Building an Archon with Mathhammer

This is an exercise in using statistics to improve one's understanding of a unit's limits and to make a close wargear call. Please review the information at your leisure to use it for your own purposes, and leave criticism where applicable.

Recently, I ran an Archon Lord in a tournament with a build that I was given on this forum in response to a thread I posted asking for advice. The Archon's pistol is replaced by a Blaster to give ranged AT, but he gets his second close combat weapon back from a Djin Blade, which is in a separate wargear list. Combat Drugs let you make up for Strength 3 much of the time. This is the concept. In practice, I was disappointed by his performance in close-combat: he barely outperformed one of his Incubi guards.

The tournament made me re-evaluate much of my unit configurations: long story short, I'm planning to start running my Archon with a unit of Wyches. I want him to keep his Blaster for the sweet 18" radius. That leads back to the Djin Blade...but what if I just ran an Agonizer, lost the bonus attacks, and dealt with it? Or, if I comprimised and went Blast Pistol+Agonizer, how much better would that make him in close combat? And what about the Drugs?

Rather than play 50+ games and gather data, I decided to math it out to see which weapon combination is best, including the effects of drugs. I did the math for the following profiles:

Guard Equivalent: T3 The Prude Eldar fall here as well.
Marine Equivalent: T4 What the Archon should be aiming for in most games.
Biker or Beefy Equivalent: T5 This is sort of a fun profile, but sometimes you gotta kill some Orks or Scout Bikes.
Assault Terminator Equivalent: T4 3++ save This is a profile that, if run with Wyches, the Archon can end up facing.

Assmptions:

1. I'm taking a page out of other forumite's books (namely Thor's) and comparing point efficiency. Namely, 20 points for a Drug-Free Archon and 30 for a Drugged one. I want to look at the upgrades themselves, and I'm confident that this approach (rather than using the Archon's total cost) will give legible results.
2. The Archon is on the charge, strikes first, hits on 3+, has no other debuffs...he would be on an infinite frictionless plane if I could swing it.
3. Each combat drug effect has an equal chance of occuring, so the weighted average of all 6 tells us what to expect in any given game.
4. The Djin Blade's bonus attacks betray you 1/6 of the time, which count as missing. You'll only have your Shadowfield cracked less than 1/36 of the time, so I'm not factoring in the negative value of that happening.

Here is the big block of math:

Spoiler:

And here is the condensed comparison of efficiencies:

Spoiler:

The Interpretation

This is the hard part, and nothing here is set in stone. Not even the math above is permanent, as I may have made mistakes. If I truly wished to be an evil mathamancer, I would claim I left an error or two in there you you to find, but not today.

Starting off: Drugs are never efficient by the standards I set for them. The Drugged Archon sometimes killed more, but not enough to offset a 10 point cost increase. That being said, some drug rolls performed better than the weighted average, with "Re-roll Failed To-Wound" being the clear winner. However, even that only let the Agonizer+Pistol equal the Drug Free version, while the Djin Blade+CCW barely surpassed its counterpart.

Now, to compare which weapon selection did best.

For the Drugged Archon, the Agonizer+Pistol wins overall. Djin Blade put up a respectable showing, winning at GEQ and being very close at killing guys with Storm Shields, but MEQ is a big category to lose in. For a weapon to pair with a Blaster it's not bad, and trumps the bare Agonizer in everything but T5+ things.

For the Drug Free Archon, it's Agonizer+Pistol. The amount that the Djin Blade leaned on the Strength boosting results in its weighted average is clear by the bigger differences. The Djin Blade+CCW still beats the bare Agonizer in 3/4 of the categories calculated.


The conclusions, then:

1. Blaster+Djin Blade beats out Blaster+Agonizer at killing common units
2. Blaster+Agonizer wins out at killing uncommon units
3. Agonizer+Pistol beats both of the above at both, but loses you that sweet, sweet 18" threat range
4. Combat Drugs are complicated- on average, their points cost as I reckon is not made up in close combat, even for the Djin Blade. Some rolls, however, are just what you need. Buyer beware!

At the end of this, I feel much more comfortable going Drug Free, and I have some good numbers to pore over before a big event to pick just the right tool for the job.

The next step, then, is to run the numbers for the weapons that I hadn't considered- Venom Blade, Power Weapon, and Huskblade+Soul Trap, with the Trap empty and full. Anyone else is try their hand at it, or else I'll add them to this thread at a later date.

I'm not sure how you would do the mathhammer on it but if you're running him with Wyches you might want to consider giving the Archon a huskbalde, soul trap and clone field and giving the Wyches as many Shardnets & impalers as allowed. The theory of course being that the shardnets reduce the number of incoming attacks and the clone field makes the archon effectively immune to them, leaving him free to hack away with the huskblade until the unfortunate victim dies and the soul trap (hopefully) gives the Archon a lovely Strength boost.

That doesn't work very well with wyches, since they only have 1 shardnet, if you don't want to footslog them. You usually want 9 Bloodbrides with 3 Shardnets for the Huskblade, Soultrap and Clonefield combo.

I dislike the Djinblade in every way. We didn't got the numbers nor the point-costs like orcs/imps to stay fine with random factors that may bitchslap yourself to a chance of ~17%.

CaptainBalroga wrote:

Recently, I ran an Archon Lord in a tournament with a build that I was given on this forum in response to a thread I posted asking for advice... ...In practice, I was disappointed by his performance in close-combat: he barely outperformed one of his Incubi guards.

The tournament made me re-evaluate much of my unit configurations: long story short, I'm planning to start running my Archon with a unit of Wyches.

I really have a hard time understanding this line of logic, I must admit not even reading the rest of it.

personally I stay away from my Archon as of late. Baron, haemies, or even Vect on some occasions are way better in their own situations, with haemies being the best all comers options imho. If I would take an Archon, its because I either A: want grenades for Incubi (who I never run) or B: I want to add some punch to wyches, to which the Succubus does it cheaper (although not as suriviable)

Personally either way just run shadowfield, agoniser, combat drugs, the PGL if going with Incubi, and haywires if going with wyches. Cheap and efficent enough for his point cost.

My couple of slaves worth, if you're taking a blaster, surely the point of that is to shoot stuff, and if you're shooting stuff, then you're not making the most of being attached to the wyches? I'd either kit him out to take on stuff in close combat if you're going to attach him to wyches, or give him a blaster but slap him in a venom with some trueborn and don't touch the close combat gear.

All right, time for my defense! I will admit that I wanted to talk more about the numbers than the abstract, but I do have answers to all of your questions.

@Count Adhemar
I have been curious how this defensive setup works compared to "Pay 30 points, get Shadowfield". Certainly, two squads (friendly and enemy) worth of math is harder to spit out than the effects of one model against a generic enemy, but it's not impossible. Empirical evidence would be useful here. Does anyone here run this on a regular basis? How well does it work?

@SleepyPillow
In any case but an Archon with a Blaster, Djin Blade+Pistol gets outperformed by the Agonizer+Pistol. So your dislike is justified. However, the Blade is not terrible, and does come quite close in efficiency.

@Raneth, Shadows Revenge, The_Burning_Eye

So, why am I running an Archon, why with a Blaster, why give him a special weapon, then, and why put him with Wyches?

I'm running the Archon because I love the Archon. My space pirates need their captain. Indulgence Count: 1

He gets a Blaster and a special weapon because it has worked in the past. The dream is to have him tear up the enemy's backfield, popping tanks and taking names. The Blast Pistol has not been good enough for that, so Blaster it is. Indulgence Count: 2

He does need a squad, though, if not just to hitch a ride from. Incubi indeed do not mesh with the mixed role, as they are full anti-infantry. Plus, (and this might soothe Raneth's raging heart) I'm not the best with Incubi. I would rather practice using a pure Incubi unit before I complicate it with my pet HQ. Wracks have been decent, but they only deal with infantry, too, and are only so sturdy. Haywire Wyches, then are my next unit to try. A bread-and-butter unit that can use the Archon's extra power, but can do fine on their own locking down enemy power weapons or multi-assaulting vehicles.

The direction I'm approaching this is: If I want a Mixed Archon, what are the best weapons do i give him, and which unit will he do the most good in? Blaster+Djin Blade and Wyches are my current conclusions. Feel free to offer alternatives, though as I mentioned, I did have another thread about this!

As said for our Craftworld Cousins, Dark Eldar are best if they are specialised. Running a mixed option HQ can be fun against newcomers to the Warhammer universe, but will break against a list that has good mechanism and synergy. Blaster: Hack open 1 Vehicle OR 1 Termi a game. No thanks. Blast Pistol: Prior to assault may kill one adversary. MAY.
Mathhammer is fine, untill you get to the point, where Djin blade has to face TH/SS termies. They wont hit much, so takeing them head on with a squad of wytches, just to assault the termies later on by Incubi and your archon will get you a few wytches dead,but then hopefully you will wipe out the termies.
So with Djin bladeyou hit on what, 5+? With Agoniser 4+? And with Djin blades you have 1/6 chance to hit yourself? No deal on my end of the thable.

On the Shadowfield: i think it to be rather expensive to have a 1/6 chance of failing me, where as a clone field gifted with lady average will block 2 attacks each turn - if we are useing mathhammer. Usually a MEQ with poerfist hits 2 times. Yay, 2 clones. If you charged the squad with the powerfist sergeant, and he will live for the next turns cc, unless youth wiper them out with the incubi, that sergeant's will only hit 1. Minimum to deflect for clonefield without failind? I'll take it.

I personally would only put my archon with wytches if they were Bloodbrides. Against the new Spacewolfs, 3 shardnets, 2 agonisers kick ass.


So on the mathammer of the topic, yeah, you did pretty good. On the worth of the gear: nay!

Enfernux wrote:

So on the mathammer of the topic, yeah, you did pretty good. On the worth of the gear: nay!

Thank you for the compliment. I'm going to keep using statistics to inform my wargear choices between similar pieces of wargear, and would recommend the same to anyone else. Human intuition is pretty bad at judging these kinds of differences: I can't even communicate how useful intuition is without using a fuzzy term like "pretty bad"! For now, though, I've just stopped using a custom Archon, and picked up Duke Sliscus and a shooting army to get more play experience.

Shooting DE is a 50%. Some times it takes 12 shots on an AV12 from blasters to crack it open, a squad of 10 ladies with HWG has more chance. If youd like, i can send you my shooty DE composition to 1k-2.5k - i did play shooty up untill a few months.

Sure, I'll take a look, thanks! I'll post what I'm using now in Army Lists as well, to open it up for critique.