The Cult’s gunslinging folk-hero packs a lot of shooting onto a single model. But is it all flashy gunplay, or can he settle a few scores before going down in a blaze of glory?
The Kelermorph is one of those units that has the potential to fulfil multiple battlefield roles. He shoots (a lot), which opens up character assassination attempts or clearing lightly held objectives; he buffs the shooting of nearby units; and his Hypersensory Abilities open up all sorts of shenanigans around line-of-sight and objective grabbing. He’s versatile, is what we’re saying.
But what interests me are those guns. The liberator autostubs can dish out a lot of shots (up to 12), and come with their own suite of special rules. Let’s take a look at how they work, and what we can expect to get out of them.
LIBERATOR AUTOSTUBS
The Kelermorph puts out six shots as standard (three pistols with two shots each). His Gunslinger rule means that any shots that hit generate a further shot with the same weapon. The wording here threw me off for a bit, because I tend to think of firing a pistol as an attack; but the rules are clear that a pistol 2 weapon makes two attacks. So the effect is nice and simple – every hit from the first set of six dice generates another shot. So we could score anything up to 12 hits.
[This table is based on the Kelermorph firing at BS2+ with no modifiers to hit, and has been rounded to the nearest whole number (for simplicity).]
The single most likely outcome is 10 hits, and the mean average is a fraction over 9 hits. It’s not bad for a single 80-point model. For Crossfire purposes, there’s a 98% chance of scoring the five hits we need to trigger a marker, which is very reliable.
It’s worth noting, however, that this is under ideal conditions. If the Kelermorph suffers any negative modifiers (such as firing through dense terrain), his numbers drop off fairly quickly. At BS3+, the most likely outcome drops to 6 or 7 hits (both at 17%), and the mean average falls to 6.6. There’s still an 84% chance of scoring five hits, which is virtually the same odds as rolling a 2+ on a single die. Not as good as 98%, but still not bad.
The problem with the liberator autostubs is that getting hits isn’t the problem – it’s what happens next. S5 is useful, and means we wound most infantry on 3+ (dropping to 4+ against T5). AP-1 is less good, especially with the new Armour of Contempt rule, which negates it completely. And after all that, it’s only damage 1.
Against a standard marine (T4, 3+ save, 2 wounds), there’s a 22% chance of a successful hit causing damage. Or, to put it another way, using crude averages, a single hit causes 0.22 wounds. Given that the most likely single outcome when shooting with a Kelermorph is 10 hits, we’d then expect to land 2.2 wounds on a marine – enough to kill one, or injure a character. Not great. Even when we factor in the mortal wounds (a 17% chance of a successful hit causing an additional mortal wound, or 0.17 mortals per hit, or 1.7 mortals from 10 hits), we only get to 3.9 wounds – probably two dead marines, or a badly wounded character.
Obviously, he’ll do better against softer targets. Against AdMech skitarii (or other T3, 4+ save models), we’re looking at 0.44 wounds per hit, plus the mortals (which are fixed at 0.17 per hit, as they always trigger only on 6s) for 6.1 wounds caused. That gives a reasonable chance of dropping in and clearing out a 5-man unit, or assassinating a support character.
But it still feels somewhat underwhelming. Maybe he’ll do better with the Wyrmtooth rounds.
WYRMTOOTH ROUNDS
This relic option is a straight upgrade on the autostubs, because it doesn’t replace them – wyrmtooth rounds are an alternate firing mode. So you can still fire as pistols if you want to (in melee, for example), but can flip to the wyrmtooth rounds as and when appropriate.
That said, the firing profile of the wyrmtooth does make sacrifices. Just three shots instead of six, heavy instead of pistol (with the potential -1 to hit), the loss of the autostubs’ mortal wound output, and the loss of ignoring Look Out Sir, which is tied to the pistols not the Kelermorph himself.
Is it worth it (given that we’re also burning up a relic slot to get these)? Let’s assume that the Kelermorph is firing on the move (because the enemy aren’t always going to walk straight into the open to be shot at). This being the case, we’re reduced to BS3+.
Here, the single most likely outcome is 4 hits, with the mean average at 3.3 hits. We only need one hit to trigger crossfire here (it’s a multi-damage weapon now), which happens 96% of the time – a pinch worse than the autostubs, but the difference between 96 and 98% really isn’t critical.
Having made the hits, how likely is the wyrmtooth to finish the job? Against marines, we still wound on 3s, have an effective AP-2 for a 5+ save, and a damaging hit will kill a marine. There’s a 44% chance of a successful hit causing damage. Assuming 4 hits (most likely outcome), the crude average is 1.8 damaging hits – probably two dead marines, or (with reasonable luck, and if they don’t have an invulnerable save) a dead character. If they do have an invulnerable save (usually 4++), we drop to a 33% chance of causing damage, or 1.3 damaging hits – six wounds if we’re lucky, but it’s much more likely to be just three. And that assuming we can target the character in the first place, which is no longer a given.
And into something like AdMech (who have a default 6++ on skitarii), we’ll wound on 2s, knock them down to that bionics save, and gain a 69% of a hit turning into damage. Four hits becomes 2.8 damaging hits, or three dead skitarii. But then, we probably aren’t going to shoot wyrmtooth rounds into light infantry (and we have the choice, remember, as these are an addition, not a replacement).
Overall, wyrmtooth rounds aren’t doing significantly more damage than regular autostubs. Both would expect to kill two marines; wyrmtooth rounds are slightly more effective against support characters, and slightly swingier against invulnerable saves (partly because the autostubs AP is so low that invulnerable saves don’t even come into play against them).
One of the perks of heavy weapons is that they can’t suffer further modifiers to hit. So these numbers hold true into dense terrain, or into units that modify incoming firepower. Which is handy.
But if we can keep the Kelermorph still and fire at BS2+, there’s a significant lift in the numbers.
Firing at BS2+, we’re massively more likely to get 6 hits (the most likely single outcome), or get at least 4 hits (81% of the time), with the mean average jumping up to 4.5 as well. Going from BS3+ to BS2+ (if everything else stays the same) usually increases your final damage output by 25%. But that’s distorted here, because of Gunslinger – getting more hits up-front allows more hit rolls in the second round of shooting, so you’re not just more accurate, but you have more dice to be accurate with. Crossfire goes off 99% of the time, and everything is rosy. Trickier to achieve, but potentially worth it.
Or is it? Assuming six hits, which still have a 44% chance to go on to cause damage, we now score an average of 2.6 damaging hits (all but 50% more than at BS3+, because Gunslinger), which is 3 dead marines if we’re generous, but still with a fair chance of just bagging two again. Which isn’t much better than the BS3+ outcome. Overall, standing still and firing wyrmtooth rounds produces the best results against well-armoured, multi-wound infantry, but we’re sacrificing mobility and a relic to do it. Given the other relics we have access to, I'm not sure this one makes it over the line.
CONCLUSIONS
[Full disclosure: I’ve used two types of processing here. With the shots I went all in and calculated the full spread – every possible outcome, and the likelihood of any given outcome occurring 9which is why they’re all presented in percentages). When it came to the wound and save rolls, I didn’t do this, because I didn’t want to – too many potential outcomes to make it anything but a slog. So I switched to the crude average. This is simpler, but falls into the trap of suggesting that 10 autostub hits will produce two dead marines. That’s the ‘average’ result, but it could be anything from zero dead marines all the way up to five dead marines or a full squad of guardsmen (neither is likely, but both are possible). So please bear that in mind when assessing all this.]
So, what have we learned so far?
o Liberator autostubs will generally score a lot of hits, but the final damage output suffers from a profile with AP-1 and damage 1.
o Wyrmtooth rounds are slightly better into some targets, like marines (despite giving up mortal wounds and the option to target characters), but don’t offer a significant improvement overall.
o The Kelermorph can deliver a crossfire marker around 96-99% of the time (dropping to 84% in the worst-case scenario (autostubs at -1 to hit).
The thing is, the Kelermorph can have a lot of shots that aren’t great, or half as many good shots (where the quality generally makes up for the fewer shots, but ends up in much the same place overall). Either way, he’s not reliably taking out characters, and is unlikely to clear objectives if anything heavier than skitarii are holding them. Sadly, he’s lost access to the Oppressor’s Bane relic (autopistols only now, and the Kelermorph only carries autostubs), which would have given back some damage two shooting. Ultimately, whilst the volume of fire looks impressive, it’s not backed up with enough of a weapon profile to make those shots stick.
But I don’t think the Kelermorph is intended to be an assassin. Going back to that opening paragraph, he’s a tactical piece now – a Swiss Army knife of a model. He has some shooting, he buffs nearby shooting units (probably, given that he has to score a kill first), and offers a range of tricky plays via his shoot-and-move rules, which allow him to position, shoot and then hide again, every turn. Or to make surprisingly quick moves across the board (up to 12” whilst still firing, which is more reliable than an advance move). Or to ambush in, shoot, and then move 6” onto a nearby objective, or into a deployment zone, or to wherever your opponent was trying to screen out.
And there we are. As the Magnificent Seven once showed us, you can do far more with cunning and guile than by sheer firepower alone - maybe that’s why the Kelermorph always reminds me of Yul Brynner. Anyway. However you choose to use him, may the music of Ennio Morricone* always play in your head whenever the Kelermorph hits the table. Happy hunting.
* I know it's a different movie. But Eastwood is just too hairy to be a Kelermorph, even if he does rock that poncho.