Mandrake spam

My main idea behind using Mandrakes was as support for a Grotesquerie.

Basically, with a Grotesquerie in Raiders you want to Enhanced Aethersail Flat-Out 30" or so right up into the enemy's face, weather a turn of shooting, then wreck face on turn 2.

One option to protect them from the hail of fire is to turbo-boost Reavers somewhere squishy so they have to choose between targets. However, why have someone chase the Raiders when you can just have someone already be where the Raiders are?

So, the idea would be to stick your 3 dirt-cheap 36pt 3-man squads in cover somewhere where they have eyes on something squishy. Then, turbo-boost your Raiders into their face, and Reavers somewhere else squishy.

Now, they've got a choice of wasting their ignores cover on Mandrakes, wasting it on Reavers, or actually doing some damage to your battle plan by shooting the Raiders. Works even better if you don't get 1st turn, as now your 36pt Mandrakes are dead, rather than your ~60pts Reavers (which are killier anyway).

They're bait. Bait with assault 2 S4 shooting.

Quote :

Disembarking warriors from their transports simply to give the enemy a more target rich environment is counter productive in most (not all) cases. If there is no GOOD reason to get them out, I would suggest never doing so. Making a unit choose between shooting at your transport OR your warriors is not a good reason, because a decent opponent will use that against you.

Speaking from experience, this isn't true at all. When you have around 30 units on the board and outnumber even battle companies and blob guard, it can overwhelm people. If they shoot the warriors, they overshoot like mad. If they shoot the Mandrakes, that's 36 points with a 2+ save they have to dig through. If they shoot the boats, the boats will jink and half their shots won't go through. There are multiple duplicates of every unit so nothing feels like a priority target. By deploying and MSU Dark Eldar army outside of your boats you dominate the table and have table presence that few armies can match.

but if you disembark on your side, can't the ennemy just ignore your troops, stay out of 24'' range, focus on your empty transport and watch and laugh at our crippled infantry walking all the field at 7-12 inches per turn? Plus, you become very vulnerable against blast weapons.

dumpeal wrote:

but if you disembark on your side, can't the ennemy just ignore your troops, stay out of 24'' range, focus on your empty transport and watch and laugh at our crippled infantry walking all the field at 7-12 inches per turn? Plus, you become very vulnerable against blast weapons.

Usually my boats are deployed along my board edge, there generally isn't a lot of anti-tank weaponry that can focus down boats from that range with any real efficiency on turn 1. The guys are also a distraction, if the opponent doesn't shoot at them, then there's 12 units of warriors in the middle of the field on turn 2 that are now in range and likely entrenched on objectives. If my opponent does shoot at them, then my boats are probably fine, which is where the meat of my firepower comes from. It does make my dudes vulnerable to blast weapons, but to be honest, unless I'm running against wyvern spam or artillery guard, the chances of losing multiple units to blast weapons is unlikely. In those situations I'll start with my dudes in the transports of course. This strategy is not fool-proof.

Basically, by having all my dudes deployed in boats, I am guaranteeing my opponent will focus on the boats. By deploying my dudes outside of the boats, I am flooding the field and giving him a chance to shoot small squads of dudes instead of the workhorse 36" cannons behind them. Also, it allows me to move my boats around all willy-nilly without having to worry about the dudes embarked on them not getting to shoot.

I use them, I generally will outflank multiple (up to 5) 3 man squads.
They have never been a disappointment when I outflank them. When I infiltrate they tend to be utterly destroyed immediately without slowing my opponent down at all. The exception being Knights and Tau, in which case you must infiltrate them and they are awesome in those games.

No matter what army you are facing you normally don't want to charge with these guys they hold objectives well and disrupt the your opponents army.

I don't run a single unit that isn't hurt by ignores cover, even my grots are in jinking raiders.
If my opponent has something that ignores cover it's generally high on my target priority anyway.
And they can feel free to waste their most powerful weapons against my on my lowly mandrakes if they want to.

Knights
Infiltrate them close and run up, forming a screen to keep them back a bit. they will probably charge them and stomp them to death but hopefully your preventing them from moving further towards you.
EDIT: this is if you have first turn.

Tau
Infiltrate them close up and shoot, again trying to hinder their movement and hopefully they will shoot at your mandrakes, not your everything else.
EDIT: this is whether or not you have first turn.

For those asking who they beat in close combat, they win against vehicles! I find them pretty helpful against battle companies actually. They can shoot and assault rear armor on all those rhinos and razorbacks (they get pretty good at it with furious charge) and I'm not often charged by the tacticals themselves because even when they disembark they can't assault for another turn. Means I might only get to kill one vehicle but that's worth it to me.

I use mine mostly for scout blocking, deathstar blocking, objective grabbing, harassing backfield units (like artillery which are also susceptible to close combat), and hitting vehicles. Their cost is so small that I never consider it a loss even if they don't kill anything.

TeenageAngst wrote:

Usually my boats are deployed along my board edge, there generally isn't a lot of anti-tank weaponry that can focus down boats from that range with any real efficiency on turn 1.

Though i thoroughly disagree with you on your "disembark for multiple targets" stance, i was giving your opinion a measure of thought, wondering if perhaps you either misunderstood my stance or me yours.
Then you claimed this.

I am not sure what the meta is where you are, but for you to say that, you must be fighting... you know what, i have no clue because almost every army i can think of could EASILY destroy, incapacitate or remove a whole swath of DE vehicles on turn 1, even if you are lined up on the board edge.

I think the mistake you are making is thinking venoms and raiders are TANKS. They are not. they are armor 10 OPEN TOPPED vehicles. they are not tanks. The closest thing to a tank the DE codex has is armor 11 open topped. Not much better is it? The enemy does not need "anti tank weaponry" to make our vehicles explode. they need a heavy bolter. And, though you may not face it, heavy bolters abound on bikes, razorbacks, other tanks, out of drop pods...
yet No anti-tank can reach you?

Have you not played against Scatterlaser bikes? White Scars Gladius? Drop pod armies of any kind?
Warp Hunters, landraiders, drop podding blood angel dreadnoughts, tau firewarriors with a freaking stock 30" str 5 weapon?

Come on. I have no issue with you disagreeing on tactics, but to say "if you deploy on the back line, you should be safe" is doing a great disservice to newer players who might not know better.

But, the above is just an opinion... what do i know?

Tau usually run suits and their weapons are relatively short ranged so you don't have to worry about mass Tau fire hitting your back like on turn 1. Eldar rarely deploy their scatbikes, they usually have artillery hiding behind a VSG on turn 1 and then run the bikes on subsequent turns to maximize their range and mobility. Drop pods are unavoidable no matter how you deploy, and the waves of dudes outside of the boats gives the boats a slight buffer. Warp Hunters are not very dangerous to DE either since they're wasting a D-cannon on a 60pt Raider which can jink. I want them to shoot the boats.

As I said, this isn't good for every scenario, but it works in a large number of them. If it didn't, I wouldn't be posting it.

Hey everyone, I'm a pretty new DE player. Whenever I make a list I always try and find a way to fit Mandrakes in, for 36 points they just seem way too cheap to not have. After reading through this thread there is one tactic that hasn't been mentioned, counter infiltrating. Why not use them to stop (dice gods willing) your opponent getting his infiltrators in a position he wants? I guess it depends on peoples meta, if infiltrators are a pita then it might be worth considering.

EDIT: Woops, didn't see the other thread, someone has already hatched onto counter infiltrating.

BetrayTheWorld wrote:

TeenageAngst wrote:

I wouldn't, but then I win by shoving people into a corner.

I don't really understand what you mean. Who runs away from dark eldar? And if they aren't running away, how do you "shove them" into a corner? I feel like you might not be facing the types of lists I see regularly. Like deep striking cleansing flame bombs. You've been hit by those, right? S5 ignores cover 2d6 assault auto-hitting nova in an 18" bubble? Wipes out entire DE armies? I normally want my stuff right in the middle of as many DE as I can fit in my range.

This bomb reminds me of the game last year. Those grey knights (thousand sons in fluff) burned my soldiers and cracked my skimmers. I was saying like, 'well let's see which save rolls that I have....oops, nope! They all died'

Regarding mandrakes, they're banned from the reborn host anyway so...

GK have one good turn in them before they peter out and lose their minds if you force them to split their forces. I usually poke opponents, GK included, for 2 turns before I find their weak side and just swarm it, push them over, and by turn 5 I'm sitting on 3/4 of the table.