Acothyst weapon choices

Hey, guys. I recently came to possess 33 (finecast) wracks; 30 wracks + 3 acothysts. I want to build the acothysts to have some special weapons for if I ever want to drop some more shooting into a squad. Question is this - Build them with 3 liquifiers, or 3 hexrifles? And follow-up question, liquifiers or hexrifles on haemonculi which may or may not be attached to the wracks?

The answer is do not take Acothysts. Ever. Convert them into more wracks.

If you felt the absolute compulsion to take an Acothyst, an Agonizer or Scissorhand would be a better pick. I despise when people ask a question and the people who respond don't actually answer, though, so if you absolutely cannot tear yourself away from giving them a gun, the Liquifier Gun would be slightly more useful than the Hexrifle, in my opinion.

The same holds true of Haemonculi.

The idea wrack build is this: X wracks, no upgrades. Maybe an Ossefactor per 5 wracks, if you have gravy points and nothing better to buy.

Of course, that's just my opinion.

Thanks for the reply - I'm not totally attached to the idea of taking acothysts, in fact I was on the fence to begin with. What about liquifiers for the standard wrack squads? I've been thinking of it, since my local meta has a lot of cover-hugging tau and craftworlds and guard players, though the cost is quite high for low strength...

I've got 10 wracks with 2 ossefactors I'm meaning to use for scalpel squadron.

Liquifiers are just awful. Never take them, is my advice.

I do take ossefactors on my wracks, but they're the first thing to get cut if I need points.

I see, thank you. What is, in your opinion, the primary and best usage for wracks? I've heard people say things like tarpit, camp objectives, etc.

They are by far my favorite unit in the book, but I know they're not as good as they used to be.

Toys wrote:

What is, in your opinion, the primary and best usage for wracks?

Helping to hold down your shelf perhaps!

More seriously, the Scalpel Squadron can have some value, with some potential victory points, although the value there is 90% from the Venoms.

If selected from the Codex then once they have Furious Charge they do reasonable damage to T3 targets on the charge. Otherwise they are a mediocre assault unit with no shooting ability and no objective secured.

Kantalla wrote:

If selected from the Codex then once they have Furious Charge they do reasonable damage to T3 targets on the charge. Otherwise they are a mediocre assault unit with no shooting ability and no objective secured.

Are you saying that the covens PfP doesn't do them any good? I'd have thought early fearless/fear would help them out more than the standard book's PfP rules.

Toys wrote:

Kantalla wrote:

If selected from the Codex then once they have Furious Charge they do reasonable damage to T3 targets on the charge. Otherwise they are a mediocre assault unit with no shooting ability and no objective secured.

Are you saying that the covens PfP doesn't do them any good? I'd have thought early fearless/fear would help them out more than the standard book's PfP rules.

The covens PfP table helps them do basically the only thing they're fit to do, in my opinion: Hold an objective in your deployment zone, going to ground in cover any time they're targetted.

Fearless keeps them from running away. Unfortunately they're not even that good at that, since they can't get objective secured.

Wracks are best taken in a formation. Scalpel Squadron (to give you potential null deployment) and occasionally Scarlet Epicureans.

They can do good work holding down objectives in your DZ, and can do occasional work holding down opponents in melee (less tarpit, more speedbumps, unfortunately). They can also do well mopping up critically wounded enemies. (The number of games I've seen won or lost because of a single Space Marine is a very high one...)

The problem with wracks is mutlifaceted: They lack objective secured, which makes them poor at objective acquisition. The change to poison between 6 and 7th editions made them less effective against the bulk of units in the game, making them not as good in assault. Finally, if you take them in a Dark Eldar detachment, they eat up valuable Elites slots, which would be better served by taking Grotesques, Incubi, or Trueborn.

BetrayTheWorld wrote:

Toys wrote:

Kantalla wrote:

If selected from the Codex then once they have Furious Charge they do reasonable damage to T3 targets on the charge. Otherwise they are a mediocre assault unit with no shooting ability and no objective secured.

Are you saying that the covens PfP doesn't do them any good? I'd have thought early fearless/fear would help them out more than the standard book's PfP rules.

The covens PfP table helps them do basically the only thing they're fit to do, in my opinion: Hold an objective in your deployment zone, going to ground in cover any time they're targetted.

Fearless keeps them from running away. Unfortunately they're not even that good at that, since they can't get objective secured.

Fearless stops them going to ground as well.

As for the Acothyst, at most I'd give him a pistol. Gives him some ranged ability without costing him the extra attack for 2 close combat weapons.

The Scalpel Squadron is the best way to run Wracks but as others have said thats mostly for the Venoms and the D3 victory points for First Blood. Beyond that tarpiting shooty units and objective grabbing is about it.

Imateria wrote:

Fearless stops them going to ground as well.

Oh yeah, good catch! In that case, it's probably better to use them with the normal PfP table then, so that they can at least get the good cover save on top of their FnP. Better to not have to take the leadership test at all than to autopass it.

But yeah, wracks aren't good anyhow. Basically the only reason to take them is because they're required for the scalpel squadron, and even that formation isn't so hot simply because we don't have anything else good to pair it with for null deployment, really.

Accepting their limitations as a unit, do the other Wrack formations from the Coven book offer anything of interest? Scarlet Epicureans and Covenite Fleshcorps, possibly using the Haemonculus as a Warlord for the automatic traits offered? I can't quite figure out the Epicureans, but the Fleshcorps seems terrible. But I'm a newbie, hence the question.

General consensus seems to be that they're not worth it, which is a shame. They did some okay work for me a while back against Tau as a cheap(ish) way to slice up fire warriors, and I actually won that game due to a single surviving wrack holding his point in the center of the board.

What if I wanted to stack -Ld bubbles with them? If I were going to, they seem like the cheapest available source of the -Ld debuff. Is that a viable strategy, or more of a gimmick?

EDIT:

Nightgaunt wrote:

Accepting their limitations as a unit, do the other Wrack formations from the Coven book offer anything of interest? Scarlet Epicureans and Covenite Fleshcorps, possibly using the Haemonculus as a Warlord for the automatic traits offered? I can't quite figure out the Epicureans, but the Fleshcorps seems terrible. But I'm a newbie, hence the question.

I'm given to understand that most players think Fleshcorps is useless, which I'm kind of inclined to agree with. A lot of people seem to think that Epicureans are sub-par, but I'm pretty interested in them since you could conceivably get a +3 PfP boost going on them really early. My experience with wracks is pretty limited though, so add salt.

Toys wrote:

I'm given to understand that most players think Fleshcorps is useless, which I'm kind of inclined to agree with.

I've used this formation against IG.

I turbo'd basically the entire army (lots of Reavers and 4 Raiders) on turn one onto one flank, avoiding about 2/3 of his firepower, and hoping to pin him down and prepare for some turn 2 combats and medusae face melting fun.

I had the audacity of believing it could actually hold out against a handful of flamers and some lasguns, of all things, and was proven wrong.

I will likely never play Wracks outside of the Scalpel Squadron formation, and even then if I would only do that if I really want a null deployment option, and I would only bother if it was with Corsair allies.

In such a case, I'd probably not take regular Dark Eldar at all - relying purely on the single Scalpel Squadron formation allied in with a large Sky Burners coterie for reliable turn two beta striking. I would buy them Ossefactors if points allowed. Make no mistake, the Wracks are tax to the special rule that I'm after for this type of list, and they're still not good models.