Are Rubric Marines over-costed?: Assault

Well... I don't think anyone is expecting a win for the Thousand Sons here. But we're not really looking for a victory, but rather a slim defeat.


So far the outlook hasn't been good for them. Their defensive value hasn't been stellar, and their shooting only marginally more effective. In fact, I'm going to go the extra mile here and say that the warp flame bolters should have had Ignores Cover as well. That would make them a clear winner of shooting, and would have put them on an equal footing with Sternguard/Deathwatch special ammunition. But we're not here to look at guns, but bayonets.




Click to zoom.


Not much to discuss here. As always, the first bit is a run down of the points and wounds. I then make a note of the average Weapon Skills of the unit.


From there, we don't need to talk about wounds and strengths, as each unit has the same. They're all Strength 4 attacks, meaning we can effectively make that a controlled variable, and jst need to consider number of attacks.


Whilst the number of Force attacks the units can put out is somewhat significant, I've decided to largely ignore the impact of having more of them. The simple reason is that I couldn't think up a good way of comparing them in a qualitative sense, so I've just left them there as their own row on the table. Someone smarter and more stat savvy than me can put those together and see if they make a difference.


What I have done is made sure to take an average of normal and charge attacks. Whilst an individual model may have higher base attacks, having double the number of models means you double your number of extra attacks on the charge.


I then take this average, and then weight it against the average Weapon Skill of the unit, which just means multiplying those two numbers together. It's not great, but it does the job of making sure WS5 attacks are more valuable than WS4.


Again, the number of points spent on the unit is divided by the weighted average, as you want each close combat attack you're paying for to be cost-effective for the points.


And to no-ones surprise, the Rubric Marines come out near the bottom. What is somewhat shocking is that the paired Librarians come out at the very bottom, but you're not taking those characters for their ability to win challenges.


Somewhat comforting is that the other two Chaos units comes out on top, meaning that they're a little bit better at CQC than their loyalist counterparts. The difference there is just made by the mandatory Aspiring champion, an advantage easily matched by purchasing a Veteran Sergeant.


Definitely not a good phase for the Rubric Marines, but in their defence, no one was calling them brawling power houses in the first place.


Next time we get to the actual sparkle of these units, and the whole reason you'd field them: Psychic strength.




Thanks for reading.

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