Rakarth's Rampage!

A whole new playstyle for Dark Eldar!
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Played my game tonight with the Coven Formations: Grotesquerie (with Urien Rakarth) and Scarlet Epicureans. These two synergise so well! Uriens 12" +1 Power from pain bonus 'bubble', plus the Wracks natural +1 from the SE formation, plus a Haemie joined to the unit! They are fully charged by T3! Absolutely rolled over a unit of Hammernators, Marneus Calgar and a Shield Eternal/Burning Blade Captain with a basic 120 point unit of Grotesques backed up by 5 Wracks! I reckon this kind of 'creeping flesh' style list is very strong! See the link below on my page to my full list (googledoc with Archon picture) and look out for my full strategy and tactica guide on my Youtube channel, links to that will also be on my page.

Omg dude I must say THANK YOU very much. I have an 1,000pt escalation league game coming up this Saturday and I've been racking my brain trying to come up with a list that could possibly take on a IG player in addition to an Ork (bikes) player. I really think the combo of these 2 detachments fits the criteria exactly. Thank you again, the rest of my week just got a lot less strenuous on my thinker lol.

Bit of rules wording nitpicking here.
You're saying that the Master of Pain rule from the Haemonculus stacks with the one from Urien, yes? I do not believe it does.
Both Urien and a Haemonculus have the Master of Pain rule, which as mentioned p.74 "is cumulative with the Agonising (pg 109) and/or Architect of Agony (pg 97) special rules."
Master of Pain isn't cumulative with Master of Pain.
Urien's Father of Pain just lets him spread his Master of Pain rule to friendlies within 12"; it is still definitely the Master of Pain rule that confers the benefit of +1 to the Power From Pain table.
So Urien and a Haemonculus don't stack +2 to a given unit.

Though obviously the Scarlet Epicurean's +1 to wracks in the formation rule stacks with either Urien's buff or the Haemy's.

Laughingcarp wrote:

Bit of rules wording nitpicking here.
You're saying that the Master of Pain rule from the Haemonculus stacks with the one from Urien, yes? I do not believe it does.

That's the same conclusion I came to with the rules as well.

Something I'm not as sure about is warlord traits for taking special characters in supplements. Does Urien still have Ancient Evil or does he get to roll on the covens table?

I had the same dilemma whenever I used Ahriman in my Black Legion or Crimson Slaughter lists.

lessthanjeff wrote:

Laughingcarp wrote:

Bit of rules wording nitpicking here.
You're saying that the Master of Pain rule from the Haemonculus stacks with the one from Urien, yes? I do not believe it does.

That's the same conclusion I came to with the rules as well.

Something I'm not as sure about is warlord traits for taking special characters in supplements.  Does Urien still have Ancient Evil or does he get to roll on the covens table?

I had the same dilemma whenever I used Ahriman in my Black Legion or Crimson Slaughter lists.

I'd say unless the Coven supplement states that he gets to roll on a different table then he has to use the trait from his datasheet entry (which the coven supplement does not replace)

Yeah he definitely gets the Ancient Evil warlord trait presuming you run him as your warlord. Nowhere does it give him permission to roll on a table, regardless of which book you run him in, since he has a trait listed on his data sheet.

Laughingcarp wrote:

Yeah he definitely gets the Ancient Evil warlord trait presuming you run him as your warlord. Nowhere does it give him permission to roll on a table, regardless of which book you run him in, since he has a trait listed on his data sheet.

Which is kind of a bummer as Coven PfP already has Fear on Turn 2 with Master of Pain.

I also agree that Master of Pain does not stack with itself.

My question is if Freakish Spectacle stacks when a unit is in 12" range of two different Coven Formations/Detachments. Because that could really dial the Fear Bomb up a notch!

Just for the record I played those two formations mentioned yesterday, and the combo between them is sick! I had Urien, 2X3 Grots with 1 Liquifier per unit, 1X5 Wracks with Liquifier, 1X10 Wracks with 2 Ossefactors, Cronos with both upgrades and Haemie with Liquifier and Scissorhand. One unit of Grots counter charged a squad of hammernators which had just killed the cronos,and came out totally unscathed, the other got charged by shield eternal/burning blade captain and Marneus Calgar (artificer version) and needed the assistance of the small group of Wracks to end those fools lives too, losing only one grotesque and the cronos from in the proccess! +2 on the PFP turn chart is just brutal for the Wracks! (+1 from Uriens 'bubble', +1 for Scarlet Epicureans)
I was up against 2 full tac squads, one small one, the two aforementioned characters in a stormraven, taken as part of the stormwing dataslate with two stormtalons. I took a couple of token warrior squads in Venoms so I could get access to our flyers in a CAD, but honestly, the SM flyers couldn't kill my Coven units anywhere near quickly enough for me to have worried about doing that. I just marched the Grots, Cronos, Urien and small unit of Wracks up the ventre of the board and said 'come at me bro' to the hammernators, marneus and captain. I had a VOidraven and Razorwing plus a Ravager and really cheap Arcon (Clone field, Power sword, Haywires) and the Ravager killed, I think, 3 marines, the Voiraven killed two with Implosions and the archon and 5 warriors hid in a building the whole game until T5 to grab an objective. If I'd just put the points from the flyers into more Coven, then I would have won just as, if not more convincingly; my flyers did nothing to his but they didn't need to. I just realised that the rules don't stack, yes. Didn't actually come ito effect in the game anyway, that unit of Wracks mainly skulked about.

El_Jairo wrote:

My question is if Freakish Spectacle stacks when a unit is in 12" range of two different Coven Formations/Detachments. Because that could really dial the Fear Bomb up a notch!

The answer we want is obviously yes, and by the wording in the rule itself I'd say yes, except for one big issue.
The BRB says "Unless specifically stated, a model cannot gain the benefit of a special rule more than once. However, the effects of multiple different special rules are cumulative."
So the only way this could work is if we can argue that the Freakish Spectacle doesn't count as a special rule...
Which we can't since it is listed under "Special Rules" for the formations, and Command Benefits for the Coven Coterie detachment (and in the BRB in "selecting detachments" it states that command benefits are special rules.).
So no stacking, by my interpretation of RAW.

Timatron wrote:

, Cronos with both upgrades

both?
The Cronos is allowed to take either a spirit probe or a spirit vortex unless there is something I'm missing?

Evil Space Elves wrote:

Timatron wrote:

, Cronos with both upgrades

both?
The Cronos is allowed to take either a spirit probe or a spirit vortex unless there is something I'm missing?

You're not - the Cronos is allowed to take one of spirit probe or spirit vortex, not both.

The_Burning_Eye wrote:

I'd say unless the Coven supplement states that he gets to roll on a different table then he has to use the trait from his datasheet entry (which the coven supplement does not replace)

It does appear to be more of an open and shut case for Urien. I compared the warlord traits rules for the coven and it even specifically says "if your warlord is a haemonculus" so you can't even use a different character in the army to roll on that table.

For my chaos armies, it's still a little less clear since it says "A Black Legion Warlord may either roll on one of the warlord traits in the warhammer 40,000 rulebook, or roll on the table on the right". Stupid Ahriman and Tzeentch's complicated setups.

Oh, never noticed that. Didn't fire the Vortex anyway so never mind, eh. Thanks though for pointing it out. Seems pointless to ever give up the +1 FNP for a very situational shooting attack. Anyone else feel they've mixed up 'probe' and 'syphon'?

Laughingcarp wrote:

The answer we want is obviously yes, and by the wording in the rule itself I'd say yes, except for one big issue.
The BRB says "Unless specifically stated, a model cannot gain the benefit of a special rule more than once. However, the effects of multiple different special rules are cumulative."
So the only way this could work is if we can argue that the Freakish Spectacle doesn't count as a special rule...
Which we can't since it is listed under "Special Rules" for the formations, and Command Benefits for the Coven Coterie detachment (and in the BRB in "selecting detachments" it states that command benefits are special rules.).
So no stacking, by my interpretation of RAW.

OTOH, strictly speaking, it's less a stacking of buffs on our units and more a stacking of a debuff on the enemy's unit(s), so that quote from the rulebook doesn't really apply. Seeing how formations are in fact detachments, RAW the debuff from multiple formations should stack, shouldn't it? Whether that's RAI is another story though.