The Soul Trap is already pretty well known, coming as it does on the stock Archon model. All you have to do is nail an independent character or monstrous ceature, capture its soul, and voila! Double strength. This lends itself naturally to being paired with the Husk Blade, also on the out-of-the-box Archon, to insta-death those pesky targets in one hit.
But, the psychotic within me is drawn to one of the seeming red-headed stepchilds of the wargear list, the Djinn blade. Oh the potential, an extra two power weapon attacks, at S6 with the trapped soul of an enemy poseur! Hell, throw in a pair of pain tokens and a favourable combat drug result, and suddenly its 8 attacks with a S8 I8 power weapon, also known as dead sexy.
Of course, there are a couple of hoops to climb before that combo could be engaged. Even the drug result will only happen one game in six, although 9 S7 I8 attacks or 8 S7 I8 reroll wounds attacks are perfectly fine.
The real kicker, though, comes in the Djinn Blade's rebellious genie, who will stab your Archon instead of his foes if given the chance! Then, all of that extra strength will tragically backfire, instantly ending the reign of terror in a manner that most of his foes would find highly amusing.
So is it worth the risk?
Firstly, what are the chances of skewering oneself upon the soul imbued monstrosity? Any double in the two extra attacks will trigger a loss of control, causing both of them to hit the wielder. Straight out, this is a 1/6 chance to wear two of your own attacks, although there is presumably nothing to stop the remaining six of your strikes from slaying your foe. Particularly galling, this is more than likely (2/3) to convert two of your own hits into two hits of yourself. Of course, if you are still swinging at base S3, this may not be a huge problem, especially if your shadowfield is intact. On the other hand, if you are still at S3, will you be able to scratch the enemy?
To calculate the utility of the Djinn blade, we can subtract the chances to autoflagellate from the overall chances to hit, remembering that 2/3 of these would otherwise have hit the foe. This leaves a 1/3 chance that both extra attacks will hit, a 4/9 chance that exactly one of the two attacks will hit, and a 2/9 chance that you will either fail to hit, or hit the wrong target. The expected return per combat phase is therefore 10/9ths of an extra hit on your enemy, and a 1/3rd of a hit on yours truly.
Now that this is known, comparisons may be drawn with some of the other weapons. The agoniser is the same cost, so beginning there, we can immediately see that the Djinn Blade will outperform it against T3 opponents, by 10/9ths of a hit, or 5/9ths of a wound (I am assuming a 3+ to hit, so adjust the maths if facing phoenix lords, bloodthirsters, avatars, daemon princes or hive tyrants). Equally, the agoniser will outperform the Djinn Blade against anything tougher.
Combat drugs may come partially to the rescue, as a +1S or reroll to wound is very handy. Likewise, after a couple of pain tokens, furious charge is a nifty boost.
Unlike the Husk Blade however, a Djinn Blade needs to do more than one wound to get anything from its sister wargear, the soul trap. The condition of having low S is not such a problem when only one wound is required; although the expected number of wounds drops sharply at T5 and six, one could still reasonably expect to deliver at least one wound per two combat phases. Presuming the target is a monstrous creature that will activate the Soul Trap, the Archon will then be free to resume reaving, this time at the much healthier S6.
The table below lists the expected output of wounds, assuming that the Archon gets the charge, and opposes enemies of WS < 7.
Next installment, I'll look at how many hits from each weapon are needed, on average, to knock off a variety of characters.
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