Myriad Cults again – this time, we’re looking at Toxin Agents. Automatically wounding on 6s is always useful, but as with all the Myriad Cults, it means giving up one of the better-known Cult Creeds. Is it worth it?
Hit rolls of 6 generating automatic wounds is something of a thing at the moment, appearing in different forms in the new Votann and Guard codices. And the Cult has its own version – Toxin Agents. There are, naturally, a few limitations: the effect only triggers on an unmodified hit roll of 6, and doesn’t affect vehicles or monsters (which is a shame, given that they’re generally the tougher targets where free wounds would be extremely valuable). It also only works in close combat.
The big question here is this: how does Toxin Agents match up against the more conventional combat-oriented creeds of Twisted Helix and Pauper Princes (which for our purposes here is the same as the Myriad Cult option Impassioned)?
Cult combat troops offer a fair bit of variety. Taking Acolytes as our baseline (WS3+, S4), we can hit better with Genestealers (2+, S4), hit harder with Metamorphs (3+, S5) or Aberrants (3+, S8), or go for the desperation option in Neophytes (4+, S3). Hopefully, this’ll mean that we’ll get a good idea of how the different creeds compare across a wide range of situations.
So, how does it all play out?
ACOLYTES
Acolytes are our basic combat troops, which makes them a good starting point. To keep things easy, I’m going to work with 36 attacks for every unit, and I’m only calculating the hit and wound rolls – as none of the creeds we’re looking at affect the saving throw, there’s no need to consider it here. And because we’re going with 36 attacks, we can assume that six of those will roll 6s, meaning that Toxin Agents will always generate six automatic wounds (in these examples).
Toxin Agents, as we might expect, becomes increasingly effective (relatively speaking) as its targets become tougher – we can see that it drops just three wounds at each toughness/strength break-point, compared to four for Helix (whose break-points are a point higher, due to their strength bonus) and five for Princes. Automatic wounds are really useful when you need 5s (or 6s) to wound; less so when you’re wounding on 3s. Here, by the time we get to T5 and T6 targets, Toxin Agents accounts for half of our successful wounds.
The +1 to hit provided by Pauper Princes means more hits (30, compared to 24 for the other creeds), but does nothing to help with wounding. This is particularly helpful against T3, where all three options are wounding on 3s, so having the most hits is the deciding factor.
Twisted Helix’s +1 strength comes into play across T4 and T5, where Helix acolytes have a better chance to wound than their rivals. However, that bonus counts for nothing against T3 and T6 – this has always been the downside of +1 strength; if it doesn’t push you through a break-point, it’s not making a difference.
GENESTEALERS
Genestealers have WS2+, so gain no benefit from Pauper Princes, and that’s reflected here – Princes is always the lowest scoring option for genestealers. Once again, Helix is strong across T4 and T5.
As before, Toxin Agents is good against T6. But here, they also do well into T3. Will all three creeds hitting on 2s and wounding on 3s, both the Princes and Helix are effectively negated, meaning that having six wound rolls going through automatically (rather than on 3s) tips Toxins over the top.
METAMORPHS
Metamorphs have a natural +1 strength, rising to +2 with Helix. This allows them to wound T3 on 2s, putting them on par with Princes (hitting on 3s, wounding on 2s produces the same results as hitting on 2s, wounding on 3s).
Above T3, metamorphs follow the same pattern as acolytes, just at a point of toughness higher – Princes are strongest at T4, Helix at T5 and T6, and Toxins at T6 (and potentially, T7).
ABERRANTS
As ever, aberrants and Helix just don’t mix well – it’s the weakest option at every point here. Why? Because against T3 and T4, everyone is wounding on 2s, so the extra hits from Princes and more reliable wounding via Toxins push both ahead of Helix. And at T5 and T6, an extra point of strength isn’t enough to make a difference either – everyone wounds on 3s, and the Helix bonus is wasted again.
As I suggested earlier, Toxins become more effective the harder it is to wound. So with aberrants, who wound almost everything on 2s or 3s, the extra hits from Princes count for more than the automatic wounds. As we’ve seen before, Princes is just a good fit for aberrants.
NEOPHYTES
Another interesting one. All three creeds convert a third of their attacks into wounds against T3. But after that, the automatic wounds of Toxins pushes them ahead. Other than that, Helix outperforms Princes at the break-points (T4 and T6 here), and Princes pips Helix at T5. All of which may be academic if we can keep neophytes out of combat anyway…
SUMMARY
Where does all that leave us?
o Pauper Princes is the best option into T3, unless you’re using genestealers. It’s also the best option for aberrants (and metamorphs into T4 targets).
o Twisted Helix is the best fit for acolytes and genestealers if you’re fighting against T4/5 (or T5/6 with metamorphs).
o Toxin Agents works well with neophytes, and is the best option into T6 (except with aberrants).It’s also a good fit for genestealers attacking T3 targets.
It’s all a bit of a mixed bag, and none of the creeds dominate.
Helix is a good mainstream choice – T4/5 covers a lot of opposing armies (including the ubiquitous marines), with acolytes and genestealers both good options for combat units in general, bringing obsec and mining weapons, and speed and volume of attacks respectively. Princes (in this context, at least) seems strong into T3, suggesting hordes; or into anything you can hit with aberrants (although sadly, their anti-horde stratagem is locked to Helix).
Which leaves Toxin Agents, where we want to be throwing neophytes into T6 targets, and genestealers into T3, right? Probably not. Toxins do have the edge over the other two creeds in those specific situations, but it’s not something we want to build around, I think.
The key thing to note here is that we’re talking about small margins. Whilst we can highlight the strongest options in each scenario, the difference is often just one or two wounds, and never more than five between strongest and weakest. And that’s before we apply any saves, which would reduce the gap even further.
For example, Helix acolytes score most wounds into T4, but only by a margin of one; they convert 36 attacks into 16 wounds, whereas both Princes and Toxins convert 36 attacks into 15 wounds. That equates to 44% of attacks wounding for Helix acolytes, or 42% for the others. And whilst a single wound can sometimes be vital, the options here are generally close enough that we could choose to look at the other elements of their respective creeds to decide between them.
NUMBERS
Curiously for an effect that bypasses the wound roll, the efficacy of Toxin Agents is determined by the score needed to wound. We see this most clearly if we think about our 36 attacks, of which we’d expect six to roll 6s. For a wound roll of 6+, we’d expect just one of those six dice to wound; but with Toxins in play, all six automatically wound (an extra five wounds). Likewise, for a wound roll of 3+, we’d usually expect four of the six to wound; again, with Toxins, it’s all six (an extra two wounds). The pattern is straight-forward – the number of extra wounds (per 36 attacks) is the score required to wound minus 1. 3s to wound, two extra wounds; 6s to wound, 5 extra wounds. In each case, we convert all of the ‘missed’ wounds, and the harder it is to wound conventionally, the more ‘missed’ wounds there are to convert.
We can see the effect of this in the table below. Whist the hit roll does matter (we all want to hit on 2s rather than 6s), it’s the wound roll that determines how useful Toxins is, relatively speaking.
We can see that when we need 6s to wound, the relative increase (over an unmodified attack sequence) is at least 100%, rising to as much as 500% for 6s to hit and wound. On the other hand, when we wound on 2s, the relative increase is much smaller – ranging from 4% (hitting on 2s) to 20% (hitting on 6s).
In short (and unsurprisingly), Toxins becomes more and more relatively effective the harder it is to hit, and especially to wound the target. And this is a bit of a problem, because as a general rule, combat troops tend to be quite good at hitting and wounding things – that’s why they’re in combat in the first place. Remember how the only unit where Toxins was the leading option in every case was neophytes? That’s because they’re the worst combat unit (lower WS, lower strength), and thus the one when Toxins had most effect. Toxin Agents is a combat buff that gets more useful the worse the unit is at combat. Awkward.
But it’s not the end of the world. After all, we’ve already seen that Toxins doesn’t perform much worse than Helix and Princes overall, and usually out-performs at least one or the other in any given situation. With sufficient attacks (and volume of attacks is something we’re fairly good at), Toxins is a safe pair of hands; it bypasses the wound roll, and delivers predictable wounds on the target. It’s not always the best option, it’s rarely the worst option, it’s just quietly good.
Here, a positive number indicates the additional wounds caused over the next best option; a negative number shows the wound deficit to the best option (based on the 36-attack maths from earlier). Green boxes indicate that Toxins is the most effective option, yellow that it’s the second best, and red when it’s the worst option. Interestingly, Toxins only loses to both Helix and Princes in the case of metamorphs into T3 – otherwise, Toxins always matches or out-performs at least one of the other two creeds. As we said, a safe pair of hands (or claws).
By way of contrast, both Helix and Princes show far more green and red (and less yellow) than Toxins. They tend to be more variable, shifting between being the strongest or weakest option. However, we tend to mitigate these weaknesses in the army selection phase. As a Helix player, I’m more likely to load up on acolytes and genestealers; if I were Princes, I might lean more towards aberrants and metamorphs, and leave the genestealers at home.
One other minor factor to consider is the margin of difference. With the exception of aberrants, Toxins is never more than 2 wounds (per 36 attacks) worse than the best option. But when Helix is the worst option, it’s always by four or five wounds; when it’s the best, it’s only by two wounds at most, but more usually by just one or even a tie. Princes isn’t always so far behind when it’s weakest, and tends to be further ahead when it’s stronger.
CONCLUSIONS
Honestly, I was hoping for a somewhat clearer outcome. As it turns out, Helix comes good a lot of the time, Princes is helpful in some cases, and Toxin Agents is okay most of the time – as we’ve just seen, it’s only the least effective option in the case of metamorphs against T3. Otherwise, it’s there or thereabouts. So I’ve not been put off so far.
The other thing I’ve considered is the degree of swing. Effects that go off on a 6 can often be considered quite variable. If you roll the 6s, great, happy days. But if you don’t, the effect is pretty much wasted. Fair enough. But it’s also true of both the other creeds we’re looking at here. If your acolytes don’t roll any 2s to hit, Princes has done nothing for you; and if they don’t roll 3s to wound those marines, Helix hasn’t paid off either. In all three cases, we’re looking for one specific die result to justify our choices. It’s not exactly the same – as we’ve discussed before, super 6s compound successes whereas +1s to hit (or wound) mitigate failures – but it’s close enough to not be a major sticking point, I think.
Are there any positives for Toxin Agents here? I think so. Whilst I like the strength bonus of Helix, it’s not always in play; it feels like Toxins is giving me something pretty similar in terms of outcomes, but with greater consistency and the freedom to select other bonuses that suit my style (like Synaptic Resonance). Of the twenty scenarios we’ve considered here (five units, four different toughness stats for each), Toxins does better than Helix in 12, worse in 5, and 3 are even (with Toxins never more than two wounds behind Helix at any point).
Likewise, whilst I can see the benefits of the Pauper Princes, I’m less keen on other parts of the creed, and don’t like that the +1 to hit only triggers for the first turn of combat. That’s also the one part of the aberrants/Princes pairing that doesn’t click for me; the one unit we have that might survive into the second round of a protracted combat loses their key combat bonus if they do. Not ideal. By way of comparison, Toxins is better than Princes in 10 scenarios, worse in 7, and breaks even in three; Toxins falls four wounds short of Princes aberrants into T3/4 targets, but keeps within 2 wounds elsewhere.
So, is Toxin Agents nailed on? No, not yet. Is it worth persevering with for now? I think so.
And that’s it for this one. Back to the shadows, and on with the revolution.