1000p Kabal

Hi citizens of commorragh!
Since my Craftworld collection is mostly finished, I started some dark eldar.

I want to get to a 1k point list for some games before I expand further (for bigger games I can also jsut add a ynnari battalion).
This is what I came up with:


++ Battalion Detachment +5CP (Aeldari - Drukhari) [47 PL, 794pts] ++

+ No Force Org Slot +

Detachment Attribute: None (Mixed Detachment)

+ HQ +

Archon [4 PL, 72pts]: Splinter pistol, Venom Blade

Archon [4 PL, 72pts]: Labyrinthine Cunning, Splinter pistol, Venom Blade, Warlord (Archon), Writ of the Living Muse

+ Troops +

Kabalite Warriors [2 PL, 30pts]
. 4x Kabalite Warrior
. Sybarite: Splinter Rifle

Kabalite Warriors [2 PL, 30pts]
. 4x Kabalite Warrior
. Sybarite: Splinter Rifle

Kabalite Warriors [2 PL, 30pts]
. 4x Kabalite Warrior
. Sybarite: Splinter Rifle

+ Heavy Support +

Ravager [7 PL, 125pts]: Disintegrator cannon, Disintegrator cannon, Disintegrator cannon

Ravager [7 PL, 125pts]: Disintegrator cannon, Disintegrator cannon, Disintegrator cannon

Reaper [9 PL, 150pts]

+ Dedicated Transport +

Raider [5 PL, 80pts]: Disintegrator cannon

Raider [5 PL, 80pts]: Disintegrator cannon

++ Total: [47 PL, 794pts] ++


I am unsure if Black heart is the best, since the buff archon forces the ravagers to stay immobile and clumped together! I guess Obsidian rose would be the best alternative?

For the remaining 200p i have 2 ideas, the main thing I feel I am lacking is anti infantry
-) Venom - Incubi - Scourges with carabines: Put the incubi into a raider with a squad of kabalites so I have some bodys incase it gets shot down

-) Razorwing Jetfighter - Scourges with carabines: wont give me a melee threat, instead I have more dissies and the rockets.

What would be your suggestions? For the remaining units and the obsession?

Thank you for your ideas!

alexxk wrote:

Archon [4 PL, 72pts]: Splinter pistol, Venom Blade

Archon [4 PL, 72pts]: Labyrinthine Cunning, Splinter pistol, Venom Blade, Warlord (Archon), Writ of the Living Muse

If you're not sure about what Kabal you're using - just be mindful that Writ is Black Heart only, so if you like that a lot, plan to take Black Heart.
These are fine and cheap loadouts.

alexxk wrote:

Kabalite Warriors [2 PL, 30pts]
. 4x Kabalite Warrior
. Sybarite: Splinter Rifle

Kabalite Warriors [2 PL, 30pts]
. 4x Kabalite Warrior
. Sybarite: Splinter Rifle

Kabalite Warriors [2 PL, 30pts]
. 4x Kabalite Warrior
. Sybarite: Splinter Rifle

I don't see much value in taking Kabalites without Blasters - especially if your intention is to scale upwards. For a very minor investment you transform the squad from basically a pew-pew unit to a unit lugging around an 18" range melta gun. Seriously now, it's a really powerful weapon and is super affordable and makes your Kabs able to be a bother to anything in the game between ignoring toughness via poison or ignoring armor and inflicting piles of wounds via the Blaster...or both.

alexxk wrote:

Ravager [7 PL, 125pts]: Disintegrator cannon, Disintegrator cannon, Disintegrator cannon

Ravager [7 PL, 125pts]: Disintegrator cannon, Disintegrator cannon, Disintegrator cannon

Reaper [9 PL, 150pts]

I see limited value in the Reaper compared to a Ravager nowadays, but it's not an inherently bad choice. Just saying - the Ravager is at *least* as good (I'd argue better) and costs less.

alexxk wrote:

Raider [5 PL, 80pts]: Disintegrator cannon

Raider [5 PL, 80pts]: Disintegrator cannon

These are fine, though frankly I think they're so excellent I always take as many as I can get, so I'd have three in my army if I was paying for three Warrior squads.

alexxk wrote:

++ Total: [47 PL, 794pts] ++

If you took all of my advice about adding a Raider and Blasters (I'll leave you the Reaper) your total would be 925, still able to float in a couple of your ideas below.

alexxk wrote:

I am unsure if Black heart is the best, since the buff archon forces the ravagers to stay immobile and clumped together! I guess Obsidian rose would be the best alternative?

I play Flayed Skull fairly exclusively as I find Black Heart pretty 'meh' frankly. It's point is in a pretty cool stratagem and the Writ if you like the Writ - but frankly you could get a Heavy Detachment with Ravagers and make that alone Black Heart to get 100% of those benefits - and at that stage is there any argument that Black Heart is worth it for the rest of the army? (hint: no)

Most of the Kabal traits have a reasonable argument for being 'good' and to a certain extent it depends on your playstyle and goals. Black Heart is excellent meta control wise due to stratagem access. Obsidian Rose is good for gunline. Flayed Skull is powerful for rush builds (and I'd argue is silly powerful for all Kabal needs, and overshadows the others, but I'm biased). Try out all of them, see what fits. I'd also note that since your Archon can move 8" and advance 1d6 anyone who is playing their Ravagers and feeling "immobile" is playing their Archon very badly. If your Ravagers need to move, than it's time for the Archon to start hustling.

alexxk wrote:

For the remaining 200p i have 2 ideas, the main thing I feel I am lacking is anti infantry
-) Venom - Incubi - Scourges with carabines: Put the incubi into a raider with a squad of kabalites so I have some bodys incase it gets shot down

Dissies are anti infantry - and are not much worse at it than Venoms - let's compare/contrast a Venom vs. GEQ and MEQ and the same for a Dissie Raider;


Venom
vs. GEQ - 2.6 dead Guardsmen (1.3 if more than 18" away)
vs. MEQ - 1.3 dead Marines (.67 if more than 18" away)

Dissie Raider
vs. GEQ - 1.33
vs. MEQ - 1.11

So the Dissie is as better or mathematically so close as to not matter when it comes to killing MEQ infantry. The Venom *is* better than the Venom at killing GEQ, but only within 18", if you're staying away from the blobs you're shooting at then the Dissie does just as well.

The Dissie also does better against anything with multiple wounds, or better toughness, or better saves (Primaris, Custodes) it is also very good against vehicles, and pretty much anything in the game - certainly outperforming the Venom against anything that isn't toughness 6+ with no armor save/only invulnerable saves.

Basically this is a longwinded way of arguing that a Raider with a Dissie is a better TAC investment than a Venom any day of the week. The point of the Venom is for a very affordable transport (and don't waste points on upgrading the TL s.rifle to a s.cannon)

I prefer my Scourges with Blasters, but a squad with carbines is very cheap and will help punch holes in infantry, though are more fragile than a Venom would be.

I dont't think you'll have a great value for Incubi at low point cost games, but they are a perfectly servicable unit...put them in a Raider

alexxk wrote:

-) Razorwing Jetfighter - Scourges with carabines: wont give me a melee threat, instead I have more dissies and the rockets.

The Razorwing Jetfighter is one of the best buys in the dex in my opinion. It's inferior to a Ravager - but, hey, rule of 3 and all that makes it an awesome 'Ravager-lite' option.

Thank you for your input! You have many valid points!
So the choice for black heart and the reaper comes from the fact that 1k tournaments in my area have a maximum of 2 of every unit (like the faq sugested). Therefore I also cant take a 3rd archon for the spearhead, and drazhar is to expensive. Thats why I choose the reaper! Should I rather take a razorwing jetfighter instead?

Skipping the blasters on the kabalites came from the idea that I could take 5 scourges instead. And (I am purely theorycrafting right now, I havent played a game with DE) I felt that I lack some units to hold objectives in the backfield, because the gunships want to stay at the archon for rerolls. I see your point though. Also the 3rd raider seems like a good choice! I didn't do the math by myself but the dissie looks amazing in comparison to the splinter cannons on the venoms! It seems to be the most allround weapon!

For the obsession:
What WL traits and relics do you go for when playing flayed skull? The helm of spite seems to be quite useful! The Djinblade seems to be quite good aswell!

Thanks alot again for your ideas and that awesome post!

Edit:I guess it would be good to go for a blaster on the non warlord archon aswell. This would leave me with enough points for scourges or some more kabalite warriors, what would you recommend for the remaining 90 points?

alexxk wrote:

Thats why I choose the reaper! Should I rather take a razorwing jetfighter instead?

Good reason to choose him

I would say they are competitively close enough that if you already own one and not the other, take the one you own - that said, I think the ability of the RWJ to provide a lot of mobility with its firepower, be surprisingly survivable (with stratagems it can become -2 to hit rolls against it) and to serve as a means to block up access routes of ground based infantry/vehicles (nothing more hilarious than parking it in front of an approaching knight and obligate him to circle around it to try and get an assault off) makes it a higher value addition to the army.

That said I run a lot of RWJs and no Reapers, so I'm biased Probably the good counter argument is that the Reaper is benefiting from your Archon re-rolls whereas the RWJ will not, and that's not a minor issue if you're running Writ and an Archon because that could be a lot of re-rolls.

alexxk wrote:

Skipping the blasters on the kabalites came from the idea that I could take 5 scourges instead. And (I am purely theorycrafting right now, I havent played a game with DE) I felt that I lack some units to hold objectives in the backfield, because the gunships want to stay at the archon for rerolls. I see your point though.

My thought on this is - very few game missions actually benefit you from holding backfield objectives over multiple turns. Therefore you don't actually need a dedicated unit to do it, you can just use the amazing speed of the DE to snag objectives near the end of the game and can be shooting with them in the meantime. I assuredly play my Warriors in their boats aggressively and have them up the field (my Ravagers, and nowadays my Archon, tend to be the holders of back field objectives). I just think the raw firepower of the Blaster is well worth getting onto the front lines, it's a very powerful weapon that we can spam for fairly minimum points and I like to take advantage.

alexxk wrote:

For the obsession:
What WL traits and relics do you go for when playing flayed skull? The helm of spite seems to be quite useful! The Djinblade seems to be quite good aswell!

My usual build includes a Wych Cult, so I'm always going for the Blood Glaive first, so depending on my CP points I will often not run an artifact on anyone else at all. However, in tournaments I often expect psychic powers, so for my Archon I am a huge fan of the Helm of Spite as it gives us *something* we can do about psychic powers other than sitting there and smiling as our opponent spams smite on us. The Djinnblade is not bad if you'd like to make a beatstick Archon - Flayed Skull can actually be pretty good at making an Archon who can smash face (as long as that face is not close combat specialized units) and a lot of the time it can surprise your opponent if you do a sudden charge with your "support character". I would just note that you don't have a lot of tools to support him in assault at this point level, so might save that idea for when you bounce up to a 1250 or 1500 point build.

alexxk wrote:

Edit:I guess it would be good to go for a blaster on the non warlord archon aswell. This would leave me with enough points for scourges or some more kabalite warriors, what would you recommend for the remaining 90 points?

90 points is an awkward gap to fill - this is with you taking Blasters and...something else?
In a vacuum of not being sure; I'd say Scourges, you can take a squad with 3x haywire Blasters for less than 90 and that is not a bad utility unit to have.