Best way to equip talos/cronos/grotesques?

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**Pain4Pleasure**

So I'm new to dark eldar. Mostly going to run formations from covens, with units in the dark eldar book to back them up. What is the best way to kit out these units?

**DirtyDeeds**

Cronos, spirit probe for the bonus to feel no pain

Talos, chain fails or ichor injector for the melee weapon. Talos are already strength 7 and will wound most targets on a 2+, but spend the extra 5 points for ichor injector of you have them or expect t6+ models on the other side. That instant death on a 6 to wound at ap 2 will scare most targets. Tail weapon depends on your meta, you can keep it cheap and simple with the splinter cannon for anti infantry, or buy the haywire blaster for anti tank..

Grotesques, give them a character with web way portal for a higher leadership and a non scatter deep strike. I suggest a haemonculus for the bonus to the power from pain tree, but a succubus with an Archite glaive works well. This unit when taken enmasse is incredibly durable to all but instant death. It wouldn't be a bad idea to get a aberation with scissor hand for rend either. The grotesquerie formation is the best way to field this unit. You can go with two large blobs, two small blobs in raiders, or one of each.

**vipoid**

Pain4Pleasure wrote:
So I'm new to dark eldar. Mostly going to run formations from covens, with units in the dark eldar book to back them up. What is the best way to kit out these units?

Well, I'd suggest looking into the coven book - especially for the grotesques (as DE pfp is worthless for them).

Cronon - Spirit Probe for pfp bonus, though I wouldn't run it outside of Dark Artisan (a formation in the coven book)

Talos - Ichor Injector if you see a lot of MCs, otherwise Chain Flails. I wouldn't bother upgrading the splinter cannon.

Grotesques - 3-4 Grotesques with an Aberration in a Raider, accompanied by a character of some kind. A Haemonculus gives a bonus to pfp (meaning they're fearless on turn 1, if taken from coven supplement), but a succubus can bring some AP2. If you want to reserve them, you could give the character a WWP, but Enhanced Aethersails on the Raider would accomplish the same thing in most circumstances (12" move from the board edge plus 24" flat out should get you where you need to be) for 1/7 of the cost.

Alternatively, you could skip the raider and use a WWP-character to bring in 10 Grotesques. In this case, I think you really need a Haemonculus and Coven Grotesques. This is because the unit is built around survivability - so you want the pfp table with Fearless, IWND and EW, and the Haemonculus to get those as fast as possible.

You might want to consider scissorhands on the Aberration (and maybe Haemonculus), so that they're not useless against AV12.

**Jimsolo**

Cronos: Spirit Probe. There is never a reason to run it another way.

Talos: Chain Flails or Ichor Injector. I prefer Injector. There's a little debate in the tail weapon. In normal squads, stay Cannons. In either of the
Or formations, Heat Lances might be acceptable to pop transports in order to charge the occupants. In the CTC, Haywire Blaster might also be acceptable. I generally stick with Cannons, though.

Grotesques: For the Covens formation, I say 4 man teams in Raiders (leaving room for Haemonculi). Add an Aberration with a Scissorhand to threaten high AV or low Sv targets. If you need points, you can drop a grot, and if you have points and room left over in the second raider, you can optionally add one.

**dominuschao**

Nail hits head but I got a few tidbits to add.

Grots from the coven work fine bare if your running low pt games. 3, raider, done. x2 of course. They will be fearless t2 so no character support needed [usually] and they will almost always perform admirably.

That said if you upgrade to the abbys then a scissorhand is the go-to and its a very solid weapon since it also retains the flesh gauntlet.
However if you really want to beat face pay the extra 15 for an agonizer which is what I do. It then becomes the hardest hitting model in the book and will absolutely shred anything non teq, which scissorhand doesn't much fix either IME. Thats what volume of attacks are for anyway.

My current grotesquerie at 1250:

haemie, agonizer, sump

3 grots, raider- dc
3 grots, raider- dc

at 1.5k and above I add abberations- agonizers, eas to raiders. The aethersails are actually a defensive upgrade btw. They enable you to deploy further back if needed and hopefully out of LoS while still maintaining sufficient threat range. Not mandatory but often welcome.
Note that the haemie can split off to make another unit fearless (if theres pts left to bring anything worth making fearless that is).

**Pain4Pleasure**

I've noticed none have stated the liquifier gun for either talos or grots. That bad huh?

**ryuken87**

Pain4Pleasure wrote:
I've noticed none have stated the liquifier gun for either talos or grots. That bad huh?

Not worth the points in the slightest. In the old book when it was S4 and 10 points it was decent but for some reason they double nerfed it.

**Jimsolo**

Pain4Pleasure wrote:
I've noticed none have stated the liquifier gun for either talos or grots. That bad huh?

Atrocious.

**vipoid**

Jimsolo wrote:
Pain4Pleasure wrote:
I've noticed none have stated the liquifier gun for either talos or grots. That bad huh?

Atrocious.

Yep.

Taking them also loses the talos an attack.

**Pain4Pleasure**

Last question. Is it ok to mix splinter cannons and haywire for the tails on the talos when using the formation?

**Frozocrone**

I'd personally have them all as Splinter or Haywire or Heat Lance. They'll all be shooting at the same target so might as well have as many shots as possible.

**vipoid**

Pain4Pleasure wrote:
Last question. Is it ok to mix splinter cannons and haywire for the tails on the talos when using the formation?

Well, it's legal, but I'm not sure why you'd want to.

**Jimsolo**

I can see mixing splinter and heat, but not splinter and haywire. If you're going to go haywire you'd probably want all 5.

**vipoid**

Jimsolo wrote:
I can see mixing splinter and heat, but not splinter and haywire. If you're going to go haywire you'd probably want all 5.

What about mixing heat and haywire?

**Pain4Pleasure**

I'm stoked to get into the dark eldar lore and learn about everything. the coven absolutely mesmerized me and I will be running the formations as much as possible. I eventually wanna add harlies, but wanna try and stay away from eldar if possible.

**Jimsolo**

If you like the idea of Harlies, Dark Eldar, and Covens, you may want to check this out right here.

**Pain4Pleasure**

Wow thanks!