10 man Kabalite squads loadout

I'm taking 3 or so units of 10 Kabs in Raiders.  Obsidian Rose giving me 24" Blasters is a no brainer, but adding a Dark Lance to each unit is causing me choice issues.  I'm just not sure that 20pts for a BS4+ (when am I really going to be stationary? .. I think never) Lance is worth it. 4 units costs 80 extra points for this upgrade choice .. That's a unit of Mandrake. Surely a better choice?

Opinions and numbers please people

Ten points for a splinter cannon instead seems like a much better deal. Leave the dark lances to vehicles. For every two units you run you get the same firepower as a venom for the cost of one dark lance and same ballistic skill. Seems good to me.

I hate spinter fire and I think the Cannon is hugely over priced. I'm also likely to be hovering at 23" from everything, so it's even worse.

Depends a little bit on the rest of the army.
Against anything with multiple wounds, the dark lances will outperform the mandrake shooting.
Against anything single wound the mandrake shooting alone will be enough to outperform the dark lances, if you also take melee into account mandrakes deal more than double the damage.

You already have 9 blaster shots (raider&blasters) if you also have some other anty vehicle shots (scourges/ ravagers/flyers) I would go for the mandrakes, they are more usefull against a variety of targets.
Considering moving lances,
Against vehicles 4 lances (4.7wounds) deal roughly double the damage of 5 shooting mandrakes 2.2, if you also consider melee (another 1.7-2.1 wounds depending on the turn), the difference is around 0.5 wound a turn.
Against MEQ lances would deal 1.7 damage while mandrakes can deal around more than 2.8 wounds just with shooting (and nearly the same in melee).

So unless in your meta you have problems with vehicles go for the mandrakes.

With Obsidian Rose, the splinter cannon is range 42" and so rapid-fires 6 shots at range 21". You only need to get a couple of inches closer than you already were to benefit from it.

I'm actually thinking that 10 man squads are stupid altogether now. Going to go with 4 Blasterborn and 5 man Kabalite squads with a Blaster in each Raider. Much more point efficient.

I'm actually trying to get rid of blaster born altogether. The only thing I'm going to use from index is the blaster Archon.

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I was trying ... but they are still better than basic Kabs, so I can't

My classic load out is 10 man Kabalites with 2 of them having blasters and one having a dark lance (we have enough poison shots by default so I skip splinter cannon). Lately I have been equipping one squad with shredders and dark lance. They have been doing good work so far.

Hellstrom wrote:

I was trying ... but they are still better than basic Kabs, so I can't

Are they though? They are almost twice the pts cost of kabalites, and yeah you get a lot more special weapons but you could take scourges for 1 more point that trueborn and gain a whole bunch of abilities. I have no issue leaving trueborn behind in the index because of that.

As far as 10 man warriors go, I prefer to take at least some 10 man squads since you need to essentially take 1 archon per 3 warrior units. I don't want to take 1 archon per 15 warriors, but 20-25 warriors seems better. Plus for stratagems 10 man units are more efficient. For equipment I think generally you'll want 2 blasters/shredders per unit, than the heavy weapon is kinda the luxury option if you have the pts.

As someone who plays Guard, I pay 20 points for BS4 lascannons all the time. Never been disappointed.

Hellstrom wrote:

I'm actually thinking that 10 man squads are stupid altogether now.  Going to go with 4 Blasterborn and 5 man Kabalite squads with a Blaster in each Raider.  Much more point efficient.

Is it? You just drastically increased the cost of the unit(s) inside per Raider.

HERO wrote:

Hellstrom wrote:

I'm actually thinking that 10 man squads are stupid altogether now.  Going to go with 4 Blasterborn and 5 man Kabalite squads with a Blaster in each Raider.  Much more point efficient.

Is it?  You just drastically increased the cost of the unit(s) inside per Raider.

4 Raiders (4x Dissie). 3 containing 10 Kabs with 2 Blasters. 1 Raider with 5 Kabs with 1 Blaster and the 2 Blaster Archons.
Total 9 Blasters
832pts

3 Raiders (3x Dissie). 2 containing 1 Blasterborn unit with 4 Blasters and 5 man Kab with 1 Blaster. 1 Raider with 5 Kabs with 1 Blaster and the 2 Blaster Archons.
Total 12 Blasters
805pts

Cheaper, but missing 1 Raider. Hmmmmm. Comparable maybe? Overall, actually more expensive I suppose. It's tricky this list making malarkey.

I think its just me holding over from older editions (I've run the same exact warrior unit since 4th ed; 10 warriors w/ 1 Splinter Cannon in a Raider w/ Dark Lance) but I usually dedicate my warriors to infantry and monster killing and my raiders and other vehicles to deal with vehicles.

In my experience you'll want that extra raider, just for the expendability; but take my experience with a bit of salt as I tend to try and keep everything as cheap as possible to squeeze in a few more models here and there.

So, if you're not using Dark Lances or Splinter Cannons, is there any reason to use a 10-man squad over 2 5-man squads?
- Same number of Blasters
- Can double up on PGLs or other sergeant weapons (if desired)
- Less vulnerable to Ld
- Can split up squad as and when needed

No need at all. That's what I've done if I'm not taking the Lance.

Soulless Samurai wrote:

So, if you're not using Dark Lances or Splinter Cannons, is there any reason to use a 10-man squad over 2 5-man squads?
- Same number of Blasters
- Can double up on PGLs or other sergeant weapons (if desired)
- Less vulnerable to Ld
- Can split up squad as and when needed

Another crucial factor to this:
> You can disembark on different sides for a greater split and distance covered for enemy charging purposes
> Your opponent can shoot one squad to death instead of 2 so he can oversaturate fire and potentially waste shots

HERO wrote:

Soulless Samurai wrote:

So, if you're not using Dark Lances or Splinter Cannons, is there any reason to use a 10-man squad over 2 5-man squads?
- Same number of Blasters
- Can double up on PGLs or other sergeant weapons (if desired)
- Less vulnerable to Ld
- Can split up squad as and when needed

Another crucial factor to this:
> You can disembark on different sides for a greater split and distance covered for enemy charging purposes
> Your opponent can shoot one squad to death instead of 2 so he can oversaturate fire and potentially waste shots

another factor, fill out detachments faster, more CP. I can't see any reason to run a 10-man, the SC and DL aren't worth it.

Filling a detachment faster is both an advantage (more CPs) and disadvantage (need an additional detachment sooner = more HQ tax).

wormfromhell wrote:

HERO wrote:

Soulless Samurai wrote:

So, if you're not using Dark Lances or Splinter Cannons, is there any reason to use a 10-man squad over 2 5-man squads?
- Same number of Blasters
- Can double up on PGLs or other sergeant weapons (if desired)
- Less vulnerable to Ld
- Can split up squad as and when needed

Another crucial factor to this:
> You can disembark on different sides for a greater split and distance covered for enemy charging purposes
> Your opponent can shoot one squad to death instead of 2 so he can oversaturate fire and potentially waste shots

another factor, fill out detachments faster, more CP. I can't see any reason to run a 10-man, the SC and DL aren't worth it.

True but not exactly a good thing since you sometimes want to take more of a certain troop type.

Yeah that's the main reason I use 10 man kabalite suads. If you only ever use 5 man kabalites, you're stuck with taking 1 archon per 15 warriors, not what I want. If I take say 2 10 mans though and a 5 man, now I get 25 warriors for one archon.

Hellstrom wrote:

HERO wrote:

Hellstrom wrote:

I'm actually thinking that 10 man squads are stupid altogether now.  Going to go with 4 Blasterborn and 5 man Kabalite squads with a Blaster in each Raider.  Much more point efficient.

Is it?  You just drastically increased the cost of the unit(s) inside per Raider.

4 Raiders (4x Dissie).  3 containing 10 Kabs with 2 Blasters.  1 Raider with 5 Kabs with 1 Blaster and the 2 Blaster Archons.
Total 9 Blasters
832pts

3 Raiders (3x Dissie).  2 containing 1 Blasterborn unit with 4 Blasters and 5 man Kab with 1 Blaster. 1 Raider with 5 Kabs with 1 Blaster and the 2 Blaster Archons.
Total  12 Blasters
805pts

Cheaper, but missing 1 Raider.  Hmmmmm.  Comparable maybe? Overall, actually more expensive I suppose.  It's tricky this list making malarkey.

You've gained 3 blasters and 27pts at the cost of a raider!, 28ish splinter rifles and 10 more wounds.

im just not entirely sure how you can justify that as being a net gain?

wormfromhell wrote:

HERO wrote:

Soulless Samurai wrote:

So, if you're not using Dark Lances or Splinter Cannons, is there any reason to use a 10-man squad over 2 5-man squads?
- Same number of Blasters
- Can double up on PGLs or other sergeant weapons (if desired)
- Less vulnerable to Ld
- Can split up squad as and when needed

Another crucial factor to this:
> You can disembark on different sides for a greater split and distance covered for enemy charging purposes
> Your opponent can shoot one squad to death instead of 2 so he can oversaturate fire and potentially waste shots

another factor, fill out detachments faster, more CP. I can't see any reason to run a 10-man, the SC and DL aren't worth it.

Lets say the game is one of the Kill point games or a game in ITC format.  You will be giving away points to your opponent with easy 5 man kills.

And passing up on 3 dark light weapons per unit is a major blow to the combat effectiveness of your range attacks.[/quote]

shadowseercB wrote:

And passing up on 3 dark light weapons per unit is a major blow to the combat effectiveness of your range attacks.

You only lose the lance, which was hitting on 4's anyway.

Or a splinter cannon, worth considering taking I think for 10 man warrior units in raiders.