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!
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