Beast of Nurgle
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I'm involved in a smaller crusade group. That has let my Keeper of Secrets get mildly out of control.
What i ask of Dakka is this, what do you think am appropriate points value for this unit, as is, would be?
The unit profile itself is unchanged as far as characteristics, but it has the following special rules added to its profile, :
the enhancment Soulstealer
Anti Vehicle/Monster 4+up
It's claws deal 4D instead of 3D, and gain Precision on a Critical Wound.
All melee attacks have Sustained Hits 2
Has Lone Operative
Melee attacks ignore Invulnerable save
Has Fights First
So just a few things. When i field it, I'm paying 355 with the new points cost, but what is it actually worth?
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Fixture of Dakka
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Well, let's see. First of all, a quick reminder that Crusade has a built-in mechanic for trying to balance this situation somewhat. If your KoS is worth enough Crusade Points, then your opponent should be getting some significant advantages as a result. Assuming he doesn't have a bunch of Crusade Points scattered throughout his list; in which case he's theoretically just getting a less concentrated version of the same benefits you're getting.
That said, eyeballing what you've got there...
* Soul Stealer: Kind of hard to price on its own, but it synergizes (and thus becomes more valuable) with any buffs to melee offense you have. And you have several of those. SH2 with 10 base attacks (all pretty good at killing marines) means that you're going to end up with something like 11 hits on average, which will then kill either a handful of marines or a whole squad of guardsmen. So very, very roughly, let's say it's resulting in 2-5 regained wounds each round or the equivalent of about 2 lascannons (with buffs) worth of damage. Significant, but not amazing. My gut says charge 25 points for that instead of the usual 15. In ideal circumstances, you're killing a couple extra models compared to a normal KoS, so we'll charge you a couple more points.
* Anti-vehicle/monster synergizes with the bonus damage to the claws and with the claws' baked-in DW turning them into a really gnarly anti-tank weapon. You're hitting about 5 times with your claws after SH2 (drop 1, pick up 2), and those will turn into 2.5 devastating wounds doing a total of 10 damage with no saves allowed where previously those 5 hits would have turned into like, 2 wounds and 1 failed failed save doing 3 damage against a rhino. Which is pretty huge. I'm going to slap 50 points on the price tag there, but averaging a dead rhino without even using your sword feels like it might actually be worth more than that? Hard to guesstimate here.
* Going to try not to double-dip on the synergy bonus for the 4D claws as that's mostly relevant to the anti-vehicle/monster rule. Against most other targets, the extra point of damage is redundant. However, the claws having baked in DW combined with D4 being a breaking point for a lot of characters means that this is somewhat spicy against characters. Call it 15 points for the high chance of insta-gibbing most W4 and lower characters, but not more than that because most non-character units either don't care or already had some of that value factored in when considering monster/vehicle targets.
* I've tried to factor SH2 in already when looking at the other benefits, so no extra cost for synergy. It has 10 Attacks base, and SH2 turns that from something like 8.5 hits into something closer to 12ish. (Drop 1.5 attacks from rolling 1s. Add 1.67 x 2 = 3.34 hits for SH2). And your attacks are high enough quality to be killing expensive targets like marines pretty reliably. Call that an extra 10 points. It would be more, but I'm shaving off a few since I already factored in characters and vehicle/monster targets earlier.
* Lone Op is huge. The reliable charge range of this model is 21" (M14" + 7" charge), probably higher if Slaaneshi daemons have some advance + charge rule I don't know about. Your toughness is high enough that your opponent really wants to use anti-tank weapons to hurt you and inflict meaningful damage, but also you have a 4+ invuln that means half those successful attacks will be ignored AND you have -1 to-hit penalty that means even fewer of those low RoF weapons will be hitting you in the first place. And then Lone Op makes it so that all those expensive AT weapons that are the ideal answer to this model don't get to start shooting at you until you're well within your own threat range. The big saving grace here is that, once you hit the enemy lines, a lot of things will presumably be able to shoot you all at once. So while you're basically guaranteed to charge at least one thing, you might be killable immediately afterwards. But even then, your opponent is going to have to get through the usual KoS defenses, and there's a good chance you've used your speed to pounce on one of his better anti-tank units by then. All of which can just completely reshape the way your opponent moves units and positions their army.
This is probably an overreaction, but I feel like Lone Op on a KoS is worth at least 75 points. I feel like an otherwise standard KoS would take Lone Op for 75 points every time without batting an eye.
* Ignoring invuln saves is made slightly less useful by the fact that you already have DW on your claws baked-in and that the AP on your weapons still leaves marines with a 5+ armor save. However, this does make you uniquely good at getting through the invuln saves of units that might otherwise try to catch your charge (to deal with that Lone Op). Things like harlies, banshees, daemons, etc. that rely on their invulns for survivability. I want to call this 15 points. It would be more if you could ignore power armor or if you didn't already ignore invulns with your Claw attacks.
* Fights first is pretty strong on anything that's decent in melee. On you, it gets a huge synergy bonus both from your improved overall offense and from your Lone Op. Basically, Lone Op makes it so your opponent *must* get close to hurt you, fights first means that anything that wants to hurt you in melee gets hurt first, and your overall offense means that you'll generally be able to kill one of the units trying to stab you ever turn before they swing. Or in other words, you get attacked by one fewer melee units every turn because you kill a unit before it attacks. I want to charge 50 points for this. It would be a lot less on most models, but your KoS is uniquely set up to already be hard to attack, and this makes it significantly harder.
Which I think brings us to a total of +240 points for a total of 530.
Glancing at a Knight Tyrant (510 points), I feel like that's probably roughly the right ballpark for your KoS. Your KoS is more susceptible to being dog piled once it gets within range of anti-tank weapons, but it's also basically guaranteed to sink its claws into an enemy unit before it dies where the Knight is at risk of getting shot to death turn 1. The best counterplay against you is probably just to try to screen you/catch your initial charge and then dogpile you, but that will also mean that you can force your opponent to bring their lascannons, fire prisms, dark lances, etc. forward (into the claws of the rest of your army) if you just hang out in the midfield intstead of diving deep.
Without Lone Op and Strikes First, you'd be a really top-heavy glass cannon. You'd be more killy than a normal KoS, but you'd also be a big, juicy target for all your opponent's big guns. Lone OP takes away the main, obvious form of counterplay (or at least makes it riskier by forcing your opponent to get close), and then Fights First combined with your increased offense makes it so that your opponent basically has to sacrifice one melee unit for every 2nd melee unit they want to use against you.
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