Post FAQ Tournament Tactica - AKA How to Win More

TeenageAngst wrote:

Cerve wrote:

Obsessions is litterally what makes us broken...

I don't see how taking a 5++ and making it a 4++ is better than, say, having 5 extra CP.

Really? If there was a 2CP stratagem that gave you this bonus (or most other obsessions) for a huge swath of your army, you wouldn’t use it every turn?

If you want to play a menagerie of random stuff without a cohesive plan, I don’t think extra VPs will help you.

withershadow wrote:

TeenageAngst wrote:

Cerve wrote:

Obsessions is litterally what makes us broken...

I don't see how taking a 5++ and making it a 4++ is better than, say, having 5 extra CP.

Really? If there was a 2CP stratagem that gave you this bonus (or most other obsessions) for a huge swath of your army, you wouldn’t use it every turn?

If you want to play a menagerie of random stuff without a cohesive plan, I don’t think extra VPs will help you.

No I wouldn't use it every turn. I wouldn't even use it most turns. A +1 to invul saves on 1/3 of your army is handy but not as handy as having those extra CP. And what you call a "menagerie of random stuff" is more like a toolbox. Cause the last thing I want is to not have the right tool for the job.

Having no redundancy and just a pile of tools makes it easy for your opponent to scalpel our (no pun intended) the one that threatens him. It’s better to be really good at a couple of things than try to be a little bit of everything.

I guess we can agree to disagree, if a stratagem let me ignore 17% of the opponent’s firepower, I’d use it constantly. I thought we had enough CPs when running raiding parties, now we aren’t married to Black heart and Coven with the increase to battalions, so chasing Brigades seems pointless.

You could do it by taking 3 Archons, 3 Mandrakes, 6 Warriors, Raiders/Venoms, 3 Scourges and 3 Ravagers. Should have enough for either a tough Coven Vanguard or an Outrider of Reavers. Eh.

You can have redundancy without identical units. How do you kill a Wave Serpent? Dark Lances? Haywire Blasters? Close combat with a Talos? How about killing a squad of Terminators? Grotesques? Wracks? Wyches to tie them up?

This is why I like the diversity. Most armies have units that are bad, ours has comparatively few. Dark Lance Scourges, Haywire Scourges, and a Talos can all kill a vehicle, just in different ways, and their effectiveness changes depending on the game turn or the opponent's army composition. My list might lack redundancy in specific slots but it makes up for it by being flexible, and the redundancy in unit roles is still there. I also have clear objectives in mind when I run it as to how I'm going to position myself which, since my list is Covens heavy, relies on having a strong mid-table dominance.

Well then if command points are better than obsessions, what’s the problem? Really, the angst feels shallow here. The army as written is very workable if you’re willing to utilize detachments, the separation of factions makes sense from a fluff perspective and gives us additional perks like extra warlord traits, and even the option you want is available with the extra perk of more command points. Seems like complaining for the sake of complaining. Cadians won’t work with Catachans, and they have a lot more common ground than Drukhari subfactions.

Because no other faction has to chop themselves into 3 segments to have access to their entire codex or lose their faction bonuses. It's a stupid rule and whoever designed it ought to be flogged. It's the kind of bozo schtick I was hoping having playtesters would help sort out considering what a mess it was in the Index but apparently bad ideas run in packs. The number of tax units we have to take to get all 3 factions on the board while maintaining Obsessions and a useful amount of CP is insane. Me taking a Brigade and saying to hell with the Obsessions altogether is me making the best of a bad situation, I'm learning to live without to pretend my army still functions coherently. The moment the errata or FAQ get updated so that I need a Black Heart detachment to use Agents of Vect or a Prophets of Flesh detachment to regenerate Wracks I'm up a creek, because then I'll have to choose between running 300+ points of useless tax units, running Outrider/Spearhead detachments that don't give me enough CP to use the damn stratagems I want to begin with, or settle for lopping off 1 or 2 thirds of the entire army.

That's why I'm complaining. Yes our army is good but list building is a nightmare because god forbid a Succubus and a Grotesque share a detachment like they did since 3rd edition.

TeenageAngst wrote:

Hmm, I think I still prefer the Brigade if only because of the extra CP is generates in lieu of Obsessions.

I actually agree here. I was doing a brigade with a ynnari patrol. Deepstrike 20 guardians and 10 dark reapers. The command points from the brigade can open up a lot of options and I use a lot of mercenary units in my brigade anyways

Also incredibly valid points about mixing drukhari "factions" but whatever. Honestly not as bad as it could be. Still many ways to make lists around it. I get we shouldn't have to but its crap that's well seasoned

Oh you can make lists around it, and it's definitely not as bad as it could be, but instead of making the army fun to make lists with they instead made it frustrating. Nothing fits right, units are chosen to fill slots rather than tactical usefulness, or entire segments of the army are lopped off in favor of getting a bonus every other army has inherently across the entire faction. I think that's the most frustrating thing. It was so close to being right but then they scratched at the 8 ball, and it was the one thing I was afraid of the most. Even with our guys playtesting it somehow the synergy still got smashed into pieces.

Ive been doing 2 Battalions 1 kabal, 1 wych and 1 Patrol of coven, this gives me 13CP, with the chances to get more its been pretty good, i go heavy turns 1-3 on CP and try to save 1-2 for turn 4+ just b.c if i can get my work done before turn 4 its a easy win.

I'd actually try not to use cult at all because they don't fit my fluff. And if I use them to get the alliance of agony I guess I'd take the supreme HQs to throw a bunch of cheap but awesome Succubus in my enemy's face.

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Honestly, Obsessions rules were playtested, and were playtested very well. Multi-detatchment army is a reality for a lot of armies in 8th, we can maximize any of them.
I mean who cares about run and charge on Ravagers? Or +1 attack/S to Kabals? Or +1 Invulnerable save to Kabals? Our Obssessions (mostly) are well paired with their models! I can litterally play:
Talos with 4++
Kabals with reroll+noCoverSave
And Reavers with Advance+Charge

all in the same list. Who cares about Brigades? 1 Point and I even have 3 GeneralTraits instead of one. Where are these taxes? I can't find any struggle on playing this Codex, You can build uo Vanguards with Mandrakes, Outriders with Scourges, Spearhead with Ravagers etc. Where's the problem?
Actually, I can see way more taxes by building a Brigade than a multidetatchment army (which 90% of the lists are righit now anyway).
In my opinion, if you fill some choices without using them in list I think it's not a problem of the Codex :-/ I'm not a mage or nothing more, but I never writed something "just for fulfill the slots". Anyway I'm not saying that Brigade is not viable. I'm saying that multiObsessions are viable as (if not more) the brigade itself.

Cerve wrote:

Honestly, Obsessions rules were playtested, and were playtested very well. Multi-detatchment army is a reality for a lot of armies in 8th, we can maximize any of them.
I mean who cares about run and charge on Ravagers? Or +1 attack/S to Kabals? Or +1 Invulnerable save to Kabals? Our Obssessions (mostly) are well paired with their models! I can litterally play:
Talos with 4++
Kabals with reroll+noCoverSave
And Reavers with Advance+Charge

all in the same list. Who cares about Brigades? 1 Point and I even have 3 GeneralTraits instead of one. Where are these taxes? I can't find any struggle on playing this Codex, what's the problem? You can build uo Vanguards with Mandrakes, Outriders with Scourges, Spearhead with Ravagers etc. Where's the problem? In facts, I can't see where's the problem.
Actually, I can see way more taxes by building a Brigade than a multidetatchment army (which 90% of the lists are righit now anyway).
In my opinion, if you fill some choices without using them in list I think it's not a  problem of the Codex :-/ I'm not a mage or nothing more, but I never writed something "just for fulfill the slots". Anyway I'm not saying that Brigade is not viable. I'm saying that multiObsessions are viable as (if not more) the brigade itself.

Ive done Coven Brigades and they are freaking amazing, a Coven Brigade with HWB Scourges, and 2 Reapers, then i took 1 outrider with wyches+shardnets and Reavers (all super cheap), comes to 1999pts

4++ on all the coven is so good, 9 Grots, 30 wracks, 3 talos, 3 HQ's, but the insane amount of CP is what does it, re-roll wounds, fire and fade, etc..


I only feel Brigade's are god if you do 1 or 2 traits, if you are doing all 3 its not worth it at all.

Part of the issue here is that our Codex seems to have been written just before the Command Points for Battalions and Brigades got changed. Taking multiple small detachments - even an Alliance of Agony - looked more attractive when the bigger detachments only awarded 3 and 9 CP. Now that they award 5 and 13 it's a lot more painful to play detachment slot Tetris.

I don't think it'd be too controversial to say that we're the single faction most negatively impacted by that part of the FAQ.

Even before, most DE players thought the 3 patrols wasnt that good

People are real quick to tell me I'm wrong about taxes but real short on suggestions to run all 3 parts of the faction together without gutting my CP or having to run an obnoxious number of useless HQs. Wish some friendly playtesters would give me a hand with this since they've had the book longer than the rest of the forum put together but as I've said before I think the faction separation was probably their idea so chances are they'd just tell me that I don't know what's good for me and to shut up and like what I'm given.

TeenageAngst wrote:

People are real quick to tell me I'm wrong about taxes but real short on suggestions to run all 3 parts of the faction together without gutting my CP or having to run an obnoxious number of useless HQs. Wish some friendly playtesters would give me a hand with this since they've had the book longer than the rest of the forum put together but as I've said before I think the faction separation was probably their idea so chances are they'd just tell me that I don't know what's good for me and to shut up and like what I'm given.

I dont understand why you want so hard to get ton of CP instead of obsession considering our most expensive stratageme are obsession related anyway. And i think the fact you found faction separation limitating was 100% intended, army building limitation are not a new thing in this game

None of our obsessions are linked to stratagems.

TeenageAngst wrote:

None of our obsessions are linked to stratagems.

??? We have 1 stratagme per obsession what are you talking about, and our best stratageme ( agent of vect) is obsession related

Those are keywords not obsession linked. I can use Agents of Vect or No Method of Death in my Brigade on appropriately assigned units.

TeenageAngst wrote:

Those are keywords not obsession linked. I can use Agents of Vect or No Method of Death in my Brigade on appropriately assigned units.

It's a bit unclear to me whether the most recent FAQ still permits this. It says we need a detachment of the appropriate faction to unlock stratagems - is that "appropriate faction" Drukhari or the respective Kabal/Cult/Coven?

I can't see opponents letting stratagems be played this way without an argument, at least.

TeenageAngst wrote:

Those are keywords not obsession linked. I can use Agents of Vect or No Method of Death in my Brigade on appropriately assigned units.

I'm pretty sure you do a rule abuse here, it was clearly not intended to work this way.

Burnage wrote:

TeenageAngst wrote:

Those are keywords not obsession linked. I can use Agents of Vect or No Method of Death in my Brigade on appropriately assigned units.

It's a bit unclear to me whether the most recent FAQ still permits this. It says we need a detachment of the appropriate faction to unlock stratagems - is that "appropriate faction" Drukhari or the respective Kabal/Cult/Coven?

I can't see opponents letting stratagems be played this way without an argument, at least.

Being in the same faction is having the same keyword, Kabal/Cult/Coven are keyword so yes this limitation apply to us.

TeenageAngst wrote:

Those are keywords not obsession linked. I can use Agents of Vect or No Method of Death in my Brigade on appropriately assigned units.

After the new FaQs, nope.

The FAQ made it clear that they could, in fact, be used that way. That isn't me talking it's the NOVA judges. Rules as written they are unlocked by *any* Dark Eldar faction.

TeenageAngst wrote:

The FAQ made it clear that they could, in fact, be used that way. That isn't me talking it's the NOVA judges. Rules as written they are unlocked by *any* Dark Eldar faction.

A new rulebook FaQs makes clear about keywords detatchments are needed for keyword stratagems.
So a BlackHeart detatchment (a fully one) is needed for Agents of Vect stratagem.