1850 Coven Heavy list

Hi internet people. Was really hoping I could get some critique on a list I put together. Really love Coven units and was trying to make a non poison spam list. Kinda new to 40k after a lonnnnnng hiatus, but play weekly with a Tyrannid, Tau, and Dark Angles army. Love to squish them with a flavourful army. This is what I got.

Total points 1860

Dark Artisan – 400
WS 5 BS 5 S 3 T 4 W 3 I 5 A 3 LD 9 SV 6
Warlord Haemonculus – 145
Syndriq’s pump (can chose fleet, itwnd, poisoned (4+), or rampage
Scissor Hand (poisoned (4+), rending
Wwp
Animus vita

WS 5 BS 3 S 7 T 7 W 3 I 4 A 4 LD 10 SV 3
Talos – 130
Ichor injector (fleshbane, any to wound roll 6 is instant death)

WS 3 BS 3 S 5 T 7 W 3 I 4 A 3 LD 10 SV 3
Cronos – 125
Spirit probe (+1 to fnp within 6”)

Main Force – 445
WS 5 BS 5 S 3 T 4 W 3 I 5 A 3 LD 9 SV 6
Haemonculus-125
Syndrig’s pump
Hex rifle (36” SX AP4 ASSUALT 1, INSTA DEATH ON 6, SNIPER)
Wwp

WS 4 BS 4 S 3 T 3 W 1 I 5 A 1 LD 8 SV 5
Kabalite warriors x 20 - 200
X2 blaster
X2 Splinter Cannon

WS 4 BS 4 S 3 T 3 W 1 I 5 A 1 LD 8 SV 5
Kabalite warriors 5 - 55
Blaster
BS 4 F 10 S 10 R 10 HP 3
Venom – 65
Splinter cannon

BS 4 F 10 S 10 R 10 HP 3
Voidraven Bomber – 160

Razorwing Jet Fighter – 150
Dark Lance x2
Splinter Cannon

Corpse Thief Formation – 585
WS 5 BS 3 S 7 T 7 W 3 I 4 A 3 LD 10 SV 3+
Talos 5x
1 ichor injector
BS 4 F 10 S 10 R 10 HP 3


Basically I have a terribly hard to kill squad in the corpse thief throwing its weight around and causing opponents to react to my movement not the other way around. Trying to wrestle air superiority and fire power with my fighter/bomber. Using Dark Artisan to kill hi priority units (anti-air, psychers, what ever is worrying me) and warrior blob to hold down central obdjectives and support the corpse formation. Then venoms flying around grabbing objectives. This viable?

I was also considering cutting down my warrior blob to give the talos some heat lances.

Welcome to the Dark City!

I'd suggest looking through several of the other list ideas here to get a feel for the typical advice given, the easiest/most legible format to present your list in, and the general feelings on various units in the codex, then try making a list again in a more presentable form, armed with your new information!

Right off the top of my head, voidraven is overpriced for what you get with it, blasters on all warrior squads is inefficient, corpsthief claw is too expensive to NOT get the haywire blasters on them, haemonculus can't take artifacts from the covens book unless the formation is drawn from the covens book, and if it is, they can't take artifacts from the main codex.

Good luck, welcome again, and hope to see more from you soon!

BetrayTheWorld wrote:

blasters on all warrior squads is inefficient, corpsthief claw is too expensive to NOT get the haywire blasters on them

I disagree with both these points,

Mathematically a warrior with a blaster out preforms a warrior with a splinter rifle in most cases (note worthy exception would be rapid fire range against single wound orks or fire warriors, though I don't want to be that close to either of those).
Against just regular marines at rapid fire range the splinter rifle is a very very tiny margin better but at 12.1" - 18" the blaster is far superior. Not to mention the potential instant death aspect (which also can cancel out their FNP if they have it).
Blasters can also mess with your opponents head with they are trying to prioritize, they may jink with their bikes (lets be honest there are alot of bikes in play these days), make bad placements with their 2+ armor guys trying to protect them, think that you are going to go tank hunting (this is actually a bad idea... don't do that with your warrior squad unless you have no choice).

Ever play against tau? You NEED blasters, if you don't have them you aren't going to hurt anything critical like broadsides, stormsurges, riptides, all their T4 multi wound battle suits etc.

You almost never going to have a game where the blaster is a bad choice, the whole army would have to be low toughness, single wound, 5+ save or worse with no FNP for the blaster to be inefficient.

As for the haywire blasters on the CTC, don't take my word for it check out table top tactics with the spider he has been running the CTC with haywire and he did a whole breakdown on how much of a bad investment that has been and the reasons why. In general, you are paying points to trade down.

Seshiru, think about cost, then come again. The blaster is 15 points. For that price you can buy 2 more warriors. So is a warrior with a blaster more effective than THREE warriors with splinter rifles?

Furthermore, if you have mixed weapons in a squad that have different ideal targets, then you're inevitably wasting the potential of whichever weapon group is included, but for which you are not currently firing at their ideal target type. For instance, every time you fire one of these blasters at a vehicle, you're wasting all the splinter shots because they can't hurt vehicles. So you have to view the OVERALL cost of the unit as the cost for that blaster shot, and it's simply not the most efficient way to do things. Ravagers, scourges, and TL blasters on corpsethief claw formations are your best bet for AT while remaining as efficient/competitive as possible.

The blasters are just too expensive. We can get dark lances on better firing platforms and use them at 36" instead of 18" to take care of all the things you'd have used the blasters on.

As for spider, I don't agree with him on some things, and haven't watched his tabletop tactics episode, but I'd imagine what he'd say is that the TL haywire blasters end up killing vehicles fine, but that it stops the corpsethief claw from assaulting as often as it'd like because when the troops disembark from the vehicle they killed, they inevitably move away from the CTC formation. And that's true. I wouldn't recommend firing at a vehicle when you're otherwise in assault range of other stuff. The nice part about haywire blasters is that they're basically like bolters against infantry, so if you're in range of both a transport and a unit of infantry you'd like to charge, shoot your haywire blasters at the infantry and they'll work fine. Or, if you really want to kill what's inside the transport and you're close to it, just assault it and don't fire the haywire blasters at all. The blasters are 24" range, for when stuff isn't close.

My entire point of getting the TL haywire blasters on the CTC is to give the CTC something to do on the rounds when they DON'T have something in charge range. 1st turn with scout, it will allow them to kill a vehicle when they otherwise wouldn't be able to assault anyhow. And often people will be able to avoid assault distance for yet another turn. That's 2 turns where you'll average killing a 3 hullpoint vehicle each turn, when you wouldn't have otherwise been able to assault anyhow, for 50 points.

No, I don't agree with spidey if he claims that's bad.

BetrayTheWorld wrote:

Seshiru, think about cost, then come again. The blaster is 15 points. For that price you can buy 2 more warriors. So is a warrior with a blaster more effective than THREE warriors with splinter rifles?

Actual 3 warriors is 1 point more than 1 warrior with a blaster but I'll let that go.
In the current meta, yes. If large hoards of single wound low armor saves makes a come back then no.
Do the math for the following:
Crisis Suits, Broadsides, eldar jetbikes, Wraith Knights, StormSurge, RipTide, Marines, Fire warriors, etc.

In general you will see that the 3 splinter rifles are better in rapid fire range against 4+ saves and almost the same (but slightly better) against 3+ saves; but then worse at 12.1" to 18" for those same targets and way worse against 2+ saves. Also that doesn't take into consideration the chance to cancel out FNP or cause instant death against a multi-wound T4 model (of which there are a lot)

2 extra warriors would be extra wounds of course, but if you are taking a venom like in the list above you can't actually add 2 extra warriors.

BetrayTheWorld wrote:

Furthermore, if you have mixed weapons in a squad that have different ideal targets, then you're inevitably wasting the potential of whichever weapon group is included, but for which you are not currently firing at their ideal target type. For instance, every time you fire one of these blasters at a vehicle, you're wasting all the splinter shots because they can't hurt vehicles.

Don't shoot your warrior squad at vehicles unless it the only viable target, one blaster isn't that great at killing a vehicle. Shoot at things that the splinter rifle is good at and the blaster is better.
Like Crisis Suits, Broad sides, eldar jetbikes, even GCs if you have enough other stuff to kill them.

BetrayTheWorld wrote:

The blasters are just too expensive. We can get dark lances on better firing platforms and use them at 36" instead of 18" to take care of all the things you'd have used the blasters on.

I wish this was true, ravager end up being a lot more points per dark light shot and we are usually forced to use them to kill vehicles and pop open transports which they aren't the best at, just the best we have. Raiders are even less cost effective (still a really good choice mind you) and also tend to have to support vehicle popping.

But I completely agree with the gist of what I think you are saying and that's don't buy a blaster and take the unit to hunt only things he can hurt, that's just a waste of good splinter fire.

Thanks for the feedback despite my improper write up. I focused on the blasters because the dark angels player is going crazy with terminators and the Tau have allot of 2+ options as well. seemed like I could get value out of them that way and have the ability to take pot shots at vehicles if I really was forced into it (at least intimidate vehicles from blatantly running up the center).

Any opinion on equipping the Talos with heat lances instead of Heywire for much the same reason? Biggest reason I don't go with the Heywire is that my opponents, other then that Tau player, don't have many tanks (SM just got a single land raider so that could be changing).

Also I guess I didn't pick up on the Artifact restriction of the two books so I guess pump is out for my heamy with the warrior squad.

Is bomber really that bad? I added it because there is allot of flyers with the Tyrannids and SM, and im trying to wrestle away sky superiority, I also lovvvvve dropping the bomb on deep striking units as that has won me a few games.

Seshiru wrote:

Actual 3 warriors is 1 point more than 1 warrior with a blaster but I'll let that go.

Oh, you will?!? You're so kind.  

I said it was the cost of 3 warriors because it was super close and that 1 point doesn't really make a difference to the issue at hand. I think 1 point difference is perfectly acceptable rounding when making a point like this, and I'd expect most people to agree. There isn't anything there for you to "let go".

Seshiru wrote:

2 extra warriors would be extra wounds of course, but if you are taking a venom like in the list above you can't actually add 2 extra warriors.

You certainly CAN add extra warriors or use those points elsewhere. Particularly when you're talking about taking 3 blasters across 2 squads. That's enough points for another squad of 5 kabalites, which basically means you trade 3 blasters for 8 splinter rifles and 5 additional wounds.

In lists where people take a single blaster across 6+ units of kabalite warriors, that's enough points to potentially get another unit of warriors in a venom, or even a ravager instead, all while regaining access to 6+ splinter rifles you previously traded away for the blasters.

BetrayTheWorld wrote:

I said it was the cost of 3 warriors because it was super close and that 1 point doesn't really make a difference to the issue at hand. I think 1 point difference is perfectly acceptable rounding when making a point like this, and I'd expect most people to agree. There isn't anything there for you to "let go".

Actually I was just referring to that not being how I want to compare points efficiency for shooting, it's easier to just to the math on your targets divide by the points and compare wounds per point. Then you don't have to account for the extra point and can just do the following:

Vs. 3+
Splinter - 0.0139
Splinter (Rapid fire) - 0.0278
Blaster - 0.0242

Vs. 3+ T4 FNP
Splinter - 0.0092
Splinter (Rapid fire) - 0.0183
Blaster - 0.0242

Vs. 2+
Splinter - 0.0069
Splinter (Rapid fire) - 0.0138
Blaster - 0.0242

Vs. Broadsides
Splinter - 0.0069
Splinter (Rapid fire) - 0.0138
Blaster - 0.0484

Vs. 4+
Splinter - 0.0208
Splinter (Rapid fire) - 0.0417
Blaster - 0.0242

Vs. dude in ruins (assumes ruins in the best save)
Splinter - 0.0208
Splinter (Rapid fire) - 0.0417
Blaster - 0.0121

Vs. WraithKnight
Splinter - 0.0046
Splinter (Rapid fire) - 0.0093
Blaster - 0.0145

You can easily make more comparisons for different scenarios, but as I said the blaster out preforms in a lot of scenarios.

Seshiru wrote:

You can easily make more comparisons for different scenarios, but as I said the blaster out preforms in a lot of scenarios.

Only in scenarios where things have 2+ armour saves, multiple wounds, and cover saves somehow don't exist. All but one of those comparisons assumes no cover save at all, which is actually pretty rare.

Then you have to consider the fact that you can't "look out sir" a guy holding a blaster, and the fact that their transports often get blown up killing everyone, or get damage results or jinking that end up making your blaster useless.

And you have to get almost within rapid fire range of splinter rifles to use blasters at all, so that has to be considered too. Dark lances are universally better, being able to be fired at 36", and thus being a safer weapon to use. Getting within 18" basically means you're guaranteed to be in assault range of anything that doesn't die.

You also compared the splinter fire points using our least efficient method of delivering splinter fire instead of our most efficient method, which those points spent on blasters could most certainly be used for: Dual cannon venoms.

There are so many factors and disadvantages of blasters that you're failing to account for that it's staggering. If you only used splinter fire from our venoms in comparison instead of rifles, that would change the results to roughly just be the rapid fire profiles at 36", double the range of blasters.

Understand the argument I'm making: Not that splinter RIFLES are specifically better than blasters, but that those POINTS can be used to purchase things that are better than blasters, while retaining an extra splinter rifle for every blaster you DON'T buy.

BetrayTheWorld wrote:

Seshiru, think about cost, then come again. The blaster is 15 points. For that price you can buy 2 more warriors. So is a warrior with a blaster more effective than THREE warriors with splinter rifles?

Furthermore, if you have mixed weapons in a squad that have different ideal targets, then you're inevitably wasting the potential of whichever weapon group is included, but for which you are not currently firing at their ideal target type. For instance, every time you fire one of these blasters at a vehicle, you're wasting all the splinter shots because they can't hurt vehicles. So you have to view the OVERALL cost of the unit as the cost for that blaster shot, and it's simply not the most efficient way to do things. Ravagers, scourges, and TL blasters on corpsethief claw formations are your best bet for AT while remaining as efficient/competitive as possible.

The blasters are just too expensive. We can get dark lances on better firing platforms and use them at 36" instead of 18" to take care of all the things you'd have used the blasters on.

As for spider, I don't agree with him on some things, and haven't watched his tabletop tactics episode, but I'd imagine what he'd say is that the TL haywire blasters end up killing vehicles fine, but that it stops the corpsethief claw from assaulting as often as it'd like because when the troops disembark from the vehicle they killed, they inevitably move away from the CTC formation. And that's true. I wouldn't recommend firing at a vehicle when you're otherwise in assault range of other stuff. The nice part about haywire blasters is that they're basically like bolters against infantry, so if you're in range of both a transport and a unit of infantry you'd like to charge, shoot your haywire blasters at the infantry and they'll work fine. Or, if you really want to kill what's inside the transport and you're close to it, just assault it and don't fire the haywire blasters at all. The blasters are 24" range, for when stuff isn't close.

My entire point of getting the TL haywire blasters on the CTC is to give the CTC something to do on the rounds when they DON'T have something in charge range. 1st turn with scout, it will allow them to kill a vehicle when they otherwise wouldn't be able to assault anyhow. And often people will be able to avoid assault distance for yet another turn. That's 2 turns where you'll average killing a 3 hullpoint vehicle each turn, when you wouldn't have otherwise been able to assault anyhow, for 50 points.

No, I don't agree with spidey if he claims that's bad.

Totally agree with you about the blasters on warrior squads.

What about heat lances on the corpsethief formation? I've been trying the on reavers lately and not hating them.

lament.config wrote:

What about heat lances on the corpsethief formation? I've been trying the on reavers lately and not hating them.

I'd lean more towards haywire blasters on the corpsethief because the corpsethief is significantly slower than reavers, and so less capable of ideal positioning for short-range melta. Furthermore, when in the ideal range of the heat lance, using it will often allow passengers of transports to disembark away from the corpsthief claw, out of assault range. Now, the same is true when using the haywire blasters at such a short range, but my point is that I wouldn't generally suggest using EITHER of them at such a short range. If you're close enough to use their melta, you probably should forego shooting and just assault the vehicle if it's a transport. And since you don't generally want to use either one at short range, you'd want to take the one that is best at the longer range, in my opinion.

Against non-transport vehicles, the haywire blasters are more reliable as well.

BetrayTheWorld wrote:

As for spider, I don't agree with him on some things, and haven't watched his tabletop tactics episode, but I'd imagine what he'd say is that the TL haywire blasters end up killing vehicles fine, but that it stops the corpsethief claw from assaulting as often as it'd like because when the troops disembark from the vehicle they killed, they inevitably move away from the CTC formation. And that's true. I wouldn't recommend firing at a vehicle when you're otherwise in assault range of other stuff. The nice part about haywire blasters is that they're basically like bolters against infantry, so if you're in range of both a transport and a unit of infantry you'd like to charge, shoot your haywire blasters at the infantry and they'll work fine. Or, if you really want to kill what's inside the transport and you're close to it, just assault it and don't fire the haywire blasters at all. The blasters are 24" range, for when stuff isn't close.

My entire point of getting the TL haywire blasters on the CTC is to give the CTC something to do on the rounds when they DON'T have something in charge range. 1st turn with scout, it will allow them to kill a vehicle when they otherwise wouldn't be able to assault anyhow. And often people will be able to avoid assault distance for yet another turn. That's 2 turns where you'll average killing a 3 hullpoint vehicle each turn, when you wouldn't have otherwise been able to assault anyhow, for 50 points.

No, I don't agree with spidey if he claims that's bad.

Hi Betray - Spidey here

I understand your reasoning here perfectly, but thought I should chime in to clarify my thoughts. I did indeed run Haywire on the CTC for a while, in fact I ran them at a tournament and found them to be an awful liability, despite actually winning the tournament!

Like you, I initially thought that the haywire would be a good investment in an army that usually struggles with anti-tank. However, in the multitude of games I had with them, I found the haywire decidedly lacklustre. The biggest issue being that you actually DON'T average killing a 3 Hull Point vehicle every turn due to the abundance of cover and or invulnerable saves (Imperial Knights etc). In fact you often do 2 Hull Points, which doesn't even stun your average Battle Company Razorback. Again, it is something that looks very good on paper, but doesn't take into account your terrain or any other factors your opponent might have.

In every instance against armoured walls, I found that you would be better off running the Corpse Thief after your Scout in the first turn to forgo the shooting and become more of a serious turn 2 charge threat.

I have now been using the splinter cannons and found that the CTC can lay serious pain down to bikes and FMC's from the centre of the board i.e. units that are usually too quick for my CTC to catch! Again, if it's an armoured wall, I'm better off sprinting towards them anyway.

This has led me to the conclusion that it just isn't points efficient to equip the CTC with haywire and I instead seek my ranged anti tank elsewhere in the list.

As for the Blaster argument, I've always found them indispensable on warrior units as I never like taking units that are only capable of doing one thing. It's for this same reason that I dislike Haywire Scourge for example. I find that a saturation of Dark Light across the Dark Eldar army, puts your opponent under great strain with target priority and given that the 90pts of saving those Blasters on 6 units of Warriors doesn't even buy you a Dissie Ravager, let alone a Tri-Lance one, I would rather keep the Blasters on the units.

Having said that, I've seen you give some fantastic advice on this forum, I think the above two points are the only things that I would differ with you on.

Cheers,

Lawrence

The Spider wrote:

This has led me to the conclusion that it just isn't points efficient to equip the CTC with haywire and I instead seek my ranged anti tank elsewhere in the list.

That's probably a fundamental difference in how we generally play. I tend to go overkill on anti-tank weapons to get my opponent hamstrung, operating on foot as quickly as possible so that I can press a speed/vehicle advantage afterwards.

Many people want enough AT to kill their opponent's vehicles over the course of a game. I want enough AT to kill my opponent's vehicles in the first 2 turns, so the fact that it ends up putting 2 hullpoints on a vehicle in cover instead of 3 doesn't make a huge difference to me. The hullpoints are still important, and I'm likely not getting something that will do a better job removing them for that 50 points.

The Spider wrote:

the 90pts of saving those Blasters on 6 units of Warriors doesn't even buy you a Dissie Ravager, let alone a Tri-Lance one

This assumes that the person I'm advising has perfect list composition other than the blasters, which isn't the case 90% of the time. I HAVE run into a list before where a guy had blasters on 4 warrior units, and his list was simply so well constructed that I couldn't provide a better recommendation as to where to more effectively employ those points, so I didn't recommend removing them, but that's the exception, rather than the rule. 3 More available points, and I probably would have recommended trading them for a unit of reavers with caltrops.

Most of the time, removing those blasters and getting that 90 points can end up netting us a tri-lance ravager or a unit of scourges after trimming a bit more fat from a list.

The Spider wrote:

I find that a saturation of Dark Light across the Dark Eldar army, puts your opponent under great strain with target priority

I do understand the benefit here against a certain level of player, but a good opponent is going to see through the smoke and mirrors and understand that your dedicated AT are still the more immediate threat to vehicles than single blasters on splinter-armed infantry. And if you're playing an opponent who WON'T see through the smoke and mirrors, let's be real, you probably don't need the mind games to beat them.

The Spider wrote:

Having said that, I've seen you give some fantastic advice on this forum, I think the above two points are the only things that I would differ with you on.

Thanks! I can't say that I've seen much from you, but apparently you're well-known enough to get a few mentions around here, so I'm sure you've got a good head on your shoulders!

If you ever happen to post some of your batreps here, I'll probably give them a watch!

I like the Haywires o nthe Corpsethief claw. the unit kind of already has anti-personell built into its DNA. the weapon gives it what the army lacks: the ability to handle ENOUGH Imperial Knights which you are quite likely to face in a competitive environment.

Vincent Price who i recently played (look him up in the ITC standings) fought me to a tie at Annihilation 4 with three Imperial Knights and three Riptides in his list. The Dark Eldar have few answers that will work FAST ENOUGH. Haywire is reliable and you need an anti-armor element that doesn't miss. The Corpsethief Claw isnt foolproof on missing for sure, but its more reliable Hull Points Eldar units can boast (scourges of course being a cheaper way to get it).

@Betray For sure buddy! Your points make good sense and as with everything, context of lists and meta are always required. I also aim to have my opponent out of their armour by turn 2 onwards, but I still do this by spreading the threat. I liked your reaver example for the saving of points from the warrior blasters. Personally, I would take the Reavers AND the warrior blasters.

@Unorthodoxy Totally get the haywire buzz against Knights pal. It's the very reason that I initially took them, in fact I played my CTC with haywire against a Knights list in a Batte Report and of course, I faced them in the tournament I attended. In fact as and when GW publishes the official FAQs and the ITC then adopts haywire being able to down Void Shields, then I would seriously consider switching back to the haywire, as those bloody shields are SO prevalent in the meta right now!

Nevertheless, I have found the Splinter Cannons to be more effective for me overall. I seek my anti tank elsewhere in the list (usually heat lance Reavers)

Any ways, great talking to you both and see you around in the forums

The Spider wrote:

In fact as and when GW publishes the official FAQs and the ITC then adopts haywire being able to down Void Shields, then I would seriously consider switching back to the haywire, as those bloody shields are SO prevalent in the meta right now!

Yeah, but when those go into effect, void shields will probably quickly evaporate from the meta, as they basically said EVERYHING works on void shields, which makes void shields overpriced.

Void shields should be affcted by all weapons.  Its good enough on its own.

Unorthodoxy wrote:

Void shields should be affcted by all weapons.  Its god enough on its own.

Being effected by haywire, grav, and every other special rule in the game certainly makes them worse. I suppose we'll see how the meta shifts once the rules take effect.

The meta will be to stop using them because unless its godlike, tourney players tend to eschew things.

I've seen a LOT of good units poo poo'd by the interwebz that I have ridden to victory.

My most recent (albeit not Dark Eldar Related example) is my Sisters Repentia unit. I played it 8 times this weekend, won 6 of 8 games, including 5-0 at one event (1-2 in the other).

Awesome sauce, and it was just REALLY good in all 7 of the 8 games. I made a mistake in one of them that cost me most of the unit so there's that... But the interwebz dislikes them.

Void Shields may eventually and quickly fall into that category. It's so good now. Change it and it will still be good. Just not Godlike. it will get put forward more often and it will see less use. Guaranteed.