1500 Start Collecting and grotesquerie

After seeing the Start collecting formation, I had an idea on what you could do with that.

Purge Coterie
Archon w/ shadowfield, agonizer, hwg 130
blasterborn in venom 180
6 reavers w/ arena champion, agonizer, 2 CC's, 2 heat lances 181 points
1 raider w/ dark lance, Aethersails

Purge Coterie
Archon w/ shadowfield, agonizer 125
blasterborn in venom 180
6 reavers w/ arena champion, agonizer, 2 CC's, 2 heat lances 181 points
1 raider w/ dark lance, Aethersails

Grotesquerie
4 grots w/ abberation, scissorhand 160
4 grots w/ abberation, scissorhand 160
Haemonculous 70 points


Idea here is to stick an archon with each unit of grots, and have them go in the raiders. With agonizers, the archons can hurt just about everything that the grots can. For vehicles, send the squad with the hwg archon. The entire list is really mobile due to transports or jetbikes, and everything hits hard, and has a bunch of anti-tank from PE reavers and the grots. Archons can tank some shots with the shadowfields and hand out PE to their units once they, and the grots, start munching enemies

thoughts?

Cut the hwg and one Arena champions Agonizer and Give each Archon a Soul trap and give the haemonculus either the sump for access to more rampage in your rampage filled units, or the vexator mask so that if you get into CC against a character who is faster than your archon and would probably kill the Aberration, you can force them to be swinging much later, giving you a fighting chance to kill them before their initiative step. Don't forget that those archons will wound marines on 3's and get rerolls once the Archon is strength 5.

Is the soul trap really worth it? The Archons would need to kill two sergeants to have enough strength to reroll, and by the time he gets in that many challenges, the game is probably over. As for the relics on the Haemy, he hits like a wet noodle in combat normally, so rampage won't do much, and is there really enough I8+ really hard hitting characters to justify gettingthe mask for the haemy?

I agree with most of your line of thinking here, but: Why would they need to be initiative 8+ to justify the mask? The mask makes anyone in a challenge with him go at -5 initiative to a minimum of 1. What this generally does is make whoever is in the challenge go AFTER all the grots, which gives the grots a chance to wipe the unit and subsequently kill the character in the challenge before he whacks your haemonculus.

ah, that makes sense.
So would dropping the lances down to dissy's, then giving the mask to the haemy make sense, or should I find another place to drop points?

The only reason I recommend the mask is cutting the Agonizer and hwg frees up 30pts, and 2 soul traps are only 20pts, and I don't see a better use of that remaining 10 pts.

You can't really afford to drop any anti-tank from this list.

Also, just so you're aware, as of the recent "Draft" FAQs, you may not be able to start the grots in the raiders. Might have to start on the table and embark first turn. I'd have to go back and look at the wording, but I think it uses the term "faction", of which I think coven formations may be their own faction. I don't really know, they're getting stupid with the FAQs. Be aware.

Mkay. Maybe drop an arena champion agonizer to a powersword for the mask?

As for the faction thing, I doubt that anyone would say that you can't have suppliment units in your transports, as they aren't battlebrothers, but the same stuff.

Cool, as for the transports thing the allies matrix chart very clearly reads that detachments from the same faction treat each other as battle brothers, but there is no supporting textual rules that say as such, so we are at odds as to correct raw.

No, the FAQ has nothing to do with whether or not they're battle brothers. Basically, the FAQ says that you can't start one detachment's units in another detachment's transports, even if they're battle brothers. They CAN embark in them. They just can't DEPLOY in them. They're trying to stop unintentional things like cullexis assassins in drop pods and such.

The faq says nothing about detachments related to this particular question. It talks about battle brothers in relation to this particular issue. This CREATES the crisis of: are factions battle brothers with themselves? Because if so different detachments of the same faction are restricted due to being battle brothers.

The FAQ has EVERYTHING to do with them being battle brothers.

I think GW intention is clear, they don't want IC from a faction to deploy in the vehicles of another faction (in our case Eldar or Harlies) but I seriously doubt they consider Coven units in the same way. At least, that's the general concensus at my FLGS.

But it's not clear if that's actually the case or not. For instance, they made nids NOT battle brothers with genestealer cults, and it would make sense that they wouldn't want White Scar space marines in Ultramarine transports, but they're technically both from the same book, but likely not from the same detachment. So where is the line drawn? I've seen this argument played out before, and I recall that it ended up being assumed that units from the same codex could ignore it, SOMEHOW. But I don't recall how that conclusion was reached. It had to do with wording from the main rulebook. But I DON'T recall if it included armies drawn from supplements.

On the surface, if you just look at the allies matrix and the FAQ, it LOOKS like you can't have troops from 1 detachment start in transports from another detachment AT ALL, even if they're the same exact codex.

Exactly. And until I read otherwise that is the RAW my play group and the local events I TO play under.

Wait, WHAT are you saying is the RAW? That they can't start in other transports?

Yep. If you were to take a grotesquerie and a cad nothing could start the game in one of the grotesque raider except that unit of grotesques and potentially their covens haemy. I'm fully certain the finalized IC portion of the BRB faq will resolve this tho.

The Allies page of the main rulebook clears this up IMO.

In the box with the Allies matrix it points out that different Armies of the Imperium are different factions, so no Blood Angels starting in Chimeras for example.

It also says "In the case of codex supplements, the Faction of all the units described in that publication is the same as the codex it is a supplement of." Therefore, Haemonculus Covens units are Dark Eldar.

The Levels of Alliance heading includes "The Allies Matrix below shows the levels of alliance between units that have different Factions in the same army."

Putting those together, I take it that Dark Eldar, due to being the same Faction, do not count as Allies with other Dark Eldar, so have no restrictions due to the Battle Brothers FAQ ruling.

The exact same chart that you are referring to clearly shows that units with the same faction treat each other as battle brothers, thus the kerfluffle over Genestealer Cults. Furthermore there is no such thing as being treated as the same army as something else in this game as whatever you field shares the same army by definition even if individual units within that army have come the apocalypse alliance levels, and IA11 stipulates that Corsairs are not only desperate allies within the cotorie, but that different detachments are always desperate allies with each other, suggesting that there is a norm that corsairs are breaking. Therefore EVERY unit in EVERY detachment has an alliance level with each other, and Units from different detachments with the alliance level Battle brothers can not begin the game in each others transports, potentially excepting IC's since the unit both has and doesn't have an alliance level with its detachment's transports.

These 2 pieces of evidence are not conclusive by any means, but are certainly strong enough to stand on enough to force a TO decision or an invocation of rule 0.

For the record, the only thing currently stopping people from deploying in battle brothers' transports is the "first draft" FAQ. None of the books actually say anything to that effect. So it's possible this dung won't stick to the wall.

True! Thanks for the general internet voyager caveat

So, how does this look?

Purge Coterie
Archon w/ shadowfield, agonizer, hwg 130
blasterborn in venom 180
6 reavers w/ arena champion, agonizer, 2 CC's, 2 heat lances 181 points
1 raider w/ dark lance, Aethersails

Purge Coterie
Archon w/ shadowfield, agonizer 125
blasterborn in venom 180
6 reavers w/ arena champion, power sword, 2 CC's, 2 heat lances 171 points
1 raider w/ dark lance, Aethersails

Grotesquerie
4 grots w/ abberation, scissorhand 160
4 grots w/ abberation, scissorhand 160
Haemonculous w/ mask 80 points

Operating under the assumption that supplement units can start in main codex transports.
Are there any obvious flaws other than lack of AA?

I like it! I might field this, but with my initial remarks as I don't particularly care if I have to start out of the raiders or not. On first blush it looks both hard hitting and hearty enough to survive swing back from the most common armies (Marines of some variety). This is probably what I will recommend new players tbh because it's probably as point and click as a dark eldar army is going to get.

Only obvious flaw is lack of any sort of real protection against psykers, and I'm mostly concerned about force on that end, as the solution to any other psyker problems with this sort of list is going to be: punch them in the face. Repeatedly.

I also see super-heavy walkers and other medium infantry+ assault troop options like wulfen, Dreadknights(Multiple), etc. being a problem. Basic walkers not so much.

I'm not to sure about the second Archon. It seems a pretty big tax to get PE while a Succubus does a better job at babysitting Grotesque.

True, but you're ignoring the fact that this lets one just take trueborn with no warrior tax.

But it doesn't give you ANY obsec in your army either. Obsec is probably the most game-winning special rule I've used for the past couple years.