any further wording, you could possibly argue that it no longer rends either. but there is no precident in the rulebook to suggest whether it needs to be mentioned to count, but that afterall is what this whole thing is about (ambiguity and whether something goes without saying).

 

If anything, I'd say this was another question for the big FAQ questions thread. I'm not going to put it there, because I'm lazy however.

[Drudge Dreadnought]

Armor penetration is always strength + 1d6, therefore saying "it has an armor penetration of 4d6" implies strength + 4d6 in my book.

 

If it says the armor penetration is 4d6, then it's only 4d6. That's what it says. It doesn't say that you get to roll 4d6 instead of 1d6, or anything like that. It simply says that it is 4d6. Not even +4d6. All other units in the game that have extra dice for armor penetration have wording like "extra" or "additional" or "roll 2d6+strength" etc. This is clearly different wording.

[Brother Valerius]

Ehhhh... with how many other obvious mistakes are in the rules in this codex, it's easy to conclude this is another one because it breaks convention to stick to RAW. I personally will play strength + 4d6 when playing my GK, and would be happy to let any opponent do the same.

[Fred Johnson the 3rd jr]

LOL at the mentions of RAW I see around here. RAW is really RAII aka Rules As I Interpret. People obviously have different ideas of what the rules mean and can't even agree on RAW, so pretending there is some objective standard is pretty damn funny.

 

Anywhoo, the Assassin is good either way.

[Zagman]

Armor penetration is always strength + 1d6, therefore saying "it has an armor penetration of 4d6" implies strength + 4d6 in my book.

 

If it says the armor penetration is 4d6, then it's only 4d6. That's what it says. It doesn't say that you get to roll 4d6 instead of 1d6, or anything like that. It simply says that it is 4d6. Not even +4d6. All other units in the game that have extra dice for armor penetration have wording like "extra" or "additional" or "roll 2d6+strength" etc. This is clearly different wording.

Well I did some checking and this is what I found. In the SM codex a chainfist and I quote has "A chainfist is treated exactly as a power fist, but rolls 2d6 for its armor penetration value."

 

TP rounds states, "A turbo-penetrator shot has an Armour Penetration of 4d6."

 

Living metal specifically states, "weapons that get additional Armour Penetration dice (such as chainfists....) do not get the extra dice against the Monolith."

 

Basted upon the chainfist description you get S +2d6 AP. This leads me to believe that the TP round gets 3 +4d6. This also leads me to believe that the new TP round does not work against a Monolith.

[Techmarine Harkus]

Armor penetration is always strength + 1d6, therefore saying "it has an armor penetration of 4d6" implies strength + 4d6 in my book.

 

If it says the armor penetration is 4d6, then it's only 4d6. That's what it says. It doesn't say that you get to roll 4d6 instead of 1d6, or anything like that. It simply says that it is 4d6. Not even +4d6. All other units in the game that have extra dice for armor penetration have wording like "extra" or "additional" or "roll 2d6+strength" etc. This is clearly different wording.

 

 

I've used some fairly uncertain terms to try and convey that that *one* (the only one we have) sentence is ambiguous and explain my take on it. I've then given two examples and since Zagman has added several more that convey the idea of what 'armor penetration' is supposed to mean. The sentence it's self is only ambiguous if you lack a good definition of 'armor penetration' and infact, the rulebook does not provide one. I would like to see some examples of of weapons that have extra armor penetration and are worded as +D6 etc, purely for contrast. The thing is, all it takes is one instance of contradiction in the use of 'armor penetration' and it no longer matters how many examples of 'additional' 'extra' '+' there are, the precident has been set. Melta is an example of an 'extra D6' but I would suggest that it's prhrased like that so not to interfere with any other rules that may be being used. Like my previous example of an ordinance melta weapon, it should be 2D6 pick the highest +D6 if under half range, but if the melta rule stated "2D6" rather than 'additional' then it would imply that to always be the case regardless of any other weapon rule that might add dice. If anyone can find an example of "rolls xD6 for armor penetration" when it definitely does not add the strength of the weapon, I would very much like to see it. Without an example of that, I would be very much inclined to decide any and all mentions of armor penetration refer to S+D6.

 

Zagmans example of Chainfists and Living metal is a perfect example which proves without a doubt that chainfists get S+2D6 armor penetration because the living metal rule specifically offers it as an example of 'additional' dice when the wording for chainfists in the first place did not state that. Unfortunatly this does not mean that Turbo Penetrator IS S+4D6 or not. All it means is that it could *definitely* be either.

 

I've convinced myself this is one for the FAQ, though in more of a rulebook faq in terms of 'what exactly is meant by armor penetration?, is it the dice roll, or the roll + S' I'm sure we'd get a better answer asking specifically about the vindicare however.

[Gentlemanloser]

The old DH FAQ has gone from the GW site, and I'm not sure if I have a copy at work, but I though the Turbo Penetrator versus the 'lith was mentioned in there?