Wound Allocation Theory

[eagleboy7259]

Problem: I've been playing demons for awhile now and whenever list building I have been confronted with the same piece of advise over and over again - fully diversify your unit of Bloodcrushers. I run mostly Tzeentch demons with a unit of Bloodcrushers, a Bloodthirster and Fateweaver as the main punch of the army. In every game where I used the full command I almost never used the icon or never got off a rend. Eventually I dropped it, saved myself the 40pts and invested it in wings for my Demon Prince.

Everyone repeats that advice about wound allocation for demons but I never ever see it readily applied to other armies. Why is it always so pressed upon for the 'crushers yet never used for Space Marines? Instead you see the same wargear choices & upgrades spammed over and over. 40pts is a pretty steep cost to diversify a squad - what I want to know is when does cost, role, and repetition overcome diversification? or do you even consider it when list building?

Example #1: The Stereotype
4x Bloodcrushers w/ Fury, Instrument & Icon > 5x Bloodcrushers

-The full command costs the same as adding another Bloodcrusher to the unit but with wound allocation is thought to be the optimal build for the unit.

Example #2: The Perceived Power Build v. Extra Wound Allocation
10x Crusaders w/ 8 Bolt Pistols & CC's, Meltagun & Powerfist > 8x Crusaders & 2x Neophytes w/ 3 Bolt Pistols & CC's, 3 Bolters, Meltagun, Powerfist, Scout Shotgun & Scout Bolt Pistol & CC

-3 model types within the unit which maximizes the number of attacks in close combat and the number of models benefiting from Accept Any Challenge, No Matter The Odds.
-6 model types within the unit which comes in 12pts cheaper
-Would it be worthwhile to add 2 scouts (shotgun/pistol&cc) to every Crusader squad just to maximize the number of different model types with the unit?

Example #3: Tau?
6x Fire Warriors w/ Pulse Rifles > 6x Fire Warriors w/ Team Leader, 4 Pulse Rifles, 1 Pulse Carbine
3x Fireknife Crisis Suits w/ Team Leader & 2 Gun Drones > 3x Crisis Suits w/ Fireknife Team Leader, Deathrain Suit, Fireknife Suit, Gun Drone, Shield Drone

-For 5 pts we have increased the squad to 3 different model types while only losing 1 pulse rifle.
-While Tau are not wonderful in close combat, effective Tau generals rely on ending close combats during your opponents turn in order to open up enemy squads to a round of shooting. Additional model types help you allocate nasty powerfist and power weapon wounds that go right through battlesuit armor.
-Adjust battlesuit wargear to have a fully diversified unit whenever possible

Final Thoughts: There are a bunch of armies and squads that could really make use of this to help increase their survivability within the game. They often have access to upgrades which cost as little as 5pts or have typical choices which deserve to be seen more. In my short list I found:

-Space Marine Sternguard Squads, Vanguard Squads, Devastator Combat Squads (Las/Missile/Sarge/Bolters), Command Squads
-Space Wolf Thunderwolf Cavalry & Wolf Guard
-Ork Nob Squads
-Fire Warriors, Pathfinders, & Every Battlesuit
-Chaos Space Marine Chosen & Termatinators
-Etc.

It won't save your squad from getting eaten by hammer units, but when faced by tactical squads or other plain jane squads which pack a sarge or equivalent for some added punch it can help keep your own squad alive by stacking power weapon wounds onto one poor guy who gets overkilled. I'm rebuilding my Black Templar this summer and I'm going to give the Neophytes a whirl and see how this goes.

[plawolf]

Never played daemons, but my guess would be that bloodcrushers have more than 1 wound?

Your example is not really why people would try to get uniquely equipped models in a unit of multi-wound models. Wound allocation tricks only really kicks in when you have multi-wound models in a unit. If they were all identical, you need to kill off models who are already wounded before allocating wounds to the next identical model.

The point of giving them different gear is that you can allocate wounds to all of them until they are all at 1 wound before you start removing models. So you would have more models on the board longer, giving you much better damage output for the unit throughout the game.

[isotope99]

Personally, I'd leave the icon at home but take the other two to boost survivability.

The requirements are:

• Multi wound models
• Wargear options that allow you to customise most or all the models

Main candidates I can think of for wound allocation tricks are:

Bloodcrushers
Thunderwolves
Nobz (in the regular, mega and biker flavours)
Paladdins
Tau
These share a common trait of costing a lot of points so wound allocation helps justify this cost. Thunderwolves and Bloodcrushers especially benefit as they are almost or completely immune to Instant Death whereas the rest can be punched.

[tdogp]

Wound allocation becomes a lot more powerful on multi-wound models. For single-wound models, the effect is usually not worth the resources required to make them all different. As a tau player I always try to do allocation with my battlesuits, and I don't know why more players don't. I usually leave the fireknives as is because they need all 3 slots to be effective, but for deathrains I switch the twin-linking from the missle pod to the flamer for very little offensive loss and a slightly cheaper price tag.

[Bean]

As's been said, if you're looking to marines for examples of wound-allocation shenanigans, you pretty clearly don't understand the principles behind wound-allocation shenanigans. It's really only for multi-wound models, because that allows you to distribute wounds throughout the squad without losing guys. In a unit of unique Nobs (the classical wound-allocation unit) the wound allocation rules can allow you to take ten wounds, one on each nob, before losing any nobs (and the damage they generate). That's why it's good, and that's why it's good on Bloodcrushers.

Paladins are really the unit for wound-allocation shenanigans, now, since they can get unique wargear without spending extra points on it.

[Lerra]

For Bloodcrushers, I tend to buy the Instrument and Fury because it's so cheap (and Fury gives you a slight chance to win vs. a walker, which is better than nothing), but I don't buy the Icon unless I actually want an Icon in the list. It's too expensive if you only plan to use it for would allocation.

For my battlesuits, I do some wound allocation shenanigans, but I won't change weapons options just for wound allocation. Imo, there is a happy medium where you have wound allocation options, but you still get the wargear that you really want on your suits.

I'm fond of this squad for Deathrain suits:

* TL missiles, drone controller, gun drone
* TL missiles, drone controller, shield drone
* TL missiles, black sun filter

But for Fireknife I tend to use:

* Team Lead: Plasma, Missile Pod, Multi-tracker, HW Drone Controller with 2 shield drones
* 2x Plasma, Missile Pod, Multi-tracker

I find that switching one Fireknife suit to a Deathrain is more detrimental than having 4 would allocation groups rather than 5. Of course YMMV.

[eagleboy7259]

I've always thought that wound allocation was worked out like this:

A space marine tactical squad w/ powerfist sarge, flamer and missile launcher gets charged by a unit of khrone bezerkers w/ power weapon skull champ. For simplicity sake well say the unit caused 20 wounds with 2 of those being power weapon wounds. I allocate 2 wounds per model and I stack the power weapon wounds on the missile launcher guy because I probably won't get the chance to use him now that he's stuck in combat. He dies, but the rest of the unit is saved from the power weapon attacks and get to make their armor saves. Whereas if I would have allocated the power weapon wounds to the bolter brothers then I would have lost 2 models instead of just the one.

Is this not correct?

[Bean]

You're correct, but the benefit you're describing is fairly marginal compared to the ability to spread out wounds on multi-wound models.

Consider the example with your bloodcrushers: if you have five identical bloodcrushers and take four wounds, two bloodcrushers die, right?

Now imagine you have four unique bloodcrushers: you take four wounds, but because you were able to assign them to individual models, each model gets one wound and no bloodcrushers die. Now, instead of being down two bloodcrushers worth of swings in your next round of combat, you're still putting out all four bloodcrushers worth of damage.

That's the type of benefit that starts to make it worth investing in unique gear loadouts for heavy-hitting multi-wound model squads. Given how expensive the upgrades on the bloodcrushers are, I'm not sure it's worth it in that instance, but it's definitely worth it for nobs and paladins and some other similar units.

It's not generally worth it, though, for units of one-wound models--because the benefit one-wound models get from it is not nearly as substantial as the benefit two-wound models get from it.

[thecactusman17]

Wound allocation becomes a lot more powerful on multi-wound models. For single-wound models, the effect is usually not worth the resources required to make them all different. As a tau player I always try to do allocation with my battlesuits, and I don't know why more players don't. I usually leave the fireknives as is because they need all 3 slots to be effective, but for deathrains I switch the twin-linking from the missle pod to the flamer for very little offensive loss and a slightly cheaper price tag.

You are right that WA tricks are more effective on multi-wound models. But that doesn't achange the fact that for some armies with really good save options (such as units with feel no pain in addition to a 4+ save, the ability to lessen the load on your normal guys can be a big boost if you need to ensure that the combat lasts one more turn (OR if you need to end it now and want to kill your leadership model ASAP to force your opponent into the open) can be very useful.

However, you probably don't need to make the entire squad unique. Have a few trusty, reliable normal models mixed in with the specialists so that you can drop models according to the needs of the situation, not just because they are the easiest to dump on.