Testing Their Mettle
Standing across the open, featureless terrain of planet bowling ball, you are staring down the barrels of a massive number of Space Marines. There is nothing to hide behind and you realize your weapons have all been replaced with Nerf. This is not going to be a good day.

In my last article I crunched some numbers for each of my potential armies to see what sort of damage they were capable of. This week I'm looking at the amount of damage that they can take. As before, I'll be showing my work so that you can use it for your own armies if you'd like to. Basically, you multiply the chance to hit by the chance to wound by the chance for the target to fail their save.

In this case, I've got both a variety of targets and a potential variety of weapons attacking them. While there are quite a variety of weapons that could be used against these armies, I decided to go with a Space Marine Tactical squad with a Lascannon, Plasma Rifle and 8 Boltguns. While it's not the highest concentration of firepower, I believe that it offers a good estimate of solid firepower taken as an average across an army. (Ie: 7 Lascannons, 7 Plasma Guns, 56 bolters with 70 Space Marine bodies is a pretty solid army.) It also offers a combination of good armor penetration and lots of basic shooting.

We'll start off with each of the different targets and how much damage each weapon can do to them. Since these are meant to be mobile armies, I'm counting all shooting here as being between 13 and 24" so that Bolters and Plasma Guns get a single shot only...

Terminator vs Bolter 2/3 x 1/2 x 1/6=0.055
Terminator vs Plasma Gun/Lascannon 2/3 x 5/6 x 2/3=0.37

Terminator with Apothecary in unit vs Bolter 2/3 x 1/2 x 1/6 x 1/2=0.027
Terminator with Apothecary in unit vs Plasma Gun/Lascannon 2/3 x 5/6 x 2/3=0.37

Space Marine/RavenWing Biker vs Bolter 2/3 x 1/3 x 1/3=0.074
Space Marine/RavenWing Biker vs Plasma Gun/Lascannon 2/3 x 5/6=0.55

Plague Marine vs Bolter 2/3 x 1/3 x 1/3 x 1/2 (Feel No Pain)=0.037
Plague Marine vs Plasma Gun/Lascannon 2/3 x 5/6=0.55

Demon Prince vs Bolter 2/3 x 1/3 x 1/3=0.074
Demon Prince vs Plasma Gun/Lascannon 2/3 x 5/6 x 2/3=0.37

Obliterator vs Bolter 2/3 x 1/3 x 1/6=0.0185
Obliterator vs Plasma Gun/Lascannon 2/3 x 5/6 x 2/3 x 3/2 (lascannon multiplied by 2 due to instakill)=0.55

Against vehicles, I am only counting damage results of Immobilized or worse. While lesser results still can do damage or degrade the performance of the vehicle, it's a much lesser effect.

Venerable Dreadnaught vs Plasma 2/3 x 1/6 x 1/6 (Glancing hit) + 2/3 x 1/6 x 1/2 (penetrating hit)=0.075
Rhino vs Plasma 2/3 x 1/6 x 1/6 (Glancing Hit) + 2/3 x 1/3 x 1/2 (Penetrating Hit)=0.129
Rhino vs Lascannon 2/3 x 1/6 x 1/6 (Glancing Hit) + 2/3 x 2/3 x 1/2 (Penetrating Hit)=0.241

Venerable Dreadnaught vs Lascannon 2/3 x 1/6 x 1/6 (Glancing Hit) + 2/3 x 1/2 x 1/2 x 1/2=0.186

LandRaider vs Lascannon 2/3 x 1/6 x 1/6 (Glancing) + 2/3 x 1/6 x 1/2 (Penetrating)=0.075

This means, for example, that the above Tactical Squad firing at a unit of 5 Plague Marines will do 0.037x8=0.296 (Bolters) + 0.55x2=1.1 (Plasma and Lascannon) or 1.396 Wounds per turn. To kill all 5 in one turn would require 4 squads firing. (Just over half the output of an army of them.) If the Plague Marines were in their Rhino, it would take 3 squad's shooting to take out the rhino before the other squads could shoot at the Plague Marines. Thus, if we take 7 such Tactical Space Marine squads to represent the shooting of an entire army, it would take the entire army a turn to kill off that Plague Marine squad and it's Rhino.

Next, let's take a look at each of the lists and see how much damage they could take.

DeathWing

130 Belial, Master of the Deathwing

145 Venerable Dreadnaught with Assault Cannon and Dread CCW

275 DeathWing Terminator Squad with 1 Assault Cannon and 1 Apothecary
245 DeathWing Terminator Squad with 1 Assault Cannon

175 RavenWing Biker Squadron with Powerfist and 2 Plasma Guns

265 LandRaider, Extra Armor
265 LandRaider, Extra Armor

1500pts

Survival Breakdown...
5x Terminator: 5 squads worth of shooting.
5x Terminators and Belial with Apothecary: 9 squads worth of shooting.
Venerable Dreadnaught: 9 squads worth of shooting.
3x RavenWing Bikers: 2 squads worth of shooting.
2x LandRaider: 28 squads worth of shooting.

Survival total: 52 squads worth of shooting. Divided by 7 (Whole army) that's almost 8 full turns of fire from the entire army.

Space Marine Bike Force

180 Space Marine Captain on Bike with Plasma Pistol and Relic Blade

175 Venerable Dreadnaught with Assault Cannon and Dread CCW
175 Venerable Dreadnaught with Assault Cannon and Dread CCW

230 DeathWing Terminator Squad with 1 Assault Cannon

210 Space Marine Biker Squadron with Powerfist, Plasma Pistol, 2 Plasma Guns and 2 Twinlinked Bolters
235 Space Marine Biker Squadron with Powerfist, Plasma Pistol and 2 Plasma Guns, a Twinlinked Bolter and an Attack Bike with MultiMelta.

265 LandRaider, Extra Armor

1470pts
Survival Breakdown...
Space Marine Captain on Bike: 2 Squads worth of shooting.
5x Terminator: 5 squads worth of shooting.
5x Space Marine Biker: 3 squads worth of shooting.
4x Space Marine Biker+Attack Bike: 4 squads worth of shooting.
2x Venerable Dreadnaught: 18 squads worth of shooting.
LandRaider: 14 squads worth of shooting.

Survival total: 46 squads worth of shooting. Divided by 7 (Whole army) that's almost 7 full turns of fire from the entire army.

Chaos Space Marines

185 Demon Prince of Tzeentch: Wings, Warptime, Doombolt

190 5 Chaos Terminators with 1 Reaper Autocannon and 1 Chainfist
260 7 Chaos Terminators with 1 Reaper Autocannon, 1 Powerfist and 1 Chainfist

235 4 Plague Marines with 2 Plasma Guns. Plague Champion with Powerfist and Plasma Pistol. Rhino.

235 4 Plague Marines with 2 Plasma Guns. Plague Champion with Powerfist and Plasma Pistol. Rhino.

240 LandRaider with Daemonic Possession
150 2x Obliterator

1495pts
Survival Breakdown...
Daemon Prince: 3 squads worth of shooting.
5x Terminator: 5 squads worth of shooting.
7x Terminator: 6 squads worth of shooting.
10x Plague Marine +2 Rhinos: 14 squads worth of shooting.
2xObliterator: 3 squads worth of shooting.
LandRaider: 14 squads worth of shooting.

Survival total: 45 squads worth of shooting. Divided by 7 (Whole army) that's almost 7 full turns of fire from the entire army.

Again, that's a lot of numbers to throw around, but it tells me that all the armies are pretty solid and they are fairly close to each other in terms of resilience. Much like the damage potential, resilience isn't the sole determining factor in choosing this army, but it does let me know what each is capable of. Understanding more about their offensive and defensive capabilities is important to being able to choose between the armies.

If you enjoyed this, email me and let me know

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