Wych Cult. What do they need.

Massaen wrote:

Because if you hand wyches a reliable way of dealing with heavy infantry on mass they do the same thing as incubi. Right now wyches do different things

I suppose with different things, you mean "nothing"?
In all seriousness, I think Incubi are dedicated AP2 weapons that should be TEQ killers, while Wyches and Bloodbrides be more a reliable anti-GEQ/MEQ weapon once they are in combat.

Wyches being more cheap and disposable, while Bloodbrides excelling more in the anti-MEQ job and beyond.


Edit: Some additions:
I want to say that, while more attacks and things like shred would certainly improve Wyches, I feel this is like trying to fix a heavily leaking pipe by pouring more into it than could possible leak out.

While this could work, I would rather let them have a distinct battlefield role. We have more than enough anti-T weapons already and we certainly dont have a problems with GEQ either. For all the shooting and damage we have, it are always the enemy armour saves that lower our incoming shooting to a laughable amount of actual damage (just look at our Missiles vs MEQ or Necrons).

So, before overloading everything with new rules, I think we should first start to fix the rules that already exist. We should tackle the real source why we can't get the crippling damage done that we should be able to and in most cases that are enemy saves, not toughness.

Exactly. Let Wyches be cheap AI killers with mass attacks and semblance of defence or a tarpit. Bloodbrides with, say 3 stances should be next step - MEQ/MC/betterAI killers. Incubi - TEQ killers

I still think rending is the fluffiest, most simple way to fix wyches. It would be representative of their ability to find the weakness in enemy armour, which is talked about in the fluff but not currently represented in the rules.

True, but give Rending to basic wyches and the thing you would have to give the BBs would make them either too expensive or too weak again in comparison.

I love the idea behind DE and causing fear. Or shaking the very foundation of an enemies soul. I don't believe our equipment that causes wounds on Ld to be nulled by fearless/ATSKNF. With that if some wych Cult units relied on this strategy it would create a niche. Perhaps Hellions or Wyches once they are in combat.

I agree that Wyches should reduce armour or have a chance to ignore it completely. Maybe on 6s to wound? Lelith herself denies armour at all times due to her skill at exposing weakness in her opponents armour.

Hellions definitely need something. I think they should give them more supporting options. Impeding Line of Sight, reducing the enemies stats somehow (Ld, BS etc). I was looking at possibly buffing allies but that doesn't seem to fit the idea of a Hellion in my mind.

I do have a beef with GW and how they account for points cost. Using 2 characters as an example. Jain Zar is a phoenix lord that costs 200 points. What she does is amazingly redicloud. Lelith Hesperax (nerdcrush) is awesome. And for only 150 points. BUT does she match up with all the crazy abilities Jain Zar has from our kin?

aurynn wrote:

True, but give Rending to basic wyches and the thing you would have to give the BBs would make them either too expensive or too weak again in comparison.

I don't understand. BBs?

BloodBrides I think...

Blaster born?

Oh, well in that case I think a Hekatrix should just be +1A & +1Ld from wyches, and should be priced just like the upgrade for daemonettes to get a seductress or w/e they're called: 5 points.

A 5 point upgrade to have a Hekatrix squad leader would be both affordable and comparitively appropriate when compared to their closest non-faction equivalent in daemonettes.

And since bloodbrides represent entire units of Hekatri, I think the current price of +3 per model for units of bloodbrides is fine. I would, however, make it so that each bloodbride has better weapon upgrade options.

I would agree that while giving rending (bladestorm of the eldar since we should not go tank hunting with wyches even if we did so in 5th edition) would work. But they are used to fightin against limited armour gladiators,so it is less fluffy. To me wyches are horde killers, not can openers and while right now they are sort of defensive in combat they should not be. That said they lose to much before the fight starts and I like the banshee masks, but I think they should not get it, better to make them slightly cheaper. The old weapon rules made more sense, but they need something more. Not counting wounds from overwatch would be a good step.

Hellions need something to distinguish them. I would say give them the old hellglaive back and make the old stunclaw rule a standard. I would even be inclinjed to let the character instantly take a wound when pulled back. Insanely powerfull, probably. But this helps to destroy the deathstars, and might bring back some semblance where it is not just about tooled up heroes and oversized titans?  
Hell not it get's me thinking about wyches having the ability to negate one special rule the enemy has since they trained against everything in the gladiatoral arena. Which would never happen, but it does sort of feel like every codex makes an effort to put more special rules in it.
Bloodbrides with just extra attack and more weapon options sounds ok to me, do not need much special rules over wyches. As I said to much special rules already anyway. Or in a few years they will blow up the galaxy and come with Age of the Emperor since the new players cannot learn the rules fast enough as was the case in Warhammer.


Some ld based stuff that ignores "fearless/ATSKNF" to represent soulsucking instead of being scared sounds really nice as well.

Another idea for wyches could be that for every turn round they are in combat it gets easier for them to kill their opponents. Either by increasing their stats somehow or lowering their opponents (I would prefer the latter). Perhaps call it Death by 1000 cuts or something. This would show not only their ability to outclass their opponent, but show the DE theme of we like to play with our food before devouring it.

What if for Hellions they gave them the old reaver ability of being able to fly through/over units to cause wounds. The old raider chain snares or whatever them and reavers had back in...5th was it? This could make them very useful as I believe they were able to do that even with units that were in combat. This would also show the skill of the Hellions and how they could pluck people from a crowd at high speed.

Maybe a good way to make them useful if to make them do something we lack in our codex and fit their fluff: Kill monstrous creature and gargantuan creatures.

A special rule stating the whole squad can make a single attack (or 2-3 ) with strength = number wyche in the squad.

They are trained to entertain people and I'm quite sure they are used to fight big beasts in their arena.

The fluff for Wyches will never fit their tabletop rules because the fluff is inconsistent as frak.

In the fluff, a single space marine can rip through hordes of tyranids like it's no biggie.
In the fluff a single wytch can mess up a handful of space marines, toying with them in the process.

There's just no way to represent that.

Sure there is: dodge always working and WS5 base.

Wyches used to be a tar-pit unit, and that would certainly be an interesting role to fill, but I feel like it makes Wracks simply poisoned-melee delivery. Which would be fine but I don't see Wyches or at least not Bloodbrides being hesitant to take poisoned weapons. In my fandex I made wyches safer (marginally) from overwatch but not ignores-cover overwatch. I gave Kabalite warriors Precisions Shots so that they can remove that one or two dudes with template weapons and wyches will be fine. If they suffer a casualty or two they'll still murder the unit because once in combat Wyches are way better at melee than any non-melee infantry unit point for point. They also have a rule which makes charging dramatically more reliable (essentially you can count on them going at least 5", max 12"). Other than that I improved Combat drugs, gave them Precision Strikes (less useful on them, to be sure, but if you were to combine this with Hit and Run...), and an extra attack. They may be undercosted in my fan dex, actually.

To balance out the wyches, I would just lower their point cost, and keep the stats. This would make the tarpit strategy viable. With the bloodbrides I would enable more wychgear per unit size and make them slightly cheaper. 4 razorflails and a syren with agonizer would be fun to charge into blobs tarred with cheap wyches.

Reavers are fine at the moment.

With the hellions I would either change their stats to make their battle role distinctly different from reavers. Perhaps make them more shooty? Another option would be to change them from fast attack to troop choice, with a cap on how many units allowed in a list for balance.

I have never fielded beastmasters or their packs so I can't speak for them.

The most obvious one for me like has been previously stated is improved combat drugs and let them pick which drug to apply.

As for fixing wyches, I think allowing you to pick a specialisation for each unit at the start of battle would do it .
For example MC killers, wyches trained extensively in killing the big gribblies in the arena:
+1 to wound and attack against monstrous creatures.

Or the infantry blenders:
+1 attack and shred if outnumbered by enemy infantry in melee.

The 3rd edition Codex: DE had their best iteration. Wyches were elites back then but the generic Wych Weapon upgrades and combat drugs were very cool. I believe a combination of those rules and 5th edition BRB fleet could be returned to them now, even though they are troops, and the game would hardly be broken.

Bile rises when I see Chaos Spawn and Wulfen, for example, are capable of first turn charges. Wulfen, in particular, do ridiculously good things for Space Wolf players.

In the good old days:
Wych Weapons halved the weapon skill of any opponent with a Strength of 6 or less. They were ensnared!
All enemy attacks were reduced by one to a minimum of one. Because they were ensnared!
Combat drug dispensers could be purchased for characters which allowed a choice of drug. Also, even with regular randomly generated drugs, multiple combat drugs could be taken each turn, at the risk of causing overdose on doubles or a certain fataliity on triples.

Wyches in my opinion are either tarpits for MC or infantry killers. I think that they should have a lesser form of bladestorm that gives them ap3 or ap4 when they roll a 6 to wound.

Wych weapons do need fixing to be worth it. I never take them. If I could take 3 per 5 wyches that may be nice, and bloodbrides can all take them. Drugs need to be chosen instead of roll. Keep them basic, maybe 1 drug per unit with no duplicates or you can make them cost 5-15 points and make them really good. There have been many good suggestions here.

Maybe give them a smoke grenade, 1 use per game that if they use on the shooting phase can ignore overwatch when charging? Causes no damage, just negates overwatch.

Rather than a simple fix, like giving them rending would do, I think there needs to be some thought about what role each of our melee options should have.

Talos is a melee monstrous creature
Grotesques are high toughness and good at taking on plentiful poor armour targets
Incubi are specialists against highly armoured targets

Where should our other melee options fit into that?

Wracks could be a fearless tarpit against non-specialists, which would make reasonable sense.

What role do Wyches fulfill with those other options? I can imagine with Rending they would be appreciably better, but still unlikely to be as good as Incubi or even in the realm of being as good as Grotesques. I think they need something like the disarm rule the Avatar of Khaine has, or something of that nature, and a way of negating overwatch at least partially. Without something significant I see my 40 Wyches sitting on the shelf a bit longer yet.

Quote :

Without something significant I see my 40 Wyches sitting on the shelf a bit longer yet.

Run them anyway once in a while. I guarantee you your opponent has never seen them before and will underestimate them so much you'll win. Wyches are one of those units where the reputation precedes them.

You can't underestimate wyches... they suck that badly!

Kantalla wrote:

Rather than a simple fix, like giving them rending would do, I think there needs to be some thought about what role each of our melee options should have.

Exactly, too little do most people think about actual gameplay.

Kantalla wrote:

Talos is a melee monstrous creature
Grotesques are high toughness and good at taking on plentiful poor armour targets
Incubi are specialists against highly armoured targets

Where should our other melee options fit into that?

Wracks could be a fearless tarpit against non-specialists, which would make reasonable sense.

In my opinion Incubi should be anti-TEQ, while Wyches should be anti-MEQ. It's that simple, really.
Our abundance of Splinter weapons can deal just fine with everything that is 4+ and above.

Unless it has the GMC tag.

Cheap fleshbane on Bloodbrides would both resolve our lack of efficient means of dealing with GMC's and differentiate between them and wyches.

Wyches as tarpits made them interesting and unique in 40k, as well as leaving murdering terminators to Incubi.

It also fits with their gladiator image, they make fools of their foes and draw out the combat for the crowd. Tonguecutter's idea of precision strikes is a great one, lets wyches remove the hidden power fist. So I'd want wyches to do the following

* Precision Strikes
* 3+ inv throughout the whole assault phase so overwatch too.
* Wych Weapons: Use agonizer rules for them, adjust price to something reasonable. DE have way too many "unique weapon worse than a plain power sword or venom blade" options. Beastmasters already wield them so it's not all that unusual. This also opens up the room for Archons/Archites with flails and razor arms for style points.
* Increase WS to 5

WS5 and 3+inv makes them perfect for tarpitting elite enemies wiffing with their thunderhammers, without going into specific special rules like the old 3e wyches had.


Blood Brides can be ws6 and all take wych weapons (agonizers) and be a general death dealer unit.

To make Incubi stills tand out I think they should be effective against vehicles too. Make Klaives a +1S two handed weapon with the Smash USR which gives them ap2 and can deliver a single s8 2d6 pen attack. The image of an Incubi focusing his martial training to delivering one perfect cut that bisects a dreadnought is a cool one.