This fun bit of math is brought to us by community member Slowbad, give it a look! -ed
I had some fun this weekend creating a bunch of functions in Python to simulate multiple attempts at our stuff shooting at flyers. This all assumes that the flyer will evade. The percentage is the chance for that unit to destroy a flyer by either stripping all hull points off or rolling an explodes result. I know in some cases like against a Night Scythe a weapon destroyed result is just as good I wanted to have this information against all flyers. Each percentage was calculated from 10,000 trials.
10 Warp Spiders, not Guided
vs AV 10 – 46.36%
vs AV 11 – 33.53%
vs AV 12 – 18.89%
10 Warp Spiders, Guided
vs AV 10 – 74.36%
vs AV 11 – 58.32%
vs AV 12 – 34.36%
Wave Serpent with TL-Scatter Lasers and Serpent Shield
vs AV 10 – 22.35%
vs AV 11 – 12.79%
vs AV 12 – 5.06%
vs Heldrake – 3.11%
3 War Walkers with two Scatter Lasers each, not Guided
vs AV 10 – 23.44%
vs AV 11 – 11.89%
vs AV 12 – 0.91%
3 War Walkers with two Bright Lances each, not Guided
vs AV 10 – 21.16%
vs AV 11 – 15.28%
vs AV 12 – 10.75%
3 War Walkers with two Scatter Lasers each, Guided
vs AV 10 – 53.85%
vs AV 11 – 28.73%
vs AV 12 – 4.54%
3 War Walkers with two Bright Lances each, Guided
vs AV 10 – 36.44%
vs AV 11 – 27.49%
vs AV 12 – 18.66%
War Walkers with Flak EML, no Guide
vs AV 10 – 36.25%
vs AV 11 – 22.76%
vs AV 12 – 10.7174%
War Walkers with Flak EML, with Guide
vs AV 10 – 54.29%
vs AV 11 – 35.20%
vs AV 12 – 35.14%
War Walkers with Scatter Laser and Flak EML, no Guide
vs AV 10 – 21.81%
vs AV 11 – 12.94%
vs AV 12 – 5.38%
War Walkers with Scatter Laser and Bright Lance, no Guide
vs AV 10 – 7.55%
vs AV 11 – 4.33%
vs AV 12 – 1.46%
War Walkers with Scatter Laser and Flak EML, with Guide
vs AV 10 – 29.995%
vs AV 11 – 17.284%
vs AV 12 – 6.64%
War Walkers with Scatter Laser and Bright Lance, with Guide
vs AV 10 – 11.851%
vs AV 11 – 6.81%
vs AV 12 – 2.02%
Crimson Hunter with no Exarch, not Guided
vs AV 10 – 60.97%
vs AV 11 – 56.32%
vs AV 12 – 46.8%
Crimson Hunter with no Exarch, Guided
vs AV 10 – 79.29%
vs AV 11 – 73.36%
vs AV 12 – 63.6%
Crimson Hunter with an Exarch, not Guided
vs AV 10 – 74.69%
vs AV 11 – 70.37%
vs AV 12 – 60.94%
Crimson Hunter with an Exarch, Guided
vs AV 10 – 85.1%
vs AV 11 – 80.19%
vs AV 12 – 71.22%
Quad Gun manned by a BS 4 model
vs AV 10 – 29.68%
vs AV 11 – 17.64%
vs AV 12 – 8.79%
Quad Gun manned by a BS 5 model
vs AV 10 – 35.19%
vs AV 11 – 20.88%
vs AV 12 – 8.93%
Reaper Exarch w/ Fast Shot using an Icarus Lascannon, Guide
vs AV 10 – 40.94%
vs AV 11 – 33.58%
vs AV 12 – 25.90%
vs Heldrake – 17.64%
Reaper Exarch w/ Fast Shot using an Icarus Lascannon, with Guide
vs AV 10 – 46.70%
vs AV 11 – 38.43%
vs AV 12 – 29.79%
vs Heldrake – 20.46%
As you can see the Crimson Hunter is far and above any other entry in our codex for killing flyers. Running a distant second are Warp Spiders, guided or not, followed by War Walkers with Bright Lances.
If you see any problems or think of any suggestions for improvements, let me know.
EDIT: Updated the numbers for Crimson Hunters. I had a 2 where a 1 should have been when calculating pen results and it skewed the numbers by 3-7%. I added results for War Walkers with Scatter + EML, War Walkers with Scatter + Bright Lance and Icarus Lascannon manned by a Reaper Exarch with Fast Shot.
So what do you guys think? This is a nice way to gauge pure offense, but does it settle the matter? I feel the less obvious factors such as mobility, reserves, and durability impact the choice as to what AA units to in a list should also be heavily considered as well. -ed
Actually I think based on the numbers there Eldar with Flakk EML is number 2, all others are number 3 or lower…
the Sphinx has spoken
I don’t think you can just use the odds to dictate what you bring to the table, a hunter may be better but how does it compare when it comes on on the 4th turn compared to war walkers starting on the table?
Great info tho thanks for the continued great posts and vids 🙂
Agreed, clearly the hunter has the best stats, seeing as that is..what it does. If only it could jink like a Nightwing, or jink and shoot at BS3 or something.
Overall my favourite is still the Reaper exarch (actually you could use a Warp Spider exarch) with Fast Shot on an Icarus cannon. Adding Interceptor, and the fact that 2x S9 AP2 shots can put the hurt on anything anyway, is a big bonus.
This only confirms my suspicions, I need 20 warp spiders…
They are pretty damn amazing.
Were I to re-buy Eldar I’d have them and swooping hawks. I actually feel they got really good as a mobile distraction unit that can kill deck chair units with impunity.
That’s how I see them too, and they really don’t cost that much.
I like the math and what this fella has done but I’d like something to compare it too, like some standard anti-flier options from all the dexes and what is considered ‘good’ anti air. Anni barges, skyfire tau, night scythes, vendettas, MoS princes. I think seeing how these options stack up against the rest will help solidfy just how good these options are.
That is actually a good idea for a general index of information on AA efficacy in general.
I’d love to see a comparison. Especially something like this for Tau. So many choices in that codex.
Thanks for getting the info out there. I’ll definitely look into compiling a list of everyone’s AA to see how it all stacks up. What’ll probably be easier is if I just code up a simulator so people can just input whatever numbers they want to use for this.
That would be awesome!
I’m really not sure why everyone loves the DR exarch on the Icarus when even with fast shot the quad gun with the same model is better, except against the heldrake where the quad gun is only 2% worse. I’d say it’s worth the extra 15 points.
Also the numbers in the article don’t take into account the chance to destroy a 3 hp vehicle with two immobilize results, thus the real numbers are slightly low. This becomes a more significant problem with a higher number of shots.
The warp spider numbers must be wrong as against AV 12 I get only 9.5% chance to destroy. Perhaps they didn’t realize monofilament weapons don’t get AP 1 against vehicles as you don’t roll to wound against vehicles.
I don’t know how i got that high of a percentage. Thanks for pointing it out.
After running the numbers again I have 8.76% vs AV12 running 100k trials. I need to update my post on DakkaDakka then.