The Primus gives +1 to hit; the Abominant explodes 6s into two hits. So which one is a better support character for aberrants?
Here’s a question: If I want to run aberrants, am I better off supporting them with a Primus or an Abominant? Now I realise that the popular answers is ‘Don’t run aberrants’. The thing is, I like them, I have a lot painted up, and sometimes they come out to smash things up. So how do I make them smashier? The Primus pushes them up to WS2+ via a +1 to hit, which is great; the Abominant gives them two hits instead of one for every unmodified 6, which is also very nice. But is one of those buffs better than the other?
At a basic level, the answer is simple. For any individual dice, it makes no difference - +1 to hit and two hits on a six are functionally the same effect. Imagine rolling six dice, and getting 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. If you usually hit on 3s, that's four hits. With +1 to hit, the 2 also hits and you score five hits; with the 6 generating an extra hit, you count the six twice and still get five hits. The chances of rolling a 2 or a 6 are the same, so the outcome balances.
However, there’s also a significant difference. +1 to hit converts potential misses into hits, whereas exploding 6s converts existing hits into more hits. One mitigates your failures, the other magnifies your successes. Roll enough dice, and the two are functionally the same. But often we aren’t rolling buckets of dice, and knowing the difference and how it plays out can affect the choices we make.
[ For illustrative purposes, I’ve worked this with an imaginary three-attack model hitting on 3s, which isn’t a base aberrant configuration. A basic aberrant has two attacks; the hypermorph has three, but either hits on 4s with the hammer, or doubles its attacks to six with the stop sign. I’ve gone with three attacks because it gives a better sense of the distribution of results, and is about as complex as I care to work out – 3 attacks involves 216 possible outcomes; 4 attacks generates 1296, which makes my head hurt. If it helps, imagine that these are regular aberrants with Might From Beyond active. ]
UNMODIFIED
So. Imagine a model with three attacks, hitting on 3s. The simple maths says you'd expect 2 hits, but the spread gives us a more detailed view:
Two hits is the most likely single outcome, but we have better chance of scoring three hits rather than one, which means we have a 74% chance of getting at least two hits.
+1 TO HIT
If we pick up the Primus’ +1 aura, and now hit on 2s instead, we get this:
Far more accurate, especially at the top end. There's virtually a 100% chance of landing at least one hit, and a 93% chance of at least 2 hits (against that 74% when hitting on 3s). The most likely single outcome is the full 3 hits.
EXPLODING 6s
If we replace the Primus’ aura with the Abominant’s, we go back to hitting on 3s, but with 6s generating an extra hit. It means that we could potentially score up to 6 hits in total (on a triple 6):
As with the unmodified version, 2 hits is the most likely single outcome, with at least two hits occurring 79% of the time (noticeably less than the 93% we had when hitting on 2s). There’s around a 20% chance of scoring more than 3 hits, but less chance than either of the other options to specifically score 1, 2 or 3 hits. This is the gambler's option - less reliable, but a potentially greater reward if it comes off.
Cumulatively, it all looks like this:
CONCLUSIONS
The Primus is all about reliability. With most Cult troops hitting on 3s, his +1 makes us as accurate as we can get. If you like to math-hammer your attacks out first, then the Primus (or any +1 to hit aura) is your friend, because it reduces the variability. The Abominant (and exploding 6s in general) is about going big or going home. When it works, it’s great; when you roll three 2s, you’ll be kicking yourself.
Perhaps what matters most isn’t how many hits you get, but how many misses you avoid. Back at the start, I pointed out that for three attacks at WS3+, the mean average would be two hits. With the primus aura in play, that rises to a mean of 2.51; for the Abominant, it’s just slightly lower than that at 2.48. The difference here is that (for this particular bit of modelling) the Primus aura leaves us missing completely just 0.4% of the time, whereas the Abominant aura completely misses 4% of the time. The primus aura edges it, because you’re more likely to get something. Is this a significant edge? Well, if I was rounding to one decimal place, they’d both read as 2.5, so probably not. But it is an edge, and if squeezing every last fraction out of a list matters to you, there it is.
In the end, I think it boils down to player preference. Would you rather have the consistency of the primus, knowing that you’re likely to safely land the majority of the hits you expect to; or would you prefer to gamble on the Abominant, hoping to pick up extra hits for a critical round of attacks that might swing things suddenly in your favour?
So I guess the real question here is: "Do you feel lucky?" If you prefer cold, logical efficiency, take the +1 to hit. But if you feel that the dice are hot, exploding 6s could be for you.