Kahl loadouts

 The Mighty Kahl. Probably the most valuable character in the 10th edition Leagues of Votann index, the Kahl is primarily a buffing character, handing out judgement tokens, making his squad inflict lethal hits and helping out with invulnerable saves or deepstriking abilities. But what about his weapons?

To be clear from the start, I really don't think the weapon choice you make for your Kahl matters too much. He is a buffing unit first and foremost, and it is unlikely that his weapons loadout is going to matter too much. I therefore have the following major recommendations before we get into the math side of things:

• Pick what you think looks the coolest. Rules come and go, magnetizing Kahl's is a pain, so cool is good.
• Take a ranged weapon with the same range as the weapons of the unit he is in, to avoid having to measure more than one range. Anything that saves time in a 40k match is invaluable.

That said, it is fun to geek out about loadout min-maxing so lets get to it!

The Kahl has two choices for his ranged weapon, and two choices for his melee weapon. We'll evaluate each of them using the same targets as in our article on the Thunderkyn and their weapons. That list is based heavily on the findings of Goonhammer in their recent datamining article. Here it is again for convenience:

• Target designation "Guard": 10 man unit (T3, 5+, 1 wound)
• Target designation "Sister": 10 man unit (T3, 3+, 6++, 1 wound)
• Target designation "Marine": 5 man man unit (T4, 3+, 2 wounds)
• Target designation "Terminator": 5 man unit (T5, 2+, 4++, 3 wounds)
• Target designation "Gravis": 3 man unit (T6, 3+, 3 wounds)
• Target designation "Monster": single model (T9, 2+, 4++, 10 wounds, MONSTER) 
• Target designation "War dog": single model (T10, 3+, 5++, 12 wounds, VEHICLE)
• Target designation "Knight": single model (T12, 3+, 22 wounds, VEHICLE)

Ranged weapons

The bolter has a 6" range advantage over the Volkanite disintegrator. My experience from a few games tells me that this comes up fairly rarely, and as we're talking about a single model here (3 at most across the army), it's not a big deal if he doesn't get to shoot once or twice during a battle. 

Still, range is nice. I'd expect a Bolter Kahl to fire his weapons three or four times in a battle, and a Volkanite Kahl two or three - so the Volkanite really should be between 33% and 50% better at killing to make up for it.

The "damage matrix" ends up looking like this:

Note: The formulas are tricky, especially for the Volkanite with lethal hits, they often end up looking like this (for volkanite into guard): (2/6)+((0.5+(2*((2/3)-(1/6))))*(2/3)). So while I've tried to check and double-check, there could be errors.

As we can see, the Volkanite disintegrator is better into all targets tougher than guard, the difference becoming truly significant against 2+ armor. So it depends what you want to shoot. As long as you're not firing at 2+ armor targets, the better range of the bolter probably outweighs or at least makes up for the difference in killing power over the course of a game - if my assumption about the number of times a Kahl shoots his gun during a battle is correct.

I'm leaning towards the Bolter being slightly better overall, which surprises me.

Melee weapons

The Kah's melee options are pretty good, we're looking at the Plasma Axe and the Concussion Gauntlet. The matrix looks like this:

As we can see, the Axe is generally much better against targets with 2 wounds or below, while the axe is better against targets with 3 or more wounds. The Monster and to a lesser extent the Terminator targets are outliers, however, where the Axe does better than expected. This is due to toughness breakpoints: The terminators are Toughness 5, and the monster is Toughness 9 - which are significant numbers for the Strength 5 of the Plasma Axe. 

Lethal hits also helps the Axe more than the Gauntlet, as it is a lower strength. Lets see what happens if the bodyguard is dead and the Kahl is fighting alone (therefore without lethal hits):

The effect of lethal hits on favoring the Axe is very pronounced, especially against the tougher targets.

But for the monster, the effect went the other way? What's going on? Well, the difference in damage is actually still the same, about 0.1, but we're looking at smaller numbers - so the percentage difference increases. Percentages can be misleading sometimes. But even looking at the flat numbers, removing Lethal Hits from the computation does help the gautlet in many cases. For Gravis-armored targets for instance, the Gauntlet did 0.31 damage more per activation with lethal hits, while it does 0.40 damage more per activation without lethal hits.

They're actually kind of the same

If we stop geeking and zoom out for a bit, look at the number of models killed rounded down. In most cases, the same number of models will be killed per activation, and the difference in number of wounds pinged off a tough target isn't huge. Remember the starting discussion - pick what is cool, and remember that this is a single model with not-that-many attacks.

Back to geeking: What about tokens?

The Hit rate of the Gauntlet is lower than that of the Axe, and the Axe is 2+, so in most cases a single token will be a massive boost to the Gauntlet in this comparison. A second token will help both, except when they already wound on 2+, although at differing rates. (Going from a 6+ to a 5+ helps more than going from a 3+ to a 2+ if we're looking at percentage increase in damage done.) The Gauntlet also more often wounded on 2s already than the Axe, so the Axe will be helped a lot more by the second token.

Turn all tokens on, and we get this:

Compared to earlier charts, we see that the Gauntlet in general benefits more from tokens. Getting that extra point of Weapon Skill means it kills as many models (when rounding down) as the axe against low-wound/toughness targets, and it gets significantly better against the tougher ones. Even getting the sometimes-better advantage of a second token doesn't help even things out for the Axe here - and remember, we're keeping the Lethal hits here, which also favored the Axe.

When remembering that the first token is easier to get than the second, this does lean slightly in favor of the Gauntlet.

Conclusion

As said in the beginning of the article, comparing what are fairly similar loadouts on a model you're never going to have more than 3 of in your army, and whose main purpose is general buffing of the army, isn't what's going to make or break your game.

And all the weapons have their advantages and disadvantages.

That said, for those who want to squeeze every microscopic advantage out of loadouts, I think Kahls with Combi-bolters and Mass Gauntlets are ever-so-slightly stronger than other variants assuming the broadest possible range of opponents and scenarios. But this can quickly change: The Volkanite will almost always be better if it gets as many activations as the bolter does. As such, it is almost certainly better than the bolter on a Kahl teleporting in with a squad of Volkanite-equipped Hearthguard for example, as he'll likely be in the thick of it, and therefore in range to fire his disintegrator, every turn he is on the table. The Gauntlet generally gets better against targets with tokens, and by the time your Kahl gets into melee the tokens will usually have been flying for a while. But if you're going to be wading through termagants, you want the Axe.

All the weapons have their strengths, and you really should pick the one you like the look and feel of the most, followed by what synergizes the best with the squads you're deploying your Kahl with - matching weapons ranges saves time, and saving time... well, it can win you games if you're playing on the clock, and it is good in so many other ways that it's hard to underestimate the value.