Reavers: MSU or Cavalry Flank?

What are we feeling for loadouts and unit sizes?

I'm at a toss between Heat lance Red grief in 6 body squads and MSU Cursed Blade with Arena Champion carrying all the toys and a power sword.

What are your thoughts?


Suggested Builds
- Adrenalight + Strife : 4* S4 AP-1 per model
- Black Lotus + Cursed Blade : 2 S5 AP- per model [AC: 3 S5AP-3 w/PS]
- Painbringer + Red Grief

Cursed Blade for Reavers is a terrible idea. They use a weapon that has a static Strength (Bladevane), so Cursed Blade wouldn't affect their strength at all.

That's not true. Every single unit in the game is presumed to be armed with a basic CCW and the directly proposed sgt has a power sword which very much cares about S. The proposed unit would be swinging at S5 with the sgt swinging at ap-3.

S5 is worth the loss of ap-1 when 42% of your attack source drops to ap-3.

How do you get S5 with reavers ? They have S3 on profile.

If you boost them with Cursed Blade, you have the choice between S4 (profile) and S4 AP-1 (weapon).


Unless you're talking about Cursed Blade + Black Lotus (which is ridiculous, considering it could be Strife+Adrenalight).

There is no reason to play a Strength bonus on Reavers. You need +2 Strength to actually boost them, and even then you lose 1 AP. You want to buff their damage output ? Give them extra attacks.



More simply put, you can choose between :

- Adrenalight + strife : 4* S4 AP-1 per model
- Black Lotus + Cursed Blade : 2 S5 AP- per model.

Unless we are allowed to use multi-patrol detachment sets as single detachments in competitive play then obsessions are hard to come by. If we want 2 cult obsessions we are rather restricted on FA slots unless we want to load up on succubi or lose out on CP.

Thanks for the math and if you don't mind I'm going to continuously update the OP with proposed loadouts and math like you proposed here.

Your black lotus example ignores an important point: the Arena champion has 3 attacks and can take a power sword, and 3/7ths of ones attack is not an insubstantial amount.

Are you taking an agonizer on the strife squad?

Whilst Cursed Blade probably are the worst choice for Reavers I'd not considered the power sword on the champion. Might try that myself. The other part of the cursed blade obsession in only losing 1 model to a failed morale test per turn plus giving them the toughnes drug though makes them stick around a bit longer though so that something to consider. Not saying it's optimal by any stretch but certainly a reason to include Reavers in your cursed blade detachment.

I'm running one big squad completely barebones, they exist solely to rush enemy vehicles and lock them down in combat. They just don't deal enough damage to send them after targets, I'd rather tear the enemy up with Kabalites or Scourges.

So Drukhari detachment then? No obsession? Which Drug?

Gorefather wrote:

I'm running one big squad completely barebones, they exist solely to rush enemy vehicles and lock them down in combat. They just don't deal enough damage to send them after targets, I'd rather tear the enemy up with Kabalites or Scourges.

They seem like pretty solid GEQ killers. Wyches will deal far more damage per point but it's quite a bit trickier to get them into combat.

amorrowlyday wrote:

Unless we are allowed to use multi-patrol detachment sets as single detachments in competitive play then obsessions are hard to come by. If we want 2 cult obsessions we are rather restricted on FA slots unless we want to load up on succubi or lose out on CP.

Thanks for the math and if you don't mind I'm going to continuously update the OP with proposed loadouts and math like you proposed here.

Your black lotus example ignores an important point: the Arena champion has 3 attacks and can take a power sword, and 3/7ths of ones attack is not an insubstantial amount.

Are you taking an agonizer on the strife squad?

If you want 2 detatchment you can go Battalion+FA detatchment. For a Cult is more than enough.

And yes, Cursed Blade on Reaver is useless. You get +1S, getting to lock yourself into +1S even in drugs, only for gettin S5 ap-. You're losing you ap for nothing. And, most of all, you don't need the buff on morale when you field a maximum of 12 models in the same unit.

And at the end, Red Grief is nearly mandatory for Reavers. It's basically writed for them.


So you're free to do it, but you seems someone who's looking for a competitive way. And that is definitely not the best way you can take for Reavers.

When you max out the fast attack slots in the Outrider detachment which is easy going msu, you need to use the ones that you correctly point out are in the battalion and unless you want that to also be red grief you either need to not take more msu reavers or utilize the obsession that detachment takes.

amorrowlyday wrote:

So Drukhari detachment then? No obsession? Which Drug?

Outrider, Red Grief, +T if against MEQ, +A if against MEQ, +Movement if against gunlines with buff characters

Sauceboss, big Reaver swarm, two Scourge units that I've been toying with trying to find optimal loadouts. Eventually I might replace one Scourge unit with a huge Hellion swarm for the Flyby stratagem.

Yeah I see it as being hard to run anything besides red grief for reavers. Adding 8" of movement on top of their already fast movement just really doubles down on their strengths, plus it makes that turn one charge very doable no matter what sort of deployment map you're using.

My guess is 6 is probably the ideal number. 3 is fine if you just want to tie things up in assault, but 6 is better for putting out some damage and doubling down on upgrades like blasters and grav-talons. Only reason I think I'd go over 6 is if I wanted to make use of fly over mortal wounds stratagem.

I run a 12 man Reaver squad with the cult of strife.  Every game so far (4 played in this codex) I have made successful charges turn one because they move 18 inches.  In two of the games I massacred my opponents unit then used the strife stratagem to pile in and massacre another unit,  if you do this make sure that you multi charge so you can attack the other unit when you use the stratagem otherwise you cannot use it.  

The stratagem is the main reason I run a 12 man.

I'm running 4 squads of 3 in a red grief outrider to supplement my kabal and other cult. will probably give them drugs like +1T, +1WS, +2move. The 12 blob with the strife stratagem seems great though, i want to try that. ATM i am using reavers to lock down important enemy fire power (leman's, devs, etc) and if they bubble wrap, the reavers will just get stuck in to them. i am shoving them down the enemies through because the are surprisingly resilient, so that the rest of my army can move in for a T2 assault.

Only issue I see with a 12 man unit is I feel like reavers output damage in assault isn't that great. Maybe with cult of strife and the +1 attack drug they are decent, that's 4 attacks each at s4 ap-1, so did you find that was enough to really inflict some damage on reasonably tough targets? Also giving up that extra 8" of movement doesn't seem ideal.

Lord Asvaldir wrote:

Only issue I see with a 12 man unit is I feel like reavers output damage in assault isn't that great. Maybe with cult of strife and the +1 attack drug they are decent, that's 4 attacks each at s4 ap-1, so did you find that was enough to really inflict some damage on reasonably tough targets? Also giving up that extra 8" of movement doesn't seem ideal.

For how I'm running them it was perfect against chaos marine last night. I shot around other targets then charged a 10 man cultists unit and killed them, consolidated then I used the cult of strife stratagem after that to kill a 5 man of Possessed (2 wounds each) at str4 -1ap bladevanes with all the extra attacks from the cult and drugs. Its about 49 attacks with the arena champion using a agonizer (300 point unit is expensive but fun).

I get how having the extra 8 inches is solid and preferred by many but I prefer strife because of the firing at full BS then fight with a ton of attacks. And if deployment for them is an issue for turn one charge Webways are alway a good option. It's been working out for me so far.

amorrowlyday wrote:

When you max out the fast attack slots in the Outrider detachment which is easy going msu, you need to use the ones that you correctly point out are in the battalion and unless you want that to also be red grief you either need to not take more msu reavers or utilize the obsession that detachment takes.

Just don't pick msu. This Codex have a lot of hints about playing big units. Stratagems like Fire&Fade, Cruel Deception, Lightning-fast Reactions, Architect of Pain, Eviscerating Fly-By etc (a lot of them, in fact), Cult of Strifes itself, is pushing you to play big units more than MSU style.
I can see an MSU for the Kabal, but talking about Wychcult or Covens, I see them play big units more than MSU.

Yeah Reavers can be used as fast tarpit in 3x, but in that case as you said you have a problem of detatchmenrs. I prefer 9-12 Reavers that will multiengage enemy units with a similar effect.

Anyway, we can't play all the good stuffs of the Codex, we need to choose.

I think a mixture of MSU/big units works well.

Yes stratagems because they nearly always work with 1 unit are always favoring large units. We also have quite a few command points that do not care about unit sizes (aliance of agony, haywire grenade, flesh craft, release the beast, freakish spectacle, pray they don't take you alive, soultrap, enhanced eathersails, crucible of malediction, torment grenade, agents of vect, concealed booby traps, atleathic aerialist)

On the other hand,
Take those 3x3 reaver squads to stop the enemy from shooting turn 1 works better than 1x9
More small Cult units means a smaller % of your army has subobtimal drugs.
Taking multiple dark creed units works better than just 1
Our transports only transport small units
If you use things like court etc without going full transport you will often finish deploying last anyway.

I think unlike some armies we actually also get advantages from MSU, which means that we can actually work quite well with MSU with and without a few bigger units thrown in.
You can only protect 1 big unit with hunt from the shadows/ lightning reflexes and 1 or 2 with the webway portal, which means if you have multiple big units some of them will be targeted.

When you just need 1 right drug on 12 Reavers, you don't really need to maximize over 6+ drugs units. O don't know, I don't really find any struggle with drugs right now.

I agree for the rest