something i haven't seen talked about yet...

with the loss of trueborn and blood brides im facing a rather small problem, a lack of elites!

ive got a relatively basic collection so far and i had planned on using 5 man units of trueborn or bloodbrides to fill my elite requirements for brigades.

now im in a bit of a bind as i have no elite units aside from some old grots (which while cool dont really jive with my army, not to mention have no real way of including in a dettachment because i also dont really have any other coven units other than an over abundance of super old haemonculi (x5)

so my question is what is the best buy to fill those slots now?

mandrakes? Incubi? both are a fair bit more pricey than trueborn.

then i realized the court of the archon charcters count as elites. would three ssylth fill those slots as well? and if so what is the better option point wise/utility.

right now my army is about 50/50 kabal/cult 3-4 raiders of mounted kabalites, a blob of hellions, wyches and reavers.

Nogrim wrote:

with the loss of trueborn and blood brides im facing a rather small problem, a lack of elites!



so my question is what is the best buy to fill those slots now?

mandrakes? Incubi? both are a fair bit more pricey than trueborn.

then i realized the court of the archon charcters count as elites. would three ssylth fill those slots as well? and if so what is the better option point wise/utility.

The Court models are worded so that they don't take up Elite slots if your army is battle forged.

Mandrakes and Incubi have different costs than Trueborn, they also fill very different roles in your army. You may find that you get the shooting missing from Trueborn with units like Scourges.

If you are concerned about filling out a Brigade you can always simply take an Drukhari army without benefiting from the Obsessions. If you find that the CP benefits from the Brigade outweigh the benefits of the Obsessions you can go this route and take whatever Drukhari units fill those slots best given your collection.

That said...those Obsessions are hard to not play with once you've had a taste

For filling them cheaply, Court. For filling them with crap that matters, Mandrakes.

Evil Space Elves wrote:

Nogrim wrote:

with the loss of trueborn and blood brides im facing a rather small problem, a lack of elites!



so my question is what is the best buy to fill those slots now?

mandrakes? Incubi? both are a fair bit more pricey than trueborn.

then i realized the court of the archon charcters count as elites. would three ssylth fill those slots as well? and if so what is the better option point wise/utility.

The Court models are worded so that they don't take up Elite slots if your army is battle forged.

Mandrakes and Incubi have different costs than Trueborn, they also fill very different roles in your army. You may find that you get the shooting missing from Trueborn with units like Scourges.

If you are concerned about filling out a Brigade you can always simply take an Drukhari army without benefiting from the Obsessions. If you find that the CP benefits from the Brigade outweigh the benefits of the Obsessions you can go this route and take whatever Drukhari units fill those slots best given your collection.

That said...those Obsessions are hard to not play with once you've had a taste

Yeah it would be nice to be able to play with the army in a tournament legal detachment rather than be forced to take 6 patrols aren't allowed or otherwise miss out on the Obsessions which are the bread and butter of the codex. Really makes me wonder who was in charge of beta testing this product from a Matched Play perspective.

You have a few options open to you, which may vary other parts of your army in the long term as they do fill different roles than trueborn. However with the price reductions you are Probably getting enough dark light elsewhere, and can really make use of mandrakes or incubis talents.

Mandrakes are a great shooting unit, and now have a reasonable cc profile to back themselves up. If you have some way only rerolling wounds for them they become down right some our best anti anything in our book. (Self promotion for my own needs) don't believe me? Put them into the new version of my math hammer calculator that now has !graph support! And give me feed back on any issues.

Incubi, good close combat troops and great against meq. I stopped using them in the index as they were too niche, only good vs MEQ. At a few points ccheaper they might pass that point, but their biggest boost was wyches being great hoard cleaners so they don't have to.
Also I love the models(even the gun hat ones) and the fluff so I can't wait to try then again

Do we know if Beast masters are elite? Thats another way we can fill out the Elite slots.

But I believe that GW took all of this into account and gave us the Raiding Force org. With the low cost for our HQ's we'd be putting in 150-350 points before upgrades, roughly 15-25% of our points into our armies. For those competitive players, I don't see why tournaments would not allow us to use 6 patrols. I'd prefer to use obsessions rather than a Brigade in that case.

The problem is that you can't spam Mandrakes and Scourges, because you can't deepstrike more than half your drops (and I already intend to DS a lot of my vehicles).

I mean if you don't plan on deep striking a lot of vehicles you definetly spam scourges/mandrakes . If I was running say a kabalite brigade, 3 mandrake 3 scourge units would be a no brainer. Actually come to think of it, for filling out elite slots mandrakes are cheaper than trueborn after you considering the cost of special weapons and transport for trueborn. Mandrakes don't need to pay for either of those and got a pts decrease.

hmm i had been leaning toward the mandrakes i think you guys have made a solid case for them, however finding room pts wise for three squads will be tough.

as for deep striking, also great points, i wasnt aware of the 50% rule, so that adjusts my plans slightly, because i also assume that screaming jets factor in.

Beastmasters - considered but problem remains i own zero beasts so theyd be pointless.

what i might end up doing is, since i plan on using flayed skull for my kabal, is rather than using screaming jets ill deploy my kabalite raiders on the very back edge of my deploy zone (forcing them enemy to come to me to shoot (opening up their rear to DS'ing the mandrakes etc.)

so i guess the answer then becomes
---
1 squad of mandrakes (to DS) and then 2 sslyth's riding shot gun in a venom with my two archons and succubs just to eat wounds/ or take the fall if the venom gets blown up
--

so whole court of the archon thing is a choice to not count them as elite slots?


also as a somewhat unrelated side note, would a big ass unit of kabalites ( a big 20 man blob with no upgrades, or 4x5 man just to help with the 50% rule) be a decent screen if i were to drop something like ravagers and bikes on the table and keep the raiders/mandrakes in reserve.


i dont have a lot of actual table top experience to draw from but i tend to be really good at thinking outside the box strategy wise which is why i chose DE as my army in the first place.

You can absolutely play your army in tournament legal detachments. Covens fill solid Battalions, Kabals are good with Spearheads, and WCs are easy to fit into Outriders. Brigadws are tough, sure, but how many armies actually can viably fill a tournament worthy brigade? Guard, that's who.

And we don't even have that hard a time of it. 6 Kabalite squads in 3 raiders, 2 Archons one who gets a venom and a court, 3 Scourge squads, 3 Mandrakes, 3 Ravagers babysat by the archin who doesn't get a court. Black Heart, reroll wounds relic on the Ravager sitter, LC trait and you get Agents. That's a better brigade than most armies can bring to the table.

Quote :

You can absolutely play your army in tournament legal detachments. Covens fill solid Battalions, Kabals are good with Spearheads, and WCs are easy to fit into Outriders. Brigadws are tough, sure, but how many armies actually can viably fill a tournament worthy brigade? Guard, that's who.

True, but the general litmus test I use for determining a "full" army is if they can fill a brigade. Harlequins can, Tempestus cannot. I feel like we fall into the latter category, as no one of our factions can fill a brigade without substantial consequence (Loss of Obsessions namely.)

This is balanced by our Obsessions and units being incredibly strong across the board (From what I've seen, it looks like only Hellions still suck, and Archons are gimmicky but useful.)

That said, it leaves a bit of a sour taste in my mouth

The only faction that can't fill a brigade (without FW anyway) is wyches.

Haemonculus can with scourges. Kabal can as well.

Mandrakes dont stop the cult rules do the? we can fill them up with 3x5 of them

And we also have Scourges for Fast as Merchs too

the_scotsman wrote:

You can absolutely play your army in tournament legal detachments. Covens fill solid Battalions, Kabals are good with Spearheads, and WCs are easy to fit into Outriders. Brigadws are tough, sure, but how many armies actually can viably fill a tournament worthy brigade? Guard, that's who.

And we don't even have that hard a time of it. 6 Kabalite squads in 3 raiders, 2 Archons one who gets a venom and a court, 3 Scourge squads, 3 Mandrakes, 3 Ravagers babysat by the archin who doesn't get a court. Black Heart, reroll wounds relic on the Ravager sitter, LC trait and you get Agents. That's a better brigade than most armies can bring to the table.

im not exactly sure what you are even talking about here. feels like you replied to some other thread and linked it in here....

most of our elites are actually mercs so wont mess with any of the obsessions.

my question was based around CHEAP options to fill those slots now that trueborn arent an option, and whether or not the court of the archon characters as single models will fill those elite slot requirements.

the_scotsman wrote:

You can absolutely play your army in tournament legal detachments. Covens fill solid Battalions, Kabals are good with Spearheads, and WCs are easy to fit into Outriders. Brigadws are tough, sure, but how many armies actually can viably fill a tournament worthy brigade? Guard, that's who.

And we don't even have that hard a time of it. 6 Kabalite squads in 3 raiders, 2 Archons one who gets a venom and a court, 3 Scourge squads, 3 Mandrakes, 3 Ravagers babysat by the archin who doesn't get a court. Black Heart, reroll wounds relic on the Ravager sitter, LC trait and you get Agents. That's a better brigade than most armies can bring to the table.

That brigade is only Kabal though. I want a brigade that utilizes the entire army not just 1/3rd of it. No other army has that ridiculous restriction.

I'm pretty sure the court doesn't count anymore, I believe they now don't take a slot and you just get one court per archon.

Thing is trueborn were never a cheap option. If you took them stock with no special weapons, yeah they were technically the cheapest unit outside of court models but that would be a huge waste. If you actually gave them special weapons they'd be more expensive than a base unit of 5 incubi/mandrakes, so for the purpose of filling a brigade we really have no issues at all for elites. The actual issue with filling a brigade is being forced into sticking with kabals/cults/covens in that one brigade or losing the obsessions, and wychs actually technically cannot make a brigade at all since they have no heavy support options.

That being said, I honestly don't particularly care. I've never felt like I wanted to run a brigade, it just forces you to spam a whole lot of cheap choices. 2 battalions would be much better for DE, lets you take 2/3 of our subfactions.

Quote :

That brigade is only Kabal though. I want a brigade that utilizes the entire army not just 1/3rd of it. No other army has that ridiculous restriction.

While I agree, it's also true that no other army has multiple benefits from a single trait. Flayed Skull for example. We get a minor benefit (3" to movement) and two major ones (Reroll hits and ignore cover). Each of those would warrant a trait in itself in other books.

TheBaconPope wrote:

Quote :

That brigade is only Kabal though. I want a brigade that utilizes the entire army not just 1/3rd of it. No other army has that ridiculous restriction.

While I agree, it's also true that no other army has multiple benefits from a single trait. Flayed Skull for example. We get a minor benefit (3" to movement) and two major ones (Reroll hits and ignore cover). Each of those would warrant a trait in itself in other books.

Okay. That doesn't make up for the fact I can only fill a detachment with 1/3rd of my units, it just makes the payoff of having to lose obsessions to run a full DE army properly that much more painful.

"damn, my army was structured to benefit competitive play, I'm so oppressed"

The fact that our army is structured around the kind of detachment mixing to maximize competitive advantage is not really something to complain about if you have a big collection.

That's not to say some DE players don't have problems. Newer players who didn't have an army structured around just one third of the army have a big shopping list if they want to use a lot of what's in their new book.

But if you've got a large collection of everything and you're trying to maximize competitiveness, then yeah, the fact that our traits are better than anyone elses is probably going to more than nake up for having to split your army into deachments.