What are the point of mandrakes.

So I've been coming up with fluff and stuff for my kabal. Still need a name they have black and silver armor, and like to attack at night. So this got me thinking a little about a fluffy list. Warriors and mercenaries, and mandrakes, well because they come out from the shadows and kill.
Can anyone tell me what they can do and if they are worth me putting in a list.

They are awesome! Against the right armies.

If you play a lot of eldar or other ignore cover armies they suck. A lot.

If you play Orks, Sisters, Marines... They are fairly solid. They have infiltrate and a decent ranged shooting attack. With AP4 they can take out a lot of Xenos armies. If they get into assault, they're ok. Not great.

Basically, I take a mid sized squad and try to disrupt a flank. Just enough to distract the opponent.

Yep. Take mid-sized squads for outflanking or little squads for infiltration onto that objective you need to grab.
They should spend most of the game hiding in terrain on an objective, shooting only when they don't need to fear getting hit back by ignores cover weapons.
Expect them to be a speed bump, maybe harass a squishy backfield support unit or two, then die, and you won't be disappointed.

Myrvn wrote:

They are awesome! Against the right armies.

If you play Orks, Sisters, Marines... They are fairly solid.

I would say that, in my opinion, they're actually not that great versus either Orks or Sisters. Sisters will have ample flame templates to just wipe them and also 3+ armor and mech to absorb their shooting without much harm. Orks...well, I think basically any Ork unit in the game can assault and wipe Mandrakes, and though you can do some damage...well, they're Orks, if that bothers them they built their list wrong

Myrvn wrote:

If they get into assault, they're ok. Not great.

I will say that in the idea of "using them the best way they can" that the mid-sized squad idea is probably right. Treat them like 18" snipers, and keep them in cover and out of assault if at all possible.

They are like 36 points servo-skulls. 3 man squad infiltrating and creating bubble around to fend off White Scars deployment etc.

Servo skull approach seems decent, except for being an Elite in my opinion. Otherwise I completely agree. I'm usually maxing my Elites.

I'll admit Mandrakes are one of my favorite units and I'm usually trying to find the best way to use a specific unit rather than finding the best unit in class.

Thor makes a good point (as usual) on Sisters. The local sisters player uses mostly melta, so that may taint my view. Against Orks I found them to be quite solid. They didn't live through the battle, but they nibbled away at a flank and did quite a bit of damage.

Myrvn wrote:

Servo skull approach seems decent, except for being an Elite in my opinion. Otherwise I completely agree.  I'm usually maxing my Elites.

I will admit I am finding Elites to be a little less heavy of a slot than it used to be - mostly because FA really stepped it up while Trueborn became a 'good take' not a 'must take'.
That said, I am likely to find better options to take than burning an odd 100 points on Mandrakes, or even 36 for a servo skull situation. I'm actually fine with White Scars pressing the line - you can't run from them anyway, and up close they let me start double tapping and assaulting anyway, which is where I want them.

Myrvn wrote:

I'll admit Mandrakes are one of my favorite units and I'm usually trying to find the best way to use a specific unit rather than finding the best unit in class.

I do both
Then I only take the best in class.

Myrvn wrote:

Thor makes a good point (as usual) on Sisters. The local sisters player uses mostly melta, so that may taint my view. Against Orks I found them to be quite solid. They didn't live through the battle, but they nibbled away at a flank and did quite a bit of damage.  

Gawds, no Immolators or anything? That guy is playing 'Twisted Sisters'. Is he just using bolters to handle mobs I guess?

I was thinking of putting some in reserves and having them outflank to get rear shots on vehicles. They're also a pretty good unit at clearing out those weak, back-field objective holders a lot of enemies take and then they can hold the objectives down very well with their cover save. I'm just liking running small squads of 5, 60 points isn't much of an investment but the 10 shots does help to give them a bit of a threat.

they are for holding that one objective you WILL put in a ruins. 2+ cover, storm bolters, AP4 soul blaze. and most importantly, can absolutely wreck Tau Pathfinders in the face no problem! if you go first that is!

There are a few flamers, but I purposely deploy on the other side :-)

The 5 man squad seems like an odd choice to me. Not saying it is bad, but if there is enough fire power to kill 3 Mandrakes, there is probably enough to kill 5. Is there enough value added with extra shots?

I do like tank hunting with them. They do a decent job of hitting side armor.

I've tried one game where I put ten in a Raider. That was fun. Not overly useful, but fun. About on par with splinter weapons and against guard/tau a little more effective.

I do like mandrakes. Probably mainly for the imagery though in fairness!

Myrvn wrote:

The 5 man squad seems like an odd choice to me. Not saying it is bad, but if there is enough fire power to kill 3 Mandrakes, there is probably enough to kill 5. Is there enough value added with extra shots?

Survivability-wise, running a 5 man unit means you won't have a morale check on your hands when you roll that unlucky 1 on a few shots into the unit from nearby infantry.  Also, when they have a 2+ cover save, it takes an average of 13.5 bolter shots to kill each one.  That means 2 more models will take an average of 27 more shots to down the unit.  Even for stronger weapons like an autocannon it still requires another 10ish shots per kill.  

Really it's more about the output though.  With 6 shots, you only have a 2/3 chance of even getting a hull point (assuming no save of any kind).  Tbh, even when a unit "averages" 1 hull point per round of shooting, I won't count on it as part of my plan so I usually like to aim for numbers above the average.  Averaging 1 hull point means you still have a pretty high chance of causing no damage at all as that's in the adjacent standard deviation.  Going from 6 shots to 10 shots puts your average number of hull points inflicted in a turn just above 1.  I'd run 6 in the unit for more reliability if I wasn't so particular about unit sizes and formations in my lists.

That makes sense. Good point.