Preferred enemy..it is as useful in 6th?

[blindmage]

I was stating up a Hive Tyrant as a 'counts as' Malanthrope for an upcoming game.

Tyrant with:
Dual Scything Talons
Toxin Sacs
Toxic Miasma
Regeneration
Leech Essence and The Horror

...then I was going to add on Old Adversary to represent the Manalthrpoe's ability to give Preferred Enemy based on the units its killed. I hadn't looked at Preferred Enemy in 6th yet...it's gotten worse.

It used to be all to hit rolls were on a 3+, the it was re-roll all fails hits, now you re-roll only 1's for both hit and wound, so basically single scything talons with worse poison..

It does apply to my shooting now, but all my shooting is Spinefists so it's Twin-Linked, the re-roll on wounds, even if it is 1's only could be nice. Since it would only count for shooting as all my Rippers have Toxin Sacs.

I really liked it making my surrounding units better, but it barely makes them better.

Comments, Opinions, Suggestions?

[gigasnail]

if you're running spinefist rippers, i'm assuming friendly/fluffy list? PE not going to do as much for your rippers (relatively) due to TL and poison, certainly. for about everything else though it's pretty decent. PE along with devilgaunts, dakka flyrant is good (you're rerolling 1/3 of your misses with a BS3 unit).

and i dunno about barely making surrounding units better. it makes them better in shooting, when before it did nothing at all until you got guys stuck in. that's a big improvement to me.

[blindmage]

Well, it could boost my shooting by a bit, a full 9 man ripper brood works out like so:
(if my math is wrong..I suck at math)

No Preferred Enemy:
36 shots
hit on 5+ means 36(2/6) = 12 hits
Twin-linking means we add 24(2/6) = 8 hits
Total average hits = 20

My most common enemy is Nurgel Daemons (lots of plaguebearers)

so to wound would be 6+ meaning 20(1/6) = 3.333 wounds or ~ 3 wounds

With Preferred Enemy:
the Twin-linking stays the same so average hits = 20
Wounds would be the 3.33 from above plus 1's re-rolled
odds of 1's are 1/6 so the extra would should be 3.333(1/6) = 0.555
making the total average wounds = 3.888 or ~ 4 wounds

huh...now that I've done the math vs the worst case scenario (wounding on 6+), I got a better result than I expected.

Since I have 6 full broods and 12 Sky Slashers, Armywide that's
264 twin-linked shots a round
an average of 146.666 or ~ 147 hits.
Without Preferred Enemy that's 24.5 wounds.
With Preferred Enemy that's 28.583 wounds.

So army-wide I'd be looking at an average of 4 extra wounds per round in a worst case scenario when everything can get line on a target. Over 5 rounds (best case I'd say) that's an extra 20 wounds at a cost of 1.25 points per wound.

...I have no idea if that math actually helped me at all, but I fell better having done it.

[Jabberwocky]

It's actually better for most units now but obviously wasted in some instances.

Even old PE was worthless on a dual taloned Tyrant though. They already hit on 3s mostly and already re-rolled.

Personally I wouldn't bother with it, running the list you are.

Giving PE to say genestealers though or gants, or even Hive Guard is great. I love re-rolling to wound with my harpies guns too.

[lordbob]

But it also works for shooting aswell now, not just close combat, so on a flyrant with devourers, you already re-roll misses but then you reroll to wound since most of the time you'd be wounding on 2's, then you get into combat and you essentially have a pair of scything talons and poison on it.

Yes, if you have dual scything talents it doesn't do much for your actual tyrant, aside from give him poisona basically, but it still makes the surrounding units better, compared to last edition when having both would only make the surrounding units better and only in close combat.

Seems like a good deal to me. And then imagine that on a bunch of devourer gaunts and hive guard.

[sockhands]

PE has saved me more times than I can count. Everything gets significantly more potent when in the bubble. If I'm running two Tyrants, I generally take it on both. I love rolling 1s now. Any monstrous creature that will generally be rolling to wound on 2 that can get in the bubble will usually wound with every hit that gets through. Big fan, personally.

[rpricew]

Hive Guard and Zoanthropes like PE as well, hitting on 3's re-rolling 1's and then wounding most things on 2's re-rolling 1's

Remember the Swarmlord can grant PE to a unit also!

[blindmage]

I'm finding it interesting because you'd that that rolling more dice means rolling more 1's, so it would be better with the massive amount of shooting I have but it doesn't seem to work out that way. I even assumed I have a round where everything in my list was shooting at something the required a 6+ to wound (which would show the benefit for re-rolling 1's to the highest extent)...and I only got 4 extra wounds.

I guess it just feels better to have the ability to re-roll 1's even if its not that worthwhile.

[Jabberwocky]

Re-rolling 1s is actually feels less significant when you need 5s/6s to succeed as the value increase you see will be minimal.

The percentage increase in performance may be better but as you percieve it, 1 extra wound won't seem a lot, even if you only scored say 1 wound normally.

If say you were wounding on 3s/4s and re-rolling the 1s, you'd see more extra successes out of it.

Let's say you roll 12 dice. Wounding on 6s, you score 2 6s and re-roll 2 dice, giving an average of 1/3rd more wounds.

Rolling 12 dice wounding on 3s, you score 8 wounds and re-roll 2 dice, giving an average 2/3rd more wounds.

It seems like you benefitted twice as much from having PE in the second scenario, even though the percentage increase in wounds was twice as good in the first scenario.

[gigasnail]

this is why we have math, because people's perception is, well, bad.

[blindmage]

on that point. Did I do the math right?

[TheContortionist]

short answer

yes

[Illithid]

You could of just done it by 1/3