Reclusiarch vs. Lemartes

[Res Ipsa Loquitur]

And spending 680pts (including the LRC) to, in theory, take down 450pts of Terminators is cost-effective in your eyes?

 

220pts of DC can easily kill four or five hundred points worth of Troops in a single battle.

[Res Ipsa Loquitur]

Plus, your maths is suspect. 15 naked DC and a bare-bones Reclusiarch (which they must be if you're only spending 430pts on them) will, on the charge, kill 320pts of Hammernators on average.

 

And that's being generous with the rounding out. They'll only kill 280pts if you're strict about it.

[DominicJ]

5 attacks on the charge

3.33333 hit

2.22222 wound

0.37037 are unsaved

 

But then we have rerolls

 

You get 1.666667 additional attacks from rerolls, which added to the failed to wound rolls, gives you, 2.59 additional hits

 

All in all, a charging DC with rerolls causes .6584 wounds on a WS4 T4 2+ enemy

 

DC = 20pts

Hammernator = 45pts

.6584x45pts = 29.63pts

 

DC + 1/15th of a reclusiarch = 28.6pts

 

1pt cheaper, and will wipe out for no loss.

 

 

 

****************

5-------------------------------------1.666666667

3.333333333--- 1.111111111--- 1.111111111--- 0.37037037

2.222222222--- 0.740740741--- 0.740740741--- 0.24691358

0.37037037---- 0.12345679---- 0.12345679---- 0.041152263

[JamesI]

I rarely find myself wishing that my DC were more powerful. The few occasions I've attached a Chaplain or Reclusiarch to them, they've ended up way overkilling units and being left high and dry in the enemy's shooting phase.

This seems to match my recent DC results. It was rather humorous but still can leave you a ton of trouble.

[DominicJ]

DC are 33% more survivable than tacticals (FNP), at 25% more cost.

 

You near wreck my raider

I wipe out your hammer

You wreck my hammer

 

And then the rest of my army eats you all up.

 

Or so goeth the plan anyway

[Res Ipsa Loquitur]

5 attacks on the charge

3.33333 hit

2.22222 wound

0.37037 are unsaved

 

But then we have rerolls

 

You get 1.666667 additional attacks from rerolls, which added to the failed to wound rolls, gives you, 2.59 additional hits

 

All in all, a charging DC with rerolls causes .6584 wounds on a WS4 T4 2+ enemy

 

DC = 20pts

Hammernator = 45pts

.6584x45pts = 29.63pts

 

DC + 1/15th of a reclusiarch = 28.6pts

 

1pt cheaper, and will wipe out for no loss.

 

 

 

****************

5-------------------------------------1.666666667

3.333333333--- 1.111111111--- 1.111111111--- 0.37037037

2.222222222--- 0.740740741--- 0.740740741--- 0.24691358

0.37037037---- 0.12345679---- 0.12345679---- 0.041152263

 

My maths was also suspect, I didn't include the extra A for Rage. Still, even with it you're going to kill nine Hammernators, which is 360pts, not the 444 you claimed.

 

Reclusiarch swings five Attacks at I5; three Hit. Three Wounds. All saved. No Hammernators dead, on average.

 

DC swings 75 Attacks at I4, 50 Hit. 25 re-roll, 16 more hits. 66 To Wounds, 44 Wound. 22 re-roll, 14 wound. Of the 58 wounds less than ten of them will not be saved and one Terminator swings back, likely killing one DC.

 

Next round the Reclusiarch swings four Attacks, none of which will do anything on average. Then the DC swing 28 Attacks, 17 Hit, eight wound and one won't be saved.

 

So, great. You just spent 680pts and took (likely) half the game to kill 400pts of Terminators. If your opponent doesn't happen to have ten Hammernators then you're going to have greatly overkilled a unit and you'll get shot to pieces next Shooting Phase.

[DominicJ]

9.something

 

At 45pts each.

[appiah4]

I find neither is worth it. Reclusiarch with power fist is too expensive, without it he's meh. Lemartes loses due to general high cost of JP DC.

[Xenith]

You near wreck my raider

I wipe out your hammer

You wreck my hammer

And you have now lost 2 expensive units to your opponent's 1, and only have half your army left at 1500.

 

I would rethink your tactics. Tit for tat gaming, trading units, can only ever end in a stalemate aganst good players. Whoever wins will have gotten lucky.

 

Put a less priority target in the raider (assault marines?), jump the DC along behind it, using it for cover.

[Office temp]

You near wreck my raider

I wipe out your hammer

You wreck my hammer

And you have now lost 2 expensive units to your opponent's 1, and only have half your army left at 1500.

 

I would rethink your tactics. Tit for tat gaming, trading units, can only ever end in a stalemate aganst good players. Whoever wins will have gotten lucky.

 

Put a less priority target in the raider (assault marines?), jump the DC along behind it, using it for cover.

 

I'm not seeing the "lost 2 units in trade of one" that you're saying. By the numbers stated, that means your opponent now lost a dead hard unit while you lost a single dc model. Now that means your opponent has both a land raider and a swarm of blood thirsty madmen in his back lines, which means that he's gonna have to expend a lot of resources to get them out of there. Yeah, you spend some six hundred points on a group, that six hundred points just anihilated 400 points and is still in the process of dispensing maximum lulz into your enemies back yard and have a great potential to continue to eat up more of your opponents points.

[DominicJ]

Office

exactly

Finshing off the Raider is probably none too hard, but killing off 15 DC and a Rec is a serious undertaking.

And 5 survivors is a enough to carry on causing havoc.

5 bp/cs DC killed Lysander last night, some luck involved, one and the reclusiarch wiped out his sternguard over a couple of turns.

[Chaplain Admetus]

Reclusiarch hands down. Reasoning: Lemartes isn't an HQ choice. I may incur the wrath of some others for saying this, but I don't like the BA HQ slots... I try to keep my HQ spending to an absolute minimum so I can get more stuff in (aside from the tournament where I took Dante and Mephiston and Sanguinary Guard at 1500, but that was more an exercise in silliness than anything else...). I'm not finding the librarian as useful as I used to (heresy) so I'm considering spending the extra points if I can find them for a reclusiarch and seeing how much more bang that gives me. Lemartes just doesn't seem like he offers enough, especially since to get the full use out of him you need to splash out on JP-DC. Real nail in his coffin, though, new wound allocation. Its now nearly impossible to make him hulk out since you have to have him at the front to take wounds, and his look out sir is only a 4+ rather than a 2+ due to being an upgrade character rather than an IC.

 

Also, Res has it with my problem with DC... overkill/underkill issues. Adding a flavour of chaplain is likely to maul its way through a unit and leave you in the open, but without you often get duff rolls and get bogged down.

 

...I want to bring my 5 chaplain list back out to play now...that was fun. No good, but fun...

[Res Ipsa Loquitur]

I'm not seeing the "lost 2 units in trade of one" that you're saying. By the numbers stated, that means your opponent now lost a dead hard unit while you lost a single dc model. Now that means your opponent has both a land raider and a swarm of blood thirsty madmen in his back lines, which means that he's gonna have to expend a lot of resources to get them out of there. Yeah, you spend some six hundred points on a group, that six hundred points just anihilated 400 points and is still in the process of dispensing maximum lulz into your enemies back yard and have a great potential to continue to eat up more of your opponents points.

 

Why would they be in the opponent's back-lines? Who takes ten Hammernators and then sits them back in their DZ?

 

Fourteen DC and the Reclusiarch would survive and then will either be stranded in mid-field sans wheels (tracks?) or will have to waste a turn embarking, moving and then disembarking before getting another charge off. They'll be lucky to do so, IMO. Unless you're playing a moron who has sat their entire army around handily in charge range watching your DC murder his Hammernators. Plus, any non-moron player will challenge the Reclusiarch with their Sergeant and likely kill him. Poof, there goes your Warlord and a VP to the enemy.

 

And the main point, which seems to have been missed, is that if your opponent doesn't take ten Hammernators (because in two years I've only faced ten once, in a Caestus) you have a DC that will go through enemy units like [Expletive Deleted] through a goose, but who will also end up massively exposed in the next shooting phase; there's no enemy unit that can stand against a unit of DC that can chew through Hammernators like that. They charge, they kill, they get shot.

 

So, again, great. You've got a unit to counter a unit that in my experience is rarely fielded and which will murder A.N. Other unit quick-time and then will die, binning 700pts. On the other hand, my DC costs 220pts (255 with Pod), is great against every unit except Terminators, is in the enemy's DZ turn one and, usually, goes from Assault to Assault without being a viable target for enemy shooting even once.

 

Then I spend the spare 425pts I'll have on units to complement them. It's all very well saying that you've got the rest of your army to move up after the DC but when your DC costs 680pts the rest of your army isn't likely to be particularly impressive or troublesome.

[Drunken Angel]

Reclusiarch hands down. Reasoning: Lemartes isn't an HQ choice. I may incur the wrath of some others for saying this, but I don't like the BA HQ slots... I try to keep my HQ spending to an absolute minimum so I can get more stuff in (aside from the tournament where I took Dante and Mephiston and Sanguinary Guard at 1500, but that was more an exercise in silliness than anything else...). I'm not finding the librarian as useful as I used to (heresy) so I'm considering spending the extra points if I can find them for a reclusiarch and seeing how much more bang that gives me. Lemartes just doesn't seem like he offers enough, especially since to get the full use out of him you need to splash out on JP-DC. Real nail in his coffin, though, new wound allocation. Its now nearly impossible to make him hulk out since you have to have him at the front to take wounds, and his look out sir is only a 4+ rather than a 2+ due to being an upgrade character rather than an IC.

 

Also, Res has it with my problem with DC... overkill/underkill issues. Adding a flavour of chaplain is likely to maul its way through a unit and leave you in the open, but without you often get duff rolls and get bogged down.

 

...I want to bring my 5 chaplain list back out to play now...that was fun. No good, but fun...

 

All good points

 

As much as I like Lemartes I leave him behind now he has been nerfed in 6th he hardly ever kills what you want him to kill anymore.

 

The Reclusiarch has the advantage of being an HQ or for less points simply take a chaplain both can take a cheap fist and this has flexibility.

Taking Lemartes is all about buffing the squad he is with in 6th he can pound armour but there is plenty in a DC that can do that.

A Reclusiarch buffs a squad just as well plus he can detach.

 

Taking a fist upgrade only removes your bolt pistol or boltgun the chaplain/reclusiarch can choose to hit at initiative with their crozius against squishy targets or Initiative 1 AP2 with the fist. The rest of the DC with their power weapons cover the AP3 stuff either with weight of attacks or power sword/axes in the mix. Anything that strikes at I4 or I5 and is AP3/2 is unlikely to be instant death which means the Reclusiarch gets his Iron Halo 4++ and hopefully a 5+ FNP rolls (you kept a priest handy to the DC for the chaplain right?). In that respect the I5 Reclusiarch is almost as usefull with sweeping troops and has one extra wound over Lemartes plus he can disperse wounds on a 2+.

[Chaplain Admetus]

I'm not seeing the "lost 2 units in trade of one" that you're saying. By the numbers stated, that means your opponent now lost a dead hard unit while you lost a single dc model. Now that means your opponent has both a land raider and a swarm of blood thirsty madmen in his back lines, which means that he's gonna have to expend a lot of resources to get them out of there. Yeah, you spend some six hundred points on a group, that six hundred points just anihilated 400 points and is still in the process of dispensing maximum lulz into your enemies back yard and have a great potential to continue to eat up more of your opponents points.

 

Why would they be in the opponent's back-lines? Who takes ten Hammernators and then sits them back in their DZ?

 

 

At least one guy I know tries this but with 5 termies rather than 10, with a termy-librarian. Quite successfully too, I should add. Can be a really good home objective guard...nobody wants to try and wade through that. Also, Deathwing. Emperor's Will, you're more than likely to have to fight through multiple hammernator squads on an objective.

[Res Ipsa Loquitur]

IIRC, Deathwing are (for now) limited to five-strong squads.

 

Still, even your examples are five-strong and the DC in question will flat-out murder five Hammernators in one phase and then be left high and dry. Probably without their Reclusiarch and you'll be one VP down. And then the DC can't take the objective.

[DominicJ]

My DC assault Turn 2, or T1 if you go first and advance.

Turn three and four they will be causing all sorts of hell in your DZ.

 

I fully expect my DC to die.

Death is their purpose.

They are painted black and thrown into hell fire because Death is preferable to living for them.

If they survive, I am doing something wrong.

 

I want them dead, and I want you to focus on them, I want to ignore the rest of my army as it hauls across the board, because on turn three or four I'm going to be short one death company, which will have obliterated your hammer and a support unit or two.

So your HQ is dead, your Hammer is dead, your sternguard is dead, and all I've lost is my distraction unit, which I didnt want to survive anyway

[Res Ipsa Loquitur]

I see. If you'd told me that you play against people who leave an 18" lane open for you to drive your LRC down T1 and who put a unit at the end of it for you to charge I could have saved a lot of time and the rest of us could have had a conversation about what works against opponents with even a modicum of strategic nous.