I realize that it’s been a while since I’ve thrown some numbers at you, and isn’t that really the purpose of this blog? So back on form, here’s a question:

Icarus was the boy of legend who flew too close to the sun, but if he traded his wax wings for a vendetta, then how worried should he be about the skyfire interceptor lascannon that they named after him?

Flyers are the new hotness of 6th edition and everyone needs to have a way of dealing with them in order to stay competitive. The BRB gives us two generic options, the Icarus Lascannon, and the Quad Gun.

Both have the very interesting interceptor rule, which lets them take a pot shot at any enemy unit that has arrived from reserve that turn – so you get a chance to blow that flyer out of the sky at the end of his movement phase (before he gets a chance to fire).

Both fire at full BS vs. flyers (thanks to the skyfire rule), and given that flyers are usually medium armour at best, you’d be hopeful of getting a lucky shot in to pop your opponent’s beloved flying machine of death. Unfortunately the numbers aren’t really on your side…

So that Vendetta flies onto the board full of hopes, dreams, and heavy weapons, how does he fare? Let’s take the Icarus Lascannon first.

Assuming BS4, with fours to pen his AV12, and fives on the damage chart to explode him we get an 11% chance of success (which drops to 7% if your opponent evades). The hull point view isn’t great either, we can do at most 1 hull point, but the expected value is 0.3 hull points.

The quad gun is certainly a better bet for doing hull point damage (not so hot for an explodes result). We can potentially do 4 Hull points of damage to that Vendetta! But what are the odds?

Hull Points inflicted vs Odds
0 41%
1 41%
2 15%
3 2%
4 <1%

As you can see, not great. The expected value is 0.79 Hull Points, which is a lot better than the Icarus, but still not a major threat.

Running a few more numbers, I came across a sad truth. A snap firing twin linked tesla destructor (i.e without skyfire) is as dangerous to a vendetta as the dedicated AA Quad Gun.

So to answer my original question, our vendetta pilot shouldn’t sweat it, but my overall conclusion can be summed up as:

God damn necrons.