It’s no secret that Acolyte Hybrids are currently very popular and this popularity is driven by Demo Charges. And why? Because Demo Charges are very, very, very, verrrrrrrrrrrry strong. Probably too strong. Which leads people to overlook the other possibilities available to Acolyte Hybrids, namely…Heavy Mining Tools.

Some weaknesses of Demo Charges:

• They’re on Games Workshop’s radar to nerf
• 6” Range typically mandates use of the Tunnel Crawlers stratagem, opening up counterplay via Vect-like effects (increase cost of Stratagem by 1 CP)
• Require character support to maximize, greatly increasing unit cost
• Greatly impacted by -1 Damage effects
• Single use - unit must die to recycle the charges, which also kills the character permanently.

Now in my testing with Heavy Mining Tools, I will point out one thing straight away--they must really be run in a maximum size unit (10 models, 4 with Heavy Mining Tools) in order to have enough attacks. 

After that, there are a couple of other factors to take into account:

• Your Meta -- Heavy Mining Tools need the appropriate targets to get after. You’re looking to play them into 2 Wd Models who have a FNP or some manner of damage reduction, or 3 wound models like Terminators and Heavy Intercessors
• I don’t want to invest characters into buffing this unit. They up the cost too much for a unit that I want to continually recycle. 

So let’s set our parameters--we’re going to compare what it looks like to put a unit of Acolytes into a unit of Terminators, with a 4++ invulnerable save. 

The numbers in the top chart represent how many failed armor saves the Terminators make. I rounded this to whole numbers for ease of display. An important note is this doesn’t represent damage, just failed saves.

So breaking down the chart, one thing that leaps out immediately is how much blast helps the Demo Charges. Stacking on an additional 4-8 chances to hit helps the unit considerably. If you are using a Primus with them, then the full rerolls and Sustained Hits really helps to magnify this as well. 

The other obvious part is that the numbers for Demo charges are higher than for the Heavy Mining Tools. Makes sense, HMT are limited to 8 attacks, Demo Charges are at a MINIMUM 16 attacks, twice as much. This is counterbalanced by needing to hit on a 5+. On raw failed saves, the Demo Charges are clearly superior.

This is where knowledge of your opponent and meta comes into play. Since the Heavy Mining Tools are Damage 3, as opposed to the Damage 2 Demo Charges, if you are attacking any units with 3 Wounds then they are more efficient at removing actual models. This is represented by the bottom table--how many models are you actually killing.

And here is the kicker--vs 3 Wound Terminators, Heavy Mining Tools are as efficient or better than Demo Charges, depending on the unit size and blast!

The goal of this isn’t to convince folks that Demo Charges are bad, they are clearly very strong! The hope is to show that there are actually deeper options within the unit, and they are very easy to switch to in order to shake up your lists, your game experiences, and to adjust to future balance updates.