Double Battalion or a Battalion and Patrol?

I like to run all three sub-factions in my list and I like to run Wyches. With those caveats, which would you run?

Battalion of Kabalites & Battalion of Wyches
Battalion if Wyches and a Patrol/Heavy if Kabalites

The warriors are cheap enough that adding three squads doesn't break the bank, but it does reach the point I could bring 1-2 other squads of something else. Do most of you find the extra CP worth bringing a second battalion?

My army list isn't set, so no specifics for every game, just looking for general ideas.

Command Points win games. A second Battalion is always worth it if you can fit it into your list.

I hate that Burnage is right.
But the flexibility of just a reroll is too powerful. I wish they were harder to come by.

Virtually always the second battalion.

strategems and CP are the name of the game now.    The "tax" is really only one more archon plus two more bare bone squads of kabalite warriors which will run you about 132 points.
 

You can easily kill 132 points of stuff or save 132 points of stuff based on some key strategems played with the extra 5 CP you get.  (one key use of Agents of Vect alone could be worth it)


On top of that, the 15 kabalite warriors give you some back field positioning while your wyches run forward.

All good points. Thanks guys.

I've been leaning that way, but wondered if i was off track. Thanks!

Obviously it depends on the points level of the game as to how practical it is.

Kabals having more than one Archon generally feels like a tax
Prophets of Flesh get good value from having both Urien and a Vexator Haemonculus
Cults have the cheapest HQs and Succubus are OK
If you add Craftworlds having both Farseer and Warlock/Spiritseer is useful

To me the ideal setup for say 2000 points would be Prophets of Flesh and Craftworlds Battalion with Kabal Spearhead.

Generally 2k.

Coven isn't my thing, so I don't have the models for a battalion there. I have way too many wyches and warriors though.

I've been weening my Craftworlds models, but will probably dive into Ynnari when their codex comes out.

I run a kabal + cult dual battalion with a coven outrider (a single heamonculus and 3 scourge) at 2k points. It gives me a mass of command points and a good alliance of agony set up to. I would definitely recommend doing dual battalion it's surprisingly easy to do with room to spare as well.

My friends are quite lenient towards the detachment cap so long as it isn't abused (taking as many patrols as you can for commander spam for example) so they often let me run 3 Patrols + Batallion, but more often than not I'll run 2 Batallions, 1 Batallion + 2 specialist detachments (anything giving 1cp)

At 2000 I don't really see why you shouldn't run double battalion+a third det of your choice.

At 1750 otherwise (the format I'm playing since a month) I can see how can be limited playing 2 battalions. It's possible, but it cut out some ways of play. You can manage a game even with 10 CPs (expecially if you got a regen BH or +D3 CP from Prophets).

Kantalla wrote:

Obviously it depends on the points level of the game as to how practical it is.

Kabals having more than one Archon generally feels like a tax
Prophets of Flesh get good value from having both Urien and a Vexator Haemonculus
Cults have the cheapest HQs and Succubus are OK
If you add Craftworlds having both Farseer and Warlock/Spiritseer is useful

To me the ideal setup for say 2000 points would be Prophets of Flesh and Craftworlds Battalion with Kabal Spearhead.

What if you don't want to use Eldar (or Harlequin) allies?

Soulless Samurai wrote:

Kantalla wrote:

Obviously it depends on the points level of the game as to how practical it is.

Kabals having more than one Archon generally feels like a tax
Prophets of Flesh get good value from having both Urien and a Vexator Haemonculus
Cults have the cheapest HQs and Succubus are OK
If you add Craftworlds having both Farseer and Warlock/Spiritseer is useful

To me the ideal setup for say 2000 points would be Prophets of Flesh and Craftworlds Battalion with Kabal Spearhead.

What if you don't want to use Eldar (or Harlequin) allies?

Coven is the Drukhari faction that gets the most mileage out of Battalions because both HQs are useful and the Troops are solid. Kabal Battalions work as well, but you do have to weigh up the gain in CP against the immediate strength and lower HQ tax that something like a Kabal Spearhead, Cult Outrider or Kabal Air Wing detachment would provide instead.

Basically, something like Coven Battalion/Kabal Battalion/Kabal Air Wing is a totally viable mono-Drukhari list that gives you plenty of CP to play with.

I admit I don't have much for Coven, but I'm planning on repainting my squad of Wracks. Although I only have one squad. I'm debating on a patrol of Coven to support a double battalion of Wyches/Kabal.

The benefits of Profits of Flesh are amazing. While I don't like the aesthetic, the units do lend themselves to be a very good anvil on the playing field.

That said... Three units of Wracks doesn't sound that good to me. Am I missing something? Do you run 5 man squads or 10? Do you put them in transports at all? I'd imagine they're better on foot. What do they do that Kabalites can't do more cheaply?

Myrvn wrote:

That said... Three units of Wracks doesn't sound that good to me. Am I missing something? Do you run 5 man squads or 10?  Do you put them in transports at all? I'd imagine they're better on foot. What do they do that Kabalites can't do more cheaply?

I'm in the same boat when it comes to Wracks.

I think they're supposed to just sit on objectives but honestly I'm more inclined to take units that actually contribute to the battle.

Regardless, do people take Ossefactors on their Wracks, or are they always taken bare-bones?

The value of wracks is primarily in their defensive profile. With a haemonculus present, wracks get a T5 4++ profile. Conveniently, most Dark Eldar vehicles are T5 4+/5++. Because the two profiles are so similar, it's almost impossible for an opponent to kill the wracks without compromising his ability to down your transports.

While the wracks themselves might not be as offensively potent as their Kabalite equivalents, your goal is to make them as obnoxious as possible. Because they rely on an invuln save, they don't get benefit from cover. In effect, this lets you advance them aggressively rather than clinging to terrain. Whether they're scoring objective points or tying up enemy units, you need to make your opponent feel like they don't have the luxury of shooting at your transports.

Most competitive Dark Eldar armies will want to field a squadron of Grotesques with Haemonculi support anyway, so wracks offer you the opportunity to fill out that detachment and get some CP for doing so. Once they're on the table, they can run interference, preventing enemy units from deep striking or infiltrating toward your more vulnerable units.

It's best to think of them as little squadrons of 1-wound raiders, rather than viewing them in the sense that the rest of our troops operate. If you ever feel like your vehicles are dying too quickly, they provide area denial and target saturation to keep that from happening.

corollax wrote:

The value of wracks is primarily in their defensive profile. With a haemonculus present, wracks get a T5 4++ profile. Conveniently, most Dark Eldar vehicles are T5 4+/5++. Because the two profiles are so similar, it's almost impossible for an opponent to kill the wracks without compromising his ability to down your transports.

Except that the transports make for far better targets for weapons with multiple wounds.

And in the case of Ravagers and such, pose a meaningful threat.

corollax wrote:

While the wracks themselves might not be as offensively potent as their Kabalite equivalents, your goal is to make them as obnoxious as possible. Because they rely on an invuln save, they don't get benefit from cover. In effect, this lets you advance them aggressively rather than clinging to terrain. Whether they're scoring objective points or tying up enemy units, you need to make your opponent feel like they don't have the luxury of shooting at your transports.

Except that, even if they advance, they're just not threatening. Who gives a damn about S3 models with Poison Weapons? Is my opponent supposed to worry that my Wracks will tickle him to death?

corollax wrote:

Most competitive Dark Eldar armies will want to field a squadron of Grotesques with Haemonculi support anyway, so wracks offer you the opportunity to fill out that detachment and get some CP for doing so. Once they're on the table, they can run interference, preventing enemy units from deep striking or infiltrating toward your more vulnerable units.

See, this is where you really start to use me.

On the one hand, you've got Wracks that are on the outskirts of your army, to block deep-striking units.

Yet on the other hand, these Wracks are apparently all near enough to Haemonculi to get the +1T.

corollax wrote:

It's best to think of them as little squadrons of 1-wound raiders, rather than viewing them in the sense that the rest of our troops operate. If you ever feel like your vehicles are dying too quickly, they provide area denial and target saturation to keep that from happening.

How exactly?

Assuming my opponent isn't recovering from a stroke, surely he'll have some sense of target-priority? Enough to realise that Wracks have negligible shooting and are utter garbage in combat (in spite of ostensibly being a melee unit). Hence, he'll focus on downing my vehicles first and worry about the Wracks later.

Soulless Samurai wrote:

Myrvn wrote:

That said... Three units of Wracks doesn't sound that good to me. Am I missing something? Do you run 5 man squads or 10?  Do you put them in transports at all? I'd imagine they're better on foot. What do they do that Kabalites can't do more cheaply?

I'm in the same boat when it comes to Wracks.

I think they're supposed to just sit on objectives but honestly I'm more inclined to take units that actually contribute to the battle.

Here's the thing; sitting on objectives is contributing to the battle.

And with a strong defensive profile for their cost as well as Objective Secured, Wracks are quite good at sitting on objectives!

I’ve recently become a convert to utility of the humble Wrack. Taken in 10 man squads they are surprisingly difficult to move off an objective. However, what really won me over is their ability to be a nuisance in close combat. They are great at tying things up and bogging down your opponent’s scary shooting and close combat threats. And Black Cornucopia is great for letting them redeploy at full strength to catch your opponent off guard. The fact that they’re not a huge melee threat means your opponent is unlikely to waste much shooting at them especially if you’re running a ten man squad. They have won me more than a few games just by flying under the radar, grabbing objectives and tying things up.

Burnage wrote:

Here's the thing; sitting on objectives is contributing to the battle.

That depends entirely on the mission.

If they sit on Objectives for 4 turns, only to be blown off them on the 5th (because you spent points on units that do nothing but sit on objectives, whilst your opponent brought units that actually fight), then they haven't contributed anything.

If you're playing one of the missions where objectives are scored each turn (rather than at the end of the game), then they're a bit better. But even then you're still sacrificing long-term gains for short-term board presence.

"Assuming you're not recovering from a stroke", you'll realize that if a large number of extremely successful competitive lists are fielding a unit to great success, but you cannot make the unit work, the problem isn't with the unit - it's with your understanding of it.

Soulless Samurai wrote:

Except that the transports make for far better targets for weapons with multiple wounds.

And in the case of Ravagers and such, pose a meaningful threat.

Except that many of the weapons that opponents would like to use against those transports are either short-range or melee-range. Having area-denial in the form of Coven units goes a long way toward ensuring that your actual threats live long enough to do what you brought them to do.

Soulless Samurai wrote:

Except that, even if they advance, they're just not threatening. Who gives a damn about S3 models with Poison Weapons? Is my opponent supposed to worry that my Wracks will tickle him to death?

You win games on victory points, and wracks are objective secured. That alone would be enough to justify their presence on the battlefield.

After deployment, once the wracks have served their purpose of keeping melta, plasma, and thunderhammers from your deploying vehicles, you can advance them toward enemy shooting units. If they lack the fly keyword, they don't get to shoot when they fall back. It doesn't matter whether their attacks "tickle" or not.

Soulless Samurai wrote:

See, this is where you really start to use me.

On the one hand, you've got Wracks that are on the outskirts of your army, to block deep-striking units.

Yet on the other hand, these Wracks are apparently all near enough to Haemonculi to get the +1T.

The haemonculus provides its bonus to all units within 6". Not wholly within 6". A single model will suffice to provide the benefit to the entire unit. If you're not creative enough to use that to your advantage, then I don't know how to help you.

We're well into 8th edition by this point. There are no templates or blast markers anymore. You don't have to space things out unless it serves your interests to do so. Take advantage of it.

Soulless Samurai wrote:

Assuming my opponent isn't recovering from a stroke, surely he'll have some sense of target-priority? Enough to realise that Wracks have negligible shooting and are utter garbage in combat (in spite of ostensibly being a melee unit). Hence, he'll focus on downing my vehicles first and worry about the Wracks later.

Most armies field weapons with a range shorter than 72". In fact, the most efficient weapons in an opponent's arsenal are consistently their shortest range options. 40k happens on the tabletop, where concerns about terrain, line of sight, and positioning have a dramatic effect on the ability of an opposing army to use its resources effectively.

Covens are built to limit an opponent's ability to do those things. You're not getting the most out of them unless you build with that in mind.

mynamelegend wrote:

"Assuming you're not recovering from a stroke", you'll realize that if a large number of extremely successful competitive lists are fielding a unit to great success, but you cannot make the unit work, the problem isn't with the unit - it's with your understanding of it.

My apologies.

Clearly tactics that rely on your opponent having the mental acuity of a 3-year-old are completely foolproof.

I don't know how I could have possibly found fault with them.

corollax wrote:

Except that many of the weapons that opponents would like to use against those transports are either short-range or melee-range. Having area-denial in the form of Coven units goes a long way toward ensuring that your actual threats live long enough to do what you brought them to do.

You're joking, right?

I can't even remember the last time one of my transports was taken down by a short-ranged weapon.

Unless your idea of "short-ranged" is "can only hit units across the width of the table".

But please, do explain to me how Wracks are protecting my Vehicles from my opponent's Armiger Autocannons.

corollax wrote:

You win games on victory points, and wracks are objective secured. That alone would be enough to justify their presence on the battlefield.

I guess when you're scraping your models off the battlefield with a spatula, you can console yourself that they had the objective secured rule. Back when they were still alive.

corollax wrote:

After deployment, once the wracks have served their purpose of keeping melta, plasma, and thunderhammers from your deploying vehicles, you can advance them toward enemy shooting units. If they lack the fly keyword, they don't get to shoot when they fall back. It doesn't matter whether their attacks "tickle" or not.

As above, melta, plasma and/or thunderhammers are almost always an irrelevance for me.

Also, are these Wracks holding objectives or are they screening vehicles and then advancing into melee?

Or do you happen to own the coveted Schrödinger's Wracks, which can simultaneously screen units, advance into melee, sit on backfield objectives, and are miraculously in a Haemonculus' aura at all times?

corollax wrote:

The haemonculus provides its bonus to all units within 6". Not wholly within 6". A single model will suffice to provide the benefit to the entire unit. If you're not creative enough to use that to your advantage, then I don't know how to help you.

Ah, yes. When you don't have an actual argument, just go with "LOL, L2P, SCRUB".

How could anyone possibly dispute such tactical brilliance?

corollax wrote:

We're well into 8th edition by this point. There are no templates or blast markers anymore. You don't have to space things out unless it serves your interests to do so. Take advantage of it.

Given that I made no mention of blast markers or templates I'm perplexed as to why you feel the need to bring them up here.

corollax wrote:

Most armies field weapons with a range shorter than 72".

Of course, how silly of me. I forgot that every 40k game involves 2 objectives in opposite corners where both players deploy their entire armies and proceed to remain stationary for the entirety of the game.

corollax wrote:

In fact, the most efficient weapons in an opponent's arsenal are consistently their shortest range options.

[Citation needed.]

corollax wrote:

40k happens on the tabletop

Steady on, sir! That's just the sort of outlandish claim that can blow a chap's socks clean off his feet.

corollax wrote:

where concerns about terrain, line of sight, and positioning have a dramatic effect on the ability of an opposing army to use its resources effectively.

Except, as you alluded to earlier, this is 8th edition. Any terrain that doesn't completely block LoS might as well not exist. Positioning was more relevant when vehicle-facings still existed, and before every vehicle started doubling as a drag-racer. And as for range, don't make me laugh.

corollax wrote:

Covens are built to limit an opponent's ability to do those things. You're not getting the most out of them unless you build with that in mind.

But that's the point I was making in my last post - it only works if your entire army is Coven.

Otherwise, what you end up with is a mix of:
- Coven units with good defensive abilities but with a lack of ranged firepower and a tendency towards being pillow-fisted.
- Glass Cannon vehicles with good firepower (outside of the transports) but mediocre defensive stats.

You're just begging your opponent to shoot your glass cannons first, which will deprive you of far more firepower and mobility than if he instead focused on taking down your tanky units.

Soulless Samurai wrote:

Burnage wrote:

Here's the thing; sitting on objectives is contributing to the battle.

That depends entirely on the mission.

If they sit on Objectives for 4 turns, only to be blown off them on the 5th (because you spent points on units that do nothing but sit on objectives, whilst your opponent brought units that actually fight), then they haven't contributed anything.

If you're playing one of the missions where objectives are scored each turn (rather than at the end of the game), then they're a bit better. But even then you're still sacrificing long-term gains for short-term board presence.

I just don't know what you're expecting from our Troops, man. 135 points for 15 T4/5 models with a 4++ and 6+++ that have objective secured and will probably give you +4 CP is pretty solid all round.

Are they going to be as big of a threat as Grotesques or Taloi? No, but nobody's saying that you should take Wracks instead of them! You take them in addition because Command Points are victory fuel and Battalions are by far the best way for us to get them.

Just throwing it out there that my last game vs Nids my wracks were MVP, a 10 man squad counter charged some Genestealers that had just mauled my talos squad, with Torturers Craft they ripped all 20 stealers to pieces, then went on to do the same to a broodlord and Swarmlord, almost wiping the squad in the in the process then brought them back full strength on a board edge to cap an objective. This was even with me screwing up my placement for Vexator mask (which is why the talos died), they just did the right number of wounds.

Honestly, both Coven Cult and Kabal are great for a Battalion. We don't really have any problem in this scenario