Asking for Alliance of Agony Advice

Hey guys, I'm looking to build a semi competitive list using the alliance of agony. Semi competitive being defined as competitive but with restrictions. Mine are: select units I want to learn to play, and using the alliance of agony stratagem.

Units I want in: grots, reavers, wyches, sslyth, beast master, khymera, razorwing flocks, talos, cronos, scourge

Taking: ravagers for competitiveness, willing to take kabalites, venoms, raiders

Maybe: wracks, clawed fiend and rest of court  

At least one of these will be a battalion for CP, it'd be cool to have two for 10CP+D3

Coven: Prophets for that 4++ and CP, easy choice for this build. Probably vanguard

Kabal: I wanted Poison Tongue for an awesome Court, but depends on their points. Alternatively, I thought about Black Heart spearhead, 1 archon for re rolls, 3 ravagers w/ 6++.

Cult: Cursed Blade is out b.c reavers. I want wyches, but I want them to benefit from Red Grief, and currently I think all they get from it is a turn 1 charge with their boat (which could be good? gets it up there way faster, and can soak OW for my reavers)

Let me know what your suggestions are, no need to give me a list, just some Obsession combos and general strategy behind them

Tl;dr: what 3 would you take and why?

So while red grief is not great for wyches, they actually benefit a ton from the red grief stratagem which let's them consolidate back into a transport after combat. I haven't seen the exact wording of the stratagem but I think you get to consolidate 6" and you only have to get within 3" of the transport to hope back in, so I think that has a lot of utility potential. Basically to me just means that red grief isn't a complete waste on wyches, though I think if you wanted to take the middle ground between wyches/reavers cult of strife as least benefits both.

Prophets of flesh seems very solid, especially for players using covens as a support detachment it seems like the no brained pick since you're making your units tougher and getting that +d3 commands points. Yeah the extra ap trait is nice but man that extra cp is tasty.

For kabal I think black heart spearhead is solid and probably going to become a popular choice to unlock their stratagem and command trait, but you can't really afford to run it if you want two battalions I think. I don't really think you can go wrong with running poisoned tongue, though you'll have to take venoms/warriors to get the mileage out of that. I mean regardless you're probably going to have to run some kabalites, I think it's hard to make a list without them.

Prophets of Flesh with the D3 extra command points AND a 4++ sort of seems like a no brainer to me. Do we know if helm of spite is archon exclusive, or can a haemonculus take one? If that's the case, then prophets of flesh haemonculus with a 4++, T5, getting you D3 extra command points and denying the witch once per turn is pretty legit.

As far as I know any character can take it, but it definetly could be archon only. Not really a huge issue if it's archon only though, I'll likely be taking 2 archons anyway.

I agree with those lines of thought. So then:

Is PT a waste because my ravagers get nothing?

Which one is a definite battalion, which could maybe be the second?

If Kabal is battalion, def going PT.

That's fair! I have no idea about what should be batallions or whichever. I've been doing just fine with the patrol thing.

I've been having a lot of fun with Obsidian Rose in a few of my test games. 24" blasters, 21" splinter canon rapid fire really makes a huge difference.

Honestly you could probably go either way for battalion, take 3x5 wych squads plus 2 succubuses isn't really that bad of a requirement for a wych cult battalion, but if you're only going to have one battalion I'd definetly go kabal because I feel wyches are better in units of 10, while kabalites do just fine in units of 5 so can more easily fill up a battalion.

If you did go wych cult battalion though, I might reconsider red grief, since 5 man wych units aren't going to survive to use the jump back into a transport stratagem, making cult of strife or the +1 strength cult better for them.

Poisoned tongue isn't a waste as long as you are running kabalites/venoms. If you're not running either than yes it's a waste, but if you're going to run a decent number of either of those stay PT. Ravagers are so good already it's hardly like they need an obsession to benefit from, and they only benefit from a few of the traits anyway.

Red grief in 5 man squads wouldn't be a bad idea. Charge 5 into an enemy infantry squad with a shardnet and you've successfully tied up an enemy unit for a turn or 2, depending on what they're up against.

So then the question is: Should cult be turn 1 disruption with beasts to screen covens or a concentrated turn 2 assault?

Well beasts can't really match the speed of hellions and especially reavers, even more so if you're using red grief so if you're going to take a bunch of beasts they will definetly be doing turn 2 assaults, which means they can cover the midfield of the board from deepstrikers while reavers speed up the board to tie up units. I'm really not sure how beasts will fit in the codex though, I use to run lots of razorwing flocks as disruption but now that you need to take a beastmaster that changes my calculations a bit. I think we'll need to wait for the codex to figure out how to best run beasts.

That being said, concentrated turn two assault is probably a solid idea for many dark eldar lists, and if you don't want to run red grief for your cult waiting till turn 2 will give your cult units reroll charges from pfp, and they can take one of the other traits instead. I think the decision to charge up the board turn one or wait for more units to get into position for turn 2 really depends on how many assault units you're taking. If you have a lot, say a combination of wyches, beasts, hellions/reavers and coven units you can wait to turn two, but if you just want reavers to tie things up no need to wait till turn 2.