Just A Quickie

I enjoy trueborn very much. This squad:

4Trueborn - 4 Blasters - Venom + Splinter Cannon (173pts)

is awesome. Fragile, perhaps, but I like it.

They have a tiny problem, though. It isn't a huge deal, but I think it makes them appear much better on paper than they actually are. Or rather, I think it could make people who bring them like this more likely to make poor choices elsewhere in their list.

They can't split fire.

Bring 3 squads like this and it looks like your list has 12 S8 AP2 shots; or bring 2 even and you've got 8 S8 AP2 shots. We just covered half our anti-armour needs right there. Except, those 12 S8 shots can only hit 3 targets. Granted, those are likely to be 3 dead targets, but still we can't look at these units like we just put 12 anti-armour shots into the list. We have to look at it like 3 really good anti-armour shots. (or 2, if we bring 2 units of them, which to be perfectly honest is what I would prefer)

with that in mind, do we really need 4? I mean, more is always better but if we can't split fire, how dead does something really need to be? Let's find out.

Chance to Affect Armour
	3 S8 AP2		4 S8 AP2
	AV10		AV10
x	0.562		0.667
	AV11	AV11
x	0.459	0.559
	AV12-13-14	AV12-13-14
x	0.340	0.426

As usual, 'x' represents the chance to immobilize, wreck, or explode. DE will be as much about landing useful stun results as they will outright destroying mech, but still this is just what I like to look at when I do these sorts of things.

So, it looks like that single extra shot adds about a 10% chance to down something. Not bad. Worth it for 27 points? Maybe. I don't know that the added durability of a single body does a whole lot. 4 guys with DE statlines die just as quickly as 3, and they both require 1 wound to morale test. I have no misconceptions about the frailty of this unit.

I think this might be a good place to shave off some points though, if I need them. For example, I'm playing with a list right now in which by removing a TB from each of my 2 squads of them, I can have just enough points to buy a blaster for each of my 4 warrior squads. Trading 2 bodies for 2 additional blasters that I can hit other targets with seems like a pretty good deal to me.