The Cult Patriarch has a number of functions – warlord, psyker, morale-booster and combat blender. And it’s that last one that interests me. What’s the best way to buff up the Patriarch for close combat?
Frustratingly, the Patriarch doesn’t benefit from Cult Creeds. This is a shame, particularly when trying for a complete combat powerhouse, as something like the Twisted Helix creed would get us halfway to S8, and Pauper Princes would grant rerolls to hit on top of the inbuilt rerolls to wound. But them’s the breaks.
A basic Patriarch hits on 2s (with the Brood Telepathy aura giving a further +1 if needed), rerolls failed wounds, and carries a -3/-6 AP with up to 3 damage a time. At S6, it wounds T3 on 2s, and T4/5 on 3s.
Using blunt averages, the standard profile will score 4.9 unsaved hits on Guardsmen (T3, 5+), 3.9 unsaved hits on marines (T4, 3+), and 2.3 unsaved hits on a gravis captain (T5, 4++). As marines are now two wounds each, those hits will likely equate to three dead marines (one going down to a rending hit, and three lots of d3 damage should finish off two more (unless we manage to avoid rolling 1s)). Against the captain, the luckier version sees a rending hit get through, for 3+d3 damage, and the less lucky version is two regular hits for 2d3 – either way, there’s a chance to kill him outright, but it’s more likely we don’t.
WARLORD TRAITS
A Patriarch has to be the warlord, so has to have a warlord trait. In terms of making a combat monster, Biomorph Adaptation feels like a good start, with +1S and +1A. However, +1S on its own doesn’t do much. We already wound T3 on 2s, and it’s not enough to improve our 3s against T4. It does help if you want to hit tanks, and it opens up the possibility of a combination with the psychic power Might From Beyond, which does then get us up to S8. And the bonus attack is always nice.
Alternatively, Twisted Helix offer the Bio-Alchemist trait, for +1D on the claws. This definitely has some value – not against guardsmen, who were dead anyway, but against marines we’re now looking at a confirmed kill every time we land a wound (plus a better than evens chance of killing 3 wound models, and a chance at 4 wound models (who definitely go down to a second hit)). It would also tilt things favourably against the gravis captain.
[None of the other regular warlord traits buff combat ability, aside from the option to always fight first; of the creed-specific traits, Bladed Cog offers wound rerolls that we already have, and Rusted Claw boosts AP on a rending hit – given that we already have AP-6 on rends, that doesn’t give us much either.]
So let’s compare the two. Functionally, Biomorph just gives us that extra attack here, whereas Bio-Alchemist give no bonus attacks, but useful damage against multi-wound targets.
Hits indicates the number of unsaved, damaging causing hits (shown as regular and rending). Wounds indicates the total average wounds caused: each regular hit generates 2 wounds (the mean score on a d3), and each rending hit generates 3 wounds. So 2.8x2 + 1.1x3 = 8.9
Unsurprisingly, Bio-Alchemist is less useful against Guardsmen, because it’s completely wasted.
Against multi-wound marines, it probably does better than Biomorph – the extra attack is less helpful than the consistency generated by the additional damage (rounding out, both cause 3 regular hits and a rend: for Bio-Alchemist, that’s four dead marines; for Biomorph, it’s anywhere between two and four dead).
Both take us over 6 wounds (average) against the captain, with Bio-Alchemist giving a wider margin. So far, it looks like Biomorph for killing chaff, Bio-Alchemist for anything else.
RELICS
The Patriarch has access to various relics. We can disregard the Amulet for now, because it doesn’t affect combat prowess directly. The Scourge does, but offers +1 to hit on a WS2+ model (who already has +1 to hit thanks to Brood Telepathy, and potentially another +1 from a Primus) so isn’t giving us much.
That leaves Vocklor’s Talisman and the Elixir of the Prime Specimen. The Talisman gives us rerolls to hit against characters, and turns wound rolls of 6+ into an additional mortal wound (upping the effect of rending, basically). The Elixir gives +1T, +1W and +1A – again, from an aggressive point of view, only one of those matters (although the other two are nice to have).
For the Talisman, the rending hits count twice – once as rends, once as mortals (because both fire on 6s). When calculating wounds, I’ve used the averages as before, then added the mortals on top. With the captain, that means 1.3 mortals, as they’re not saved by his iron halo (which reduces the rending hits by half)
The Elixir has the same overall effect as Biomorph (which makes sense, as both are simply contributing an extra attack, in offensive terms).
The Talisman matches it against guardsmen, where the mortal wounds balance having less attacks; against marines, it’s a little less effective (but potentially kills the same number of models overall; against the captain, the bonus rerolls to hit on top of the mortals pushes the Talisman ahead.
So the Talisman for character hunting, but the Elixir against anyone else. (It’s worth noting that the Bio-Alchemist trait still outperforms the Talisman against the gravis captain, though.)
COMBINATION
When it comes to combining warlord trait and relic, we need to remember that three of the four I’ve looked at so far are locked to particular creeds. This means we can’t combine Bio-Alchemist with Vocklor’s Talisman, but we can run both relics with Biomorph, and the two Helix ones together.
Of these three combinations, Biomorph with either relic is most effective against chaff, either through sheer weight of attacks (with the Elixir) or by generating mortals (with the Talisman) which are killing a whole extra model each time.
Against marines, Bio-Alchemist generates a ton of wounds and kills a whole marine with every damaging hit. But if we round off the numbers, we see something different.
· Bio-Alchemist/Elixir kills four marines (one rend, three hits at minimum 2 damage)
· Biomorph/Talisman kills at least three, and could kill four and wound a fifth with a mortal (one rend, then at worst three lots of 1 damage and a mortal to kill two more)
· Biomorph/Elixir kills at least four, but could get as many as six (two rends (just), then even at 1 damage a time, four hits kills two marines)
So whilst Bio-Alchemist/Elixir is consistent, Biomorph/Elixir leverages the extra attacks to cause more unsaved hits, and significantly, potentially generate more rending hits. The Biomorph version is swingier, but the bottom of the swing matches the Bio-Alchemist/Elixir result, so the swing is only beneficial.
And against tougher characters, both Bio-Alchemist/Elixir and Biomorph/Talisman have their perks. The Bio-Alchemist combo feels the full effect of the bonus damage, making every wounding hit count, whereas the Biomorph/Talisman approach benefits from rerolls to hit, and the mortal wounds bypassing the invulnerable save. On these numbers, the Bio-Alchemist edges it, but I suspect in real-life it’ll also be swingier – big damage when it beats the invulnerable, falls flat when it doesn’t; whereas the Talisman will be dropping a mortal or two each time, hopefully, on top of anything else.
We should also note that the Biomorph/Elixir version has the extra bonus of buffing the Patriarch in other ways – extra toughness and an extra wound producing the best stat-line of all the options.
PSYCHIC BUFFS
The last thing to consider is psychic buffing. Specifically, Might From Beyond, which gives +1S and +1 A. This combines neatly with the Biomorph trait to boost the Patriarch up to S8, where he wounds marines on 2s. Being a psychic power makes it much less reliable than a trait or a relic, but I wanted to see how things would look if it went off. (Interestingly, it’s the same buffs as the Biomorph trait, so has the same effect on a basic Patriarch.)
With Might enabled, we see a small general improvement against guardsmen; the rounding hides it a little, but it’s generally another dead guardsman all around. We also see a fairly consistent increase against marines, with a couple more wounds put down each time. And against the gravis captain, the Biomorph/Talisman build picks up a slight advantage over the Bio-Alchemist/Elixir version, going from just worse to just better. Both remain stronger than the Biomorph/Elixir Patriarch.
But there are no dramatic shifts here. Might From Beyond makes all three versions better, but the jump to S8 does less than I expected it to. Interestingly, with full rerolls to wound, the Patriarch is more likely to pick up rends when wounding on 3s, as rerolling 1s and 2s gives twice as many chances to pick up 6s second time round. Wounding on 2s gets more wounds overall, but with less dice to reroll, less 6s are generated. So whilst S8 makes it easier to wound, it makes it slightly harder to rend, giving marines more chance of saving. This also has an effect on the Talisman, which also relies on those 6s – against T4 marines, the Patriarch generates less mortal wounds at S8 than at S7.
CONCLUSION
So, what’s the answer? What’s the most aggressive warlord/relic combination? I don’t think there’s a clear answer here.
On warlord trait alone, I like Bio-Alchemist for the reliability (and usually play as Helix, so I’m not worried about being locked into that creed). In combination, Biomorph/Elixir feels like the better all-rounder, given the extra attacks and general honing of the Patriarch statline. And if you’re throwing the Patriarch into line troops, or even some elites, then this is going to see lots of enemy models removed.
On the other hand, if we end up fighting against heroes, or multi-wound elites, or even against the increasingly prevalent -1 to damage options (like Death Guard or Dreads), then I think Bio-Alchemist/Elixir becomes increasingly useful.
The Talisman surprised me. It’s not one I’ve considered before, but I’m glad I included it here. Unfortunately, I think it falls short in comparison to the other two options (because the extra damage of the Bio-Alchemist edges out the mortals of the Talisman against characters, and Biomorph/Elixir is a better general blender), but it might have a place if you don’t mind being HiveCult for a bit.
The other thing to consider is that theory-hammer only gets us so far. In the real world (relatively speaking), I don’t really need my Patriarch to hit regular marines – that’s what all my acolytes and their rock saws are for (and realistically, where I want Might From Beyond to go too). I do want him to survive for a bit, and to present a credible counter-threat to nasty elites like bladeguard and captains. So in practice, whilst I like the Bio-Alchemist/Elixir pairing (in part because it really leans into the Helix thing), I tend to run with Bio-Alchemist (because everything I just said) and the Amulet, because not getting overwatched to death is a good thing.
Your mileage, of course, may vary.
If you made it this far, thanks. Well done. And if you have any thoughts or better ideas, feel free to share them.