Fabius Vs Abaddon

I know that this is a bit of a strange post, firstly it comes straight out of left field among all of the tournament reports and Eldar analysis posts, however I said I'd do it so here it is. I recently got into a debate with some guys on Facebook regarding Fabius and Abaddon. The original notion being that Abaddon made Fabius look good. I disagreed, and flew straight into my basic argument stance. Write so many words that people cannot be bothered to read it and I win by default (actually I employed the same tactic in my A Level Computing Coursework a couple of years back, 1,500 pages and over 500,000 words). However, when the obvious of not reading the post was stated, I promised to post it as a Blog article and link it in, breaking it down into sizable chunks. So here it is.

"Breaking Abaddon and Fabius down into 2 parts. Force Multiplication and Individual Ability. Starting with Fabius. Hold on people, it's going to be a long hall. Fabius as an individual is awful. He costs just as much as a Khorne Lord with Axe of Blind Fury, who puts Fabius to shame with the amount of individual asskickery he puts out. He's got a respectable profile, until you realise that but a single missile will knock his block off. Granted, he does get quite a few attacks and he causes instant death, albeit with no AP and a fairly low initiative by character standards where the ID rule is going to come into effect. But good luck getting him into combat anyway as essentially he's as durable as 4 marines when you're getting FNP. 

He does have a shooting attack, but again, good luck getting that close and although it could be useful for Wraithknights they're just going to come and step on you in the next turn. However, you're not taking him for his individual ability, you're taking him for his buffs I take it. +1 Strength and Fearless. Sure, it's a nice little buff, but Fabius gives the squad Fearless anyway, as does pretty much any independant character in the book, and that's where the real hitting power is, the marines hit pretty hard if they can get into combat but not that hard, so you really need a hard hitting HQ in there with them for that extra threat and thus Fearless is kind of useless unless you plan on splitting off the character, but then you've paid almost as much as the marine squad for the buff that makes them fearless.

The +1 strength is really nice, but good luck getting them into combat, shooting doesn't care if you're +1 strength, you're still only a squad of marines. So to get them into combat you really need a Land Raider, so now you're paying for the Marine Squad, Land Raider and Fabius. Getting kind of expensive for this squad and what it does now huh? Fabius isn't great, what you can do with him you can do better with other characters. Fabius and the squad he is enhancing (calling it a 9 man to squeeze in a land raider if needed, I'll even throw in dual CC weapons for free and MoK) will set you back 305pts.

Now let's compare this to Abaddon, just on how hard it hits. Abaddon is Eternal, he has a 2+ save, he has a 4+ invuln, and he's T5, so he's far more capable of actually getting into combat than the above squad. In addition, he hits far harder when he actually gets there. I've seen him bring down 3 versions of Coteaz in a single round of combat, in fact, not only does he himself hit like a tonne of bricks, but if you're a Space Marine, then you will be hit harder by everyone around him too. So in conclusion, although Abaddon is not the best of characters, he's not very good in fact, he still takes more damage, and hits far harder for his points, than any concoction that involves Fabius."

And that's it for today. More things tomorrow.