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Question is in the title. Are any of the Idoneth Deepkin battalions worth taking?

The Royal Council gives a pretty nice command ability, but it requires the soulscryer to be within 3" if the king which makes the soulscryer nearly useless.

The Akhellian Corps could be useful, but it does limit the mobility somewhat since it requires the unit to be wholly within 12" of the leviathan.

The Namarti Corps seems the most useful to me, but I'm not entirely sure how worthwhile the reavers are over cavalry, sharks, or more thralls.

Alliance of Wood and Sea is interesting but leaves very little room for what can be added to the mandatory units, at least at 2k points.

Lastly the Phalanx, and do I really need to say anything about this? It's a super battallion; when is it ever likely to see play?

I should note that I have not played using Idoneth Deepkin myself, and have only played two small games against them, but these are my observations as someone who is considering them as a new army.

all battalions are useless in a competitive setting.

The namarti corps is useless because of the wording of the recursion. It is only in your battleshock phase, not in the battleshock phase.

I play IDK competitively and do not consider any battalions. It will always be better to take another soulscryer for 100 pts or another unit instead.

Yes there is, 2 are very good, Namarti Corpse and Royal Council.

Royal Council with an addition Soulscyer will get you +6 charge and +3 movement, the 2nd relic, less drops, +1CP

Namarti Corpse will again get you the +1CP, +1relic and less drops, but also is cheap, Reavers are fast and Thralls easily counter many things

Remember Battalions are effectively -50pts, b.c CP are 50pts anyways when playing down for them so Royal Council is only 90pts and Namarti Corpse is 50pts, having 4-5 Drops is also very important, you either are 1-5 or you dont care and will always go 2nd.

Do you guys think the akhelian Corps worth it? It seems like a great way to drop a lot of models on the table with some of our most powerful units.

 minisnatcher wrote:
all battalions are useless in a competitive setting.

The namarti corps is useless because of the wording of the recursion. It is only in your battleshock phase, not in the battleshock phase.

I play IDK competitively and do not consider any battalions. It will always be better to take another soulscryer for 100 pts or another unit instead.

True, but it brings up the question of what he is looking for.

OP, when you say 'worth it' what power level are you speaking of? Are we talking casual meta or heading to tournaments? In a strict min-max sense the battalions are, as minisnatcher said, not that great. However something almost always needs to be overpowered to be worthwhile in an optimized setting, and when looking at an average performance overall the battalions are not bad, they just are not the strongest option available.


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 Amishprn86 wrote:
emember Battalions are effectively -50pts, b.c CP are 50pts anyways

True, but also not the whole picture. A CP is worth vastly different amounts to different armies, and even to different army builds; to one army it could be worth more than 50 points in usefulness while to another it could be worth less. Which ultimately means that while the CP benefit should be considered it should be done so within the army context rather than a broad sentiment.

 Tiger9gamer wrote:
Do you guys think the akhelian Corps worth it? It seems like a great way to drop a lot of models on the table with some of our most powerful units.

Not currently, but it is my favorite one for Deepkin, its not worth the points for the units.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 minisnatcher wrote:
all battalions are useless in a competitive setting.

The namarti corps is useless because of the wording of the recursion. It is only in your battleshock phase, not in the battleshock phase.

I play IDK competitively and do not consider any battalions. It will always be better to take another soulscryer for 100 pts or another unit instead.

True, but it brings up the question of what he is looking for.

OP, when you say 'worth it' what power level are you speaking of? Are we talking casual meta or heading to tournaments? In a strict min-max sense the battalions are, as minisnatcher said, not that great. However something almost always needs to be overpowered to be worthwhile in an optimized setting, and when looking at an average performance overall the battalions are not bad, they just are not the strongest option available.


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 Amishprn86 wrote:
emember Battalions are effectively -50pts, b.c CP are 50pts anyways

True, but also not the whole picture. A CP is worth vastly different amounts to different armies, and even to different army builds; to one army it could be worth more than 50 points in usefulness while to another it could be worth less. Which ultimately means that while the CP benefit should be considered it should be done so within the army context rather than a broad sentiment.

I consider a extra CP and Relic for deepkin very strong, we dont really have ways to get extra CP easily.

Also some of the top Deepkin tournament players takes Namarti Corps, so Minisnatcher is off on that, I think his name was James Tindtales? He won one of the bigger events with Namarti Corps.

What was the event? Maybe we can find a copy of the list to see what he did.

I have a copy, but not the event. Let me dig it out (He does a lot of events).

https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/tgacommunity/monthly_2019_04/1946FC2B-4EB1-42CD-BCD4-70D438A327F9.jpeg.293b076ffb559987e8020740a5965038.jpeg


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PS, TGA has a forum for copying lists from events, Im not 100% sure where it is posted, but you could go through them as well to see others for fun.

Found it: https://aosshorts.com/justice-series-gt-recap-top-lists/

Both 6th and 8th were Idoneth with Namarti Corps. Though worth noting that in both cases that battalion's primary purpose is to facilitate an eel build; even including the cost of the battalion itself both lists spent more on eels than they did the entire battalion.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
True, but it brings up the question of what he is looking for.

OP, when you say 'worth it' what power level are you speaking of? Are we talking casual meta or heading to tournaments? In a strict min-max sense the battalions are, as minisnatcher said, not that great. However something almost always needs to be overpowered to be worthwhile in an optimized setting, and when looking at an average performance overall the battalions are not bad, they just are not the strongest option available.

I'm mostly looking at the upper end of semi-competitive. I'm not planning on going to any tournaments, but I would like a higher tier army than my existing Dispossessed forces.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Found it: https://aosshorts.com/justice-series-gt-recap-top-lists/

Both 6th and 8th were Idoneth with Namarti Corps. Though worth noting that in both cases that battalion's primary purpose is to facilitate an eel build; even including the cost of the battalion itself both lists spent more on eels than they did the entire battalion.

Yes they spend more on Eels but thats not to say IDK battalions are bad. They are viable in competitive. Sure you might not build fully around it, but it is serving a purpose. Everything in lists for comp (What OP wants) needs to serve a purpose, and it does. Especially in Comp forcing your opponent to take the 1st turn is very strong, making a 1-4 drop list is important, extra Relic and CP is important as well.

I did adepticon and out of the games i lost, i lost b.c i went first and got double turned, if it wasnt for that i would have won another 2 of my games.

 snykyninja wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
True, but it brings up the question of what he is looking for.

OP, when you say 'worth it' what power level are you speaking of? Are we talking casual meta or heading to tournaments? In a strict min-max sense the battalions are, as minisnatcher said, not that great. However something almost always needs to be overpowered to be worthwhile in an optimized setting, and when looking at an average performance overall the battalions are not bad, they just are not the strongest option available.

I'm mostly looking at the upper end of semi-competitive. I'm not planning on going to any tournaments, but I would like a higher tier army than my existing Dispossessed forces.

Any of the battalions will work well in that context, just figure out which you like


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 Amishprn86 wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Found it: https://aosshorts.com/justice-series-gt-recap-top-lists/

Both 6th and 8th were Idoneth with Namarti Corps. Though worth noting that in both cases that battalion's primary purpose is to facilitate an eel build; even including the cost of the battalion itself both lists spent more on eels than they did the entire battalion.

Yes they spend more on Eels but thats not to say IDK battalions are bad. They are viable in competitive. Sure you might not build fully around it, but it is serving a purpose. Everything in lists for comp (What OP wants) needs to serve a purpose, and it does. Especially in Comp forcing your opponent to take the 1st turn is very strong, making a 1-4 drop list is important, extra Relic and CP is important as well.

Agreed.

I did adepticon and out of the games i lost, i lost b.c i went first and got double turned, if it wasnt for that i would have won another 2 of my games.

Yeah well, despite what some say there isn't really anything you can do about that : /