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Offline Arquarian

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New depravity?
« on: September 13, 2013, 12:22:45 PM »

So in one of my many fads I find myself looking at Dark Eldar.


I have some Kabalite warriors in my Eldar Corsair army and  they did me proud at the 40Konline Tourne last year.  I also used the Incubi as my bladesworn bodyguard.


But Now I'm looking at a haemonculus coven as a small detachment of allies. This is a completely fluffy project as I quite fancy painting something different. I wasn looking in the range of 600 points type of size and was thinking about the following units;


Haemonculus
2 units wracks
 (these are troops with a Haeme, right??)


grotesques
Beastmaster
(with an assortment of beasts, was thinking a couple of flocks of Razorwings and a few Khymerae)
Talos
Chronos


Basically the carnival of Pain Apoc formation with a couple of tweeks.


As there is no news regarding a 6th ed codex anytime soon, has anyone got some experience with covens? What's good, what's not, what's fun...?


Cheers
Arq.

Offline Plastikente

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Re: New depravity?
« Reply #1 on: September 17, 2013, 01:30:52 PM »
Personally, I find that Coven units have great potential but are quite specialised, so I only use them as one part of a balanced force.

Wracks, for example, make good troops for taking on high toughness enemies, and a liquifier gun is good for melting through power armour 50% of the time.  However they have no ranged capability beyond "template" distance and don't deal well with hordes or armoured foes in assault.  I like to have a few of them among my Wyches and Warriors.

Grotesques are good for being big and scary, and drawing fire away from your more fragile units and transports.  They are pretty formidable in assault, they aren't too worried about overwatch due to their toughness, and they have the strength to threaten any vehicle with a rear-armour of 10.

Talos and Cronos have great models and are fun to play with.  However, they can be a bit vulnerable as they are not tough enough to shake off anti-tank weapons and they have no invulnerable save (until you get a pain token).  They are quite slow, especially as all of your other units will likely be in transports.  Also, they take up HS slots that you could do with using for Ravagers, given that a coven list is already massively short on ranged weapons.

Offline Arquarian

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Re: New depravity?
« Reply #2 on: September 17, 2013, 06:06:20 PM »
Great advise thanks!


I'd be putting together a 1k force as a max for fun one off games or as an allied detachment in a larger game.


not sure I want to go mounted, the area I play in the boards are pretty well stocked with terrain. plenty of cover saves.


The Cronus will dish out pain token though right?


whats the best way to run a webway assault in a list like this?

Offline Plastikente

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Re: New depravity?
« Reply #3 on: September 22, 2013, 06:11:59 PM »
Webway Portals took a bit of a hammering when 6th Edition came out, to the extent that I can't make them work for me any more.  For your particular situation, the first issue is this, from p.5 of the current FAQ:
Quote
Q: Can units from allied detachments use a webway portal to enter play from reserve? (p.62)
A: No.
This was presumably added to v1.4 of the FAQ to prevent (non-DE) allies from entering through your DE primary detachment's webway portal.  What it actually achieves is preventing an allied detachment of DE from using this wargear.  However, strict RAW would suggest that you could still bring it along, but only your non-DE primary force reserves could enter through it!  :o

Assuming that you and your opponent decide to ignore this ridiculous FAQ and interpret it such that only DE units can use the webway portal, there are a few other issues...
  • You need to place it on turn one, because your reserves have a decent chance now of arriving from turn two and having to foot-slog up the table.  This limits how far forward you can place it.
  • To make a really reliable webway portal list, you need two portals, in case one bearer gets killed (or just shot down/pinned) before he can place it.
  • You cannot assault out of the portal, meaning that you have to weather at least 1 turn of shooting.  Fragile DE aren't really set up for this.  This hits coven units particularly hard, because they don't really have any shooting weapons either, so you really do lose a turn.

If you are going to run the portal, Cronos/Talos are about the best things to bring out of it.  They have reasonable shooting firepower, and are tough enough to stand a chance of surviving that turn of shooting to get into assault.  Particularly the threat of a Talos with twin-linked liquifier can be a great area-denial tool - nothing much will want to get within 12" of your portal if that is still lurking in reserve.

Offline Arquarian

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Re: New depravity?
« Reply #4 on: September 23, 2013, 06:21:19 AM »

Many thanks Plastikinate.  All great stuff!




My gaming group are pretty relaxed. Fortunately we don't have those type of RAW guys so the reule will be played with a degree of common sense and as intended.




The webway portal is used in lieu of a shooting attack right therefore the maximum forward placing on the portal (assuming a T1 deployment) would be 15" from enemy lines. This isn't so bad as I said before the tables we play on have a decent anmount of terrain on them.


Also the choice of shooting the Dark Eldar or my Iyanden Wraiths should give my enemy a bit of a target priority headache


As for the fragile comment most of the models I'll be using will have T5 or T7 plus their FNP roll. Yes some will fall but some should survive :D  Cronos / Talos and a bunch of Grotesques bowling out of the portal should scare someone!


Thanks again!




Arq.

Offline Plastikente

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Re: New depravity?
« Reply #5 on: September 23, 2013, 12:46:56 PM »
The webway portal is used in lieu of a shooting attack right therefore the maximum forward placing on the portal (assuming a T1 deployment) would be 15" from enemy lines. This isn't so bad as I said before the tables we play on have a decent anmount of terrain on them.
Or closer, if you're willing to mount the portal carrier - 6" cruising speed, 6" disembark and the drop a 3" portal for a threat that is 9" away from enemy lines - Mwahahahaha!

Also the choice of shooting the Dark Eldar or my Iyanden Wraiths should give my enemy a bit of a target priority headache
I've been toying with the idea of exactly this combination.  Let me know how it goes.

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Re: New depravity?
« Reply #6 on: September 23, 2013, 01:33:58 PM »
A Coven army is an uphill battle in 6th edition.  Not only did shooting receive a huge boost, but Feel No Pain got docked to 5+ standard, and the point values of the Dark Eldar Codex is a weird holdover from 4th edition rather than a true 5th/6th edition Codex.  Razorwing flocks remain popular, but I have never seen anyone field a Chronus or Talos in ages.  Considering how badly Pain Tokens got docked, I would prefer the Talos with its better stats and access to a haywire blaster- the Syphon just isn't worth the tradeoff.

The ability of Dark Eldar flyers to dump all their missiles in one turn also hurts DE a bit, not that a Coven list typically has those anyway.
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Offline Arquarian

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Re: New depravity?
« Reply #7 on: September 24, 2013, 07:46:30 AM »
I'm still undecided weather to go Mech'd up or not.

As I said the force will be fighting along side my Iyanden Wraiths who aren't exactly close combat specialists. Thats where these guys would / could come in handy. I'm thinking Grotesques here...

5 Wracks in a Venom sounds a bit too flimsy to me but 10 in a raider is going to get expensive.

2 x 5 wracks in Venoms both with all the bells and whistles and dual portals is probably the safest way to go but this is going to take up a chunk of points in what was only ever going to be a 1k army and also means I have less to spend on tough goodies.


I did think about Beast masters and the like and in the same vein Scrourages as there is the Heamon link to these units.  I'll have to have a look again at my options.
I'm going to have to decide what exactly I want to do. As for the reserves I may have to consider an Autarch to jimmy the reserve roll in my favour.

For reference the Iyanden side of my army is likely to look like this...
Spiritseer
5 Wraithguard (D-scythes), waveserpent  TLSL
5 wraithguard, waveserpent TLSL
Wraithknight SC/FS, (Warlord)

 


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