Eldrad Death Masque

Hi all,

I just ordered the Death masque to benefit from the huge discount on Harlies models.

I dont know Eldrad at all. I made a few research to find spoiler stats and I must say I'm curious to play him as we dont play psykers in my meta (Ork, Necron, Blood angel, Dark Eldar) other than my lone shadowseer. I'm curious what a lvl4 psyker can do!

What do you think of him?

Thanks,

He's the price of 2 farseers without being 2 farseers. He has a slightly better save and can cast slightly better. He has eternal warrior so he's ok in challenges.

Like Teenage Angst insinuated, 2 Farseers would be better than one Eldrad. This big daddy psyker has a number of pros and cons.

If chosen in "The Coherian Host" formation, he becomes an Eternal Warrior. The Coherian Host is a bit sucky, though. Half of the host is made of cool units: Inriam's Spectre, Eldrad and the Blades of Fate. The other half is sub-optimal.

Eldrad is highly likely to get Invisibility when you roll on telepathy. His staff is a 3+ melee weapon, so I presume that means he always hits on a 3? It also comes with AP3, fleshbane and Force to boot. This is a nasty combo for killing MCs or normal ICs but the caveat is the one attack on his profile, boosted to 2 with his witchblade or shuriken pistol.

My Eldrad model is typically a proxy Shadowseer, but one day I'll give him a run!

I disagree on the whole. Being a level 4 psyker with 4 rolls on the same table greatly increases the reliability of getting a key power.

The Red King wrote:

I disagree on the whole.  Being a level 4 psyker with 4 rolls on the same table greatly increases the reliability of getting a key power.

This. I play Eldrad regularly for just this reason. I use him when I have a strategy that really hinges on me getting a specific power, like gate of infinity or invisibility. Since he gets 4 rolls on a single chart, he has a far better chance of rolling a specific power. So, 66.66% of the time, he will get you the power you want. I tend to use him with at least 1-3 other farseers for redundancy, for the few times he doesn't get it, with plans on how to use the farseers in both success and failure to roll the proper powers.

If you don't want that many psykers, with 4 rolls on the same chart, if you don't get the power you're looking for, you also know what powers you WILL have, so it's easy to plan alternate ways to use him as long as you choose a chart that has multiple useful powers. Generally, if you plan 2 units for him to join(1 if he gets X power, and 1 if he gets Y power) that specifically utilize each power set efficiently, he's always worth it.

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

Quick Example:

Eldrad takes 4 Rolls on the Sanctic Daemonology Table that includes the following powers:
Gate of Infinity, Hammerhand, Sanctuary, Purge Soul, Cleansing Flame, and Vortex of Doom
The last 3 are witchfires and therefore universally useful.

In this instance, you could take the following 2 units to utilize whatever he may get:

1 unit of 5 Wraithguard with D-scythes and a wave serpent.
1 unit of 10 Khymerae from a Dark Eldar beastpack and a Succubus w/Archite Glaive

If you get gate of infinity, you can join the wraithguard and teleport them around the table spraying things with ignores cover D weapon templates(plus whatever witchfires you got). If you don't get gate of infinity, the wave serpent is there to transport your D-scythes.

If you get Hammerhand, that makes the khymerae S6 with 4 attacks on the charge. That's 40 S6 attacks on the charge for the whole unit. Eldrad and the succubus are on foot, but the khymerae move 12" as beasts, so you can sort of slingshot them by stringing out the unit to keep the characters in coherency, then charging ASAP. Since charging is up to 12" of extra movement, and a successful charge ends up including additional pile in moves as well(2 per round), this means the characters can be slingshotted a surprising distance forward(up to 24") in a single round. The succubus is also very nasty with hammerhand and AP2.

Sanctuary is also really helpful for the Khymerae unit, since it improves their invulnerable save from 5+ to 4+, Succubus' 4+ to 3+, and improves Eldrad's invuln from 3+ to 2+.

If you instead get gate of infinity and put Eldrad with the wraithguard, the Succubus and Khymera are still a good unit, because you can still use the Khymera to slingshot the Succubus into combat, and 10 khymerae still generate 40 S4 attacks on the charge.

This is how I design lists. No matter what I roll, I like it.

That's a great point of view with plenty of valid examples set out. Eldrad may need a run in my next game (at the expense of 2 shadowseers).

Awesome replies thank you. I'll give him a try.

Beginner question here: did someone ever considered placing him in a grotesquerie unit?

What would be your objective in doing so? If hammerhand: They don't really need it because their weapons are poison already, so they don't benefit that much from it. I guess invisibility might make them hard to kill, but I think there are probably better ways to apply Eldrad, unless I'm missing something. Is there a particular set of powers you were thinking about for the grots?

I'm just curious, I never played psykers other than a lone shadowseer. A few ideas:
- shriek is quite short range, with grotesquerie he will be closer
- dominate, shriek and terrify benefits from freakish spectacle. Dominate could be useful to lock a target in place for the grotesques
- prescience, shrouding or invisibility for his unit of grotesques
- to protect him he benefits from T5 and is protected from challenge by the abomination.

Ah well he only have 1 attack in his profile, it's a shame with these weapons.

Eldrad is pretty awesome, and a Telepathy Farseer (including Eldrad) synergize very well with a Grotesquerie.

I've had some very good results in the past taking out particularly tough nuts with a grotesquerie protecting a Void Dreamer, and it seems like a big hoss psyker like Eldrad could do a similar job. You'd want to pick up a defensive power (particularly one that can protect the unit from GMCs) to be able to keep them alive. (A Void Dreamer can just purchase a Scatterfield, but Eldrad has a pretty good chance to pick up any power he fishes for, if you need Invisibility or an invulnerable save.)