Math-hammering the Spartan to death

I was after some Math-hammer advice.
I recently read how BetraytheWorld has been frustrated by the sometimes blasé attitude towards math-hammer, but percentages and numbers is exactly what I'm after.

Someone I know has recently decided to run a Landraider Spartan, with a large khornate deathstar led by Kharn and a Lord. This represents a large chunk of his points from his army.

My question is, how many lance shots do I need to "mathematically" guarantee it's destruction?

I was hoping that Math-hammer could give me a ball park figure and I could use that for army building purposes.
I don't really understand math hammer, and normally I just do "I roll 6 dice at 3+ to hit, so 4 should hit etc"

Cheers

assuming you don't roll a 6 on the pen chart you need 12 lance shots per raider. 12 shots means 8 hits which means 4 glances or pens assuming he doesn't get any cover saves from hiding behind buildings.

Spartan has 5 hull points. On a side note it a lso ignores the effect of melta, but not lance, and carries 25? guys.

Bleaksoul Brethren wrote:

assuming you don't roll a 6 on the pen chart you need 12 lance shots per raider. 12 shots means 8 hits which means 4 glances or pens assuming he doesn't get any cover saves from hiding behind buildings.

You're doing the average though, the question was how many shots to ensure destruction, that requires probabilities to be brought in.

I know each shot has a stand alone 7.4% chance of destroying the Spartan, but...okay, let's see here; we glance on the 4+ so we have a 33% chance per shot of doing a glance or better.
(I'm writing this out because I'm tired, so others may want to double check my math)
6 shots thus have a 92% chance of at least causing a glance or better.
So, with 5 hull points, if you fire 30 lances at it (I feel I may be skipping a step, but usually I am doing this for causing a wound or a hull point - like I said, double check me) that should equate to a 92% chance of destroying the Landraider, which is fairly close to an absolute. I guess we could pack on more to try to get closer.
10 lances is basically 99% chance to cause a glance or better.

So I'll say 50 lance shots - which gives basically a 99% chance that you assuredly destroy the Spartan.

Naturally you could do it with 1.
And 30 would still be a pretty safe bet being over 9 times in ten.
More than 50 also would be even safer yet.

As for the purpose of your answer, having 30+ lances/blasters/et al available should make it a pretty assuredly dead vehicle.

That seems depressingly accurate. Thanks Thor. I hope ravagers come in squadrons in the rumoured 'dex.

I have to admit, i actually like it when my opponent fields Spartans - I think those are good quality vehicles for us to face. I like expensive models with high AV value across the table from me.

It would take far more lance shots than haywire, so I'd probably go that route. But that being said, it would take a lot, as shown above, to be SURE of destruction. It's far better to be relatively confident than sure.

I'd say that with 18 Lance shots in a single round, you could be relatively confident that it would go down.

18 shots gives you a 78% chance of glancing it to death.
AND
A 52% chance of exploding it with a penetrating hit.

Together, these give you about 89.5% chance that it will be destroyed either by glances or an Explodes! result.

That being said, with the new detachments system, it's not particularly expensive to get 18 dark lance shots. If you run two combined arms detachments, you can get 6 Ravagers for 630 points.

That's all 18 shots right there. I'd probably also run a bunch of dual cannon venoms filled with blasterborn too, though, just to be safe. 4 of those is 692.

That leaves 528 for 2 HQs and 4 Troops units. Tight, but it can be done.

Wyches with HW grenades? Seems like a much more efficient way to deal with this versus the units necessary to drop 30-50 lance shots.

Thanks Betray, that is a interesting breakdown. I appreciate the, whatdaya call it " math-based assistance" ;-)

The reason I was much more keen to use lances over haywire is the composition of the dudes "Khornate deathstar" It is Kharn, a Chaos Lord and Cultists. Lots of cultists.
If I haywire it to death, odds are they'll get out and continue moving towards me.
I know that'd it be possible to simply avoid this massive unit, but think of the bonuses to blowing it up!
25 to wound rolls at S4 on T3 (majority) 6+ armour models.
The demoralizing effect of having your 300 point tank shot out from under you.
The effect on his overall battle plan.
The fact that it is possible, but highly unlikely, that the 1st shot could detonate it.
It just seems rather Dark Eldar-ish to destroy the strongest thing in his army.

In my experience its better to ignore this kind of tank until you have no other targets to solve. First, remove what can hurt you and what you can hurt effectively (Devs, Predators, etc.). If you dedicate first two rounds of shooting to the Spartan, then you will get Las/Plas/ML-ed in da face. The only exception is the Relic mission IMHO.

My bad I thought it only had 4 hull points. With 5 I'd suggest haywire. Turn 2 you can charge it and then they have to foot march across the board which is very easy to avoid or focus down to kill.

Are Spartans even legal for Chaos Space Marines in 40k? What supplement is that coming from?

Imperial Armor Apoc - and, yes, they're legal for Chaos.

Timatron wrote:

Are Spartans even legal for Chaos Space Marines in 40k? What supplement is that coming from?

Spartan tanks are in IA:9 and are technically allowed under an Astral Claws CSM army as written.  There is a PDF online that shows the statline/loadout from it that includes rules for allowances in a CSM army (most notably losing Power of the Machine Spirit).

It depends on how your local meta defines 40k.  As an example, in my local meta, anything forgeworld with a 40k stamp is considered to be legal as long as it follows all the current edition and detachment rules.  Your mileage may vary.

Yes, I have the Badab War IA books here (9+10), but I can't find the Spartan in there. Astral Claws aren't CSM, the Badab campaign is not 40k as far as I understand the concept. It's a seperate campaign and the units in the books are meant to represent the units that took part in that campaign. Just writing "yes they're legal, Imperial Armour Apoc" doesn't actually tell me anything, Thor!

Timatron wrote:

Just writing "yes they're legal, Imperial Armour Apoc" doesn't actually tell me anything, Thor!

They're in Imperial Armour Apocalypse (2013) and the Chaos Spartan is shown as 40K legal.

Count Adhemar wrote:

Timatron wrote:

Just writing "yes they're legal, Imperial Armour Apoc" doesn't actually tell me anything, Thor!

They're in Imperial Armour Apocalypse (2013) and the Chaos Spartan is shown as 40K legal.

Thank you, Adhemar.
I was just supplying the name of the book - don't blame me that GW is unimaginative in their titles

So, not in IA9, the first Badab War book, as Koreban said? Because I'm looking through and can't see it, although the one with the Thunderfire cannon on the front looks a bit tasty!

I am unsure if it did or didn't appear in one of the Badab war supplements.

It most assuredly is in IA Apocalypse, as I stated.

Edit: According to Lexicanum it also appeared in White Dwarf and the first Heresy rulebook. No mention of Badab.

Thor665 wrote:

Edit: According to Lexicanum it also appeared in White Dwarf and the first Heresy rulebook. No mention of Badab.

Ah, the good old WD119 conversion. Helped a friend build one back in the day based on that old conversion guide! You pretty much flipped a Land Raider upside down and glued the front half of a Rhino to the front. It was AWESOME (for the time ) Now you just drop $165 plus shipping......

Timatron wrote:

although the one with the Thunderfire cannon on the front looks a bit tasty!

Land Raider Achilles, my personal favourite. With a Techmarine regenerating any hull points you lose, its very hard to put down.

Timatron wrote:

So, not in IA9, the first Badab War book, as Koreban said? Because I'm looking through and can't see it, although the one with the Thunderfire cannon on the front looks a bit tasty!

The spec sheet I printed for it says IA9 pg. 193. If that's not correct then I apologize, but that's what was printed. My IA9 reference is at home, so I can't verify it at the moment, but I will check later tonight if someone here doesn't confirm it before then.

The closest I see on pg. 193 is that it would allow a Tyrant's Legion army to field a Spartan through the use of the Astral Claw's Chapter Support rule as long as a Cohort was in play.

Probably the notation was about how/where a Spartan could be fielded, not a reference for stat info.

Thor665 wrote:

The closest I see on pg. 193 is that it would allow a Tyrant's Legion army to field a Spartan through the use of the Astral Claw's Chapter Support rule as long as a Cohort was in play.

Probably the notation was about how/where a Spartan could be fielded, not a reference for stat info.

I found a PDF online that matches my printout.  It was found by googling "spartan assault tank rules".

I won't post it here in case there's a rule against posting statline/points, but it should be easy enough to check.

The person I play against owns no IA books. He found a PDF online, (Type in Spartan Assault tank in google, its about the 3rd one down)
I have the IA:Apoc book, so I confirmed it for him(pg 58 if anyone's curious)
The Spartan is also listed in "BattleScribe"