Do we have the answer to overpowered Marines right in front of us?

I am heading up to Adepticon next month, and got in some much needed practice against marines (specifically Iron Hands). Though I won the match (and the tournament) I felt like I was on my back foot the entire game. Pretty much, I was unable to dictate the outcome through my normal means...I had to rely on speed, amassing points and trying to survive the brutal firepower he was capable of laying out.

To me, "trying to survive" is NOT a winning strategy. I prefer to have a solid plan in place, and execute it to where my opponent, rather than myself is having to react, and make decisions that they are not happy with.

So, I have been pondering on my opponents army, his strategy and what he was trying to accomplish. I also have been thinking on what worked in my army, and what did not.

What Was Good:
Drazahar.
Flayed Skull attributes for rerolls and no cover.

What was Ok:
Incubi
Venoms

What Was Hot Garbage:
Ravagers

Even though I won, it was an uphill battle. His tactics were a big part of that. When i would engage, he would simply back away, and remove anything that was in front of him from the table.
Incubi- Gone
Drazahar- Gone
Yncarne- Gone

Upon reflection, I found it odd that his target priority was not the ravagers or venoms, it was my Melee units. All of them. He focus fired until they were gone.
So why was the melee units a threat? I am thinking because his heavy hitters, the snipers, the dreadnaughts, the leviathin, they all SUCK in hand to hand. Their utility is cut to a pale shadow of how good they are in shooting.

So to the new marine players- melee is a waste of both time and effort. They will avoid it where they can, or back away and remove it where they must. In base to base, they can't snipe, their leviathin is a big joke and their thunder fires fall silent.
In other words, you neuter their list by engaging them.


With this knowledge in hand, I tried to make a list I was happy with that would exploit the few weaknesses Marines have, while maximizing the benefits my army has.

So to start-
marine Weaknesses:
1. Being engaged in Hand to Hand by a unit or units that can survive the counter attack.
2. Mobility. for the list to work, they have to remain in a big ball for the most part.
3. Mortal Wounds. These can not be reduced, minus-1 or even passed on to other models.

So what list can I make that would benefit the most from this knowledge?
Ugh. I almost hate to say it, but here goes....
A Wych Cult.

Now before you try and run me out on a rail, think about this.
Benefits of the cult:
1. Take Slashing Impact and Test of Skill. This makes the wyches viable against both vehicles AND hordes or foot troops. Slashing impact creates mortal wounds, which is one of the weaknesses of the Marines. Test of skill still has the wyches hurting tanks on a 5+.
2. Take An Auxillary of 12 jetbikes with red Grief. This is pretty much for two things and two things only. A: Eviscerating Flyby. Use this to target characters (I/E Apothecaries!). Removing these buffing characters will decemate a Marine list. and B: tie up either thunderfire or sniper squads turn 1 if possible. This puts the Marines on the back foot from the start of the game.
3. Shardnet and Impalers. this nifty toy will be the one piece of unassuming wargear that will not only frustrate your opponent, it will DESTROY his entire gameplan. If he cannot back out of combat, he cannot shoot at what was tying him up. If he cant shoot it, it is a threat with a fallback and charge strat, so he has to break up his castle to prevent just being swarmed into uselessness. When the castle breaks up, it is so so much easier to pick them apart.
4. Blast pistols. Each and every squad, each succubus, all of them HAVE to have blast pistols. You wound most vehicles or dreadnaughts on a 3 (or 2!), and no character wants to take a dark light shot to the face.

So... mixing it all together I came up with this list for Adepticon, but still looking for a reason not to take it.

Red Grief- 12 reavers, 4 blasters 2 grav talons

Slashing Impact/ Test of Skill
2 Succubi w/ blast pistols
Drazahar
The yncarne

7x 5 wyches/ shardnet/ blast pistols
1x 6 wyches/ blast pistol/ shardnet
7x Incubi (w/ demiklave)
2 Raiders (dark Lance)
8 venoms

Never thought I would even entertain taking a wych cult to a GT, but here we are.

thoughts?
Something I am missing?

How do you plan to keep your wyches alive long enough to reach your opponent?

I don't trust Eviscerating Flyby for targeting characters.  You'd be counting on rolling the 4 wounds needed to put an Apothecary down without much to show if you roll low.  The Apothecary would also get the ignore injury roll, which lowers you chances of success.  Better to shoot the bubblewrap down, charge in with Bladed Impact and Grav Talons.

Also, you can have 4 Grav Talons.

In total, Iron Hands is the army that scares me the most as a primarily Wych Cult player, outside of the rare Salamanders.  5+ Overwatch and 6+ ignore injury in an army that is already tough enough. Even with the new Cult Traits (Bladed Impact, Test of SKill) i find myself leaning on shooting to thin enemy units down to 3-4 models before charging.

For all our bluster about how awesome Shardnet/Impaler is, there are very few enemies out there where 5 Wyches actually want them to stay alive long enough to not be able to Fall Back. The thing to remember about No Escape is that the enemy gets to attack back, not Fall Back in their turn, shoot you with pistols, and then attack you again before your Wyches. Meanwhile, a stock Intercessor gets 5 attacks per model, hitting and wounding on 3s and a pistol shot. There's a very thin territory between the enemy being too large to charge in the first place, and too small for this gimmick to really work out. For these reasons, and the utter lack of hitting power they bring, i avoid 5 strong Wych units.

I don't see how this list doesn't just get blown off the board by a competitive Hands or Fists list. MSU Wyches are also, in my experience, not really capable of holding most Marine units in combat at the moment because they just get punched to death.

I can see your logic here but I think Covens are the better anti-Marine subfaction on the whole.

Sure this list might attempt to be tailored to Marines, and even that is up for debate. But let's also remember, other armies exist. I don't see how this army competes with some of the other armies out there much less Marines.
I think you need to go back to the drawing board.

I just see an over reliance on Venoms. Those are for Kabalites.

I agree with the above sentiments; Wyches evaporate to Thunderfires, and Venoms evaporate to Stalker Bolt Rifles. Fun Fact: Two shots from Imperial Fist Stalker Bolt Rifles kills a Venom.

If you really want Venoms, Artists of the Flesh is the way

Even if you do get to melee, a humble Intercessor squad will pile in and slap 17 attacks at you, probably with full rerolls. I don't think mono Wyches are the answer, though their Shardnets certainly can be very useful.

The Iron Hand Levy dread, and dreadnoughts in general, are some of the biggest issues that you need to have an answer to. Blasters and Dissies just don't cut it, and almost nothing in melee will handle them either. So, currently my answer involves bringing a tonne of haywire (6+ Talos and 6+ Skyweavers) and using Agents of Vect to stop them from palming the attacks off.

Just a thought though: if you only gear up to play against the Iron Hands brigade style, and even if you perfect a Wych based build that negates some of their strengths, you risk getting blindsided by some of the hyper aggressive melee builds that are out there, both Marine and non Marine. I've found Blood Angels pure infantry builds to be a very difficult match up when I spammed haywire, for example, so there's always a trade off. I imagine that the Blood Angel lists I struggled with would probably also cut down Wych builds in no time.

... but of course, if you do find some success against Marines with Wyches, please share what you did and how it happened!

I understand your points. All of them. I told them to myself before. I will play a few practice games against a good IH player and let you know how it will works out.
No matter how much I think on it though, it looks strong to me. This army only works in unison, as a group. The Yncarne will pop up where I place the empty venom as a sacrifice. Drazahar and the incubi will tee off against their intecessors in unison with a shardnet or two. Heck, even a venom charging in to absorb overwatch causes a mortal wound on a 5+.

Like I said, I was looking for a reason NOT to take this. I will let you guys know how it went in a few days.
Thanks!

I'm currently playing around taking objectives and raid weakness points, which is all in all the way this army is designed and totally on BG. So it's fine to me losing like the 80% of my pieces for scoring objectives. I'm playing heavy on Cornucopians 25/30 Wracks, 15 Mandrakes, Reavers, Razorwings. The thing is force the SM to castle himself and punish him if he try to open and getting some points. You're not able to afford his castle, you're a raider: you need to hit his weakness. If he play defesive, just get more points. If he opens, avoid the heaviest side and go and rush for those 5 Intercessors/scouts/thunderfire/single units that try to get far objectives etc. I'm not losing against SM since I take this tought.
And with this in mind, yes, SM suffers the hovercraft spam (any kind of it).

Anyway, a tip: I'm finding Artists of the Flesh nearly mandatory if I'm going to rush Venoms. -1Damage counter directly the IF trait AND gives you and HUGE advantage against IH. Expecially if he spam Stalker bolters. Deploy your mass Venoms in hide and keep all of them within 6" from Haemonculus (usually you field 2 of them with a batallion, for this purpose): now their Thunderfire are shooting with -1 to hit and wounding on 5+. And if you need tho, hexrifle on him+Fire&fade gives you an edge for the first turn movement, sometines (it really depends on the moment, but because stinger pistol and hexrifle costs the same.....why wasting this chance? It's free).
You can use 5-5-5 Wracks as objective takers, and then add some Mandrakes (which are really good in this guerrilla style) or Incubi if you prefer, and unlock a good amount of Venoms.

If you're curios on the list:
Prophet Battalion
Urien+Haemi
10-10-10 Wracks
6 Talos
Aircraft BlackHeart
3x Razorwing
Vamguard Strife (but I'm switching on RedGrief now, works better here)
Drazhar
5-5-5 Mandrakes
12 Reavers

The other variation is cut the 12 Reavers and 5 Wracks and add in 7 Grotesques. I'm using both these two variations. Anyway yes, run for objectives more than killing stuff is the way to go against them. We are amazing doing that. So good luck

I see where you're going with this list and I like a LOT about it. A few questions and suggestions.

Why Red Grief on the bikes? Advanced and charge is good, but situational. Reavers synergize really well with both test of skill AND slashing impact, that Red grief really doesn't offer enough. Your bikes would wound most vehicles on 2+ with your blasters, 5+ with your poison, and 4+ in CC. You'd also have free, slightly worse grav-talons on every bike in addition to the grav-talons you do have. I'll take all that over the situational movement advantages of RG.

That looks like 2 battalions and an outrider and I would consider arranging one battalion into:

Yncarne
Succubus
Wych ×3
7 Incubi

Turn this battalion into Ynnari if you really want to see those Incubi sing. The combination of Drazhar's aura with Ancestor's Grace/Unbind Souls (or the strat) is pretty nutso. If you charge and have SfD active you hit on 2+ with re-roll and have +1 to wound and re-roll wounds. That re-roll just makes lethal precision so brutal. I had a squad of 5 do 15 wounds to a knight in a single fight phase.

Ynnari also does a lot to overcome a lot of the issues Succubi suffer from (helps compensate for unwieldy glaives, re-roll wounds,. Not to mention turning impalers into impaler/hydra gauntlet hybrids. Ynnari isn't widely useful, but in a minimal CC oriented battalion, it adds more than you might think.

Also, I don't know that this list uses the Yncarne to his full potential. I find he works best if you have the ability to get units behind the enemy. Razorwing flyers are great for blitzing behind the inevitable thunderfire battery. Do y0ur damage, wait to die, pop the Yncarne over to get behind enemy lines early while you continue to pressure from the front. I understand the sacrificial venom, but it seems like an inefficient use of points and open to counter-play (shoot the other 7 venoms instead). The easiest way to sneak in a razorwing would be to trade venoms for raiders until you can still mount everything up, but with no excess space.

Hope some of this helps, and good luck!

I have had a similar thought process to the SkullnBonz except I agree with others, wyches die far too easily to marines. I had to adapt my previous Cult/Kabal list and dropped the Wyches out because they couldnt suvive to hold onto a marine unit with their nets. I've instead gone for a Red Grief Vanguard detachment with two units of mandrakes and a unit of incubi, led by a 3++ Red Grief succubus with shard net + impaler. I've also got a unit of 12 Reavers in there, but I'm running heat lances over blasters. I prefer the 2d6 damage roll for hunting characters, or centurions etc. Eviscerating Flyby and Grav Talons are so handy, and if you chuck a couple of hex rifles in the mix, you can try to finish off the last wounds on a well wrapped character.
I don't think we have a consistent answer to marines. If I have bad dice, or bad terrain/mission, or go second then I'm largely sunk against a competent marine player. The army is so strong that other armies need every bit of advantage they can get from elsewhere.

sekac wrote:

Why Red Grief on the bikes? Advanced and charge is good, but situational.

thanks for your comments. I did not consider a yannari detachment, but now I will.
As for the Red Grief, the bikes are there to do eviscerating flyby on bubblewrapped characters, then engage a weaker unit like snipers and thunderfire cannons. You HAVE to advance for flyby to work, but just doing a flyby and leaving them in the open was an easy death sentence.

In theory, a 20 man red grief hellion unit would be ideal, but hellions are all over the place tactically.

Reavers advancing is a huge distance, though. Plenty of room to advance and shoot something with your Blasters or Heat Lances.

The only way I found to play Hellions is into a Bastion. 20 men units, I tried Cursed Blade but that was bad. Then, with RedGrief they worked better.

Right so I have to give up one of my 3 detachment slots to take a fortification to make a subpar unit work? No thanks, I'm good. Pass on hellions until they get a rework.

I do think wych cults have some use in facing marines, but they can't be the main focus of the list. I really think competitive Drukhari these days need coven. Talos/grots with PoF take way more punishment than anything else in our unit roster, and talos in particular have the perfect statline for munching primaris marines in melee. I use MSU wyches, I like them a lot but you can't expect 5 wyches to charge into 5 primaris and expect it to go well. You need 10 to gang up on one unit, or attack in support of a talos, and have the talos on the board to absorb the turn 1 firepower. Reavers we well I see a use but again I'd make sure you have a good compliment of coven units first, then see if you have pts left for reavers.

Hey wait, don't discard the idea just because you're throwing a detatchment away. You're not, you"re just losing 1 CP in change of a new level of strategy. You will be surprise about how much it works. It's good, super tricky.

You are throwing away a detachment, fortifications can only be taken as a separate detachment so given the standard is max 3 detachments, you're losing one. Given I often want to take all 3 of our subfactions, or potentially fit in harlequins as well there's just no room for a fortification.

I'm not throwing away a detatchment, I'm playing a list that play with a Bastion :-/ I don't get it.


I mean, I'm spending 1 detatchment for the Bastion. It's not "wasting" it for me.

Cerve wrote:

I'm not throwing away a detatchment, I'm playing a list that play with a Bastion :-/ I don't get it.


I mean, I'm spending 1 detatchment for the Bastion. It's not "wasting" it for me.

We understand what you're saying, but the point remains - if we can only access one third of our Codex per detachment, using one of our only three detachments for a bunker is really tough to stomach.

I lean pretty hard toward two separate Coven detachments (Prophets + Artists) for most lists I want to build nowadays, I love Skyweavers, and really enjoy having access to Agents of Vect. That's four detachments already :O

How do you find space to fit a bastion in lol?

Yup exactly what Hydranixx said. I am also starting to mix skyweavers into my armies, which on top of often wanting all 3 subfactions now means I have 4 factions to choose from, but only 3 detachments. Throwing in a 5th option that doesn't even unlock a range of units, just one single building that doesn't particularly synergize well with Drukhari? Yeah there's just no way I'm gonna find room for that, even if it has one neat little trick.

Well, wait, of course if you're going to bring it in it's because you're going to play a neat little trick. And you're going to sacrifice something. But it's ok for me, I mean, we have A LOT of ways to play. I can find the 70% of pur obsessions useful so...yeah, you can't always bring everything you want

Anyway, the Bastion is a fun way to play something fresh and definitely unique. 20 RedGrief Hellions inside it. Now you're deploying a Bastion that gives you another blos for your deployment (and we Drukhari live around blos so it's the first sinergy). Then, you have 20 Hellions inside that thing which:
1- have a 3,9"+16"+D6"+2D6 (rerolling them) of threat;
2-They can pop Eviscerating Fly By on 3,9"+16"+D6" of range from the Bastion, basically sniping any W5/6 character out during movement. This is huge, consider about sniping any smashcap, any support caracter, anyone. Or you can just throw out 6-7 mw on any infantry.
3- Now they shoot 40 shots at bs 4+
4- Then they're charging with damage2 and the drug wherever you want.
All in all, it is an hell of a treat if you add all these points. If you want to keep them on morale check, you can just spend 2 CP. And if the opponent it's really going to shoot down the Bastion.....no he'is not. No way he will waste his attenctions on that thing but if he do it, be grateful: he's basically ignoring you Ravagers/Flyers/anything else (and that's another sinergy).
So it gives you an huge middleboard threat, a sniping potential, a blos for your army and a distraction target to the opponent. It is surprisly efficient, and a good way take a fresh breath.
Some skill is required anyway, it's not an easy archetype.

I did great with lots of Raiders, Wracks, Talos and a couple 5 mans of Mandrakes. But this is with CA missions and i played the mission more than anything, trying to kill all of their troops first with raiders and Talos kills vehicles. Mandrakes try to wait for good opportunities to DS for mission objectives.

I stopped taking Ravagers for Talos and Raiders, at least for CA, for ITC i don't play, but Adepticon is known for doing a mix of GW missions with some minor mall secondaries, unlike ITC events, if this is still true try looking at mission based lists with good mobility and troop killing power at the same time units that can be protected.

My list is 30 Wracks, 9 Raiders, 6 Talos, 10 Mandrakes, 3 Haemonculus in a Battalion traits DT/EC. I win most of my local games vs Marines, but its only 3 Marines players and 2 of them are lesser lists and 1 good list (IH or IF, BA, UW), the BA and UW player's do take the best lists those armies can offer but its nothing compare to IH/IF.


Now, if i am going to a tournament as Non Mono DE, then i'll bring a unit of Skyweavers 100% for sure, they are way to good not to.

Interesting list, will be looking to see how it does. Just wondering how you'd fair versus DE Talos Bomb, or CWE (Wave Serpents with CC troops) though?

PS also at Adepticon but with CWE+DE in the Doubles, so good luck!

amishprn86 wrote:

My list is 30 Wracks, 9 Raiders, 6 Talos, 10 Mandrakes, 3 Haemonculus in a Battalion traits DT/EC.

Do you find you have enough CP for your list to function smoothly? I find my Talos are surprisingly CP hungry, and you're only 1 HQ pick (take Drazhar) from going dual battalions.

I like your list though, it's very interesting. Do you bring Electrowhips on the Wracks and Haemies?

hydranixx wrote:

amishprn86 wrote:

My list is 30 Wracks, 9 Raiders, 6 Talos, 10 Mandrakes, 3 Haemonculus in a Battalion traits DT/EC.

Do you find you have enough CP for your list to function smoothly? I find my Talos are surprisingly CP hungry, and you're only 1 HQ pick (take Drazhar) from going dual battalions.

I like your list though, it's very interesting. Do you bring Electrowhips on the Wracks and Haemies?

I also did try a double Battalion with Drazhar in a ITC 16man event, it was ok. I didn't really need the CP for a Coven force, as i can't use Lightning Fast stratagem or Vect, the 8cp was good enough. Especially when mostly what i am doing is rolling shooting and melee dice. So i stopped. it for sure it much more fun and better in CA missions, way more balanced too. The new ITC rules are looking 30% better, but it still wont be as fun as CA missions for me for events.

My haemi's has Ele whip + Hexrifles, i dont have the points for the Wracks, i did try it a couple times and it really did do much for the points.