Hi, during another gaming session where a few players learned the ropes, the question came up whether it was necessary to roll individually for each model in the case of multiple hits against each unit in a formation. I would like to think that the odds should be worse if you have to make a number of saves with each unit than if you rolled the correct number of dice and just removed the casualties. Has anyone ever calculated the difference? Is it negligible or not?

/Fredmans

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http://www.tacticalwargames.net/taccmd/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=14636

The other effect is that if you hit every model in the formation, the "doubling up" of hits can reduce the number of kills as one model may fail more than one save.

I have to say, I despise Epic's hit allocation system. It's clunky and annoying.

It's actually the opposite.  Speedrolling can increase the casualties.

It's no worse  with regards to the number of casualties until you get to doubling up hits like Lord_I states.  If you just roll a handful of dice, every failed save is a kill.  However, if you roll for each individual based on the number of hits allocated, it may be that multiple failed saves actually occur on the same model while leaving other models untouched.

Let's say you get 10 hits on 5 Tactical marines with 4+ armor.  That's going to average 5 failed saves so it will frequently wipe out the formation.  However, if you allocate 2 each, the chances of each individual marine saving is about 25%.  The median number of marines that survives is 1.25 as opposed to 0 with speed rolling.

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Neal

The easy way to do it then (when you have units taking 2 hits), is to roll all ten dice, and then reroll any successes, rather than roll all ten dice and have them count. If the formation took 7 hits, roll 2 dice, rerolling successes, and then 3 dice as normal.

It's fairly easy to speed roll dice and still have relatively accurate results. It does remove the possibility of swisscheesing a formation (putting units out of coherency, etc), but can speed the resultant rolling fairly easy.

We use the reverse procedure for Reinforced Armor. Terminator Squad takes 4 hits, roll 4 dice, reroll any failures. It does get a bit more complicated, and we resort to individual rolling, when there are multiple hits (math starts getting a bit wonky), or if there's a character involved.

Morgan Vening