Greetings fellow Archons, Succubi and Haemonculi,
How do I destroy enemy vehicles? Its the question to ask every new edition. While we've never had a problem dealing with enemy monsters (excepting a slight interruption in transmission during the 7ed Gargantuan phase), vehicles have often posed more of a challenge. In 8th edition, with vehicles across the board appearing to become more durable, and many of our weapons reconfigured to boot, the question is more relevant than ever.
I've attempted to answer part of this question with my favourite tool, the probability curve. Briefly, I want to know the probability of destroying a vehicle for any given number of shots with a particular weapon.
Of course, in 8ed, destroyed is not the only meaningful result - stripping half of a vehicles wounds reduces its Movement, and usually Ballistic Skill also; a condition that I refer to as 'Degraded'. Reducing a vehicle to a quarter of its starting wounds reduces its characteristics further, which I note below as 'Crippled'. It may sometimes be enough to degrade or cripple a vehicle rather than destroy it; after all, if the troops inside a transport can go faster if they get out and walk, does it really need to be dead? So, I've included these conditions in the analysis.
I've used the Space Marine Rhino as the benchmark vehicle. It has T7, 10W, and a 3+ save. I've assumed that it is not in cover, and has not deployed its smoke launchers for this turn. I've also assumed that all of these shots happen in one turn, so that its self-repair abilities do not come into play.
Accepting these caveats, let's see how our weapons do. Let's start with the OG crew:
--- Darklight ---
The Dark Lance
The original, its been there for us since the beginning. Can we finally put the derisive 'dark glance' moniker to bed?
I've included a grey line indicating the performance in the equivalent test (destroying a Rhino out of cover) in 7ed. We can see that although there is no chance to one-shot the Rhino, as there was in 7ed, there is still a noticeable improvement to the dark lance resources we need to invest into taking the Rhino out of the game.
Firing 6 Dark lances has a respectable 46.8% chance to destroy a Rhino, a 61.1% chance to cripple it, and a very solid 82.4% chance of degrading it. Not bad.
Blasters
The blaster used to hit just as hard as the dark lance, but now doesn't do as much damage. Sadly, this dramatically limits its potential.
That 7ed line? Yeah, it's the same as the line for the dark lance. We can see that now blasters, by themselves, will struggle to destroy enemy vehicles. Even 10 blasters only have a 41.7% chance of destroying a Rhino. It is worth mentioning that 8 blasters still have a 78.3% chance of degrading an enemy Rhino, and a 43.4% chance of crippling it.
It seems to me that the blaster is best thought of as an adjunct anti-tank weapon; not expected to destroy enemy tanks themselves, but to either degrade dangerous vehicles that don't necessarily need to be killed, or to finish already degraded tanks.
--- Heat Lance ---
Our signature melta weapon. -5 to opponent saves means that a Rhino can't even get a save in cover! But does the relatively low S6 cause a problem?
From Far, Far Away
Outside melta range, it is definitely a problem.
We can see that the numbers of heat lances required to kill the Rhino is much worse than in 7ed, partly due to not having a chance to one-shot it, partly due to the Rhino having many more wounds. The curve is also notably flatter, suggesting that 10 heat lances (outside melta range) are still not suffering from diminishing returns.
Notably, when compared with the blaster, the heat lance still has a higher chance to get lucky and kill the Rhino with a few shots, due to its higher damage. Since it has a lower strength however, there is also a much higher chance of it simply doing nothing.
Inside Melta Range
We already knew that outside the range of its special sauce rules it wasn't as good. How about within optimal range?
Ouch. That is what a low strength does for you. Now that melta only affects the damage, not the chance to cause damage in the first place, there is no offset for the heat lance's S6. When pointing it at T7 targets or higher, 2/3rds of the time it will just bounce off. And that makes it really hard to get enough damage on the target to kill it.
It really does seem heat lances will be best used against T6 or lower targets, where their S is not a handicap and their special rule can shine.
--- Haywire ---
Another weapon, another complex damage function. Working out how to model the effects of the mortal wounds and combine them with the potential that the original shot would go through, all based on the wound roll, was a bit of a pain... but that's not what we want to know. What we want to know is does it work!?
No. No, it does not. It turns out, a few mortal wounds here and there are not a substitute for having a good strength and damage characteristic. Save it for trolling vehicles with invulnerable saves, and scaring opponents who still remember their 7ed rules.
--- Vehicle Weapons---
We've seen the dark lance already, but there are another two candidates here - the disintegrator and the dark scythe. Both deserve closer scrutiny.
Disintegrator
S5, and flat 2 damage per hit. Is it enough, combined with the new to-wound chart, to make this bad boy an anti-tank threat?
The flat 2 damage helps, and the high rate of fire helps even more. It's worth noting that the chart above shows 'weapons fired' on the axis; remember, each disintegrator fires 3 shots. But since it is weapons, rather than shots, that are the options on the vehicle, this is the better point of comparison.
We can see that 8 disintegrators has a solid 46.5% chance to kill a Rhino, 67.4% chance to cripple and 84.8% chance to degrade.
Dark Scythes
Only available on the Voidraven, they sport d3 shots and d3 damage. Can the halfway house, sort of a rapid fire blaster, cut the mustard?
It sure can. Again, showing the weapons fired, the rate of fire helps it strip wounds off quite effectively.
Pity they only come on one unit type.
Conclusion
It seems to me that efficiently matching weapons and targets will be a big part of 8ed. Heat lances will be sub-par against T7+, for example, but will shred T5-. Dark lances will be the workhorse, of course, but chipping wounds here and there may make a big difference to the final result.
Finally, the fact that vehicles degrade at half wounds mean that killing them may not be the most important thing anymore. I'll look forward to seeing how the tension between the more durable vehicles and their changing characteristics plays out over the first few games of 8ed.
Subject: To Kill a Rhino 
Wed Jun 07 2017, 06:19
