Litanies of the Faithful

Dear reader,

Have you ever wanted to remove any enjoyment, mystery, or intrigue from your favourite hobby-based wargame by spending hours doing basic, single digit arithmetic so that you would be 100% certain of any outcome in said game based on your input (on average*)?

Well, this article is for you.

No longer will you suffer from having to try to do math after standing up for 2 hours. Completing these steps beforehand – and committing all the information to your long-term memory- will have you succeeding in no time.

Today I will be investigating my favourite unit in Warhammer 40k, Obliterators Corpuscarii Electro-priests.

This unit is found within the Adeptus Mechanicus codex. It boasts the following incredible statline:

Move	6″
Toughness	3
Save characteristic	7+ (5+ Invulnerable)
Wounds	1
Leadership	7+
OC	1

Now, I know what you’re thinking.

‘Ryan, this unit is dogshit.’

Yes.

Next up, it’s ranged AND melee weapon profiles. This unit is unique in that it is equipped with the same weapon in ranged, and in melee.

Electrostatic Gauntlets

Range	12″/Melee
BS/WS	3+/4+
Attacks	3
Strength	5
AP	0
Damage	1
Abilities	Pistol/Sustained Hits 2

Now I know what you’re thinking.

‘Ryan, this unit is dogshit.’

Yes.

The unit has two datasheet abilities:

• 5+ FNP (Yea it counts)
• Electro-Shock: In your shooting phase, pick a unit after you shoot it (excluding vehicles/monsters), until the end of your opponent’s next turn subtract 2″ from its move characteristic, and subtract 2 from advance and charge rolls made for it.

Electro-priests also receive the army rule, which is a weird thing to say, but at one point they didn’t.

I like em, they’re cute. So, let’s see how much damage they do on average to a number of different units in the game. We’ll be using certain profiles, GEQ, MEQ, TEQ, if you don’t know what any of those abbreviations mean, stop reading this article now, this isn’t for you. Don’t be tainted by this, it’s shit.

GEQ – Guard equivalent, think T3, 5+ save, 1 wound. Think Cadian shock troop

MEQ – Marine equivalent, think T4, 3+ save, 2 wounds.

TEQ – Terminator equivalent, think T5, 2+ save, 3 wounds.

I’ll also be including a number of other profiles like armigers – T9, 3+ save, 14 wounds – Standard Space Marine tanks – T10, 3+ save, 12 wounds – big knights etc. to see how much damage the Electro-priests can do in certain situations, and how many of certain profiles they are able to D E S T R O Y.

But first, what buffs can be applied to the Electro-priests to make them, better?

• Tech-Priest Manipulus – Lethal Hits
• Dunerider – re-roll all wounds against a target
• Conqueror Imperative – +1 WS, extra AP
• Protector Imperative – +1 BS
• Haloscreed Detachment – Crit on 5’s, re-roll 1’s to hit and wound, both Imperatives at once
• Data-psalm conclave detachment – +1 AP at half range, +1 to attacks and strength on the charge, +1 to wound in the fight phase
• Explorator Maniple detachment – +1 to hit, re-roll wound rolls of 1, +1 to wound
• Rad-Zone Corps detachment – Lethal hits (Manipulus does the same), re-roll all hits (enemy unit must be in deployment zone)
• Skitarii Hunter Cohort – nothing

There are a LOT of different ways that AdMech can buff units – apparently – and this greatly impacts the output of its units. You must be careful and cautious when making plays using this army, ensuring you are in the correct imperative and have access to the resources you need to make plays work.

Corpuscarii Electro-priest – The data

Assumptions:

• As cover is so ubiquitous in 10th, I’m assuming that when you shoot, the target is always in cover.
• Realistically, I’m not using most of these buffs. I would only really play Corpuscarii in Haloscreed and Data-Psalm, and within these detachments there are certain combinations of buffs that come up more than others – for example in Data-psalm I would never choose the -1 ap at half range buff, I would always pick the +1 attack and strength on the charge. I may use the enhancement to get both buffs on a unit but would almost always put that on a unit of Breachers instead as it is more effective. Similarly, in Haloscreed I would almost never use crit 5’s and re-roll 1’s to hit and wound at the same time, I would mostly use crit 5’s when I was re-rolling wounds out of a Dunerider.

I was going to create my own excel spreadsheet and it was going to be all cute and stuff, turns out someone already made a template for this and it’s super easy to use (upon publishing this I realized the picture small as hell, open it in a separate tab to view it more easily or suffer looking like Aaron when he uses his phone).

GitHub – svknoe/WH40k-Point-Efficiency-Calculator: Excel sheet for computing expected damage and point efficiency in Warhammer 40k 9th edition

The Graph shows damage against various targets; it’s fairly straight forward as all the damage from Corpuscarii is – 1.

I’ve generally always assumed that I should be running this unit with a Manipulus for the lethal hits. But this shows lethal hits is putting on average about 1-2 damage more. With Crit 5’s against a T6-9 target with a 3+ save this increases the damage from 4.4 to to 6.7 at range, and 6.7 to 10 in melee. The extra AP matters a LOT and if you can manage to hit your target while they aren’t receiving cover you will get a lot more damage through. Is it worth the 60 points from a Manipulus though? It depends on how many activations you get out of the unit I suppose.

To put the damage of this unit into perspective though, a Skorpius Disintegrator – the big ranged shooty tank of the Mechanicus – shooting at a Rhino/Wardog will do about 6-9 wounds on average unbuffed. This is a similar amount of damage that a Corpuscarii unit can do coming out of a transport & re-rolling wounds. You also get the damage from the Dunerider & Manipulus.

These are obviously two different things, and the Disintegrator does it at 36″ vs. the Corpuscarii at 12″, but they can punch up into things that aren’t necessarily their intended targets.

They can also do very similar damage in melee! which is a huge bonus as a lot of AdMech units are specialised to melee or ranged. This is incredibly effective as I spend most of my games in conqueror and the Corpuscarii have a natural 3+ BS. Having assault on their guns also helps them get into range with their 12″ range weapons.

The unit clearly excels into units with at best a 3+ save, and that are <=T5. The unit can be good against units between T6-9 and is generally pretty bad against anything >=T10 or units with a 2+ save. The caveat is that assuming the unit is in cover, in melee against a 2+ save, it can be pushed to a 3+ which makes the unit semi effective, but I would only use it against <T5 units with no armour of contempt strategems.

There is obviously more detail and edge cases you can go into regarding this unit. But this should be a useful enough overview to help you use Corpuscarii in your games.

Later nerds