Corpsethief Claw Formation

I played 3 games yesterday with a modified Corpsethief Claw, only 3 Talos and I had the Dark Artisan formation moving in Tandem. They were not a game breaker but their resiliency was great. The first battle I fought AM and they really didn't do much but clog the center of the board. The Dark Artisan formation Talos had TL heat lances and an Ichor injector. The 3 Talos were stock with splinter cannons, 2x Ichor Injectors and 1x Chain Flails. 2nd game, I had a tough match against space wolves using some formation from Fenris. My opponent had (I think) 4 Wolf Lords and 2 Rune Priests all mounted with 10+ wolves and cyber wolves running with them. I think the formation was close to 1,000 points. Well my two formations together were 725. They battled for three turns. Dark Eldar in fact won round one but fightingSM, they were unable to do a sweeping advance. My opponent was able to spread the wounds off to the wolves and around the characters to keep them in the fight. In hindsight, I'm confident a full up CC Formation would have won the day. Then I fought a combination of Necrons and Tyranids. DE shooting had virtually no effect with the exception of blowing up a ghost ark with the heat lance. In close combat they took 2 turns to work through some wraiths with a 3++ but were around long enough to engage a huge enemy formation of gargoyles and Flyrant. By attacking from the flank they were able to pull the enemy off the contested objection at the end of the last turn.

So that was my first experince. I will be playing the full up CC Formation next weekend to see how it goes. I think the scout + victory points for killing certain units will help counter the negatives of the point sink. I'm thinking to add 1 or two heat lances to the mix and uncertain about the cc weapons. In my mind the options are 2 CC weapons generating an extra attack, chain flails to give shred, or the ichor injector for a fleshbane, STR 7 AP2 ID weapon. Do you agree the chain flail is not a CC weapon and therefore does not give you an extra attack?

If so I'm thinking of leaving one or 2 with the stock 2 CC weapons. What do you guys think?

Chain flails are close combat weapons, and hence do give you the extra attack. Same with the Ichor Injector.

I don't remember ichor injector having fleshbane...

So... someone helped me out about the ichor injector thing and I can't edit my post on my phone.. please ignore my last post!

I have used it twice, first against space wolves. It literally chewed through the whole army, and that was with having lost two advancing across the board.
Second time against 3 assault blobs of blood Angels. They set up camp on an objective, my opponent charged all three blobs into it foolishly, and they chomped them. Forced them to break, and didn't catch them in sweeping advance, this led to the blood Angels being bunched up, leading to my two razorwings appearing and blowing something like 28 marines up with their missiles.

Well happy with it both times.

It will almost never make its points back, but it gives free VP's which help hugely when coming to controlling the game.

I think the sheer volume of shots required to take it out is effecient enough. Even my dark artisan formations ate 3 rounds + 3 overwatches from tau firewarriors.

Where I go to play people hate this formation. I actually won a small local tournament with this, the dark artisan formation, and 3 flying tyrants (with mucolids as troops). These guys actually took out 2 knights in cc in a single game (1 had only 2 hp left the other was ws2 due to psychics). I gave them Ichor injectors and hw blasters to have the answer to everything but that was personal preference.

Here (Italy) is considered one of the best formation ever writed. Corpsethief+DarkArtisan are one of the best list you can do with DE, extremely tough.
Icor Injector to all Talos, and for shooting what you want. Depends what you deploy with other 400-500 points.

Bleaksoul Brethren wrote:

These guys actually took out 2 knights in cc in a single game (1 had only 2 hp left the other was ws2 due to psychics). I gave them Ichor injectors and hw blasters to have the answer to everything but that was personal preference.

Cool! Did the talos' all use the single smash attack to take down those knights?

Bleaksoul Brethren wrote:

Where I go to play people hate this formation. I actually won a small local tournament with this, the dark artisan formation, and 3 flying tyrants (with mucolids as troops).

Do they not enforce the come the apocalypse rules in your tourney setting?

bunbun_phd wrote:

Bleaksoul Brethren wrote:

Where I go to play people hate this formation. I actually won a small local tournament with this, the dark artisan formation, and 3 flying tyrants (with mucolids as troops).

Do they not enforce the come the apocalypse rules in your tourney setting?

I suspect you mean "do they not ignore the come the apocalypse rules in your tourney setting?", since in 7e it's perfectly legal to ally with CTA allies.

normally my dark artisan units (i run 2 in my lists) i use ichor injectors... and let me tell you, the last 3 games i played my talos made triple its point on first turns of combat in all the games by instant detaching costly models... wraith knight, some gigantic tyrannic thing, and today one of those giant tau guys (sry I'm new don't know all the names)

None of those units cost anywhere near the 400 points a kitted out DA unit costs, but I'm glad you are enjoying them.

Well, just killing power is nice, but surviving to enjoy the killing is nice too. If you killed something and survived, that means they didn't get points, but you did. This is valuable too, especially given the rest of the army's ability to survive after killing something...or lack-there-of.

Things that are great about CTC that aren't immediately obvious: 1. Board control: The Claw covers such a large area on the board and your opponent has to deal with it.  I use this to manipulate the flow of the game. 2. It's extremely difficult to kill: With the exception of grav guns or massed plasma cannons, it will stay around for a long time. 3. The unit messes with people's heads: My opponents know that the Claw is a close combat beast and I get extra VP if I kill things in close combat.  I can use this fear to manipulate what they do.  4. The Claw surprises people with how survivable it is.  

My CTC has killed two knights in a game (one being a lancer).  Wraithknights are no problem.  Invisible Khorn Dogs...  no problem.  It's a great unit.

Hellstrom wrote:

None of those units cost anywhere near the 400 points a kitted out DA unit costs, but I'm glad you are enjoying them.

your absolutely right, but it was my talos alone that killed these guys with a single ichor injector, its my goal in every game to throw them at giant things to just take em out turn 2 or 3

I'll advocate for the DA + 3 talos from HS.

They are 675 pts bare bones, the CTC is 600 but does not include a HQ so they are even pts wise.

The CTC has scout and extra VPs for killing infantry in CC...
The DA and friends is way tougher than the CTC and is 2-4 unts so is more flexible and can hold multiple objs.

I need to do more playtesting but I don't think the CTC is clearly superior.

Edit - Posted in the wrong talos formation topic but they are similar so I don't think it matters.

Used it against Tau. Won the game. Kl4 points in one turn.

I've ummed and ahhed about making/taking this unit, I've seen it at a few tournaments doing ok but I see far too much D now to think about it.

Sky Serpent wrote:

I've ummed and ahhed about making/taking this unit, I've seen it at a few tournaments doing ok but I see far too much D now to think about it.

Expect the amount of D to go through the roof in about a week's time.