Wyches and haywire

megatrons2nd wrote:

My terrain covered 1/4 of the board.  

Banshees shooting will kill 1-3 depending on how much bladestorm helps them.  Hit on 3's shooting, wound on 3's shooting, and will average 1-2 bladestorm hits, and there will be an average of 1 failed save beyond this.  Then the 3-4 kills in combat depending on who gets the assault in.

You need to look at the whole unit not just the assault capability.  If the Banshees are unable to shoot for some reason, then yes Incubi will likely end the Banshees, but when shooting is added the Banshees will win, most of the time.

Your maths is way off. They're armed with pistols not catapults so a 10 man squad will do something like 5 wounds on average, so about 0.8 Bladestorm hits. With saves and FnP thats 1, maybe 2 dead at worst. Mind you, I wouldn't disembark the Incubi until it puts them into a reasonable charge range of their target, using what line of sight blocking terrain I can to keep the Venom alive until then.

10 attacks 9 hit on 3+, 1 on 2+ for the exarch.  Statistically, 3 miss, 1 will be a 6 leaving 7 hits.  To wounds, 3+ to wound, statically, 1.16 will be a 6, 2.31 will fail to wound, 4.62 will wound. 1-2 wounds from bladestorm, and 4-5 from regular attacks.  Statistically 1/3 of the incubi will fail the 3+ save from the other attacks meaning 1-2 will fail this, meaning statistically 2-4 will  take wounds from shooting shuriken catapults.  FnP may save another 1-2.  Out of 5 Incubi, this leaves between 1 and 4 alive.

The subsequent assault, will have 30 attacks at a higher initiative, and likely the same WS due to the formation +1 WS benefit they will likely have.  15 will hit, 10 will wound, 6 will make it past the FnP.  Not counting the Exarchs 6 WS.  No Incubi attacks back....because they are all dead.

Not very easy to keep a AV 10 vehicle around.  They Die to a stiff breeze, Jink/invulnerable saves only carry it so far.  I've never had one live past Turn 3, and never let an opponent get one with Incubi in it close....ever, High priority target.  Also with the +3" charge range for Banshees, the Banshees will likely be the unit to get the assault bonus.

megatrons2nd wrote:

10 attacks 9 hit on 3+, 1 on 2+ for the exarch.  Statistically, 3 miss, 1 will be a 6 leaving 7 hits.  To wounds, 3+ to wound, statically, 1.16 will be a 6, 2.31 will fail to wound, 4.62 will wound. 1-2 wounds from bladestorm, and 4-5 from regular attacks.  Statistically 1/3 of the incubi will fail the 3+ save from the other attacks meaning 1-2 will fail this, meaning statistically 2-4 will  take wounds from shooting shuriken catapults.  FnP may save another 1-2.  Out of 5 Incubi, this leaves between 1 and 4 alive.

6's don't matter when rolling to hit. Bladestorm triggers on 6's to wound. So, to simplify:

9 Banshees: 9 shots, 6 hits, 1 'rend', 3 normal wounds (of which 2 will be saved), leaves 2 unsaved wounds, or 1.33 dead Incubi after FNP. Exarch does another 0.12 wounds unless he gets a 'rend'. So not really anywhere near the 2-4 dead Incubi you calculated.

I also don't think it's fair to assume they will have +1WS as, unless you take an entire Aspect Host of cc units, you're always going to pick +1BS instead (which does of course increase the shooting damage they do). I'll come back to this later when I have more time.

7 hits average counting Exarch, 4.62 will wound, 1 will likely rend, 1.19 will succeed in clearing the saves. Minimum 2 average kills, maximum is 4 average kills, 5 at the extreme end of excellent rolls for the Eldar. The 2-4 is the average variance, and the most likely area, the 5 kills is excessively unlikely, as is 1 kill; both being extreme ends on dice rolls. The way you round will effect this number, I round down to figure low end and up to figure high end, your numbers seem to match the always rounding down variance. Math differences like this will skew your view, so maybe I should have mentioned it in my description. Decent rolls on both sides will leave an average of 2 deaths, slightly increasing one side or another's rolls will skew it more towards one side or another. The low end 2 is marginally below average rolls for the Banshees, and good rolls for the Incubi, Great rolls for the Incubi wound drop that number to 1 or even 0 depending on how great the great rolls are, and I excluded great roll variances. Conversely the high end 4 is good rolls for the Banshees, and Marginally below average rolls for the Incubi. Great rolls would have ended the Incubi without ever reaching assault.

It's not hard to get the 3 Aspects for the +1 WS, Banshees, Scorpions, and Dire Avengers with a CC oriented Exarch. I did 3 of this formation when I still had Eldar, 2 for shooting, and 1 for melee.

I'm not sure I understand what argument is being made here between Incubi and Banshees...are we talking about, point for point, which ones will beat the other?

Because I'm pretty sure Banshees win that, just because you get 5 banshees for the price of 3 Incubi. If we give the Incubi every benefit of the doubt for no penalties, no overwatch hits, and assume neither gets a bonus for charging, let's find out what happens:

Round 1
3 Incubi kill 2.66 banshees at initiative 5. (6 attacks, 3.996 hits, 2.66 wounds unsaved)
5 Banshees kill 2.5 Incubi at initiative 5. (10 attacks, 5 hits, 2.5 wounds unsaved)
Round 2
0.5 Incubi kills 0.44 Banshees at initiative 5.
2.34 Banshees kill 1.17 Incubi at initiative 5.
FINAL: 0 Incubi Left, 1.90 Banshees left.

If Incubi have FnP 5+:
Round 1
3 Incubi kill 2.66 banshees at initiative 5. (6 attacks, 3.996 hits, 2.66 wounds unsaved)
5 Banshees kill 1.67 Incubi at initiative 5. (10 attacks, 5 hits, 1.67 wounds unsaved)
Round 2
1.33 Incubi kills 1.18 Banshees at initiative 5. (2.66 attacks, 1.771 hits, 1.18 wounds unsaved)
2.34 Banshees kill 1.17 Incubi at initiative 5. (4.68 attacks, 2.34 hits, 0.77 wounds unsaved)
FINAL: 0.66 Incubi Left, 1.16 Banshees left.

Ultimately, the Incubi would have the greater chance to win combat by Banshees failing a leadership roll, but absent a leadership failure, the Banshees will ultimately kill equal points in Incubi unless the Incubi have some tactical advantage outside of their stats. The reverse also being true(Banshees will crush Incubi if they get the tactical advantage of charge bonus, and vice versa). The primary difference being that it's easier for Banshees to get the tactical advantage in games because they have pistols, pseudo-grenades, formations that give them +1 WS, etc.

Incubi, like Wyches need some rework to allow them to perform their role as intended.

Incubi are hampered a lot by a lack of assault grenades and by the demiklave "upgrade" being statistically worse than the base weapon. A rework of the demiklaves would make them worth taking, give them the same +1 S as the base klaive and give them rending. You trade guaranteed AP 2 for and extra attack and 1/6 chance for AP 2. Would probably be worth the trade. As for the grenades issue give the Incubi some sort of fear-based projector in their helmets (like the Banshee's do and similar to their old pistol-in-the-helmet gimmick) that counts as assault grenades. They can't throw nades into combat (GW seems happy with them having no shooting at all) but they can still assault at initiative. I think they should also be given counter-attack. Their main usage in the Dark City is muscle/protection for the Archon's, it makes sense for them to be able to leap to the defence if charged.

Wyches need to come down in price as well as needing a buff. They should be good at killing light infantry but they should also be cheap and disposable (more so than kabalites). Easy changes would be to let the damned invul save work in overwatch (what a stupid oversight this was), allow them to assault from open-topped transports even if it moved at cruising speed, to make their Wych weapons worthwhile (1 of them is statistically so much better that it invalidates the other two and even then it isn't great) and allow them to take 1 per 3 models instead of needing them to be a 10 woman squad to take a bunch of them. The old Wych weapon rules were way more interesting, they only lost those because GW was bent on simplifying the game when the codex was released. They since backtracked so why not bring back the better rules? I think there's an argument for giving them poison 4+, if kabalites can shoot it why aren't the gladiators fighting with it? If you give them all those then maybe you wouldn't have to bring the price down.

As for the haywire issue it just doesn't make sense for them to have them. Their role shouldn't be assaulting vehicles - they're gladiators. Other things in the DE arsenal can take care of that. They shouldn't be trying to pop metal boxes either, again other things do that. Death from a thousand cuts - let the ravagers or scourges pop the box then have the wyches charge the contents. If they're not gonna use it in the arena then they shouldn't really be carrying it into battle. Otherwise you'd just give them actual armour and guns instead of CC weapons.

The biggest problem facing the DE though is a lack of formations in a meta that is heavily reliant on them for leverage. A Wych supplement with suitable formations and some rules changes (like suggested above) could overnight make Wyches (and entire Wych Cult armies) viable. I feel many of the short comings of the codex can be rectified by formations and new detachments. This is the way the game is going anyway we should be on the bandwagon!