Codex Drukhari Preview: Stratagems

Mppqlmd wrote:

- Crucible feels like a downgrade, but the removal from the profile probably lowers the price, or gives room for a more useful ability. I won't use it very often, though.

- Soul-trap is pretty cool. Doesn't work against Squad champions, though, but against some armies it will be cool. And if you play against another Dark Eldar (with tons of HQs), things can get hilarious.

- Lightning-fast reactions : a bit expensive, but since it can be used on so many targets, it's a nice trick to hide in your sleeve. I know I'm gonna be scarce in CP though, so probably won't use it often.
Best used on a VRB or a RWJF to stack with the "hard to hit" bonus.

- Agents of Vect : very expensive, but can be deadly. Denying the "Moral immunity" stratagem can be super, super useful for example. Many great applications, but if you don't roll a 6 you're losing a lot of CP. Might be useful to spend a CP to reroll the die here if you roll a 1.

- Onslaught : hmm, okayish. If there is a way to give them a hit bonus, then okay. If not, it's pretty weak.

- Drazhar change : YES.


A lot less exciting infos here. I hoped for some HQ infos...

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Man I don't understand whats so upsetting here? Did people really ever make use of the crucible in the first place? I played a haemonculus easily 50+ times in 8th, and I think the bloody artifact went off once and did 1 damage to a daemon prince. It sucks that it's now basically a useless stratagem, but the rest of these are looking pretty good.

It was a good answer to Genestealer and brimstone smite-spam.

Bad-baden-baden wrote:

Man I don't understand whats so upsetting here? Did people really ever make use of the crucible in the first place? I played a haemonculus easily 50+ times in 8th, and I think the bloody artifact went off once and did 1 damage to a daemon prince. It sucks that it's now basically a useless stratagem, but the rest of these are looking pretty good.

Ok, let me first start out by saying "I only play with Haemonculus HQ's" I have played 2 of them in literally every DE beside my yesterdays game (only b.c i wanted to test Kabal rules) i have used the CoM well over 20x (most likely over 30x tbh) and it doesnt do much at all, even against a Tzeentch army between the 2 Haemonculus it did very little good.

CoM isnt good, it was/is a nice treat that should cost 0 points.

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- Agents of Vect : very expensive, but can be deadly. Denying the "Moral immunity" stratagem can be super, super useful for example. Many great applications, but if you don't roll a 6 you're losing a lot of CP. Might be useful to spend a CP to reroll the die here if you roll a 1.

It'd pair nice with a Freakshow list for sure, but I can't think of a target that's both overly susceptible to morale and worth spending a third of your command points on

Crucible was a free item that you could take on each Haemy. Not it's a 2 CP stratagem, and you can't play it more than once.

That's a huge drop.


About Agents of Vect : you're playing Black Heart, you'll have... lots of CP.

Interestingly, your Black Heart WL trait procs when the enemy spends the CP, then you can cancel the stratagem (and get some CP back from your spent), then the enemy gets refunded.

So more procs for your CP-gain ability.

The Red King wrote:

The first one seems awful. The soul trap seems meh. The Agents of Vect though is, even for the cost, absolutely amazing. Some strategies resolve entirely around being able to use a stratagem.

Lightning fast is just the same as craftworlds but still great. If mandrakes keep their blanket minus 1. Then they like banshees can tarpit some hard hitting units.

And lastly the incubi one is... good enough? With Drazhar's +1 to hit it's very deadly.

ESE can you confirm (when you're not busy with the baby) if " you can easily pack in CP" is accurate for Drukhari? In playtest did you find yourself with more than 7-9?

Soul trap doesn't require he kills them in assault though. You can use that relic pistol top snipe w weak character or you could find an angle off a venom and use a blaster to get a quick cheeky kill then drink his soul before ever touching the battle field

Mppqlmd wrote:

Crucible was a free item that you could take on each Haemy. Not it's a 2 CP stratagem, and you can't play it more than once.

That's a huge drop.

It turns it from a nice free benefit that didn't do much and you expected nothing from to an unusable stratagem. I'm not too sore over it. It did nothing for me and it will remain doing nothing for me.

On to agents of vect - correct me if I'm wrong, but that all stacks with the Black Heart warlord trait, no?

So, if you use the stratagem on an opponent who did a 3cp stratagem, you can expect to be refunded 1 of those points, regardless if your enemy successfull manifested the stratagem or not. That's pretty good. Functionally would turn it into a 2cp stratagem in many cases.

Soul Trap could get hilarious against certain Imperial Guard and Chaos armies.

With Agents of Vect, I think it will almost always be worth it to spend an extra CP to reroll the die if you come up with a 1.

I don't like what they did to the Crucible, but the rest of this seems either good or amazing.

Soultrap not being a relic is golden, you can have a prober weapon relic and still use the soultrap.

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Soul Trap could get hilarious against certain Imperial Guard and Chaos armies.

That's what I was thinking. You could pretty easily get a S6 Archon with 8 Atracks and Leadership 12 against them.

First impression: I don't care about any of these stratagems either due to being a good, overpriced stratagem, or because it just sucks.

Four out of five days isn't bad. I would have loved for them to spend time on our units. This is disappointing.

Logan Frost wrote:

Soultrap not being a relic is golden, you can have a prober weapon relic and still use the soultrap.

Yes. However, it does not work for shooting like said before. It clearly says "fight phase".

Well i personally only like the Drazhar fix, but am scared b.c he can attack twice, he will still be 140pts. He is not worth that at all, i could just take 2 Succubui for the same points and have double the wounds and still 2 attacks phases.

So, something to keep in mind about a Black Heart "Tax":

We've seen so far that Black heart unlocks Agents of Vect, the Labyrinthine Cunning Warlord Trait, +1 Ld for that detachment, and allows a 6+++ on Kabal units that don't normally have it (ie. Vehicles). It might not add offensive punch, but these tools are pretty sweet. Also, Labyrinthine Cunning goes off when you or an enemy spend the command points. Agents of Vect goes off AFTER an opponent spends command points; so, you get to mine CP and then cancel the stratagem. And then roll 3 dice to try to refund Agents of Vect.

Bad-baden-baden wrote:

We can get a mental number of CP's.

With the Haemonculus warlord trait you get an additional D3 to the 7 you start with. Combine that with the Black Heart's return CP's on 6's it adds up.

If your opponent starts with 7 cps, on average you're looking at 11-12 Cps per game for DE.

I don't get the hate here. Take a small Black Heart Patrol, it's hardly that much of a tax. This gains access to the return CP's on 6 like you said.

So opponent uses a 2cp Stratagem - Plus your own 3cp to stop it - That's 5d6 to get a free CP on a 6 isn't that correct?

on top of this. if you roll a lucky 6 the full god damn stratagem is free!!

Wow.

soultrap seems like a fun little stratagem, not game breaking but fun to use if our archon can actually kill some enemy characters with a huskblade, which may be dependant on the stat for the blade changing.

I do really like th kabal of the black heart stratagem, looks like a lot of fun to use, but I don't think I can justify running a black heart patrol just for that.

Lightning fast reactions is fun, tad pricey like a lot of the revealed stratagems so far but I'm really looking forward to springing that one on an opponent with a large unit of overcharged plasma guns.

Overall a little underwhelming of a preview today compared to getting to look at our traits, but the wait is almost over so there's that at least. Hoping there will be some codex reviews over the weekend so we can see everything before the release next week.

Hmm.

OK, not knowing how the Codex will make you take Obsessions (aka must be on a patrol), but hear me out....

Supreme command of Black Hearts with 3 Archons in a Venom (you could now have a potential -2 hit, 5++/6+++ venom).

Edit: I now its not a patrol so you wont be counted towards the bonus CP, just thinking of a fun bomb to make the most use of Black Heart

I think hemonoculus can still have an old CoM thanks to these two things.

https://imgur.com/a/Rhrm1
https://imgur.com/a/aZiAg

Soul trap combined with the stim addict trait mentioned yesterday could lead to a pretty strong archon, assuming stim addict can be given to an Archon.

yeah very underwhelming for strategems, vects is not bad.
It seems a lot of our strats are very situational.
Also with regards to crucible, i never had times to use it, so this is a non-worry, still nice to have it in case you do come up against those types of army, as long as its now not included in pricing of heamy that's fine

Our system of subcations already makes us take a bunch of characters to unlock more detachments, why would I want to stack that on and take even more archons? If I was going to fit in kabal of the black heart just for the stratagem, I think I'd take an outrider of one archon and a bunch of scourges, barely even a proper black heart detachment but hey it counts.

Lord Asvaldir wrote:

Our system of subcations already makes us take a bunch of characters to unlock more detachments, why would I want to stack that on and take even more archons? If I was going to fit in kabal of the black heart just for the stratagem, I think I'd take an outrider of one archon and a bunch of scourges, barely even a proper black heart detachment but hey it counts.

Yeah, its a heavy tax within a system that already is force to have a tax.

Lord Asvaldir wrote:

Our system of subcations already makes us take a bunch of characters to unlock more detachments, why would I want to stack that on and take even more archons? If I was going to fit in kabal of the black heart just for the stratagem, I think I'd take an outrider of one archon and a bunch of scourges, barely even a proper black heart detachment but hey it counts.

Sounds like you're going to have to actually make a decision. Hence it's good design.

Mppqlmd wrote:

Crucible was a free item that you could take on each Haemy. Not it's a 2 CP stratagem, and you can't play it more than once.

That's a huge drop.


About Agents of Vect : you're playing Black Heart, you'll have... lots of CP.

Interestingly, your Black Heart WL trait procs when the enemy spends the CP, then you can cancel the stratagem (and get some CP back from your spent), then the enemy gets refunded.

So more procs for your CP-gain ability.

Why on earth would you guys think this was a free item? Maybe they dropped it to help justify making Haemonculi cheaper. It's asinine to really believe that the crucible was free before, it was more like forced wargear. Would it have been nice of them to remove that garbage 4+ requirement OR the range band? Yes it would have been, but if my haemonculi drops 10-15 points out the gate I'll call it a win.

Also, pure madness that people are calling black heart a tax, every list was gona take that guy for the WLT to begin with, now he can shut down critical strats AND gain back CP]s while doing it.

Lightning fast reactions is huge as well BTW. Make a command venom -2 to hit, hell, imagine mandrakes, who are apparantly cheaper and more lethal being -2 to hit now?

GUYS CAN YOU USE AGENTS OF VECT TO STOP A UNIT USING THE DEEPSTRIKE STRATEGEM FOR THE WHOLE DEPLOYMENT PHASE???

EDIT frak i read the last sentence. Ignore this... so sad... Sorry guys

Since I double checked the 3 detachments in matched play thing is in fact a suggestion for tournaments and not a hard rule. I suspect I'll end up running 3 or 4 patrols alongside a blackheart vanguard. An archon with 3 or 4 sslyth in a venom is not terrible and is quite fluffy. Vect is keeping an eye on you but in return you receive some patronage (awesome warlord traits and stratagems).
Also I rethought the soul trap. I like it as a stratagem. You used to have to pay for it in list and maybe never get to use it. Now you only use it if you need it.

And I fall more in love with Agent of Vect as I think on it. Just so many golden chances to just say no. Double firing obliterators or 40 man cultist blob? No. 3d6 blood angels charge? No. Fight twice with X unit. Nope.

You just get to look your opponent in the eyes as he declares the lynchpin move of his strategy and say "No." And as he fumbles to rearrange his plans around his newfound impotence you get to tell him " Nobody outsmarts Vect".

Shride wrote:

So, something to keep in mind about a Black Heart "Tax":

We've seen so far that Black heart unlocks Agents of Vect, the Labyrinthine Cunning Warlord Trait, +1 Ld for that detachment, and allows a 6+++ on Kabal units that don't normally have it (ie. Vehicles).  It might not add offensive punch, but these tools are pretty sweet.  Also, Labyrinthine Cunning goes off when you or an enemy spend the command points.  Agents of Vect goes off AFTER an opponent spends command points; so, you get to mine CP and then cancel the stratagem.  And then roll 3 dice to try to refund Agents of Vect.

Its even better than that, say you are using agents of vect to stop a nasty 3CP strat, like an avatar res or something, that's 3D6 refunding on 6s, then the 3D6 from agents, and because those three CPs from the opponent get recycled back into his pool, that's ANOTHER 3D6 over the rest of the game.

So effectively, for 1.5 command points, you are all but guaranteeing you can mess up poor sods master plan of "use this 3 CP stratagem to do something important"