With the latest set of codices now on the shelves, it’s time to start breaking down what units and options are going to be right for your list!
Guest Writer: Dan Meyer
While playing test games is the best way to understand your options, it’s hard to get in enough games to understand all the variables at play and arrive at a reasonable set of expectations. Have no fear though! I am here to help by giving you an in depth look at what you should really expect out of a unit or piece of wargear.
My Shtick
I will look at a unit and their wargear options and help you understand what is the best choice for a given situation or at least help you figure out what you can truly expect from your units. I achieve this by simulating 1,000,000 iterations of that unit attacking a set of common targets that are representative of things you will see in the meta and get a true sample population so we can not only understand the mean of the expected outcome, but also how the variance shapes the outcome distribution. This will give you a much better appreciation for the variability in your game. If you have any questions on my process, ask away!
How do I kill resilient vehicles with Codex Custodes?
Zoom Zoom
Adeptus Custodes are freshly updated (and apparently a hot take for LVO 2022!) and I am excited to expand my collection and actual play this army as a change up from my normal Ultramarines and Drukhari. After going through the codex, I am left with a curious question as to its design philosophy. How much do the designers bank on Forgeworld to fill the gaps of the army rather than design a holistic approach from just the GW miniatures perspective? The main thing I notice lacking from the army as a whole is the ability to take on things like vehicles and monsters…especially ones that are hard to crack. Considering only the codex, there are 3 main anti-vehicle/monster units: Contemptor with multimelta, Landraider, and Vertus Praetors with Salvo Launchers. Other units can hurt light to maybe medium targets, but I’d say these are the few that can attempt to take on heavier targets.
In my opinion, the Contemptor and Land Raider are not worth talking about. Their output is rather obvious and each unit has its own challenges when seeing play (if they ever do…). The far more exciting unit is the Vertus Praetors! They have amazing speed, are incredibly resilient and are armed to the teeth with good weapons. While each one is 85 points apiece (with Salvo Launchers), they have the statlines to back it up.
Let’s breakdown the weapon stats of the golden flying bananas:
| Weapon | Shots | Strength | AP | Dmg |
| Salvo Launcher | 1 | 8 | 4 | 3+D3 |
| Interceptor Lance | 4A (melee) | 7 | 3 | 2 |
The salvo launcher is only a single shot, but thanks to BS2 this will hit more often than not. At Str 8, AP4 and a solid minimum 4 damage, this weapon can put the hurt on tough targets. The only problem is that it’s hard to get a lot of these in your list given the premium price. Beyond just the unit, I think one of the best Shield Hosts in the book is the Emperor’s Chosen and my-oh-my will it be a huge help for the Salvo Launcher. We will consider this as well when we look at the output for Vertus Praetors.
Thankfully, the Vertus Praetors back up their good shooting with fantastic close combat skills. The Interceptor Lance gives you +1 to wound if you charge or heroic intervene (which will be most times given the tricks you can pull!). With 4 attacks per model, and solid statline, this unit will typically do work. Against tougher large models, it might struggle some, but I expect the volume of attacks and +1 to wound will help some.
The Simulation Begins…
Like our previous simulation with the Ridgerunner, we will take a look at what we can expect against a Redemptor Dreadnought. This represents typical hard to kill vehicles/monsters, with the all too common -1 damage. This will help us understand what we will typically come up against in the current meta…I’m looking at you Crusher Stampede! Let’s remember the Redemptor stats: toughness 7, 3+ save with -1 damage. We will consider a simple unit of three Vertus Praetor models with three levels of buffs while we are at it: baseline (no buffs), Emperor’s Chosen Shield Host but only use the single reroll for wounds, and Emperor’s Chosen plus a reroll hits of 1 aura from a nearby Captain. Here we go!
Figure 1: 3x Vertus Praetors with Salvo Launchers vs. Redemptor Dreadnought
The distributions of the expected output are pretty neat. Thanks to the D3+3 damage, but with minus 1 damage from the Redemptor, we will never get one or two damage. Thanks to good BS and high strength and AP, the chances to score high damage is pretty good. What’s truly fascinating though is what happens when you start to consider your buffs. Once you add in Emperor’s Chosen single reroll on wounding, the average jumps from 6.67 to 8.05 damage and if add reroll 1s to hit from a Captain on top of that it jumps up even higher to 9.56 damage. Fully buffed, the distribution becomes left skewed, meaning the chances for crap damage dwindle. The mode will be 12 damage while the mean sits at 9.56 damage…not bad for three shots! This may suggest that 4+ man squads might be worth investigating if you wish to be able to be able to take on these sorts of units in one turn. You will also have to consider the variable cost stratagems in the book as well vs. squad size.
Thankfully, if you don’t manage to kill the vehicle with the Salvo Launchers you can do it the old fashioned way…with pointy sticks. A three man Vertus Praetors squad will put out a solid 12 attacks and get +1 to wound on the charge. Unfortunately, the Redemptor’s -1 damage neuters our output heavily so maximum damage is capped to only 12 wounds which means we could never actually kill a redemptor with just assault with this number of models (and even then you’d have to get insanely lucky!). However, assuming you wounded it with Salvo Launchers ahead of time, there is hope we can finish it off in close combat. We will simply consider the baseline case here:
Figure 2: 3x Vertus Praetors with Interceptor Lance on the Charge vs. Redemptor Dreadnought
That is a wonderful normal distribution! The mean clocks in at a solid 5.55 damage and ~70% of the time you will achieve at least 5 wounds of damage. If we pair this with Emperor’s Chosen buffed Salvo Launchers, on average we would expect a dead Redemptor (8.05+5.55 damage). Not bad, but still open for variability. Buffs from here will only help more.
Well there we have it, the Vertus Praetors are certainly capable of dealing with light to medium vehicles and monsters even with -1 damage, but having buffs will really help push your damage output higher (duh!). What I really, really worry about is dealing with much bigger baddies such as Knights and the like. Units like these are going to be extremely tough to take down, though hopefully things like that don’t gain -1 damage and you will be able to get max efficiency out of the numerous 2 damage weapons in the codex. Forgeworld units should also be considered if possible for you…though I’m not sure if there’s truly anything there that will shine. I could be wrong though, what are you finding works?! You may need to consider alternative strategies and use the table to your advantage in rough matchups against armies full of big baddies.
Let me know if you have any questions, comments or concerns with any of the results you have seen here! And of course, I welcome all suggestions for future simulations!
The Emperor Protects,
Ligolski
PS: Good luck to all the people attending LVO!
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