More than 1 Kabal?

Let's suppose your realspace raid consists of two or more Kabals working together (read: temporarily) towards the same goal.

Which Kabals are you taking, and in what detachments?

And yes, I realise this is not optimum - bringing in Cults, Coven or Craftworld are probably always going to preferrable.

My list usually consists of a Black Heart Spearhead and a Flayed Skull/Poisoned Tongue batallion.
I use Flayed Skull when I go more Venom heavy, while Poisoned Tongue is the more Raider heavy choice.

A Black Heart Spearhead is just too good to ignore.

Black Heart Spearhead because I can't afford not to.

Obsidian Rose Battalion with 2 Blaster toting Archons, 3 squads of 5 Blaster toting Kabalites, Shredderborn, and 20 Kabalites in a Webway Portal.

Flayed Skull Air Wing of 2 RWJs, 2 Voidravens, and 4 Venoms.

It's only about a half dozen Stratagems to have to remember, too, and the less I have to mentally juggle or account for the better.

I love Venoms and hate taking more than one or two Archons, so I tend to just run a Flayed Skull detachment. Battalion or Spearhead depending on what limits I'm working with.

Burnage wrote:

I love Venoms and hate taking more than one or two Archons, so I tend to just run a Flayed Skull detachment. Battalion or Spearhead depending on what limits I'm working with.

I hated it too, and just obsessive compulsively stewed over the idea of my Archon/s being forced to muck about on the ground....until I put them in anti-grav thrones and miniaturized skyboards...now I'm having a great time with my three 'footslogging' Archons.

Well, Poison Tongue is my favourite Kabal, so I'd probably have a Battalion of those and then a small Black Heart detachment so that I can finally try Agents of Vect.

The Strange Dark One wrote:

My list usually consists of a Black Heart Spearhead and a Flayed Skull/Poisoned Tongue batallion.
I use Flayed Skull when I go more Venom heavy, while Poisoned Tongue is the more Raider heavy choice.

Mind if I ask why? Seems like it would make more sense the other way around (since Raiders don't benefit from Poison Tongue aside from the Stratagem).

lcfr wrote:

I hated it too, and just obsessive compulsively stewed over the idea of my Archon/s being forced to muck about on the ground....until I put them in anti-grav thrones and miniaturized skyboards...now I'm having a great time with my three 'footslogging' Archons.

I'm the opposite. Modelling my Archons like that just makes me even more annoyed that there's no way to actually represent that sort of thing on the table.

All I can picture is this Archon zooming along on his "skyboard", and then a Kabalite casually walks past him. 'Morning, boss.'

I go with a Black Heart Spearhead, for obvious reasons, and a Flayed Skull Battalion consisting of a couple Blaster Archons, six Blaster Kabs, some Scourges, and seven Venoms to carry them all. Leaves enough room still for a Spearhead/Outrider of something else.

So it's clear that a Black Heart Spearhead is popular.

What I can't yet understand is why exactly that is - it must be obvious to some among us but not to me - what am I missing? There is surely more to it than a 6+ FNP on a few Ravagers and unlocking Agents of Vect?

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What I can't yet understand is why exactly that is - it must be obvious to some among us but not to me - what am I missing? There is surely more to it than a 6+ FNP on a few Ravagers and unlocking Agents of Vect?

You get access to Labyrinthian Cunning, one of the few Warlord traits that isn't based on boosting the Warlord's combat ability.

You get Writ of the Living Muse, basically the only reroll wound ability for our army. This works nicely with the innate reroll hits and the Disintegrator Cannon's terrible strength.

You, of course, get access to Agents of Vect.

You get a backline Archon that you don't have to buy a transport for.

That 6+++ is really the best trait for Ravagers. It's not like your backfield anti-tank barrage is going to care about ignoring cover or rerolling wounds for poison it doesn't have.

In short, the Warlord Trait, strategem, low cost, and all around utility makes it the perfect support detachment that'll contribute no matter what list you're running

Ok, I can understand that now, thanks for the clarification. Theres certainly a number of reasons to go for it. I will say that Ignoring Cover with dissies still has a lot of appeal to me, as they hunt more than only tanks. However, the benefits you describe are admittedly more helpful to have than ignoring cover; re rolling wounds with Str5 alone is as no-brainer as it gets.

I'm not 100% sold on Labyrinthine Cunning but I can see why a lot of people would like it. It's probably more competitive than most other traits

I hardly run anything with obsessions but I usually have a patrol of Black Heart.

I run only Obsidian Rose. Failure is not an Option is a superb stratagem for my playstyle and I enjoy the extra range on all my ranged weapons. Best defense is never being in range of the enemy guns or at least their rapid fire range! Likewise I greatly enjoy the warlord trait in its simple effectiveness, and while the artefact does not seem to be doing much, I still take that armour for the sinister Incubus warsuit allusion.

I also am not that keen on the sedentary playstyle that a Black Heart spearhead fosters, as the Archon mainly just sits there handing out rerolls to as much units as possible. With Obsidian Rose I can cover more ground purely by virtue of the Archon blasters covering more ground, thus increasing their threat bubbles  as I tend to split my Ravagers across the deployment anyway, two being the maximum near an Archon at any time. Sometimes I run a Ravager outside an Archon's range entirely as I am only losing out on a marginal boost of accuracy, thus the decision is far easier to make in the heat of battle. With a BH Muse Archon it's just not that simple as the larger loss of offensive efficiency makes the decision of legging it all the more difficult.

I simply prefer a more autonomous playstyle - while the 8e buff bubble mechanics are neat, they can hamper the speedy playstyle of Drukhari that I am used to, so I prefer not to go too crazy with it. That is why I prefer Obsidian Rose the most as it is a straight up boost to all Kabal units that is always on, allowing them to work independent from one another. Failure is not an Option only adds to that murderous efficiency and reliability until turn 4 when it stops working (but by then they've done their part).

AoV is a fantastic stratagem, but a lot of its strength lies directly in the power of the opponent's stratagem being played. I prefer to focus on my own play at the current stage and clean it out from any mistakes while taking on the full brunt of enemy's offensive strategies. Only knowing full well what they all do would I consider dipping into Black Heart. But then, that would mean betraying my rebellious void corsair roota and that simply won't do!

Siticus the Ancient wrote:

I also am not that keen on the sedentary playstyle that a Black Heart spearhead fosters, as the Archon mainly just sits there handing out rerolls to as much units as possible. With Obsidian Rose I can cover more ground purely by virtue of the Archon blasters covering more ground, thus increasing their threat bubbles  as I tend to split my Ravagers across the deployment anyway, two being the maximum near an Archon at any time. Sometimes I run a Ravager outside an Archon's range entirely as I am only losing out on a marginal boost of accuracy, thus the decision is far easier to make in the heat of battle. With a BH Muse Archon it's just not that simple as the larger loss of offensive efficiency makes the decision of legging it all the more difficult.

Whilst I appreciate that the synergy between the Black Heart archon and ravagers does make it easy to sit still - It's not actually the case. With the Archon rerolling advances from turn 1 (Due to +1 PFP), he can easily run 12" each turn. Granted he doesn't have fly, but all you need is to keep your ravagers within 6" of him and you're golden - Considering the unique angles on our Ravagers, this is really easy to do.

With him running around, he's also able to help out other Black Heart units, such as a 20 man blob of warriors with blasters + splinter cannons.

Soulless Samurai wrote:

Well, Poison Tongue is my favourite Kabal, so I'd probably have a Battalion of those and then a small Black Heart detachment so that I can finally try Agents of Vect.

The Strange Dark One wrote:

My list usually consists of a Black Heart Spearhead and a Flayed Skull/Poisoned Tongue batallion.
I use Flayed Skull when I go more Venom heavy, while Poisoned Tongue is the more Raider heavy choice.

Mind if I ask why? Seems like it would make more sense the other way around (since Raiders don't benefit from Poison Tongue aside from the Stratagem).

...

Maybe it is just my experience, but a Raider with valuable cargo is usually one of the primary targets and gets destroyed first. Insidious Misdirection allows me to deploy Raiders very aggressively and redeploy them if I don't get first turn.

This helps in particular with high value cargo like Grotesques or HQs (I don't need to tell you the pain of HQ mobility). Flayed Skull doesn't help your transport to stay alive longer, but deploying them where the enemy can't shoot them does.

At least I treat Raiders as explosive Death Traps and my opponents learned that Flayed Skull Kabalites drastically lose their effectiveness once their transport gets shot off the table. Poisoned Tongue leaves your Kabalites with a little extra when they leave the transport (voluntarily or not). B

I found Venoms to be more durable for their price and I completely love the 19" move that never degrades. There is also a psychological aspect to having -1 to hit on a unit (and a potential -2 with the stratagem).

But I started using PT only recently and might have only had some beneficial games so far.

hydranixx wrote:

Let's suppose your realspace raid consists of two or more Kabals working together (read: temporarily) towards the same goal.

Which Kabals are you taking, and in what detachments?

And yes, I realise this is not optimum - bringing in Cults, Coven or Craftworld are probably always going to preferrable.

One of the best list of the Codex is maded by BH+FL+Prophets!