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Ok so my buddy started playing WH40k and he has heard that Mandrakes suck, but i looked at them and they look pretty good to me, especially for 15 pts, now hes not sure but he thinks their kinda cool, he just doesnt wanna get any if they're lousy. Now as an ork player i may be biased but they seemed like a solid choice for 15 pts, am i wrong?

In my opinion they are probably the worst choice in the DE codex

Terrible choice, very little benefit of taking these over Wracks for example. No close-combat potential besides a CCW, a shooting attack which while is not that bad, requires you to gain a Pain Token first, usually from wiping out a unit which they'll struggle to do. Basically anything they can do, everything else in the DE Codex will do 10x better.

huh, they looked ok to me, but as i said im an Ork player, and i didnt realize that they needed a pain token to use balefire.

If they didn't they might be worth using.

As is...

Awesome models, gakky rules.

The sad part is Dark Eldar has a lot of that across their model range. "Hey we look cool! Our rules suck, but we look awesome!"

Dastrike wrote:
The sad part is Dark Eldar has a lot of that across their model range. "Hey we look cool! Our rules suck, but we look awesome!"

I dont really think thats true. There is surprisingly little dead weight in the codex (but some units have to be played differently in 6th to how I understand they were played in 5th)

Mandrakes are not very good. I really wish they were because they look plain awesome, but they just dont function in any way really. They can be a good distraction and interference unit, but they are expensive and brittle for that role.

Apart from them, pretty much all the other units in the codex work in their role, or can at least find a place in an army. For example, people say Hellions are not very effective, but they're a great harassing unit, and are a very good Troops choice when you add the Baron.