Are Wych Cult lists dead?

First time poster. I have been out of 40k for awhile now. From the posts I have read I have seen a lot of Wych hate. Wych Cults were the army that originally got me into Warhammer 40k. Are they dead with the current codex? I see a lot of lists that rely on Venoms builds/raiders/ravagers or scourges but is the Wych Cult CC list dead?

Yes it is,

Though Reavers are still good, and we have some good CC coven units

If you ran a reaver list with a couple of wych units that'd work out fine

Yeah if you go min-squads in vehicles you're only paying a 10pt premium overall compared to 5 kabalites in the same spot. You're actually downgrading in terms of effectiveness but whatever.

The Fall of Cadia apparently will have wych cults arriving later in the campaign. So if you want to wait an unknown amount of time (prob a year out or so), they may become something between "not horrible" and "ok"

But seriously, they are OK, just worse than everything else. If you can play them well, and your opponent isnt playing net-lists of top-tier armies you should be fine. But we really dont need any further handycap beyond "we are DE"

They aren't bad, just not what they used to be. Overwatch kills them and ignores cover, but 'ally' in a couple of heami from the coven supplement can help them. Shadowseers can help them as well to stay alive. Go min squads backed up by reavers and stuck haywire grenade on hexatrixes and go balls out

They are bad, I have charge into a unit of fire warriors, some how survived the overwatch and then LOST COMBAT! Against fire warriors!

Which mathematically wasn't really surprising (both models wound on a 4+ and get 4+ saves, Wyches get twice as many attacks per model (and had FNP at the time) but fire warriors are cheaper and you lose a few (usually more than a few) on the way in)

They no longer have the tarpit capability to remove attacks. They just have a 4++.
A Hekatrix with Haywire grenade and agonizer is 50 points were a 3 man reaver unit with cc is 63 points.

The one thing wyches do better than any other unit in our codex is die horribly.

They are the worst unit in our codex
Mandrakes aren't great but they can be useful,
Wracks are more survivable and do way more damage in close combat
Hellions are bad, really bad, but they do more damage in close combat and they move faster and they shoot better.
Voidraven bomber is way overpriced and generally hard to use but it can roast a helturkey with it's void lances and it probably has the best bomb in 40k.
Drazhar is too expensive but he is a beast in close combat.

If anyone can make an argument for a decent use for wyches I would love to hear it.

All that being said, a formation for them could easily make them worth while as others have pointed out.

I am still going over the codex and strategies but I feel that if you did a classic styled Wych Cult army you would have to incorporate things to cripple the units you would be assaulting as much as possible to give your Wych's the advantage. Eg. using Mandrakes to soulblaze a unit before assaulting them. (granted this is a very minor thing that with a low chance of causing wounds but every little thing helps I suppose when you play DE) If you are going up againt the few things that aren't fearless the armor of misery with phantom grenade launchers may also help. That being said as stated there are better units to assault with currently. Just trying to find some sort of advantage lol. Seems like a lost cause atm. Shame to have to shelf all of my old Wych models

Yeah I do wonder whether people are expecting Wyches to do more than they can. Maybe throwing a single unit of Wyches at another unit is the wrong way to do it...

Would Wyches work if you had 3 or 4 min squads in Venoms and go around ganging up on stuff. First squad charges in and eats the overwatch (if there is any), then the remaining 3 units bundle in and mob the unit to death.

Then, they repeat that until they're all dead or the game's over.

Question. Can you consolidate back into a vehicle after combat? If so, could you park right in a unit's face (or Chain Snare it out of cover), mob the unit with a bunch of high I attacks so they can't fight back before they're dead and then hop back into your paper boats (or position the boats so they provide cover for a turn).

I havent played that long so take my input with a grain of salt.

In the games I've played my wyches have done two good things in total. One was to eat some fire from the enemy that allowed my Reavers to not die. The other thing was was to deep strike behind enemy lines and hold some objectives. But honestly a unit of Wracks would have done it better.

And "Models can only voluntarily embark or disembark in the Movement phase." to the question above.

Lelith/Succubi is ok. Wyches are bad, just a wound shield. Very limited offensive power. Hekatrix, the new Succubus of old, is still the only damaging model, but this time around doesnt have good option of Punisher and drugs are random, cant dispense them.

In 5th edition they had decent option of taking very cheap venom blade 2+ or power spear (cheap AP3 +1 Strenght) but that was taken away with new codex, as well as nets that stolen atacks. So you are stuck with expensive Agoniser option if you want to do any damage with the squad itself. Wych Weapons are plain idiotic, giving rerolls for chosen models atack, in an age where rerolling buffs for entire units and armies are distributed with abundance. They also have AP5 on them, showing how much current author of the codex knew about unit and how it is supposed to be used.

Even further nerfs for squad that was borderlining oblivion.

Upgraded version, bloodbrides, does nothing to aleviate squad weakness, buffing the least potent regular S3 atacks, while losing ability to contest objectives with objective secured squads.

So yes, they are very bad. Use, if you need 10pts wounds for Succubi and Lelith, and dont have points for something better, like Grots. At which point you probably sould rewrite the list, but whatever, you have the option.

For the last time @Seshiru: Wyches are not the worst unit in the army. Bloodbrides are.

@Ynneadwraith Venoms should never be that close to their target. As for piling on: 11.6ppw. So long as grotesques are that undercosted you're wasting your time. As for your question: No. The only unit in the game that can do that is the serpent formation Harlies have.

amorrowlyday wrote:

For the last time @Seshiru: Wyches are not the worst unit in the army. Bloodbrides are.

@Ynneadwraith Venoms should never be that close to their target. As for piling on: 11.6ppw. So long as grotesques are that undercosted you're wasting your time. As for your question: No. The only unit in the game that can do that is the serpent formation Harlies have.

I stand corrected.

You can use Wyches as Count-As Lhameans (from the Archons Court), and although they are squishy as all heck, they CAN put out a lot of hurt on a charge (2+ Poison and IDs on 6's).

Otherwise they can be used to collect dust on a shelf. That is their best use at this time

I love how I am the only one who likes them. :-D Taking them to a mini tourney on sunday. :-P

I mean we all have our little blind spots . how do you feel about hellions or am I the only one who has a build for them?

Actually I dont hate them as much as most people and use them in KRP formation from time to time with Archon shooting Animus at the enemy. They can get scary with all the bonuses and the HnR combined with 2-shot assault guns. They just cant get stuck in combat. Although I like beastmasters (as in the dudes, not monsters) bit better. Hellions just need to either DS or arrive from reserves. They are very dependent on PfP. Even more than Wyches.

The 14-24" charge puts them in a good position of actually get the charge when they want it, while they soften the target unit by a bit of poison @18''. Just dont put them in front of any transported assaulters. :-D

I too, prefer the beast master. As a beast Type himself, he isn't slowed down by terrain and you can use him as a good short range shooting unit I guess. But let's wait what the campaign is bringing us

Haha, my weakness is for the beastpack. Still occasionally trying to make them work, but any combat multiplier you put with them would be better placed with Grots. As you said, we all have our blind-spots

Dead? Dead like absolutely no one uses them regularly..probably close to the truth.

As troops they are to points expensive and fragile for their own damage output. The only success I've ever had with them was taking large squads in raiders to hide succubi or a hekatrix with agonizer. This was in a very friendly match against a new grey knight player at the time.

I've always wanted to try a beast pack but, it seems the nerf they received killed the more effective builds and the legit models have the same problem as do court of the archon. Expensive unless you counts as or convert. Sucks, the sculpt for the khymerae looks great.

I wonder if the real question is, are wyches useful and when?

I personally no longer use them, loved them in days gone bye, but those days went bye bye.

I have been thinking about them in a new light though, as a frontline screening unit paired with a second raider one can get the raider with splinterracks and warriors into position and then move the raider filled with wyches so that it can potentially and easily multi-charge anything that would threaten to charge the raider filled with warriors since the buggers should at this point be about 11-12" away to use rapid fire adn are likely to go boom in the next enemy shooting/assault phase.

from here the unit is forced to overwatch on the wyches. tactically this requires a third unit to actually finish the buggers off in CqC, something mobile and evil that you could technically have moved into position along wiht the one unit of warriors and unit of wyches.

grotesques come to mind for this role, as do wracks and reavers bouncing in and out of combat.

for me thought, the kings of needing a screening unit would have to be harlequin troupes.

in a different light, per turn a unit of ten warriors usually maxes out at either 20 shots in the shooting phase (no upgrades), OR 20 attacks in the assault phase.

a unit of ten wyches gets 10 shots in the shooting phase PLUS 30 attacks in the assault phase minus bloody overwatch losses...

still, they could use poisoned attacks or rending to be effective.

to work around these issues, shadowseer's can access telepathy: Dominate will cancel out overwatch, invisibility is invisibility and probably more useful elsewhere.

alternately you can just slap a banshee mask on an autarch and multicharge your heart out agains things that cant shoot overwatch allowing your real threats in the door. This of course is in my books what I like to call cheating (aka using regular eldar).

Well now that the door is open...

Divination- you know how everythign has ignores cover? well, dark eldar should have it, they don't but slap perfect timing on a unit and all of a sudden it gets kinda scary for a turn.

precognition can turn your frown upside down if you slap it on a clown, or in this case a unit of wyches. 30+ rerollable attacks have got to hurt something, provided its under T6...

and now the icing on the cake, Misfortune. bam, semi-rending wyches! hell, everything else that hits the affected unit too!

and i suppose santic daemonology can increase that 4+ invulnerable to a 3+ invulnerable. Go a step further and all of a sudden through hammerhead your unit of wyches now has 30+ S5-7 (+1 furious charge on turn 4 and +1 for combat drugs) attacks on the charge with a 3+ invulnerable save, combined with some of the other psy-powers mentioned above (specifically the whole rending thing) and they all of a sudden look less shelf worthy

With all the posts I have been reading in other forums and the ones posted here I have attempted to think of Wyches in a new light. I have been thinking of trying them in a close combat style hammer and anvil approach. With their 4+ inv in combat they make for a great anvil unit that can tie up a unit in order to have a second unit charge and tear them to pieces. You could also use the combat as a screen for raiders/venoms/ravagers that are there for tank hunting. This is all just theory of course
Need to play test.

It doesn't work. You still take 2-3 wounds, deal maaaaaybe 1, lose combat, break, get swept. This is consistent.

Will of Asuryan

oh, adn since wyches have a reputation of being bad, people will not see this sort of thing coming.