Opinions on incubi

So what’s everyone’s opinions on incubi because wyches seem so much better with obsessions and drugs and much cheaper, but I love the incubi models so much but I’m concidering dropping them to invest points somewhere else

From what I've seen it seems to be the popular opinion that they're one of the weaker units in the codex. I can't imagine it helps that they're competing for elite slots with the vastly improved and far more flexible Mandrakes now.

It's a shame because like you said they really are some nice models.

They're fine, but they're competing with Mandrakes in the "unaffiliated elite" slot, and Grotesques in the "murderous melee wrecking ball" slot. There's nothing wrong with them, but I wouldn't expect to field them a lot unless you can barely see your local meta for all the space marines.

I don't consider incubi to be a weak unit, its well priced for what it does, the prob is dissies have become cheaper and mandrakes allow more utility. Incubi has a very specific role which mandrakes kind of fill to a degree but dissies basically do.

I would not compare to wyches tbh, wyches die easily and although wyches can win eventually against TEQ in attrition, incubi will hit them like a ton of bricks on first turn charge.

do you fight a lot of MEQ and TEQ?, if so then incubi excel here

They get a decent number of attacks now, but S4 D1 is pretty weak, even with AP-3. They can't even get to S5 with PfP anymore.

They might be okay if they were Kabal units (or even Wych units), but as it stands they have no Obsessions and basically no HQ support. And I just don't think they're good enough on their own to be worthwhile. Yes, they're mercenaries, but if anything that works against them:
- Kabal would actually like a melee unit . . . except that, as above, they have no synergy with Kabal HQs and don't get the Obsession bonuses.
- Coven is generally going to prefer Grotesques, which hit just as hard but are vastly more durable and benefit from Obsessions and the HQ aura.
- Likewise, Cult is probably going to want to use its own melee units.
- Even in terms of being mercenaries that fill out Elite slots, Mandrakes are usually going to be better. They don't need a transport, they have a great shooting attack and are just far more independent in general.

I like them. I only have 5 of them, so they are a precision scalpel. I pick 1-2 targets for them, and their job is to kill those units. 5 in a Venom works well for me, or I've been wanting to try treating them like a court option. Raider with Archon, 2 Sslyths, 1 Medusae, 1 Lhamean, 5 Incubi. Expensive for a cardboard transport, but that's a lot of choppy choppy and some decent support fire. Definitely not optimal, but I don't play that way.

I love incubi since I first started playing Dark Eldar in 5th. But I just can't find room for them in my list. As said before..Disintigrator cannons do their job better. and I feel in any match where they would be optimal, they would be the first targeted. They arent exactly spammable

I hope everyone writes in and tells them to make the stratagem uncapped. That singular change will make Drazhar, the Incubi, and the stratagem worth inclusion. Seems a super simple solution.

Do your part!

I think they are pretty ok.
Probably won't make it when playing hardcore tournament style, but for normal games they are nice.
They do not cost that much, 80 points for 16 attacks ap -3 means the enemy will have to deal with them and with 6 wounds and a 3+ 6++ I found that sometimes they are worth it just walking on the table, with a reasonable move and a 2+ save in cover they can still eat around 170 lasgun or 100 bolter shots or roughly 26 plasma shots before dying.

I'm simply shocked that Incubi (of all units..) don't have an invulnerable save. Seriously?

SushiBoy013 wrote:

I'm simply shocked that Incubi (of all units..) don't have an invulnerable save. Seriously?

Why would they? They are just edgy samurai elves in heavy armor. It's not like they have a forcefield or another fancy defense mechanism.

The problem is that there is almost no unit where an squad of Incubi performs significantly better than a squad of Wyches. And Wyches offer additional versatility (filling troop slots, objsec, No Escape, obsessions, drugs).

Incubi want to be TEQ hunters, but due to multiple wounds and invul saves your kill count is heavily diminished. And against higher toughness enemies S4 isn't impressive either. To make things worse, Mandrakes deal just fine with units having invul saves.

Benefitting from Kabal obsessions would be nice but doesn't fix their fundamental problems. They need a way to deal 2 damage per wound. They are not horde blenders, they are elite killers.

frankly i think with the codex spliting us in to three subfactions Incubi and scourges should have been rolled in with the kabals instead of left as mercenaries.

with the absence of trueborn kabals are pretty much just warriors and vehicles. giving them incubi and possibly even scourges would have made sense (though i can see some issues balance wise)

incubi would fill that elite kabalites role and ffs they look like beefy kabalites already, scourge are just suped up kabals.

to me this would have made a lot of sense and fleshed out kabals to be a bit more on par with cults or covens (who have multiple unit types) where as kabals are pretty much just warriors and the archon court.

Nogrim wrote:

frankly i think with the codex spliting us in to three subfactions Incubi and scourges should have been rolled in with the kabals instead of left as mercenaries.

with the absence of trueborn kabals are pretty much just warriors and vehicles. giving them incubi and possibly even scourges would have made sense (though i can see some issues balance wise)

incubi would fill that elite kabalites role and ffs they look like beefy kabalites already, scourge are just suped up kabals.

to me this would have made a lot of sense and fleshed out kabals to be a bit more on par with cults or covens (who have multiple unit types) where as kabals are pretty much just warriors and the archon court.

While I agree with that, fluff wise they are indipendly. And game wise we need them to fill these slots, if we restrict ourselves to kabals/cults/covens.

What do folks think of this idea?

Blood Contract 1 CP
Drukhari Stratagem

Use this stratagem before the battle. Choose a detachment that benefits from a <KABAL>, <WYCH KULT>, or <HAEMONCULUS COVEN> obsession. Any INCUBI units in that detachment gain the corresponding <KABAL>, <WYCH KULT>, or <HAEMONCULUS COVEN> keyword until all non-Incubi units in your army which share that keyword are destroyed.

I like the idea, but I would link it to a specific character since they used to be known as bodyguards etc.

Ooh, cool idea. So:

Blood Contract 1 CP
Drukhari Stratagem

Use this stratagem before the battle. Choose an HQ unit in a detachment that benefits from a <KABAL>, <WYCH KULT>, or <HAEMONCULUS COVEN> obsession. Any INCUBI units in that detachment gain the corresponding <KABAL>, <WYCH KULT>, or <HAEMONCULUS COVEN> keyword so long as that HQ remains in battle.

from my personal experience i think they they are one of the worst units in the codex right now... they should have flat 2 damage or at least lethal precision base for all of them imo to be worth it...

I used to be a huge fan of Incubi and always found a way to include them in my lists effectively, but with this new codex, they won't be seeing the table in my games. They are obviously a CC unit, and I feel that Cult and Coven do it better with their obsessions now. Both Wyches and Coven can take on anything in CC. They have different ways of doing it, but they are effective nonetheless and have no need for adding in the Incubi mercenaries. Now maybe an argument can be made for a pure Kabal army that needs a CC unit or two, but IMO, I would just take a Patrol of Coven or Wych instead of Incubi at that point.

As far as the other mercenaries, they most definitely have a role to fill. Scourges can provide good AT if you're running a CC oriented army without having to pay for a full detachment for the Kabal dark light weapons. Mandrakes honestly can fit into any style of army. They are one of the most flexible units we have.

Why do so many people want the 2 damage for incubi? Over half the TeQ have power weapons or similar where the armour of the incubi is wasted, while against most MEQ don't. And while I really like wyches I find against most MEQ the incubi still perform a lot better, is it just because wyches are more versatile or am I missing something else?

Scourges would be way too expensive if they got obsessions. It would also leave no fast attack option at all for Coven, so I totally disagree on that.

Incubi being Kabal would be a nice middling perk to make them more worthwhile.

|Meavar wrote:

Why do so many people want the 2 damage for incubi? Over half the TeQ have power weapons or similar where the armour of the incubi is wasted, while against most MEQ don't. And while I really like wyches I find against most MEQ the incubi still perform a lot better, is it just because wyches are more versatile or am I missing something else?

Incubi are certainly MEQ killers, but for the same amount of points in Wyches (10 wyches vs 5 incubi), the Wyches will kill about the same number of MEQ when receiving +1S and +1A. The main difference would be the cost differential in the required transport.

But yes, I think that Wyches are much more versatile than the Incubi. The have the potential to prevent your opponent from falling back, have a better save once they make it into combat, they have pistols, and have a Plasma grenade as well (which also gives you access to Haywire Grenade strategem). They will also kill many more T3 chaff, and let's be honest, T3 is the more common toughness in lists right now with the amount of Cultists and guardsmen that are currently being included in lists.

|Meavar wrote:

Why do so many people want the 2 damage for incubi? Over half the TeQ have power weapons or similar where the armour of the incubi is wasted, while against most MEQ don't. And while I really like wyches I find against most MEQ the incubi still perform a lot better, is it just because wyches are more versatile or am I missing something else?

That's the thing. What are the role of the incubi?

Seriously  a elite choice with ap-3 is to kill MEQ? For each incubi you can inclued 2 wiches with obsesions,drugs, and are troops with OS that can kill MEQ, so why will you going to use them for that?

Maybe are they designed yo fight TeQ? TeQ always have had power weapons and invulnerable salvation, that's not new, the diference is that now they have 2 wounds, so seems that now if we want to use incubi to kill TeQ the way is the saturation, but then it's the same situation that against MEQ or worst, because wiches saturates more and has invulnerable salvation too.

Basicly, if the incubi are designed to kill MEQ,  they are a  overspecialiced unit, like use a bomb to kill mosquitos, and there is other units that can do the same job and are mor versatiles. And if they are designed to kill TeQ they are a unit without the enough damage output to do their job before die.

Delete this, please xD

CptMetal wrote:

Nogrim wrote:

frankly i think with the codex spliting us in to three subfactions Incubi and scourges should have been rolled in with the kabals instead of left as mercenaries.

with the absence of trueborn kabals are pretty much just warriors and vehicles. giving them incubi and possibly even scourges would have made sense (though i can see some issues balance wise)

incubi would fill that elite kabalites role and ffs they look like beefy kabalites already, scourge are just suped up kabals.

to me this would have made a lot of sense and fleshed out kabals to be a bit more on par with cults or covens (who have multiple unit types) where as kabals are pretty much just warriors and the archon court.

While I agree with that, fluff wise they are independant. And game wise we need them to fill these slots, if we restrict ourselves to kabals/cults/covens.

Meh, I get that Incubi are their own special club in the dark city or w/e, but couldn't hellion gangs be split into mercenaries in the same way lore-wise? There's probably lore designations to make just about any of our more unique units mercenaries, so that's not the best reason IMO.

Incubi are clearly tools used by the kabals primarily too if you want a lore reason (plus their armor is extremely kabal-istic looking too) and why not give kabals ONE freakin CC unit to go with melee Archons. They would benefit a ton from the KotBH and Poisoned Tongue obsessions too making them at least compete with wyches/Grots when it comes to CC options for a Druk army. Currently there is no reason to ever take them from what I can tell. As for making them mercs to be a flexible elite slot, when do we need to fill an elite slot anyway?

This next opinion is probably a lot less popular . . . but I think they should have made Scourges coven units too. They're created by haemonculi from what I remember, and Covens have no (real) shooting. If you're going to split Drukhari into 3 subfactions and draw hard borders around those factions through obsessions, then GW should damn well make sure that each faction has at least one CC or shooting unit. Currently, we have mercs that are trash (incubi) and then mercs that are must-brings (scourge, mandrakes). That tells me they didn't put a ton of thought into balancing these units compared to all of the great work they put into creating the 3 subfactions and making awesome obsessions and 3 very different ways to play Drukhari.

I would be fine if the only true mercs we had were vehicles, or maybe just mandrakes since mandrakes are so mysterious and different from any other Drukhari units anyway that I have no idea where they would fit in.

Making Scourges a Coven unit would be pretty pointless because the only Coven they'd benefit from is Dark Creed. And -1 morale just isn't very impressive.

On the other side, I absolutely love that I can fill a Cult outrider detachment with Reavers, Hellions and Scourges. And a potential 24" Heat Lance on Scourges sounds really cheesy. No unit in the game can deep strike and be in melta range, there shouldn't be an exception for the DE (once you add one exception, others will follow).

I can only suppose that Hellions were made Cult and not mercinary units for gameplay reasons. Without obsessions, there wouldn't be a point in taking them.

Personally, it doesn't make sense for Beastmasters to be mercinaries and not Hellions. It would be fun having a gang of Hellions as a Patrol and a Helliarch/Hellion HQ/Baron serving as HQ. But going this route is only splintering our faction further.

As for Incubi, I think giving them <Kabal> wouldn't redeem the unit. Black Heart Incubi would be interesting, but I don't see why Incubi should benefit from Kabal obsession for fluff reasons. Incubi are also completely devoid of purpose.

Heck, if I wanted some melee power in a Kabal, I'd take beasts. Clawed Fiends really aren't that bad.