Goatboy’s Warhammer 40K: What Makes a Unit Really Tough?
Goatboy here to talk about how we are starting to see units get a bit too tough in 40K. What can be done?
It’s going to be a weird few weeks for warhammer 40K, and then bam a ton of change as the mentioned point/balance dataslate is coming. As well as a slew of new units for the new codexes too.
Why Are Units Tougher in 10th?
9th Edition invalidated a lot of what we used to consider how to make units tough. The new Lethal Hits rule showed up in armies’ rules that shot a ton of shots. This invalidated the old way of determining if things were tough by utilizing Toughness as a factor in building that.
That has all changed again in 10t edition. While units still have Toughness values and they have changed to get – well tougher – but we also have a slew of other rules that stack atop that. Oh and we now have rules that make things even tougher than just having a high Toughness value. All of these rules combos create these weird little bubbles of units that define the current 40K meta for specific armies and setups. While other armies dont have any super togh units and have to find a way to endure and win.
I saw this as we probably have one of the toughest units now in the game with the C’Tans and the whole ability to wreck the meta in different ways. So what makes units tough now in 10th Edition? What is the special sauce to create an untamable monster-uit on the tabletop?
Tough Unit Trait #1 – Damage Mitigation
The first thing of course is just pure and simple damage mitigation. You can think of this in a few ways. The first way is, of course, a saving throw. The second way is a stacked saving throw. Then, finally, you have a damage reduction in some form. All of these combine to make a unit really thought to deal with.
Let’s take some Necron C’Tan math for you. The C’tan are perhaps the toughest single unit in Warhammer 40K right now, so we’re using them as our guinea pigs. You first have a 12-wound model that is base toughness 11. That is pretty dang high, and it means any weapon under Strength 6 will have to roll a 6 to wound. At a base level, it is taking out a ton of damage just from removing some of the more common strength loadouts you see on basic infantry weapons.
This means you would need to somehow get 72 hits to hope to have a chance to put 12 wounds on one of these jerks. That is a ton of hits and a lot to think about if you even get to do something like that to one of them. Now of course, you take that 72 hits to generate 12 wounds, and you ignore half of those with a 4+ invulnerable save.
That’s right 50% of them by the math is thrown out the window. This means now you are looking at 144 hits to have a hope per the math to get 12 wounds through. But wait! You forgot the extra icing on the cake with the 5+ Feel No Pain thrown in for good measure.
This means 1/3 of the wounds that get thru would get saved. Doing some math means that we have to do somewhere around 216 hits to even have a hope to put that much damage into them. This is all in one round of shooting, mind you, as it will gain wounds back just due to being a Necron and around its friends.
That is an absurd amount of shooting! Of course you can put in higher damage stuff but then it’s next round of protection – taking half damage rounded up – means that only way you are going to do anything more than a single damage is utilizing Damage 3 and above. Which of course, still requires an absurd amount of hits. Getting to do Damage 2 attacks on them still means you need 108 hits to get a chance to do 12 wounds.
What Can Be Done About This?
This isn’t even counting any lucky spikes in saving rolls or damage. So what is a player supposed to do with all of this? How can some armies even get a chance to deal with this?
Well – you can do what a lot of players do and just play the mission and not really play against the opposing army. These models warp the reality around them – but what they don’t always do is score points nearly as well. This means making sure you are looking at how you score points instead of just wrecking face.
I think the bigger thing in all of this is the whole idea that these sort of tough units could show up elsewhere. It wouldn’t surprise me to see this become the new way to toughen things up by just layering defensive rules. At the very least, it does let you try to math it out a bit more than just the old ways of limiting how much you can do to things.
Hopefully, some events show up in the next few weeks so I can dig into winning lists and see what hot new meta shows up – especially when the Dark Angels come out wrecking things with a new boxed set.
Watch out for those angry Star Gods folks!
