Could the poster boys of the Twisted Helix really be better off under Pauper Princes? There’s only one way to find out…
Over in part one, we’ve already run a comparison between Pauper Princes and Twisted Helix using acolytes as the template; whilst it wasn’t a clean sweep, it certainly suggested that the Princes should out-perform the Helix against most forms of infantry.
But what about aberrants? Helix feels like the natural home for them – the creed enhances their strength and they have a specialised stratagem allowing aberrants to fight twice. On the other hand, aberrants can’t take a cult icon, and the hammer variant hits on 4s – the Princes rerolls do a lot to offset both of these issues.
More than with the acolytes, it feels as if the creeds push aberrants in two different directions. Helix looks to enhance what aberrants already do well (hit things hard), whereas Princes acts to mitigate their weaknesses (hitting things at all in the first place).
Let’s take a look at which approach comes out on top. For this one, I’ll run the pick and hammer versions together. As with the acolyte version of this, the number shown is the likelihood of a single attack hitting and wounding, forcing the opponent to make a save. As neither Helix nor Princes affect the AP or damage, there’s no need to factor them in.
ABERRANTS
Hammers confer a -1 to hit (usually making aberrants 4+), but double the strength of the wielder. Here, we’ll consider a Helix hammer aberrant to be S11 – doubling S5, then adding 1 for the creed. There’s an argument in favour of working it the other way round (to give S12 aberrants), but I think 9th edition aims for that not to be the case. (It's also worth noting up front that the Princes creed refers to rerolling hit rolls rather than misses, which is important with the hammers.)
If you already had a wander through the acolyte version of this, that’s a pretty familiar looking table. Once again, Princes come out firmly on top – the picks match or exceed Helix against everything except T6 (following the broad pattern that Helix models are most likely to come out on top when the opponent’s toughness matches their boosted strength, as the to wound roll swings in their favour for a moment), and the hammers are uniformly better in Princes’ hands.
As a general rule, the worse your WS is, the more you benefit from full rerolls to hit. So with the hammer aberrants hitting on 4s, they get even more benefit from the Princes creed. Between that and the double strength given by the hammers, which diminishes the effect of the Helix creed, the Princes sweep the board with the heavier weapon (they’re 50% more effective than Helix).
(You’ll also notice that Helix is no different to a regular aberrant with the hammer – S11 is no different to S10 until you hit T10, which doesn’t happen all that often. And even if the Helix aberrant was S12, it would still only score 0.42 against T6, and would still be worse than the Princes 0.5)
So if you want those hammers to go vehicle hunting, go Princes. And if you prefer picks for chopping up infantry, or just as a general-purpose weapon, then still go Princes, unless you know you’ll be facing lots of T6. But in that case, get hammers and go Princes. In short, Princes.
PRIMUS
Aberrants don’t have access to cult icons, so we can move straight to the Primus. This eats into the Princes advantage (better WS, less to gain from full rerolls), but will it be enough to make a difference?
The Princes still dominate with the hammers, no matter what the target is. They’re now around 33% more effective, but that’s still pretty good.
Picks are more interesting. As the Princes accuracy advantage is eroded, Helix becomes more effective against most infantry (T3 and T5), with utility at T6 too – here, the Helix strength advantage does work in their favour, allowing them to double out T3, and to wound more efficiently against T5 and T6, which is where the change in fortune comes from. However, Helix are only 6% more effective against T3 (and 14% against T5), whereas Princes are 16% more effective against T4. If you’re expecting to be throwing pick aberrants into infantry, it might still be worth going with Princes in an all-comers build, as they’re significantly better against marines and only a little worse against AdMech or Dark Eldar.
We might also note here that Princes hammers are more likely to force a save than their picks. But with Helix, it’s the picks that are more likely to force saves for T3, T4 and T5. Princes are better able to compensate for the hammers’ -1 to hit, but that modifier really hurts Helix. Couple that with the Helix strength buff being more noticeable on the picks, and the smaller weapons slide into the lead within that creed. Looking back, the same is even more true of unbuffed aberrants, where Helix picks out-perform Helix hammers all the way up to T6.
So maybe there’s a little more justification for going with Helix here, if you plan to throw pick-armed broods into T3 or T5 targets (and there are an increasing number of those about), but that’s about it.
PRIMUS AND ICON OF THE CULT ASCENDANT
The Icon (or Might From Beyond, if you prefer) has some odd interactions here. For pick-armed aberrants, it’s a useful bonus for Princes, pushing them from S5 to S6, and allowing 2s to wound against T3; but for Helix, going from S6 to S7 only makes a difference against T7, which is quite a specific target.
With hammers, the position is reversed. Princes gain little benefit as they move from S10 to S11, whereas Helix go from S11 to S12, allowing them to now wound up to T6 on 2s. Again, not a devastating advantage, but better than nothing.
So, how much difference does all that make? First, the Icon on its own.
And then with the Primus in play too, because Helix need the help.
There we go. An absolute clean sweep for the Princes armed with hammers. They’re simply better than anything Helix can put together. And when the relic banner is in effect, Princes with picks are better against infantry and T8, with Helix having their only moment of glory against light vehicles in the T6/T7 range.
CONCLUSIONS
So what went wrong for Twisted Helix there? Aberrants are supposed to play right into the creed’s strengths, but helix comes off second-best in almost every case.
Part of the answer is that the Pauper Princes creed puts all of its eggs into one basket – they only gain their benefit in the first turn of combat (and not always then, if another unit consolidates or intervenes into them), so it needs to be good. And it is. Most Cult combat troops hit on 3s, so the Princes creed makes them 33% more effective – for every 36 dice rolled, 24 hit first time, and another 8 hit on the reroll (on average), producing 33% more hits than you’d get without the reroll. With the hammers, that rises to 50% more effective, turning 18 hits (out of 36) into 27.
Twisted Helix, on the other hand, go in different directions. They have their +2” advance bonus (always useful), and their strength buff is always on. It’s just that it isn’t always effective. And the stronger the basic model is to start with, the less useful a strength buff becomes. A Helix aberrant will feel the effect of +1 strength against T3, T5, T6, and then nothing until T10; against T4, or T7-9, the buff may as well not be there. With the hammer, it’s worse. At S11 (versus S10), an aberrant sees no difference in dice until T10 (which happens vanishingly rarely) – a Helix hammer aberrant gains no combat benefit from its own combat creed.
In the cases where the Helix creed does make a difference, it’s useful – a flat 17% increase in wounds, the same as an extra six saves forced for every 36 dice rolled. Sadly, that’s still generally less effective than full rerolls to hit. Here’s a maths bit:
Imagine 36 dice, distributed evenly – six 6s, six 5s, six 4s and so on. Unlikely in real life, but a helpful mathematical model. As we’ve just said, +1 to wound generates an extra six wounding hits from those 36 dice. But if you’re hitting on 3s and rerolling all misses, you’d expect to generate an extra eight hits (24 initial hits, reroll 12 dice, 8 more hits), so you get more of an advantage.
Or to put it another way: full rerolls on a WS of 3+ takes you from 24/36 hits to 32/36, whereas +1 strength shifting you from 3s to wound to 2s to wound takes you from the same 24/36 wounds to 30/36 wounds. Good, but not as good.
The Princes win the head-to-head comparison because they should. By design, they’re the better combat creed. The question it leaves us with is this: does the rest of the Helix creed provide me with sufficient benefit that I’ll accept less combat ability? Does the extra mobility and reach (and by extension, greater opportunity to engage in the combats I choose) compensate for being a little less effective when they get to the fight?
To which the answer can only be: maybe. It depends on playstyle, on tactics, on what else is in your army, and how it synergises together. And I feel that this is a good place to be in, because it feels balanced (as all things should be, apparently). If Helix had come out on top here, why would you ever pick Princes, knowing that their bolt was shot whilst Helix still had a whole other side to their creed still to come. Here, Princes have the combat advantage, but we still need to decide if that’s enough to outweigh the greater tactical possibilities Helix presents. (And that’s before getting into traits, relics and stratagems.)
So that’s your lot for this one. Perhaps even more one-sided than the acolyte version, but with hopefully more of an explanation as to why things have fallen out as they have. Whichever way you choose to go, happy smashing.