Chillwind VS Arcane Bolt.

[PaintedDeath]

So I've been using a Sorceress mounted on a Cold One for a few games now and I'm starting to believe Chillwind is completely useless. I have had it fail to even cause damage in all but 1 casting in 3 different games, with a few of those castings sac-ing some bleakswords toward the casting. I decided to sit down and do a few test rolls to see how it stacked up against Arcane Bolt.

These are the results I came up with.

Dice thrown Damage done ! Damage Done
8 0 ! 1
9 1 ! 2
7 2 ! 1
9 2 ! 1
11 2 ! 3
10 3 ! 3
12 2 ! 1
9 2 ! 3
8 1 ! 2
7 1 ! 1


Chillwind and Arcane Bolt both succeed on a casting of 5 or more, so only those have been taken into account since the chance of it succeeding are the same.
The left side is Chillwind with the number of dice thrown, and on the right is a successful casting of Arcane Bolt.

As you can see, not in a single casting did I ever pull more than 3 wounds from a Chillwind, and once I even did 0 damage. You are guaranteed at least 1 wound on an Arcane Bolt, but are guaranteed nothing on a Chillwind.

I even did a few test rolls using 12 dice, and then using 14 dice which is the most you could possibly get from sacrificing a unit, and a few of those rolls came up with 0 wounds, with none of them pulling more than 3 wounds. I would recommend using Arcane Bolt 100% of the time over using Chillwind, unless you are feeling particularly lucky and even then you're probably better off with an Arcane Bolt.

[PaintedDeath]

So my formatting didn't translate in the forum post, but the numbers on the left are number of dice thrown, damage caused, following after the ! by the damage caused by Arcane Bolt.

[Daeron]

Very nice report and analysis. I really like the simplicity and effectiveness of your testing.
I concur with the conclusion. Chillwind is generally weaker.
The Druchii tools don't allow you to calculate this exactly, but they can give a decent approximation. If we would let any roll of Chillwind be succesful, so less than 5 is fine, then this would be the damage:

(Modeled like 2d6 attacks of which every 6 to hit causes a wound)
Compared to Arcane Bolt:

Arcane bolt will win most of the time, and this is an optimistic score for Chillwind.

As I don't know of any modifiers for the spell, I don't see any circumstances that change this outcome.
Chillwind is definitely out unless some new rules change the spell.

[Daeron]

I just realised my approximation may actually be pessimistic since bad results, below 5 dice to roll, are not filtered out. I'll try to give a more accurate calculation some day. But I do think the conclusion still stands.