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Page 115: Points Values, Raider - Change the unit cost from 85 to 95.

Page 49: Detachment Abilities - Add a fourth bullet point: 'VENOM units in DRUKHARI Detachments gain the Splinter Raid ability.'

Page 49: Detachment Abilities - Add the following ability: 'Splinter Raid: During the Declare Reserves and Transports step of your mission (or at the start of deployment, if you are playing a mission without this step), you can select a DRUKHARI Troops unit from your army that includes at least 10 models. Select at least 5 models in that unit; these models are split from that unit and form a new unit until the end of the battle. This new unit must start the battle embarked within this model.'

Everyone loves the Raider, and no-one takes the Venom. The Raider is undeniably very good, but that's no surprise; it's the bread and butter of the entire DRUKHARI Faction. It should be very good, or they won't be able to zip about on pirate murder-boats the way they're fundamentally designed to do. The Venom, however, isn't bad. It's more vulnerable to massed small/medium hits, but it's a bit faster (before Enhanced Aethersails), it's almost as tough against big guns, it doesn't degrade with damage, and it's just as good at melee support (Shock Prow aside), all for 10pts less.

The real problem is everything around the Venom, because:

The Venom has some light/midweight anti-infantry weapons... but so do Kabalites, Wyches, and Wracks, and Kabalites can fire them off the back of a Venom or Raider anyway. Meanwhile, the Raider gives you heavy anti-VEHICLE weapons you can't easily get elsewhere. This makes it inherently more valuable, because it does something its embarked unit can't; it's adding options.

The Venom can transport up to 6 models, no GROTESQUES. Because of how Drukhari infantry options are set up, this bans you from Wych Weapons, it bans you from Kabalite Heavy Weapons, and it bans you from 2+ Wrack Guns. Drukhari have no equivalent to Space Marine Devastators/Veterans/Eradicators/Hellblasters, where a small 5-model unit can concentrate all the special weapons you need. The closest would be Grotesques, who are banned, and Incubi, who you usually want in a 10-man blob anyway.

This fix solves that in two ways: first, it widens the gap between Venoms and Raiders by 10 points, which also acts as a broader nerf to Drukhari forces by acting as a surcharge on one of the army's core units. Second, it allows you to use Venoms to split Troops units like Combat Squads. This lets you sneak around the restrictions on Drukhari weapon options while still fielding units small enough to get inside a Venom, without bloating your number of units past a Patrol. However, it still forces you to field the same overall number of models, and the split-off unit has to start the game embarked within a Venom, so there's a bit of a surcharge.

My key concern at the moment is that this change allows you to concentrate your units into pseudo-Special Weapons Squads; a unit of 12 Kabalites can be split into 5 splinter rifles and a dark lance, plus a blast pistol, 2 blasters, and 3 splinter rifles on another, while a unit of 20 Wracks can be split into one unit of 15 Wrack blades for squatting on objectives, and another unit of 5 liquifier guns in a Venom. I think this is... probably fine, really? It's a greater concentration of firepower, sure, but it makes those guns more vulnerable, since they've fewer bodies around them, and you're still getting fewer "squad leaders". The fix here, if needed, would be to enforce the "equal size" restriction from Combat Squads, rather than the current "pick 5" system; that'd limit you to splitting off from units of 12, maximum, which means 2 special guns and 1 heavy, tops, in a mini-squad of Kabalites.

There are two other options I also originally included, in spoilers below:

So you want to buff a faction that's more broken than Iron Hands and expect others on this forum to agree with you...? *shakes head and walks away*

Considering the player base has switched from Venoms over Raiders to Raiders over Venoms with little change in the rules, one must wonder if the issue is a matter of cost and utility over rules? Is he Venom actually bad or just not as good as a Raider given their comparative points cost?

Giving fake combat squads won't change the fact that a 75 point Venom is grossly overcosted for what it does.

 Canadian 5th wrote:
So you want to buff a faction that's more broken than Iron Hands and expect others on this forum to agree with you...? *shakes head and walks away*

Ah, yes, the famous method of buffing a faction by, uh, increasing the cost of its primary transport by 10 points.

Ordinarily I'd suggest you read the whole post for context, but that's literally the first line of the OP. This isn't about making Drukhari more powerful, it's about making the Venom more viable relative to the Raider, internally.

And no, Drukhari are absolutely not as broken as Iron Hands; they're very strong, they're generously costed in most areas and have 2-3 broken interactions, the most obvious being Technomancers; but in no small part their success is down to taking advantage of a meta that simply isn't prepared for anything without 2 wounds and power armour. The Iron Hands needed great chunks ripped out of them; Drukhari need a handful of tweaks. Fix Technomancers and Competitive, points bump on Raiders, Drazhar, and non-Haemonculus HQ options. That's basically it. Maybe drop the Warlord Command Benefit from an all-Patrol army, but beyond that... Nah.

RevlidRas wrote:

 Canadian 5th wrote:
So you want to buff a faction that's more broken than Iron Hands and expect others on this forum to agree with you...? *shakes head and walks away*

Ah, yes, the famous method of buffing a faction by, uh, increasing the cost of its primary transport by 10 points.

Ordinarily I'd suggest you read the whole post for context, but that's literally the first line of the OP. This isn't about making Drukhari more powerful, it's about making the Venom more viable relative to the Raider, internally.

And no, Drukhari are absolutely not as broken as Iron Hands; they're very strong, they're generously costed in most areas and have 2-3 broken interactions, the most obvious being Technomancers; but in no small part their success is down to taking advantage of a meta that simply isn't prepared for anything without 2 wounds and power armour. The Iron Hands needed great chunks ripped out of them; Drukhari need a handful of tweaks. Fix Technomancers and Competitive, points bump on Raiders, Drazhar, and non-Haemonculus HQ options. That's basically it. Maybe drop the Warlord Command Benefit from an all-Patrol army, but beyond that... Nah.

These changes are still almost a straight buff to DE. You're making the smallest possible nerf to the Raider while massively buffing the Venom's utility and allowing for units that aren't designed to split to do so...

 alextroy wrote:
Considering the player base has switched from Venoms over Raiders to Raiders over Venoms with little change in the rules, one must wonder if the issue is a matter of cost and utility over rules? Is he Venom actually bad or just not as good as a Raider given their comparative points cost?

Yes. Well, the main difference between 8e and 9e is that the Venom went up 10 points with more expensive upgrades and no changes, while the Raider went up 5 points with more expensive upgrades and got +1 Toughness; it's simply more durable than the Venom now, while the Venom used to be harder to kill but hit and carry less.

But as I explain in the OP, the key discrepancy between Raiders and Venoms is what they can carry; a Raider can take on 2x5 Wracks for 4 Liquifier Guns, or 1x10 for 3. It can take on 2x5 Kabalites for 2 blast pistols and 2 blasters, or 1x10 for 1 heavy weapon, a blast pistol, and 2 special guns. The Venom is screwed because its own guns are nothing that heavy, and thanks to unit-building rules its passengers can take half or fewer than half the number of special weapons. The only thing this hack changes about the Venom - because I honestly think it's pretty fairly costed, the Raider's just too cheap - is allowing it to match the Raider for concentration of special guns.

 Canadian 5th wrote:
So you want to buff a faction that's more broken than Iron Hands and expect others on this forum to agree with you...? *shakes head and walks away*

Buffing an underpowered/unpopular unit in an overall overpowered faction isn't inherently problematic so long as the changes don't result in optimized builds becoming even more powerful.

@RevildRas:
Personally, being able to combat squad units doesn't hold much appeal for me. Doing so would basically give me a disposable unit for jumping on an objective, but it would leave all my special weapons without their ablative wound friends. And drukhari are pretty good at taking cheap, disposable units when they want to as-is.

I used a mix of venoms and raiders throughout 8th and previous editions; partly due to only owning 3 venoms, and partly due to simply wanting more dark light and dissies in my army. When I fielded venoms, it was usually because I felt they were a cheap way to complement the unit inside them. For warriors, they had a bunch of splinter shots that worked well with my rifles. For wyches, the venom was a bit faster and easier to hide behind terrain. Plus, the to-hit penalty meant that a venom with a seemingly weak troop choice might be less likely to get shot at than a raider with incubi and an archon riding around inside. Most of that still holds true, so I wonder if part of the reason I'm not looking at venoms as often is simply the reduced number of shots on the splinter cannons.

I used to run two cannons on my venoms. Now, that loadout is more pricey and gets me half the shots. And sure, those shots are theoretically better at killing marines than the old ones, but so are disintegrators, incubi, and plenty of other things in our army. I wonder if simply giving it "venom splinter cannons" that have the old splinter cannon profile would perhaps give it some of its old troop-clearing charm back for when you just need to kill a few ork boyz but aren't ready to stick kabalites or wyches or shredders in the enemy's face.

Other half-baked ideas that I like the sound of:
* Let it take some of our other special weapons that don't have a ton of platforms. Being able to field a single heat lance or a pair of haywires or shredders on a venom would give you much more access to certain brands of specialized firepower that can be hard to squeeze in elsewhere.
* You could build on the -1 to hit rule and make venoms the "defensive" option. Steal a page from the old Corsair rules and have its 5+ invul improve to a 4+ on turns that it advanced or deepstruck. You could potentially let it treat its weapons as assault if you went this route, but trading offense for defense has a certain appeal.
* You could lean into their mobility by letting them deepstrike for free or jump-shoot-jump or what have you, but I'm not sure how you'd justify such a thing on a venom but not a raider.
* Or you could just lower their cost a little. Next to a craftworld vyper, they don't feel like much of a deal to me.

Haha, Combined Landing in the new AdMech codex. Someone's had similar ideas, it seems.

Just drop the chassis by ten at the same time as increasing the raider by ten, and I suspect that things will work themselves out. The Venom's guns are terrible and the rsider's are really good so t you at may bear some consideration, but first of all, the chassis


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I'm a druhkhari player, but but god does that feel fairer than the prat over at Goonhammer suggesting that transports get the rule to three.