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So, everyone else has one, I think we should as well.

Let's start off with a fact - We are not the same army. Drukhari in 9th were a melee powerhouse, an army of glass chainsaws that advanced and charged into the opponent with some of the most cost efficient and powerful melee units in the game. We do not do that anymore. Our melee has been absolutely sidelined to some minimal, specialized, and overall disappointing support entries. But we're still fast, and Pain Tokens bring a level of reliability to our shooting that we've never had before. Our army is held up by a few humble stat-lines, namely the Dark Lance at Str 12 AP 3 damage d6+2, and the humble splinter weaponry which now wounds infantry on a 3+ (at the cost of being useless into everything else). Supplemented by some esoteric weaponry, such as the Haywire Blaster, Heat Lance and surprisingly dangerous Hex rifle which are interesting...and realistically not all that much better than bringing more Dark Lances.

I thought I'd start the ball rolling with a few discussion concepts:

The HQ Problem: The detachment is a trap. None of our non-epic HQ's are without substantial issues. The Haemonculi buffs wracks! For the price of...another unit of Wracks. But he brings a Pain token and Art of Pain?! Buy 2 Chronos for the price and get the same result, with more durability and more firepower. The Succubus...doesn't exist, she can't be noticed under Leliths shadow as the only semi-viable way to run Wyches. The Archon can't even lead Incubi! And all of his cool abilities only work when he's not in a transport, so those kabalites are footslogging it if you want to make full use of him. The Court of the Archon sorta facilitate the idea, but it feels like rolling tape around a cracked vase, it's still won't hold any water.

Oh, I guess the Beast Master is fine. As the only HQ who doesn't actively have any inefficiencies, I actually like a Beast Master with Art of Pain to zone out the backfield.

Urien has the same problem as the Haemonculus. If only he could join Grotesques. Draz and Lelith, with their respective bodyguard, form the best of the bunch for melee counter punch. And it's...not terrible. Lelith is actually a star by herself, and even makes Wyches semi-mediocre, and Incubi with +1 to wound will still wipe a MEQ unit off the table with Draz. But Incubi are Str 4, so are now thoroughly limited to anti-infantry/elite roles, and they can't advance and charge anymore. Consider taking 1 of these units in a Raider and use Rapid Ingress to beta-strike it somewhere.

Lances Lances Lances: 2 units of Scourge with 4 lances. 2 Ravagers with 3 lances. 430pts. Unless you have a very good reason, start every list like this. Our anti-infantry guns do nothing to anything else, they can't touch monsters or mounted troops. So Lances, en-masse, need to cover a whole bunch of ground. Heat Lances are better lances, but need to be closer. Haywire blasters are like lances, but do mortal wounds and don't touch monsters/bikers. Both of these are fine, but they don't replace the standard lance profile. Don't leave home without them.

The Kabalite trick: You all probably know this by now. 490pts. 2x10 Kabalites. 1 Raider. 2 Venoms. The Venoms allow you to split the kabalites into goobers and special weapon dudes. Place all special weapons inside raider, and use a single pain token to re-roll to hit with 3 lances 2 blasters 2 splinter cannons. Whilst the Venoms go do sticky objective stuff carrying no one of any significance. I think this is good.

Support weirdos: So, after you include your painful choice of warlord, and after you include your lances, where do you spend the rest of your points? Mandrakes are fantastic for mission play. A single Chronos is almost mandatory, 2 is ideal, as the cheapest unit in the codex and makes the firebase resources go further. Units of 6 Reavers with 2 heat lances and 2 cluster caltrops are a cool utility piece, able to flex into mortal wound damage with their fly by (use fire and fade, and fly by twice, 10+ mortal wounds). Hellions, hilariously, have the best anti-infantry shooting in the army, and hit as hard as Incubi, but are hit by the fly and mounted changes limiting their mobility. Grotesques are disappointing offensively, but they can't be removed for free. Every model packs a flamer (for a surprisingly overwatch) and 4+ fights on death. Whereas Talos can come in units of 2 and make good use of the -1 to wound strat, packing The Build (Liquifier, Haywire and Gauntlet) are weirdly and underwhelmingly effective into everything.

So there it is, conversation starter. Suffer with me.

I agree with a lot of that. Briefly hitting the topics you've provided:

* Our warlord situation is rough enough that I think we might be best off just sticking a pain token generator against the back table edge rather than buying a bodyguard or transport for them.

* Don't be fooled by the haemonculus's weapon stats. He doesn't have the attacks or AP to be a reliably character assassin even if you bother getting him into melee. Treat his melee output as a nice bonus if you get lucky enough to do anything with it.

* I hadn't considered using a beastmaster as a warlord. I'm kind of bummed about beast packs at the moment because fixed unit composition with homogenous capabilities is kind of the opposite of what I want from this unit. I prefer the idea of each beast type bringing its own skills to the table. Khymarae for invulns, razorwings for ablative wounds, and fiends for punch. That, and I have a ton of khymarae and no razorwings, so there's that.

* Agreed that dark lances are the backbone of the army, but I feel like you'll probably want some heat lances or haywire blasters mixed in somewhere as ravagers are really our only source of cheap lances that hit on a 3+. Scourges with lances are cool, but you're averaging two hits and less than two wounds with them.

* The kabalite trick is good to have in mind, but I'm personally kind of leaning away from it. Not because it's bad but because I'm not sure if I want to take more than 1 squad of warriors this edition. For the cost the second squad and the second venom, you could just about squeeze in both an extra ravager and an extra scourge squad. Or just two raiders provided you have something to ride inside them.

* Based on all of one games this edition, I'm liking reavers as a heat lance deliver system. You're probably right to go with six-strong squads, but there's something pleasantly-nimble about 3-man squads that are easy to hide. But the 3 man squads will do basically nothing with their fly-by attacks or in melee, so 6 bodies is probably more practical.

FWIW, my single game with them so far made their offense seem insufficient for dealing with my opponent's Iyanden list. I spent all game trying to line up lances against wraithguard, but the Phantasm strat made their sluggish robot boys way more mobile than anything in our army, and he was generally able to deny me decent targets. I was hoping our splinters would pair well against wraiths who pay so many points for their high toughness, but their 2+ saves and the spirit seers' ability to bring back two wraiths per round were just too much.

My own force only has 2 problems atm.
1) my Talos & Cronosnow only come in units of 1-2 instead of the previous 1-3.
This means I have 3 Talis & 3 Cronos sitting idle on the shelf. :(
2) things got cheaper. This, along with 6 of my models being sidelined, means that I'm nowhere near able to put a 2k pt force on the table now.

I think its a soft spot, but I like an Archon camping around the backfield (assuming some vaguely sensible LOS-blocking terrain) with the Art of Pain.

Not sure its good exactly - and it certainly isn't fluffy. But you get not-Vect. You get a bunch more pain tokens. He's reasonably hard to target due to being small and has a 2++ if they do. He's unlikely to ever kill anything - but if some tiny unit runs into my deployment zone he can have a go.

It would be interesting to swap out the "20 Kabalites 1 Raider 2 Venoms" package for say 18 Reavers and 40 points change. 6 Heat Lances vs 4 Dark Lances 2 Blasters, 6 Splinter Cannons, 2 Shredders? 3 units vs 7. Dropping an average of 12~ mortal wounds would have an impact on some targets.

I think the issue is that unlike some I don't think 5 naked Kabalites in a Venom is a complete waste. Sure they aren't exactly a threat - but they do have sticky objectives. Any firepower they take potentially isn't going into Ravagers etc. Without them I'm not sure what else you are throwing out onto objectives.

Wracks are probably the alternative. But I'd be taking a few squads of them anyway.

The fething beastmaster is a character???

.....

....then yeah he's our best HQ LMAO. Art of pain. Ignore the detach entirely as it sucks donkey bits.

The bad: Most stuff. Our detachment is just hilarious, our army-wide rule is super anemic, Eldar have greedily gobbled up all the supposedly "shared" units like Harlequins and Corsairs which can now fully use Eldar detachment abilities, stratagems, army ability etc, and they forgot to key all of our gak off of the Aeldari keyword instead of the Drukhari keyword, soooo Harlequins we take in our detachments can't even use the strats we share with our more-loved cousins :^)

The only unit you want to bring is death jesters, because they allow you to farm pain and they dont really consume any resources, just hang in the back and be Lone Ops, pop-pop-pop take a battleshock test please and thanks.

Ravagers are underpriced as hell, as is obvious from the first glance at them. Always take 3 with lances. Done.

Scourges with lances can also do a lot of work for their cost, popping through walls thanks to fly+infantry, and popping back.

Always take at least one cronos to stand in the back near your pain-using lancer units and recycle your tokens. The couple comp lists I've seen actually spam the max number of them, because theyre tanky boys for their cheap cost.

I like reavers as an absurdly fast cheap disposable objective grabber that has 1 gun that can unexpectedly crack something open in the heat lance. IDK if youd want to take 6 and burn pain with them. The lancers burn a lot of pain, you probably want to just stick with them. But I like them better than venoms full of kabs.

The only pricy objective sitter I would consider is doubled up wracks in a raider. I've found 4 hexrifles and the allied in jesters is the sweet spot to be able to make problem characters no longer exist.

As much of a travesty as that datasheet is the beastmaster is not technically mechanically bad. He's 120pts for 21 T4 wounds I think? That's Fenrisian Wolves level cheap pts per wound, and his weird bananas garbled up statlines average out to a lot more damage.


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Drukhari Trying to be Good

120pts Beastmaster (Enhancement: Art of Pain 25pts)

95pts Ravager Lances
95pts Ravager Lances
95pts Ravager Lances

50pts Cronos
50pts Cronos

120pts Scourges Lances
120pts Scourges Lances

90pts Talos Liquifier Haywire
90pts Talos Liquifier Haywire
90pts Talos Liquifier Haywire

150pts Reavers x6 Heat Caltrops
75pts Reavers Heat Caltrops
75pts Reavers Heat Caltrops

70pts Death Jester
70pts Death Jester
70pts Death Jester

130 10x Wracks
90 Raider Lance

130 10x Wracks
90 Raider Lance

This is probably the best list I can field.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
actually mulling it over I think haemonculus+5 wracks is probably a better backfield stander HQ than the beastmaster. You've got effectively the exact same defenses (W10 6++ 4+FNP vs W21 6++ both at T4), you can sneak in an extra cheeky sniper shot and ossefactor shot if youre not at risk of getting bopped, and 6 models is much easier to hide out of true LOS than the weird sized 7 models.

Plus you get the bonus +1 pain token up front.

You know, for all of 9th's faults, at least most of the units in our book felt usable.

Now we seem to be right back to 'spam the 6 or so units that are actually worth a damn and leave everything else in the bin'.

Which is your favourite generic HQ - the one with no options and a anti-infantry melee weapon, the one with no options and a anti-infantry melee weapon, or the one with no options and a anti-infantry melee weapon? Also, the Archon's Shadowfield still fails on a 1 but now not only is there still no way to recover it, he has no build-in backup save (even though basic Kabalites get a 6++), nor any artefacts to give him a backup save.

Wyches were good for all of 1 edition and are now straight back to being trash. Wych Weapons no longer exist in any form, and Combat Drugs have also vanished (because S3 melee weapons are so impactful ). They even have worse splinter pistols than anything else in the book, for no discernible reason (and since GW hasn't corrected it in the errata, it appears to be intentional).

Venoms are laughably bad and appear to exist solely to permit units to combat-squad. Quite why that ability was given to the transport rather than the units is a mystery even to GW.

Raiders aren't assault transports, despite this having been a core part of their fluff since their inception.

Warriors have all of 1 good weapon and can't even double up on the others. People seem to really like their sticky-objectives ability, despite the fact that it's antithetical to how Pain Tokens interact with transports.

Incubi have successfully recaptured the inglorious days of 7th. No one wanted them to actually be worth a damn, right?

It's probably telling that the Beastmaster is one of our better HQs, despite his datasheet being an absolute travesty, with the Court of the Archon hot on its heels.

Even more so, in fact, as the Court encourages you to merge it with a Warrior squad . . . which then can't fit in a transport. But even if you use a Venom and Raider and awkwardly split the Warrior unit, you still have the problem that the Archon is a waste of ink and none of his abilities work in a transport.


There are a few good units but the codex is so utterly devoid of flavour, customisation and effort that I really can't find the inspiration to bother building a list with them.

 the_scotsman wrote:

The bad: Most stuff. Our detachment is just hilarious, our army-wide rule is super anemic, Eldar have greedily gobbled up all the supposedly "shared" units like Harlequins and Corsairs which can now fully use Eldar detachment abilities, stratagems, army ability etc, and they forgot to key all of our gak off of the Aeldari keyword instead of the Drukhari keyword, soooo Harlequins we take in our detachments can't even use the strats we share with our more-loved cousins :^)

They did basically the exact same thing in 9th, so at least the design team is being consistent for once.

 vipoid wrote:
You know, for all of 9th's faults, at least most of the units in our book felt usable.

Yeah. I remember being kind of bummed when the 9th edition book dropped because it seemed like they abandoned most of the flavor and options of the army and instead just made everything absurdly killy so they could compete. Now that they've successfully nerfed the lethality of everything, we're still left lacking in flavor and options, but we also aren't competitive. If I were to try to find a silver lining, I guess it would be that our index feels so low effort, maybe it means the designers intend to put that saved up energy towards a satisfying overhaul when our codex eventually comes out.

Venoms are laughably bad and appear to exist solely to permit units to combat-squad. Quite why that ability was given to the transport rather than the units is a mystery even to GW.

I don't hate how venoms perform right now, but the combat squad thing feels really gamey and dumb. Just let us take 5-man squads of warriors and wyches, and figure out how to price units reasonably. They went out of their way to make 10-strong squads mandatory and invent a problem that they then tried to solve with a really awkward transport rule.

Raiders aren't assault transports, despite this having been a core part of their fluff since their inception.

Yeah. When they previewed the assault ramp on land raiders, I was hoping I'd finally be able to zoom forward and launch my wyches out of raiders again. But nope. And it doesn't seem like letting us charge out of raiders would be game breaking at all, so this feels less like a choice and more like the designer assigned to our faction just doesn't know/care about them enough to remember to give it to us.

Warriors have all of 1 good weapon and can't even double up on the others. People seem to really like their sticky-objectives ability, despite the fact that it's antithetical to how Pain Tokens interact with transports.

I do like the sticky objective ability, but I'm missing what you mean about tokes and transports. To me, this rule seems like an okay way to spare us from having to sit on objectives; which always felt weird for our fast, non-territory-taking space elves to begin with.

Incubi have successfully recaptured the inglorious days of 7th. No one wanted them to actually be worth a damn, right?

I know this is a pricy option, but taking Drazhar with them actually seems pretty decent. I'm not sure why incubi/Drazhar are our army's assassins, but it seems like they can pretty reliably take out a marine character from its unit while having enough non-precision hits left over to take a chunk out of the rest of the unit.

There are a few good units but the codex is so utterly devoid of flavour, customisation and effort that I really can't find the inspiration to bother building a list with them.

Big agree. I want to play a few more games to give it a fair shake, but the current version of the army has none of what drew me to the faction in the first place. I can't give my characters and squad leaders personality with their wargear options. I can't zoom my skimmers and bikes around at crazy speeds. I can' giggle to myself as I risk overdosing to flood my wych units' systems with a bunch of drugs. I can't even take satisfaction in knowing that my splinters are trading well against high-toughness targets like bikes or monsters.

Played a 1500pt game today and I hate to say it, but I actually enjoyed it.

I ran an Archon, lelith and her wyches, 20 kabs split between 2 venoms and a raider, 2 talos 2 ravagers a death jester and a solitaire. And the mandatory Chronos.

I had acceptable antitank, acceptable anti infantry, acceptable melee threat. I was fast, I was good at objectives. I had pain tokens out of the waZoo. Lilith did 16 wounds to a necron warrior blob, erasing them from existence.

It felt good. Still missing the actually lethal combat threat, but our speed and firepower still felt on point. Pain tokens and the raider full of all the special weapons felt dirty.

Glad to hear it, Alex!

When you say the super raider felt "dirty," do you mean that it felt too strong or that it felt too gamey/weird?

Laying out some of our various options against each other, I havent run the kabalstuffed raider, but its actually pretty appealing from an output perspective.

Kabalstuff Raider (Pain)

4.0 MEQs (splinter cannons)
5.44 GEQs (rifles and shredders)
8.0 VEQs (Lances blasters)

210pts

Wrackstuff Raider (Pain)

1.75 vs characters (Assuming T4 and 4++)
1.76 MEQs
5.13 GEQs (Liqs and Stingers)
2.15 VEQs

220pts

2x Ravager (RR 1s to hit)

11.4 VEQs

190pts

2x Haywire Talos (Pain)
6.75 VEQs
2.625 MEQs

180pts

2x Heat Reavers (Pain)

6.12 VEQ
3MW (not vs monster/vehicle)
1.5MEQ or 3.0 GEQ

150pts

4x Lance Scourges (Pain)

7.31 VEQ

120pts


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I've been running the wrackstuffed raider as my for lack of a better word Troops units, but if I had two venoms to use, 2x kabal squads, 1x raider, and 2x venoms doesnt sound too bad as the basis for an objective securing presence on the board.

Also, I'm quite curious whether anyone ever has the chance to run the zany court of the archon+10 kabs gak in a Tantalus. It obviously seems like the ultimate essence of a Timmy piece, but theres just so many god damn buffs on that unit that it might be goofy enough to do something.

Hell, i've been tempted to try it with all the special models from half a kabalite squad split for a Venom and you stuff the thing in a Raider. It just feels like the ultimate expression of infinite wall-spaghetti that just seeing it disembark and unload all its insane bs on a bunch of stuff would be worth a laugh.

So we're litterally index:darklance ? God this army just keeps getting more boring and boring, i hope we get something that boosts our poison or makes it a non-troll weapon. I got into the army for venoms, not raiders and ravagers :(

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Glad to hear it, Alex!

When you say the super raider felt "dirty," do you mean that it felt too strong or that it felt too gamey/weird?

I mean it felt a little like an exploit, because I got so much value out of 1 pain token, which the chronos gave me back almost 100% of the time!

Played 3 games last weekend, and the winning streak continued. I really really like the core of 2 venoms, 2 Ravagers, 1 raider, 2 Talos and 1 Chronos. I felt I had the tools I needed to control the board and the anti-tank necessary to pick off enemy centre pieces.

MVP is the Chronos. I think he has a 80% pain token regen rate at the moment.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:
So we're litterally index:darklance ? God this army just keeps getting more boring and boring, i hope we get something that boosts our poison or makes it a non-troll weapon. I got into the army for venoms, not raiders and ravagers :(

Our poison isn't a troll weapon? Venoms are great. Sustained hits and damage 2 feels fantastic, especially into things like Custodes and Skorpeks. If I'm within Chronos range, I almost always pain token them.

Don't forget the whole "jump back in" thing either. Kabalites are actually semi decent melee combatants. I've been using my 4 rifles + Sargent w/ agoniser and blast pistol commonly as a semi-melee unit, shooting and charging rubbish chaff, then getting picked up by their venom a moment later.

Yeah, honestly, I've yet to run into a list that would make me extremely sad with poison (that being a bike, or some kind of...theoretical...beast/swarm spam list???)

When youre looking at vehicle spam, generally youre talking about T10+. A splinter cannon, or a traditional strength-based similar weapon like a heavy bolter, basically end up just about identical wounding on 6s and not doing much of anything. it is what it is, and those token squads of kabalites now serve the role for your list of "being supremely annoying about stealing objectives from your opponent, and maybe threatening popping out and doing the ol' grenade strat to finish something off"

There will be occasional opponents where your splinter rifles wound on 6s instead of the 5s you would have if the unit was armed with a standard S4 Ap- small arm.

But there are way, way more opponents where a S4 or S3 small arm would be wounding on 6s, and you're wounding on 3s.

Really, the fundamental problem with the index is the characters are ludicrously overcosted for what they do outside of maybe possibly drazar and lelith, our infantry is costed brutally for its relative durability and somewhat above average killing power, and we have too damn many of those silly "I'm armed with 4 different weapons with 4 different ranges and 4 different preferred targets, have fun" type units.

Also, venoms are pretty overcosted IMO. I've run them with drazar and co and found them fine, but the cost to split out a kabal squad to get the shenanigan units seems a little annoying. if your opponent is MEQs though, they can whack them fairly good.

@the_scotsman:

I think my issue with our splinter weapons is more a combination of them and blasters both sort of losing their old roles.

Poison (especially in eldar family reunion lists) was the punch-above-your-weight mechanic. So even if splinters only wounded guardsmen on 4+, at least you also wounded the enemy's bikers and greater daemons and tau suits on a 4+.

Meanwhile, darklight weapons were great against every flavor of vehicle and could also reach down to punch high-toughness non-vehicles as needed. So between splinters and darklight, our shooting was able to reasonably basically any target.

But now our splinters can't really help against bikes and suits and such, increased vehicle toughness means your anti-tank guns are less free to help against bikes and suits and such, and the blasters and blast pistols we used to be able to sprinkle around are now more limited and not really able to chip in against vehicles as reliably.

tldr; I'd feel less bad about poison being Anti-Infantry if I felt like I had more wiggle room to point darklight at bikes, etc.

Silver lining: now that blasters and blast pistols are bad against tanks, I guess we're free to point them at bikes and gravis?

But I largely agree with what you're saying.

Venoms are overcosted compared to Starweavers. Same price, similar guns, same ability, the Harlequins have a 4+ invul, which is better than a 6+ and stealth. But the Venom is a smaller model, and I'm not sure how to factor that in.

Include some Haywire Guns, ideally on 2*2 Talos, then you'll be free to point them at vehicles and point your Dark Lances at whatever offends you!

I'm not sure I'll ever take blasters unless I'm forced to on Kabalites. Str 8 doesn't cut it vs the Dark Lance.

However, compare the Blaster a Melta. Longer range, same AP, similar strength, assault. It's still a good gun. Just doesn't compare to sitting 36" away.

Problem here is that Dark Lances are available so cheaply. When you can get 3 Ravagers and 3 Scourges, for 21 Dark Lances, for 645pts, that's hard to not do. Heat Lances and Haywire Blasters and Regular Blasters just don't compete with the range of targets the DL deals with.

3 Ravagers
3 Scourge
2*2 Talosi
2 Chronos
20 Kabalites
1 Raider + 2 Venoms = 1595pts

That 's the core of our most competitive list I think.

405pts left. We need a HQ. Call it a basic Archon.

320pts left.

Let's get a DJ for Lone Operative shenanigans.

250 left.

Lets get another unit of 2 Talos for 180, leaving 70pts for some objective scoring Mandrakes.

Final list:
Archon.
20 Kabs. 1 Raider 2 Venoms
3 Scourges (Dark Lances)
3 Ravagers (Dark Lances)
3*2 Talosi. Gauntlets, Twinlinked Liquifiers, 4 Haywire Blasters 2 Heat Lances.
2 Chronos
1 Death Jester.
5 Mandrakes / another DJ.
2000pts on the dot.

Probably one of the most competitive lists we can make.

Yeah, the scourge list is now extremely straightfoward in terms of its basically just dark lance.

I'm *maybe* a little curious about Shredder scourges...in my test games, I've seen a lot of gak out of autohitting weaponry, and 4x 18" range autohitting guns at S6 seems quite potent for 120. Infantry and Fly is also a solid combination.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Wyldhunt wrote:
@the_scotsman:

I think my issue with our splinter weapons is more a combination of them and blasters both sort of losing their old roles.

Poison (especially in eldar family reunion lists) was the punch-above-your-weight mechanic. So even if splinters only wounded guardsmen on 4+, at least you also wounded the enemy's bikers and greater daemons and tau suits on a 4+.

Meanwhile, darklight weapons were great against every flavor of vehicle and could also reach down to punch high-toughness non-vehicles as needed. So between splinters and darklight, our shooting was able to reasonably basically any target.

But now our splinters can't really help against bikes and suits and such, increased vehicle toughness means your anti-tank guns are less free to help against bikes and suits and such, and the blasters and blast pistols we used to be able to sprinkle around are now more limited and not really able to chip in against vehicles as reliably.

tldr; I'd feel less bad about poison being Anti-Infantry if I felt like I had more wiggle room to point darklight at bikes, etc.

Silver lining: now that blasters and blast pistols are bad against tanks, I guess we're free to point them at bikes and gravis?

But I largely agree with what you're saying.

Honestly that was theoretically the old role of poison but it basically always suffered from the problem of, the big stuff that theoretically you get a benefit against, typically had good saves and high wounds. And the small stuff that you really struggled to clear, you didnt have a good tool for. Poison now works wonderfully against all infantry up to and including MEQs, thanks to 3+ base sv not really benefitting from cover vs AP-. It struggles into sv2+ but so far every time I've piled the 5 "crap guys" from a kabal squad into a venom when they get into a fight with something I end up stepping back and going

....OK, Kabalites, I see you. I see you and your venom just now taking out 4/5 members of that MEQ squad.

Another win, continuing the 10th Ed win streak.

2k Vs Tau.

I genuinely felt like I outshot and out sped Him, at least until his detachment rule kicked in. Then he started to remove stuff, but by then I had already racked you a huge scoring lead.

Turns out battle suits are vehicles. So when my 2*2 Talos I with haywire blasters where shooting, they regularly put down 9 mortal wounds. Terrifying. I really really rate Talos, because when he shoots back, use the -1 to wound strat.

 VladimirHerzog wrote:
So we're litterally index:darklance ? God this army just keeps getting more boring and boring, i hope we get something that boosts our poison or makes it a non-troll weapon. I got into the army for venoms, not raiders and ravagers :(

I do believe this was the fifth edition codex. Index darklance does sound a bit fun. Very rock paper scissors with a lot of movement.

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:
Another win, continuing the 10th Ed win streak.

2k Vs Tau.

I genuinely felt like I outshot and out sped Him, at least until his detachment rule kicked in. Then he started to remove stuff, but by then I had already racked you a huge scoring lead.

Turns out battle suits are vehicles. So when my 2*2 Talos I with haywire blasters where shooting, they regularly put down 9 mortal wounds. Terrifying. I really really rate Talos, because when he shoots back, use the -1 to wound strat.

Talos with the (insanely auto-take not even a little bit balanced at all thanks for free wargear GW) loadout of Haywire, twin liq, and gauntlet have done quite well for me. luckily I have 3 already made up with injector+gauntlet+haywire from last edition, I just tell my opponents the injector is the twin liquifier and like with basically all xenos weapon loadouts they shrug and go "OK".

The hilarious thing is you might look at Haywire and think "well, fine and diddly-dandy for when my opponent has vehicles but i'll not be caught with my pants around my ankles, I'll take one of the other options!" but in fact, GW put in so colossally little effort that, well, check this out:

2x talos with splinter vs guardsmen: 6 x (effectively) .666 x .88 *.833 = 2.93 unsaved wounds.

2x talos with stinger pods vs guardsmen: 14 x .5 x .666 x .666 = 3.10 unsaved wounds

2x talos with haywire vs guardsmen: (4 x .5 x.255 x 3) + (4 x .5 x .495 x .833) = 2.36 unsaved wounds with 1.5 of those being mortals

thanks to the fact that it gets to re-roll the chance to wound on a 6, the haywire option is only a teeny tiny bit less effective against guardsmen...and is just blatantly the best against literally every other target, be that space marines, monsters, bikers, whatever.

Does anyone have any thoughts on the Voidraven Bomber? A little high in pts but also very high firepower and is T9 with stealth.

marcman wrote:
Does anyone have any thoughts on the Voidraven Bomber? A little high in pts but also very high firepower and is T9 with stealth.

Initially I was considering it until I saw how the logistics of actually using the bomb ability worked out.

So, they changed the way aircraft move and deploy in 10e - you now have to put them in strat reserves, and when they arrive from strat reserves, they dont get to move. and when they do move, you have to move in a straight line FIRST, and THEN rotate, as opposed to rotating first, and then moving.

This pretty much requires that you use "Rapid Ingress" to bring your voidraven in during your opponent's turn if you want to Set Them Up The Bomb - if you go second, that means you get to use it on your second turn, but if you go first youd have to wait until your third turn, or youd be deploying it on your turn and giving your opponent the chance to move out of the way.

And once you do use RI and spend your 1cp tax to use the unit at all, your opponent then gets to shoot you with everything because you're Aircraft - and while with Stealth its fairly durable, it's not *that* durable that I would rate it surviving against any kind of motivated opponent. The usual trick of using RI to drop something in an awkward LOS spot, just doesnt work.

so yeah all things considered, dont like the VR after all. Thought it was maybe useful, but not really no.

for me the "hidden gem units" that surprised me beyond the obvious set of usable stuff (that being Ravagers, Scourges, Wrack squads in Raiders, Talos, Cronos, allied Death Jesters, Incubi+Drazar in Venom, and Heat Reavers) have been the Beastmaster squad and weirdly Hellions. Hellions seem to basically do what wyches used to do and are now wholly nonfunctional at doing, and theyve got *just* enough juice in them to clear a GEQ or 5-man MEQ squad with nothing to spare. The rr on their poison and the sustained hits with the fact that they can do an at-will to hit reroll I've been vibing with them way more than I did initially looking at their price.

Also, I played a game with a friend of mine that was explicitly intended to be a more casual not-super-cutthroat affair and building out our detachment the way youre "supposed to" is actually fun, even though its not particularly competitively viable. I ran the spicy half of a kabal squad+archon+court in a Raider, Lelith+10 wyches in another raider, and a haemie+5 wracks standing in the backfield with Art of Pain. I just burned a token on basically every attack, and good lord the court is hilarious.

These are my main concerns too. RI is a neat idea but as you say it could get shot off ASAP. Its threats certainly need to be weakened first.

I like them to potentially catch out lone operatives, but the movement restrictions say this could be countered. Not moving until T3 (without RI) and pivoting after moving means the enemy could move 8, advance 4, and then you are SOL. At least the LO might not be able to shoot/charge then... (the only reason I might run two is because of this haha, I could space them out 11 inches and cover 33 inches of field)

I think that they could whack a unit of terminators with the dark scythe pretty easily though - which was the initial appeal. The Ravager beats out the Void lance IMO, since you can run two for 5 less pts and use deep strike which happens T1 and can be placed anywhere on the map.

Could be decent with Webway gate it if wasn't 220 pts lmao

Firepower and durability feel good pt cost wise, just these aircraft restrictions are tough to swallow...

Surprised the beast master is getting so much love. Good number of wounds for the pts but almost 0 armor save - I think he is more likely to get shot off before the voidraven... I am partial to the crows and clawed fiend. TBH not going to run it just because it forces me to run maxed units of everything.

Is Drazar just good for the pain token generation?

note: you do not get to deep strike turn 1, they just did the same thing they did in 9th and put the 2nd round onward restriction in a weird ass spot like the 'matched play rules" or the main text of the tournament packet or something.

I don't "love" the beastmaster as much as I hate him less than all our other characters, who are for the most part bottom of the barrel abysmal. The most useful thing a drukhari character can do objectively is stand around and generate a pain token with art of pain.

However, honestly, in my next game that leans more competitive, I'm just going to have my allied death jesters serve as my warlord. There doesnt seem to be any rule against them being my compulsory character. As a lone op with a 4++ invuln theyre better at staying alive than the haemie+5 wracks or the beastmaster and theyre half the points. Having a few of them lurking in the backfield gives you a phenomenal way to hold your backline objectives, generate pain tokens via forced battleshock tests on stupid little token units, and occasionally help your wracks' hexrifles shave the last wound or two off a character model by swapping into Precision.


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Personally I think I'd always prefer drazar+5 incubi over 10 incubi, looking at their output versus various units, the fact they can be transported in a venom that has that handy re-embark rule, and he's also a good character who can be your warlord.

Unfortunately - looks like I can't make a death jester my warlord. so one drukhari character is required minimum. Drat. Drazar it is.

I've learnt to value the Archon better that I originally thought, literally leading a squad of 5 randomers.

He's bad, and disappointing, but the ability to make a strat cost extra is a necessity in many match ups. Necrons, Custodes, Eldar, Chaos Marines, all have strats that are fantastic to punish.

From an efficiency point of view I like the Beast Master.

From a Lelith Vs Drazhar standpoint I prefer Lelith because of the free paintoken. But I'm sure Draz does have some play.

Lelith and her Wyches have impressed me in every game I've used them. It helps that I don't expect much from them. But Lelith is always a star player.

 the_scotsman wrote:
note: you do not get to deep strike turn 1, they just did
However, honestly, in my next game that leans more competitive, I'm just going to have my allied death jesters serve as my warlord. There doesnt seem to be any rule against them being my compulsory character. As a lone op with a 4++ invuln theyre better at staying alive than the haemie+5 wracks or the beastmaster and theyre half the points. Having a few of them lurking in the backfield gives you a phenomenal way to hold your backline objectives, generate pain tokens via forced battleshock tests on stupid little token units, and occasionally help your wracks' hexrifles shave the last wound or two off a character model by swapping into Precision.


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EMMM not sure why this is also in quote XD ->
Probably only want one death jester unless you plan on one dying pretty quick... Its special rule can only work for one of them and is not that great without it... Though I guess you could still troll for battleshock with all of them <-

Yeah i'm aware only one gets cruel amusements. They still have good output, theyre extremely safe with lone operative, and they provide quite reliable pain token generation by plonking off a MEQ/couple GEQ from a few units and forcing battleshock on all of them.

Its one of those situations where index eldar's gak is so good in comparison with ours that even without rules and enhancements and stratagems their dregs outperform our stuff benefitting from the detachment.

The army seems solid but dull. If every army was made like this I think the game would be very good, very tactical on the table.

But most armies are won or lost in codex picking and list building. (This is a strong version of the claim which maybe isn't entirely fair but the game does lean that way.)


The way I see it we have 3 units.

1. Talos.

2. Gun boats. A. raiders full of guns
B. ravagers
C. Venom with a few guns

3. Scourge.

Chronos you have to take but they are more a buff tax than a unit. There is nothing about that guy that looks fun to play.

3.5 Jet bikes. There could be a use for a few units of these guys. But now that they are max 6 they loose a lot of their impact.


4. Kab block with Archon. This seems like a straight up downgrade from kab block in a raider. And its fire power is weird and unfocused. I really miss the 24 inch range blaster I gave all my archons in 8th.

Is there anything else we want in the army? Anything solid?