Why take Kabalites?

Kabalites and trueborn are really good now. I have started fielding less of them and are using more and more wyches, because it is more fun when the game is challenging. When I run pure kabalite and trueborn games with lance and dissie spam, I feel like a 7th ed tauplayer as I table everything after round 3.

I'm having a relatively similar experience, horde armies I find most difficult to deal with, went against a Mordian A.M player this week and they wiped three raiders off the board turn one and the rest of my vehicles turn two. Dropped ten DL scourges and took out one tank in response, he then wiped those out and proceeded to decimate my army with conscripts...my list has done exactly what you said to every other army (except for tzeentch daemons which was a tie and Orks who I just managed to win against) but A.M are a real issue for us now.

What's this fixation on a Brigade about? The only thing we use points on is Lance damage rerolls anyway.

I get it, we'll get Strategems or whatever in the Codex but they would have to be pretty ridiculous to make me give up ObSec that moves 16" at -1 to hit.

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What's this fixation on a Brigade about?

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Well, eventually, we would want a brigade.

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I get it, we'll get Strategems or whatever in the Codex

Brigades are useless before codices releases. After that, they become mandatory. Stratagems are always super useful.

Mppqlmd wrote:

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What's this fixation on a Brigade about?

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Well, eventually, we would want a brigade.

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I get it, we'll get Strategems or whatever in the Codex

Brigades are useless before codices releases. After that, they become mandatory. Stratagems are always super useful.

And IMO this is good, great incentive to stick to 1 army but some room for a small ally force.

It's great... but we can't really benefit from it.
Filling the troop choices is super easy for us. Filling the HQ choices is a nightmare, though.

Mppqlmd wrote:

It's great... but we can't really benefit from it.
Filling the troop choices is super easy for us. Filling the HQ choices is a nightmare, though.

Well, Archons are at least relatively cheap. And once you have 2 or 3, you can get them a Venom and pretend they're over-priced Trueborn.

Voidhawk wrote:

Mppqlmd wrote:

It's great... but we can't really benefit from it.
Filling the troop choices is super easy for us. Filling the HQ choices is a nightmare, though.

Well, Archons are at least relatively cheap. And once you have 2 or 3, you can get them a Venom and pretend they're over-priced Trueborn.

If Archons could take Darklances they might make almost passable backfield objective sitters. Hang out on an objective taking 2+ potshots at passing tanks while being hard to get rid of without serious investment from the enemy.

Again I have a hard time believing we'll get Strategems good enough to be worth the Brigade tax. And if we do, I worry about our ability to build around it as a Brigade.

I don't follow tournament meta, are the competitive folks going full brigades for every army? Obviously IG will be because they can get away with it. Grey Knights certainly aren't, and I have a hard time seeing Marines and Mech do it.

If you gotta do it, and we can still cherry pick Aeldari units, we'll have to go Warlocks most likely, followed by 90 point Kab squads of 10 with a Lance.

After some frak around in Battlescribe I'm at:
HQ - 3x Warlocks
Elite - 3x Medusae
Troops - 6x 10 man Kab squads w/ Lance
Fast Attack - 2x Scourge w/ Lances, 1x Khymerae
Heavy Support - 3x Ravagers, Lances

All for 1520 points. Definitely not optimal, and plenty of room to flesh out on top of what's there. I guess we can make this work?

Thor665 wrote:

The value of Warriors is not their shooting of splinter rifles, those are just a nice bonus. For everyone decrying how bad poison is this edition, I would point to the decade where our rifles were just lasguns with fancy names.

Pointing to a time when Splinter rifles were even worse isn't very good justification for them being poor now. And incidentally--to your first point-- the primary way people fielded Warriors back then was in cheap sniper squads with 2 Lances. I wouldn't mind Splinter Rifles sucking so much if we still had that option.

Kantalla wrote:

but was looking at what I got from my Kabalites in Raiders and seeing I could get the same or more firepower, and a more resilient force by switching to Ravagers and Venoms without taking the Warriors.

My experience definitely agrees with this. I've been doing better competitively against all the codex armies since dropping the extraneous Warriors from my list and just going Spearhead, Vanguard, and Flyer Wing. I've kept the same amount of CP but been able to replace the anemic firepower of the Warriors in exchange for more Clawed Fiends/Ravagers/RWJs. I can't say I've felt the loss of ObSec since Warriors are so easy to kill anyway, but having so many more legitimately threatening units in their stead has been a big help.

Chippen wrote:

Again I have a hard time believing we'll get Strategems good enough to be worth the Brigade tax. And if we do, I worry about our ability to build around it as a Brigade.

I don't follow tournament meta, are the competitive folks going full brigades for every army? Obviously IG will be because they can get away with it. Grey Knights certainly aren't, and I have a hard time seeing Marines and Mech do it.

If you gotta do it, and we can still cherry pick Aeldari units, we'll have to go Warlocks most likely, followed by 90 point Kab squads of 10 with a Lance.

After some frak around in Battlescribe I'm at:
HQ - 3x Warlocks
Elite - 3x Medusae
Troops - 6x 10 man Kab squads w/ Lance
Fast Attack - 2x Scourge w/ Lances, 1x Khymerae
Heavy Support - 3x Ravagers, Lances

All for 1520 points. Definitely not optimal, and plenty of room to flesh out on top of what's there. I guess we can make this work?

Its literally impossible to know.... Beast might be great/more useful, trueborns/bloodbrides might be a must pick, Talos/coven might be good.

Deris87 wrote:

Thor665 wrote:

The value of Warriors is not their shooting of splinter rifles, those are just a nice bonus. For everyone decrying how bad poison is this edition, I would point to the decade where our rifles were just lasguns with fancy names.

Pointing to a time when Splinter rifles were even worse isn't very good justification for them being poor now. And incidentally--to your first point-- the primary way people fielded Warriors back then was in cheap sniper squads with 2 Lances. I wouldn't mind Splinter Rifles sucking so much if we still had that option.

I wasn't justifying them being poor now, I actually don't think they're poor.
I was saying that the value of Warrior squads was the special weapons, not the rifles.
I think this holds true for most basic units in the game.

I also never really liked running sniper squads and considered them inferior - Raider Squads 4 life

Warriors are the most cost effective way to get splinter shots.

The problem that is becoming increasingly clear is that splinter shots are not, in and of themselves, very good. They are not very good at anti-infantry. They are completely overshadowed vs monsters (due in large part to the sheer number of wounds monsters have and the fact that high toughness is no longer the be all and end all of defenses, combined with our excellent lances and kinda okay blasters), and of course splinter weapons aren't even on the table for AV usage.

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Warriors are the most cost effective way to get splinter shots

This.

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Again I have a hard time believing we'll get Strategems good enough to be worth the Brigade tax. And if we do, I worry about our ability to build around it as a Brigade.

Every codex so far has had stratagems good enough to justify a brigade.
It's also quite easy to build a Brigade for us. The problem is that, since our HQs bring nothing to the table, it's absolutly sub-optimal to take more than 1. But IF codex gives us either strong HQs (so it would make sense to take 3 succubus), or cheap HQs (if lhamaens get back to the HQ section), then Brigades are going to be very easy to achieve.

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HQ - 3x Warlocks
Elite - 3x Medusae
Troops - 6x 10 man Kab squads w/ Lance
Fast Attack - 2x Scourge w/ Lances, 1x Khymerae
Heavy Support - 3x Ravagers, Lances

Warlocks are not DE. You are building a Aeldari Brigade, and that's useless. The whole point of the Brigade is to use the Stratagems that will be included in the Drukhari codex.
Also, you can't take a single Khymera.


The cheapest Brigade for DE is 798 points :
3 Archons with Ago : 174
3 Medusae : 84
6 Kabs (5 men) : 210
3* 2 RW flocks : 42
3 Talos with Macroscalpels : 288

Of course it sucks, but it's very cheap. It just shows that achieving big Detachment is something that Drukhari can do very easily : the problem is that as long as our HQs are not worth their points, it makes no sense.
But i'm hoping codex will fix that.

Mppqlmd wrote:

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Warriors are the most cost effective way to get splinter shots

This.

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Again I have a hard time believing we'll get Strategems good enough to be worth the Brigade tax. And if we do, I worry about our ability to build around it as a Brigade.

Every codex so far has had stratagems good enough to justify a brigade.
It's also quite easy to build a Brigade for us. The problem is that, since our HQs bring nothing to the table, it's absolutly sub-optimal to take more than 1. But IF codex gives us either strong HQs (so it would make sense to take 3 succubus), or cheap HQs (if lhamaens get back to the HQ section), then Brigades are going to be very easy to achieve.

Quote :

HQ - 3x Warlocks
Elite - 3x Medusae
Troops - 6x 10 man Kab squads w/ Lance
Fast Attack - 2x Scourge w/ Lances, 1x Khymerae
Heavy Support - 3x Ravagers, Lances

Warlocks are not DE. You are building a Aeldari Brigade, and that's useless. The whole point of the Brigade is to use the Stratagems that will be included in the Drukhari codex.
Also, you can't take a single Khymera.


The cheapest Brigade for DE is 798 points :
3 Archons with Ago : 174
3 Medusae : 84
6 Kabs (5 men) : 210
3* 2 RW flocks : 42
3 Talos with Macroscalpels : 288

Of course it sucks, but it's very cheap. It just shows that achieving big Detachment is something that Drukhari can do very easily : the problem is that as long as our HQs are not worth their points, it makes no sense.
But i'm hoping codex will fix that.

And we might have a "strong" list with buffs, we are looking at this pre-codex and we might want to spend more points for something better.

Several years ago, I used to run kabalite squads as snipers (without raider) because I didn't have much money for vehicules and and thought it was kinda cool.

I still use them sometimes and they are pretty amazing for 3 reasons :
First : It can perfectly sit on an objective and live with it.
Second : Sometimes it can add THE missing dark lance shot to finish a vehicule or monster
Third : Even with a small squad of 5, they are 4 bodies to get rid of before removing the special weapon.
When on the table next to raiders / ravager / scourges, etc. It kinda make a small distraction carnifex as the opponnent knows they don't do much, but they also die easily. Most of the time they end up either ignoring them, or splitting shots and doing less damages to both.

Squad of 10 is also nice to hold objectives, it's a little harder to kill from a distance when in cover, and still do some damage both firing and melee.

IMO that's underrated ^^'

Yeah it's a new edition with a very different set of rules, there's no harm in trying out different strategies and thinking outside the box. I'm going to try out 10 strong DL squads and see how they fare as well. I can't imagine they'd be a high priority target either

10 Kabalites with a Dark Lance is 90 points, compared to 115 for a Dark Lance Raider. Better toughness and save and better mobility on the Raider, as well as transport capacity if you want that. They are an option for filling out the Troops slots, but probably not amazing.

Just give our Sybarite kind of Blaster combi weapon and make a shredder a flamer and they are good.

Kantalla wrote:

10 Kabalites with a Dark Lance is 90 points, compared to 115 for a Dark Lance Raider. Better toughness and save and better mobility on the Raider, as well as transport capacity if you want that. They are an option for filling out the Troops slots, but probably not amazing.

Sure, but you lose 18 splinter shots and CC ability, as well as Obj Sec and bodies to count for the Objectives.

Also, 10 Kabs are more resilient than 1 raider against a vast variety of attacks, because 10 bodies are immune to multi damage weapons. 1 Raider can be destroyed by 2 lucky Lascannon shots. 10 kabalites require 10 wounds from different shots. That's a huge difference.

Sure, but if you are sitting back to provide a Dark Lance shot they are functionally fairly similar. While your point about multi-damage weapons is true, if those are shooting a spare Raider instead of your Ravagers, then that is a clear win.

That's a very strange argument. What you're basically saying is : "The raider is more fragile than its price in Kabalites, which is a good thing because it makes a good magnet to protect ravagers". Fragility is never a boon.

I don't think the comparison of Raider vs 10 kabs goes into the empty Raider's advantage. Less firepower, less CC, less resilience...
Of course, a Raider is much more than that, it's mostly a transport, but if you compare an empty Raider to 10 kabs, the kabs are cheaper, harder to kill, and shoot better.

Something I hadn't given much thought to, which is related to the strength of Kabalites, is the new Objective Secured rules for Troops coming in Chapter Approved; they only get that if the entire detachment shares a <faction> keyword.

That's not great for us, is it? We need to break down our list into Kabal, Wych Cult, Coven and unaligned Drukhari detachments to allow our Troops to benefit from Objective Secured. That only even seems feasible to me right now because most Cult and Coven units are very weak.

Aeldari and Drukhari are both <faction> keywords.
I don't see the problem there.

Mppqlmd wrote:

Aeldari and Drukhari are both <faction> keywords.
I don't see the problem there.

I don't think this is right. "<faction>" to me seems to refer to more specific factions, like "Blood Angels", "Kabal of the Black Heart", etc. The kind of factions that are listed in Indexes and Codexes as <chapter> or <kabal> or whatever.

If it doesn't, why would they bother to be so specific with the language in the rule? If <faction> referred to all faction keywords then in any Battle-forged army all Troop units would automatically get Objective Secured.

Edit: According to the ITC "Drukhari" counts but "Aeldari" doesn't, so (mostly) ignore me.