A Nice Little Combo...

I was recently noodling ways to better deal with bike armies and their jinx saves when I came across something I had never thought of nor seen mentioned so thought I would share.

The liquifier gun is a "much loved" piece of war gear here at the dark city. While it ignores cover, its middling strength makes it a bit underwhelming against T5 bike marines.

Solution? Syndriq's Sump.

This toolbox artifact has the ability to bestow the poisoned rule (among others) to our spindly little flesh doctors. And what is one of the only pieces of war gear a haemonculous can take that isn't already poisoned? The liquified gun.

For the cost of an agonizer, you now have a 4+ poisoned liquifier gun.

Nice. Not D- Weapon Nice. But Nice.

I think the best delivery mechanism for this little combo is the Dark Artisan formation. The WWP gives it great placement and alpha strike options and it can be combed with a twin linked gun from the Talos and the template on the Cronos if desired to potentially drown a unit in wounds, not to mention making for a nasty "Come at Me Bro" overwatch defense.

Unfortunately the poison rule only applies to the bearer's melee weapons, not ranged.

Edit: Oh, nevermind... *feeling ashamed*

Very interesting, not a game changer, but interesting.

So, you are basically paying 25pts for a 4+ template with a D6.
Both, in terms of firepower and price this is comparable to a Medusae, which are arguably among the better models in our codex.

So, what about a Haemy in a Grotesquerie? He's already a great boon in order to unlock the goodies of PfP early and the Sump almost is a must have in case the Grotesques get Fleet.
Considering this, you basically pay 15pts for a template weapon you'd normally be paying 25 points for.

Considering that we also pay 15pts for a Blaster, I think this is not too little value for our standards actually (but please let's not talk about our standards...).

Personally, I think I wouldn't use it on a DA because it is too slow for my taste but all in all I think this is something that I'd really like to test out. Perhaps I am even going to try it out with a Hexrifle as well.

Exact wording on the Sump is "At the beginning of each of his turns, the controlling player nominates one of the following special rules to apply to the BEARER of [the sump]....poisoned (4+)."

Hmm, this is (surprise!) unclear...

Let's try it this way:

I think we all can agree that if I pop the Poison 4+ on my otherwise naked Haemy, his 2 close combat weapons (which he has stock) will now always wound on 4+. Does this mean that the close combat weapons are part of the bearer? It sure seems that way. Now we just replace one close combat weapon with the Liquifier Gun. It is now also Poison 4+.

And if we say "No, his weapon(s) don't benefit from Poison 4+!" then... what does benefit from the poison?

His base CC attacks.

I think that's in the poison rule, something on the line of "a model with this rule treats it's close combat attacks as poisoned. A weapon with this rule treats it's attacks as...". The model is the one getting it, not the weapon, which means that only it's cc attacks are poisoned.

Frederick Vael wrote:

I think that's in the poison rule

Always a good place to start when wondering how the poison rule works

To be precise:

Quote :

If a model has the Poisoned special rule, or is attacking with a Melee weapon that has the Poisoned special rule, it always wounds on a fixed number...when attacking in close combat

and:

Quote :

Similarly, if a model makes a shooting attack with a weapon that has the Poisoned special rule, it always wounds on a fixed number

The Sump gives the bearer the poison rule, which confers onto it's melee weapons but not ranged weapons, which are required to have the rule themselves.

Ah darn. And here I was getting excited by all the Haemies in my army

Even if it did work it's only a fairly minor increase on 1 character for a lot of points and I wouldn't have gotten too excited about it.