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As the name suggests I'm asking DE players (or people who have faced DE) if they think mandrakes can ever be useful. I don't know about competitive useful, lets not kid ourselves here but have you had any success stories with them? Any tactical use? Psychological or otherwise? I always thought they had the potential for some trolling. 15pts is a little steep but they do have 2 attacks at str4, I5, move through cover, fleet, stealth, infiltrate, night vision (lol) and can get furious charge, fearless and an ap4 storm bolter attack. For 150pts you get 10 and I feel like they could be quite useful to infiltrate beside some fire warriors on a defence line or some IG heavy weapons teams. Any thoughts, ideas, Stories?

The models are very very good.

A commin tactic used to be to drop of an hamuncyly from a boat to give them feel no pain and shooting. I do not think there is a way for them to outflank together?

You can infiltrate them i a bastion and use bs 4 heavy bolters, hoping to get a pain token.

From everything I've seen, no, they aren't useful under the current rules set.

The other idea I had for them is to use 9 as a body guards for an archon (or vect) and jack someone's transport, they would in effect give him stealth against anything but sniper weapons and 5++ saves can be helpful but then again it's kind of impractical and for only 7pt a model more you can get incubi for that role.

I was toying with taking two squads of three to infiltrate as close as possible to the opponent. They're a cheap distraction unit, that can possibly get much better if they don't distract them.

Mandrakes are very useful...they make great counts as wracks. Models look fantastic, rules are total garbage.

 Dr. Serling wrote:
Mandrakes are very useful...they make great counts as wracks. Models look fantastic, rules are total garbage.

exactly, I have a bunch from the good ol' days when i bought them simply to have them. If i ever dust off my DE it will probably be to use them as wracks, since those are actually good, just like how i use my old grotesques as wracks too.

 Jimsolo wrote:
From everything I've seen, no, they aren't useful under the current rules set.

or the previous rule set and given what we know wont be good in the next ruleset.