The Patriarch has access to a wide variety of creeds, warlord traits, and even a couple of relics. Amongst all the options, which are the ones that turn his combat potential up to 11?
The Patriarch is a multi-faceted piece – warlord, psyker, morale-booster, and combat monster. The base model comes with useful abilities right off the datasheet, with the option to advance and charge (always good on a model with no guns), re-rollable wounds and the potential to push his AP to -6 and damage to 3. On top of that, the Patriarch almost always has a warlord trait (given that he has to be the warlord), and that’s often another combat boost.
A factor here is that a lot of warlord traits (and relics) are locked to certain creeds. This limits the combinations we can run, but there are still a good few options. And where there are options, there’s usually choices that produce better results than others. Obviously, if a more narrative approach is your thing, then go with whatever works for you. But if you’re of a more competitive bent, or just like to know how the various options play out, then let’s find out how we can cause maximum carnage.
Last time I ran the numbers on the Patriarch, I used a Guardsman, a Marine and a Gravis Captain as his targets, so let’s stick with that. Armour of Contempt is now a thing, so we’ll factor that in too.
CULT WARLORD TRAITS
There are two of the non-creed-specific traits that directly affect the Patriarch’s combat abilities – Biomorph Adaptation (+1 attack) and Preternatural Speed (re-roll hits). We can ignore the toughness boost from Biomorph and the strikes first part of Speed, as they affect combat in a more defensive way. They’re both useful, but not within our scope here.
The maths here is made slightly complicated by the ‘rending 6s’ on the wound roll. Rest assured it’s getting factored in. However, only the AP boost matters against marines (as 2 damage kills them as effectively as 3 damage), and only the damage boost matters against the Captain (as either AP gets us to the invulnerable save).
As it turns out, when we use basic ‘average’ outcomes, Biomorph and Speed produce exactly the same results. In practice, they’re very slightly different – Biomorph opens up the possibility of 7 hits, for example, which balances those attacks being slightly less accurate. But overall, both traits generate the same offensive output. The only real choice here is whether you prefer to be T6 (handy against S3, S5 and S6), or to always strike first. Both are situational, and can be useful in the right match-ups.
This also shows us that the Patriarch isn’t the full-on combat blender that we might want him to be. With one of the generic warlord traits and no relic, he’ll kill 5 Guardsmen, 4 Marines, or wound (but probably not kill) a Gravis Captain. It’s not terrible, certainly, but it’s not devastating either.
CULT RELICS, CULT OF THE FOUR-ARMED EMPEROR and PAUPER PRINCES
Nope. There are no regular relics that affect the offensive output of a Patriarch. We can only make use of three relics at all – the Crouchling and Unwilling Orb affect psychic abilities, and whilst the Amulet of the Voidwyrm can help us to stay alive long enough to get into combat, it doesn’t make us any more effective once we get there. All of the others are linked to specific characters, or to weapons that the Patriarch can’t take.
Similarly, the Cult of the Four-Armed Emperor offers us nothing to boost our combat punch – some interesting tricks and strategic play, but nothing that directly affects the degree of damage we can put out. If you want a combat Patriarch, this isn’t the cult for you.
Pauper Princes is in an odd place as far as the Patriarch is concerned. The cult creed is combat oriented, but +1 to hit isn’t that useful when you’re already WS2+. And whilst the stratagem, relic and even the psychic power affect combat in different ways, they’re not really boosting that all important damage output. This might be great on other combat troops, but for the Patriarch it’s a pass.
HIVECULT
As a general rule, the Hivecult is a firepower option, but it’s also the home of the Vockor’s Talisman relic. This allows any wound rolls of 5+ to completely bypass saves, even invulnerable saves. This combines with the Patriarch’s claws, so 6s to wound would generate an unstoppable 3 damage. And because the claws have full rerolls, we have the option to fish for those 5+ wound rolls if the AP-3/-6 isn’t cutting it.
As the Hivecult’s warlord trait doesn’t affect combat, we’ll run the Talisman with the two options from the general list.
The Talisman has no effect against Guardsman, because they weren’t getting a save anyway; and it generates around 0.4 additional damaging hits against Marines (because it doubles our chances of ignoring their save). Where the Talisman shines is against the Captain’s iron halo. Suddenly, two thirds of our successful wounds are bypassing that 4++ save, exposing the Captain to far more damage than usual – enough that you’d have a fair chance of killing him outright even with just the Talisman and no warlord trait.
It's interesting to note what happens when we go fishing for those 5+ wound rolls. Against Marines, it works against us – we only gain the Talisman’s benefits on a wound roll of 5 (as wounds of 6 were already ignoring saves with AP-6), and rerolling 3s and 4s means we’re trading some successful wound rolls for likely fails. However, against the Captain, the picture is different. The overall number of damaging hits doesn’t change (well, there’s a tiny marginal increase, but not enough to affect the numbers here). But rerolling the 4s here increases our chances of scoring 5s and 6s, and because they negate the save completely, that’s a worthwhile risk (and is slightly better than holding onto 4s that have an even chance of bouncing off the iron halo anyway).
BLADED COG
The Bladed Cog isn’t a great fit for a combat Patriarch. Their creed hands out a 6+ invulnerable and the ability to reroll a wound, both of which we already have. The relic, the Mark of the Clawed Omnissiah, is more helpful to us, dropping mortal wounds on any enemy units within engagement range. The mean average output from the Mark is 1.5 mortals (regardless of the target units’ profiles). This keeps things nice and easy for us, as we can simply add those to the damaging hits we’ve worked out before.
Like the Hivecult, the Bladed Cog warlord trait doesn’t affect the Patriarch’s combat abilities, so we’ll run the Mark with the standard Biomorph/Speed option instead.
In general terms, the Mark will usually kill at least one extra Guardsman, with a 50% chance of 2 or 3, making more effective than the Talisman. It also has a 50% chance to kill an extra Marine, which is roughly on par with the Talisman – the Mark kills a marine half the time; the Talisman gains 0.4 additional damaging hits, and as each damaging hit kills a Marine, the outcomes are almost the same.
Against the Captain, the additional mortals bypass the iron halo save completely, akin to the Talisman, but have a smaller overall effect, taking the wound count to 5.9 for the relic on its own, or 6.6 with a warlord trait. Pushing through a mortal wound or two is less efficient that getting those 2- and 3-damage hits straight through the invulnerable save.
As a bonus, if you get the Patriarch into multiple combats then the Mark becomes increasingly effective, as it’ll drop those mortals onto every potential target.
RUSTED CLAW
The Rusted Claw isn’t necessarily a ‘go to’ combat creed, but it has some interesting tools – not least the Entropic Touch warlord trait. 6s to hit gain an additional two hits, and AP is improved by 1 (which is nice into power armour). Unlike the other cults we’ve looked at so far, this is warlord trait rather than a relic, so can’t be combined with Biomorph or Speed. It could be linked to the Rusted Claw relic, the Nomad’s Mantle, which offers no direct combat boosts but is going to make getting into combat an awful lot easier (even through screening troops, if you fancied turning the Patriarch into an out-and-out character hunter).
For our purposes, though, we’ll just focus on Entropic Touch.
Entropic Touch outperforms the Talisman against Guardsmen and Marines (where the Talisman has little or no effect), and is similar (but more consistent) than the Mark (which has greater variance, as the final damage output depends on how many mortal wounds you roll on a single d6). Against the Captain, it is less effective; the extra hits can’t compete with the abilities of the Talisman and the Mark to just bypass the 4+ invulnerable.
TWISTED HELIX
Okay. This feels like the big one. Buffing up for combat is the Helix thing, right? It certainly looks that way. The creed provides +1 strength (which will work well into our test targets, as an S6 Patriarch now wounds Guardsmen on 2s, and the Captain on 3s), the warlord trait gives +1 damage, and the relic opens up several optional buffs. Let’s be generous and assume we included an Biophagus in our list, meaning we can access both +1AP and an additional hit on 6s.
This is the first time we have mix-and-match possibilities. With both a Helix relic and warlord trait on the table, we can combine the Elixir relic with either the Bio-Alchemist trait or the Biomorph/Speed option from the main list (which continue to mirror each other, even with the exploding 6s).
Into Guardsmen and Marines, the Elixir/Biomorph and Elixir/Speed combinations are excellent – with an extra attack or rerolls to hit, exploding 6s, wounding on 2s with rerolls, these versions of the Patriarch kill a lot of Guardsmen, or a combat squad of Marines (which feels like the gold standard – getting five Marines in one go means no return attacks, and a consolidation move to a better position.
Into the Captain, the Bio-Alchemist is one of the strongest options, almost matching the heights of Vockor’s Talisman. Whilst the Elixir/Bio-Alchemist approach still bounces off the invulnerable save half the time, the bonus damage means that the hits that do get through really count. Sadly, Bio-Alchemist is wasted into lighter targets, as 2 damage was already enough. And into other 3-wound targets, we run the risk of encountering higher toughness or more invulnerable saves. As with the Talisman, this is one to save for a character-hunting build rather than general combat brutality.
MYRIAD CULTS
The last option available to us is the Myriad Cults. Going this route means we can’t take a useful relic (as we saw earlier, none of the general relics affect combat output directly), which is a bit of a restriction. There are a few creed options that we could drop onto a combat Patriarch, but most them aren’t really useful.
Impassioned (+1 to hit) is rarely going to come up. Likewise, Cold-Eyed Killers (+1AP on 6s to wound) would give us a ridiculous AP-7, but there’s no practical advantage over the AP-6 we already get from those 6s. Deep Supplies (reroll one wound roll) is already covered by the Patriarchs claws, which leaves Toxin Agents (hit rolls of 6 automatically wound), potentially generating one free wound per combat. I think I’ll pass on the Myriads.
CONCLUSIONS
If we pull all of the different cult options into one list, we end up with this:
INFANTRY
Let’s do the easy bits first. In terms of raw numbers (and bearing in mind that these are crude averages rather than most likely outcomes), the Helix-specific combination of the Elixir relic with either the Biomorph or Preternatural Speed traits (further enhanced by the Helix +1 strength creed) is the way to go against 1- and 2- wound infantry. [With the Speed trait, for example, we’ve got 6 attacks, hitting on 2s with full rerolls and exploding 6s, wounding on 2s or 3s with full rerolls and rending 6s, with AP-4 2-damage base rising to AP-7 3-damage from those 6s.]
Honourable mentions go to Entropic Touch, where the pairing of exploding 6s and +1AP really hurts Marines, and is still good against Guardsmen even though the AP is wasted; and to the Mark of the Clawed Omnissiah – the mortal wound output is swingy, but a good roll potentially makes this option the most dangerous of all.
CHARACTERS
Against invulnerable saves, Hivecult-locked Vockor’s Talisman is the strongest play. With a third of all wounds simply unsaveable, and with half of those triggering damage 3, the Talisman is both destructive and reliable. It’s worth noting that even without any supporting warlord traits, the Talisman still does better into the Captain than anything except itself with traits, and the Elixir/Bio-Alchemist combination (which does more damage overall, but is likely to be highly variable). Whilst the Hivecult tends towards a firepower-based approach, this provides an effective counter-charge option into opposing elite combat units.
As alluded to above, the Helix option of Elixir and Bio-Alchemist is also worth a look. It’s serious overkill into Guardsmen, but good into Marines (and kills even 3-wound models outright), and dangerous into things like the Captain, where a couple of failed saves will see most characters brought down.
NEPHILIM
At the time of writing, relics and warlord traits come at a cost in competitive play – 1CP each, even for the first one. One of the things we can take out of all this number-crunching is that the most efficient single choice into both Guardsmen and Marines is Entropic Touch; into invulnerable saves, it’s the Talisman. If you want to minimise your pre-game spend, those are the ones to consider.
BALANCE
One of the positives here is that all of the Cult creeds potentially have play. If you want your Patriarch to go toe-to-talon with enemy heroes, Hivecult and Twisted Helix give you the tools. If you know you’re going to be hunting Marines (or Armour of Contempt in general), then Rusted Claw looks good. And if you prefer to simply rampage through enemy lines, either Twisted Helix or Bladed Cog can provide a general purpose wrecking ball. As we’ve seen before with this codex, there’s no clear ‘correct’ choice here. A good fit is going to depend on your playstyle, your opponent, the rest of your list, and in some cases, how lucky you feel.
My own preference lies with the Twisted Helix, pairing the Elixir with Preternatural Speed (because the problems that a free counter-charge provides can give your opponent a few tricky choices to make). As I said above, rerolling all your hits and wounds, with exploding and rending 6s, a minimum of AP-4 and 2 damage, and then +1 strength, +1” move and immunity from being wounded on 2s – it’s quite the package. Throwing him downfield with a couple of packs of genestealers early in the game can pile on a lot of pressure. It doesn’t always work for me, but when it does, it really does. Alternatively, if I'm aiming for a more balanced build, and need the relics elsewhere (like my Magus and Nexos), then Preternatural Speed on its own gives some serious reliability, especially when coupled with the claws.
Anyway. I hope that gives you a few things to think about, and a basis for making those vital decisions about tooling up one of our more influential pieces. May your uprisings always see the oppressors brought low.