Haemonculus Coven - Prophets of Flesh - Tactics Requested

Greetings,

You may be in luck shortly; there's a campaign book called Vigilus 1 that came out recently that had a bunch of the old 7th edition formations remade for 8th edition, just none for Dark Eldar yet. The fluff in the book indicates that in Vigilus 2 (ETA unknown), the Dark Eldar involvement is predominantly Coven so hopefully that will be what we get.
As for a list, it's hard to create a list with so few troops as you're locked out of Batallions (The best CP detachment).

From what you've got I'd say
Spearhead
Haemy #1 in a venom
Haemy #2 in a venom

5 wracks
5 wracks both in a Raider

5 Grotesques in a raider

3 Talos
2 Talos
1 Cronos

With all the trimmings you mentioned that comes to 1423pts. You would only have 4cp which is really low, but leaves you enough points to include another squad of wracks when you come round to it and you can upgrade the spearhead to a Batallion (2 HQ 3 Troop minimum) that will net you 8cp which is much more reasonable and put you at 1482pts and your Haemy could share a venom. You could also put ichor injectors on them for 5pts each to bring you closer to a 1500pts list.

As for which obsession, Prophets of Flesh are the clear winner as they increase everything to a 4++ except the vehicles, have a great relic to make an enemy fight last even if they charge you and you can ignore overwatch and their stratagem works really well if you have 1 Wrack left to reposition him and his fully regenerate squad on a board edge near an objective. Warlord trait most people go for diabolical Soothsayer with PoF for extra CP as it grants you greater flexibility but the generic ones are pretty good.
If Prophets don't tickle your fancy, Coven of Twelve make really good use of Wracks (their number of poisoned attacks, reroll to wound stratagem and extra AP make them surprisingly deadly) and can make a very deadly haemonculus character using The Flensing Blade + Master Nemesine to wound on a 2+. Their stratagem would be cool to allow you to fire your liquifier whilst in combat aswell.
Dark Creed are the runt of the litter; there are just too many ways to ignore morale in the game for their leadership debuff to work well, spiritsting isn't a great relic as it caps out at 3 damage. Their stratagem is our only sniper in the book and can be used on a raider to snipe a character with a dark lance or on your talos squad to snipe with heatlances, but it's situational and shouldn't be built around. The mortal wound leadership thing isn't great either.

As for stratagems, one strong combo is that if you think on turn 2 your grotesques will get into combat you can use Architects of Agony to give them +1 to their Power From Pain so they will be hitting on a 2+ for the squad! Combo that with Torturers Craft for reroll wounds and they'll destroy whatever they touch.
Flesh Craft will compliment your Cronos to keep everything healthy, enhanced aethersails on the Raider carrying the grotesques will help them get to the fight quickly and if you find yourself surrounded by psykers the crudicible of Malediction is a good tool to remember.
Oh, and if you find that you're locked in combat with something you don't want to fight with your Talos, use Cruel Deception to fly over your enemy and still be able to charge something new, it's good to get over screening units that would otherwise lock them up. Fire and Fade if you can find a target also allows your talos to move again so Move + Advance, shoot, fire and fade closer to the enemy, let them charge you and then use Cruel Deception to jump over them and charge something more vital.

As for tactics and strategy, are you willing to mix or is it only coven stuff that you want to run.

First of all, thank you very much for taking the time to write such an elaborate reply

Gizamaluke wrote:

You may be in luck shortly; there's a campaign book called Vigilus 1 that came out recently that had a bunch of the old 7th edition formations remade for 8th edition, just none for Dark Eldar yet. The fluff in the book indicates that in Vigilus 2 (ETA unknown), the Dark Eldar involvement is predominantly Coven so hopefully that will be what we get.

This is potentially really good news and I think it might be even probably that it will see it's release this year. I don't recall the Haemonculus Coven book having it's release originally that much later than the 7th Edition Codex right?

Gizamaluke wrote:

As for a list, it's hard to create a list with so few troops as you're locked out of Batallions (The best CP detachment).

From what you've got I'd say
Spearhead
Haemy #1 in a venom
Haemy #2 in a venom

5 wracks
5 wracks both in a Raider

5 Grotesques in a raider

3 Talos
2 Talos
1 Cronos

With all the trimmings you mentioned that comes to 1423pts. You would only have 4cp which is really low, but leaves you enough points to include another squad of wracks when you come round to it and you can upgrade the spearhead to a Batallion (2 HQ 3 Troop minimum) that will net you 8cp which is much more reasonable and put you at 1482pts and your Haemy could share a venom. You could also put ichor injectors on them for 5pts each to bring you closer to a 1500pts list.

As for which obsession, Prophets of Flesh are the clear winner as they increase everything to a 4++ except the vehicles, have a great relic to make an enemy fight last even if they charge you and you can ignore overwatch and their stratagem works really well if you have 1 Wrack left to reposition him and his fully regenerate squad on a board edge near an objective. Warlord trait most people go for diabolical Soothsayer with PoF for extra CP as it grants you greater flexibility but the generic ones are pretty good.[/quote]

So in this situation the Haemonculi are at liberty to fly around to where they are needed as fast as possible by usage of the Venoms. At the same time though, considering the high amount of wounds that Grotesque's have, do they really need to be more than 3? Wouldn't 2x 6 allow me to cover much more ground and attack 2 enemy units rather than 1? Or does experience tell you that regardless of Grotesques their impressive stats, especially when boosted by a Haemonculus, really need more than 3 to start shining?

My initial strategy would be to have the Wracks reside in their venoms and take enemies out from about 24" of relative safety behind Venom armour. How would you use them in this case? Just like the Grotesque's, ram em straight into the enemies for close combat? In both cases I think it would be preferable to have a Haemonculus with them to increase their longevity, but then do they even still need to fly around in a Venom if they're going to be near the rest of the groundtroops all the time?

Also, does Master Of Pain even work when the Haemonculus is still within the vehicle? It's probably viewed as an aura which sadly doesn't seem to work even though they are in open topped vehicles.

Gizamaluke wrote:

If Prophets don't tickle your fancy, Coven of Twelve make really good use of Wracks (their number of poisoned attacks, reroll to wound stratagem and extra AP make them surprisingly deadly) and can make a very deadly haemonculus character using The Flensing Blade + Master Nemesine to wound on a 2+. Their stratagem would be cool to allow you to fire your liquifier whilst in combat aswell.

Dark Creed are the runt of the litter; there are just too many ways to ignore morale in the game for their leadership debuff to work well, spiritsting isn't a great relic as it caps out at 3 damage.  Their stratagem is our only sniper in the book and can be used on a raider to snipe a character with a dark lance or on your talos squad to snipe with heatlances, but it's situational and shouldn't be built around. The mortal wound leadership thing isn't great either.

I think, especially for a returning novice the Prophets of Flesh are the go to choice for any Haemonculi Coven enthousiast. Dark Creed does trigger my interest more than Coven of Twelve though. I like the idea behind those Ld reduction possibilities, but I think it's probably best in very, VERY close quarters. Like if you were to play on a heavy city terrain inspired table. The Dark Creed would probably also benefit from horror-movie tactics, where antagonists always seem to pop up out of nowhere. Having a (or multiple) enemy unit be surrounded by 3 of my units all at once and combining this with other Ld reducing shinanigans might be cool and fluffy, but I think as it now it's probably more fluffy than effective.

It seems the Haemonculus Coven is pretty much a Close Combat army with some Assault move Ranged weapons thrown in there for the sake of diversity. Yet the Wyches also are a Close Combat oriented army. It would perhaps be more balanced if the Coven was a balance in between the Kabel and the Wyches, playstyle wise, but perhaps it is and I'm just thinking about it the wrong way.

Skari wrote:

As for tactics and strategy, are you willing to mix or is it only coven stuff that you want to run.

Well considering I'm not even going to buy new models at this point I'd say no. But if I were to buy new models it would either by Urien, 1 more unit of Wracks with maybe a Venom and or 1 extra Talos and 2 extra Cronos. My preference lies with a Haemonculus Coven only. I like the appeal of the horror vibe these guys have.

Urien is a must if you want to play PoF; the +1 strength buff is simply required of your Talos face a Knight or similar things as with the Scalpel you are now S8.
He is a great addition to a pure Coven force, although he himself has no reliable damage output.
The moral buff is also great in more situations than you might think.

Gizamaluke has made a great summary of the important Stratagems.
You will want to run two battalions for the CP though, so more wracks are recommended.
Wracks are actually great in prophets of flesh; I play units of 10 on foot as a screen and once a unit is brought down, I pop the PoF Stratagem and have them appear behind enemy lines, threatening the hom marker. Still worth it even if you have to spend 2 more CP just to save them from moral. I also give them one ossefactor so that they can fire and fade as well. Against many weapons, they are as robust as guardsmen per point and with the +1 S buff of Urien they can also clear screens, using their S3+1 native weapon that every unit has as per rulebook errata, instead of poison 4+.

I used to run 6 Talos and 25 wracks in a battalion without grotesques and against ynnari and other shooting heavy lists, the Talos melt away in 2-3 rounds of shooting. So I would say you need 1 more Talos and some more grots or 4 more Talos, which is a little extreme maybe..

The Cronos never really performed well enough for me, I rather have another Talos.