The True Leadership bomb

With the Harlequins "Chapter Tactics" revealed, i start to think about a list that involves Harlquins of the Silent shroud, an air wing detachment of hemlocks and a detachment of Dark creed (mostly) grotesques. The ability to seriously damage primaris marine squads, genestealer blobs and guardsmen with just one casualty seems like geat fun. The only problematic thing is moral shenanigans like synapse and mob rule, but with the debuffs being an aura ability guard commissars, ethereals and the such have a hard time
what do you think about it?

I think it sounds awesome on paper, but I'm a bit worried that it'll be very easy to go overboard on how much Leadership debuffing you bring. Leadership can't drop below 1, so the absolute most that you're going to need is -9;

Horrify Hemlock, -3
Phantasm Grenade Launcher, -1
Power From Pain, -1
Dark Creed, -3
Mask of Secrets, -1
Death Jester, -1 (possibly more?)
Silent Shroud, -1

Are all pretty easy to fit in a list and come to -11. I'd honestly be pretty comfortable just bringing half of that, while also maybe taking a Farseer and Shadowseer - this would allow Torment Grenades, Mind War, and Hallucinogenic Grenades to deal a ton of mortal wounds alongside the leadership casualties.

I don't think the -9 is going to do you much good outside of mindwars, against high wound high leadership characters.

The bigger issue is going to be applying -4 to -5 to multiple units and then forcing moral checks on each.
This might be the best place for the occifier. It's a fairly reliably way of killing one model, which is enough force the check.

Silent Shroud adds nothing, really. The combo of hemlocks and Dark Creed and PGLs should be adequate. You can even add Shadow Specters to the Craftworld detachment.

I wouldn't say they add nothing, extra bubbles of -1 LD from more units gives redundancy and makes it easier to apply the debuff to more enemy units with the speed of the Harlies. They also force rolling two D6 and picking the highest on the LD test, something which the Dark Creed don't offer.

What I think is great though is that GW themselves called this out as a legitimate tactic, meaning they have actually thought about it and intend for it to be a genuine army build.

Couple that with Esoteric Kill from afar and hopefully a Death Jester that can pick out enemy buff characters and actually have a chance of killing them, and suddenly a lot or armies have a lot to worry about with their morale tests.

What armies have the ability to negate this type of offense completely? I guess Iyanden, Cursed Blade and others that mean you only lose 1 model for failing a morale test. Ork mobs until they have been whittled down. What else is there?

hekatrixxy wrote:

I wouldn't say they add nothing, extra bubbles of -1 LD from more units gives redundancy and makes it easier to apply the debuff to more enemy units with the speed of the Harlies. They also force rolling two D6 and picking the highest on the LD test, something which the Dark Creed don't offer.

What I think is great though is that GW themselves called this out as a legitimate tactic, meaning they have actually thought about it and intend for it to be a genuine army build.

Couple that with Esoteric Kill from afar and hopefully a Death Jester that can pick out enemy buff characters and actually have a chance of killing them, and suddenly a lot or armies have a lot to worry about with their morale tests.

What armies have the ability to negate this type of offense completely? I guess Iyanden, Cursed Blade and others that mean you only lose 1 model for failing a morale test. Ork mobs until they have been whittled down. What else is there?

Tyranids in synapse.

This is the big worry about a leadership debuff build - there's a ton of stuff that can outright ignore morale, and none of it's that rare. If all else fails an opponent can just spend a couple of command points to automatically pass a morale check.

I wouldn't say tons of stuff.
Their is nids with synapse, and killing the synapse stuff has always been part of the fluff for nids. Other than that you have things that help with moral, but very few that make units immune when their down -5 ld outside of single model units.
Spending 2 cp isn't nothing. And also why I said forcing multiple units is key.

Burnage wrote:

hekatrixxy wrote:

I wouldn't say they add nothing, extra bubbles of -1 LD from more units gives redundancy and makes it easier to apply the debuff to more enemy units with the speed of the Harlies. They also force rolling two D6 and picking the highest on the LD test, something which the Dark Creed don't offer.

What I think is great though is that GW themselves called this out as a legitimate tactic, meaning they have actually thought about it and intend for it to be a genuine army build.

Couple that with Esoteric Kill from afar and hopefully a Death Jester that can pick out enemy buff characters and actually have a chance of killing them, and suddenly a lot or armies have a lot to worry about with their morale tests.

What armies have the ability to negate this type of offense completely? I guess Iyanden, Cursed Blade and others that mean you only lose 1 model for failing a morale test. Ork mobs until they have been whittled down. What else is there?

Tyranids in synapse.

This is the big worry about a leadership debuff build - there's a ton of stuff that can outright ignore morale, and none of it's that rare. If all else fails an opponent can just spend a couple of command points to automatically pass a morale check.

i was really hoping they would change something about synapse in 8th because hordes are so powerful, but the only army that received a nerf was guard

You go Dark Creed Haemonculus Covens with allied craftworld Hemlock Wraithfighters and add in Silent Shroud. The Freakshow Lives!

You fight Dark Angels, or Chaos Cultists with a backseat Abaddon, or Tyranids, or Harlequins that run Dreaming Shadow for that matter.

Your entire strategy falls apart.

The Freakshow is dead. It's a cute trick, but don't expect it to actually work.

So nids, as known. One subfaction of Marines. A subfaction if a rarely played faction.
And unique character bubbles. When your faction strat let's you snip characters.

Compared to 7th when it was: every space Marines. Every daemon. Every wraith unit. And nids. It's pretty good.

The real problem however carried over. Vehicle heavy lists.
They have leadership values now, but won't take moral tests.

hexxenwyrd wrote:

The real problem however carried over. Vehicle heavy lists.
They have leadership values now, but won't take moral tests.

This is why you bring Mind War, Torment Grenades and Hallucination Grenades - they all do mortal wounds based on leadership without requiring a morale test.

I think basing an entire army around leadership debuffing is going to run into difficulties, but it's so easy to slot some into a standard mixed Eldar list that it'll be a great additional benefit.

A big part of it as that a decent amount of the modifiers require you to get close, which isn't reliable in all cases. And the ones that do shoot, you'll also need to be shooting the HQ nearby in some cases. Long story short, redundancy will be key and if you have a list that can get up to -11 LD, I would only count on being able to execute maybe half of it reliably (if that). 5 or 6 is still substantial though.

Personally, from a competitive stand point, I wouldn't base an army around LD shenanigans, but if you can fit some aspects into a already solid list, then you'll be on to something

The thing is, a lot of the units that one would take in this style list are also good anyway. Grotesques, Talos, Hemlocks and Troupes in Starweavers are all strong units in their own right already.

I'm not sure having some opponents where the LD shenanigans are not as effective is that much of a problem, as the army is already very killy anyway. The only real cost therefore is the opportunity cost of not taking a different obsession/masque form.

Sample list for example (using leaked points):

Silent Shroud Battalion - 972pts
Troupe Master w/ Fusion Pistol & Embrace - 85pts
Shadowseer - 125pts
Deathjester - 45pts
3 x 5 Players w/ Fusion Pistols & Embraces - 420pts
3 x Starweavers - 297pts

Ulthwe/Alaitoc Air Wing - 630pts
3 x Hemlocks

Dark Creed Spearhead - 375pts
Haemonculus w/ EC Whip & Stinger Pistol
3 x 1 Talos w/ Haywire, Chainflails & Macro-scalpel

10 CP and ~20points to spare


Not saying it's going to win loads of tournaments, but would be a fun list to play.

I think it's useful to remember the obsessions affect vehicles as well. 1 unit of grotesques in a raider with a Haemonculus that all charge in together gives you a -3. I'm actually thinking of using Venoms aggressively to stack the debuff.

hexxenwyrd wrote:

So nids, as known. One subfaction of Marines. A subfaction if a rarely played faction.
And unique character bubbles. When your faction strat let's you snip characters.

Compared to 7th when it was: every space Marines. Every daemon. Every wraith unit. And nids. It's pretty good.

The real problem however carried over. Vehicle heavy lists.
They have leadership values now, but won't take moral tests.

yeah dark angels aren't really popular these days
torment grenades would work on vehicles too, am i right?

Just to weigh in a bit, I tried a freakshow list a couple weeks ago using a dark creed battlion (Wracks in raiders plus pain engines), a black heart patrol, and an alaitoc patrol (farseer with mindwar, 2 hemlocks, rangers). Tested it out against emperor's children, and being honest I made mistakes, forgot stratagems, etc, but I tabled them on turn 5. Play of the game was a 6 mortal wound mind war against the daemon prince. I'm currently toying with replacing the black heart with silent shroud, leaning towards shadowseer, solitaire, and 2 death jesters.

I think across all of that there is enough character targeting potential to deal with characters. Dark creed, rangers, jesters, hemlocks that are well positioned (it can happen), a well timed solitaire blitz, mind war, all can work. And most importantly they can lose models from having a low LD without taking a morale with the shadowseer's hallucinogen and torment grenades.