I really like aberrants, and whilst they may not be a top competitive choice, I’d still like to get the most out of them in combat. So, what’s the best way to arm them?
Aberrants are great. Subjective opinion, clearly, and one not necessarily supported by maths or table-top experience, but still. They feel very Cult, a unit that really belongs to us, and as such, it’s always good to get them down on the table, throw in the Abominant to really amp up the difficulty level, and then let them rampage.
But what should they rampage with? Aberrants have fairly limited options – power pick and rending claw, or heavy power hammer. One in five can be a hypermorph, and you should probably take that option for the extra attack, whilst being aware that you then need to take either the hammer or the heavy improvised weapon (which isn’t cheap, but is a lot of fun).
There are a few different ways to break down the differences between the pick and hammer options, so let’s get into it.
DAMAGING HITS
A power pick aberrant also gets to attack with its rending claws, effectively doubling its base attacks. The pick is usually the superior option in terms of landing damaging hits (because the consistency of AP-2 tends to out-perform the occasional AP-4 of the claws), but the claw is slightly more likely to cause damage against opponents with T6 or better and a 3+ save or better (because when you’re wounding on 5s, half of those wounds will be at AP-4 with the claw, tilting the balance in its favour against heavily-armoured targets). However, even in those niche cases, the difference is tiny (the claw lands 0.02 more damaging hits per attack), and so will almost certainly be outweighed by the pick’s d3 damage. For that reason, I’ve calculated the pick aberrant with two attacks from each weapon (rather than four claw attacks) against every option.
This first comparison shows the number of damaging hits we would expect from each option. Unsurprisingly, the four WS3+ attacks of the pick aberrant outperform the two WS4+ attacks of the hammer aberrant. In this comparison, the higher damage output of the hammer is ignored. Which sounds unfair, but this comparison is more useful against targets with one wound, where the multi-damage of both power weapons would be wasted anyway.
Against one wound models, the pick/claw combination is always superior.
TOTAL DAMAGE
However, we aren’t always fighting enemies with just a single wound. Which is where the higher damage output of the power weapons comes into play. Because the pick has variable damage (d3), I’ve just taken the mean average of 2 for this table.
And the tables have turned. Despite the hammer aberrant having fewer and less accurate attacks, the significantly greater strength, better AP and more consistent damage of the hammer means that against multi-wound targets it’s usually the better option. The pick still has a role to play against lightly armoured, multi-wound enemies of T4 or less, but that’s not giving us a broad selection of viable targets.
However. Multi-wound targets, especially in the 2 or 3 wound bracket, are hard to calculate for. Against a marine, the hammer is wasting a point of damage each time; the pick has a 2 in 3 chance of killing that same marine, but might only wound him and then waste damage from a second attack (but might equally finish him off with a claw, for no wasted damage). So we can’t just flatly say that hammers do more damage. In broad theory, yes; but in practice? Maybe.
ABERRANTS vs MARINES
At this point, I’m going to switch to a different approach. So far, we’ve been using mean averages – roll enough dice over a long enough period, and the results will tend towards the figures shown. But in reality, you can’t land 2.5 wounds on anything. Instead of averages, then, we need to look at the spread of results. What are the chances of any particular outcome playing out?
For this, I’m going to limit things to a couple of specific examples (because working it out for every combination of toughness and save just isn’t fun). Let’s start with a marine – toughness 4, 3+ save, 2 wounds.
PICK
A pick aberrant has an outside chance of killing three marines, if both pick attacks cause at least two damage, and both claw attacks succeed. On the other hand, even a successful pick attack will fail to kill an uninjured marine a third of the time. Ordering also matters – if the first pick attack kills a marine, but the second only wounds one, then the claw has a chance to finish the wounded one off if either attack causes damage; but if the first pick attack only wounds, the second can at best kill off the first marine, meaning that the claw only racks up a second kill if it succeeds twice (there are ten combinations that kill two marines – seven of them start with the first pick attack getting a kill).
Three kills is a long shot – it’s doable, but barely (you have better odds of rolling a triple 6). Even getting two kills is unlikely, at 6% - if twenty pick aberrants attacked marines, you’d expect just one of the aberrants to manage a double kill. Worryingly, even a single kill has just a 40% probability, and the most likely single outcome is that a pick aberrant fails to kill a single marine. In fact, more than half of a given aberrant brood won’t register a kill. That’s not great. But how does it compare to the hammer?
HAMMER
At flat 3 damage, a hammer aberrant will kill a marine for every failed save. Needing a 4+ to hit, 2+ to wound, and avoiding a 6+ save gives a 35% chance of effecting a kill with a single attack.
Which is noticeably better. We’ve given up the chance of three kills, but that wasn’t really happening for the pick aberrants anyway. Hammers are twice as likely to rack up two kills as their pick counterparts; and are more likely to get a single kill, which is also the most likely outcome overall. Where the pick aberrant has a cumulative 46% chance of killing at least one marine, the hammer aberrant has a 58% chance. [For comparative purposes, 58% is also the likelihood of rolling 7 or better on two dice; 46% is slightly more likely than rolling an 8 or better (at 42%).]
All of which boils down to this: if you want your aberrants to hit marines, take hammers. The better strength and AP outweigh the -1 to hit, and the flat damage seals the deal. With all of that in play, the hammer is more likely to get a kill than not; the pick is more likely to fail.
I’m a bit surprised by this result. The conventional wisdom has been to take picks, because they’re ‘better’ – look at all those attacks, weight of dice matters, -1 to hit cripples you. But mathematically, that’s not the case. Hammers get better results. In fairness, they cost more, but only by five points (at the moment) – is that extra damage output and (oddly for a -1 to hit weapon) reliability worth a few extra points? I think it might be.
ABERRANTS vs SICARIANS
Before we get carried away, let’s try all this against something else – specifically, AdMech sicarians (because my wife uses them a lot, so the outcome here matters to me). Sicarians (ruststalkers and infiltrators) are only T3, which is no different than T4 to aberrants, and have a 4+ save with a 5+ invulnerable – in effect, any AP over -1 is wasted, removing one of the hammer’s advantages. How will the spread play out here?
PICK
The pick is going to work out exactly the same as against marines – we still wound on 3s, and they still save on 5s. The claw is slightly different – AP-4 on 6s is effectively gone, as the sicarian save can only drop from 4+ to 5++; however, the claw will always push the save to that 5+, so the save is still generally worse than a marine. It pans out like this:
A touch better than against marines, but not by much. Given that the pick does most of the work here, the slightly better results for the claw don't swing things enough to make a significant difference.
HAMMER
The hammer will be less effective here than against marines – it still wounds on 2s, but the invulnerable save gives sicarians a 5+ save instead of the marines’ 6+. That improved save drops the chances of scoring a damaging hit from 35% to 28%. Any damaging hits will still result in straight kills, though.
It’s functionally identical, rounding errors aside. They have the same chance of missing completely, the same chance of causing a single kill, and pretty much the same chance of getting two kills (given how unlikely it is that the pick aberrant gets the third kill). This feels like the point at which the picks swing back into the lead, as they’re achieving the same results, but for less points.
I’m speculating rather than calculating here, but I’d expect that as a given invulnerable save increases, the balance of power swings towards the picks, where AP matters less. Similarly, the proliferation of transhuman-similar stratagems and abilities will also affect the hammers more. However, the hammers do have more damage up their sleeves (or manacles), so I would expect them to extend their advantage against 3-wound models (like terminators, who might be the perfect target for the hammers, given that AP-3 exactly reduces a 2+ save down to the 5+ invulnerable without wasting any AP, and they can utilise all 3 wounds of damage).
CONCLUSIONS
There’s not really one definitive answer here. This is one of those where what you’re hitting really makes a difference. If you’re up against enemy units that just have the one wound per model, then picks are the way forward. If you want your aberrants to put damage into tanks, get hammers. If you think you’re going to be facing marines, it’s hammers again, unless you also think they’ll have really good invulnerable saves, in which case go for the picks. Against AdMech, with hordes of skitarii and 5++ sicarians, picks are probably best, unless they bring lots of tanks, walkers and robots...
For me, there are two big take-aways here. The first is that picks aren’t always the best option, particularly as their strength (taking on light infantry) isn’t really something we struggle with across the Cult codex; there is definitely a place for hammer aberrants.
The second thing is more broadly applicable, and that’s how much more valuable flat damage is against multi-wound models. Having d3 damage on the picks is nice, but against marines (for example), a flat 2 would be way more effective.
Remember, this is all theory-hammer. I’m not considering faction bonuses, stratagems, relics, traits, and all the other things that affect how things play out on the battlefield. So you might find that your guys get different results to the generic numbers here. And if you’ve found the one true way to run aberrants, feel free to share it with the rest of us.
As always, thanks for sticking with it right to the end, and may your aberrants, whatever you arm them with, crush all before them on the day of uprising.