Knight Melee Weapons - What to Expect

[SkimaskMohawk]

With the new rules for the Atropos shown, and the mechanicum questoris the other week, there's now a bunch of different Melee options available to Knights. The Atropos in particular has a weapon that's very swingy, so I'm going to break down the math and compare it to other weapons so people can understand what to expect and maybe make a more informed purchase between new knights and older knights.

 

So, assuming we've hit with a lascutter attack we have str 6 + d10, the average chance of rolling is as follows (I'm skipping 7 and 8 because the lowest armour value is 9 iirc):

 

9 (80%), 10 (70%), 11 (60%), 12 (50%), 13 (40%), 14 (30%), 15 (20%), 16 (10%)

 

Pretty simple because its a d10. But what does it mean?

 

Against Questoris/Cerastus:

- the average attack won't do damage 20% of the time

- the average attack will do a direct hit 40% of the time

- the average attack will do a devastating hit 30% of the time

- the average attack will do a critical hit 10% of the time

 

Expect your attack to do 1 or 2 structure points of damage; critting is rare and shouldn't be relied upon. You might be able to kill a questoris with one atropos' attacks, but rarely a cerastus.

 

Against Acastus:

- the average attack won't do damage 30% of the time

- the average attack will do a direct hit 50% of the time

- the average attack will do a devastating hit 20% of the time

 

Expect your attacks to do 1 structure point of damage; there's a higher chance to do nothing than there is to do 2 points.

 

 

 

Let's look at the spread on the rest:

 

Siege Claw

9 (66%), 10 (50%), 11 (33%), 12 (17%), 13 (17%), 14 (11%), 15 (5%)

 

Acheron/Castigator/Questoris

9 (83%), 10, (66%), 11 (50%), 12 (33%), 13 (17%)

 

Lancer

9 (83%), 10 (83%), 11 (66%), 12 (50%), 13% (33%), 14 (17%)

 

 

A really quick rundown is that the questoris to lancer range of weapons are better at dealing single structure points to all knight classes, but the damage potential of the lascutter allows it to kill a questoris and cerastus faster by a margin of about 1 hit vs a lancer (4 hits for questoris, 5 for cerastus vs 5 and 6 respectively). Both the lascutter and lancer kill an acastus with 8 hits.

 

Now things can still change depending on how you want to play Ion Shields. If you play that melee bipasses, the lascutter has the most efficient attacks vs knights. If not, it changes;

 

- Minimum banner of Questoris cut all lascutter hits by 50% vs. 33% for s7 and 17% for s8

- Minimum banner of Cerastus cut all lascutter hits by 50% (66% with a lancer) vs. 33% (50%) for s7 and 17% (33%) for s8

- Minimum banner of Acastus cut all lascutter hits by 33% vs. 17% for s7 and 0% for s8

 

This means to break through the knights' shielding a lascutter needs:

- Average 8 hits against Questoris vs. 8 hits for s7 and 6 hits for s8

- Average 10 hits against Cerastus (15 with a lancer) vs. 9 hits (12 with a lancer) for s7 and 7 hits (9 with a lancer) for s8

- Average 12 hits against Acastus vs. 13 hits for s7 and 8 hits for s8

 

With Ion Shields, the atropos is on the whole worse than either questoris or cerastus options for melee vs other knights. The elephant in the room is if they give the atropos the option of the mechanicum knights to double up on weapons. That would push them into being the best melee option out of all the knights vs other knights.

 

I'll look at Titan armour values tomorrow.

Edited December 2, 2020 by SkimaskMohawk

[schoon]

Thanks for this. Good analysis.

[Mandragola]

This is good analysis. However melee hits definitely do not bypass ion shields. There's nothing whatsoever in the rules for AT to suggest that they might - it's just what people expect because they don't work in melee in 40k. 

 

This actually matters a lot in knight v knight combat. S6 is the lowest strength band for ion shields, where knights get their best saves. Lancers can even end up with a 2+ save against S6 attacks.

 

You do also get very low armour values on titans sometimes, in effect, after they've suffered structural damage. A Reaver or Warhound's body can be equivalent to AV 7 once compromised.

[SkimaskMohawk]

This is good analysis. However melee hits definitely do not bypass ion shields. There's nothing whatsoever in the rules for AT to suggest that they might - it's just what people expect because they don't work in melee in 40k.

 

This actually matters a lot in knight v knight combat. S6 is the lowest strength band for ion shields, where knights get their best saves. Lancers can even end up with a 2+ save against S6 attacks.

 

You do also get very low armour values on titans sometimes, in effect, after they've suffered structural damage. A Reaver or Warhound's body can be equivalent to AV 7 once compromised.

Oh ya, I agree with you on the ion shield thing, but theres AT-ism there that can cause some confusion.

 

Likewise titans for sure can drop to ludicrously low armour, which is why I left the titans out of the initial post because it'd be a lot of variables to cover.

[Mandragola]

Fair point on the "AT-ism". Not all the rules make sense in this game. However, they do actually make a distinction between void and ion shields. If something says it bypasses one, it doesn't necessarily bypass the other.

 

Knights are fairly bad at killing each other, as you've shown. I'm becoming a bigger fan of the Thermal Cannon because it's able to do real damage in a single shot. It makes the Errant a bigger threat to titans than it would first seem, even without orders.

[SkimaskMohawk]

I think the secret is to view the single shot knight weapons as ranged melee weapons. Like that bs4 is unreliable, discourages targeting and encourages having your knights be in Los to titans. But as a "use as a melee weapon" you can let them rip on 3s and then free target their location with your actual melee weapons.

[Sherrypie]

Fair point on the "AT-ism". Not all the rules make sense in this game. However, they do actually make a distinction between void and ion shields. If something says it bypasses one, it doesn't necessarily bypass the other.

 

Knights are fairly bad at killing each other, as you've shown. I'm becoming a bigger fan of the Thermal Cannon because it's able to do real damage in a single shot. It makes the Errant a bigger threat to titans than it would first seem, even without orders.

The point about Ion Shields, as SMM originally referenced my note in the other thread, stems from the writing in Knight rules. It's not about bypassing in the mechanical sense, it's that their rules are written like this: "Unlike void shields, ion shields can be used against attacks that originate from within 2". If a Banner is hit by a shooting attack, hits are resolved as follows..." (Rulebook, p. 47).

 

One could say there's no clear distinction between melee and shooting attacks in the game rules, but precisely because it isn't defined it would be just as valid (if not actually stronger) to argue directly from the English language that there is an obvious difference between hitting something physically or by using projectiles of various types. I'd be happy to play both styles, because the latter seems more inline with the universe being portrayed but my knickers wouldn't get atwist if someone liked the saves to apply universally.

[Mandragola]

Oh that's interesting. So the shields would apply to shooting attacks within melee range, but not actual melee attacks. Maybe, I guess.

 

I have to admit I'm not an expert on the knight rules. I've only recently painted some and have only fielded them a couple of times. I've hit other people's a few times with Arioch claws, but that meant the issue of ion saves was not relevant.

[Noserenda]

I think the intent is unclear given shooting is never defined, really needs an FAQ tbh but we generally run them against everything, a melee attack in 40k is typically too quick and small to aim a knights shields at but the opposite is true in AT :) 

The best place for knights is typically in melee so i tend to think of all their weapons as melee weapons, just some of them can take pot shots at range if they fail their orders :D 

[SkimaskMohawk]

Pure RAW a shooting attack doesn't exist in AT, so it means nothing from a rules sense. The caveat of telling you to take them against things within 2" is a pretty solid indicator of intent; as it's not shooting or melee or explosion or whatever that procs voids, it's the range from the originating point. Youd have to make a whole compendium of what is and isn't a "shooting attack" for whether knights would get their save that's already mitigated by strength and unit size.

[SkimaskMohawk]

So I still haven't gotten around to doing the Titan math, but I did realize I screwed up on the acheron and castigator math; I forgot they had Rending!

 

This means you have 17% chance to roll a 14, 11% chance to roll a 15 and 5% to roll a 16. I don't think this really changes too much; it gives a very small chance to one hit the smaller knight chassis and an equally small chance of boosting damage output against titans. But unlike the siege claws where you can dual wield them and double the chance of high rolling, you need charges to really have a chance at those high rolls