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The point of this idea (these buffs can change, its the idea not a set in stone it has to be these buffs) is to give DE the option to buff 1 aspect of the army, something they specialize in. This will also at the same time give back some of the flavor that was lost over the years that made DE more fun to play and buff things in a non power creep way like how DT did.


Pick a specialist and one of the specialist traits, your army gains that rules for the rest of the battle
2CP stratagem to change it once per game.

Poison specialist
Poison weapons are +1 to the damage on a wound roll of 6
-1ap with poison weapons
+1 to wound with poison weapons

Makes poison more desirable, if you are going kabal heavy with venoms, or Raiders with Splinter racks. This could be helpful if you need just more AP, multi damage, or just better chances to wound.

Heavy Specialist
While embarked treat all heavy weapons as assault
Can advance and shoot heavies as if they were assault
+1 to hit if remained stationary

Great for anyone that likes heavy weapons. Kabals in 10mans, Wracks with Snipers, Scourges DSing onto the board. If its heavy we got you.

Raiding Specialist: "units with fly or transports"
Gain +3" movement
Gain a 5++ vs shooting attacks even while engaged
Gain a 6" disembarked instead of 3"
If a Raider did not advance when it moved, you may disembark within 1" of the vehicle after it moves, your unit can not make a normal move, otherwise it can still shoot and charge.

This is for those that want to feel the old ideas of DE, rushing in with your Vehicles and moving fast. A straight +3" buff to all fly makes DE the fastest army in game again making the more fragile units a higher chance to do something. Or if you want a save, now your Scourges, Reavers, Hellions, Birds, and even vehicles for engagement range now has a proper save, to finally a better disembark giving you assault vehicles back.

Some might think this seems very strong, but remember many units can also move just as far now. Wyches are 8", can be buffed to 10" (can actually be +" for 12" movements) can advance and charge with re-rolls, a 3" disembark makes them 13" move with a D6 and still charges. Its noting to say "let them charge out of a vehicle after it moved" when that vehicle only moves 14". Its more of a quality of life and a unique rule for DE.

Some cool ideas here. To clarify, these would be rules that apply to your entire army, but you only get to use them if all detachments in your army have the Drukhari keyword, right?

Heavy Specialist
While embarked treat all heavy weapons as assault
Can advance and shoot heavies as if they were assault
+1 to hit if remained stationary

Great for anyone that likes heavy weapons. Kabals in 10mans, Wracks with Snipers, Scourges DSing onto the board. If its heavy we got you.

I like this one, but I wonder if it's maybe less desirable than the other two? With the recent price increase, I feel like 10 man warrior squads are less likely to be seen. So that leaves the first two benefits mostly only useful for hexrifle wracks and dark lance scourges. A single unit of lance scourges would get a lot of use out of this because you could fire and fade afterwards, but it's not doing much for the majority of your army.

Also, this means that you're actively rewarded for not moving. I could see this making our army less likely to match its fluff on the tabletop. Tau used to be considered a mobile army; now they're all about castling up around a Kau'Yon commander and not moving because that's how they maximize the efficiency of their shooting. Also, a dark techno reaper that hits on 2s and wounds anything T7 or less on 2s might be a bit much.

Raiding Specialist: "units with fly or transports"
Gain +3" movement
Gain a 5++ vs shooting attacks even while engaged
Gain a 6" disembarked instead of 3"
If a Raider did not advance when it moved, you may disembark within 1" of the vehicle after it moves, your unit can not make a normal move, otherwise it can still shoot and charge.

This is for those that want to feel the old ideas of DE, rushing in with your Vehicles and moving fast. A straight +3" buff to all fly makes DE the fastest army in game again making the more fragile units a higher chance to do something. Or if you want a save, now your Scourges, Reavers, Hellions, Birds, and even vehicles for engagement range now has a proper save, to finally a better disembark giving you assault vehicles back.

Some might think this seems very strong, but remember many units can also move just as far now. Wyches are 8", can be buffed to 10" (can actually be +" for 12" movements) can advance and charge with re-rolls, a 3" disembark makes them 13" move with a D6 and still charges. Its noting to say "let them charge out of a vehicle after it moved" when that vehicle only moves 14". Its more of a quality of life and a unique rule for DE.

Well, the disembark and charge thing is a bit bigger of a deal than you describe it. A raider might have a base move of 14", but that will go up to 17" thanks to this rule, and a Flayed Skull raider can go up to 20(?)" with this rule. So this takes a unit of incubi from a 10" disembark + move to a potentially 20" disembark before charging. That's still not as big a deal for movement drug red grief wyches, but those are unusually speedy compared to most of our melee units.

I also worry that the 5+ invul is both redundant on our vehicles and also defeats the purpose of some of our infantry. Giving everyone a 5+ invul takes away one of the major advantages of coven infantry units and steps on the toes of wyches. Maybe the invul only kicks in before the first DE player turn and on turns in which the DE unit advanced? That would let us trade some offense for a little defense, fit our alpha strike fluff, and offer more value to assault weapons in our army.

 Amishprn86 wrote:


Pick a specialist and one of the specialist traits, your army gains that rules for the rest of the battle
2CP stratagem to change it once per game.

Poison specialist
Poison weapons are +1 to the damage on a wound roll of 6
-1ap with poison weapons
+1 to wound with poison weapons

Makes poison more desirable, if you are going kabal heavy with venoms, or Raiders with Splinter racks. This could be helpful if you need just more AP, multi damage, or just better chances to wound.

I've been thinking about our poison weapons recently. They used to be specialized-but-scary, being as bad as a lasgun against T3 targets, as good as a bolter against T4 targets, and kind of devastating against monsters back when those only had a handful of wounds. 8th edition giving more wounds to splinters' preferred target has really reduced their utility. Now, they're generally worse against most targets than a gauss flayer, shuriken catapult, or pule rifle. The recent kabalite and splinter cannon price hike suggests that these aren't meant to be "weak" weapons, so giving them some kind of boost seems appropriate.

However, giving them better Damage and better AP and better to-wound rolls is a pretty major vertical power boost. Where the other two options mostly change your playstyle and what options you take, this one seems like it's just a raw power boost for half (most?) of the weapons in our army. Someone could math out how these changes look and I might be convinced that they're actually very reasonable, but my knee-jerk reaction on paper is that this is just kind of a kitchen-sinky power boost.

Also, and this isn't a huge deal, it makes venom blades that much less desirable because their only advantage over other poison weapons is that you wound on 2s. An agonizer that wounds everything on a 3+ is even better compared to a venom blade than it already is.

That said, I don't have a great alternative for how to boost poison weapons. +1 to wound does seem appropriate, but is having our entire army wounding non-vehicles on a 3+ too big of a power boost? The +1 Damage on 6+ also seems fluffy, but it doesn't really help us against T3 armies, and it feels like an attempt to deny marine players of their shiny new wound.

I feel like it would make sense to turn lhameans into "splinter sergeants" that buff poison weapons near them (including embarked on the same transport they are). I also feel like it would make sense to create a stratagem that applies debuffs to an enemy unit that you focus fire on with splinter weapons. Neither of these fits what you're trying to do very well, however.


Some other random thoughts that didn't really fit as a response to a quote:
* While the current Power From Pain is pretty functional, I feel that it does little to benefit the shooty units in our codex and lacks the visceral reward of something like the old Pain Token system. Perhaps our Doctrine equivalent could modify the PFP system in some way?

* When I think of problems I'd like to see solved for Drukhari, some of my most frequest pet peeves are the transport capacities of our transports and our HQs' inability to buff our boat army unless they're jogging around on the ground. Perhaps the raiding specialist option could increase the transport capacity of vehicles by 1 so that you have a slot for HQs and courtiers? Perhaps the heavy specialist option could allow you to treat whatever boat your archon is embarked on as a "command vehicle" and allow his aura to impact vehicles (and their passengers) within X"? Or maybe he simply points at an enemy unit within line of sight and grants rerolls of 1 to units that target that unit.

* I feel like our "doctrines" should reflect the purpose/goals of a given raiding force. We're generally there to either take slaves, blow up key targets, or show off/have fun. The raiding specialist does the first one well. The heavy specialist blows things up well. Maybe there should be an option to reflect drukhari playing with their food/earning glory/testing out their new creations instead of or in addition to the poison specialists option?

* I think I actually kind of like the idea of NOT being able to switch specialists in the middle of a battle. Our force was sent here with a goal in mind. Let changing up strategies be more of a marine thing. We don't follow some stinking codex.

poison specialist is fine, I think Heavy Specialist is potentially pretty abusable with Ravagers/Reapers and the +1 to hit if stationary bit.

Raiding specialist would get pretty wacky with Flayed Skull XD and I don't understand the second bit - is that not how the 5++ saves work right now? If I'm within 1" of you it's still a shooting attack, which is what's specified by the various 5++ rules...

Personally I think they're just a little bit over the power bar that we saw with the Sisters Rites, but I love the idea of something unifying your splintered Dark Eldar force. I would trim it to 2 rules at maximum personally. I think it'd be really cool if it were based around what the raid is supposed to be doing. An alternative version I'd propose:

Culling

-1AP with poison weapons
INFANTRY models ignore the penalty to hit with Heavy weapons if they moved

Prisoner Raid

Units embarked within transports may disembark after the transport has moved. Any units that do so may not move further in the movement phase.
All units treat the Power from Pain track as being 1 turn higher than it is

Lightning Strike

All models with FLY can either shoot or charge on a turn they made a Fall Back move
All models ignore the penalty to hit for Advancing and firing Assault weapons, and Rapid Fire weapons become Assault weapons (e.g. rapid fire 1 becomes assault 1) if the unit made an Advance move

I really like some of the rules written here, specially how fluffy is that poison weapons have some AP and 6s being better. I hope we see something like this, the 50% more expensive Kabs would make sense.

But I think our book needs a major rethinking, right now 80% of the codex makes no sense. I like the "3 different subfactions" lore, but we need some nexus in the middle, Alliance of Agony is not enough to make the army feel like a real one.

- We need to feel more like Space Pirates. Our HQs need to be able to work from inside our boats, at least from inside Raiders. We need more capacity and Archon auras working from the inside and to the embarked dudes.

- We need Mercenaries to work for us. A stratagem like "2cp, until the end of round, your mercenaries gain the obsession of their detachment" would make us think creatively and tactically (plus it feels like paying a tax, they are indeed mercenaries).

- We need Xenos weaponry to matter. Poison first, but Darklight too. You guys made a lot of valid points on this one.

- And we need our units to be at least "niche", right now there's a lot of models that are basically useless outside of fluff reasons. Make our Court models have special uses... the idea is so cool but is so badly written...

I love this army, and I don't want it to be broken, just to make sense as a whole.

Yeah, I really think Courts should go back to being a single unit with flexible contents that add their special rule to the whole unit, sort of like how Deathwatch Kill Teams work. Also, you could use them as a way to bring back Trueborn/Bloodbrides, seeing as we are now getting a datasheet for Veteran Intercessors, so there does not seem to be a "1 Model Kit = 1 Datasheet" rule in place anymore.

Drukhari Retinues (3 datasheets, named "Cult Retinue", "Coven Retinue", "Kabalite Retinue"

Always 4 models, start as Trueborn, Bloodbrides, and Acothysts, which are A+1 W+1 versions of Warriors Wyches and Wracks. Trueborn have access to Sybarite equipment or Warrior special weapons, Bloodbrides have access to Wych Weapons and Hekatrix weapons, Acothysts have access to Acothyst weapons.

You may swap out any model for:

-A Medusa
-An Ur-Ghul
-An Incubi
-A Sslyth

You may swap out 1 model for a Lhamean, which costs more now and grants the whole squad Poisoned Weapon on any melee weapon that doesn't already have the rule.

This is kind of tongue-in-cheek, but why not?

Heavy Specialist
While embarked treat all heavy weapons as assault
Can advance and shoot heavies as if they were assault
In your Shooting Phase, you can declare an Infantry unit will only shoot a single target. If you do, select one target for this unit; models in this unit equipped with heavy weapons can shoot twice with those weapons this phase, but they can only target that enemy unit.

the_scotsman wrote:
poison specialist is fine, I think Heavy Specialist is potentially pretty abusable with Ravagers/Reapers and the +1 to hit if stationary bit.

If I'm not mistaken, ravagers actually wouldn't benefit from the +1 to hit because lances count as assault when mounted on a vehicle. Which is interesting.

Personally I think they're just a little bit over the power bar that we saw with the Sisters Rites, but I love the idea of something unifying your splintered Dark Eldar force. I would trim it to 2 rules at maximum personally. I think it'd be really cool if it were based around what the raid is supposed to be doing. An alternative version I'd propose:

Culling

-1AP with poison weapons
INFANTRY models ignore the penalty to hit with Heavy weapons if they moved

Prisoner Raid

Units embarked within transports may disembark after the transport has moved. Any units that do so may not move further in the movement phase.
All units treat the Power from Pain track as being 1 turn higher than it is

Lightning Strike

All models with FLY can either shoot or charge on a turn they made a Fall Back move
All models ignore the penalty to hit for Advancing and firing Assault weapons, and Rapid Fire weapons become Assault weapons (e.g. rapid fire 1 becomes assault 1) if the unit made an Advance move

I like the general direction you're going here. Seems like I'm the only one reluctant to give poison weapons a big boost. Out of curiosity, why is everyone pitching -1AP? Splinter weapons don't strike me as being especially good at piercing armor. If anything, I feel like most BL scenes involving splinter weapons involve at least one mention of the splinters being at least partially deflected by armor. Is it just because that's what doctrines did?

Is ignoring the to-hit penalty for heavy weapons useful on enough platforms to be worth an army-wide rule? From memory, the only units that gain anything from that are a single weapon choice for scourges, hex rifle wielders, and one or two guys in a warrior squad if you're not running them MSU. It's a nice rule to have if you're running those platforms, but it's a little niche.

Does the fall back and charge thing on Lightning Strike devalue hellions too much? Those guys already struggle to make it into lists, and this takes away one of their advantages.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

the_scotsman wrote:
Yeah, I really think Courts should go back to being a single unit with flexible contents that add their special rule to the whole unit, sort of like how Deathwatch Kill Teams work. Also, you could use them as a way to bring back Trueborn/Bloodbrides, seeing as we are now getting a datasheet for Veteran Intercessors, so there does not seem to be a "1 Model Kit = 1 Datasheet" rule in place anymore.

Drukhari Retinues (3 datasheets, named "Cult Retinue", "Coven Retinue", "Kabalite Retinue"

Always 4 models, start as Trueborn, Bloodbrides, and Acothysts, which are A+1 W+1 versions of Warriors Wyches and Wracks. Trueborn have access to Sybarite equipment or Warrior special weapons, Bloodbrides have access to Wych Weapons and Hekatrix weapons, Acothysts have access to Acothyst weapons.

You may swap out any model for:

-A Medusa
-An Ur-Ghul
-An Incubi
-A Sslyth

You may swap out 1 model for a Lhamean, which costs more now and grants the whole squad Poisoned Weapon on any melee weapon that doesn't already have the rule.

I like the idea of making the court a combined unit again. Having each unit add a special rule is interesting. I don't think I'd do it quite like this, however.

First of all, trueborn don't really fit this mold very well. In the past, they've had a lot of wargear flexibility on their own and some kind of wordy restrictions on how many guys can take what wargear. I'd rather see them be their own datasheet that you can build as either a special weapon squad ("blasterborn") or a kabalite melee squad (power swords, venom blades, etc. available to everyone). Bloodbrides never had a well-defined niche of their own, but they'd likely end up with sufficiently complex wargear or special rule options that would make them complicated enough to warrant their own datasheet as well.

Only giving squad benefits to the lhamean feels like it doesn't go far enough with the "everyone brings a rule" concept to warrant doing it that way. If that's the concept we're going with, maybe add something like...
* if a ghul is in the squad, enemies may not arrive from reserves within 12" of the squad (the ghul smells them coming).
* If any sslyth are in the squad, wounds must be assigned to them first, but the the entire squad uses the sslyth's toughness if any sslyth were in the squad at the start of the phase.
* And then yeah, let the lhamean grant poison 4+ to non-poison melee weapons and +1 to wound to actual poison weapons or something.
* Medusae and incubi don't have special rules but are in the squad for their offense.

Alternatively, if we're not doing the special rule combo platter thing, just let the court consist of 1-10 models from the above list and make the following changes:
* Sslyth go down to T3 but gain a couple of wounds. Mostly so that you don't have to deal with mixed toughness weirdness.
* Let up to two incubi swap their klaives for blasters or shredders as a nod to the old models.
* Give ghuls more attacks and a charge bonus against enemy units that are at half strength or half wounds (they're in a blood frenzy)

I kitbashed a squad of 10 lhameans at the tail end of 7th and missing have a whole squad of shaimesh blades...

Also, this is neither here nor there, but I"d kind of like to split the current lhamean into two different things. I want the lhamean to go back to 1 wound and be available in squads (the court of the archon), and I want an "Arch Lhamean" HQ character that buffs poison weapons.

I suppose you could do +1 to wound with poison weapons instead of -1AP, thematically could be more appropriate but mathwise it's basically potato potahto right, it's one shift either way. I think damage 2 is too powerful and damage d3 is fiddly (the poison is deadlier) but +1 to wound makes thematic sense. Also provides a little mini-nerf to Dark Technomancers with the +to wound cap which is nice.

I believe Reapers weapon is actually heavy. Those things never fail to cause balance problems (see: right now!) Why did we need a slightly more different version of the DL ravager that just never gets rules balance updates? I don't know!

Mostly, I just want Bloodbrides and Trueborn to return (and haemonculus covens to get an equivalent) and for you to be able to take them as a 4-person squad and for them to be W2 to give them an actual reason to be beyond just "a platform you can spam blasters on". If marines can have vets with +1 wound because they're veterans (bladeguard) and so can eldar (exarchs) then so can we.

Wyldhunt wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
poison specialist is fine, I think Heavy Specialist is potentially pretty abusable with Ravagers/Reapers and the +1 to hit if stationary bit.

If I'm not mistaken, ravagers actually wouldn't benefit from the +1 to hit because lances count as assault when mounted on a vehicle. Which is interesting.

Personally I think they're just a little bit over the power bar that we saw with the Sisters Rites, but I love the idea of something unifying your splintered Dark Eldar force. I would trim it to 2 rules at maximum personally. I think it'd be really cool if it were based around what the raid is supposed to be doing. An alternative version I'd propose:

Culling

-1AP with poison weapons
INFANTRY models ignore the penalty to hit with Heavy weapons if they moved

Prisoner Raid

Units embarked within transports may disembark after the transport has moved. Any units that do so may not move further in the movement phase.
All units treat the Power from Pain track as being 1 turn higher than it is

Lightning Strike

All models with FLY can either shoot or charge on a turn they made a Fall Back move
All models ignore the penalty to hit for Advancing and firing Assault weapons, and Rapid Fire weapons become Assault weapons (e.g. rapid fire 1 becomes assault 1) if the unit made an Advance move

I like the general direction you're going here. Seems like I'm the only one reluctant to give poison weapons a big boost. Out of curiosity, why is everyone pitching -1AP? Splinter weapons don't strike me as being especially good at piercing armor. If anything, I feel like most BL scenes involving splinter weapons involve at least one mention of the splinters being at least partially deflected by armor. Is it just because that's what doctrines did?

Is ignoring the to-hit penalty for heavy weapons useful on enough platforms to be worth an army-wide rule? From memory, the only units that gain anything from that are a single weapon choice for scourges, hex rifle wielders, and one or two guys in a warrior squad if you're not running them MSU. It's a nice rule to have if you're running those platforms, but it's a little niche.

Does the fall back and charge thing on Lightning Strike devalue hellions too much? Those guys already struggle to make it into lists, and this takes away one of their advantages.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

the_scotsman wrote:
Yeah, I really think Courts should go back to being a single unit with flexible contents that add their special rule to the whole unit, sort of like how Deathwatch Kill Teams work. Also, you could use them as a way to bring back Trueborn/Bloodbrides, seeing as we are now getting a datasheet for Veteran Intercessors, so there does not seem to be a "1 Model Kit = 1 Datasheet" rule in place anymore.

Drukhari Retinues (3 datasheets, named "Cult Retinue", "Coven Retinue", "Kabalite Retinue"

Always 4 models, start as Trueborn, Bloodbrides, and Acothysts, which are A+1 W+1 versions of Warriors Wyches and Wracks. Trueborn have access to Sybarite equipment or Warrior special weapons, Bloodbrides have access to Wych Weapons and Hekatrix weapons, Acothysts have access to Acothyst weapons.

You may swap out any model for:

-A Medusa
-An Ur-Ghul
-An Incubi
-A Sslyth

You may swap out 1 model for a Lhamean, which costs more now and grants the whole squad Poisoned Weapon on any melee weapon that doesn't already have the rule.

I like the idea of making the court a combined unit again. Having each unit add a special rule is interesting. I don't think I'd do it quite like this, however.

First of all, trueborn don't really fit this mold very well. In the past, they've had a lot of wargear flexibility on their own and some kind of wordy restrictions on how many guys can take what wargear. I'd rather see them be their own datasheet that you can build as either a special weapon squad ("blasterborn") or a kabalite melee squad (power swords, venom blades, etc. available to everyone). Bloodbrides never had a well-defined niche of their own, but they'd likely end up with sufficiently complex wargear or special rule options that would make them complicated enough to warrant their own datasheet as well.

Only giving squad benefits to the lhamean feels like it doesn't go far enough with the "everyone brings a rule" concept to warrant doing it that way. If that's the concept we're going with, maybe add something like...
* if a ghul is in the squad, enemies may not arrive from reserves within 12" of the squad (the ghul smells them coming).
* If any sslyth are in the squad, wounds must be assigned to them first, but the the entire squad uses the sslyth's toughness if any sslyth were in the squad at the start of the phase.
* And then yeah, let the lhamean grant poison 4+ to non-poison melee weapons and +1 to wound to actual poison weapons or something.
* Medusae and incubi don't have special rules but are in the squad for their offense.

Alternatively, if we're not doing the special rule combo platter thing, just let the court consist of 1-10 models from the above list and make the following changes:
* Sslyth go down to T3 but gain a couple of wounds. Mostly so that you don't have to deal with mixed toughness weirdness.
* Let up to two incubi swap their klaives for blasters or shredders as a nod to the old models.
* Give ghuls more attacks and a charge bonus against enemy units that are at half strength or half wounds (they're in a blood frenzy)

I kitbashed a squad of 10 lhameans at the tail end of 7th and missing have a whole squad of shaimesh blades...

Also, this is neither here nor there, but I"d kind of like to split the current lhamean into two different things. I want the lhamean to go back to 1 wound and be available in squads (the court of the archon), and I want an "Arch Lhamean" HQ character that buffs poison weapons.

Why give them -1ap? B.c in the fluff DE can modify their ammo to fit what they need. Really Kabals should get specialist ammo in general based off the fluff "We need army piercing rounds!".

the_scotsman wrote:
I believe Reapers weapon is actually heavy. Those things never fail to cause balance problems (see: right now!) Why did we need a slightly more different version of the DL ravager that just never gets rules balance updates? I don't know!

The reaper is heavy. Ravager guns aren't.

The reaper and ravager had less overlap when the reaper first came out. Back then, the reaper lacked the ability to potentially one-shot an enemy vehicle the way a dark lance ravager could, but it could reliably stunlock an enemy vehicle by inflicting multiple glancing hits with its super haywire rule. Additionally, its anti-infantry profile used the large blast template making it quite a bit more flexible than the 3 shot ravager. Dissies weren't considered good for most of their history, so a dissie ravager wasn't really a point of comparison.

Mostly, I just want Bloodbrides and Trueborn to return (and haemonculus covens to get an equivalent) and for you to be able to take them as a 4-person squad and for them to be W2 to give them an actual reason to be beyond just "a platform you can spam blasters on". If marines can have vets with +1 wound because they're veterans (bladeguard) and so can eldar (exarchs) then so can we.

I'd love to see blood brides and trueborn come back. I'm not sure making them 2 wounds necessarily does them a ton of favors though. Presumably that extra wound has to cost points, and the extra wound may not actually be very useful depending on the job you're giving them. Assuming "special weapon squad" is still a use for trueborn, for instance, they don't care all that much about having a second wound while they spend all game riding around in a transport. It doesn't help them kill things, and an extra wound probably just means your opponent has to fire a couple extra bolters at them to finish them off once their transport dies. Bloodbrides and elite wracks maybe benefit more from a 2nd wound because their invul saves (and possibly toughness) make each wound harder to strip off. But for trueborn, the points cost of an extra wound risks lowering their overall efficiency.

I guess if you could give them ghost armor and hand out melee weapons to everyone, they could functionally be sort of like a slower, off-brand banshee squad? Maybe give the dracon similar stats to an archon but without the shadowfield so the other trueborn act as ablative wounds for a slicey dicey squad leader?

What do you see the role of elite wracks being? I worry that 2 wound wracks will lack a niche compared to wracks and grotesques, either rendering one of those two units redundant/inefficient or else being redundant or inefficient themselves. I suppose if you give them trueborn style weapon options, they could serve as a hexrifle sniper squad or a DT liquifier gun squad?

Amishprn86 wrote:
Why give them -1ap? B.c in the fluff DE can modify their ammo to fit what they need. Really Kabals should get specialist ammo in general based off the fluff "We need army piercing rounds!".

Sure, but if armor piercing rounds are a thing, that implies that non-armor piercing rounds are also a thing. So if splinter rounds are always AP-1, why do they ever use the AP0 version? If they're teaming up with harlies or craftworlders to fight space marines, why do they leave the armor piercing splinters at home?

I'm all for specialist ammo (as either a strat or a an option on trueborn). It just seems a little odd that of all the weapons in the game, the spicy needles are seen as being deserving of an AP buff akin to that of the bolter. It just doesn't strike me as an intuitive, fluffy buff, but maybe I'm in the minority.

Wyldhunt wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
I believe Reapers weapon is actually heavy. Those things never fail to cause balance problems (see: right now!) Why did we need a slightly more different version of the DL ravager that just never gets rules balance updates? I don't know!

The reaper is heavy. Ravager guns aren't.

The reaper and ravager had less overlap when the reaper first came out. Back then, the reaper lacked the ability to potentially one-shot an enemy vehicle the way a dark lance ravager could, but it could reliably stunlock an enemy vehicle by inflicting multiple glancing hits with its super haywire rule. Additionally, its anti-infantry profile used the large blast template making it quite a bit more flexible than the 3 shot ravager. Dissies weren't considered good for most of their history, so a dissie ravager wasn't really a point of comparison.

Mostly, I just want Bloodbrides and Trueborn to return (and haemonculus covens to get an equivalent) and for you to be able to take them as a 4-person squad and for them to be W2 to give them an actual reason to be beyond just "a platform you can spam blasters on". If marines can have vets with +1 wound because they're veterans (bladeguard) and so can eldar (exarchs) then so can we.

I'd love to see blood brides and trueborn come back. I'm not sure making them 2 wounds necessarily does them a ton of favors though. Presumably that extra wound has to cost points, and the extra wound may not actually be very useful depending on the job you're giving them. Assuming "special weapon squad" is still a use for trueborn, for instance, they don't care all that much about having a second wound while they spend all game riding around in a transport. It doesn't help them kill things, and an extra wound probably just means your opponent has to fire a couple extra bolters at them to finish them off once their transport dies. Bloodbrides and elite wracks maybe benefit more from a 2nd wound because their invul saves (and possibly toughness) make each wound harder to strip off. But for trueborn, the points cost of an extra wound risks lowering their overall efficiency.

I guess if you could give them ghost armor and hand out melee weapons to everyone, they could functionally be sort of like a slower, off-brand banshee squad? Maybe give the dracon similar stats to an archon but without the shadowfield so the other trueborn act as ablative wounds for a slicey dicey squad leader?

What do you see the role of elite wracks being? I worry that 2 wound wracks will lack a niche compared to wracks and grotesques, either rendering one of those two units redundant/inefficient or else being redundant or inefficient themselves. I suppose if you give them trueborn style weapon options, they could serve as a hexrifle sniper squad or a DT liquifier gun squad?

Amishprn86 wrote:
Why give them -1ap? B.c in the fluff DE can modify their ammo to fit what they need. Really Kabals should get specialist ammo in general based off the fluff "We need army piercing rounds!".

Sure, but if armor piercing rounds are a thing, that implies that non-armor piercing rounds are also a thing. So if splinter rounds are always AP-1, why do they ever use the AP0 version? If they're teaming up with harlies or craftworlders to fight space marines, why do they leave the armor piercing splinters at home?

I'm all for specialist ammo (as either a strat or a an option on trueborn). It just seems a little odd that of all the weapons in the game, the spicy needles are seen as being deserving of an AP buff akin to that of the bolter. It just doesn't strike me as an intuitive, fluffy buff, but maybe I'm in the minority.

Well in the way i had mine you had to pick what specialist you wanted, so if you want -1ap then you don't get +1 to wound, etc..

@amish:
Ah. My bad. I misread the OP as letting you change from a category of specialist to another category and each category gets all benefits at once. So you might start with all the benefits of the poison specialty, then spend CP to switch to have all the benefits of the heavy specialty.

I think the_scotsman has more or less the right approach. Our "doctrine" should represent the purpose and intention of our army's presence. Are we here to blow up a key defense, harvest slaves, or maybe seeking some exotic thrill that can only be found in combat.