Kabalites survival and cover

At the game store I play at there's a small grip of obstacles and also different decor that kind of gives the battlefield more places etc. But I don't think its done well. Most of the cover and things they have you can pull out for the table is very small and usually pretty short too. This personally bothers me. When there is little to no cover or obstacles, it basically makes the battle too straightforward and also just irritating, playing dark eldar, i really need to hope that I get to go first, otherwise the enemies units will blow away my army, and the fact that the cover the store has, I basically get tiny cover saves, as the line of sight is easy, they are just always more or less out in the open.

For the most part there's not much I can do, but does anyone have thoughts on it? how much cover and how big of a role does it play for you? Since most of the people at the store don't seem to mind the tiny cover, I would need to go out of my way to make it work. I just hate it when a battle basically becomes a blood bath since its just one end shooting and charging and mine too.

Its hard since I have my army designed as a kabalite army, I don't want to include Haemonculous coven units, even for me wyches are kind of a iffy unit.

If you don't have the potential of cover, straight kabalites are boned.

The old school standard was that 25% of the table being covered was the minimum. It sounds like your store is pretty impoverished in the table/terrain department.

You could shell out some money and buy a bunch of MDF buildings if you wanted. Optionally you could always take up a collection to buy the group more terrain. Finally, you could look up some tutorials and make some yourself. If you're the one donating terrain to the store, you'll be able to get folks to thank you for putting your army in a better position!

Gotta agree with Jim on all accounts. Proper terrain (or lack there of) makes or breaks this game, and assault in particular needs terrain to be a functioning element.

I also would recommend investing time and money into the terrain and board side of things as I and many others have done. Its the most overlooked part of this hobby but its critical to a healthy environment.

Yeah thats why its really annoying, none of them really seem to care, although there is terrain, most of it generally just gives it the cover saves here and there, there is little to none line of sight blocking cover, and when I'm against a space marine player using some mounted turret manned by a tech marine, backed by another tau player, I'm basically sol to begin with, much less when theres no cover.

Trying to think a little outside the box here because this doesn't directly refer to cover as such - how about going for a quasi null deployment? If you bought a bastion/bunker/ADL with comms relay and stick some Mandrakes in it, and deploy that at the back end of your deployment zone you have yourself a fairly durable anchor from which to call in your reserves. And anything thats in reserves can't get shot and therefore doesn't need cover. At least that way you get a chance to blow something off the board even if you don't get first turn.

If you feel a unit of Mandrakes isn't enough you could add 2 Ravagers in your corners, that's how I frequently set up and so far I haven't come close to being tabled.

Just a thought!

Back in the day when you could field huge beast blobs (feels like so long ago ), I'd often bring squads of 15 or more kymereas to provide mobile cover for my units that also had the ability to threaten or at least tarpit anything they could charge.  We jokingly referred to these as a "canine defense line".

As of the 7th edition codex, the kymerae's unit size was cut in half, and their save reduced to 5++ (although toughness and cost improved).  This has since become a much less effective strategy, but can still work under the right conditions.

Reavers can also still make a pretty effective screen for larger vehicles like raiders and ravagers.  Do this for any length of time though and you're robbing yourself of a fast and versatile threat, probably the equal of whatever it is you're protecting.

It's a shame screening doesn't really work anymore as it's one of the few strategies that we could use to our advantage.  Since we generally rely on volume of fire overcoming armor saves, and units can only make 1 save anyway, the cover save does very little for most enemies.

We on the other hand need every single cover save we can, and will rarely encounter a ranged weapon that won't bypass our armor.

Yeah, well thats why its iffy, now, I haven't gotten completely destroyed and looked bad, but basically, Kabalites get decimated, scourges mostly do, and the main work literally lies within my Incubi, Drazhar, Archon, and Ravagers, and the rest basically just sits until the reserves are available.

Why do we need cover? Everything is in transports. Just take Raiders, Night shields and jink. Thank you. One common tactic is to place mission marker in the open to deny the enemy any cover...so what's the deal?

And it means that the enemy transports don't have cover themselves. That's great!

CptMetal wrote:

Why do we need cover? Everything is in transports. Just take Raiders, Night shields and jink. Thank you. One common tactic is to place mission marker in the open to deny the enemy any cover...so what's the deal?

And it means that the enemy transports don't have cover themselves. That's great!

We must be playing different games. Our troops and vehicles are all extremely fragile. Our armour saves are, to all intents and purposes, non-existent as virtually every AI weapon in the game bypasses our 5+ (or worse!) armour. Our transports are death traps as we can now be killed whilst still inside them (with no cover save or even the invulnerable save that flickerfields give the vehicle) and if they explode the effects on the occupants are generally even worse than being hit by the weapon that exploded the vehicle! Cover is just about the only thing protecting us from enemy fire and we benefit far more from it than other, sturdier, races.

Jink?

Of course I want to have cover but jinking is always possible.

You get killed by flamers?? I don't get so close that they can use them actually.

I always put my mission markers out in the open to neglect them any cover saves against my dark light weaponry. Say bye bye to your out in the open tanks!

CptMetal wrote:

Jink?

Of course I want to have cover but jinking is always possible.

Jinking also effectively negates the firepower of most of our jink-capable units. Razorwings, Voidravens, Ravagers, Venoms and Raiders all become basically worthless in terms of firepower if they jink. Reavers are probably the only unit that I don't mind jinking with.

Quote :

You get killed by flamers?? I don't get so close that they can use them actually.

I take it you don't play against Heldrakes or anything that is capable of deep striking?

Quote :

I always put my mission markers out in the open to neglect them any cover saves against my dark light weaponry. Say bye bye to your out in the open tanks!

Your opponents use tanks to claim objectives?

My opponents use everything they got. For example guard squats in a Chimäre. I prefer those to not be in cover.

If you jink with a gun boat you still got 95% of your fire power.

And no, you're right I don't face hell drakes that often. Hell hounds get special attention.

The writers of the DE codex themselves stated that the DE defence was supposed to be speed. To simply not be there anymore when the bullets came your way. On a 4' X 6' table with opponents with 48" + range the only real way to escape is often behind LOS blocking cover.
This allows your raiders to not jink and you can set up fire lanes to control the movement on the board ETC. The benefits are many.
In order to never again have to play on boards with only a hill in one corner and a GW forest in the opposite corner, I decided to make my own easy to make, easy to transport set of buildings.

I got the idea from some Blue table painting terrain they made for a shanty town setting. I figured that what better place to round up some easy slaves than a backwards imperial mining town.

So I got these stackable boxes:

www.pandurohobby.no/ArticleImages/1200x1200/264337_01.jpg

Painted them with some cheap acrylic. Used old sprue bits as doors and windows and turned the lids upside down to create "battlements".

Before completion


In use






Not epicly awesome, I know. But the nice part is that they all fit inside each other so when I want to bring them I only have to bring one house with all the other houses inside.

They have saved many a game from being one sided.

This is actually an awsome idea. Very smart and well done

Those bits of scenery you made are great, just large enough to give room to move, and also able to block line of sight, I may need to make some of my own, one guy at my game store does do scenery, he's been playing 40k for I believe he said 20 years, plays for a year, takes like a 5 year break, and so on.

But as for transports defenses, jinking is a possibility, but I prefer not to, I want all my firepower out there and ready, the transport units are weak though, bolter fire can take down almost all of the units in the codex except for a ravager basically, and when it comes to it as well, I don't like all my units starting in reserves, i field some kabalites and scourge, and usually leave the incubi, drazhar, archon, and the like in reserves on dedicated transports, I only have venoms sadly, no raider, a razorwing, and a vrb, but even still, if the enemy starts first any units they can see are basically in trouble, and big trouble at that.

Even if the units didn't need cover, i like to be strategic, moving units in effective spots to win the firefights, instead of cleared board bloodbath type of skirmishes.