Night Shields effectiveness

Well here I go again... I was so long pondering if NS are worth it or not for 15 pts. Unable to decide, I have made another spreadsheet.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XvSe4kieH0vd2swSzaoFUKwg5E9t2y3y4n0fak3ZEKU/edit?usp=sharing

The sheet is showing what is the probability of the Night Shield actually saving a result per one-model shooting. The results are surprisingly low. For example - the Night Shield will save your vehicle from explosion or immobilisation once per 20 lascannon shots... but your vehicle will die of HP loss almost 3 times over even with NS. So NS will save your vehicle from a critical result in 1 of 3 battles on average... 15pts upgrade? Heck NO!

EDIT: Corrected a mistake in the "other results kick-in chance". Forgot to divide. :-)

EDIT2: Added a table for Ravager - even more worthless.

Couldn't load the sheet fully, but once you start adding in the potential for the shot to miss etc then yes, that extra 1 saved result looks drastically over-costed.

But.

Given that our transports tend to get in close, making them vulnerable to S4 rapid fire weapons, the extra reduction of potential damaging shots (remember you roll your jink saves before penetration) is not insignificant. Let's look for arguments sake at 9 rapid firing bolters (9 makes the numbers easier, and you often have 1 special/heavy weapon in a unit). 18 shots, of which 12 should hit the raider. Normally that would be 2 hull points gone, leaving the special weapon to remove the last one so a pretty decent chance of causing terminal damage to the transport. Even if you jink normally and save half of those, there are still six hits, which should statistically cause 1 hull point. Now add in the night shields, and 8 of those hits are cancelled, leaving your opponent with a measly 4 hits and only a 67% chance of causing even 1 (glancing) hull point of damage before special weapons.

My first test game I took night shields and my Archon's raider took fire from the vast majority of my opponent's army and only lost 1 hull point (he was using the standard of devastation so upwards of 80 bolter shots, a plasma cannon, 4 krak missiles and 1 krak grenade). I didn't record how many of those saves landed on the night shields but I do know that without them my archon and his unit would have been sat facing a whole lotta firepower with no raider to protect them.

I'm confused by your math.
Mind you, I went to art school, so I am frequently confused by math.
Here's how I see it, and how I see it may well be very, very wrong.

Without the night shield, our jink save is 50%. With the night shield, our jink save is roughly 66%. It's tempting to say that the difference of effectiveness is roughly 16%, or one in six, but I think it's much better than that.

You've saved half the shots with a regular jink, leaving three die results to do bad things to you. The night shield saves you from one of those three possible results. Thus, the night shield saves you from 33% of otherwise unsaved incoming fire.

You are of course correct, but you have to add the fact how many times in a certain volume of shots that 16% nominal and 33% relative difference actually does its job... For each Lascannon shot, there is a 11% chance that the lascannon shot will do any damage and will be saved by that 16/33% difference... :-)

If you consider the important results only (explosion), there is only 3.09% chance that the shot will hit, pene and cause explosion that will be saved by the Nightshield bonus. It means that for each 33 lascannon shots, the Nightshield will save 1 explosion. Considering that Raider has 3HP, those 33 shots will cause 22 glances and penes total, NS will prevent bout 4 of them, which means that the raider will die 6 times before the nightshield statistically saves it and as the raider can die only once per battle, the NS will therefore prevent an explosion on any one vehicle once in 6 battles where it is shot at by lascannons. :-D

Is it bit clearer?

@Calyptra - The question though is, is that then worth it?
Because for the cost of 4 Night Shields I could just get an additional transport - which can absorb of fire and do things. The question then becomes, what is more valuable?

Toss in that three of the nastiest armies out there currently (Eldar, Tau, and IG) have the ability to ignore Jink with shooting capable of downing Raiders pretty easily and the value slips further.

I think Night Shields are shiny and interesting and appear on the surface good, but the more you consider them the less valuable they become.

Thor665 wrote:

Toss in that three of the nastiest armies out there currently (Eldar, Tau, and IG) have the ability to ignore Jink with shooting capable of downing Raiders pretty easily and the value slips further.

Good point - and therefore they also become very meta-dependent. I'd say that of all these three though, IG have the weakest options as taking down their command squads (say via deep striking wwp units?) takes away much of their ability to ignore cover (Except flamers, grrr). Tau aren't too worrisome to shut down much of their ability to ignore cover (at least in my experience), it's really Eldar that are the big pain, but they are to every army out there quite frankly. Personally, my meta doesn't have any serpent spam, and Tau generals don't get many games if they bring too much cheese.

It's funny, I actually consider Tau the harder ones to shut down, as for Eldar the raw volume of firepower tends to make the ignoring cover part rather meaningless for us.

I will agree it is meta dependent - everything is

Maybe it's the people I play against! The most difficult Tau markerlights i ever played against were a unit in a bastion. no real chance of knocking the bastion down (my lists were definitely more fluffy than efficient back then) and the little swines never missed (ok maybe not never, but in three games against him I think i maybe saw one phase when 8 pathfinders didn't get 7 hits). Other than that, pathfinders are my priority number 1 target usually. I've never played a tetra (FW is very uncommon at my club) and the marker drones haven't appeared too much either.

Wait, wait. You DECIDE to jinks before the penetrating hits, but you roll AFTER they have done.
So 9 bolters? 18 hit, 12 penetrating, 2 in. Now, u roll 2 jink saves

I don't like to look at it "point for point". If you have a unit in the raider that relies on the raider for effectiveness then that 3+ is going to be good.

I guess my point is like deepstriking terminators. If you are going to do it, you will probably want a locator beacon to stop you losing them, to reduce the risk.

If I have a 110 point warrior squad in 55 point raider I'm willing to pay 15 to stop the unit getting wiped or made redundant. Math-hammer is great in theory. But over the decade I have been playing this game, I am yet to play a game where probability is exact. I've lost 5 terminators to 5 Lasguns before. I've also survived 60+ shots from the shadowfield and failed every single flickerfield save in last ed. You cant plan for that, but you can try to mediate it. So nightshields, yeah, the 3+ is so so good in reality rather than theoryhammer!

I am trying to point out that JINK is good. COVER is good. But that +1 is GROSSLY overpriced. And does not have any significant effect in great great majority of cases.

The fact that we have to make the decision to jink before rolling to hit escalates the fact. Taking a NS is like betting on something that has 10% chance of happening. Given you have 3HP on the vehicle, you have total 30% chance of the NS having any effect in any given battle. And that is not considering that most shooting will have certain level of overkill and even if the NS works, it might not save anything.

I just think its not good enough.

aurynn wrote:

I just think its not good enough.

That's fine, but remember that other people will have different opinions, and mathammer is not a categoric method of establishing if something is worthwhile. That game where the last lascannon your opponent has gets saved on a 3 and the squad of grotesques on board goes on to charge in the next turn, rampaging through half his army killing hundreds of points worth of models a 15 point upgrade will seem like nothing, when the alternative is the raider gets blown up, the grotesques are stranded and never catch up with an enemy unit.

The_Burning_Eye wrote:

aurynn wrote:

I just think its not good enough.

That's fine, but remember that other people will have different opinions, and mathammer is not a categoric method of establishing if something is worthwhile. That game where the last lascannon your opponent has gets saved on a 3 and the squad of grotesques on board goes on to charge in the next turn, rampaging through half his army killing hundreds of points worth of models a 15 point upgrade will seem like nothing, when the alternative is the raider gets blown up, the grotesques are stranded and never catch up with an enemy unit.

Of course, of course and of course on the third thing too. But what you are saying is that given very special circumstances and great amount of luck, they can be game-changing. But... you have spent what? 45? 60? 90? pts on them in the whole army in hopes of just that happening? Wouldnt the extra unit/transport, bodies be equally game changing and in manymore occasions than that?

Just discussing. No offence or attempt to bring you to the dark side intended. :-)

The 4+ from Jink is also quite good.
And costs nothing additional.

aurynn wrote:

Just discussing. No offence or attempt to bring you to the dark side intended. :-)

Don't worry, I'm not taking any offence or anything!

You're right yes, if you start adding night shields to all you transports then the cost soon mounts up. I guess the thing that really decides if you take them or not is what is the purpose of a) the transport and b) the unit on it.

If the primary purpose is transporting an assault unit, I'd absolutely take them, i don't want assault transports getting wrecked before they get where they need to be.

If it's a gunboat I'd be far more cautious about excess points as it's less likely to be facing much return fire (I like to gang up on stuff, never use 1 gunboat to take on a squad when two or three will do!)

If it's empty, no way, becuase then jinking ruins the point of taking it anyway. So no, I wouldn't put them on ravagers (especially since ravagers are likely to be out of rapid fire range anyway, and only Tau and Necrons can hurt them with normal rapid fire stuff.

THAT seems like the wise choice. I think I would like that +1 on my Grots/Icubi raider... just to feel more confident. :-) But elsewhere... doubtful...

In addition, night shield does not provide any cover against assault troops.

KW in a Raider w/ SR will likely be in rapid fire range, in order to be efficient. Obviously, they will be in charge range. Anything with enough S4 attacks will be able to assault and wreck the raider (no need to talk about Marines with power axes, melta bombs, etc...). NS will not save the Raider.

Assault troops in a Raider w/ aethersails will likely be hidden behind cover turn 1 and move 30" to get in position. Maybe it can benefit from NS in that case, but as for the KW SR Raider, it will likely be in a very short distance from any S4 units and/or "assault equiped" sarge.
NS may save the raider depending on its position / cover / LoS blocking terrain, if you do not use maximum move to get as close as possible to your assault target, protecting it rather than gaining advantage of max mobility (which is a waste in my opinion). I'd rather go full move turn 1, get my raider be wrecked, disembark behind cover and be able to assault turn 2. A 3+ jink in that case, why not... but sails + NS, price is becoming high for a sacrificial transport.

The raider has a natural 4+ cover which is "free & enough" to prevent low rate of fire weapon (ie melta), but not enough against Heavy 12 F6 (riptide big gun) or TL Heavy 6 F5 (dual TL heavy bolters) or Salvo 40 F4 (tac devastation banner).
3+ will fail "less" than 4+ against those type of range weapons.
3+ will be useless against assault.

I think the effectiveness of NS is dependend on your enemy, whereas other investments of those points dont have to be.

Where I struggle is that it helps a lot in matchups which are manageable for us, or in other words making easy games easier.

But it doesnt help much in those matchups which are most difficult for us which are Tau and Eldar because of the amount of cover ignoring shots (NS improve cover saves for the cost of additional bodies/options). So for the tough lineups the 15 points are not well spent and could be spent better otherwise and thus making the army weaker in such a particular match.

My simple conclusion is that NS make easy matches easier, but the difficult ones tougher.

If you agree on this logic, ask yourself if that is something desireable.

Well said, I agree.

Aroban wrote:

I think the effectiveness of NS is dependend on your enemy, whereas other investments of those points dont have to be.

Where I struggle is that it helps a lot in matchups which are manageable for us, or in other words making easy games easier.

But it doesnt help much in those matchups which are most difficult for us which are Tau and Eldar because of the amount of cover ignoring shots (NS improve cover saves for the cost of additional bodies/options). So for the tough lineups the 15 points are not well spent and could be spent better otherwise and thus making the army weaker in such a particular match.

My simple conclusion is that NS make easy matches easier, but the difficult ones tougher.

If you agree on this logic, ask yourself if that is something desireable.

Yup, I agree with this.

A complete waste of points in some cases, but useful in others. 15 points isn't cheap either, when you start adding them to multiple vehicles it starts adding up.

Yea. Tooling against a particular enemy could make me consider them too. Nicely wrapped Aroban.

i usually run two warrior gunboats, where jinking dosen't affect passenger shooting, so the 3+ seems worth it

Recently I've been takring night shields on my flyers and ravagers. Lost flicker field, but now we get a 6+ cover save in the open or an even greater save in cover. Without MS and no jink you get no save, with it we at least get a T-shirt

But that +1 is not worth it. It will do absolutely nothing for you in 90% of the cases. And will do absolutely nothing important for you in 95% of cases. It is an illusion that having that +1 makes any kind of difference other than psychological. :-)

That extra splinter cannon on the venoms not worth it if it doesn't hit and wound. That shadowfield isn't worth it if it shorts out first time. That heatlance deepstriking scourge squad isn't worth it if it misshaps.
That's the logic Im seeing in a lot of cases. Now is it overpriced? Yes. 10 points is reasonable. But its difficult to say if something is effective or worth while unless you actually use it. If you take it and your ravager passes all those lascannon shots is it now worth it? Especially as it boosts standard cover saves as well...

As said before it depends on what and who you are playing. The easy games easier and the hard games harder quote, I 80% agree with. There's no point taking it on all your stuff if there is a lot of ignores cover and the points may be better spent. However, if taking it on select stuff, and it stops those shots that don't ignore cover, it will help reduce the risk of losing that unit in one shooting phase. I personally like to have stuff left to shoot back.