Mephrit tomb blades

[Miek]

Heads up: I misread mephrit's stratagem which threw the whole thing off, but I posted it nonetheless mostly because I had already done the "work". Feel free to comment or ignore as you see fit!

 

Hi! This is nothing new or particularly imaginative, but I ran the numbers on mephrit tomb blades to see how many mortal wounds they can output with the right support. The Python code is at the end in case anyone's interested.

 

So 9 Mephrit tomb blades with particle beamers, boosted by an OL or CCB to hit on 2+ and backed by a Triarch Stalker average 9 mortal wounds for 1 CP (talent for annihilation).

 

OMG I'VE JUST RE-READ THE STRATAGEM AND IT'S LIMITED TO 3 MORTAL WOUNDS (I don't feel like a genius right now )! Anyways... I've already done it so I might as well finish what I started... Let's say 3 mortal wounds is a sure thing and that more that justifies having at least one tesla TB for the malevolent arcing stratagem, and yeah... the rest should be gauss then. Now that I've realized how pointless this is I won't rework the code for 8 gauss + 1 tesla, but considering 9 particle beamers:

 

That's of course in addition to any damage done by the attack itself, which has the following boosts:

 

- +3" range (dynastic code);

- +1 AP at half range (dynastic code);

- +1 AP on sixes to wound (vengeful stars);

- Ignore cover at half range (vengeful stars).

 

So that's potentially the equivalent of S5, -5 AP with gauss blasters up to 16", with the aforementioned 2+ BS + rerolls.

 

Now I'm curious about how the disintegration capacitors would combine with talent for annihiliation, but I assume that if you automatically wound, you don't get to roll to wound and thus don't generate sixes to wound. Then again, if you're limited to 3 MW anyways, that might not really be a limitation. Would have to run the numbers but it's getting late.

 

With 1 tesla TB, malevolent arcing can generate more MW. An interesting thing about this stratagem is that it doesn't depend on the amount of tesla weapons you have nor even that they hit.

 

Going to bed now... conclusion: Mephrit TB pack a punch. But I don't intent to play Mephrit so I took a minute to tweak the code below and calculate how they would perform under another dynasty with disintegration capacitors as improvised anti-tank / monster (got about 24.5 wounds with particle beamers, with solar pulse or the nebuloscope to ignore cover but that doesn't matter for anti-tank / monsters anyways). Even then, gauss would likely be much better 90% of the time with its -2 AP, and mephrit would raise that to -3/-4 AP at half range + vengeful stars.

import numpy as npn_rolls = 100000models = 9attacks = models * 6def d6():    return np.random.randint(1, 7)def reroll_ones(result):    return d6() if result == 1 else resultdef roll():    hit_rolls = [d6() for _ in range(attacks)]    # Rerolling for the Triarch Stalker    hit_rolls = list(map(reroll_ones, hit_rolls))    # Hitting on 2+ because of the OL/CCB boost    hits = len(list(filter(lambda x: x > 1, hit_rolls)))    # Wounding on 3+ for MEQ    wound_rolls = [d6() for _ in range(hits)]    # Mortal woulds    mortal_wounds = len(list(filter(lambda x: x == 6, wound_rolls)))        return mortal_woundsresults = np.mean([roll() for _ in range(n_rolls)])print(f"Mortal wounds (mean): {results}")

Edited November 3, 2020 by Miek

[Mr4Minutes]

My go to’s for 8th, and now 9th are double battalion (now double patrol) Meohrit and Novokh. Mephrit gets all the shooty, Novokh gets all the choppy.

 

It may be capped at 3 MWs, but I agree that tomb blades are an excellent tool to get to a more juicy target for them. The additional ap at half range also makes Tesla weapons more appealing too.