Mandrakes vs. Wyches

Since the topic was brought up in the last splintermind I would like to put myself to it. In a comparison, the wyches would have to succumb to mandrakes considering what they can do on the field. Mandrakes are cheap and can infiltrate to snatch objectives.

What do you think?

Top 5 worst

1. Bloodbrides
2. Hellions
3. Mandrakes
4. Wyches
5. Wrack/Voidraven

They're on the same level of useless in my opinion

I don't think the voidraven is useless. It's overprized, but will be be able to achieve something on the battlefield. We can't say the same thing for the other choices.

Mandrakes are not useless, small squad is a decent thing. Definately better then wyches.

5 mandrakes with 2+ cover save dont cost that much and have AP4 attacks. That can be super annoying for the opponent and he would have to waste ignores cover stuff on them wich is just a bonus for us because meanwhile other units dodge those shots.

I've had many games where they just dont die and their shotting can pick off valuable targets, also its dirt cheap and really isnt competing anything in the elite slot in my experience

Wyches/blood brides have no purpose what so ever, they aren't good in close combat or shooting or holding objectives.

Wracks are also bad, so is Drahzar.

In the meh category (they are usable but not great) we have Hellions, and void ravens
Hellions might be better if we had a jump or bike HQ, void ravens are just more expensive than they should be.

More and more I'm thinking Ravagers should be in the meh category as well.

Seshiru wrote:

More and more I'm thinking Ravagers should be in the meh category as well.

When considering internal balance within our codex, Ravagers are good.

When considering external balance against other codices, you're right: They're "meh".

The problem is that so many people want to play pure DE without allies. When that is the case, you're using ONLY internal balance as your barometer of what's good and what isn't. So, in that scenario, Ravagers are great, because they're better than our other options.

I can see the ravager being dispensible for the right battles. Though if it would be brought against my orcish horde army, it would just be seen as a weak piece of metal with petite lances. Here something more versatile like the Razorwing might be useful. In the latest batrep, two Razorwing killed off nearly 40 orcs in one turn.

Does your ork list have no vehicles in it? If not, can you post a picture of your ork horde army with a sign that says "Hellraiser's Army" in the picure?

It might have

I really love wracks. It is bad that we are used as the beating bags though the pain is delightful.

This is like "Who is better at driving? Ray Charles or Stevie Wonder?"

Even within the context of just our codex, Ravagers have been very meh. I usually end up killing vehicles with other units after the ravager tries and fails to do anything. I have actually on multiple occasions fired at a vehicle with a triple lance ravager, had it fail to do anything at all, and then used mandrakes to wreck it (granted they were armor 10 in the rear).

Seshiru wrote:

Even within the context of just our codex, Ravagers have been very meh. I usually end up killing vehicles with other units after the ravager tries and fails to do anything. I have actually on multiple occasions fired at a vehicle with a triple lance ravager, had it fail to do anything at all, and then used mandrakes to wreck it (granted they were armor 10 in the rear).

Anecdotal evidence isn't really evidence. Just an FYI.

If, within our codex ravagers aren't good, what are you saying is better? That's what internal balance means. It means, compared to our other options, ravagers are X.

Then X equals bad, decent, good, awesome, etc. It's not really about the actual PERFORMANCE that you've personally experienced with a Ravager. Anyone can get a cold streak of dice rolls or whatever. It's about what you should EXPECT the ravager to do based on it's stats, in comparison with what you should EXPECT other units from our own codex to do based on THEIR stats. Anecdotal evidence, while many people attempt to use that to guide their own behavior, most often leads people down bad roads that they forever justify with a story of "that one time when I did it X way, and rolled a 1 out of 6 chance to fail and failed."

Without dropping any names, a prominent poster here, who I believe to be a pretty intelligent player, fell into such a trap recently. They nearly gave up on a strategy after using it in only a single test game because they rolled the 1 thing pre-game that wouldn't help them, instead of the 5 others that WOULD. That's a 17% chance, and yes, you should design your list with redundancy so that when you hit that low number, you can recover from it, but it doesn't mean you give up on good strategy because a small percentage of time it can let you down(Which ends up being percieved as a higher percentage of the time because people tend to remember when things DON'T work far more often than when they DO).

I feel like ravagers get a lot of that negativity from people who WANT to play pure DE, and it's a fairly simple reason, I think. A box of scourges is $25, vs. a Ravager that's $50.00, while both are roughly the same points in game. So one is more accessible in real life. Then, people buy ravagers in small numbers, like 1 or 2, and when they suffer the inevitable bad roll or two while having so few ravagers, they feel like ravagers let them down. But the same people are more than willing to run far greater numbers of things like scourges, warriors with blasters, etc because they're more affordable dollars-wise. And those numbers, because they're running them in greater numbers of units, have a tendency to average out.

Well, in order to best see how ravagers function, they require the same philosophy. I know many will balk at the idea of owning $300.00 worth of ravagers, but I've found that it's at exactly those types of numbers that ravagers are most effective: With redundancy and overkill.

6 Tri-Lance Ravagers at 1850 points. That's what I recommend for almost ANY pure DE list. Season to taste with additional haywire scourges and caltrop reavers.

Now, if you are willing to play using allies, I wouldn't bother recommending ravagers in most cases. Eldar Hornets are far and away better in almost every situation. 80 points instead of 125 for 4 S8 shots instead of 3. No question, hands down, hornets get my vote. But THAT is external balance, and isn't what we're debating here, as allies brings up the inevitable question: Why should I run any DE detachments at all?

6 Ravager for 1850 points? And I'm here considering to buy two additional Ravager to use three at 1500.

CptMetal wrote:

6 Ravager for 1850 points? And I'm here considering to buy two additional Ravager to use three at 1500.

In a pure DE force? Yes, absolutely 6. If not, what are you doing with all your points? Buying warriors with blasters? LMFAO!

As I said, that is true for MOST pure DE lists. That number would potentially change if someone was including expensive Coven formations like a CTC or Grotesquerie in their list. But absent coven formations, I have trouble imagining a whole lot of situations in which I wouldn't recommend 6 ravagers at 1850.

Even WITH coven formations, in a pure DE army, I'd probably make appropriate adjustments and try to get as close as possible to 6 ravagers in the list based on what slots I had available after taking the necessary coven formations.

If someone is taking a CTC and Dark Artisan in a tournament format that only allows 3 detachments, for example, then the max number of ravagers would be 3, and that's how many I'd try to fit in, in most cases. Now, with formations as expensive as the DA and CTC, I might not be ABLE to fit 3 ravagers in, but I'd try.

Essentially the basic building block for a Dark Eldar army would therefore look like this:

Combined Arms Detachment
Lhamaean in Venom with Splinter Cannon (75)
5 Kabalite Warriors in Venom with Splinter Cannon (105)
5 Kabalite Warriors in Venom with Splinter Cannon (105)
Ravager with 3 Dark Lances (125)
Ravager with 3 Dark Lances (125)
Ravager with 3 Dark Lances (125)

660 points

Take two of those and you come to 1320 points, which doesn't leave much for other units if you are playing at 1500, or say 1850.

That is a pretty solid starting point to take on most armies out there. You could swap some of those Ravagers for Scourges and Trueborn, but those options are a bit less efficient in most cases.

Kantalla wrote:

Essentially the basic building block for a Dark Eldar army would therefore look like this:

Combined Arms Detachment
Lhamaean in Venom with Splinter Cannon (75)
5 Kabalite Warriors in Venom with Splinter Cannon (105)
5 Kabalite Warriors in Venom with Splinter Cannon (105)
Ravager with 3 Dark Lances (125)
Ravager with 3 Dark Lances (125)
Ravager with 3 Dark Lances (125)

660 points

Take two of those and you come to 1320 points, which doesn't leave much for other units if you are playing at 1500, or say 1850.

That is a pretty solid starting point to take on most armies out there. You could swap some of those Ravagers for Scourges and Trueborn, but those options are a bit less efficient in most cases.

Exactly. That's what I'd suggest as the basic building block for a DE list in most cases. 2 of those at 1850, use the remaining 530 points to add your own twist to it.

Even though 530 points isn't a lot by itself, since you've basically got just about everything you need from your core that you've already purchased, you have a lot of freedom to mix it up and experiment with that 530 points, so you can actually create a lot of variety with it.

For instance, you could add an allied seer council to the mix:

1 Farseer Skyrunner w/Singing Spear & Spirit Stone of Anath'Lan 135
1 Farseer Skyrunner w/Singing Spear 120
5 Warlock Skyrunners w/Singing Spears 275
TOTAL: 530

Or, if you didn't want to use allies, there are plenty of DE variations for you to play with. And if you find that the core list limits you too much and stops you from taking something you want, like a corpsethief claw formation, for instance, it's easy enough to drop 1 Ravager to make room for something big like that. It's modular. But in doing so, I'd probably personally purchase the haywire blaster option on the CTC to replace the dropped ravager. Just a personal preference for facing opponents on foot, particularly if I'm using the CTC.

Kantalla wrote:

Essentially the basic building block for a Dark Eldar army would therefore look like this:

Combined Arms Detachment
Lhamaean in Venom with Splinter Cannon (75)
5 Kabalite Warriors in Venom with Splinter Cannon (105)
5 Kabalite Warriors in Venom with Splinter Cannon (105)
Ravager with 3 Dark Lances (125)
Ravager with 3 Dark Lances (125)
Ravager with 3 Dark Lances (125)

660 points

Take two of those and you come to 1320 points, which doesn't leave much for other units if you are playing at 1500, or say 1850.

That is a pretty solid starting point to take on most armies out there. You could swap some of those Ravagers for Scourges and Trueborn, but those options are a bit less efficient in most cases.

When I see this, I am thinking about all the fun things you could field instead of this list where three glasscannons clot up half the list. For example one hundred angry orcs with a painboy. You are going to have a hell dealing with all of them with two kab venoms. Considering the fact that three ravagers will kill six orcs/turn. Pew pew pew.

I find your post misleading to the public.

seshihuru wrote:

Even within the context of just our codex, Ravagers have been very meh. I usually end up killing vehicles with other units after the ravager tries and fails to do anything. I have actually on multiple occasions fired at a vehicle with a triple lance ravager, had it fail to do anything at all, and then used mandrakes to wreck it (granted they were armor 10 in the rear).

Tend to agree here.

Had to do some math,

3 Ravagers working together all firing at a single vehicle (using 12,12,10) will reliably kill it at 74.26% (2 is only 46.76%)

As soon a 4+ cover save is thrown in (either through jink or ruins) it takes 5 Ravagers (61.02%)

3 grots have a 69.03% chance in CC (assuming no strength buffs).
5 Mandrakes have the exact same chance turn 4+ (since this thread is about Mandrakes not sucking after all)
1 Tallos is 55.92% chance

2 haywire scourge units 91.72% with no cover, 39.26% at 4+ cover

@Betray
You ask what's better but you want it in the context of your one way to play dark eldar (the 5th edition style skimmer spam list), which you say is the best that dark eldar have and you follow it up with dark eldar just aren't that good right now. Have you considered your play style just isn't good right now? And that Dark Eldar actually have alot more to offer than your vision of max venoms and ravagers? Don't get me wrong for a new player that's a simple easy list to play but once you start going against top tier lists I don't think it pans out and it's seem pretty limited in the strategies you can use with it (at least for me, maybe you have a bunch of tricks I haven't considered other than just trying to out shoot your opponent).

And btw I don't bother with Allies at the moment, and I put blasters on my warrior squads because it is point for point the most effective shooting weapon in our codex against tau suits. It's also quite good against marines, Eldar and necrons.

Hellraiser wrote:

Kantalla wrote:

Essentially the basic building block for a Dark Eldar army would therefore look like this:

Combined Arms Detachment
Lhamaean in Venom with Splinter Cannon (75)
5 Kabalite Warriors in Venom with Splinter Cannon (105)
5 Kabalite Warriors in Venom with Splinter Cannon (105)
Ravager with 3 Dark Lances (125)
Ravager with 3 Dark Lances (125)
Ravager with 3 Dark Lances (125)

660 points

Take two of those and you come to 1320 points, which doesn't leave much for other units if you are playing at 1500, or say 1850.

That is a pretty solid starting point to take on most armies out there. You could swap some of those Ravagers for Scourges and Trueborn, but those options are a bit less efficient in most cases.

When I see this, I am thinking about all the fun things you could field instead of this list where three glasscannons clot up half the list. For example one hundred angry orcs with a painboy. You are going to have a hell dealing with all of them with two kab venoms. Considering the fact that three ravagers will kill six orcs/turn. Pew pew pew.

I find your post misleading to the public.

The 36 splinter shots from the venoms with the 10 splinter shots from the warriors and the 9 lances combine, however, to kill 20 orcs per turn, all while being fast enough to kite the orcs, zooming around the table, out of melee range while the orc's poor leadership leaves them prone to running off the table in even larger numbers per turn.

I find your post misleading to the public.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Seshiru wrote:

Had to do some math,

3 Ravagers working together all firing at a single vehicle (using 12,12,10) will reliably kill it at 74.26% (2 is only 46.76%)

As soon a 4+ cover save is thrown in (either through jink or ruins) it takes 5 Ravagers (61.02%)

3 grots have a 69.03% chance in CC (assuming no strength buffs).
5 Mandrakes have the exact same chance turn 4+ (since this thread is about Mandrakes not sucking after all)
1 Tallos is 55.92% chance

2 haywire scourge units 91.72% with no cover, 39.26% at 4+ cover

@Betray
You ask what's better but you want it in the context of your one way to play dark eldar (the 5th edition style skimmer spam list), which you say is the best that dark eldar have and you follow it up with dark eldar just aren't that good right now. Have you considered your play style just isn't good right now? And that Dark Eldar actually have alot more to offer than your vision of max venoms and ravagers? Don't get me wrong for a new player that's a simple easy list to play but once you start going against top tier lists I don't think it pans out and it's seem pretty limited in the strategies you can use with it (at least for me, maybe you have a bunch of tricks I haven't considered other than just trying to out shoot your opponent).

And btw I don't bother with Allies at the moment, and I put blasters on my warrior squads because it is point for point the most effective shooting weapon in our codex against tau suits. It's also quite good against marines, Eldar and necrons.

Ok, I don't know what made you think to single me out to try to attack my positions on unit selection, but pretty much everything you're assuming here is wrong. Let's go through all your points, one by one:

1: AV 12+ vehicles are certainly not the "average" vehicle AV in 40k. Front AV 11 is far more common than 12+

2: Yes, strong infantry units have a better chance to kill a vehicle with front/side/rear AV of 12/12/10 far easier than a ravager in shooting. However, you have to get that melee unit IN CC to begin with. That takes time, typically to the tune of 2-3 turns. That's 2-3 turns of risk as well. In 2-3 turns of shooting, that ravager is going to outperform a melee unit against the vast majority of vehicles(The vast majority of vehicles are NOT AV12+.) This is assuming your opponents aren't turbo-boosting their AV12 skimmers over to your grotesques on turn 1, and if they ARE, then WHY BOTHER WITH A TACTICS FORUM?

3: I have long held that scourges are better at taking out AV12+ vehicles than Ravagers are. They're our best option for it, as I've always said, but Ravagers are just so much better at killing literally everything else that they're simply more versatile, and therefore more useful most of the time. I generally do a 3-to-1 ratio of ravagers to HWB scourges. The scourges focus on the high AV stuff, ravagers on everything else. But if I don't know what I'm going to be facing and I have to pick 1 unit between a Ravager and HWB Scourges, Ravager every time due to versatility.

4: Hey, if you want to put blasters on warriors, be my freaking guest. But maybe if you weren't so anti-ravager, you wouldn't NEED blasters on your splinter fire troops. My 36" dark lances work just as well at killing Tau suits as your 18" blasters, and I'm not spending points making my units inefficient in order to do it. I can shoot at what I'm good at killing without having to worry that half of my weapons are being wasted by my target selection. While my ravagers fire at Tau vehicles and/or battlesuits, my warriors can fire at pathfinders where the splinter fire's AP5 actually makes a difference! So don't you come around here trying to piss in my cheerios and call it buttermilk, ok?

Is 'Mandrakes look cool' a valid tactical argument? I hope so because that's why I will eventually field them. Although, wyches also look cool. And wracks. And hellions. And especially Incubi.

...probably good that I'm half in this for the hobby aspect.

Mandrakes.

Mandrakes while not being great can still do stuff... like infiltrate, outflank, 2+ cover, OK shooting and CC. They are a cheap, annoying backfield threat.

Wyches cannot do anything and that includes tarpitting.

betraytheworld wrote:

The 36 splinter shots from the venoms with the 10 splinter shots from the warriors and the 9 lances combine, however, to kill 20 orcs per turn, all while being fast enough to kite the orcs, zooming around the table, out of melee range while the orc's poor leadership leaves them prone to running off the table in even larger numbers per turn.

And that is at full BS, assuming all orks are in open terrain, within 24" inch range, IGNORING the fact that I can field a unit of 30 that will profit from FnP.

This claim is outrageous!

Why is this heading off topic that fast?

Can a mandrake and a witch unit even be compared properly? They have totally different roles. Anyway, what a mandrake is supposed to do is:
Outflank or infiltrate, annoy units, be cheap, be difficult to remove
I think they are fairly good at those things as long as the enemy isn't coming too close with flamers or ignore cover weapons. But if you take multiple 3 guy units: let him shoot them! The more units you have, the more burn markers you can toss around.

I like them. I even once managed to kill a serpent in close combat with them. Pushed the enemy into a corner so he couldn't escape.
Yes. It's anecdotal. But I like them. I just hate the models. I use spirit hosts or whatever you call them from a vampire courts army.

Mandrake are really cheap for what they do and dont need a transport. If you want either them or wyches - thats mandrakes.