Quote Originally Posted by Ninjaman View Post
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I looked at it, and i didn't think i looked that scary so let me try run the math:
4 attacks(on charge)
2/3 are going to hit: 4*0,666= 2,664 hits
2,664 hits, wounds on 2+: 2,664*0,833=2,219 wounds
2,219, hits on 3+: 2,219*0,666=1,477 hits
1,477 wounds on 2+:1,477*0,833=1,230 wounds

By dividing the number of wounds by the number of attacks i get: 0,555
Meaning that for every attack you score 0,555 wounds.
4*0,555=2,22
2,22*0,555=1,232
1,232*0,555=0,683
0,683*0,555=0,379
That add up to an average of 4,514 wounds.
And i know that it isn't 100% correct (for instanse i didn't round up the fourth decimal if it was 5+). But it should give a pretty good picture.
4,5/30*100=15% effectiveness of what you guys said

Is there something i missed?

Edit: I know that it would have given a better result if i took more than 4 steps, but i don't think it would go above 5 wounds.
Ahhh, ye olde Mathhammer.

One thing I will agree with Cheesegear on is this, this is a useful guide, but should be treated as just that.

Let us apply a touch of Further Mathhammer.

Last I looked, the statisticians would have us believe that everything comes down to a Normal distribution (AKA the bell curve), you will have results that are above average, you will have results that are below average. All that working things like this out is telling you how it should go. Unfortunately for your basic Mathhammer, what it tells you is how it goes with the exact average point in the centre of the middle quartiles of all the statistics you should get. In other words, not actually all that many of the results you'd analyse to get that.

Now, I have a good deal of experience with Talon Dreadnoughts by now, it's actually a pretty rare game where I don't have at least one. This means that, should I have written the performance down, I would have over 100 different results to look at and correlate. I can tell you that there have been days when I have torn through 30 Gaunts in a single round and still had attacks to spare, there have been days when I have missed everything. Comparing like with like, there have been days when the Grey Knights have died horribly (including the Librarian, FOR JUSTICE !) and days when I have been eaten by the Brotherhood Champion's Nemesis Hammer.

Simply put, 5 wounds may be as much as you can expect, perhaps it will do none at all, which is the risk you run with all moves in this game. However, there is no denying that when it works it really, really, really works. And it really works enough of the time for it to be totally worthwhile (like the 2 upper quartiles of the curve, or 50%). Even when it doesn't work, well, there's the wounds it does as well as the intangible benefits like every opponent's flinch reaction to shoot it with everything so it doesn't get to do what it does best, thereby making it worth its points (actually very cheap...) as a distraction and fire magnet.