We’ve seen that acolytes are pretty good into most types of infantry. But how do they fare into tougher targets, like tanks?
We’re not blessed with an abundance of anti-tank options in the Cult. We have a few ways to bring mining lasers, true, but acolytes offer us a couple of different approaches – hacking heavy armour to pieces with mining tools, or blowing it up with demolition charges. Both sound like fun (for us, at least), but are they a sound approach or a desperation play? Let’s take a look.
For our purposes here, we’ll use the following tanks for target practice:
Rhino T9, 3+, 10W
Redemptor T10, 2+, 12W
Leman Russ T11, 2+ 13W
Land Raider T12, 2+, 16W
A rhino will be wounded on 3s by both mining tools and demo charges (as would anything T7/8). By the time we reach the Land Raider, mining tools will be down to 5s, and demo charges will wound on 4s.
COMBAT
To keep things simple, let’s compare four mining tools to four cult knives and claws. The figures here represent the number of damaging hits scored, not the total damage.
Rounding to the nearest whole number, mining tools would potentially land 9 damage on the rhino (almost destroying it), 6 damage on the redemptor, and just 3 damage on the Russ and the raider. Knives and claws potentially score a single wound, but not reliably – with a full unit, the claws would probably do enough damage to finish off the rhino, but not enough to make a critical difference into any of the others. Either way, it’s obvious that the punch of the mining tools far outweighs the extra attacks of the claws.
We have a few options for boosting our output here. The Primus gives us full rerolls (rather than the acolytes’ native reroll 1s) – that’s an increase of around 11% in accuracy, and isn’t going to significantly change the outcomes above. A Primus is nice with combat acolytes, and removes the frustration of rolling 2s, but he isn’t bringing that much to the table. [Running the numbers for unit of ten, the Primus makes them slightly more reliable, but doesn’t change the overall damage outcome.]
The Biophagus gives us Lethal Hits (the alchemicus familiar is useless here). Lethal Hits is more useful, allowing us to bypass the high toughness of armoured vehicles. It helps the mining tools, and gives the claws a change at doing something (although beating the save is still an issue).
Let’s switch to looking at a full unit of ten. For convenience, we’ll assume four mining tools and six claws. We’re now looking at the likely total damage, expressed as mining tools + claws.
Noticeably, as the target gets tougher, the Biophagus becomes more useful (because Lethal Hits matters more when you wound on 5s) – we’d likely cause double the damage into the Russ and raider, and might be slightly more confident about taking out a rhino.
SHOOTING
Again, keeping it easy, we’ll compare demo charges to hand flamers. Similarly, we’ll look at four of each (averaging the demo charge shots to 26, and the hand flamers to 14), and the numbers here depict the projected number of damaging hits.
Demo charges would potentially put 8 damage on a rhino, 6 on a redemptor or Russ, and 6 on a raider (but with much less confidence, due to the way rounding works). The flamers pretty much bounce off, despite auto-hitting, due to their low strength and AP – they might put a wound on the rhino, but that’s still not enough to destroy it (even six hand flamers don’t get there).
Character-wise, the Biophagus has no effect on our shooting. That leaves us with the Primus – he won’t affect the hand flamers, but offers a useful buff to the demo charges, which jump from a 39% chance to hit up to 56% (a 70% relative increase in accuracy).
Let’s switch to looking at a full unit of ten again, with four demo charges and six hand flamers. We’re looking at total damage again, as demo charges + hand flamers.
It’s enough to destroy the rhino, almost take out the redemptor or Russ, and would likely do significant damage even to the raider. Better, but not spectacular.
DEMO CHARGE ALPHA STRIKE
However, that’s not really how demo charges are used. If we’re planning to hit something hard, we tend to tool up properly. Coming in as reinforcements gives us sustained hits; Perfect Ambush gives us BS+1 and AP-1; Coordinated Trap gives +1 to wound; and we can gain a further AP-1 from a ridgerunner. That gives us:
26 demo charge shots, hitting on 4s with full rerolls and sustained hits, at S12 (+1 to wound) and AP-4
21 hand flamer shots, auto-hitting, at S3 (+1 to wound) and AP-2
[Bear in mind that the shot totals here are variable. Four demo charges can go as low as 16, and as high as 36; hand flamers range from 6 to 36. We’re just playing with the average.]
Now, this costs 4CP to set up (Perfect Ambush, Coordinated Trap and Tunnel Crawlers), plus points for a Primus with a very short life expectancy. Is it worth it?
With 26 demo charge shots, we initially land 13, including four 6s. We reroll the 13 misses, landing 7 more with two further 6s. As it turns out, we’d average around 26 hits from our 26 shots. Into anything shy of the raider, we’d usually wound on 3s which now become 2s, for around 22 wounds; in the raider, it’s 4s becoming 3s, for around 17 wounds. The rhino gets no save, and takes 44 damage. Everything else saves on 6s: the redemptor and Russ both save four times, taking 36 damage; the raider saves three times (less saves to make) and takes 28 damage. Everything is very dead. And we didn’t even touch the hand flamers.
Let’s back up a little. Coordinated Trap is the most expensive element here, and comes with some potentially unhelpful conditions – both units it affects can only target a single enemy unit. And as we’ve just seen, the first four models from the first unit will comfortably remove whatever they point at. So what if we didn’t use that stratagem?
We still land 26 hits with the demo charges. We now get 17 wounds into most targets, and 13 into the raider. The rhino takes 34 damage; the redemptor and Russ save three and take 28 damage; the raider saves two and takes 22 damage. Everything is still dead, with room to spare. And we still have six AP-2 hand flamers to go, which we can now put into something else because we’re no longer locked to a single target.
CONCLUSION
Vehicles are a tough target in 10th edition. Neither flavour of acolyte (mining tools or demo charges) will reliably take out even a rhino, and do increasingly less damage above that. But the right buffs make demo charges a lot more dangerous.
Mining tools work, but are unlikely to destroy armour outright. The Primus provides a touch more reliability; the Biophagus is the better option to increase damage.
Demo charges are more variable, and slightly better into heavy armour (like the Russ or raider) due to S12. The Primus is more useful here, as full rerolls on a low BS unit are valuable.
Dropping 2CP and ridgerunner shooting to support a demo charge unit coming out of reserves gives a pretty good chance of obliterating a heavy tank, or even multiple transports, plus bonus infantry with the flamers. Under the right circumstances, we could punch a significant hole in the enemy lines (or clear a flank) for around 300 points.
If we have the support to make it work, demolition charge acolytes are an absolute ace-in-the-hole unit that can pretty much pick a target and remove it. I can see why people are currently loading up with a couple of these units for turns two and three. And now they get to reload their charges when they inevitably get gunned down (although with significantly less utility, as I don’t think Cult Ambush and Tunnel Crawlers overlap, meaning revived units will potentially drop in during turn two for their big moment, spend turn three recycling, reappear in turn four, and be close enough to use those demo charges again in turn five).
But ultimately, if you really want something dead, tunnel crawling acolytes chucking demo charges with a Primus is probably the way to do it. Happy hunting.