Mandrake gun boats

I came up with this while on the splinter venom thread and without wanting to double post about it, I wanted to get people's feedback on it rather than off tracking the other thread.

Over the last couple of days I have seen people talking about venoms with 2 splinter cannons in them for anti hoard, so I ran the numbers on them vs a mandrake venom and what I found is in this thread:
http://www.thedarkcity.net/t15666-trueborn-in-venoms-with-double-splinter-cannons

Tldr version. Mandrakes do more to marines and probably most things due to mortal wounds and ap for similar points.

I'd be interested in your thoughts and are there any holes in my logic. is there further down the rabbit hole we can go with this?

Might look great if you model the venom or raider accordingly.

5 Mandrakes costs 60% more than 5 Kabalites with a Blaster. They'll, point-for-point, outperform them while shooting against most single-wound infantry - though they'll struggle compared to Kabalites against Vehicles and especially against Monsters. So ask yourself if what we need is more anti-infantry or anti-vehicle/monster. My money's on the latter.

The problem of mandrake gunboats is that you're paying for three S4 attacks in melee and -1 to attack them, but you're not using either of those things until after the boat goes poof - they just cost too much compared to Kabalites to fill a boat in a useful manner.

And doesn't that kinda take away from the Mandrake's ability to be where you need them to be via their deep strike rule? However the idea of the gunboats sounds interesting and I think Mandrake's against a vehicle will be an interesting idea as against most vehicles they will need 5's and 6's to wound it and any 6 adds a mortal wounds on top of the regular -1 AP wound ... So they might have a slight advantage over kabalites against vehicles on that sense. But as kabs can take a blaster the damage might even out or swing slightly in the kabs favor.

Given that Mandrakes can put out some impressive firepower now, I think taking them in a transport is quite reasonable. I mean, you can still make use of their S4 and -1 to-hit for enemies shooting at them - either when you choose to disembark them or else when their transport is destroyed.

Also, it's worth noting that starting them inside their transports is entirely optional. If their deep strike would be more useful you can just choose to do that at the start of the game instead.

While we are paying for the ability to be -1 to hit, regardless point for point they do more damage than splinter born on a venom. These other points just make them better for when we jump out of the venom and assault or it gets shot down.

Against a t 5 or 6 or 7 vehicle with a 3+ save blasters are better, mainly due to the multi wound element of their weapons. If it is a single wound thing with a high toughness or even some low multiwound creatures the mandrakes are better.

Shredder, that is interesting the mandrakes do give us the option to deepstrike with them if we want to, which is a little bit more flexibility than most of our options, forcing the opponent to put the units at the back of their force in bubble wrap otherwise we will come for them.

Hmm.

I find this very interesting.

Now, how to properly model this vehicle....

Source lit flames all over the place...
Some of the Yncarne gunk around the Bladevanes...

Paint it all dark green, edge highlight with black.

Freehand some goulish screaming faces on anything flat...

This is now on my list of "things I will never get around to."

Since my Kabal theme is based on necromancer things and I use spirit hosts as mandrake I plan on modeling screaming faces on all my vehicles. Stolen souls powering my Kabal and prolonging our lives.

Would make some nice scenery too:
Crystalline monoliths covered in those faces. Like the dark Eldar version of the infinity circuit but used to enslave enemy souls.