The Woes of Power Armor

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Been somewhat back into 40king loosely time to time. However something been observing on my own games and other people games.

I don’t mean that power armor is bad it’s just the expectation for it doesn’t match its capabilities. In a probability wise the Power Armor is really good. We are looking at a 66% chance of success each save which is good.

However in reality is a different story. For those who in the hobby for quite a while know how mess up dice rolls can do. So while overall odds are good. Power Armor have low tolerance for “bad rolls” or unexpected losses.

An example would be Wong idea of using Cultist as benchmark. So let say a 5 men space marine squad is around 90 points. (no upgrades, nothing) . So each cultist is like 4 points each. So for price of 5 Space Marine you can have roughly 20 cultist.

So now both squad takes fire from 3 wound from bolter round.  On paper the Space Marine would only lose 1 man at average and obviously the cultist would lose 3 guys right off. However in game there a chance that space marine squad would fail all their save and lose 3 guys. As for the cultist, losing 3 guys is already expected and if by some chance the squad had cover. Any saves that it make is already a bonus

People can argue saying that those Adeptus Astartes can withstand flamer and autocannon round.  Which yes that true but experience player won’t leave their horde army clump up or out in open to allow their squad to be easily slaughter. Also these are things that player can anticipate and control as mention above. While the Astartes can take less heed than their horde counterpart but still binded a chance that something can go horribly wrong.

Edit: Here a video of relevant content.