Warhammer 40K: Here’s How 1 Striking Scorpion Can Kill An Imperial Knight
The Aeldari have a new codex, and some of the units got major buffs. Striking Scorpions especially!
Space Elves are back baby! Powered by a shiny new book they are here to rock your tabletop. The new book has some massive upgrades, and while Corsairs might be the coolest part, they are just a tiny fraction. A lot of classic units got major upgrades in this book. Some of them have gone to pretty crazy heights when you take a deep look at them. For instance, did you know that a single Striking Scorpion can now take down an Imperial Knight? No? Let’s look at how.
Scoooooorpion
Classically Striking Scorpions were not the unit you took for a ton of damage output. While they were elite assault troops, they tended to be more tanky than damage-oriented. With Banshees holding the place of damage dealer, Scorpions often felt a little left behind. Well, now they’ve got some major new upgrades and are ready to kick butts. They might not be the most obvious unit to be able to kill a knight per model, but they can.
The New Stats
Looking at the new datasheet we can see that Scorpions have some new toys to play with. With their chainswords they are rocking 4 attacks each, which isn’t bad, though each are only D1. Next up we have Mandiblasters, with on a unmodified 6 to wound do 1 mortal wound (unless the target is a monster or vehicle). Now we’ve bumped a model’s output to 8. Next up we’ve got Sustained Assault, meaning unmodified 6s to hit also give you an extra hit. Sadly Mandiblasters doesn’t work with these extra attacks. So that takes us up to a potential of 12 damage in one round of combat. But of course, you might notice that’s not enough to kill a knight, indeed only 8 damage will affect a knight. Well, there’s more.
Time For A Craftworld
To up these guys power we need to get a little crafty. Craftworldy that is. We are going to skip right by the established Craftworld and pick from two of the far-flung traits. The first one to go for is Vengeful. This rule makes it so that each unmodified 6 to hit in melee adds an additional hit. Combined with Sustained Assault this means your 6s turn into 3 hits, so with 4 base attacks you get now get 12 hits. As an added bonus unlike Sustained Assault these extra hits can trigger Mandiblasters, now upping your potential damage to 20 per model. And we’ve still got one more trick.
For the second Craftworld trait we are going with Children of Khaine. This rule means that on an unmodified wound roll of 6 (in melee) we add +1 damage to our attack. Suddenly our 12 attacks can be D2, putting out a max of 24 damage. Enough to kill an Imperial Knight. Versus infantry we’d actually be looking at a max output of 32 with the 8 mortal wounds. Not bad for a single Striking Scorpion.
An Elf Can Dream
OK look, I know that this is never going to actually happen in a game. While it’s theoretically possible, we aren’t going to see long Scorpions rolling up to Knights and one-shotting them. Doing 24 (or 32) damage would require rolling four 6s, followed by twelve more 6s and then having the enemy fail all their saves. But the fact that a single Scorpion, not a unit known for their damage output, CAN, in theory, kill a Knight is kind of a crazy look at how ultra-deadly 40K has become.
It’s also a testament to how improved they are in this book. Let’s recall that this combo is done without any outside buffs aside from army rules. No auras, powers or stratagems. In the previous Craftworld book a Striking Scorpion had a damage output of 2. Now they have one of 32. A sixteen-fold increase. It’s perhaps even crazier that a unit that can put out 32 damage is still likely overshadowed by Harlequins. They made a unit do 16x the damage it used to and STILL might not be good enough to get regular play.
But that’s 9th Edition for you. 
Let us know if you are going to try to kill a Knight with your Striking Scorpions, down in the comments.
