Is Coven alone any good?

What's good about the coven? Could they be played alone? because my goal is to have 1500p of Kabal and 1500p of a secondary army which I can then mix up as I want to but wracks seem kind of very lackluster or dare I say bad on paper, how do you even play them?

the other coven unit is talos/chronos, talos seems pretty good but chronos seems weak.


can anybody maybe point me towards a battle report where somebody plays coven or are there even any pure coven players out there?

Things I already have: 4 venoms, 2 raiders, 1 razorwing, 10 wyches, 20 kabalites, 2 archons, 9reaverbikes.

Prophets of Flesh Coven are insanely good. PoF Grots and Talos supported by Urien or a Haemie are very hard to kill (particularly in max-size squads) and hit extremely hard. I don’t play pure Coven as they work best with Kabalite fire support, but roughly 1000 points of my normal 2000 point list is Coven and they have yet to disappoint. I should mention that I only Grots, Talos, and HQs, though as Wracks are pretty useless except as objective campers and I’d much rather pay the points for another Talos rather than use a Chronos. So, to answer your question, I think Coven is quite good but need fire support in the form of Ravagers/Flyers/Scourges to play to it’s full potential.

I've played pure PoF at 1500 points, Urien, Haeme, 3 units of wracks in venoms, two units of 7 grots and 3 units of two taloi.
Incredibly hard to kill.

Coven alone will get mauled by anyone capable of understanding target priority.

lol. I love the variety of answers you get sometimes....
"insanely good, needs support"
"very hard to kill"
"will get mauled, do not try!"

Covens has all of 3 moving parts: Wracks, Grotesques, and Talos. If you're running exclusively Covens you're going to get annihilated before you can get your expensive, slow units into close combat with any opponent worth their salt. They have hardly any shooting to speak of. Sure, you can pay for Venoms for Wracks, but the only reason Venoms work as gunboats is usually because they have 5 Warriors inside backing up their 2 guns. With Covens you'd almost need to pay for the extra Splinter Cannon which is a ripoff. Scourges are suicide squads, they're more utility units than line infantry. Mandrakes are an option but they're too unpredictable in their payoff.

Bring a flyer wing or sub in some Kabalites, the subfactions aren't designed to work by themselves.

The venom cannon is not a rip-off, but not essential either (especially if you’re spamming venoms).

I agree on the second point. Since 40K is still in essence a shooting game, you need a Kabal element both for cheap scoring troops, and excellent shooting. Then you can take Cult or Coven depending on whether you want a lot of fast models, or fewer tough models that are individually more threatening.

So Kabal+Coven, or Kabal+Cult, even if the Kabal portion is just a Ravager spearhead and/or some flyers. Running all three subfactions was viable when Raiding Party was better than a battalion, but not so much after the CP buff to battalions.

The Alamo GT #3 list (iirc) used Coven with a Cult backup, but I think a lot of the success of that list was due to it being the first big tournament after the codex release and folks generally being unfamiliar with the terror that is Grotesques. From the battle reports of that tournament, they did most of the heavy lifting.

withershadow wrote:

The venom cannon is not a rip-off

Your Tyranid is showing.

Cult doesn't need kabal for flyers. Between those scourges, blaster bikes they might get enough anti vehicle.
Coven get hurt on anti-vehicle. Scourges seem like a must include.

People love on PoF, but for wracks I think C12 might be better. Wracks are decently tough for their cost, but don't deal out damage. -1 AP makes them much more scary.

In my opinion, there is no reason to ever take a pure Coven force.
Looking at them, the only things I'll ever take are Haemnculi leading a detachment of Talos. I just don't think the rest have any decent function.

Squidmaster wrote:

In my opinion, there is no reason to ever take a pure Coven force.
Looking at them, the only things I'll ever take are Haemnculi leading a detachment of Talos. I just don't think the rest have any decent function.

I wouldn't necessarily take a pure coven force but my Grots definitely disagree with your second statement!

Squidmaster wrote:

In my opinion, there is no reason to ever take a pure Coven force.
Looking at them, the only things I'll ever take are Haemnculi leading a detachment of Talos. I just don't think the rest have any decent function.

I'm curious as to what you see in Talos but not in Grots.

To my mind at least, Grots are by far the best Coven unit.

Squidmaster wrote:

the only things I'll ever take are Haemnculi leading a detachment of Talos.

Wow.

You do realize that Grots are without a doubt, hands down the best unit in our codex, right?

Might as well say " i think Agents of vect is overrated, I prefer the crucible of malediction stratagem".

That's not exactly fair. You need to run a black heart detachment to get AoV, while you only need any haemo to get crucible. So it's hard higher commitment.
Plus there is nothing preventing you from using both in a coven/kabal list.

hexxenwyrd wrote:

Cult doesn't need kabal for flyers. Between those scourges, blaster bikes they might get enough anti vehicle.
Coven get hurt on anti-vehicle. Scourges seem like a must include.

People love on PoF, but for wracks I think C12 might be better. Wracks are decently tough for their cost, but don't deal out damage. -1 AP makes them much more scary.

i PoF wracks are pretty bad ass, im guessing you are forgetting the PoF stratagem

black cornucopians
you can basically redeploy a unit of wracks at full strength, personally id be doing raiders for the 10 mans to take advantage of that.

the problem is the other covens don't really offer that much and kind of pale in comparison to PoF

hexxenwyrd wrote:

Cult doesn't need kabal for flyers. Between those scourges, blaster bikes they might get enough anti vehicle.
Coven get hurt on anti-vehicle. Scourges seem like a must include.

People love on PoF, but for wracks I think C12 might be better. Wracks are decently tough for their cost, but don't deal out damage. -1 AP makes them much more scary.

Blaster bikes are not adequate anti tank, especially the red grief always advancing variety. And I think wracks should be keeping their heads low and holding down objectives rather than trying to kill stuff. The rest of the Coven units are far deadlier.

I would also say that coven alone is not optimal. You lack the ranged firepower and if your enemy sees your army he will have an easy time during deployment.

I would say kabal + coven works best.

Most of the time I use my wracks to hold objectives. They are also not bad to screen your shooting units from fast CC units and deep strikers. And in case they really make it into combat, maybe against an enemy HQ, I always equip an electro corrosive whip .

Agree with others that any single Drukhari faction is going to be lacking played on its own. Combining those factions balances our army out. I pretty much treat Kabal as my starting point, then add Cults and Covens to taste. Mono lists will be fine for casual gaming and fluffy fun, but not so much for competitive edge.

I Player a Prophets of Flesh Brigade with scourges and a Black Heart Flyer Wing. Super good, I used the Wrack for redeployment and objectives. Mandrakes, scourges and flyers did the mobile part, while grots and Talos did the scaring away. This was already pretty darn good, although I will use two battalions next and buy transports for my grots! Coven is great, especially Prophets. And point by point, wracks are mor durable then guardsmen against most dakka.