Fake 40K: Shooting the Horrors

My dice. I like these as they are easy to use and remind me somewhat of the warp. *Nerdy Laughter*

Here's a silly idea - I feel like rolling dice and seeing results on what if-type scenarios for my units. As this Pink Horror unit I posted about (see prior thread) still has my interest (not to mention I've started seeing silly comments like "I CAN KILL FLIERS NOW WITH HORRORZ!" on other sites using similar builds to the one I theorized), I'd like to see how the dice hold up.  Mathhammer, while giving me the averages, can only take me so far :) Plus its fun to throw dice around.

Alright, the standard test - lets 20 pink horror shooty death vs. a standard 10 man space marine tactical squad (wha, not combat squaded?? I know, but we wants to see how much damage we can do, precious).

Round 1
First, Tzerald attempts to roll up prescience - rolls a 4, success.
Pink Horrors attempt to roll for Flickering Fire of Tzeentch - rolls a 4 (again!), success.
Enemy unit rolls to deny the witch - 3. Okay.
To save time, Tzerald will also roll to cast FFoT to combine shots - rolls 3, (rolling low so far) - passes psyker check.
2nd Deny the witch - 5.
Alright, so expending 3 warpcharge for the horrors (4d6 shots) and 1 warpcharge for the Tzerald (2d6 more) we roll up to see how many shots we get - we do actually need to differentiate the rolls as the Tzerald has a BS4 the horrors just a BS3. Horrors roll (3,3,3,1) and Tzerald rolls (3,2). A total of 15 shots, slightly below the average.
We have to do the shots seperately (or with different colored dice to differentiate the units varying BS - already somewhat of an annoyance) - with re-rolls from prescience Horrors score 7/10 hits and Herald scores 5/5 hits. Yeah Divination's good. Now for the fun, 12 S6 hits against marines needing 2s - 10/12 wounds.  Marines get their save 6/10 pass leaving 4 dead. Now for the warpflame toughness test - marines roll a 5 failing it!!! (I swear I'm not making these rolls up lol) - they take an additional d3 wounds (1). So 5 dead. Meh. Lets try it again.

I'll condense it for future rolls.
Round 2:
Prescience - (1,1) passes with perils - Tzerald takes a wound.
Pink Horrors FFoT (4,2) - pass. Deny the Witch (4) fails.
Tzerald FFoT (6,1) - pass. Deny the Witch (3) fails.
Pink Horrors get (4d6) = 12 shots.
Tzerald gets (2d6) = 9 s6 shots. (Lookin better)
Horrors shooting - 7/12 hits.
Tzerald shooting - 6/9 hits.
To Wound (combined) - 12/13 wounds.

Marine Saves - 7/12 successful saves - 5 marines die.
Warpflame toughness test - 5 again! - 2 more unsaved wounds - so 7 marines get killy killed.

Round 3:
Prescience - (5,4) passes.
Pink Horrors FFoT (6,6) FAILS! one horror eats it as part of the brotherhood of psykers rule.
Tzerald FFoT (6,4) Pass - Deny the Witch (2) fails.
Tzerald gets (2d6) = 10 s6 shots. Wow.
Shooting - 10/10 hits.
To Wound - 8/10 wounds.
Marines Saves - 7/8 successful saves.
Warpflame toughness test - 1. This time they pass and get a 6+ FnP as well for the rest of the game.

Well, if this exercised has proved anything, its that Horror batteries are fiddly. Super, super fiddly.

Yeah, I'm lazy and don't do math without the internet.

For one, you need to make 3 psychic tests - one for the Divination spell, one for the horrors' witchfire, and one for the  Tzerald's witchfire. That gives you three 5.5% chances that you will fail (or a 16.5% chance that one of them fails - not terrible odds, but theyre still there.) You also have a 16.5% chance that your your opponent makes his Deny the Witch roll, which he gets to do twice (making it a 33% chance overall that your opponent cancels out either 2/3rds of your rolls or 1/3rd - maybe both if he's lucky - theres a 1/36 chance of that happening).

Secondly, after you've managed to make the psyker tests - you then need to hope you roll high - and you have to do it separately (as the Horrors and Herald have different BSs) to figure out how many shots are hitting on 3s and 4s. Divination helps out a ton, I dont see anyone using this unit without at least Prescience powered on them.  Since its AP4, it doesn't really do all that much to marines. The S6 works nicely too.

I think my first two rounds were rather lucky, especially with the failed toughness test at the end of both for warpflames. I think that the 3rd round is more of what you will typically see with this unit (something goes wrong with either failing a psyker test or getting the witch denied) with little effect on power armor equivalents.

For 410 pts, I can take a lot more firepower that is more reliable 3 4man autocannon teams from CSM havocs cost 345 pts, and put out a 24 guaranteed S7 AP 4 shots per turn, with no silly FnP afteraffect from Warpflame. Of course, they don't have as many wounds as this unit (22 including the Tzerald), and their torrent of fire goes down faster as they die (-2 shots a guy, while the horrors need to lose 5 guys to lose that first warpcharge point and go down to 3d6) but they do have better saves.

Daemons are random, this is very apparent.  As always, playing by yourself with dice in a vacuum situation doesn't really prove anything, but it shows you  how crazy certain things can be.

Oh and for what its worth - when the marines shoot back (after moving 6" and firing bolters at 18") they kill 4 of them (not an average). And 5 the next time.

I think next time, I will bust out a few pictures of my minis and simulate a Lord of Change/ Daemon Prince build and how they perform in CC as well as shooting at them and from them beforehand.

Looking back now, I see I messed up by missing out on a warpcharge point with the ML3 Tzerald that wouldve gotten an extra d6 worth of shots... Lol, already-overly-lengthy-post invalidated.

To whoever the guy was that said his Horrors can now reliably kill most flyers - *rolling* - you may be on the right track - Re-rolling from divination gives you much better odds of getting those 6s, but being only S6 isn't going to help unless you're shooting that Helldrake in the Butt, or can roll lots and lots of further 6's to glance AV12.

One last note (and cuz I want to roll one more time) - This unit if everything fires off successfully will hurt guard blobs (I scored 14 wounds with no saves as its AP 4). However, because they will be close enough to shoot you back, they will definitely do a good amount of damage to you if they haven't pie plated your face yet. Also FnP will do wonders for them as they come in larger numbers, so exercise caution if youre really committed to wielding horror blobs.

As for me, I'm feeling that although they are neat, they don't do reliably nearly enough for how much they cost.

As a random guy in my 40k Facebook group mentioned to me the other day, "Chaos. High risk/high reward."  I'll second that.

Okay, I'm done.