Warhammer 40k tactics: I did the math, and Emperor’s Children have one BIG flaw

Warhammer 40k’s new Emperor’s Children army list is fast, lethal, and packed with great combat troops that can dominate objectives and shred enemy infantry. But after crunching the numbers, we’ve got the data to reveal their biggest weakness: enemy heavy armor shuts them down hard.

Check out our 10th edition Emperor’s Children codex review to find out what we think of the faction as a whole. It’s one of the most characterful armies in Warhammer 40k, with a very strong and thematic gameplay style focused on speed, aggression, and units that don’t co-operate. But as we’ve found out, with help from a new statistics app, it has a very limited toolbox for answering enemy armor.

What do we mean by ‘heavy armor’?

Unlike dedicated transports and light tanks, heavy armor units are all but impervious to anything smaller than dedicated anti-tank weapons. A lot of different defensive statlines might be considered heavy armor, but they all stack multiple defensive abilities. They also have serious hitting power of their own, whether that’s from guns, melee, or the cargo of elite troops they’re carrying.

We’ve calculated the odds for Emperor’s Children units attacking several example heavy armor units. Most Warhammer 40k factions can field some form of heavy armor, albeit they may use totally different defensive styles.

• Imperial Knights: Toughness 12, a relatively poor 3+ save, and a conditional 5++ invulnerable save against ranged attacks, they are likely to benefit from a 6+ Feel No Pain damage reduction. They also have a massive stack of wounds, making them hard to bracket or kill.
• Rogal Dorn: Toughness 12 and a 2+ armor save. This is a stand in for the Imperial Guard’s direct fire damage dealing battle tanks.
• Land Raider: With stats like a Rogal Dorn, Land Raiders also have easy access to Armor of Contempt to reduce the effectiveness of enemy armor penetration. We’ve made our calculations for a Land Raider that’s using both AoC and the Benefit of Cover against shooting, to simulate heavy armor with maximum defensive buffs.
• Redemptor Dreadnought: with Toughness 10 and a 2+ save, the Redemptor is vulnerable to weapons with lower Strength than the other Heavy Armor on this list. However, it reduces the damage of incoming attacks by one, which is critically effective against two and three damage attacks, which the Emperor’s Children have quite a lot of.
• We’ve also calculated results for a Redemptor Dreadnought with the benefit of cover and Armor of Contempt, to show just how durable this kind of unit can be when it has its shields up.

How we’ve calculated the odds

We’ve used the Adept Roll mathhammer app to calculate the “average” damage that a unit “should” inflict when it attacks a specific target. It will deal this much damage or more, roughly 50% of the time. Consider these damage numbers a best guess – you’re most likely to get a result somewhere around this result, but much higher and much lower is possible. Dice have no masters and respect no laws.

We assume the attacker is at full strength, unless stated otherwise, and we’ve listed any buffs that we’ve applied. We’ve only included reasonably reliable buffs that you can get from a Detachment, Leader, or an easy to activate ability. It is possible to get more advantages using 40k Stratagems or using different Detachments.

Emperor’s Children ranged attacks

There are three dedicated shooting units in the Emperor’s Children, and they all offer good firepower. However, they aren’t reliable anti-tank solutions that can be expected to win a shooting match.

Land Raider

The Land Raider’s pair of Soulshatter Lascannons are dedicated anti-tank guns, but they’re mounted on a very expensive chassis. It has a few other anti-infantry guns, which we haven’t counted in this calculation.

There are good reasons to take Land Raiders in your list, particularly the speed boost and protection they give to Flawless Blades. But it’s not cost effective to use this tank just as a long range anti-tank gun.

Noise Marines

Noise Marines are equipped with a mixture of Sonic Blasters – better, short ranged Heavy Bolters – and Blastmasters, unique direct-fire weapons that are effective against horde infantry and light vehicles. These weapons natively ignore cover.

For these calculations, we’ve also attached a Lord Kakophonist to the unit, who brings two more guns and grants the unit Sustained Hits 1. This unit is a holy terror against infantry of all sorts, but with low AP, low damage scores, and S10 attacks at best, all of the different defenses Heavy Armor units bring to bear reduce their effectiveness.

Tormentor Squad

A 10 model Tormentor squad led by a Lord Exultant can take four special weapons, plus a couple of plasma pistols on the squad leader and the lord. The Lord also grants them Lethal Hits. For the calculation, we’ve assumed they’re at 12″ range, and the plasmaguns (but not plasma pistols) are overcharged.

Their attacks can spike a lot higher if they get lucky with the meltaguns damage rolls, but that’s a hail mary. Using them to plink tanks also ignores their excellent Precision ability on shooting attacks, which lets them assassinate characters leading units.

Emperor’s Children ranged firepower cannot realistically wipe out enemy heavy armor. And because that firepower is so limited, armies with access to strong defensive stratagems – like the Space Marine chapters and their Armor of Contempt – can easily work out when to pop the strat.

Emperor’s Children struggle to focus fire

The Emperor’s Children army ability, Thrill Seekers, allows them to shoot and charge after advancing or falling back from melee. But there are stipulations: a unit cannot shoot or charge at an enemy that has been targeted by another unit this phase, or that it began the phase engaged with.

Focusing fire is essential for destroying hardy units, particularly if your opponent has any kind of healing capability – small amounts of damage spread over multiple targets are easily healed into insignificance. But you can’t focus fire and benefit from the Emperor’s Children’s army ability at the same time.

The Emperor’s Children player must factor this into their making plans. If you Advance with a Landraider or a unit of Noise Marines to give them an unobstructed line of sight or get them into range, or Fall Back to free them up from melee, they need to be the first unit to shoot their target this turn. They will then be the only unit that took advantage of the Thrill Seekers ability that can shoot at that target this turn.

This extends to the charge phase. Two Maulerfiends should be able to destroy a Knight or Rogal Dorn battle tank that they charge, but only one of them can make a charge after it Advances.

It comes down to blades

Emperor’s Children should not rely on ranged attacks to do more than soften up heavy armor a little. If you want to destroy enemy heavy armor, you need to bring a density of dedicated anti-tank melee threats. Fortunately, while Emperor’s Children have few melee threats, they’re very good ones.

As well as expected damage, we’ve calculated the odds of a melee attack wiping out a full strength target in one round of combat.

Fulgrim

Fulgrim, the daemon Warhammer 40k Primarch of the Emperor’s Children, is a fast melee threat who offers absolutely no support to his own troops. He has a ranged attack equivalent to a more accurate, short ranged Hades Autocannon with Sustained Hits: expect it to whip out plenty of light infantry, kill one or two marines, and put wounds on light vehicles.

There are various ways to buff Fulgrim’s melee prowess in different 40k detachments: Peerless Bladesmen grants him Lethal Hits in melee, he can trigger Sustained Hits on a 5+ in the Carnival of Excess, and if he’s your Favoured Champion in the Champions of Slaanesh he’ll get rerolls to wound. These produce remarkably similar expected results when he’s targeting tanks. For these calculations we’ve gone with the Sustained Hits 40k ability from Peerless Bladesmen.

Fulgrim does have another feature that will provide you with progressive advantage over a long game. Each enemy unit he hits becomes poisoned for the entire battle, and has a 50% chance of suffering D3 mortal wounds during each command phase. This will spike and trough, but on average, it deals one mortal wound per target per turn – it gets better the more you spread it around.

Maulerfiend

The Emperor’s Children Maulerfiend is a dedicated tank-hunting unit, with a very useful ‘Glutton for Punishment’ ability – when it’s below starting strength, it gets +1 to hit, and when it’s below half strength, it gets +1 to wound.

For this exercise, we’ve loaded it out with Lasher Tendrils to help unstick it from any chaff infantry that engage it in melee, and we’re assuming it’s using Sustained Hits from the Peerless Bladesmen detachment. We’ve also given it +1 to hit, as any Maulerfiends that make contact with the enemy are likely to have survived at least some incoming enemy fire.

Flawless Blades

Flawless Blades have a deceptive statline. Their blissblades are competent marine killing weapons with three attacks, S6, AP-3, and Damage 2: fewer, better attacks than Bladeguard Veterans. Their Daemonic Presence ability allows them to hit far, far above their weight class, letting them wound any target on a 3+, though they’ll lose a model if they don’t score a kill. In effect, their strength isn’t six, it’s “target’s toughness plus one”.

For this calculation, we’ve assumed you’re using the Peerless Blades detachment, granting the blades Sustained Hits 1, and you’re using a squad of three. They’ve also turned on their Daemonic Presence.

Here’s a fun thing with probabilities: doubling the number of models in a squad making attacks doubles the expected damage, but it increases your chances of scoring an outright kill by far more.

So while three Flawless Blades are effectively incapable of one-turning a heavy tank, six can. They’ve got a 21% chance of taking out a Land Raider under the effects of Armor of Contempt, a 40% chance of killing a Rogal Dorn, and a 41% chance of wiping out a Knight.

This makes it all the more obvious how completely they are shut down by damage reduction. Six Flawless Blades still have less than 1% chance of one-turning a Redemptor Dreadnought.

Summary

The Emperor’s Children have very few tools for answering enemy heavy armor. One option is to simply refuse to engage with enemy heavy armor by playing a game of keepaway, using superior objective control to win on primary objectives while attempting to limit your losses with defensive use of terrain and tactically sacrificing units. You won’t have any trouble acing enemy infantry. But what if you do want to kill big targets?

There is no cost-effective way for the Emperor’s Children to win a long range shooting match against heavy armor. Against foes with particularly deep defenses, or when they’re fielding lists that are particularly light on ranged threats, they may barely be able to dent such targets.

When Emperor’s Children want to destroy enemy armor, they need to do it with melee threats. A max sized unit of Flawless Blades, a Maulerfiend, or Fulgrim, all have a chance at destroying heavy armor in one round of combat, and a good chance of bracketing it. The odds improve greatly if the target has already been softened up.

However, the Emperor’s Children struggle at focusing fire and co-ordinating melee attacks. Their units are fast and hard to pin down thanks to Thrill Seekers, but the extra speed and their ability to fall back and then charge or shoot is conditional on being the first unit to target a given enemy in a turn.

With limited shooting and un-coordinated charges, there’s a real risk of leaving a target alive to counterattack. And while they’re not exactly feeble, Emperor’s Children are brittle, despite their Space Marine armor.

And of the three available melee units, Flawless Blades have a hard counter – enemy units with damage reduction. They’re still excellent into any other target, but a force cannot rely on them alone if it wants to be able to answer every kind of heavy armor threat.

Despite this deficiency – in fact, partly because of it – the Emperor’s Children remains one of the most exciting Warhammer 40k codex releases this edition. They’re oozing flavor, have a unique playstyle, and this weakness poses an interesting challenge for list building and overall strategy.

If you’re a true servant of Slaanesh who isn’t put off by these limitations, make sure you check out this interview with The Warsinger about his incredible Emperor’s Children cosplay!

Source: Wargamer