Which Wych configuration?

Noob question, and sorry if this has already been discussed elsewhere (if so, could someone point me in the right direction via link?).

I've done some math hammer for razorflails vs. hydra gauntlets against MEQ and on paper the latter HGs appear to be more effective. What are your thoughts/experiences on the matter?

Additionally, do the basic Wych sprues contain enough of both flails and gauntlets to kit out all 10 of the Wyches uniformly of the same weapon? Or rather, 9 Wyches if I intend to promote a Hekatrix with an agoniser?

Thanks,

Shardnets.

I'd considered that for my squad moving with my CF Archon.

First things first: welcome.

DarkJude wrote:

I've done some math hammer for razorflails vs. hydra gauntlets against MEQ and on paper the latter HGs appear to be more effective. What are your thoughts/experiences on the matter?

I believe other math hammer work shows otherwise. Hydra Guantlets are more useful if you have a full troop transport but Razorflails tend to perform better overall when factoring in combat drugs. Adding an additional wyche is always better, except when faced with transport capacity. Razorflails are strictly better that HG on Bloodbrides.

DarkJude wrote:

Additionally, do the basic Wych sprues contain enough of both flails and gauntlets to kit out all 10 of the Wyches uniformly of the same weapon? Or rather, 9 Wyches if I intend to promote a Hekatrix with an agoniser?

There are only three wyche weapons in a box of wyches. If I understand what you're proposing, you can only use one wyche weapon per 5 wyches except with bloodbrides....unless I'm wrong and you're going to town and plan on having 5+ wyche squads.

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Hydra Guantlets are more useful if you have a full troop transport but Razorflails tend to perform better overall when factoring in combat drugs.

Interesting - and yes, I was thinking full transport.

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If I understand what you're proposing, you can only use one wyche weapon per 5 wyches except with bloodbrides

I missed that in the codex, thanks for pointing out.

I guess this brings about more questions - like... is a full transport of 10 or 2 squads of 5 better?

The magic number appears to be something like 7 or 8 Wyches. It really depends on what you want to do and what kind of HQs you're using. I like to run my squads with a Succubus. She's pretty good at wrecking things. I recall one match where a squad of 6 or 7 Wyches with a Succubus launched a multi-assault against a squad of scouts and terminators w/ a librarian. Killed the terminators, the Librarian, and half of the scouts while losing one Wyche in return. On the other hand, a Wyche squad with a Haemunculus always starts the game with Feel No Pain and is by extension harder to kill in shooting and nearly impossible to kill in Close Combat. The trade off is speed--the Haemunculus doesn't have Fleet and will slow down the squad unless he stays on the Raider. Then he's basically a free Kill Point.

What do you want to do?

LTKage wrote:

What do you want to do?

I'm not sure to be honest - all I've got to work with are a box of scourges, an archon, and the battleforce for my first 750 game. I was thinking of maybe dropping the reavers from the list for scourges w/ haywires supporting a splinter setup via kabalites+raider and the wyches on foot with the archon?

I'd post a working list in the Army List section of the forum. I'd also put the wyches & archon in the raider. Lets see what you got.

Sure - uno momento.

http://www.thedarkcity.net/t3259-first-de-list-750#34723

I've had some free time at work (yay!) and managed to do some serious probability counting on Wych weapons' effectiveness (wich I assume was the basic question in this topic).
I've assumed Space Marines as a most common opponent, and all maths was done against their stats. I've taken all drugs into account. And my conclusions are as follows:

razorflails inflict more wounds in long term than hydra gauntlets* UNLESS you roll Painbringer drug
* I assumed an average of 3,5 attacks result on hydra's D6 throw
of course they inflict more wounds than shardnet & impaler
BUT
even if you manage to put S&I into base contact with ONLY 1 enemy model you will receive less attacks after your charge is resolved. The thing is, that while S&I doesn't kill that much it debilitates enemy models IF they have more than 1A, so it works well against Assault SM or Orks for example.

However it is almost useless against regular SM (you HAVE TO put it to base contact with sergeant to gain benefits) and I wouldn't take it at all against armies with weak troops like Eldar or IG.

Should anyone be interested I've uploaded the [url=wilku.ehost.pl/upload/de_probability.xlsx]de probability spreadsheet[/url] to my server. feel free to copy, modify and share. I will update it with more simulation possibilities soon

Thanks! My preference on wych weapons has long gone to the S&I, in part because they are especially effective against close combat monsters like many ICs and MCs.

And while, as you said, they provide no benefit against single-attack units like tactical marines or IG... wyches already beat those units in assault, so taking S&I instead of other options against those units will not likely result in going from a win to a loss.

Well, I'll take a look at Wyches vs. IC or MC and special weapons effectiveness.
Allandrel - Can you suggest any particular ICs or MCs for me to test?

btw: anyone knows what happened to my link in the previous post?

Shardnet for me too.

Tried the hydra gauntlets at first thinking it would boost productivity for the wyches but I realized productivity is not what comes naturally for wyches. For me, they are not a "hammer" unit and giving them offensive wych weapons like hydras or flails is not going to make them one reliably - I found they still have troubles and it is more of a S3 T3 problem. Once I figured that there are other more reliable units that can be a hammer better than the wyches a new role for them came about. It's no mystery - wyches are a tarpit simply by having a invul save and coupled with the one wych weapon that also compliments that role I haven't looked back.

Simply, they are a tarpit unit that can shut down a dread, IC, MC or deathstar. Of course, I only really need one of these units and certainly no more than 2 of them. I run them in squads of 8 on a raider or 10 out of the portal. They always take haywires and an agoniser. Their job is a specialist one but I do have other units that can deal with the regular rank n file targets better than a squad of wyches can. They do go after rank n file when opportunity arises but it is kind of a waste of their abilities so I do combo charge with other units to get them free of combat form my next turn.

If you are running a wych cult or wych heavy list then you can probably bring the squad number down (to something like 6) and boost the number of squads up. Surround and drown idea suits the wyches fine as I would say the number agonisers in any given combat is what is going to determine who wins combat, not the number of flails or hydras. I would even say drop the wych weapons altogether and ensure either more wyches and/or more agonisers.

Just my thought however I run only 1 unit of wyches in my non-Coven lists.

wilku wrote:

Well, I'll take a look at Wyches vs. IC or MC and special weapons effectiveness.
Allandrel - Can you suggest any particular ICs or MCs for me to test?

Ork Warbosses, SM Captains, and CSM Daemon Princes both come to mind as commonly-seen units that can have their day ruined by a couple of S&I-armed wyches but would not care much about wyches armed with hydragauntlets or razorflails.

Not that this will sway anyone one way or the other, but this is how I field wyches:

First, I take a haemy as an HQ, he gets liquifier and venomblade.

Then I add him to a unit of 9 wyches with hekatrix. The hekatrix takes and agoniser, there is a shardnet wych.

They all ride in a raider with flickerfields and a shockprow.

It's a pricey unit, but it is fairly durable and will do plenty of damage if given the opportunity.

Bearded Dan wrote:

First, I take a haemy as an HQ, he gets liquifier and venomblade.

Then I add him to a unit of 9 wyches with hekatrix. The hekatrix takes and agoniser, there is a shardnet wych.

They all ride in a raider with flickerfields and a shockprow.

With the exception of the shockprow, seems like a good setup. Would probably drop the shockprow and one Wyche though. Maybe even the flicker field if you zoom 24" every time.

while I would also suggest dropping the shockprow I'm very curious what do you use it for?
AFAIK it allows a tank shock, so I assume you tank shock an enemy unit. so you have it your Raider movement range (24"). so you are most likely able to charge it with your wyches: 12" raider move + 2" disembark + avg 3,5" (D6" avg) run + 6" charge = 23,5".
So what's the point of the shock prow?

The shock prow is presumably because he is fond of 'ram of opportunity' attacks.

yep, an unexpected arse ram from an empty raider...is quite painful 83% of the time you pen a Leman Russ so...can make a difference. Espechially if you are deemed cant shoot. Opponents like haha, me tankz be in safety zone...BAM!

Back on topic: for tarpit unites, i would say s&i, for grinder unites, razorflail. Against Gretchen: hydra gauntlets

Bearded Dan wrote:

Not that this will sway anyone one way or the other, but this is how I field wyches:

First, I take a haemy as an HQ, he gets liquifier and venomblade.

Then I add him to a unit of 9 wyches with hekatrix. The hekatrix takes and agoniser, there is a shardnet wych.

They all ride in a raider with flickerfields and a shockprow.

It's a pricey unit, but it is fairly durable and will do plenty of damage if given the opportunity.

My Wyches minus shockprow and swap venomblade + liquifyer with scizzorhands and shattershard. This unit is my Ultamate tarpit of kill-y-ness, but arnt tarpits not ment to kill things i hear you ask? NO, Wyches can do both! This unit has been my women of the match many, many times in my smaller battles and wych ( ) they have been the bane of anything from terminators (shattershard to soften up) to guardians (SLAUGHTER) to marines to tau. I find S+I is the best wych wepon because it takes away those attacks that the opponent depends on, daemon hammer or lightning claws or any exarch EVER.

Its a defensive wepon that does its job incredibly well, ussally making the oppenent lose 2 attacks for me. I'd raver 9 living wyches to 7 (2 dead) wyches with a few more attacks.

(wanna say it somewhere, FC wyches that strike before haliquins is just plain funny!)

I honestly don't find any of the special wych weapons worth it.

Too many points for not much action.

Hydra Gauntlets are better than Razorflails most of the time. Also, considering that you could get re-roll to wound with your Combat Drugs, your only benefit gained by the Razorflails would then be re-roll to hit, in which case the Gauntlets are even better.

Gauntlets are better more often, and exceedingly so if you do happen to get re-roll to wound on your drugs.

Well again debatable. In Thor's tactics article he specifically states that razor fails are more reliable than hydra gauntlets. Doing the maths without drugs fails causes double the wounds against T4. Here is the maths.

Flails: (3*1/2=1.5 + 1.5*1/2=0.75)=2.25*1/3=0.75 + 1.5*1/3=.0.5)=1.25 unsaved wounds.
Gauntlets: cause 3.5 wounds average so 3.5*1/2=1.75*1/3=0.5833 unsaved wounds.

With drugs the maths gets much more complex. But I'm good at maths so trust me. In this case I'm assuming your charging with a pain token (because that's how I do it).

Flails: this really made the mind spin but the average with drugs was 1.50386 unsaved wounds..
Gauntlets: on average with all drug rolls, the gauntlets caused 0.77315 unsaved wounds.

So either way, Flails smash gauntlets causing double the wounds. Mind you this is against T4 only. I don't know what would happen vs T3 but with the Marine environment I will certainly be modelling more Flails than gauntlets.

Here is another question - what is best Wych Weapon on Bloobrides, considering there is Duke in the list?