Exorcists take 2: A TKE request

This is just for TKE! Picture is of Vinsanity's (vote for his SoB! I want to see that army painted. I covered Exorcists here but as TKE pointed out the post kind of ended with an army list and I didn’t really finish up the logical sequence. Rather than editing a huge chunk into the post I’m just going to post again. Lucky me. In the previous post we covered the weaknesses of Exorcists lying in their single gun and advocated Immo spam w/IG support through infantry platoons. We’ll take a more in-depth look at why the Exorcist isn’t a good fit here specifically.

The general problem with Exorcists comes down not to competition in the Heavy Support slot of WH (like the Night Spinner) but actually how their army operates. Again, whilst the Exorcist suffers from one gun syndrome, it’s not that bad in raw isolation but when you look at it in comparison to more Immolators in the WH army, the army begins to deteriorate. We covered Immo spam earlier which is pretty much the peak effectiveness of WH (even pure WH) due to a mass of vehicles, flamers and meltaguns with the only downside being lack of ranged firepower. However, to add ranged firepower through Exorcists you have to consider what you're losing. As we covered earlier ISTs + Immolator (from heavy Support) are on par with the Exorcist for points and can be more reliable but have lower damage potentials (against tanks) and range issues.

However, using the Immolator from HS (with ISTs inside) continues with the Immo spam theme and provides the army with more vehicle, anti-tank and anti-infantry firepower saturation and makes target priority very difficult for your opponent. Against a pure WH Immo spam army your opponent has 11 Immolators with 8 melta squads (3 scoring) and 3 flamer squads + 2 Rhinos w/meltagun SoB squads all coming at you. The SoB squads are in 'lesser' tanks without Heavy Flamers whilst the scoring meltas in Immos should be shot first and thus be hiding for 3+ saves. If one takes Exorcists over Immolators here, you’re not only losing synergy but giving your opponent easier choices during shooting, especially if they can get into the side arc of the Exorcists.

To the second point… Synergy is lost as you're moving less tanks (with Heavy Flamers) and meltaguns forward. Whilst on a mathhammer basis you might actually be gaining in terms of anti-tank which can mitigate the loss of scoring Troops and anti-infantry, the disruption to army synergy has a much greater impact not seen through the math. There are less targets heading towards your opponent which means less blocking w/Rhino V’s and triangles and less “leap-frogging” to gain as much cover as possible. Because there is less saturation heading towards your opponent they are more able to disrupt your army and blunt your assault by shake-locking the Exo’s or are better able to significantly damage your armoured push and when your army reaches the opponent lines, there is less increase in firepower.

Since Immo spam is so limited in range, you want to hit your opponent’s lines with as much melta/chassis/flamer as possible and Exorcists end up detracting from this. Even if your opponent is unable to kill the Exorcists it’s not too hard to shake lock them and that’s a lot less overall firepower. On the other hand, the Immolators fit perfectly into the theme of the army and you can pack in cheap Troops w/meltaguns. Throwing 10+ tanks w/Heavy Flamers, flamers and meltaguns galore is the glory days of 5th edition and when you start adding in IG platoons which cannot be shake-locked and provide AV12 Chimeras, well now you’ve added suppression fire to the mix.

In summary, Exorcists aren’t a terrible buy (nor great due to one gun syndrome) but don’t fit the Immo spam theme and WH due to an old codex are hard-pressed to find a better build where they are more useful. Their problem lies not in their stats but in trying to fit a square plug into a round hole. Ranged firepower is great but w/Exorcists it becomes too big of an opportunity cost in terms of synergy and army cohesiveness. IG platoons are capable of doing a similar job (whilst less effective) but maintaining the saturation pushing forward. Whilst both Exorcists & IG platoons change Immo spam and make it more susceptible to being picked apart by the opponent but IG add enough to the army without taking from the armoured spearhead that they improve the army.

There we are TKE, better ^^?

P.S. redonkulous