Mandrakes

The Shredder wrote:

2) Perhaps more importantly, they don't fit the core concept of most of my DE armies - i.e. mobility and, to a lesser degree, range. For such a fragile army, I find the ability to redeploy at a moment's notice invaluable.

At the moment, my DE army is based around Coven formations, the core of which is a Corpsethief Claw and a Dark Artisan which takes up nearly 1000pts on their own. Giving my opponent additional targets that they have to target instead of them on Turn 1 will I think be useful, even if they get wiped out.

They'll have to either use their ignore cover weapons on them as well or if I get to place them in cover, they'll end up with a 2+ cover save thanks to their Stealth+Shrouded

Range of the drakes is not an issue. You WANT them to be close enough to shoot, but far enough to assault. You WANT them to get shot at. :-)

They can move through cover workout penalties. They are fast enough.

I have been know to put 4 in with my archon and deep strike WWP with them for some shinanigams, disembarking in backfield cover or objective makes them a small, but cheap unit that has decent firepower with soul fire that's almost always going to have a 2+ cover save

I thought our characters couldn't join Mandrakes before deployment - since they don't have infiltrate?

They just cannot infiltrate with them. Just because it can infiltrate, doesn't mean it has too.

"An Independent Character without the Infiltrate special rule cannot join a unit of
Infiltrators during deployment."

The Shredder wrote:

"An Independent Character without the Infiltrate special rule cannot join a unit of
Infiltrators during deployment."

That seems to generally be interpreted as cannot join an unit with the infiltrate special rule that is infiltrating.

There may be a point about timing too, during deployment being the physical act of infiltrating them onto the battlefield, as opposed to joining the unit before deployment and it being held in reserve

The_Burning_Eye wrote:

The Shredder wrote:

"An Independent Character without the Infiltrate special rule cannot join a unit of
Infiltrators during deployment."

That seems to generally be interpreted as cannot join an unit with the infiltrate special rule that is infiltrating.

There may be a point about timing too, during deployment being the physical act of infiltrating them onto the battlefield, as opposed to joining the unit before deployment and it being held in reserve

The BRB FAQ has added the words "and vice versa" to the end of the sentence quoted above and I think that makes it pretty clear that you cannot put an IC with your Mandrakes prior to the start of the game unless it also has the Infiltrate rule.

Note also that Infiltrators always deploy last, even if they're not using their Infiltrate ability.

Quote :

Units that contain at least one model with this special rule are deployed last, after all other units (friend and foe) have been deployed.