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I'm wondering what dakkas thoughts are on the Haemonculi Coven themed lists. Generally I see almost all DE armies running kabal themed lists and occasionally tossing in a pain engine or something. Reading the stats 4-5 man wrack squads in 2 raiders seems like they would be pretty good with their higher toughness buffed with a Haemonculi, but at the same time its melee dark eldar in a shooty edition. Am I missing something or are the Haemonculi Coven lists actually really bad?

Coven lists are my favorite ones, but as you said they're quite bad at the moment. Pure coven lists at least.

If you bring a few units in a kabal list they can do something but all the typical units have been nerfed badly in this edition.

I continue to play talos and/or grotesques because I love them, and the haemys are the only HQs worth taking IMHO, but cronos are completely useless and wracks are very mediocre. I prefer wyches over wracks if you really want an assault oriented troop.

They don't seem too bad, but the big issue is these crazy amount of heavy weapon spam that can be fielded making the T6 worthless almost. Im making a list thats mostly coven but with a Kabal support group of ravengers, voidraven and scourges. Hoping it will be able to somewhat be decent.

Urien is amazing. I've had him tank marneus calgar with 4++ re-rollable and 6+++ followed by 6++++ for a warlord trait.

Talos and Cronos are EXTREMELY over priced
Wracks are ok, not as good as kabals just b.c shooting from open tops and special weapons
Grotesques are a bit over priced, but really their problem is the weapons are to costly (13pts for a flamer b.c it can have better ap, thats cool but its also S3 so not really a balance point price)
Haemonculus are actually good, they do more damage than an Archon and have the CoM (Large AOE Psychic MW bomb) They also help your coven with a good Aura (Archon, Suc, Lelith, Draz dont have good auras)
Urien is a bit costly, but in this meta he can be very strong, he just needs more damage IMO, he is very weak for a named character, especially compare to the Haemonculus

I have 20+ Grots, 5 Talos, 2 Cronos, 40 Wracks, 5 Haems and Urien, i like Coven back in 7th, but not really playable in 8th outside of friendly games, the lack AT and Range.

If you are doing Coven, Vehicle+horde is the way to go, Take lots of Reapers and a Tantalus with Wracks in the Tantalus and Haemoncului, (like 3 units and 1 Haem) then have a Haem outside the Tantalus to give them all +1 Toughness, take a Ele-Whip on all 4 Wracks and a Ossefactor, some Venoms and Wracks are great too. If your going to take a Talos/Cronos, take only the Cronos.

Ive done this a few times and it works good until you get to Spam Comp lists, even against a strong Tac list it is fine.

Edit: Basically you need vehicles and dont take Talos

They don't function well because essentially a coven list consists of 5 units, and 3 are currently very very bad.

Taloi, Chronoi, and Grotesques simply did not get upped in toughness or damage enough for the transition to 8th. Where we saw units like Wraithguard beefed up massively going from 1 to 3 wounds, gaining D3 damage melee weapons, etc so they can fill the heavy elite infantry role, Grotesques kept the exact same number of wounds and still swing a single damage weapon despite being gigantic gorillamonsters.

Ditto for the pain engines: they went from something solidly more durable than a marine dreadnought which did less damage and costed about the same (which is about where their role falls) to something that for some reason was WAY less durable than a marine dread...and still did far less damage. A basic dread CCW is what, S10 AP-3 flat 3 damage? Compare to a Talos Cleaver at S I think 7, AP-1, D2. And their toughness is only roughly equal to a dread if they have a haemonculus nearby.

Just like with Gorkanauts and Wraithknights last edition, you just have to run a pain engine up against a roughly equivalent generalist walker unit from any other faction (Wraithlord, Dreadnought, deff dread, etc) and see what happens to it in combat to see where the problem is. The pain engine gets shredded without causing more than 2-4 wounds every single time.

The Haemonculus is actually the best HQ we have with a useful aura and actual damage output in combat, whilst Urien is really difficult to kill thanks to the re-rollable invuln and T6. the problem is the rest of the Covens list, whilst it's all very tough and survivable, it's all a bit gummy having had it's teeth removed. A Grotesque last edition could have up to 9 or 10 attacks each on the charge with re-roll to wound against T4 and Instant Death on 6's, when you rolled that many dice the lack of AP didn't matter, and T5, 3 wounds with FnP was a big deal last edition. Now they only have 5 attacks each at most with no reolls and only AP-1, D1 so they really struggle to put out the damage compared to last edition, whilst getting more expensive.

Same goes for the Talos, last edition mine would tear other monsters to shreds with ease but now they've lost a point of S and T (though gained a 5++) and only have AP-1 and D2. They're great at shreding infantry but thats not what anyone wants them for. The Cronos is a support unit that offers no support.

So essentially the big issues that I would have would be elimiated by avoiding the pain engines and taking some anti tank ranged firepower from a Kabal as backup then?

It's basically avoid everything but haemonculi since wracks are terrible as well, IMHO even worse than grotesques.

If you play in a casual meta talos, grots and wracks can be ok though.

 cosmicsoybean wrote:
So essentially the big issues that I would have would be elimiated by avoiding the pain engines and taking some anti tank ranged firepower from a Kabal as backup then?

Basically if it's not Kabal+ Mercenaries (Scourge, Incubi and Mandrakes) then don't bother. In a friendly meta Coven and Cult might make for fun games but the moment you find someone thats using good units you'll start to have trouble.