The Abominant. It’s a cracking model with some interesting rules. But is that big hammer any good when clobberin’ time rolls around?
The Abominant feels like he should be a combat piece. His hammer certainly thinks so, at Sx2, AP-3 and D3+3 damage. Even his WS3+ and S5 look reasonable. And then we get to his attacks – 3 attacks is not a lot. It’s one less than a basic acolyte leader, and even a 6-point neophyte leader can get to the same three attacks with a chainsword (for free). So how does the Abominant play out on the tabletop, and how can we get the most out of that massive hunk of powered metal?
[Honestly, I didn’t arigonally bother mathing in the Mindwyrm Familiar reroll, just to save a bit of work. Except then I felt bad about not doing it, and went and worked it all out anyway, and had to come back and rewrite all of this one because it has quite a noticeable effect at the top end. You can read more about that side of things in part three. Yes, there are three parts.]
THE ABOMINANT: COMBAT
The Abominant fights at S10, which means that he wounds on 2s against everything up to and including T5, and on 3s against everything else. He’ll also ignore saves of 4+ or worse, marines are reduced to 6+, and most things that have an invulnerable will need to use it. Against regular infantry models, a damaging hit is almost always a kill, because there are very few (if any) squad-level models with more than 4 wounds.
Let’s take a look at the Abominant’s chances of doing damage against the regular benchmark profiles: a guardsman (representing all T3-T5, 4+ save infantry); a marine (enough save to still get one; or 6++ saves like the AdMech); a marine captain (4+ invulnerable and 7 wounds, requiring more than one damaging hit to kill); and a Leman Russ (T6+, good save, 12 wounds).
INFANTRY
Good news – our 95-point elite choice is likely to turn two or three infantry models into red paste. Take that, 15-points-worth of guardsmen. [By way of comparison, a single genestealer (also an elite option, but only 14 points) has a 40% chance of killing three or more guardsmen. In fairness, cheap infantry are bread and butter for genestealers, and serious overkill for the Abominant, so it’s not the kindest comparison. But it's still useful.]
Against marines, the outcome is slightly worse, just as we’d expect given that we’re no longer negating the whole save. Marines are still not an ideal target, and the most likely outcome here is that our 95-point model kills two marines. Not great.
Against basic infantry, the Abominant falls short. Why? Because that hammer is making a few targets very dead indeed. As many as 5 wounds are being wasted each time. If that squad of marines was a single character, things would look different - now those hits are concentrated on a single target, and we’re getting much better value from the high damage characteristic.
CHARACTERS
Let’s imagine a marine character with 6 wounds and no invulnerable save (we’ll come back to that). Now we have a 64% chance of a straight kill – three hits generates 12-18 damage; two hits gives 8-12 damage. We also have a 1-in-3 chance of a single damaging hit rolling a 3 and causing 6 wounds, for another 9%. In total, that’s a 73% chance of killing a T4, 3+ save, 6-wound character; rising to 92% if they only have 4 wounds. And the same maths applies to any character of T5 or less, with a save of 3+ or less, if they don’t have an invulnerable save. Which covers a fair number of support characters, I suspect.
INVULNERABLE SAVES
Invulnerable saves are the fly in the ointment, because they don’t care about the AP-3 (which is doing a lot of work for us here). You can see it in the sudden drop-off above, as we go from a 25% chance of 3 damaging hits against marines to just 5% against captains. Same Abominant, same T4 – the only difference is the invulnerable save, and it hurts.
If we’re talking about a regular marine captain, with just 6 wounds, we’re down to a 44% of killing him straight up. But if we’re going after a primaris version, with 7 wounds, then a single damaging hit can’t do the job, and we’re down to a 30% chance – as it happens, whilst one hit won’t do it, two or three hits always will, because even two hits does a minimum 8 damage. If the Abominant can get his attacks through, he’ll kill characters. He just doesn’t have enough attacks to be reliable.
TANKS
The Russ is about as tough as they come, so this is the worst-case scenario – the Abominant will do better against other armoured options (but not much better, as the hit and wound rolls remain constant). We do slightly better here than against the marine captain [also interesting – T4 with a 4++ does better here than T8 with a 2+. Invulnerable saves really do good work].
As with invulnerable characters, if we can land hits, damage starts to stack up. Against the Russ, and taking the cumulative chances of achieving a certain damage or higher, it looks like this:
[One curious feature of the power sledgehammer is that it can’t score 7 damage. A single hit scores a maximum of 6; two hits scores a minimum of 8. The damage output also curves – two hits generate 8-12 damage, and are most likely to get 10; three hits generate 12-18, most likely to get 15.]
So the Abominant has an 11% chance to take out a Russ in one turn. Given that he needs to cause 6 damage to bracket it, there’s a 49% chance of doing at least that much and slowing the tank down – not bad, but it’s a coin toss. Overall, the Abominant is likely to damage a Russ, doing enough to bracket it half the time, and always has an outside chance to take it out completely. Again, he can get the job done, but you can’t count on it.
THOUGHTS
As ever, there’s a fair chunk of number-crunching here, so let’s try to pull the most salient points out of the waffle.
o The Abominant is wasted against most infantry, likely killing three guardsmen or two marines (and bouncing off units like bladeguard because of their shields)
o He’s unlikely to kill characters with good invulnerable saves
o He won’t reliably cripple heavy tanks (although lighter vehicles are fair game), but will likely damage them
o He’s good at splatting support characters (if they don’t have an invulnerable save)
That’s not a wide range of good targets.
As we said right back at the top, 3 attacks is not a lot. The Mindwyrm re-roll will smooths out a little of the spiking, but it won’t rescue us from three missed hits or bad wound rolls, and with only three dice in play, the outcomes can be calculated but remain highly variable.
In terms of his own damage output, the Abominant is underwhelming unless you can get him into those support characters, or perhaps an already-damaged tank. And for 95 points, I could have nearly 7 genestealers (98 points), or 8 acolytes with a pair of mining weapons (92 points), both of which feel like more useful options. If the Abominant is on the battlefield, I can probably find something for him to do (or at least threaten); I’m just not sure I want him on the battlefield in the first place, given the other options.
All that said, the Abominant is more than just a big hammer. He’s one of the toughest models we have (T5, -1 damage, 5+ FNP), and provides buffs to aberrants (who aren’t Core, so don’t (usually) benefit from other support characters like the Primus). Is that enough to make the Abominant a viable choice? Well, that’s what part two is for.
[So here’s a thought. I don’t tend to get into ‘what if’ scenarios (because they’re not going to happen) – but indulge me just this once. What if the Abominant had been given the roll-over damage from the hypermorph’s heavy improvised weapon? What if those d3+3 wounds were all getting used every time? Suddenly, instead of two or three dead guardsmen, we’re looking at anything from 8 to 12, with a (very) outside chance of smearing 18 infantry models out of existence in a single round of combat.
You could even give it some fluff-justification by saying that the Abominant’s enhanced musculature allows it to sweep the power sledgehammer through bodies as if they weren’t there, bludgeoning handfuls of the enemy with each stroke.
It would also give the Abominant a bit more purpose (and threat). You can imagine him rampaging around the backfield, smashing up small units, support pieces and characters, and generally making enough of a nuisance of himself that your opponent has to deal with him somehow, diverting resources that could be better used elsewhere. And suddenly you have the simple-minded rage-beast of the fluff. Like I say, just a thought.]