Webway Portal Tactics

Greetings fellow Archons. So, I have been playing around with a small unit of ten Wyches popping from the webway portal. In this way, they have grabbed objectives, screened other units, or mostly just caused havoc in the enemies backlines. Using the Wyches in this way has produced some mixed results though.

Now, I have spent some time thinking about it, and have wondered if I should increase the number of Wyches I use this way. Even going so far as writing an army list with two units of twenty arriving from the webway. Another thought, was to scrap the Wyches altogether, and use full units of Talosi instead. And my final thought, was that maybe bringing units from the webway was just too hit-or-miss to be an efficient use of either unit.

I’d like to hear what our amazing community thinks on the matter. Am I on the right track with the Wyches, should I switch to the Talos units, or just forget about using webway portals? I look forward to hearing others thoughts on the subject.

I think Wyches are not very good when DSing, they are cheap and fast, and should just start on the table. DSing units needs to be able to do what they need to do when they DS, Wyches its less than a 50% chance to even be able to do what they need to do. Look at DSing 20man Guardians for an example.

Now, you dont need to get rid of them, but adding in Talos is also a good thing.

Unfortunately you can't DS Talos using the WWP strategy as they are Monsterous Creatures. I would so LOVE to drop that in my opponent's backfield!!!

I had toyed with the Aeldari Webway gate. But it's pretty pricey just to DS something. And now that you can't come in till turn 2, it's highly likely to not be there.

I don't like to DS in assault units because I think that relying on the 9" charge roll is leaving a bit too much to chance.

However, in theory, I like the idea of webway portalling in 20 kabalite warriors with 4 shredders and 2 splinter cannons vs. a light infantry horde.

With the current DS rules, I struggle to see webway portals as being worthwhile for anything other than flavour.

Having to sit through potentially 2 enemy turns before you can actually use your reserved units seems like a really dubious prospect to me. Especially when you're paying CPs for the privileged. What's more, it seems insanely expensive for what it does. I really don't see any reason why DSing a unit and a single character needs to cost 3CPs.

Only thing I can think of at the moment is for a Mandrake-themed army, you could pay a CP to deep strike one of your HQs and pretend it's a Mandrake. Is it useful? No. Is it effective? Highly doubtful? Is it fun? In concept, yes. In practice, no.

You can keep 2 5kabalites units un reserve and DP them to take objective in late game. It's not very expensive and can gain you a few victory points.

dumpeal wrote:

You can keep 2 5kabalites units un reserve and DP them to take objective in late game. It's not very expensive and can gain you a few victory points.

To my mind, 3CPs is insanely expensive.

krayd wrote:

I don't like to DS in assault units because I think that relying on the 9" charge roll is leaving a bit too much to chance.

However, in theory, I like the idea of webway portalling in 20 kabalite warriors with 4 shredders and 2 splinter cannons vs. a light infantry horde.

I completely agree, even if you're deep striking a melee unit turn two so you have reroll charge rolls from PfP, it's still a 9" charge which is just not reliable to get. Unless you're BA and have the 3d6 charge from DS stratagem, I don't see deep striking melee units as good. That especially applies to wyches because if they fail to charge that's a lot of t3, +6 save bodies they are gonna get shot up real easy.

I'd like to see someone try 20 kabalites with lots of shredders deep striking. I think to really make that work they'd have to be obsidian rose, the extra range will really help have the whole unit in range of the target when they ds, and you have the moral stratagem to avoid losing lots of kabalites to moral. Only issue is it's a big unit that could easily get tied up in melee.

@Souless Samurai: I agree 3cp for deep striking 2 units is expensive, especially when we can use screaming jets for one unit per one cp. I think I'd only ever use webway to ds one unit because of that.

Lord Asvaldir wrote:

I'd like to see someone try 20 kabalites with lots of shredders deep striking. I think to really make that work they'd have to be obsidian rose, the extra range will really help have the whole unit in range of the target when they ds, and you have the moral stratagem to avoid losing lots of kabalites to moral. Only issue is it's a big unit that could easily get tied up in melee.  

I'm inclined to try Poisoned Tongue with a unit like that, to give the splinters a bit more bite AND to give the unit a greater edge in close combat, because that's where they're probably going to end up.

I'd be more tempted to use Obsidian Rose for the morale protection.

(I'd also likely want Blasters instead of Shredders, but that's another matter.)

Skari uses a blob of 20 DSing wyches in his competitive tournament list and is very happy with them.

I don't doubt that DS 20 wyches can be effective, but there's always the risk that they don't make a charge on the turn they show up, as failing a 9" charge even with rerolls isn't that hard. If they fail, that's almost 20 wyches sitting in the open waiting to get torn apart by shooting.

krayd wrote:

Lord Asvaldir wrote:

I'd like to see someone try 20 kabalites with lots of shredders deep striking. I think to really make that work they'd have to be obsidian rose, the extra range will really help have the whole unit in range of the target when they ds, and you have the moral stratagem to avoid losing lots of kabalites to moral. Only issue is it's a big unit that could easily get tied up in melee.   

I'm inclined to try Poisoned Tongue with a unit like that, to give the splinters a bit more bite AND to give  the unit a greater edge in close combat, because that's where they're probably going to end up.

Poisoned tongue is probably ok on a big kabalite unit like that, but I really think obsidian rose is better. It's hard to get 20 warriors from DS all in rapid fire range, but with the boosted range of OR it would be much easier, so I'd gladly give up the reroll 1s to get more kabalites in range. Plus kabalites are pretty mediocre in melee, the reroll 1s isn't going to save them when they get stuck fighting a real melee units.

I used 9 grotesques with a mask haemonculus very effectively against tau.
They didn't get the charge but that was secondary.

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I used 20 man kabalites in DS with 4 blasters and 2 cannons, it was very satisfying, even blasted a charging demon prince in overwatch. I don't remember the cabal I used, though.