Making mandrakes match the fluff

TeenageAngst wrote:

Massaen wrote:

A single flamer answers the question of "how do I kill mandrakes efficiently?"

When your battle company consists of nothing but grav squads, whence cometh the single flamer?

If you are playing against this that often that many mandrakes work and they dnot assault you, you really need to play against better people.

BetrayTheWorld wrote:

Jimsolo wrote:

Space Marines who run nothing but grav squads deserve to lose to Mandrake armies.  I hear stories, but I've never seen such a beast in my time.  I still hope to see an all-grav army plopped down opposite me in a tourney some day.  

I'm going to laaaaaugh....

They were all the rage at adepticon last year. I played against 3 lists that were all virtually identical space marine grav spam lists. They were basically carbon copies of the list Frankie G used to win that tournament. I think he published what list he was going to play in advance, and a lot of people copied him.

There were minor variations, but the core was all the same. If I recall correctly, it was the Hunter's eye from white scars to ignore cover in a unit of grav-cannon centurions, and a bunch of free transports with grav gun marines in them, plus a drop podded Cullexus Assassin.

But they had Ignore cover and I bet some bikes too, also they most likely wouldn't be afraid to charge a small 3man unit with no saves in melee.....

It doesn't matter if they have ignores cover when they are wounding on 6's.

It also doesn't matter if they have ignores cover if they're blowing GRAV to shoot at MANDRAKES.

That too. I'm more pointing out that they'll be using multiple squads worth of shooting to drop your 36pt mandrakes after turn 1 and that's going to be gold.

Jimsolo wrote:

Space Marines who run nothing but grav squads deserve to lose to Mandrake armies.  I hear stories, but I've never seen such a beast in my time.  I still hope to see an all-grav army plopped down opposite me in a tourney some day.  

I'm going to laaaaaugh....

"And Dark Eldar makes 1st place because everyone's anti-wraithknight/knight/riptide armies had no counter to the mandrakes!"

I'd enjoy 8th edition DE bringing out new mandrake units to celebrate decapitator's completion of his super skull shadow beam thing. Like a 4-armed solo assassin mandrake that covers the role (without being bad) that decapitator used to do, then the mandrake king gets a new model where he's basically a daemon prince of shadows.

And who knows maybe he finally completed his skull room...

|Meavar wrote:

And who knows maybe he finally completed his skull room...

In Gathering Storm II, he does.

TeenageAngst wrote:

It also doesn't matter if they have ignores cover if they're blowing GRAV to shoot at MANDRAKES.

Not all have grav.... they have bolters too.........

Quote :

Not all have grav.... they have bolters too.........

2+.....whats worse then shooting 36 pts mandrakes....shoot 24 pts mandrakes.

Quote :

And who knows maybe he finally completed his skull room...

He does!

Kinda new Mechanicum detachment Grand Convocation screw this tactics - the one where you can give power of the machine spirit to vehicles en masse. Split fire sucks. One of those weapons are torrent heavy flamer.

Azdrubael wrote:

Quote :

Not all have grav.... they have bolters too.........

2+.....whats worse then shooting 36 pts mandrakes....shoot 24 pts mandrakes.
He does!

And as is was said many times, just melee them.

The thing about mandrakes is They need to do 1 of 2 things

1) Be offensive and that means within 18", if you are that close a tac squad or something with ignore cover can get to you and kill you in melee or ignore you cover

2) Play them defensively and keep them on an objective away from the opponent. If you play them this way the other player will not care about them till turn 4-5 sense the range is 18".

We are not saying they cant be useful and having a unit isnt a bad thing, but again the POINT was they are not OP. You are not taking 300-400pts of them like you do with Reaver Bikes.

Do you think they are as good as Reaver bikes? Scatter Bikes? Warpsiders? Riptides? 3 units of 10 is 360pts, Id say that is easily equal in points to the mention units.

Would you take 3 units of 10?

Certainly not. But I'd absolutely take 10 units of 3 if I had access to the FOC slots or a formation that allowed me to.

I also explicitly think it's unfair to think about units in terms of maxed out squads. Nobody takes 10 body scat bikes. Nobody takes 12 body Reavers.

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And as is was said many times, just melee them.

You can only shoot them to melee them, if you do not have split fire. Targeting restrictions. IF unit is doing something that turn on mandrakes - it will spend all it can do this turn.

Quote :

1) Be offensive and that means within 18", if you are that close a tac squad or something with ignore cover can get to you and kill you in melee or ignore you cover

A venom with a kab squad arrive near mandrake location. That venom and drakes are only in LoS of single tac squad. Who will tac squad shoot, assault? Drakes?

By that merit one of the squads is invincible, protected by game mechanic. And you only have ~6 turns, this game have finite time. Each turn something die, goes off the table. And moves, goes spreading. At each point of battle only a number of your units can actually be targeted.

Max at start - when you have long range war. Less and less as the game progresses.

Azdrubael wrote:

Quote :

And as is was said many times, just melee them.

You can only shoot them to melee them, if you do not have split fire. Targeting restrictions. IF unit is doing something that turn on mandrakes - it will spend all it can do this turn.

Quote :

1) Be offensive and that means within 18", if you are that close a tac squad or something with ignore cover can get to you and kill you in melee or ignore you cover

A venom with a kab squad arrive near mandrake location. That venom and drakes are only in LoS of single tac squad. Who will tac squad shoot, assault? Drakes?

By that merit one of the squads is invincible, protected by game mechanic. And you only have ~6 turns, this game have finite time. Each turn something die, goes off the table. And moves, goes spreading. At each point of battle only a number of your units can actually be targeted.

Max at start - when you have long range war. Less and less as the game progresses.

A tac sqaud wont care to shoot if they are stopping you from an objective or denying them one.
Also not always can a unit do alot of damage due to LoS/Range etc.. when shooting so you something haves units that might not care to shoot, taking a unit like this to deal with a small unit isnt a problem

3rd, if you playing ITC and you had Mandrakes aggressively close and your opponent roll "Kill a unit" they will charge them without question.

I would take 6 units of 3. I would say they are equivalent in effectiveness as Warp Spiders.

TeenageAngst wrote:

I would take 6 units of 3. I would say they are equivalent in effectiveness as Warp Spiders.

You think Mandrakes are ass good as Warp Spiders. Ok, Well I dont.. at all, no where near at all.

TeenageAngst wrote:

I would take 6 units of 3. I would say they are equivalent in effectiveness as Warp Spiders.

Nearly every time I come on this forum (once every couple of weeks), I see your posts, yet, I am seriously doubting that you actually PLAY 40k.

Also "Would take" indicates that you DO NOT take 6x3 mandrakes, despite easily being able to by taking 2 CADs (pretty much the only option for mono DE). Again, this further indicates to me that you dont play, which is  fine, but dont mislead other people (specifically newer playes) by making wild claims, such as the quote.

I think that's a wild an unfounded accusation that you would not find if you read all their comments across the entirety of the tactica.

Your 'observation' about "would take" is baseless because the question posed was a hypothetical, and they are answering with a hypothetical, which is absolutely acceptable.

If you've seen my comments towards them you'll find that we don't agree on much, but I find your comment to be distasteful.

Ill definitely get on reading all of his/her comments across the entire tactica. /s

He`s making a wild, unfounded claim that I cant see anyone who actually plays the game agreeing with. Warpspiders are one of the cheesiest/OP units in the game, this is common knowledge, so to say that Mandrakes are equivalent to WS, is to say that the humble Mandrake is also one of the cheesiest/OP units in the game, a statement that I cant see anyone who actually plays the game agreeing with.

Do they serve a purpose? Yes. I often include a min unit or two and they almost never disappoint, but claiming that they are "equivalent in effectiveness" is crazy talk and can mislead newer/uninformed people.

Tbh with you, I find alot of the DE bashing and salt spreading on this forum to be distasteful, in fact as a newer player I almost didnt play DE specifically because of this forum, but everyone is entitled to their opinion and I stand by mine.

RoadRageRob666 wrote:

TeenageAngst wrote:

I would take 6 units of 3. I would say they are equivalent in effectiveness as Warp Spiders.

Nearly every time I come on this forum (once every couple of weeks), I see your posts, yet, I am seriously doubting that you actually PLAY 40k.

Also "Would take" indicates that you DO NOT take 6x3 mandrakes, despite easily being able to by taking 2 CADs (pretty much the only option for mono DE). Again, this further indicates to me that you dont play, which is  fine, but dont mislead other people (specifically newer playes) by making wild claims, such as the quote.

The fact I'm not allowed to flame or curse on this forum unlike /tg/ means posts like this go unanswered. What a cultured and enriching response however.

Hey, remember when we were talking about making Mandrakes match the fluff? Those were some good times.

Let's keep this civil, please. There's no cause for personal attacks. Not all of us play in similar groups, communities, or metas. The differences can sometimes make it seem like we're playing completely different games, and can lead to some pretty big differences in opinions. Despite that, let's not let these differences lead to animosity, please.

I never get tired of singing the praises of Mandrakes. We could give them ignores cover shooting (cause they're shadows), precision strikes (cause they're assassins), and a 5++ daemon save or something, that'd make them fluffy without really pushing them out of their roles.

Honestly, just give them their 5++ save back, without any additional changes, and I'd take them.

Today my Mandrakes scored 11 points for me on The Scouring mission by sitting on 2 objectives in ruins and not moving the entire game. 2 units, on a 5 and a 6 objective markers, the absolute madmen. Any other unit would have been primaried off those things so hard they might as well not have been placed on the table, but Mandrakes? "I'm not worried about them right now."

Warp Spiders cannot even compare.

TeenageAngst wrote:

Today my Mandrakes scored 11 points for me on The Scouring mission by sitting on 2 objectives in ruins and not moving the entire game. 2 units, on a 5 and a 6 objective markers, the absolute madmen. Any other unit would have been primaried off those things so hard they might as well not have been placed on the table, but Mandrakes? "I'm not worried about them right now."

Warp Spiders cannot even compare.

So if you had any other units on those objectives that clearly was in a good spot for you wouldnt have done the same?

Got pics?

What Mission was it? What was your opponent playing? how many points?  got an example or a pic of the terrain you used? what cards did you draw? or did you play itc style and no cards?

PD: Warp Spiders Won Tournaments so...... yeah thats the proof they are good.