Havoc mathhammer

[Wayniac]

This has me thinking now. I was going with 4x reapers and 4x lascannon Havocs AND a 10-man squad with 2 reapers supplemented with 2x5 plasma squads.

 

This does have me rethinking the reapers on the Havocs... Maybe to 4x autocannon and 4x lascannon, or 2x missile 2x autocannon and 4x lascannon

[Lord Asvaldir]

Thanks Drudge for the math on missle launchers, that pretty much settles it for me to never use missile launchers lol. I do agree with what other are saying about chainreaper cannons though, given their shorter range and high number of shots they are good heavy weapons in standard marine squads. Yeah you miss out on throwing lots of stratagems on one concentrated suad, but I'll take that sacrifice to keep the chainreapers around longer and to have my little MSU marine units get a little firepower. 

 

I think 4x lascannons and 4x autocannons is the way to go for havocs. Given the prevalence of knights these days, lascannons are still mighty useful, while autocannons keep one unit nice and cheap and more useful against a variety of targets. 

[Wayniac]

Thanks Drudge for the math on missle launchers, that pretty much settles it for me to never use missile launchers lol. I do agree with what other are saying about chainreaper cannons though, given their shorter range and high number of shots they are good heavy weapons in standard marine squads. Yeah you miss out on throwing lots of stratagems on one concentrated suad, but I'll take that sacrifice to keep the chainreapers around longer and to have my little MSU marine units get a little firepower. 

 

I think 4x lascannons and 4x autocannons is the way to go for havocs. Given the prevalence of knights these days, lascannons are still mighty useful, while autocannons keep one unit nice and cheap and more useful against a variety of targets. 

I am starting to come around to this train of thought myself after looking through the math.  And I just ordered 4 not-chaincannons from pop goes the monkey.. 

[MegaVolt87]

I have been thinking, based off what I currently own-

 

x2 lascannon, x1 ML, x1 AC, bolter champ

x2 lascannon, x1 ML, x1 AC, bolter champ

x4 HB, bolter champ

 

3x 12 bolter CSM with x2 Rotor cannon each (champ various), 6 rotor total. 

 

So dumb question- if the champ has a flamer stock for havocs, and I change to bolter- am I still paying for the flamer ? Would be less complicated if the champ just had a bolter stock IMO. 

[Amon777]

Ordered 2 boxes of the new havocs. I think I will make them mixed with 2 lascannons and 2 autocannons each with the chaincannons being given to the base CSM squads. I'm thinking mixed might be safer with the 5 man max now to prevent the more serious threat from being focused down depending on the opponent.

[Drudge Dreadnought]

Chain Cannon havocs are still really good. Havocs overall seem good enough that you should pretty much take your full allotment of 3 squads unless you are going for an armor saturation list or something. If you aren't planing on running all 3 squads in a Devastation Battery, then a Chain Cannon squad is still a great idea. But if you want all of them hanging back in a blob around a character providing aura buffs from the Devastation Battery warlord trait, then using Chain Cannons may not work out so well. Of course it also matter if you are running Oblits in the Devastation Battery, in which case you need to be up within 24" anyway.

 

So there are a lot of variables, but I think it's safe to say that running 3 squads with 48" weapons in a devastation battery is a solid choice, in which case leave out Chain Cannons.

 

Maybe next I'll run Havocs vs Oblits and we can see how they stack up.

[Lord Asvaldir]

I have been thinking, based off what I currently own-

 

x2 lascannon, x1 ML, x1 AC, bolter champ

x2 lascannon, x1 ML, x1 AC, bolter champ

x4 HB, bolter champ

 

3x 12 bolter CSM with x2 Rotor cannon each (champ various), 6 rotor total. 

 

So dumb question- if the champ has a flamer stock for havocs, and I change to bolter- am I still paying for the flamer ? Would be less complicated if the champ just had a bolter stock IMO. 

 

You don't pay for the flamer since the champion doesn't have it in that case. Really see no reason to give the aspiring champion a special weapon in havoc squads, he's pretty much your one extra wound. Plasma gun in a full chainreaper squad is the only thing I'd consider, and probably not in that case either as chainreapers don't want to go up to rapid fire range. 

 

Once I have the hobby funds to buy 3 of the new havoc squads, probably will be running the full three squads as they seem to deal out more firepower than most of our vehicle options, benefit from legion traits and have way better stratagems to use. I am very curious to see how they stack up against obliterators though. The upside for havocs is definetly reliability, but if you roll well for the obliterator guns they can have a pretty huge damage output. I am also very unsure if the new pricetag for obliterators in shadowspear is going to hold up or not, as they are very pricey now. 

[Drudge Dreadnought]

Okay, time for Havocs vs Obliterators. This is important for deciding just what you ought to take in your Devastation Battery.

I'm running Oblits at the shadowspear price of 115pts, and their weapon with average rolls. So Str8, ap-2, D2.

 

 

The main comparison to make is Oblits vs Reaper Chain Cannons, as those are both 24" range. And funnily enough, we see that point for point, the reaper is more efficient against everything, but especially against horde infantry.  This is mainly because of the cost difference. The Oblit is ~3x the cost of the Chain Cannon Havoc.

 

Autocannons are even cheaper. You get the whole squad of 4x autocannons and 1x champ for 5pts less than a single Oblit! And they also actually meet or beat the Obliterator in efficiency per point in almost every area, although which areas changes a bit with re-roll 1's to hit. With re-roll 1's to hit and wound, they are exactly the same vs the tanks.

 

The Lascannon is behind on infantry and slightly ahead on the tanks, with the difference increasing once the re-rolls are introduced.

 

So in pure offensive power, the havocs actually come in ahead for the most part. But of course, this comparison actually has more to it because of how different these units are. On the surface of it, we can notice that for the price of 3 Oblits, we can afford 10 Chain Cannon Havocs. But of course, those would be split into 3 squads, only one of which can benefit from VotLW or Shoot Twice. Oblits have the biggest benefit from strats because they let you concentrate the most shooting power into a single squad.

 

Also note that I used average, middle of the road rolls for the Oblits. If they rolled worse it would perform worse against some targets, but not necessarily vs all of them. If they had only str7 instead of 8, that wouldn't change anything vs the Guardsmen. And Ap-1 wouldn't change anything vs the Boyz.

 

And how about Defense? The Oblits are 4 wounds per 115. Chain Cannon havocs are ~3.5, and autocannons are ~5. But the Obliterator has 2+ Armor, which effectively doubles its durability over the havoc vs AP0. And the Invul of 5++ doubles it vs AP-3 (plasma.) They are vulnerable to high Damage weapons, but between the armor and invul, they are still much more durable per point than the Havocs. And that's before you consider that they can get Daemon Keyword defensive buffs, and are easier to benefit with defensive buffs that target a single unit. And they have a nice melee weapon. And Deep Strike.

 

So overall, Oblits are the superior unit, even at the shadowspear price point. But a lot of that is due to strats and buffs that will be in short supply. So you should fill a full unit of Oblits, but you may want to consider Havocs instead of a second unit of Oblits. After all, you can get 3 squads of Autocannon havocs for the cost of 3 Oblits! And they have the 48" range going for them.

[MegaVolt87]

No love for the heavy bolter in the excel calc?

[Drudge Dreadnought]

No love for the heavy bolter in the excel calc?

 

It's there in the original post but it's really disappointing. It beats the autocannon vs light infantry, but otherwise is no good. And it doesn't have enough extra range to really justify how weak it is compared to the Chain Cannon. If the chain cannon didn't exist it might have a use. Or if it was 48". Or if it was 5-7 points. Or if we had the loyalist mortal wounds strat for it.

[Wayniac]

You are really convincing me to just put my chaincannons on CSM squads and run the Havocs with Auto/Las in two squads.  I like autocannons anyways, so it's win-win?

[Prot]

I'm not really a fan of math hammer but I really appreciate the work put into this. A lot of people don't get to play enough, and if you're new I think this is a great place to start feeling out what you want to do, and why.

 

To me the game is so situational, and everything is a new scenario that demands an often dynamic decision making environment.

 

But even so as a rule I think the new Chain gun, with Cacaphony, VotLW is going to be a gold standard. For me specifically I think of units like... Knights (rotate Ion Shields), Riptides, etc. These are units where you are taking a very strong weapon, with a potential of 6 damage (Las/Missile) and the target has a very high chance of shutting down that single shot.

 

In 8th I far prefer the ability to make someone take their very defensive unit (IE: great invuln save) and force them to roll fist fulls of dice... even if the damage is 1-2.  I don't want them to CP re roll my one lascannon that got through, or risk rolling a '2' on the damage chart. I want that Riptide player to roll a chunk of dice as often as I can.

 

Not to mention those other intangibles like... CP re rolls, and halving damage/reducing damage.

 

That being said the power of having a Havoc squad capable of interrupting a your opponent's first turn is amazing. Lascannons always have a place, and you could argue the Obliterator is still a strong threat that brings things to your strategy that Havocs can't.

 

Plus it's not like there's one Oblit arm per box!

[Lord Asvaldir]

Thanks again for the mathammer Drudge. I'm not too surprised the chainreaper wins again, in 8th you really just can't beat high quantity of shots with a little ap and medium strength. I do agree with Prot, I'd usually rather force my opponent to roll fistfulls of dice and watch even those one damage weapons get through enough times on a knight then rely on a d6 damage weapon rolling a 1 over a 6. I wouldn't say that means never take lascannons, just that we shouldn't over rely on them. 

 

I am curious to see if the price change for obliterators holds up. I'm not sure nearly doubling their pts cost was worth getting 2 shots, one toughness and one wound, seems like a bit much to me given they are almost the cost of a venomcrawler. I do still think oblits are worth taking, as Drudge mentioned given how many shots you can get out of one unit they are a really good consolidation of strength in one unit that gains a lot of returns on stratagems. I'm just hoping they drop down to say 100 pts. 

[Panzer]

I'm not really a fan of math hammer but I really appreciate the work put into this. A lot of people don't get to play enough, and if you're new I think this is a great place to start feeling out what you want to do, and why.

 

To me the game is so situational, and everything is a new scenario that demands an often dynamic decision making environment.

 

But even so as a rule I think the new Chain gun, with Cacaphony, VotLW is going to be a gold standard. For me specifically I think of units like... Knights (rotate Ion Shields), Riptides, etc. These are units where you are taking a very strong weapon, with a potential of 6 damage (Las/Missile) and the target has a very high chance of shutting down that single shot.

 

In 8th I far prefer the ability to make someone take their very defensive unit (IE: great invuln save) and force them to roll fist fulls of dice... even if the damage is 1-2.  I don't want them to CP re roll my one lascannon that got through, or risk rolling a '2' on the damage chart. I want that Riptide player to roll a chunk of dice as often as I can.

 

Not to mention those other intangibles like... CP re rolls, and halving damage/reducing damage.

 

That being said the power of having a Havoc squad capable of interrupting a your opponent's first turn is amazing. Lascannons always have a place, and you could argue the Obliterator is still a strong threat that brings things to your strategy that Havocs can't.

 

Plus it's not like there's one Oblit arm per box!

 

I agree, mathhammer is far from perfect but it's a great tool to get a general feeling of what to expect from specific units/loadouts on the board.

I also agree that rolling tons of dice is MUCH better than rolling few super dangerous dice. There are so many mechanics that help you to stop that one devastating shot but there's pretty much nothing to stop tons of less dangerous shots. Death by a thousand cuts indeed. ^^

[nanosquid]

I totally spaced on the warlord trait only being given to the specialist detachment units, derp. Thanks for calling me on that.

 

As for the missile math, I'm very disappointed. The system changes for what were blast weapons really screwed up a lot of things. I do enjoy how much faster the game is but I think blast weapons could do with a rework. d6 hit rolls just doesn't make sense. Maybe take a cue from flails, make it 1 hit and add damage spillover?

[Finkmilkana]

Just a quick note about the oblit math, simply using the average profile only often overestimates expected performance. This is because the damage does not scale linearly for the different profiles. For example S7 will do less damage against marines than S8, but S9 won’t do more. Overall, 1 oblit should in expectation ‚only‘ deal about 2.07 wounds against marines, 3.15 wounds against guardsmen and 3.26 against rhinos (all exact values without guarantee, I just quickly calculated them on my phone). Against LR (both), the average profile should actually produce the expected damage though.

Also note that oblits have a conparatively high damage variance, making them somewhat unreliable against hard targets. For example, simply rolling a 1 on the strength roll makes them really bad and not worth to use endless on anymore (so if you bring oblits, bring at least a second unit on which endless cacaphony is worth it).

 

Overall, I’m with SFpamzer on this: As great as looking at expected values (and statistics in general) is, it is usually a bad idea to judge a weapons performance just by a single (set of) number(s). While it’s clear from mathhammer that missle launchers are most likely not worth it, all other weapons are so close that it mostly tells us: mix them in a way that best fits your army and the way you play.

[Drudge Dreadnought]

Thanks again for the mathammer Drudge. I'm not too surprised the chainreaper wins again, in 8th you really just can't beat high quantity of shots with a little ap and medium strength. I do agree with Prot, I'd usually rather force my opponent to roll fistfulls of dice and watch even those one damage weapons get through enough times on a knight then rely on a d6 damage weapon rolling a 1 over a 6. I wouldn't say that means never take lascannons, just that we shouldn't over rely on them. 

 

I am curious to see if the price change for obliterators holds up. I'm not sure nearly doubling their pts cost was worth getting 2 shots, one toughness and one wound, seems like a bit much to me given they are almost the cost of a venomcrawler. I do still think oblits are worth taking, as Drudge mentioned given how many shots you can get out of one unit they are a really good consolidation of strength in one unit that gains a lot of returns on stratagems. I'm just hoping they drop down to say 100 pts. 

 

Actually, I think the math shows that Oblits are in about the right place at 115pts, even compared to the very efficient Chain Cannon. They are slightly behind on offense, but Chain Cannon havocs are essentially a glass cannon. The oblits are far more durable. And with their strat and buff synergy, they just get nuts. Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if competitive chaos meta just involves spamming several squads of them. They could probably go up to 130pts and still be an auto-include due to strat and buff synergy. However, if you reduced their max squad size even down to 2, everything changes. If they were a single model unit, they could probably cost 90-100. 2 max, 100-115, etc. Or of course if VotLW and Shoot Twice didn't exist.

 

 

 

Overall, I’m with SFpamzer on this: As great as looking at expected values (and statistics in general) is, it is usually a bad idea to judge a weapons performance just by a single (set of) number(s). While it’s clear from mathhammer that missle launchers are most likely not worth it, all other weapons are so close that it mostly tells us: mix them in a way that best fits your army and the way you play.

 

I agree too. Although I'd say we can also rule out the heavy bolter.

[Finkmilkana]

I agree too. Although I'd say we can also rule out the heavy bolter.

I feel heavy bolters still have a potential (though admittedly very shaky) place. Not as weapons in and of themselves, but as ‚cheap’ ablative wounds in a chain cannon squad. They are afterall better than autocannons against 1 W models.

[Iron_Within]

Chain cannons are amazing I can attest. Played against a primaris list on the weekend and they deleted a unit a turn. They were part of a devastation battery and with the re rolling 1s on the wounding for vehicles they put some hurt on the repulsers too

[Lord Asvaldir]

Ehh I just don't see taking HBs are abaltive wounds as making much sense. In a 5 man squad of havocs, an extra wound or two before you start losing some chainreaper cannons just isn't that helpful. Far better to spend the extra 10-20pts and just have way more firepower from chainreaper cannons. 

 

The real issue with heavy bolters is that for twice the price of the HB, you get 1.5x the number of shots at the cost of 1/3 less range, and that's something I pretty much always will take. If I really want something with long range I'll take autocannons since they have a much more substantial range bonus.  

 

Good to hear that chainreapers did well, can't wait to get my hands on at least 3-4 for my 5 man marine units. 

[Panzer]

Chain cannons are amazing I can attest. Played against a primaris list on the weekend and they deleted a unit a turn. They were part of a devastation battery and with the re rolling 1s on the wounding for vehicles they put some hurt on the repulsers too

 

Did you use the Punishing Volley Stratagem as well? How was the reaction? ^^

[Drudge Dreadnought]

Another question is what's the best HQ to put in a Devastation Battery? It's probably a Terminator Lord with a combi-bolter or combi-plasma so that they can also contribute. Black Legion has a big advantage here because you can give them that great stormbolter relic. The Red Corsair Combi-melta relic is also solid, but then you don't have VotLW (but if you're using it elsehwere that's fine.) Alpha Legion can't do a fancy relic, so might be best to just use a cheap foot lord for them.

[BrainFireBob]

Combibolter on the sarge?

[brother_b]

Thanks for this spreadsheet.

 

It always bums me out when GW totally makes something obsolete (heavy bolter) with the inclusion of a new weapon.

[Subtle Discord]

But honestly, if there was a heavy weapon to be put out to pasture, I think the Hvy. Bolter is a good contender. It's been a good run, but the Hvy. Bolter hasn't really had 'legs' for some time now.