Monday, May 30, 2011

How many veterans does it take to pop a rhino?

Recently I've seen some of our local gamers creating lists for new armies they're playing and its interesting to see how much anti-tank they think is enough and what the value of various anti-tank units is. Some people think that Ravagers for example should be a pretty darn reliable anti tank solution. So in response I've done a bit of math-hammer, pitting some anti-tank weapons vs the ubiquitous and humble space marine rhino.


A Dark Lance vs a rhino
BS 4 = 66.6% of hit
Strength 8 vs armour 11 (66.6 / 2 ) = 33.3 chance to penetrate
To wreck or explode (33.3 / 3) = 1.1
One in three chance to wreck or explode means that a single non-twin linked dark lance shot has around a 1 in 10 chance to destroy a rhino.

Meltagun at close range vs a rhino
BS 4 = 66.6% chance of a hit
Needing a 4 to penetrate on 2d6 = 81%
Needing a 4+ to wreck or destroy = 40.9% chance to destroy a vehicle with a single melta shot at close range, without including the possibility of destroying it with a glancing hit.

Lascannon vs rhino
BS 4 = 66.6% chance of a hit
Needing a 3 to penetrate = 44.4% to penetrate
Needing a 5+ to wreck or destroy =  14.8% to destroy a rhino with a single lascannon shot.

In other words, to have a fair chance to destroy a rhino with no cover save (defining a fair chance as better than 50% chance) you would need:
5 dark lances
Or 2 meltaguns
Or 4 lascannons
To have a fairly certain chance (defining fairly certain as better than 75%) you would need:
7 dark lances
Or 5- 6 lascannons
Or still 2 meltaguns
This is all assuming the enemy vehicles never get a cover save.
This has some pretty scary implications when you consider that to really reliably down a rhino, you could need two whole ravagers for the job, and if the rhino pops smoke, even that could well not be enough.

2 comments:

  1. You only need one Krak Missile to destroy a Storm Raven though :)

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  2. How about if you add Vulkan into the mix for the melta gun method?

    Or the Caz-effect?

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