Let's talk competative coven. I've been playing competitive coven for quite some time. For the last couple years it's been mostly grotesques and talosi but now I think we will see the return of wracks in venom! This means it's time dust of the old Coven-painted venoms we used in that first turn deepstrike formation back in 7th.
Let's face it, 3 patrols is the way to go and in my opinion this is my favorite coven patrol for competative. I would argue that it's not only viable but makes a coven detachment something to really consider in competative play:
Obsession: Dark Techomancer Drazhar 5x Wracks with 2 Liquifier gun 5x Wracks with 2 Liquifier gun 5x Wracks with 2 Liquifier gun Venom x2 Splinter cannons Venom x2 Splinter cannons Venom x2 Splinter cannons
Now, Venoms don't get worse when taking dmg from Dark Technomancer and having 3+ to wound and 3dmg is insane! From what I can see in the meta right now there are allot of multi wound non-vehicle units and monsters on the tables. 5 wracks in a Venom is only 145 points and will be a great threat and excellent distractions.
My opinion is that the Haemonculus isn't as viable in competitive play as the Succubus and Archon and the 10man superwrack unit basicly only gives you 1 more liquifier. With Drazhar the HQslot doesn't become a tax.
I would also argue for that this is the best bulk but I can also see Raiders instead of Venoms but with the Obsidian rose and Black heart is simple better for that 1 Dark Lance shot. However, I really think Cronos have a place! I haven't tried the Cronos in game yet but on paper it looks really good with the Dark Techomancer!
Now you might question the double splinter cannons and so do I but I really think it's viable.
I imagine my fellow archons here have thought about this aswell but I haven't seen much discussion. Am I blind because of my love for coven heavy lists or is this viable? What do you think?
A 1st place got Raiders instead of Venoms, because +1 to wound and Dmg on Lances is good, and with 1 roll only you get D3 MWs only 1/6 times. DT is solid anyway.
But I like Artists (for Grots and Talos) and PoF (for Wracks hordes) too.
I don’t think DT venoms are worth it. First, they don't poison things on 3+. Poison works differently now. It is always an unmodified roll of 4+ causes a wound. So the only advantage DT poison does is wound vehicles and titanic units on 5+ instead of 6+. Not great when considering the risk of self-destructing in a single shooting phase.
I do, however, think DT Raiders with dissies are good. They wound anything T4 on 2s, provide a great solution for anything with -1 damage modifiers, cut through Gravis units with ease, and wound any vehicle on 4+. With 10 wounds, it is impossible for them to completely self-destruct in a single turn. In the 3 games I've played with them, the mortal wounds they inflicted on themselves made the difference between them living and dying exactly 0 times. They often died, but not before delivering their payload and they would have died if they were fully healthy when the opponent decided to kill them anyway.
I think a raider with either two squads of 5 wracks and a character (like Drazhar), or a squad of 5 wracks and a squad of 3 grotesques with 3x liqs are both excellent choices.
I would also like to try Talos with liquifiers and heatlances. I was a big fan of DT liquifiers on Talos with the 8th book, and they're even better now. I wouldn't power up the heatlances very often, but if there is something I absolutely need dead, wounding anything <T8 on 2s and doing D6+3 damage is a great way to do it.
I also like DT in venoms with dual-LG-wracks, and I also believe that it is one of the builds that make venoms attractive (the other being Poisoned Tongue, mostly).
However, you can also use DT with footslogging LG wracks. 3 five man units can be deployed in reserves for just 1CP.
Also, if you put two units in a Raider, you can use the stratagem for moving the raider out of the border and into reserves.
The latest two options offer good compatibility with the Deploy Scramblers secondary, just saying...
But here's another patrol for Covens:
Obsession: Dark Creed Drazhar (WL) Haemonculus, Fear Incarnate (1CP), Poisoner's Ampule (Ooga-Booga!) Incubi x 10 demiklaives Wracks x10, 3x LGs, Electrocorrosive Whip 2x Raider, Grisly Trophies, PGL Talos x3: twin LG, Gauntlet, twin HLs OPTIONAL: Chronos with Spirit Probe for rerolls to wound.
The coven is there to debuff leadership (-3 Ld around the raiders) in order to help the Tormentors do their job. The Ooga-booga removes Obsec and auras while the Esoteric Kill stratagem can be used on the 3LG unit or the Talos one to directly kill the characters. Dark Creed combines well with Talos Gauntlets as it can remove the penalty to hit. If you add the Chronos, it can really boost Drazhar, the Incubi and the Talos (just add an Archon somewhere to give reroll 1s to hit too to the mercenaries).
I also like DT in venoms with dual-LG-wracks, and I also believe that it is one of the builds that make venoms attractive (the other being Poisoned Tongue, mostly).
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Remember that poison in 9th is immune to every +1/-1 to wound, so DT will affect the dmg only.
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amishprn86 Archon
Posts : 4436 Join date : 2014-10-04 Location : Ohio
DT Raiders are still great, Lances or DC are still very good, with higher AP and Damage than a SC for the same shots I don't see why even taking a venom is better.
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The main META builds topping tournaments generally involve Death Guard and Dark Angles. Death Guards -1 Damage and Dark Angles 4+ to Wound really messes with pure DT builds, since its hard to get up to that Damage 3 to kill those Marines.
I would imagine you want to take a few patrols of Coven, to max out those Wracks.
At least 1 PoF patrol with a Master Haemonculus and a block of Haemoxytes, and a few blobs of Wracks with their mini-Trans Human goodness. Not sure how you can mitigate the Leadership issues with large blobs.
I think people are underestimating the value of Wracks right now.
The main META builds topping tournaments generally involve Death Guard and Dark Angles. Death Guards -1 Damage and Dark Angles 4+ to Wound really messes with pure DT builds, since its hard to get up to that Damage 3 to kill those Marines.
On the contrary, DT dissies and (to a lesser extent) Splinter cannons are the only real source of damage 3 shooting we have. If facing a lot of DG and DA in your meta, then packing as many DT transports as possible is the best counter. The liquifier spam won't be as effective as they are against many armies, but it's not as if the other covens offer more efficient options.
If building a competitive coven only army, I'd probably go with 2x DT patrols and a DC patrol.
The main META builds topping tournaments generally involve Death Guard and Dark Angles. Death Guards -1 Damage and Dark Angles 4+ to Wound really messes with pure DT builds, since its hard to get up to that Damage 3 to kill those Marines.
On the contrary, DT dissies and (to a lesser extent) Splinter cannons are the only real source of damage 3 shooting we have. If facing a lot of DG and DA in your meta, then packing as many DT transports as possible is the best counter. The liquifier spam won't be as effective as they are against many armies, but it's not as if the other covens offer more efficient options.
If building a competitive coven only army, I'd probably go with 2x DT patrols and a DC patrol.[/quote
Mm...not really. You can just saturate them with a lot of D1 in melee and that's all.
I think DT is still very competitive. There's 2 standouts to me and that's DT and Dark Creed. However, DC is more combo-oriented whereas DT has more immediate value with liquidifers while being able to outflank + score + objsec.
I think Covens shines best in a RSR detachment because you can give them reroll 1's to hit with an archon.
Besides that I feel like folks just need to try it out and not be so down on the PoF nerf. Take a look at Chronos and how they fit into things. There's room to be creative here.
I think DT is still very competitive. There's 2 standouts to me and that's DT and Dark Creed. However, DC is more combo-oriented whereas DT has more immediate value with liquidifers while being able to outflank + score + objsec.
I completely agree.
Apart from the LG wracks, DT offers the best boost in our codex for shooting out of all <COVEN> units, including transports, and precisely because the coven units do not need the protection from transports (or not that much), having the potential to charge dissies and splinter cannons without caring about destroying your own transport is quite nice... although I wouldn't rely on Venoms still.
On the other hand, DTs Talos and Chronos can be healed by nearby heamonculi, and there's even a WL trait for healing 3W instead of 1D3 per turn, which is nice if you want to go crazy with your flesh constructs. Also, Talos and Grots with liquifiers...
DC is perfect for a Realspace Raid when you want a lot of synergies with Ld shenanigans, and at the same time you can use the rerrolling 1s to hit from the Archon when shooting Characters with Esoteric Kill.
Edit: I want to give an honorable mention to Coven of Twelve, as their units can shoot while performing actions, so they make the most versatile Wracks (+1AP in combat).
Last edited by Eldur on Thu Apr 15 2021, 22:26; edited 1 time in total
The main META builds topping tournaments generally involve Death Guard and Dark Angles. Death Guards -1 Damage and Dark Angles 4+ to Wound really messes with pure DT builds, since its hard to get up to that Damage 3 to kill those Marines.
On the contrary, DT dissies and (to a lesser extent) Splinter cannons are the only real source of damage 3 shooting we have. If facing a lot of DG and DA in your meta, then packing as many DT transports as possible is the best counter. The liquifier spam won't be as effective as they are against many armies, but it's not as if the other covens offer more efficient options.
If building a competitive coven only army, I'd probably go with 2x DT patrols and a DC patrol.[/quote
Mm...not really. You can just saturate them with a lot of D1 in melee and that's all.
Not really to what? Any coven can just saturate them with a lot of D1 in melee, that's not really an argument for which coven people should take. Fisheyes was expressing concern that DT aren't as effective against DG and DA and my point was that they offer more than spamming D2 shooting. They can also can get a lot of D3 shooting which exists nowhere else in the book and allows you to diminish their numbers while minimizing their ability to retaliate.
Im not sure what I am saying, just screaming into the void
If I had to try and find a point to my incoherent ramblings, its that DT may not be the silver bullet everyone is talking about. There is a lot to love with Coven beside just DT and DC.
PoF offer some really cool buffs with their mini-Trans Human, and provide an anvil unit that we are generally lacking.
Ive been playing around with some Custom Covens, to moderate success. This weekend I intend to try out some Master Torturer/Splinterblade wracks for hard hitting poison CC goodness. Master Torturers has been pretty good to me so far. Free re-rolls on a 10 man wrack unit is just fun. I expect the exploding 6’s will be icing
I don’t think DT venoms are worth it. First, they don't poison things on 3+. Poison works differently now. It is always an unmodified roll of 4+ causes a wound. So the only advantage DT poison does is wound vehicles and titanic units on 5+ instead of 6+. Not great when considering the risk of self-destructing in a single shooting phase.
I do, however, think DT Raiders with dissies are good. They wound anything T4 on 2s, provide a great solution for anything with -1 damage modifiers, cut through Gravis units with ease, and wound any vehicle on 4+. With 10 wounds, it is impossible for them to completely self-destruct in a single turn. In the 3 games I've played with them, the mortal wounds they inflicted on themselves made the difference between them living and dying exactly 0 times. They often died, but not before delivering their payload and they would have died if they were fully healthy when the opponent decided to kill them anyway.
I think a raider with either two squads of 5 wracks and a character (like Drazhar), or a squad of 5 wracks and a squad of 3 grotesques with 3x liqs are both excellent choices.
I would also like to try Talos with liquifiers and heatlances. I was a big fan of DT liquifiers on Talos with the 8th book, and they're even better now. I wouldn't power up the heatlances very often, but if there is something I absolutely need dead, wounding anything <T8 on 2s and doing D6+3 damage is a great way to do it.
My mistake, I see that dissies on raiders look quite favorable now that you can't get the poison on splinter cannons to 3+ BUT the 3 damage against the likes of Death guard, Necrons or other multi wound infantry armies are still really good. They also don't get worse after rolling 1s on the to hit roll.
To me Dark Technomancer seems almost wasteful on grotesques since they favour close combat. That's the problem with LG on them as well... To remove their best CC weapon and replace it with DT... And believe me I really enjoy my converted grotesques, a true centerpiece and been playing with them almost every game since 7th but now I just can't see how they are viable in competitive anymore. Loosing that 4+ invul hit them hard. I feel pretty much the same about DT liquifiers on Talos.
fisheyes wrote:
The main META builds topping tournaments generally involve Death Guard and Dark Angles. Death Guards -1 Damage and Dark Angles 4+ to Wound really messes with pure DT builds, since its hard to get up to that Damage 3 to kill those Marines.
I would imagine you want to take a few patrols of Coven, to max out those Wracks.
At least 1 PoF patrol with a Master Haemonculus and a block of Haemoxytes, and a few blobs of Wracks with their mini-Trans Human goodness. Not sure how you can mitigate the Leadership issues with large blobs.
I think people are underestimating the value of Wracks right now.
I agree about the death guards! But I can't see how Coven would be competitive beyond one single patrol detachment... I think the other factions have to much good to offer.
amishprn86 Archon
Posts : 4436 Join date : 2014-10-04 Location : Ohio
I see no reason to take Grots at all anymore, what you can get in LGs on Grots you can get more damage out of other things for the same cost, 5 Wracks with 2 flamers is 60pts, a 3 man unit of Grots with LG is 135s, that means you can get 2 units of Wracks for 120pts, its 2 less wounds but its also 1 more flamer. With all the Multi D now, IDK if 4 wound Grots with just a 6++/5+++ is worth it. As Aotf yeah thats different.
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I see no reason to take Grots at all anymore, what you can get in LGs on Grots you can get more damage out of other things for the same cost, 5 Wracks with 2 flamers is 60pts, a 3 man unit of Grots with LG is 135s, that means you can get 2 units of Wracks for 120pts, its 2 less wounds but its also 1 more flamer. With all the Multi D now, IDK if 4 wound Grots with just a 6++/5+++ is worth it. As Aotf yeah thats different.
To me Dark Technomancer seems almost wasteful on grotesques since they favour close combat. That's the problem with LG on them as well... To remove their best CC weapon and replace it with DT... And believe me I really enjoy my converted grotesques, a true centerpiece and been playing with them almost every game since 7th but now I just can't see how they are viable in competitive anymore. Loosing that 4+ invul hit them hard. I feel pretty much the same about DT liquifiers on Talos.
I agree with your general point that grotesques got hurt hard by losing their PoF benefit. I think they're the coven unit that got hurt the most. I was never totally blown away by their performance though, but understood why others liked them so much. To me, that's why making them DT makes the most sense. Use Raiders to protect them since their invul isn't up to the task. 5 wracks and 3 grotes in a raider gets you 5 liquifiers, which can be just a gruesome amount of damage in an area. I wouldn't go heavy on them, but a list featuring 3 or 6 in Raiders would be fine. They're no longer CC specialists, but fairly tough generalists.
Regarding Talos, I've got to strongly disagree. Double liquifiers were very, VERY good on Talos with the 8th edition book, and they are considerably better now. Each Talos was mathematically similar to a dissie ravager. But now they have 4" more range, no risk of mortal wounds, wound T4 on 3s, wound T6 and 7 on 4s, AND new PfP allows them to move+advance+shoot+charge on turn 2.
Their defense is situationally slightly worse, but their offense is truly bonkers.
Gazebo wrote:
I agree about the death guards! But I can't see how Coven would be competitive beyond one single patrol detachment... I think the other factions have to much good to offer.
I don't disagree. For the most competitive builds, no more than 1 patrol should be coven. But if they hypothetically removed the other 2 subfactions from the game, I still think coven would be a competitive army.
I think Covens are in a reasonably good spot at the moment, in terms of internal balance. Unlike 8e, where it was basically PoF or nothing, there are now several decent choices that do different things well.
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amishprn86 Archon
Posts : 4436 Join date : 2014-10-04 Location : Ohio
I think Wyches are so good they over shadow almost everything else. CoS stratagems are so good it makes the supplement a must for any serious games.
Turn 2 15 Hellion blob Flyby to kill a character, melee a 5man squad kills it if not killing 2 units, gains a 4++, will have -1 to be hit, while ignoring OW.
Hard to want a 40pt melee model that is slow when you have 17pt Hellions, sure only T4 and 2 wounds, but 2 of them is 34pts for double the damage and speed. They both start out with a 6++ but Hellions how can get cover and Lightning fast.
Even just MSU 5mans of Hellions are great at objectives and actions, 85pts compare to 120 that of Grots, 120pts gets you 7 Hellions (14 wounds, thats 2 more wound at the cost of a 5+++) and Grots while are for sure tougher (5+++ will help in the long run), they are still not much of a threat at all.
Thats not talking about Incubi, Wyches, etc....
For me Coven is no longer the Anvil we had, more of a utility unit for Creed, objectives baby sitters for wracks, or Wracks LG spam. A cronos might be fine, but Grots and Talos, IDK if i will actually play them at all in 9th.
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So, this is what it looks like (with some points to spare). To me, the thing that makes it special is the 2D3+3 wounds per command phase from the haemonculi, plus the extra wound from PoF. Also, the Chronos should be in combat for regenerating any lost grotesque and talos. I really feel that it needs another grotesque and/or talos unit to be really scary...
What do you think?
krayd Hekatrix
Posts : 1343 Join date : 2011-10-03 Location : Richmond, VA
Subject: Re: Competative coven Sat Apr 17 2021, 18:41
Cerve wrote:
Eldur wrote:
I also like DT in venoms with dual-LG-wracks, and I also believe that it is one of the builds that make venoms attractive (the other being Poisoned Tongue, mostly).
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Remember that poison in 9th is immune to every +1/-1 to wound, so DT will affect the dmg only.
While this is true for most applications, splinter cannons are also S3, so DT will allow them to wound T3 units on 3+, for what it's worth.
Subject: Competative coven 
Thu Apr 15 2021, 12:07
