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 Fafnir wrote:
If the passengers are not on the board, they're not within range.

Sorry, I wasn't being clear.

Our open-topped vehicles explicitly pass any "restrictions or modifiers" that they gain, onto their passengers. So if the transport gets hit by an enemy Fog of Dreams, the passengers get -1 to hit.. If you could Prescience the transport (somehow), they'd get +1 to hit.

My question is, do we do the same thing with re-rolls?

caelim wrote:
What's the view on Archon re-rolls applying to Open-topped passengers?

If an Archon is aboard a transport, his aura doesn't even work on himself. Likewise, the Archon's Court refuses to even acknowledge his presence if they're both aboard the same transport.

You see, Dark Eldar are so well adapted to fighting from atop their transports that their leaders can't even give out the piddling turd they call a buff until everyone disembarks.

caelim wrote:

 Fafnir wrote:
If the passengers are not on the board, they're not within range.

Sorry, I wasn't being clear.

Our open-topped vehicles explicitly pass any "restrictions or modifiers" that they gain, onto their passengers. So if the transport gets hit by an enemy Fog of Dreams, the passengers get -1 to hit.. If you could Prescience the transport (somehow), they'd get +1 to hit.

My question is, do we do the same thing with re-rolls?

Models inside transports are treated as NOT being on the table, and therefore can not gain Re-rolls. Open-top rules lets you shoot those units even if they are not on the board, but then follows all normal rules like "within 1" can't shoot other than pistols, cant shoot if fell back, etc..

Aura effect units within range and must be in play, and b.c while on a transport you are not counted as being on the field, there is technically no aura if on a vehicle, if the archon was out of the vehicle, you still dont gain the aura b.c your unit embark on the transport is treated as not being on the field making them not within the aura.

caelim wrote:
What's the view on Archon re-rolls applying to Open-topped passengers?
-text says "restrictions and modifiers" that affect the transport, affect the passengers.

I was considering blaster Raiders vs. Ravagers, but if this doesn't work that might kill that...

The rulebook sets out re-rolls and modifiers as being separate things so no re-rolls for the guys inside.

...it's almost as if the Archon's aura was very poorly thought out and does nothing to actually contribute to the army he's meant to support.

 Fafnir wrote:
...it's almost as if the Archon's aura was very poorly thought out and does nothing to actually contribute to the army he's meant to support.

Well. Except for Ravagers, which he buffs fairly well. And troops on foot. And transports, it's usually worth it to get the archon out to get the transports his aura while you're shooting things up.

Getting value out of archons is one of the reasons I'm slowly gravitating towards Poison tongue over Flayed Skull as my main kabal choice (secondary kabal is always going to be the obvious Black Heart for AoV). Disembarked kabalites getting both buffs put out serious damage, and control the board far better than when I play FS and end up basically having 5-6 transports on the board instead of 14 units with a ton of them having obsec. I think the aversion to getting out of your transport is a holdover to the 7th ed days, where our units were paper thin and died to a stiff breeze. At 6ppm, with 5+ armor and 6+++, kabalites on foot are pretty annoying to take out, especially deployed in cover where you have the option of popping their saves up to space marine levels if you want to.

Its the same as all other Auras, i wish our Relic worked in/out of transports tho....

Like I said on the last page, Warriors are fantastic line infantry.

- You don't need transports to protect them -- they're more durable than the transports.

- You don't need transports to get them into range -- they can move and then shoot 24 or 30"

- Transports don't even significantly improve their firepower by getting them into rapid-fire range. 95 points for 5 Warriors and a Venom gets you 20 shots at 12". 96 points for 16 Warriors is 16 shots at 24 or 30", with the potential for 32 shots later. Raiders at 12" provide almost no firepower advantage over Warriors on foot at 24".

- And as others have noted, Warriors in transports don't get aura buffs, whereas Warriors outside of transports can, if you don't want +6" range, always be re-rolling hits and wounds of 1. This makes Warriors on foot at 24" almost as effective as the same points in Flayed Skull Warriors and Venoms at 12" (except vs cover).

We are all Guardsmen now.

We're not guardsmen, they can spam 100 infantries and ed up with a very good list, we don't. We still rely on some assault if we really want to be competitive, as I don't think a pure gunline is the best built we can have.

But I agree about kabalites being among the best troops in the game.

Yeah, its almost like being 33% cheaper means you can take more units.

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Its the same as all other Auras

Not in the slightest.

For a start, other auras work on the entire army - not a tiny fraction of it. And of the 9 units the Archon's aura affects, 4 of them already get rerolls for being near him, and another one wants to shoot from a vehicle (and so can't benefit unless they disembark).

Indeed, DE in general favour a more mobile and often dispersed playstyle, making auras less useful even if they weren't awful. And whilst other army's auras don't work in transports either, most other armies can't actually shoot out of their transports. So the aura would do nothing even if it worked.

Finally, there's the issue that our HQs are among the slowest in the game, with no mobility options outside of transports. Only IG and Admech are slower. So, whilst a Space Marine Captain can hand out his aura from atop a bike or with a jump pack, our ""fast"" HQ is stuck either riding in a transport (thus negating his aura entirely) or else trying to jog beside out other units (sure am glad I'm playing such a fast army). And in the latter case, his aura still won't affect any units embarked on transports within his aura.

They do work the same, we just have more restricted keywords, the laws of the aura is the same for us as they are for space marines.

We are just more restricted but still act the same way and follow the same rules.

 Amishprn86 wrote:
They do work the same, we just have more restricted keywords, the laws of the aura is the same for us as they are for space marines.

I mean, I guess if you ignore every other aspect - including the units the auras can actually affect - then sure, our aura that affects maybe 1/3 of our army works exactly the same as the Autarch aura thay affects everything in the army. And which has a chance of generating CP each turn for good measure.

 Blackie wrote:
We're not guardsmen, they can spam 100 infantries and ed up with a very good list, we don't. We still rely on some assault if we really want to be competitive, as I don't think a pure gunline is the best built we can have.

This looks pretty similar to me. A Kabal battalion gets you 6 units of Warriors, which is already 40 even if you're limiting yourself to squads of 6 or 7 for morale purposes. A Spearhead unlocks 3 more units. As I argued, these Warriors are competitive with Guardsmen for the same job. What is it that these 100 Guardsmen are doing that your 60 or 70 Warriors can't?

Actual lists that rely on Guardsmen also tend to use other units. They also frequently rely on fast assault units to be competitive -- that's the appeal of Blood Angels. At various times tournament lists have brought deep-striking anti-infantry like Grey Knight Strike Squads or deep-striking anti-tank like Scions. Often they back up the Guardsman horde with devastating ranged shooting like Basilisks.

Dark Eldar have basically all of the same concerns, and actually almost the same incentives to soup. Dark Eldar don't have great CC units; if you want to do the Blood Angels thing you're probably souping in some Shining Spears. If anything in the Harlequin codex ends up being competitive it'll probably be some fast CC units too. If you want some deep-striking anti-infantry you'll soup in a Guardian blob. You can handle deep-striking anti-tank yourself with Scourges or anti-MEQ with Mandrakes, and likewise you have vehicles with great ranged shooting in Ravagers.

Dionysodorus wrote:

This looks pretty similar to me. A Kabal battalion gets you 6 units of Warriors, which is already 40 even if you're limiting yourself to squads of 6 or 7 for morale purposes.

Surely you'd want at least 10 per squad, otherwise you don't have access to Heavy Weapons?

Dionysodorus wrote:
As I argued, these Warriors are competitive with Guardsmen for the same job. What is it that these 100 Guardsmen are doing that your 60 or 70 Warriors can't?

Warriors and Guardsmen are indeed pretty comparable. Guardsmen are 2/3 the cost of Warriors, but Warriors have BS4+ and PfP, so it's pretty even there.

However, the real killers are the HQs. 2 Guardsmen HQs cost less than a single Archon, but bring vastly more utility to the table. Yes, both can let nearby Infantry reroll 1s to hit, but the problem is that that's the least Company Commanders do. Archons have no way to mimic First Rank Fire! Second Rank Fire!, which is an amazing order for Infantry armies. They've also got Forwards for the Emperor!, Get Back in the Fight! and Move! Move! Move!. The second one we can get with a Stratagem, so there's that, but I don't believe we've got anything on the others.

In essence, IG HQs are cheap and provide a great deal of support and versitility, whilst Archons are expensive and tend to offer diminishing returns.

Also, IG have far more Infantry options than DE does. Infantry Squads are the obvious ones, but you've also got Heavy Weapon Squads as Heavy Support choices, you've got Scions as deep-striking troops, you've got Scion Command Squads as harder-hitting, deep-striking Elites. You've even got a deep-striking HQ to support them (something our "fast" HQs all lack). Basically, they have a far greater variety of units for different roles, whilst we're relying on just one specific infantry squad (maybe 2 if you count Trueborn) to do everything, and with far less HQ support.

Furthermore, you talk about Battalions, but IG can easily fill out a Brigade with Infantry. Hell, at 1500pts, I can have a Brigade *and* a Battalion with IG (possibly more but I'm using a themed army).


Just to be clear, I'm not saying DE can't do Infantry armies - just that they're not really comparable to IG armies, because they lack the variety/specialisation, HQ support and cheap cost (not just of troops but also of Elites, Heavy Support and such).

Even so, if I had enough Kabalites, infantry-DE is definitely something I could see myself trying sometime.

 vipoid wrote:

Surely you'd want at least 10 per squad, otherwise you don't have access to Heavy Weapons?

I'm not sure why you'd want them. Again, look at what people are doing with Guardsmen in tournament lists. It's just lasguns. In ITC they bring mortars but that's mostly just to get the squad down to 9 guys so that they dodge a secondary objective. But, sure, if you're concerned about anti-tank you might take a squad of 10 and hole them up in cover with a dark lance. Otherwise you probably want just pure splinter rifles, although a blaster in a bigger squad isn't terrible with Obsidian Rose.

Warriors and Guardsmen are indeed pretty comparable. Guardsmen are 2/3 the cost of Warriors, but Warriors have BS4+ and PfP, so it's pretty even there.

However, the real killers are the HQs. 2 Guardsmen HQs cost less than a single Archon, but bring vastly more utility to the table. Yes, both can let nearby Infantry reroll 1s to hit, but the problem is that that's the least Company Commanders do. Archons have no way to mimic First Rank Fire! Second Rank Fire!, which is an amazing order for Infantry armies. They've also got Forwards for the Emperor!, Get Back in the Fight! and Move! Move! Move!. The second one we can get with a Stratagem, so there's that, but I don't believe we've got anything on the others.

In essence, IG HQs are cheap and provide a great deal of support and versitility, whilst Archons are expensive and tend to offer diminishing returns.

Also, IG have far more Infantry options than DE does. Infantry Squads are the obvious ones, but you've also got Heavy Weapon Squads as Heavy Support choices, you've got Scions as deep-striking troops, you've got Scion Command Squads as harder-hitting, deep-striking Elites. You've even got a deep-striking HQ to support them (something our "fast" HQs all lack). Basically, they have a far greater variety of units for different roles, whilst we're relying on just one specific infantry squad (maybe 2 if you count Trueborn) to do everything, and with far less HQ support.

Furthermore, you talk about Battalions, but IG can easily fill out a Brigade with Infantry. Hell, at 1500pts, I can have a Brigade *and* a Battalion with IG (possibly more but I'm using a themed army).


Just to be clear, I'm not saying DE can't do Infantry armies - just that they're not really comparable to IG armies, because they lack the variety/specialisation, HQ support and cheap cost (not just of troops but also of Elites, Heavy Support and such).

Even so, if I had enough Kabalites, infantry-DE is definitely something I could see myself trying sometime.

See my post on the last page for some more detailed analysis of Archons vs Company Commanders, but in short: Company Commanders don't actually buff units very efficiently. Their big one is FRFSRF -- that's what I was considering in my earlier post -- and they're only slightly better than just bringing more Infantry even in pretty favorable conditions. The second Archon is something of a tax, but an untargetable BS2+ blaster isn't bad, and you're always pretty happy to have one BS2+ grenade launcher to use with the MW stratagem. But, yes, I agree that probably you only want to bring the one battalion -- this is still at least 40 Warriors and could easily be pushed to 50 or 60 -- and then supplement with other infantry elsewhere. With the CP changes I'm not sure that brigades are even particularly desirable anymore -- you're probably better off with 2 battalions and a third 1 CP detachment than with a brigade and two 1 CP detachments.

And you have access to plenty of solid infantry choices. Mandrakes and Scourges are very good in the Elites and FA slots. And then in a separate detachment you have Rangers, Guardians, and Dark Reapers (and probably Shining Spears even though they're not technically infantry), or even Grotesques if you can force the enemy to come to you or are willing to wait until turn 2 to do anything with them (they're probably better than Bullgryn but have many of the same issues). Craftworld allies also bring in psychic support, and Doom and Jinx are great. Again, look at what people are using Guardsmen for. It's very common to see just a bunch of Infantry Squads and some mortars, and then other detachments to handle other jobs.

Cheap guardsmen are needed to bubble wrap their tanks and artillery. We have mobile gun boats that can fire without penalties and several effective close combat units while AM basically only shoots from distance. We don't need 80-100 warriors to protect the ravagers, that's the huge difference between the armies.

But maybe that's me, since I can't even imagine playing a gunline

 Blackie wrote:
Cheap guardsmen are needed to bubble wrap their tanks and artillery. We have mobile gun boats that can fire without penalties and several effective close combat units while AM basically only shoots from distance. We don't need 80-100 warriors to protect the ravagers, that's the huge difference between the armies.

But maybe that's me, since I can't even imagine playing a gunline

This is not really how they get used. It's a common misconception that Guardsmen are mostly only good for getting in the way of stuff. For example, look at the top 16 lists at Adepticon: https://spikeybits.com/2018/03/40k-adepticon-championship-top-16-lists-revealed.html

There are four lists that bring Infantry Squads, and none of them are using them to stop tanks or artillery from getting locked in CC -- they don't even have vehicles for the most part. There's a mostly Blood Angels list with a ton of Catachans -- these are clearly going to be aggressively moving forward and trying to get into CC. There's a similar list which is mostly Guard infantry and then some Blood Angels and Custodes. There's a list with Dark Angels and GKs (nothing here that doesn't want to be close to the enemy) and then a Guard battalion. And last there's a list that's a lot like the second one but with Cadians. None of the Infantry Squads have heavy weapons and none of the lists have anything that needs to worry about getting locked in CC.

Guardsmen get used because they're just all-around fantastic. They're very durable and they're very good at killing things and they take up lots of space and screen. Warriors do the same, and even if you don't care that much about your Ravagers getting charged you still have lots of reason to want to keep deep-strikers away from them and to hold your half of the board.

Edit: Also note that of those lists, only one has more than 6 Infantry Squads (it has 8). Only 2 of the lists are using a brigade, and this is before the change that makes battalions relatively more appealing. DE can bring something very similar with a battalion with 2 Archons and 6 units of Warriors.

I feel like reading the AdMech thread where they talk more about AM than AdMech :/ Do you guys play a lot against AM ? How many of you are active competitive players ? I see discussions about Guard all the time but oddly only one person plays it in my LGS, and when he faces our best player (unbeaten since V8 at 40k), who plays mostly Aeldari and Daemons, he puts up a good fight but always loses against him. So I tend to think these discussions about Guards are always exaggerated.

Of course my meta is not your meta but it's getting tiring to feel like we're playing Astra Militarum 40,000

EDIT: I'd add that a well-equiped Archon can mow through loads of units by himself while the Company Commander may as well be preventively taken as a casualty when he gets engaged in a fight against anything. The Archon gives back his points value by slaughtering everything with his blaster/blast pistol and huskblade. The aura is just a situational bonus GW felt like giving us so that the Archon fits the "aura HQ" theme. I agree they could've given him something else but it's there at least.

At least the discussion isn't "just bring Guard instead of your own units" the way it is in Imperium threads. I'm comparing to Guardsmen because we know that they're good -- 3 to 6 naked Infantry Squads have been a staple of competitive Imperium lists since the start of 8th, or at least since Conscripts got nerfed. If Dark Eldar can put together something that works very similarly, then chances are that's a solid detachment that can be plugged into almost any Aeldari list. It's important to understand why these Guard battalions are successful in order to understand that Eldar would benefit from the same kind of thing and that Warriors can do the same job.

On the topic of Archon auras, page 5 of the BRB FAQ states thatauras do not apply to passengers, despite the Open-Topped rule. Now I think this is silly, as RAW now any modifiers like, say, The Horror (or whatever Tyranid psychic power gives -1 to hit) still applies to the passengers, but the Archon's aura does not.

Also, the strength of Guardsmen spamming is mostly cheap CPs and amplifying their strength via orders and stratagems. Spamming footslogging kabalites en masse would work until you run into someone whose list has enough output to kill them. You're putting your entire list on the math game.

Dionysodorus wrote:

I'm not sure why you'd want them. Again, look at what people are doing with Guardsmen in tournament lists. It's just lasguns.

Perhaps, but then Guardsmen have access to FRFSRF - which drastically increases their damage output with lasguns. Dark Eldar don't have that.

Nor can Dark Eldar use them just to shield artillery pieces, as we also have none (and our vehicles are mobile enough that assault shouldn't be much of an issue).

Dionysodorus wrote:

See my post on the last page for some more detailed analysis of Archons vs Company Commanders, but in short: Company Commanders don't actually buff units very efficiently. Their big one is FRFSRF -- that's what I was considering in my earlier post -- and they're only slightly better than just bringing more Infantry even in pretty favorable conditions.

I've read your math and it's weird, to say the least.

You look at Company Commanders and say 'well, their main buff is better than just bringing more infantry, and they also bring a toolbox of other buffs . . . so they're pretty poor.'

Then you look at Archons and say 'Well, their buff is pretty bad, especially looking at their cost . . . so they're pretty great, really.'



Also, I think you're being optimistic about just how many squads you can fit around an Archon, in addition to apparently having Ravagers around him as well. But then, we seem to greatly disagree on squad sizes as well.

Dionysodorus wrote:
The second Archon is something of a tax, but an untargetable BS2+ blaster isn't bad

Not when it costs ~90pts.

Dionysodorus wrote:
and you're always pretty happy to have one BS2+ grenade launcher to use with the MW stratagem.

The Archon doesn't have Plasma Grenades and has no means of acquiring them.

Dionysodorus wrote:
But, yes, I agree that probably you only want to bring the one battalion -- this is still at least 40 Warriors and could easily be pushed to 50 or 60 -- and then supplement with other infantry elsewhere. With the CP changes I'm not sure that brigades are even particularly desirable anymore -- you're probably better off with 2 battalions and a third 1 CP detachment than with a brigade and two 1 CP detachments.

Possibly, but either way you're looking at an even bigger HQ tax.

Dionysodorus wrote:
And you have access to plenty of solid infantry choices. Mandrakes and Scourges are very good in the Elites and FA slots.

They're good, it's just a shame we have no way to support either of them. This is one of the things I was talking about with regard to IG doing Infantry armies better than us. They can actually support their infantry, whereas Scourges and Mandrakes in our lists are entirely on their own. Our Archons can do nothing for them, and they have no HQs of their own.

Dionysodorus wrote:
And then in a separate detachment you have Rangers, Guardians, and Dark Reapers (and probably Shining Spears even though they're not technically infantry), or even Grotesques if you can force the enemy to come to you or are willing to wait until turn 2 to do anything with them (they're probably better than Bullgryn but have many of the same issues). Craftworld allies also bring in psychic support, and Doom and Jinx are great. Again, look at what people are using Guardsmen for. It's very common to see just a bunch of Infantry Squads and some mortars, and then other detachments to handle other jobs.

Okay, if we're having to bring in Eldar infantry I'm calling it there. If Dark Eldar can supposedly do infantry armies well, then they shouldn't need to bring in a whole other army to make them work. QED.

Vipoid, you should probably re-read my last couple posts because you haven't understood much. Feel free to ask questions if you don't understand where some of the numbers are coming from. Also, I'm not sure why you've decided that I'm arguing that pure Dark Eldar can run a competitive all-infantry army. Did I accidentally say that somewhere? Also, to clarify real quick: when I said "grenade launcher" I meant "grenade launcher", not "plasma grenade". And so the stratagem I'm referring to is the one that works with grenade launchers, not the one that works with plasma grenades.

 Chippen wrote:

Also, the strength of Guardsmen spamming is mostly cheap CPs and amplifying their strength via orders and stratagems. Spamming footslogging kabalites en masse would work until you run into someone whose list has enough output to kill them. You're putting your entire list on the math game.

Again, that's not really true, and Warriors compare very well with Guardsmen even considering the buffs available to each.

- Warriors also provide cheap CP -- it's very easy to justify a Warrior battalion for Agents of Vect and 5 CP. You're paying a bit more for the Archons but you're getting characters that are actually valuable in themselves.

- Guardsmen don't really get that much extra efficiency from orders when you account for the cost of the Commanders. They get especially little out of them when the other player doesn't need to get through all of them in a single turn. Infantry are good because a vanilla Guardsmen with no support is really strong for its cost.

- When you account for morale, Warriors aren't really more fragile than Guardsmen per point unless you're taking them in big squads. Having a 6+ FNP and higher leadership in a smaller squad is a big deal. Just like Guardsmen, they're very hard to remove efficiently. Sure, in principle if you run into someone who can kill all your stuff very quickly you're in trouble. That doesn't seem to be a problem for Guardsmen so why would it be a problem for Warriors?

- Warriors can match many of the important utility orders Guardsmen have. Warriors are naturally just faster than Guardsmen. There are stratagems for shooting after falling back and for moving after shooting. They can do all of this while still getting hit and wound re-rolls.

Dionysodorus wrote:
Vipoid, you should probably re-read my last couple posts because you haven't understood much.

Sorry, but I'm not taking the blame for the fact that your arguments don't make sense.

Dionysodorus wrote:
Also, I'm not sure why you've decided that I'm arguing that pure Dark Eldar can run a competitive all-infantry army. Did I accidentally say that somewhere?

That appeared to be exactly what you were arguing earlier when you appeared to say that DE can do infantry armies just as well as IG can:

Dionysodorus wrote:

 Blackie wrote:
We're not guardsmen, they can spam 100 infantries and ed up with a very good list, we don't. We still rely on some assault if we really want to be competitive, as I don't think a pure gunline is the best built we can have.

This looks pretty similar to me. A Kabal battalion gets you 6 units of Warriors, which is already 40 even if you're limiting yourself to squads of 6 or 7 for morale purposes. A Spearhead unlocks 3 more units. As I argued, these Warriors are competitive with Guardsmen for the same job. What is it that these 100 Guardsmen are doing that your 60 or 70 Warriors can't?

Dionysodorus wrote:
Also, to clarify real quick: when I said "grenade launcher" I meant "grenade launcher", not "plasma grenade". And so the stratagem I'm referring to is the one that works with grenade launchers, not the one that works with plasma grenades.

Ah, fair enough. Have you found that Stratagem to be particularly useful?

 vipoid wrote:

That appeared to be exactly what you were arguing earlier when you appeared to say that DE can do infantry armies just as well as IG can:

Dionysodorus wrote:

 Blackie wrote:
We're not guardsmen, they can spam 100 infantries and ed up with a very good list, we don't. We still rely on some assault if we really want to be competitive, as I don't think a pure gunline is the best built we can have.

This looks pretty similar to me. A Kabal battalion gets you 6 units of Warriors, which is already 40 even if you're limiting yourself to squads of 6 or 7 for morale purposes. A Spearhead unlocks 3 more units. As I argued, these Warriors are competitive with Guardsmen for the same job. What is it that these 100 Guardsmen are doing that your 60 or 70 Warriors can't?

It is very strange to me that you're continuing to insist on this reading even when the quote you've found obviously doesn't support it at all. "60 or 70" Warriors is about 400 points. Three Archons, even with blasters, are a bit under 300 points. 700 points in two detachments is not an army -- to be clear I've had 2k lists in mind when talking about this and I suspect that that's also what Blackie was thinking about when he mentioned 100 Guardsmen. And, uh, the fact that I mentioned a Spearhead should probably have tipped you off that I'm not talking about a pure infantry DE army, since there are literally no infantry units in the DE Heavy Support slot.

I'm really not sure what else to say if you're not even going to bother to read what I'm writing. As with this, your last post simply isn't responding to things I actually said. So, again, if you'd like to understand why Warriors are better than you're thinking they are, you might want to re-read.

Dionysodorus wrote:
Also, to clarify real quick: when I said "grenade launcher" I meant "grenade launcher", not "plasma grenade". And so the stratagem I'm referring to is the one that works with grenade launchers, not the one that works with plasma grenades.

Ah, fair enough. Have you found that Stratagem to be particularly useful?

I mean, of course it's useful. The Torment Grenade stratagem lets you pick any targetable unit within 18 or 24" of your Archon. You're going to hit, because you get d3 shots at a re-rollable BS2+. The hit reduces the target's Ld by 1. Then you roll 3d6 and need to get above the target's modified Ld. This has a 91% chance of going off against an initially Ld 7 unit, 84% vs Ld 8, 74% vs Ld 9, and even 63% vs Ld 10. Obviously if you've got a Hemlock close by or similar it's even easier. And then you do d3 MWs. So you expect 1.8 MWs against a Ld 8 target, and it can be anything, like Obliterators or Havocs even with Cultists intervening. It's like a targetable Smite -- Smite also inflicts an average of 1.8 MWs at WC 5. 1 CP to try to cast a targeted Smite is definitely worth it. And the grenade launcher itself is a pretty easy pick-up.

 vipoid wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:
They do work the same, we just have more restricted keywords, the laws of the aura is the same for us as they are for space marines.

I mean, I guess if you ignore every other aspect - including the units the auras can actually affect - then sure, our aura that affects maybe 1/3 of our army works exactly the same as the Autarch aura thay affects everything in the army. And which has a chance of generating CP each turn for good measure.

The entire point of why i said that was for rules sake via Transports................


As for Warriors vs Guardsman? Guardsman are better as a horde, they are cheaper and thats all that matters for them. Warriors can have Shredders, Blasters, Lances, on 3+ models and thats where we are good, thats why you see mass 5 or 10man units in vehicles, b.c every turn a vehicle is alive that 2-3 more good weapons and huge mobility.

Dionysodorus wrote:
I'm really not sure what else to say if you're not even going to bother to read what I'm writing.

As some feedback, It's this approach to your points that's likely proving problematic Dio as your writing style comes across as that you believe you have found "the one true way" and that anything contrary to this gets brushed off as people not having put the effort in to try to understand you.

I've read through your posts, put the effort in, and even then i'm still not sure what you are trying to make as your point beyond "Kabalites are good". You do however come across like you are expecting everyone to now drop all plans and make a Kabalite horde force off the back of your own revelation and are disappointed that you don't seem to be getting anywhere with that one.

So out of a desire to see how you believe this information should actually be applied, could you put up a draft 2K list as you see it? The reality of what you are thinking a list should be vs what it comes across that you think a list should be could be very different.

Lithanial wrote:

As some feedback, It's this approach to your points that's likely proving problematic Dio as your writing style comes across as that you believe you have found "the one true way" and that anything contrary to this gets brushed off as people not having put the effort in to try to understand you.

I've read through your posts, put the effort in, and even then i'm still not sure what you are trying to make as your point beyond "Kabalites are good". You do however come across like you are expecting everyone to now drop all plans and make a Kabalite horde force off the back of your own revelation and are disappointed that you don't seem to be getting anywhere with that one.

So out of a desire to see how you believe this information should actually be applied, could you put up a draft 2K list as you see it? The reality of what you are thinking a list should be vs what it comes across that you think a list should be could be very different.

Sure, I can talk about that. To be clear, I'm not saying that Warriors in Venoms are bad, and most of the reason I'm posting this stuff is to see if anyone can raise objections I haven't thought of or considered enough. It's a weird way to play Eldar and there are a lot of moving pieces here, so I could easily have missed something. But, like, someone brushing off what I'm saying as not fulfilling the promise of a pure DE all-infantry army on the basis of my referencing only 700 points of DE infantry (as a high end estimate!) in detachments that must include at least 300 points of vehicles is... not an objection worth listening to. Right? And that seems characteristic of the care with which vipoid, specifically, read my posts. I'm interested in responses to my actual posts and not in responses to aggressive misreadings of them, and I feel like it's probably important to at least point out that that's what their responses are -- thankfully they provided a wonderfully clear example I could use and then doubled down on it by quoting a snippet of my post that proved them wrong -- to avoid other people sort of skipping over the exchange without thinking too much about it and assuming from my lack of response that I don't have answers to what he's said.

But, yeah, I kind of am just trying to say "Kabalites are good". I think so good that they probably work best on foot doing the same job that Guardsmen do. I'm very interested in substantive objections to that. The point is not to get everyone to go out and buy a ton of Warriors but to see if anyone can poke holes, and just to clarify my own thinking on the matter by taking the time to write it down.

Anyway, so again the basic idea here is that you can plug in a Warrior battalion to a lot of other list shells -- we're looking to use Warriors the same way Imperium uses Guardsmen. 438 points would get you 2 Archons with blasters and 6 7-man squads. Probably these are Obsidian Rose for the extra range, and you still get Agents of Vect this way. The Warriors themselves are 252 points, like the 240 points of Guardsmen you might see in a 6-unit Guard battalion. If your opponents aren't trying to blow them all away on turn 1 and are willing to let morale do some work, these 42 Warriors are almost exactly as durable as the 60 Guardsmen vs single-damage weapons, and they shoot only a little worse vs T3 and much better vs T4+. The first Archon is a steal, and you're probably only over-paying for the second by 20 points or so.

So what can we plug that into? We can produce something that looks a lot like some very powerful Blood Angels lists. Cult units don't seem great so we probably want Craftworld or Ynnari for this. 626 points gets a small Alatoic battalion with a Farseer, Warlock, Rangers, and 9 Shining Spears. We Quicken the Spears and hit very hard on turn 1. The same units but Yvraine instead of a Farseer is 648 points. We could bring both of these and try to WotP and advance one and Quicken the other. The Blood Angels analogues here are Shining Spears for the hard-hitting melee like the Captain and Sanguinary Guard, and then Rangers for controlling the board instead of Scouts. Rangers deploy a little worse but shoot a lot better. Spears are obviously crazy good. You could also replace one unit of Rangers with a big unit of Guardians that will deep strike in, but I'm not sure how useful that is on turn 2 now.

We could also do something with more long-ranged shooting, comparable to an artillery list. The big question here is whether we go with Ravagers and maybe Crimson Hunters or whether Ynnari Dark Reapers are still king. A Dark Reaper battalion costs only a bit more than the Shining Spear pieces I described earlier, and you probably want a Wave Serpent for turn 1. If you've got a Serpent anyway you might as well bring some Ravagers. Maybe a Black Heart Spearhead as your third detachment. This will shred anything other than T3 hordes, but I think is probably lacking there -- you're relying on your splinter rifles for that and that's not great.

With most of these you have some extra points floating around. Valuable add-ons would be a Hemlock to help with anti-tank and anti-horde (via its -2 Ld debuff), Scourges (anti-tank) or Mandrakes (anti-MEQ), or maybe some Swooping Hawks (anti-GEQ, objective grabbers).

So, that sort of thing. The current competitive-but-not-that-competitive list I'm toying with, avoiding Ynnari, is 2 Alatoic battalions with 5 units of Rangers and 1 big unit of Guardians, 1 big unit of Spears, 2 Hemlocks, and then 45 Warriors. Obviously it's mostly a Craftworld thing with Warrior support, which is also how Guard tend to get used in soup. I'd like to use more DE elements but I have a hard time justifying it, and there's also a lot of reason to have at least 3 Craftworld psykers for buffs and Doom. Maybe the Guardians should be dropped with the new deep strike rules. The other really promising DE unit, I think, is Grotesques, but getting them there is a big problem. It might make sense to bring Ravagers instead of Hemlocks; it probably depends on how many primaris statlines are out there.

Pure DE seems a lot harder to do since it feels bad to have a bunch of Archons, Cults don't seem to offer very much outside of some tricks with Reavers, and you can only have 3 Archons (and you don't really want the third one anyway), while Covens don't do anything for the whole first turn. One option would be to combine a Warrior platoon with more traditional Venom/Ravager spam. The foot Warriors lock down the mid-field while squads with blasters in Venoms get closer to kill tanks. But it's hard to do all of this without 2 battalions and Drazhar. But if you have a DE shell using just one Archon and the other sub-factions, or you still have Troops slots open in a Cabal battalion, a bunch of Warriors are probably a very strong addition.

Ok cheers for that Dio, explains it in more depth.

It sounds like you are trying to think through a little bit what i'm thinking through, which is "what's a great Kabalite batallion that can bolt on to other Aeldari things". Just you've taken it in a 100% pure mathematics direction for unit configurations by going MSU on unit sizes for durability.

It's that MSU which I would challenge. If you are going for 6 units of 7 Kabalites it may work out mathematically the most durable for avoiding the affects of Morale, however do consider that by doing so you are essentially wasting potential firepower by only part filling in special/heavy weapon requirements. At the full 6 units that's 12 Kabalites over your special weapon needs which could be unlocking further special and heavy weapons. When a splinter cannon increases the splinter shot output of a obsession-less 10 man Kabalite squad to 18" by 50% it's well worth the morale risks of larger squads.

I don't think anyone at this point would be disagreeing that Kabalites are strong, but they do need a clear purpose. Your comparison to Guard Infantry Squads and the 7 man squad sizes looked to have everyone thinking your whole purpose was to use them as a screen, when Aeldari have very little that either wants a screen or is worth screening. If your purpose is just to have a solid anti-infantry Kabalite core that's durable for holding objectives though, then I would advise bumping those squads up to 10 and add those Splinter Cannons. If morale is your main reservation against doing so, then you have the option to use the Poison Tongue warlord trait.

A word on Morale however - Splinter cannons, like all special and heavy weapons make the casualties taken early worth less than the final casualties. While you can avoid morale casualties by taking MSU, the same affect can also be achieved by taking larger squads of 15-20 who still have great functionality when reduced to low model count thanks to all the extra weapons - then you ignore morale through use of CP. Sure it has a cost, but it's an alternative approach to the one you are thinking of that is also viable. (e.g. Ork tactics)

I did get a chance to test out some dismounted Kabalites in a game yesterday against a half armored/half militarum tempestus guard list, and I can attest to being pleasantly surprised by their durability, though I have to say I would not have been had I not had Raiders to protect them early.

The list I played against had 2 battlecannon+Extras russes (one commander) one Fireball Russ with heavy flamers and punisher, 2 Hellhounds, a wyvern and a Hydra. That stuff would have taken my kabalites apart had they not spent the first two turns trying to crack open my transports. And once they did, with the help of a big 30-man scion drop, the scions didn't have enough juice to kill the warriors inside and the artillery was either destroyed or tied up by wyches at that point. He had opted to screen with a big line of bullgryns, which turned out to be more of a liability than a help because they ended up not able to withdraw from the wyches and I ground them out just in time for my turn 2 where I got to engage all the vehicles.

The warriors were basically able to slug it out with the scions no problem post-drop, along with one of my Archons who just eviscerated a tempestus prime and most of his command squad in one round of combat.

So yeah, I don't know about foot horde warriors, but I do think a warrior battalion is incredibly strong thing to tack into any list. It's just so cheap. But you can fit a full kabal battalion into 2 Raiders no problem - I don't see why you would want them on foot.


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As a side note, Hunt from the Shadows is rapidly becoming one of my favorite stratagems to use. Just wait for a big street sweeper unit to commit their firepower to killing one of your units (for me it was a 15-man hellion squad sitting in a ruin getting shot by 40 LR punisher shots) and just turn them into space marines. I probably spent 8 of my 13 command points giving things +2sv or -1 to hit.