In Hammer of Math, we look at statistics and probability, and look at key questions in Warhammer 40k around those topics. This week we’re looking at a variety of rules in the upcoming Codex: Death Guard.
Codex: Death Guard is coming up pretty fast and in case you missed our review of the new book, you can find that here. This week we’re going to take a look at a number of rules in the new book, the odds and probabilities around them, and how you can use those in your games.
Deathshroud Terminators
One of the most exciting units in the new Codex are Deathshroud Terminators, now upgraded to have 4 wounds each, 7 Toughness, and the ability to Deep Strike just over 6″ away from any Afflicted units.
Let’s start with that Deep Strike – because you can absolutely still charge after dropping in. Normally when you drop outside of 9″ your chances of completing a charge are just under 28%. That’s abysmal, and only increases to just under 50% with a re-roll. Dropping outside of 6″ gets you all the way up to 72% – a much more sure thing, especially if you tack a re-roll on top of that.
The other thing to know about Deathshroud is their plaguespurt gauntlets. These little pistols fire off D6 shots each at S3, AP0, 1-damage shots with ANTI-INFANTRY and IGNORES COVER. A full unit of these guys will get 7 shots – you have two pistols on the champion – and that means on average you should expect to land 24 to 25 shots – 3.5 per model – when you fire the entire unit. This can go up to 42 total, but if that every happens your opponent is going to give you some real “c’mon, son” vibes.
Even at S3, Deathshroud can often wound T3 targets with their pistols on a 3+ thanks to Contagion effects, but most of the time you’ll be looking at either 4+ (T4+ infantry) or 6+ for your rolls. Where these really shine is with Rattlejoint Ague, where your target will get -1 to their save rolls, which pairs with Ignores cover to wreak some real havoc. Against regular space marines your 6-model unit will average 6 damage with no re-rolls, and against vehicles that’s more likely to be 2.
If you give your Deathshroud Terminators a Lord of Virulence, that improves substantially – he gives his unit re-rolls to their wound rolls, and with that in place you’ll average just over 9 damage against marines and just under 4 against vehicles before you factor in the Lord’s own twin plague spewer. pushing through 10+ damage on Overwatch is pretty nasty, and even being able to chip a few wounds off a vehicle before charging in is huge.
The Tallyman
We’ve covered this guy in every edition. In your Command phase, the Tallyman lets you roll 2D6, and on a 7+ you get a Command point. Your odds of rolling a 7+ are about 58%, and over the course of an average game you can expect this to happen 2-3 times. That’s a really good deal for 40 points, and while you can get CP by discarding secondary objectives at the end of the turn, the Tallyman giving you CP in your Command phase means his bonus point can be used to discard and replace a recently drawn Secondary Mission, helping you improve your score early. This is crucial when you’re chasing 100-point games.
Stinking Mire
This Stratagem in the Mortarion’s Hammer Detachment gives one of your vehicles protection against enemy charges, giving enemy units -2 to their Charge rolls for a phase. The most common time you’ll use this is against units arriving via Deep Strike, where dropping them from a 9″ Charge to an 11″ charge drops their chances of success to just over 8%. That’s usually enough to deter someone from trying it, but if you’re me your opponents just make those charges multiple times per game anyways.
Death Lord’s Chosen
This Detachment has you roll 2D6 for each Afflicted unit in the opponent’s army in their Command phase, doing D3 mortal wounds if you roll a 6 or less, and subtracting 1 if they’re below half strength. Your odds of a 6 or less on 2D6 are generally about 42%, and that’ll increase to 58% if you have to roll a 7 or less with the -1 modifier. That’s not bad and by round 3 you’ll usually have more than one Afflicted enemy unit to roll for.
5+ Feel No Pain
The 5+ feel no pain shows up pretty often in Codex: Death Guard, making units substantially more durable. When you think about a feel no pain, tend to think of it as an increase in the number of effective wounds a model has. For a 6+ feel no pain that increase is 20%, for a 5+ it comes out to 50%, and for a 4+ it’s 100%. This is a little counter-intuitive but the math basically involves an infinite sum – every saved wound gives you another slight chance of saving again, and when you sum those values together you end up with the final result.
Put more simply, imagine you’re shooting a unit with 6 wounds and a 5+ feel no pain. If you do 9 damage to it, you’ll expect 3 of that damage to get ignored, leaving the 6 left you needed to kill the target. So think of Mortarion as actually having something more like 27 wounds when you go up against him or play with him.
Where this gets a little weird is 1-wound models like Poxwalkers. You’re fine keeping that math in mind against 1-damage guns but if you have 2-damage guns your feel no pain is more like a 1/9 chance of success than 1/3, so it’s really more like 1-2 wounds per 10-model unit. And at 3 damage you’re talking 1/27 odds to shrug off a blow, and that’s pretty marginal.
Final Thoughts
There’s not a ton of crazy math in the Death Guard book – at least nothing on par with the World Eaters and the Blessings of Khorne. Instead it’s really a book that’s more about strong datasheets and high-value models, albeit with low Movement values. That said, if there’s something we missed that you’d like us to look at from the book, shoot us a note and we’ll add it to our list.
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