Druhkari Slaving/Raiding Force

I am looking for a change from my only current WH40K army, Blood Angels. Druhkari seem to be the polar opposite, the most evil of evils. I want my army to be solid on the tabletop, while confined to the bounds of rule of cool and my theme of a highly mobile raiding force of evil space elves in midnight clad. My plan is to magnetize all of the Disintegrator Cannons and Dark Lances, so that the raiders and ravagers can run either or. Couple of questions I have, firstly being if I can really run The Visarch in a non-Ynarri detachment. Second, I am sure that there are better combos for my warlord and would love to get some input. Without further ado, here is the 1,995 point list:

Battalion

Kabal of the Obsidian Rose

Archon - Warlord, Venom Blade, Blast Pistol, Armor of Misery, Deathly Perfectionist

The Visarch

Lhamean

10 Warriors, 2x Shredder

10 Warriors, 2x Shredder

10 Warriors, 2x Shredder

Raider, Disintegrator Cannon, Chain snares, PGL

Raider, Disintegrator Cannon, Chain snares, PGL

Raider, Disintegrator Cannon, chain snares, PGL

Razorwing Jetfighter, 2x Dark Lance, twin splinter rifle

Razorwing Jetfighter, 2x Dark Lance, twin splinter rifle

Spearhead

Kabal of the Obsidian Rose

Drazhar

9 Incubi, Klaivex

Ravager, 3x Disintegrator Cannon

Ravager, 3x Disintegrator Cannon

Ravager, 3x Dark Lance

Tantalus

It's a solid list.

The only tweaks I would make are;

Chain snares on the raiders- unless you're extremely commited to getting them into combat, they aren't worth much. In addition, the PGL, they can be useful, especially with the strat, but overall LD isn't something many armies have a problem with. If you insist on taking them, it's better to stick them on the kabs assuming you're taking them inside the raiders.

If you're looking for a beatstick archon, something I enjoy doing, then it's probably best to change some of that around. You've got the points spare, even without any changes to give him a huskblade. Any units you do want a beatstick archon fighting are typically equipped with armour. A venom blade is only really used as a cheap option. I would also change the relic to the djinn blade, for extra harm.

Seeing as you're not running any cult or coven, there's no need to use the alliance of agony strat, so instead giving a warlord trait to drazhar is probably worth it. Drazhar is very good in melee without his trait, and it only makes him better. If you do take that route, then you mafy find there be no need for a beatstick archon, as without the trait it does far less damage. You could instead fix him to being an aura for the ravagers, possibly even switching the spearhead to black heart to take advantage of the relic and provide your ravagers with better survivability.

Sarcron wrote:

Chain snares on the raiders- unless you're extremely commited to getting them into combat, they aren't worth much. In addition, the PGL, they can be useful, especially with the strat, but overall LD isn't something many armies have a problem with. If you insist on taking them, it's better to stick them on the kabs assuming you're taking them inside the raiders.

If you're looking for a beatstick archon, something I enjoy doing, then it's probably best to change some of that around. You've got the points spare, even without any changes to give him a huskblade. Any units you do want a beatstick archon fighting are typically equipped with armour. A venom blade is only really used as a cheap option. I would also change the relic to the djinn blade, for extra harm.

Seeing as you're not running any cult or coven, there's no need to use the alliance of agony strat, so instead giving a warlord trait to drazhar is probably worth it. Drazhar is very good in melee without his trait, and it only makes him better. If you do take that route, then you mafy find there be no need for a beatstick archon, as without the trait it does far less damage. You could instead fix him to being an aura for the ravagers, possibly even switching the spearhead to black heart to take advantage of the relic and provide your ravagers with better survivability.

Thanks for the input! Chain snares and PGL were really just on the raiders to eat up points to get me to an even 2000. I will move the PGL to the squads and then see if I can find a better use for the chain snare points.

I was thinking that The Visarch and Drahzar would be the beatsticks, and the Archon was really just there to fill in the HQ tax for the Battalion. How do people run the Archon to use the aura? The idea was to have the Archon, Visarch, Drahzar and Incubi in the Tanalus, which at least gives a good LD buff to the army. But the Archon seems too slow to really help with re-rolling 1s, especially if I want to split up the Ravagers to deal with different threats.

For the Huskblade, is it actually more useful than a Venom blade? Coming from the Space Marine world, the +1 S to get to S4 doesn't seem as appealing as the wounding everything on 2s? Obviously it doesn't have the AP of the Huskblade, but with the trait the Archon is hitting on 2s re-rolling 1s, wounding everything on 2s and doing 2 damage. That seemed like a better call mathhammer wise, but I could be very wrong.

You'd be surprised how far you can get the aura to reach, it's a base of 6" range yes, but that means the ravagers can be up to 13" away from each other (counting the width of the archon's base). Add in his 8" movement and any advancing he can still move around to let the ravagers re-position. Besides that, especially as you're playing with obsidian rose, you'll rarely be out of range for anything with the ravagers.

The reason I'd say for huskblade over the venom for a melee archon is mainly for the djinn blade + hatred eternal trait. One of the problem's with the archon right now is he requires a relic to be decent in combat.
It depends on your choosing of warlord trait. If you give it to drazhar, your archon won't do much, but drazhar will become amazing.
If you give the trait to your archon, hatred eternal + the djinn blade will be great. I've had my archon kill tanks with it. That being my opinion only- I reccomend you test out various combinations, both with and without drazhar factored in to see which you find is better.

Sarcron wrote:

You'd be surprised how far you can get the aura to reach, it's a base of 6" range yes, but that means the ravagers can be up to 13" away from each other (counting the width of the archon's base). Add in his 8" movement and any advancing he can still move around to let the ravagers re-position. Besides that, especially as you're playing with obsidian rose, you'll rarely be out of range for anything with the ravagers.

The reason I'd say for huskblade over the venom for a melee archon is mainly for the djinn blade + hatred eternal trait. One of the problem's with the archon right now is he requires a relic to be decent in combat.
It depends on your choosing of warlord trait. If you give it to drazhar, your archon won't do much, but drazhar will become amazing.
If you give the trait to your archon, hatred eternal + the djinn blade will be great. I've had my archon kill tanks with it. That being my opinion only- I reccomend you test out various combinations, both with and without drazhar factored in to see which you find is better.

In order to give Drazhar his trait, which I think is a must to max out his killiness, do I have to make him the warlord or can I give it to him by using Alliance of Agony? I didn't really have a plan for putting my Warlord in harm's way, and Drahzar needs to get into the thick of things ASAP, hence why I didn't make him my warlord. Thoughts on that?

I am thinking about playing the list as both Obsidian Rose and Flayed Skull. I feel like mobility with firepower is one of the keys for DE, and that Obsidian Rose kind of makes you want to sit back and shoot instead of jumping around the board. Thoughts?

Sadly no, it's either alliance of agony or drazhar as warlord, I gave as an option because you're only running kabal and so you can't use alliance of agony.
It's really up to you, do you prioritize damage, and a bit off added risk that your opponent get's 1 vp, or stick to the back lines and play it potentially more safely.

I agree on the point of obsidian and flayed, my goal of a list uses both

So are we all agreeing the visarch can be used in a Drukhari exclusive list? Does the strength from death rule apply to the rest of the army? Where can I prove I can do this? Sorry lots of questions but just getting back into the game after a few years off

Doomseer92Y wrote:

So are we all agreeing the visarch can be used in a Drukhari exclusive list?  Does the strength from death rule apply to the rest of the army?  Where can I prove I can do this? Sorry lots of questions but just getting back into the game after a few years off

I have yet to receive clear answers on the Visarch being part of a non-Ynarri detachment. Seems to be some controversy out there about it. As for the Strength from Death, that will only apply to your Ynarri units. So as long as a Detachment is a Ynarri detachment, it will get Strength from Death and lose its Kabal/Cult/Coven traits.

There's no question about it, Phoenix Rising explicitly states you can take the Ynnarri characters in any detachment. The visarch will not benefit from strength from death though in a Drukhari detachment, and you absolutely don't want to make the detachment Ynnarri just for that anyway.

On the list overall, I don't think the Visarch is all that useful though. He is just really outshined by Drazhar, and this being a Drukhari force his aura isn't going to do anything. A second archon would be far more useful, as he could stay backfield with the ravagers and provide them a reroll 1s aura. Another small change, if you want a melee archon like the warlord you have with the armor of misery, the venom blade is just bad. You want that on your cheap backfield archon who won't do any fighting most games. Give your melee archon a huskblade instead, it's not an amazing weapon but you need some ap, and the d3 damage goes well with the obsidian rose warlord trait.

One last note, I would rate obsidian rose as a mid-tier kabal trait. Flayed skull or black heart are better, black heart giving you the excellent relic, stratagem and warlord trait, plus the extra 6++ save on your vehicles will be very handy, while the flayed skull trait is just so many useful rules packed into one trait. I'd only stick with obsidian rose if you really feel strongly about using that particular kabal.

Lord Asvaldir wrote:

There's no question about it, Phoenix Rising explicitly states you can take the Ynnarri characters in any detachment. The visarch will not benefit from strength from death though in a Drukhari detachment, and you absolutely don't want to make the detachment Ynnarri just for that anyway.

On the list overall, I don't think the Visarch is all that useful though. He is just really outshined by Drazhar, and this being a Drukhari force his aura isn't going to do anything. A second archon would be far more useful, as he could stay backfield with the ravagers and provide them a reroll 1s aura. Another small change, if you want a melee archon like the warlord you have with the armor of misery, the venom blade is just bad. You want that on your cheap backfield archon who won't do any fighting most games. Give your melee archon a huskblade instead, it's not an amazing weapon but you need some ap, and the d3 damage goes well with the obsidian rose warlord trait.

One last note, I would rate obsidian rose as a mid-tier kabal trait. Flayed skull or black heart are better, black heart giving you the excellent relic, stratagem and warlord trait, plus the extra 6++ save on your vehicles will be very handy, while the flayed skull trait is just so many useful rules packed into one trait. I'd only stick with obsidian rose if you really feel strongly about using that particular kabal.  

Thanks so much for the input! I was really only taking the Visarch for rule of cool and the fact that Dracons aren't an HQ anymore. Why does GW hate DE so much haha? The lack of HQ options isn't cool IMO. I will play around with the points and go for that for sure. My plan was for the Archon to just ride in the Tantalus, pumping out the Leadership aura and overall not doing much. But the dual Archon setup could definitely be the way to go.

I was drawn towards Obsidian Rose due to their lore, with the current Archon doing some badass stuff to make her way to the top. Everyone runs Black Heart, and I know why on the tabletop, but I can't be that guy. Same reason I run Blood Angels over Iron Hands or Imperial Fists, rule of cool comes first. But I have been considering Flayed Skull, or possibly even custom Kabal, because the increase to flyer movement seems so strong. I will dig more into that. If I do go with Flayed Skull, and want a beatstick Archon, what is the best build out between Relic and Trait?

We all want more characters for Drukhari, it's a complaint that has been there for a long time. Just gotta make do with what we have, in my headcanon I just count my second archon as a dracon anyway. The ld aura from the tantalus is of very limited usefulness, much better to have that archon be a beatstick running into melee with the incubi.

I have been a flayed skull or bust fan since the codex dropped, it's an astoundingly awesome trait given it's 3 effects all packed into one trait, not to mention the stratagem is pretty solid as well. The +3" for flier movement isn't even the best part, reroll 1s for rapid fire weapons long as your warriors are in the raiders makes them more accurate, and ignore cover is super useful especially on poison weapons with no ap. My typical build for a beatstick archon is the djinn blade/hatred eternal trait. I've run that archon for a long time, and he has a long career of blending a lot of stuff in melee, and failing his shadowfield at the worst possible moments. Granted now that Drazhar is so awesome he's a lot less impressive, I'd give Drazhar the warlord trait and just run your archon around with a huskblade. I've started using the flayed skull relic more, it's a nice little bonus for when your shadowfield fails the first save all the damn time.

One last note, don't even look at the custom kabal traits, it will just make you angry how bad they are.

Lord Asvaldir wrote:

We all want more characters for Drukhari, it's a complaint that has been there for a long time. Just gotta make do with what we have, in my headcanon I just count my second archon as a dracon anyway. The ld aura from the tantalus is of very limited usefulness, much better to have that archon be a beatstick running into melee with the incubi.

I have been a flayed skull or bust fan since the codex dropped, it's an astoundingly awesome trait given it's 3 effects all packed into one trait, not to mention the stratagem is pretty solid as well. The +3" for flier movement isn't even the best part, reroll 1s for rapid fire weapons long as your warriors are in the raiders makes them more accurate, and ignore cover is super useful especially on poison weapons with no ap. My typical build for a beatstick archon is the djinn blade/hatred eternal trait. I've run that archon for a long time, and he has a long career of blending a lot of stuff in melee, and failing his shadowfield at the worst possible moments. Granted now that Drazhar is so awesome he's a lot less impressive, I'd give Drazhar the warlord trait and just run your archon around with a huskblade. I've started using the flayed skull relic more, it's a nice little bonus for when your shadowfield fails the first save all the damn time.

One last note, don't even look at the custom kabal traits, it will just make you angry how bad they are.

Just retooled the list, removing the Visarch to add in a cheap Archon (who would be my Dracon) to babysit the Ravagers at the back. I somehow had only focused on the 3 inch move buff, and compared it to the Obsidian Rose 3 inch range buff. The ignoring cover and rerolling 1s is extremely impressive. Warlord Archon has got the Djinn Blade and Famed Savagery. So quick mathhammer by me says that the extra S and A on the charge beats out Hatred Eternal for most things? Although I might just make Drahzar my warlord to really beef him up.

So if we're talking what's the best choice, without a doubt Drazhar is going to do way more damage than an archon ever good, so he's the best choice for warlord. However I get the thematic appeal of keeping your archon as the warlord. Famed savagery is alright, but I do think hatred eternal in the long run will net more damage. Not to mention it also works on his blast pistol which is nice.