When to Jink

A recent game was making me wonder when it's best to jink, and when it's best to try and take the shots.

Basically, I'm curious as to how you guys decide when to jink and when not to jink. Especially with regard to Venoms, Ravagers and Razorwings - which lose most of their firepower in the process.

I'm also interested in more general terms - not in cases where jinking is the only logical option (like when it's turn 5 and you're trying to stay alive on an objective). e.g. if your venom or ravager gets shot by a lascannon, would you jink?

venoms? No. Although ironically it would have kept one alive for me tonight, I don't jink with them because of the impact on shooting, which is why I take them. If I jink, then my opponent has effectively silenced it for a turn, and will probably kill it next turn or force me to jink again.

Same with ravagers, get a cover save by all means but jinking makes them worthless - the only time i might consider it with them is if i think it's definitely gonna kill them, i can be completely hidden next turn, and there aren't any major targets left for them to shoot at (or my opponent has several flyers buzzing round)

Razorwings again I rarely jink, though I would against things like vendettas and nasty skyfiring tau.

Having only played Dark Eldar in previous editions where jinking did not exist, we just kept raiders and ravagers in cover. I would say do the same thing now. stay in cover and don't jink. why waste a turn of shooting.

Jinking doesn't affect the passengers, so I'd be jinking raiders all the time. Jinking Venoms when it threatens their last hull point (12 splinter shots at BS1 is better 0 splinter shots).

Throwing the opponent a 3+ jinking raider as a target for them to fire at can give your other forces a chance to get into position or be able to withstand a smaller volley of fire. 10 twinlinked splinter rifles are more valuable to me than 3 disintergrator shots(though the dissie looks more threatening from the outside). Especially when the blastarchon and his blasterborn are floating around.
I like to play psychological warfare games

For me it's simple mental math - if the shot will likely kill the vehicle outright, or will cause multiple pens I jink, because odds are I'm dead or snap firing anyway if I don't, so I might as well make it hard.

However, if the shot is just likely to put 1-2 glances on me or something, I usually just shrug it off.

Still using the cover you have available is a big win, natch.

Thor665 wrote:

For me it's simple mental math

Same here. I try to quickly work out roughly how many hits to expect and what the odds of those hits damaging me are. I then make a judgement on whether to jink or not.

It heavily depends, one example: opponent goes first, it is night fight, you are aiming for flying MCs next turn, why not take the 3+ jink with your venoms?

Other situation: space marine bikers coming at you, you get 4 lasgun shots on a single venom. You need the full firepower urgently so I would not jink as the venom is either dead with or without jink, but if it survives though invulnerable saves it can at least shoot efficiently

There is no general answer

I agree with the others, there isn't an "answer" to this. It's extremely situational. I've probably jinked about 30% of the time in the last 3 games with any of my Venoms or Ravagers. I think Thor's number estimates are best here. If think a pen has a decent chance of occurring, you may as well jink as you are going to be snap firing or destroyed anyway ...... Why not keep your vehicle around for another turn. For glances or a single BS3 (likely) pens, I won't jink a Venom and just hope for the Invuln.

I think a lot of people decline good opportunities to jink when there is an invisible unit or something flying on the table. If you're going to be snapshooting anyway, you might as well be tougher to shoot down in the meantime.

Another good case that I'll jink liberally on is if I have a distant point I need to get to in my turn (capturing/contesting an objective or linebreaker), knowing you need a unit to flat out anyway means you might as well make it the one taking fire.

In my last game of 900 pts against imp knight and riptide I did not jinked with my ravager with nightshield that was always in ruins throughout the whole game. I instead place the raider with blasterchon and blaster wielding kabalite unite in the open to tempt my opponent to target the raider which jinked and did not loose much shooting power.

I try to claim cover with all of my units whenever possible, so having to jink either means that I've been caught out and made a mistake somewhere, or that the attack targeting me is powerful enough to warrant it. It's rare that I attempt to jink things like boltguns and if I do it's usually to hose them down with the passengers of a raider. Since venoms have flickerfields I almost never jink them at all as they are primarily used as gun platforms.

Basically it all comes down to how big the threat is and what you want to accomplish next turn.