In Hammer of Math we take a look at some of the big questions in Warhammer 40,000, answering questions about probability, dice, and statistics. This week we’re looking at the updated Blessings of Khorne from the upcoming Codex: World Eaters.
Codex: World Eaters is coming out in just two weeks and if you missed our review of the new book (you can find it here), you may be surprised to find that one of the big changes in the book is to Blessings of Khorne. Let’s take a look at the new rule:
Army Rule: Blessings of Khorne
If your army is World Eaters, then at the start of the Battle round you roll 8D6 and use the results you get to get effects that improve your entire army. What you can get depends on what you roll, and when you use results, they’re “spent” and can’t be used to buy another effect. These have changed from the Index quite a bit, with three options getting swapped out:
- Any Double: Unbridled Bloodlust – Re-roll Charges.
- Double 2+: Rage-Fuelled Invigoration – Your units can pile-in and consolidate 6” instead of 3”.
- Double 3+: Total Carnage – Each time one of your models dies, you can fight on Death on a 4+.
- Double 4+ or Any Triple: Martial Excellence – Your units have [SUSTAINED HITS 1] on their Melee attacks.
- Double 5+ or Triple 2+: Warp Blades – Your units have [LETHAL HITS] on their melee attacks.
- Double 6+ or Triple 3+: Decapitating Strikes – When your units make a melee attack against an INFANTRY unit, they gain [DEVASTATING WOUNDS].
We looked at Blessings of Khorne way back when their ninth edition Codex released and with the new book it was time to make an update. so let’s take a look at the odds of rolling these results and the how likely you are to get a specific combination.
Single Results
Whenever you roll 8 dice, you’re guaranteed to get at least one double – there are only six results, and you’re rolling 8 dice. You’re also almost guaranteed to get two doubles – it’s very rare that you’ll get the bad roll: A single triple with every other result being a different value, e.g. (1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6). These happen about 1.5% of the time and when they occur you only get one blessing of khorne. It sucks.
That said, there are times when you only get one blessing on a roll, such as when you use the Skulls for the Skull Throne! Stratagem in the Berzerker Warband Detachment. When that happens, your odds of getting each ability are as follows:
That’s pretty good news – you’re almost guaranteed to get most results except for Decapitating Strikes, and those are generally a little easier than before – Warp Blades is a bit harder since it needs a triple 2+ but Martial Excellence got a bit easier since you can get it from a triple.
Combination Results
That’s cool but what we’re really looking for most of the time is how we can get combos. The most desirable combinations are going to be Sustained Hits + Lethal Hits (Martial Excellence + Warp Blades) and Sustained Hits + Devastating Wounds vs. non-monster/vehicle targets (Decapitating Strikes), as these give you the boosts on raw damage output your Berzerkers need to kill key targets.
In order to do this I wrote a Python script to simulate 10,000 Blessings rolls and identify whether a given combo of abilities was possible from that roll. What you end up with is a much tougher result – because you have to use dice for a given result, your chances of getting some of the harder combos drops way down. Specifically you should expect to score Martial Excellence and Warp Blades together around 15% of the time. And Martial Excellence + Decapitating Strikes should show up closer to 8% of the time.
Adding Dice
There are notably a few ways to add dice to this roll. The most common is through an Icon of Khorne, where you add a D6 for each enemy unit killed. These really help – your odds of getting those two kill combos nearly doubles if you can add 2D6 to the roll.
Reborn in Blood
Finally there’s the big one – How often will you bring Angron back? Well your odds of rolling three or more sixes on 8D6 is about 10%.
Sustained vs. Lethal Hits
We’ve done this math many times before but generally if you’re wounding on a 5+ or worse, you want Lethal Hits. If it’s a 3+ or better, you want Sustained Hits. If it’s 4+, it doesn’t matter but Sustained Hits has a higher upside and a little more variance. When you’re considering combinations remember that Lethal Hits and Devastating Wounds do not interact, so you should generally avoid the combo of Warp Blades + Decapitating Strikes.
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