December 3, 2012
The Quality of Quantity?
Joseph Stalin, infamous Soviet dictator, is reputed to have said "Quantity has a Quality all its own". This was in response to questions about the "quality" of Soviet military equipment. In short, Stalin's point was "its ok if our gear sucks, its cheap and plentiful"
In 40k, there are several armies which embrace the "Quantity vs Quality" argument. In most people's minds, though, the ORKS are the poster-child for "TONS of inexpensive troops" I've listed below a non-exhaustive list of positives and negatives:
Positives:
Ground control: ability to clog up the board, Area denial. Hamper deep strike armies.
Defense: cover saves from intervening troops, threat of multiple counter-assaults
Offense: Flexibility in targeting, multiple-unit assaults, Reduce impact of Snap Shot penalty.
Negatives:
Victory Points: units of inferior troops are easier to kill out for victory points
Transport: reliance on transports to reduce foot-slogging infantry
Dice: Rolling 30 dice to force 3 saves takes game time.
Price-tag: Need for LOTS of models to make your points requires cash.
Detachment: Need to be able to lose huge numbers of troops without getting despondent.
On Snap Shots:
Snap shots have a major negative impact on Space Marine accuracy. Normally hitting 67% of the time, Marines are reduced to 17%. Marines "hit rate" is dropped to 25% of its normal number. Marines don't get "Tons of shots" because they are usually very accurate. Attempting to Snap-Fire at FLYERS with Marines is relatively uneffective. So much so that unless my units have nothing else to shoot at, they tend to ignore Flyers entirely.
Orks, on the other hand, are very poor marksmen. They normally hit 33% of the time. To compensate, they generally have "Lots of shots". Snap-Fire for Orks reduces them to the same 17% hit rate. However, this only cuts their "hit rate" to 50% of its normal value.
Ork Lootas get d3 S7 shots per model. Combine that large number of relatively high strength shots with the reduced impact of Snap Fire on ORK accuracy and you can see how ORKS are among the LEAST penalized armies when it comes to shooting at FLYERS.
Next Topic: The Quality of Quality
--Rory
So the same principle would apply to IG blob squads then too? how ever i think the idea of the blob squad is to bubble wrap the heavy and special weapons in the blob, because i dont think srt 3 -ap is going to do much against marines how ever with rapid fire your going to have 25 models tied up in heavy/special weapons leaving 25 lasgun shots with rapid fire so 50 shots, 5 heavy weapon shots amd 15 special weapon shots in a 50 man blob lasguns ar range 24" so to rapid fire you have to be with in 12"? or somthing close to that, that not counting the sargents or commisars int he blob either so the number may vary.
ReplyDeleteThanks for this great write-up, Rory!
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