Are Kabalite Warriors worth taking?

So I'm guessing that most of you veterans are going to be taking brace of pistols and jetpacks for your reaver troops?

Not sure what to do with reaver bands exactly. Jet packs with assault weapons seems fun, but I don't think that would be my first option. Maybe pistols if I take melta. Lasblasters otherwise.

I think min units for scoring and being annoying is a good option. Las blasters would be my weapon of choice.

One thing that I am curious about is corsair reavers (maybe with special weapons) in objective secured, scouting falcons might be worth considering. They give you a very manoeuvrable/durable and have solid firepower, and can get some solid work done.

stang wrote:

So I'm guessing that most of you veterans are going to be taking brace of pistols and jetpacks for your reaver troops?

That's the first thing I intend to try with them. I'll have 3 5-man squads with 2 Fusion guns, 3 Brace of Pistols, a Felarch and Jetpacks.

They'll be in a Sky Burners Coterie (so, reroll reserve rolls and scatter just 1d6"), deploying via deep strike.

My aim is to land them within melta-range of a vehicle, or else within 12" of a juicy target. They'll shoot it and then use Reckless Abandon plus their Jetpack move to retreat 3d6+6" away (hopefully getting them in or behind cover some).

If you're interested, here's my entire list:

Spoiler:

Anyway, my main dilemmas with Reavers are:
- Whether to take 5-man or 10-man groups. As you can probably tell, I much prefer MSU, but with the limited troop space in each Coterie and being unable to pick the same benefit twice, I'm wondering if I should include at least some larger squads.
- Whether to take Jet Packs or transports. Jet Packs are cheaper and give the model more mobility when it's on the field, but transports actually bring some firepower for their points and would give models much more accuracy on the turn they deep strike (since their transport will only scatter d6", and they can then disembark up to 6" to correct for that).
- Whether Pistols and Fusion Guns have sufficient range. I can't remember if I've brought this up already, but I'm uncertain of the ability of Reavers to get back into range after retreating up to 3d6+6".

When I manage to get a game, I'll let you know how it goes and whether or not my concerns were substantiated.

- I assume mobility is key for troops, with firepower being a secondary bonus. In fact, firepower can always be filled by the other slots whereas securing objectives can not be. MSU troops also have a smaller footprint than fat transports.

You guys certainly know better though and yes, would be great to see how your games go with them.

I myself am still stuck between MSU jetpack and Falcons.

stang wrote:

- I assume mobility is key for troops, with firepower being a secondary bonus. In fact, firepower can always be filled by the other slots whereas securing objectives can not be.

That's entirely untrue - objectives can be captured by any unit (save for Malevolents). However, a troop choice with useless weapons can't force an enemy troop unit/vehicle off an objective or take out a key vehicle elsewhere. Likewise, a dead troop unit can do nothing whatsoever.

Put another way, this isn't 5th edition anymore and troops now need to pull their weight like any other unit. ObjSec is sometimes useful, but not nearly useful enough to justify taking worthless units. Moreover, ObjSec is really only a tiebreaker - if the enemy also has an ObjeSec unit on an objective then you need to be able to remove their unit - not just get to the objective.

stang wrote:

I myself am still stuck between MSU jetpack and Falcons.

It might depend somewhat on the rest of your list, but why not have some of each?

Apologies for dredging this topic up again, but I wanted to run something by you guys.

So its a given when (if) we buy Kabalites, we always take transports, because they need to get in range to do anything. What if we simply have a wwp as our transport? You can get fairly "cheap" HQ as the caddy.

Its actually pretty cute from my experiences with it. You get pinpoint arrival, with well over 40 shots, almost anywhere on the board, with Pfp already starting to kick in.

I rocked a squad of 20 with a Syrabite and 2 Splinter Cannons. 170 points. Plonked them down by an infantry squad, and killed the entire thing. They then ate 3 full flamer shots the next turn, with a total of 35 hits, and a multitude of lasgun fire.., and still didn't die. FNP does wonders when you have 20 bodies. 9 Kabalites still walked onwards to kill his second squad and take the objective.

Its probably never going to catch on, but I wondered if anyone's played 20 man squads before?

hydranixx wrote:

So its a given when (if) we buy Kabalites, we always take transports, because they need to get in range to do anything. What if we simply have a wwp as our transport? You can get fairly "cheap" HQ as the caddy.

Its actually pretty cute from my experiences with it. You get pinpoint arrival, with well over 40 shots, almost anywhere on the board, with Pfp already starting to kick in.

I rocked a squad of 20 with a Syrabite and 2 Splinter Cannons. 170 points.

Firstly, that squad you're talking about is more than 170pts.

20 Warriors with no equipment are 160pts. With 2 splinter cannons and a Sabarite they're 200pts.

Then, once you add the Archon w/ WWP (and no other gear), you're looking at ~300pts.

So, that's ~300pts to get 49 poison shots at 12". Is that worth it, do you think?

I mean, for 315pts, you can get 3 units of Kabalite Warriors in Venoms. They put out 36 poison shots at 36", and 66 poison shots at 12". Moreover, they can split their fire against up to 6 different targets, capture up to 6 objectives and are vastly more mobile.

hydranixx wrote:

They then ate 3 full flamer shots the next turn, with a total of 35 hits, and a multitude of lasgun fire.., and still didn't die. FNP does wonders when you have 20 bodies. 9 Kabalites still walked onwards to kill his second squad and take the objective.

Please don't take this the wrong way, but it sounds like you were *really* lucky.

Those 35 flamer hits average 15 dead kabalites (and that's with 5+ FNP). Even if you manage to tank a couple of those wounds with the Archon, that's still 13 dead kabalites before lasguns or other shooting.

Furthermore, this is against some of the least effective shooting in the game. Consider what happens when your massive blob of warriors gets hit by a Wyvern or Thunderfire Cannon, or by a Dreadknight's S6 AP4 torrent flamer, or by a unit like scatterbikes that puts out a ton of S6 shooting.


The final thing I'll say though is that my issue with Kabalites isn't that I have to take a transport to get them into range safely. My issue is that I have to take a crappy unit of Kabalites to get access to a useful gun-platform transport. Hence, I'm more interested in finding a way to eliminate the Kabalites, rather than the transport.

Firstly, that squad you're talking about is more than 170pts.

20 Warriors with no equipment are 160pts. With 2 splinter cannons and a Sabarite they're 200pts.

Then, once you add the Archon w/ WWP (and no other gear), you're looking at ~300pts.

So, that's ~300pts to get 49 poison shots at 12". Is that worth it, do you think?

I mean, for 315pts, you can get 3 units of Kabalite Warriors in Venoms. They put out 36 poison shots at 36", and 66 poison shots at 12". Moreover, they can split their fire against up to 6 different targets, capture up to 6 objectives and are vastly more mobile.

hydranixx wrote:

They then ate 3 full flamer shots the next turn, with a total of 35 hits, and a multitude of lasgun fire.., and still didn't die. FNP does wonders when you have 20 bodies. 9 Kabalites still walked onwards to kill his second squad and take the objective.

Please don't take this the wrong way, but it sounds like you were *really* lucky.

Those 35 flamer hits average 15 dead kabalites (and that's with 5+ FNP). Even if you manage to tank a couple of those wounds with the Archon, that's still 13 dead kabalites before lasguns or other shooting.

Furthermore, this is against some of the least effective shooting in the game. Consider what happens when your massive blob of warriors gets hit by a Wyvern or Thunderfire Cannon, or by a Dreadknight's S6 AP4 torrent flamer, or by a unit like scatterbikes that puts out a ton of S6 shooting.


The final thing I'll say though is that my issue with Kabalites isn't that I have to take a transport to get them into range safely. My issue is that I have to take a crappy unit of Kabalites to get access to a useful gun-platform transport. Hence, I'm more interested in finding a way to eliminate the Kabalites, rather than the transport.  [/quote]

I was aware I had the points wrong just as I logged off, my bad for that. And yes, you're right, I did get quite lucky, so the result is by no means indicative of what we'd routinely come across.

I do, however, think that most nasty strength 6 guns would flatten the venom(s) just as fast as it would flatten the Kabalites. I normally see scatter lasers on small jetbike squads, so they can split their fire to take down most of these 3 venoms just as quickly. If they want to shoot scatter lasers at 8 point models, I'm cool with that.

As for the templates, again you're right. They'll die in their droves if caught. Careful planning in the turn or two before they arrive 'can' change things up though. If you can simply shake vehicles that have template weaponry, you're fine. It's not reliable though, so I agree with you.

I think the triple venom option is quite a lot better in most scenarios. But this build does have a few merits.

If you wanted the venoms so badly, would you consider taking them as left over FA choices, and missing out on extra Kabalites entirely? Assuming you're going RSR.

TLDR: trying to make Dark Eldar units large is rarely ever worth it, even if I like trying to justify it :L

hydranixx wrote:

I do, however, think that most nasty strength 6 guns would flatten the venom(s) just as fast as it would flatten the Kabalites. I normally see scatter lasers on small jetbike squads, so they can split their fire to take down most of these 3 venoms just as quickly.

Well, bear in mind that each Venom also has passengers - so they'd also need 3 additional Jetbike squads to kill those. Also, it's probably easier to hide a 5-man squad than it is a 21-man squad.  

But you're right in the sense that S6 fire is pretty devastating to venoms as well. Even so, I'd much rather my points were more spread out. I mean, even if I do end up playing against MSU Scatterbikes, it's not like my chances of survival will be worse.

hydranixx wrote:

If they want to shoot scatter lasers at 8 point models, I'm cool with that.  

That seems a little disingenuous given that there are 200pts worth of 8-pt models in that unit (which also includes 1 18pt one and 2 23pt ones).

hydranixx wrote:

If you wanted the venoms so badly, would you consider taking them as left over FA choices, and missing out on extra Kabalites entirely? Assuming you're going RSR.

Probably not, simply because my FA slots already tend to be pretty full. I have 3 squads of 3 Reavers with Cluster Caltrops and Heat Lances (or Blasters), A Razorwing and 1-3 Scourge squads.

However, I've quite often taken a 10pt Lahmaean to access a Venom in the HQ slot (which, for obvious reasons, is far less contested   ). It usually depends on whether I want to take a RSR detachment or 2 CADs.

hydranixx wrote:

TLDR: trying to make Dark Eldar units large is rarely ever worth it, even if I like trying to justify it :L

To be honest, I feel this way about the units in most armies. Even outside of DE, I'd rather have lots of small units than a few large ones. Although, I'd say DE probably have the fewest reasons of any race to use large units.

The Shredder wrote:

210-man squad

That's the biggest squad I've ever heard of

Lord_Alino wrote:

The Shredder wrote:

210-man squad

That's the biggest squad I've ever heard of

Whoops!

I think I'd originally put '20-man', then realised that the archon would make 21. Unfortunately, it appears I somehow forgot to delete the '0' when I added the '1'.

Before you read the rest of my post,  consider i had mistakenly read only the first page before i typed it out. The example below demonstrates one way how Warriors can be played to their full potential, where they're in a winning situation. I'd like to add that in addition to comparing the potentials of troops, we should be comparing what we want from our troops vs what they deliver.  Compare when you would want to take Kabalites and see what a SM player would take to accomplish the same thing.  Are there rolls beyond Obj. Sec. that we want our troops to do and not other units.   In summary, the question we have been missing is are Kabalites worth taking NOT are they a worthier, more versatile Troops choice supported by better formation/Detachment rules .

Well I'd just like to point out, dark eldar have never been about being objectively stronger than anything, but rather, it's about their potential versus the enemy's potential.  Consider this mathhammer scenario:  17 DE Warriors in 5+ cover compared to 10 Marines in the open.  10 marines comes to slightly more than 17 Warriors in points.  Everyone is firing 1 shot from his weapon.  Marines will inflict about 23.704 points of damage in a round of shooting, DE will inflict about 26.446 points of damage.  If DE have 5+ FnP then marines only inflict about 15.803 points of damage.  All I'm saying is that it is possible to play the game to your advantage to minimize your vulnerabilities and capitalize on your strengths.  Dark Eldar have never been an auto-win button.  It's my hope they never will be.  But although it's difficult perhaps even unfairly difficult to win with Dark Eldar, it is not an insurmountable challenge and it is one every true Dark Eldar player relishes.

Third edit:  I feel dumb brining this up after the discussion of Corsairs.  I think our best option is to just play unbound and kill or out-maneuver all of your opponents Obj. Sec. Units.   Unbound you don't have to take an HQ choice, you don't need to take Troops, you can take aS many MSU as you want regardless of force organization slot, and the available detachments and Formations for pure DE suck baboon butt anyway, so you're not missing much. Keep in mind I'm a purist when it comes to mixing codices.

Hello, chaps.

Just thought I'd update my thoughts on Kabalite Warriors slightly. Recently, I used a 1500pt list that comprised Corsairs, DE and a Grotesquerie (it was originally going to be 500pts of each, emulating SkarredCast, but in the end I wanted more functional stuff). The list was:

Spoiler:

As you can probably tell, it wasn't exactly intended as a competitive list.

Anyway, my opponent (a KDK list) castled up, and I sent virtually everything forward, except for the Balestrikes and Kabalite Venoms. The Reavers took out his vehicles, the Grots, Incubi and Malevolents went after his infantry and various poison weapons killed his Daemon prince and summoned bloodthirster. Meanwhile, one of the Kabalite squads just jumped out to grab the relic.

The thing is, that was the first time Kabalite Warriors had actually felt useful. Not that they did any meaningful damage, but it was quite useful having a couple of 40pt squads at the back to grab objectives (or, in this case, the Relic), whilst my other squads ploughed forward and did the actual damage.

I guess what I'm wondering is whether I'd hate Kabalites less if they were more of a secondary troop choice (a bit like SM Scouts compared to Tactical Marines, I guess). If I had the option of troops like Corsair Reavers for a more functional (but expensive) troop choice (or if wyches were worth a damn), then I might like Kabalites more as cheap objective-grabbers and such.

Although, even then, I'm not sure they'd be better than, say, Corsair Jetbikes in that role. Nevertheless, I thought I'd share this slight revision regarding my thoughts on Kabalite Warriors.

Totally admittedly when shooting at Termagants or Guardsmen or anything else T3/5+ or worse our s1 4+ poison guns aren't as efficient as, say, a bolter.
But that doesn't make them bad at shooting Guardsmen or 'Nid hordes.

Legitimately, when somebody starts unloading a pile of Termagants on the table before a game, I get a trash-eating grin on my face because I get to enjoy tearing them apart with my basic troop choice. (Except for the local guy who runs an invisible/4++/re-roll saves/4+FNP Guardblob with Conclave, but he's a different story)

Kabalite Warriors are pretty darned good all things considered. Cheaper than my CSM Cultists, and much much deadlier on the table.
Yes T3 FNP doesn't sound like much. But if somebody dedicates s6 to shooting Kabalites in cover off an objective, and therefore NOT forcing a Venom/Raider to Jink, should we really complain?

Laughingcarp wrote:

Totally admittedly when shooting at Termagants or Guardsmen or anything else T3/5+ or worse our s1 4+ poison guns aren't as efficient as, say, a bolter.
But that doesn't make them bad at shooting Guardsmen or 'Nid hordes.

Well, yes kinda does.

At the very least, I don't think a firefight with either of those would go in the Kabalites' favour.

Laughingcarp wrote:

Legitimately, when somebody starts unloading a pile of Termagants on the table before a game, I get a trash-eating grin on my face because I get to enjoy tearing them apart with my basic troop choice. (Except for the local guy who runs an invisible/4++/re-roll saves/4+FNP Guardblob with Conclave, but he's a different story)

 

Well, in the case of guardsmen, they're certainly preferable to a parking lot - which is about the only thing I see IG players do these days. Incidentally, want to try Warriors against Leman Russ, Wyvers, Manticores, Chimeras etc.?

Laughingcarp wrote:

Kabalite Warriors are pretty darned good all things considered.

Not really, no.

Laughingcarp wrote:

Cheaper than my CSM Cultists

8pts is cheaper than 5pts?

Laughingcarp wrote:

and much much deadlier on the table.

You mean elite troops have more firepower than Chaos' cannon-fodder troops? Um... good... I guess.

Laughingcarp wrote:

Yes T3 FNP doesn't sound like much. But if somebody dedicates s6 to shooting Kabalites in cover off an objective, and therefore NOT forcing a Venom/Raider to Jink, should we really complain?

A few points:

1) If getting that objective will win your opponent the game then him not shooting the venom is irrelevant.

2) Can he not just shoot both? Or in subsequent turns? Speaking personally, I have more than one unit with S6 guns in my army (albeit only after switching to Corsairs).  

3) Do they really need to dedicate S6 shooting to remove them from an objective? Seems like other weapons could also do the job (including stuff like flamers, which would be ineffective against the venom anyway).

4) The fact that you'd consider this a positive in the first place is very telling.


More importantly though, you seem to have ignored my main issue with Warriors - in that you can't tailor them to a more useful role. Poison guns might be impressive... if their transport didn't completely outgun them. A unit of 5 Warriors gets a piddling 5 shots at 24" and 10 shots at 12". A Venom gets 12 shots at 36". Not only that but it can move 12" and still fire at full BS.

Put simply, I don't need fething poison weapons on my Warriors - my Venoms have that covered. What I need is the ability to take some useful anti-vehicle weapons (not just a single, overpriced Blaster). Or to cover some other role that Venoms can't.

Alternatively, as I said in my previous post, by all means leave Warriors as cheap and crappy - but give me a more useful troop choice as well.

I believe he's saying they're cheaper than cultists because you have to buy the cultist unit at 50 points while we just spend 40 for the kabalite unit. Their inexpensive price point is a good part of what makes them so great. The 5 warriors even do more damage than the cultists.

I'm always hesitant to spend 100 points on a unit that I just want to leave in the backfield sitting on an objective or to throw out in front of a thunderwolf/necron deathstar, but a 40 point unit? Get to it boys.

lessthanjeff wrote:

I believe he's saying they're cheaper than cultists because you have to buy the cultist unit at 50 points while we just spend 40 for the kabalite unit.

Even so, calling Warriors cheaper when you're comparing their price to twice as many cultists seems disingenuous.

lessthanjeff wrote:

Their inexpensive price point is a good part of what makes them so great.  The 5 warriors even do more damage than the cultists.

I'm always hesitant to spend 100 points on a unit that I just want to leave in the backfield sitting on an objective or to throw out in front of a thunderwolf/necron deathstar, but a 40 point unit?  Get to it boys.

And that's fine. The option of a cheap troop choice that's just there to capture objectives (and unlock a Venom) is a great thing to have.

But, again, my issue is that I'd also like the option of doing other things with my troop choice. What if I'm building a more aggressive army and want a troop choice that can actually do something useful on the front lines? What if I want to bring some decent anti-vehicle stuff?

My problem is that Kabalites aren't remotely versatile enough for a unit that's basically our only troop choice.

I think if the Blaster wouldn't be so expensive or if they could take a heat Lance or Haywire Blaster, everything would be fine. Do you want to say that?

CptMetal wrote:

I think if the Blaster wouldn't be so expensive or if they could take a heat Lance or Haywire Blaster, everything would be fine. Do you want to say that?

Honestly, I think they also need be able to take 2 specials per squad (I was wondering about 2-per-5, but I don't know if that would make Raider squads a bit too good).

Especially because Blasters (including those of the Haywire variety) are single-shot hull-point strippers.

Of course. 5 dudes for one special weapon would be great. But put 8 Splinter Rifle and two Blaster in a Raider and it's still a huge waste of one of those. Especially if you bought Splinter racks.

CptMetal wrote:

Of course. 5 dudes for one special weapon would be great. But put 8 Splinter Rifle and two Blaster in a Raider and it's still a huge waste of one of those. Especially if you bought Splinter racks.

I did say 2-per-5, so you'd have 4 Blasters and 6 splinter rifles in the Raider (or 2 Blasters and 3 splinter rifles in a venom).

I suspect Raider squads still wouldn't be worth it, although 6 splinter rifles and 4 Shredders could be amusing.

The Shredder wrote:

4 Shredders could be amusing.

Four of you? Amusing would be quite the understatement.

Oh right, the weapon.
Shredders... Yeah...

In their current incarnation, 4 Shredders in a troops squad, *might* just be cheap enough to afford, and *might* actually give them something interesting against other infantry. At very close range.

I'd love to see it get AP5, or 18" range, or downgrades cover saves by 1 special rule. Or all three. I would pay between 5 and 10 pts for that.

Back to the topic at hand, yeah Kabalites are pretty shifty troops.

Unless you've fit in some means of upping PfP, they're glass almost the whole game. When they get fearless, you can rely on every Kabalite to never run away, but they still die easily. Their weaponry is largely sub-par, because, as the Shredder mentions, their transports generally do it better. Venoms are obvious examples, but even a single raider, with a single dark lance, has the same damage output for tank hunting as a Kabalite squad with a blaster (only 5 pts difference), while being infinitely faster, useful to blocking LOS, and able to carry something we actually want.

What other troop choice do you know that got 1 special weapon per 5 dudes? And how many that for 2 per 5?

CptMetal wrote:

What other troop choice do you know that got 1 special weapon per 5 dudes? And how many that for 2 per 5?

Off the top of my head,:

- Corsair Reavers get 2-per-5. And basically seem like what Kabalites should be.

- I have a feeling SoB (of all things) get 2 special weapons in a 5-man squad (don't know if it's 2-per-5 though).

- Plague Marines, if they count.

- Skitarii Vanguard are 2-per-5, which goes up to 3-per-10.

- Same goes for Skitarii Rangers.

- Eldar and Corsair Jetbikes obviously get 1-per-1 Heavy weapons.

Then you have stuff like IG Veterans, which are 3-per-10 (but 10 is the minimum squad size, so go figure).

Would making it a flat 2 specials per squad (rather than 2-per-5) be any better?

I think 2 special weapons per unit would be good. Would make venom spam even more popular though.

Do we dare for the Skitarii approach? 2 per unit, and 3 per 10 models?

Even then we should probably make both our special weapons better or cheaper.

EDIT - They'd almost have to have a new Kabalite kit available with more of each too, this way.