The Shredder... Returns?

This budding Archon has been scheming, plotting and dreaming about which units will be mustered for war. And, like many, I've noted the devastating potential of Trueborn loaded with darklight.

As it happens, I've so far only managed to buy one box of warriors, and they've been established as a raider squad. Noting that there is exactly one of each special warrior weapon in the box, I have planned my order of warrior buying and building accordingly.

The second warrior box I pick up will be dedicated to a dark lance / blaster home objective holder squad. These guys will be boots on the ground, probably accompanied by a Haemonculus to harden them up. The next warrior box will be another raider squad, similar to the first.

So when I pick up my fourth box of warriors, that will leave me with one blaster and three dark lances available. The dark lance minus barrel will look enough like a blaster to pass for one, so that gives me a four blaster Trueborn unit to make Land Raider drivers reach for their security blankets. But I've been toying with a few ideas on what to do with the other half of the box. And it has occurred to me, that I will also have four shredders.

The shredder gets a bad rep next to its snazzier cousin. All my raider squads will be toting blasters, and probably blast pistols, for the extra anti-tank threat. Besides, one shredder in a unit of dudes who are quite capable of annoying infantry themselves is not so scary.

Four of them in a dedicated shredder unit may be a different story. It should be straightforward enough to hit 3 models under a small blast marker, so 12+ hits from a round of shooting is quite possible. S6 is nothing to sneeze at, and the non-existent AP is mitigated when firing at units in cover (ie everything).

Naturally it will not be as good against anything with an armour value. But that may yet be an advantage, as they can act as surprise anti-transport! Even with a -1 to damage tables, four S6 hits on side or rear armour can make a mess of many light vehicles. And while the foe is busy running away from the darklight destroyers, he may just overlook these little guys!

At least, that's the plan. At the rate I paint, I'll be putting them together maybe, next December? Still, the best laid plans of men and Archons...

The Rise of the Fallen Phoenix

A nice feature of the new Dark Eldar codex is the presence of Ahra, the legendary fallen phoenix - here named Drazhar, master of blades. Really, the transition between the particularly good bodyguard of the old book to Ahra incarnate exemplifies the evolution of the backstory across the whole codex.

I suppose I should point out that the designers stop short of explicitly calling him out, but they don't stop too far from it. The clincher is his profile, which by sheer coincidence is the exact same profile as the other phoenix lords!

It certainly got me wondering, how would he stack up against his craftworlder cousins? The most obvious challenge would be Karandras, successor to the Striking Scorpion mantle.

Now, Karandras has a problem. If he wants to ignore Drazhar's armour, which he does, he'll have to swing last. This means that he'll have to survive a full round of attacks! Unluckily for him, Drazhar can re-roll his misses, and put 4 S6 attacks into him very easily (as it happens, he has a better chance using the 4 S6 attacks than the 6 S4 attacks, even accounting for the increased Onslaught chance). It works out to be about a 50% chance to kill Karandras stone dead before he can so much as lift his limp wrist.

However, should he fail, Karandras has 6 S8 attacks to show him how its done. And he, too, has about a 50% chance of removing Drazhar's smug little updated head from his shoulders.

As both of them have extremely lethal attacks, and not much in the way of defence, chances are good that victory will go to he who strikes first. In this case, the Fallen One!

Against Jain Zar things start to get heated, as she can throw her 4 S6 attacks at the same time as Drazhar's. However big D's ability to gain preferred enemy against her tips the balance; he will slaughter her in one round ~50% of the time, but will be cut down only 19% of the time himself. While he has the advantage, it is very likely that whoever wins will be in no shape to do much more!

But against the Father of the Phoenix, Asurmen, Drazhar meets his match. Asurmen not only matches his rerolls, but denies him an attack. And while Drazhar can still muster one more S4 attack than his foe, Asurmen rather unsportingly carries the extra protection of an invulnerable save.

Incidentally, the presence of both Asurmen's invulnerable save and Defend ability and Drazhar's Onslaught special rule tips the balance ever so slightly in favour of using the demiklaives to provide +2 attacks. In this situation, the expected value for the number of wounds caused is 0.9791 for the +2S, and 0.9871 for the +2A, so the discrepancy is minor.

Asurmen though administers tough love to his wayward protege, returning an expected 1.4802 wounds (killing him in one round 15% of the time, compared to 7.8%) while spanking Drazhar, and telling him to bring an invulnerable next time.

Of course, this all assumes that they all stand in a ceremonial candle-lit duelling pit, where no-one has charged. If Jain Zar wins the charge, her chances of offing the recalcitrant Phoenix rise to ~34.5%, and the odds of mutual annihilation are a quite respectable 17.5%. If Drazhar were to charge Asurmen, he is not only better off with the +2S once again, but his chance to one-round kill the do-gooder climbs to 11.3%, and his expected return to 1.2849. If he has been lucky enough to chew through some mooks first, or simply made friends with a Haemonculus and some Wracks, he might have enough pain tokens to unleash a furious charge. Naturally, this favours the +2A mode of demiklaives, and improves his chances of nailing the King in one go to 21.59%. Going first is nice, too!

So, if you're going to teach those silly Craftworlders how a real Phoenix Lord rolls, feel free. You might not emerge unscathed, but the dark brethren are surely used to that. Just remember, if Asurmen is around, to bring the PAIN!