Corsair love

I've been a little down on the Kabalites lately, finding the choice of "poison or lance" a bit hum drum of late... figured I'd try to have a look at the Corsairs and at least keep it in the family.

Did a 1k game this evening, and had a blast with the new rules. Took the special coterie detachment thing. Went with Survival of Eternal Darkness for the Prince, and a Sky Burners coterie with some bikes (led by a wild psyker Baron), couple squads of reavers with Fusion, a shuricannon-toting balestrike squad, and a couple of Hornets.

Was facing an Ultramarines CAD with a little of everything - Libby and sternguard in a rhino, Captain with biker buddies, melta squad drop pod, and an Iron Rain Speeder, as I recall. Oh, also some LotD.

Bottom of T3 I had an immobilized Hornet, dead cloud dancers, and probably a few Reavers missing. He had 3 marines left on the board.

The shooting is pretty brutal, and Reckless Abandon offers insane mobility. In part a smaller game allows a whole lot of open space to make the best use of that, but even on a 4x4 I can see it letting you run circles. The only charge he was able to pull off was against my Prince/Baron already in combat, and that just ended with some dead marines.

Sigh, it really feels nice to have an HQ that can buy a proper-dangerous weapon.

I was also impressed at how little I had to tote to bring a 1k force to the table... usually it's either extra trays of vehicles, or hordes of bodies for the Nids. The perks just keep coming xD

Seriously though, this army was a breath of fresh air. The DE, for me, have just gotten stale lately. These guys will keep me happy for a while, I think, at least until the new DE book and (hopefully) a fresh set of rules.

I will give Corsairs a go this week as part of my "Last Dance of the Eldar" list. I really like how they can cherry pick certain things from both Dark and Eldar armies, but have a very distinct flavour of their own.

It is cool repurposing my substantial reaver collection to be geared more for shooting. I know scatter lasers are amazing, and they are elsewhere in my force, but I will kit my cloud dancers with splinter cannons and rain death from afar. I have A LOT of old school warrior Splinter Cannons whose barrels I will saw off and stick to the underslung mount of the new reavers.

I have invested in haywire grenades for some outflanking/wreckless abandon shenanigans. The points costs for the grenades was a big surprise, though!

The rest of my force will be made up of Eldar and Harlequin units. I tried to get some DE in there but once Battlescribe showed me some of what was possible with Corsairs, unfortunately I felt: "Why bother?" These Corsair rules are a perfect fit for what I'd imagine a sneaky DE army to be. Outflank is a great rule that all DE raiding units should have.

I've seen splinter cannon bikers used to great effect.

I'm also a huge fan of the shimmer shield. 15 pts to give a whole unit a 5++ save is remarkable.

I have been using Corsairs over DE for some time now.

Even a basic force can surprise other armies. My most often used tactic is to deep strike/outflank as much as possible. Using the Coterie options is fun and I virtually never leave home without one shadowfield and a shimmershield.

I added a few corsair's as allies in my game yesterday, and they did pretty well.

It seems to me that a 1000 pt army of nothing but bikes and jet pack infantry is quite doable, and would be very easy to transport around.  Would it get the job done, though?

It seems to me that paying double points for better armour, a jet pack, and dual shuriken pistols is a far better deal than kabalite warriors, particularly given the option of taking a bunch of fusion guns.

Then there's Scourges vs Baleblasts. Jet pack infantry with five DLs for 10 pts less than jump pack with only four DLs? Kind of a bargain.

Yeah I always take a unit of Splinter Cannon bikes. They work wonderfully. They are cheaper than scatter which is nice. And they are not scatter. So that makes them more fun!

I tend to take 4 Corsair bike units. 1 splinter bike, 2 scatter and one with just twin Shuriken Catapults.