Sneak Peek at New Drukhari Codex

Dark Elf Dave wrote:

So what’s the problem then? They are cheap enough. Leave them backfield sitting on an objective if you can’t think of a better way of using them.

Ah, forgive me for not recognising the superb game design of making transports so small and HQs so abysmal that they cripple any squad they're leading before they've even hit the table.

And also of not giving HQs any mobility options so that they don't have to share transports.

Truly Dark Eldar are blessed.

I’ve had a good look at how I will build Wyches and actually I’m thinking in a lot of cases I will perhaps only want one special weapon anyway. So for me 9 is the magic number. Succubus. Raider. Happy days. The Dark Lances on Raiders just made them viable for me and I have more of them than Venoms as I’ve never liked the Venom spam armies anyway. -1ap in mass volumes is enough to make Wyches decent.

Saying you can’t put your Archon with your Kabs is a little odd. I mean yeah he buffs them but it’s not a game changer having an archon sat with 10 Kabs in boat where he can’t provide an aura anyway. It’s a complaint you can have for sure if you really need to find one. It’s not something you can blame a loss on though. I’ve seen that your archon is now better used for actions.

Wracks don’t really need special weapons. I’ve always thought they were a waste of points.

Seriously consider who you really need to have a HQ support for...well it’s possible. Come on people, it’s time to get real again.

I’m thinking of a Drahzar conversion because I don’t like his pose or weapons. He’s pretty much interchangeable with the new Incubi from the looks of it. I much prefer the pose from the artwork of him facing off vs Jain Zar.

The fundamental issue with HQs and transports is that it was very common in 8th to wind up with your entire army in vehicles... except for one or two token HQs who were forced to either babysit Ravagers or footslog up the board by themselves.

It doesn't feel fluffy and it isn't, I imagine, what most Dark Eldar players want to be doing with their characters.

Yes but let’s be straight about it. I’m pretty sure all the other armies with 5/10 capacity feel very much the same. This is a cake and eat it issue more than anything else. People are just salty that they have to make small compromises.

They want all the heavy weapons and all the special weapons and all the buffs and all the speed and all the protection. They just simply want it all! And let me tell you something...if you gave them it all they would still complain because that’s simply some people’s nature.

How many squads do you need to have re-roll 1’s for before you can win a game? All of them by the sounds of some of you.

I know this is just a pet peeve of mine, but I don’t like empty spaces in my transports. It feels... asymetrical and weird, to me.
If I’m taking a small elite squad to accompany my HQ, I want them to be able to take the smaller transport and fill it out, rather than having no option but the larger one, and leaving half of it empty.

This idea seems to have been understood, and designed for, back in 5ed (when the Venom was introduced). Back then all Elite units was min.size of 3, so you could have any of them [that could go in a venom] be an entourage for your HQ of choice. And the elite version of Wyches could take a special weapon for every third model, maxing out their options/potential at 9models, perfect for a Succubus to hang with in a Raider, and also meant that they still got 1 special if they instead went with the succu in a venom. Stuff like that.
Now the ”min.size=Models in the box”-philosophy for Elite choices has pushed HQs out of having Venoms as an option.
Sure, a Succubus or Haemonculus can technically take a Venom but right now they can only go alone, with more HQs, or with Court of the Archon-models (who have no synergy with them). It’s just bad design. That, rightfully, irks people.

And the whole thing is [probably] an unintended result of a universal decision about min.sizes, that didn’t take it into account. And hasn’t been adressed since (this was in 2014). So I totally get why it bothers people.
I would like it fixed, but can’t really see a clean way for GW to do it, with the limitations they have. +1 passenger creates more unused spaces for units where I don’t have an HQ, but I don’t think there is a chance that they bring back smaller min.sizes, so it’s the best solution I can see!

Dark Elf Dave wrote:

Yes but let’s be straight about it. I’m pretty sure all the other armies with 5/10 capacity feel very much the same.  

Which armies?

Dark Elf Dave wrote:

This is a cake and eat it issue more than anything else. People are just salty that they have to make small compromises.

I know, right. Imagine expecting to run a fluffy army without shooting yourself in the foot.

Imagine being able to do what just about every other army can do and put a 5- or 10-man squad in a transport with an HQ.

And then you remember that most other armies have other options besides transports because they're not saddled with nothing but footslogging HQs.

I swear to god, if GW ran a restaurant that served dog-faeces as dessert, there are people here who would not only gobble it down but ask for seconds and leave a handsome tip for the chef.

Dark Elf Dave wrote:

Yes but let’s be straight about it. I’m pretty sure all the other armies with 5/10 capacity feel very much the same. This is a cake and eat it issue more than anything else. People are just salty that they have to make small compromises.

There are no such armies, that's the problem. It is a flaw exclusive to our faction.

Oh no, let's be accurate. Several other factions have only 5 or 10 model capacity - At a glance it's at the very least Necrons, Death Guard, Chaos Space Marines, Thousand Sons, and Us. I might have missed someone.

What makes us unique is that we're the only ones that have this problem but don't also have any individual movement options for our HQs except the heel-toe express. Everyone else that has this problem gets to take wings, chariots, jump packs, bikes, mounts, and all the other possible ways that an HQ might move as fast as and often faster than the transports.

We are the only ones who have to choose between having the clear and logical squad sizes of 5 or 10 that the army is explicitly built on because they're the ones that grant us bonus special weapons, and having our HQs actually keep up with our army.

mynamelegend wrote:

Oh no, let's be accurate. Several other factions have only 5 or 10 model capacity - At a glance it's at the very least Necrons, Death Guard, Chaos Space Marines, Thousand Sons, and Us. I might have missed someone.

What makes us unique is that we're the only ones that have this problem but don't also have any individual movement options for our HQs except the heel-toe express. Everyone else that has this problem gets to take wings, chariots, jump packs, bikes, mounts, and all the other possible ways that an HQ might move as fast as and often faster than the transports.

We are the only ones who have to choose between having the clear and logical squad sizes of 5 or 10 that the army is explicitly built on because they're the ones that grant us bonus special weapons, and having our HQs actually keep up with our army.

In fairness, I was accurate about that at the end of Pg 21. We only replied more tersely when that was glossed over.

We are the only faction in the game with exclusively foot-slogging characters and no way to conveniently transport them.

It's an arbitrary quirk that runs completely counter to what we're supposed to be.

Seriously though. Archon in a Venom with three sslyth. It’s fluffy and useful and it means your kabalites can take three weapons in a raider. What’s the problem with that? There’s even a spare seat for a succubus if you simply have to take the special wych weapons.

WrackYourBrains wrote:

Seriously though. Archon in a Venom with three sslyth. It’s fluffy and useful and it means your kabalites can take three weapons in a raider. What’s the problem with that? There’s even a spare seat for a succubus if you simply have to take the special wych weapons.

There isnt a problem with it. And I think that is what we are intended to do. And Sslyth are (currently) good.

But its an unnecessary tax. I think, for all that 5th was a minor blip in our favour, that it stems from how we played in 4th ed.

We have always been a near fully mounted army. Gunboats of kabalites, transports delivering wyches, those were our front line. And our HQs have always been reasonable at range and usually pretty awesome in CC. But in 4th (or 3rd, or was it second, that dex didnt change a whole heck of a lot over those editions), the "court of the archon" or Retinue was a unit TIED TO THE HQ. They had to maintain coherency if I remember. And thus you took the archon, and enough of the retinue to fill a raider.

The problem is, our most recent incarnation has archons buffing kabalites, so really you want to keep them together. Not doing so isnt a case of not having your cake, but choosing to eat it. Its a case of literally not using the bare minimum rules we have been given. And yes, you CAN lump a handful of Sslyth with an Archon in a transport and have done with it.

But again, that is misusing a handful of rules just to make it work. Yes, Sslyth get to jump in front of attacks for the archon. But they are also tanky and reasonable in combat by themselves. AND they dont need to be anywhere near the archon. They get no benefit from being near him, and he gets minor survivability off of them. Ideally, they should spread out, and help tank melee encounters for your kabalites who have ObSec.

But there is also another point. Its not about taking 3 Sslyths to fill out empty slots in a transport. Its about taking 3 Sslyths AND A TRANSPORT just to get our "fast, agile, ready to flay" Archon into CC where, in 8th, and presumably 9th, he belongs. And you COULD have it follow another raider full of kabalites and when they get out, dump out your archon too, but thats 2 transports following the same path, which again, for an agile "we cant stand and hold, we have to keep mobile" army, is literally playing against the rules we have.

And THEN it gets worse if that HQ you want to get to the front is not an archon. Ok, Heamies actually have a really decent long range weapon. But Succis dont get range at all. They NEED to be at the front. Preferably they need to be with Wyches. Because of buffs. And you COULD load them into a transport with 3 Sslyths, assuming you have an archon in your army. But then the Sslyths cant actually synergise AT ALL with the succi. They cant jump infront of attacks directed at her. So that transport becomes a shuttle bus. "First stop, Wych Point - all Succis off. Sslyths are requested to remain on board for the next 2 turns as we move across the map to our next stop - Oh-god-they-got-through-to-the-ravagers-and-the-warlord-oh-god-the-screaming Road."

Its not about min-maxing. Its about not being able to use the rules we have been given as they were intended to be used, because of the lack of another rule, or set of options, that is held by literally every other army.

6 slots or 11 slots in transports might not be the solution many other armies have. But those armies that DONT have that, DO have mobility options for HQs. OR their HQs are never supposed to be in combat at all.

The fact that it was an issue, a repeated issue, throughout 8th surprises me. It would have been such an easy experiment, and easy to roll back if it didnt work. But literally every Drukhari army in a tournament had their HQs footslog. An FAQ to give 6 and 11 slots, even at a points cost, would have had an immediate effect. If the standings only changed marginally, they could have let us keep it. If we dominated everything all the time, they could have rolled it back. Instead, it was just ignored.

Drukhari has a weird, dare I say unique, playstyle. If you just look at our points, and our troop options, you would be forgiven for thinking that we are a hoard army. Really cheap models, decently scaling special weapons, firepower, attacks, etc that work well en mass. We also lack heavy hitting tank options.

Then you take a second look and realise that the transports are relatively cheap. And you read the open top rules. And you read the fluff. And you take another look at the durability of those troop options and then it clicks. We are not a hoard army. We are a mounted army.

The cost of a unit of troops is barely half the cost of the actually unit you field. Because every. Single. One requires at least half a transport. And given the way our sub-factions are split, there are almost required choices for certain things, leaving us rather points starved.

Asking us to then pay even more to give our HQs their own dedicated transports, maybe with a body guard or 3 , but only for one of the 3 sub-factions, is a tax. More than ANYTHING else. Every other "tax" in our army that people talk about is a choice between flavour and optimal play ("kabalites are a tax because wracks are better at holding points" "wyches are a tax because kabalites are better at removing things from points" "wracks are a tax because taloi and grots are so good"). But HQ dedicated transports are a tax because the other option is "They do nothing until, maybe, maybe, turn 4". And no other army has that tax. Every other army either has HQs designed to sit in the back field, or room in their transports for a unit of troops/elites and an HQ, or built in mobility for their HQs.

The fact that we dont is baffling. It is not whining to say this. It is not wanting to have your cake and eat it to say this. It is a genuinely strange design choice with seemingly no explanation. Why are 2 of our 3 HQs melee specialists, yet have no way to keep up with our front line by default? If the lack of transport was a design choice, why are they melee specialists? If the melee specialism was a design choice, why are they so slow compared to where our front line will be?

Archons absolutely do not belong at the front line in combat. Not in the fluff, and not in the game. The hang around the fringe of the battle buffing other units until there’s an opportunity to bully a small unit off an objective. And they’re good at that in 9e. An archon advancing out of a venom moves 11+D6, and that’s usually plenty to get him to where he needs to be to buff ravagers.

You’ve missed the point of the sslyth. They’re not combat units. They’re deep strike / reserve deniers and action monkeys (action snakes?). They hop out, grab a vp or two for engage in all fronts and deploy scramblers, and screen out reinforcements. They’re a serious pain in the bum for the enemy and earn like 20 vp over the game, for a 60 point unit that doesn’t use a force slot.

WrackYourBrains wrote:

Seriously though. Archon in a Venom with three sslyth. It’s fluffy and useful and it means your kabalites can take three weapons in a raider. What’s the problem with that?

That works!
Problem is it only works for the Archon.
What if you want to use a Succubus instead? Or a Haemonculus?
Other problem is that it limits you to using the Court, which feels unnecissarily restrictive.

The venom was originally designed to work for a wide range of possible unit+character combinations, as an alternative to the Raider. The reason it does not work that way anymore is more collateral damage from a shift in GW policy, rather than intentional design. (I believe).

A succubus can ride in there too if you want. Or she’s happy with 9 wyches. You only need one shardnet really.

Haemies walk along with a unit of talos and wracks and take mid-board objectives.

The court is absolutely not a restriction, it’s a big asset in 9e.

WrackYourBrains wrote:

Archons absolutely do not belong at the front line in combat. Not in the fluff, and not in the game. The hang around the fringe of the battle buffing other units until there’s an opportunity to bully a small unit off an objective. And they’re good at that in 9e. An archon advancing out of a venom moves 11+D6, and that’s usually plenty to get him to where he needs to be to buff ravagers.

You’ve missed the point of the sslyth. They’re not combat units. They’re deep strike / reserve deniers and action monkeys (action snakes?). They hop out, grab a vp or two for engage in all fronts and deploy scramblers, and screen out reinforcements. They’re a serious pain in the bum for the enemy and earn like 20 vp over the game, for a 60 point unit that doesn’t use a force slot.

usrvamp already covered the fact that this reply does not account for the Succi I mentioned.

The sslyth might be currently used (by you, and by others) as deep strike deniers, and deploy scrambler units. But, once again, thats because we have been forced to use them like that. Their rules are designed for them to take wounds for the Archon. We are under-utilising them if we dont do that. They are overpriced if we NEVER USE THEM FOR THAT. No matter how cheap they may be. That is literally their only design purpose. If we all decide that actually we are supposed to use them for the things you mentioned, and essentially always were (because clearly they wernt fit for purpose in 8th either then), then we have to question why it even has the take wounds ability.

Same with the Archon. The idea that it should sit at the edges, buffing units, while thematically fitting, does not work. At best, an archon sits with some ravagers. It needs to be outside of a venom to use its aura. It is useless in combat, and cannot push ANYTHING off a point because ravagers should be nowhere near points (also, archons dont get obsec, so you better be sure it can kill the entire unit...). So for it to do as you say, it needs a venom to sit with it. You cant assume you will have one if you use it for another unit and come back. And you cant put the archon in it from the start, and fly round the edges hoping for a unit in the right place were the archon can disembark to buff.

And then you read its stat line. Sure, the shadowfield is extremely flakey. But for its price, the Archon is one hell of a melee combatant. Again, not using him as such is a waste.

If our entire playstyle in 9th is "Ignore the enemy, field only coven and a few other tanky units, deploy scramblers and teleporters and gain every map quarter and screw ever killing the other side" then there is something we do not understand about the design.

While archons continue to have fantastic CC skills, and buff kabal units, they should be able to keep up with kabal units and help them on points. Kabal are not massively good at CC, even with the extra attack, so he will be in the midfield anyway.

While Succi continue to buff wyches and lack ranged capabilities, they should be able to keep up with cult units. Cult units tie up infantry, and can dice weak units, perfect for us getting into the enemy back line and stealing their home objectives.

At present, neither HQ can do that. At best, we have to pay extra for them to TRY and do that, OR we have to play against their rules, and the rules of the court, in order to make them effective.

mynamelegend wrote:

Oh no, let's be accurate. Several other factions have only 5 or 10 model capacity - At a glance it's at the very least Necrons, Death Guard, Chaos Space Marines, Thousand Sons, and Us. I might have missed someone.

Yes if you write 5 or 10, for 5 and 10 it is only us, as chaos marines and necrons don't have a small transport.

The venom is the only 5 men transporter, besides the Land Speeder Storm, and that one can only transport Scout units, so no real gain for that one if it could carry 1 more. All other small transporters have a transport capacity of 6.

Koldan wrote:

mynamelegend wrote:

Oh no, let's be accurate. Several other factions have only 5 or 10 model capacity - At a glance it's at the very least Necrons, Death Guard, Chaos Space Marines, Thousand Sons, and Us. I might have missed someone.

Yes if you write 5 or 10, for 5 and 10 it is only us, as chaos marines and necrons don't have a small transport.

The venom is the only 5 men transporter, besides the Land Speeder Storm, and that one can only transport Scout units, so no real gain for that one if it could carry 1 more. All other small transporters have a transport capacity of 6.

See, this is what confuses me. They must have this data. They must have, at the very least (and please tell me they have more than this) a spreadsheet with all the units, types, capacities, etc? They must notice if we are the only army to have a 5 man small transport that is non-discriminatory in what it carries?

I addressed the succubus point, they go with 9 wyches with a shardnet.

And yes, dark eldar in 9e are at their best when they use their manoeuvrability to score points without necessarily killing every enemy model. You have to use your brain a bit to win with them. Across every edition of the game they’ve had middling-to-poor stat lines for their price. If you throw them at the enemy and expect to out-stat their foes you’re gonna lose. Sslyth are bargain for what they bring in terms of vp and disruption.

Honestly it sounds like you don’t play 9e. You’re stuck in an old 8e of wanting to kill everything, and it’s holding you back. Check out Skarii’s battle reports, he does great with dark eldar and gets great mileage out of these units that you claim can’t do a job for us.

WrackYourBrains wrote:

I addressed the succubus point, they go with 9 wyches with a shardnet.

And yes, dark eldar in 9e are at their best when they use their manoeuvrability to score points without necessarily killing every enemy model. You have to use your brain a bit to win with them. Across every edition of the game they’ve had middling-to-poor stat lines for their price. If you throw them at the enemy and expect to out-stat their foes you’re gonna lose. Sslyth are bargain for what they bring in terms of vp and disruption.

Honestly it sounds like you don’t play 9e. You’re stuck in an old 8e of wanting to kill everything, and it’s holding you back. Check out Skarii’s battle reports, he does great with dark eldar and gets great mileage out of these units that you claim can’t do a job for us.

Its not that I dont play 9th. Its that I dont enjoy 9th. At all. I wont get into why, my views are elsewhere on the forum. In summary though, I find it utterly boring to have to avoid rolling dice to stand a chance. We have always been glass cannons. Part of the joy was positioning to cut down the enemy, leaving you standing in cover. The risk/reward of "ok, if I got for that squad, and I wipe it, then I am safe. If I dont wipe it, I lose everything".

And other armies in 9th dont have to avoid fighting. If we do. If we are the only army that does. Then we are broken.

Aha ok that makes sense. If you don’t like dark eldar’s play style then they’re probably not the army for you. You’re looking for harlequins or blood angles by the sound of it!

WrackYourBrains wrote:

Honestly it sounds like you don’t play 9e. You’re stuck in an old 8e of wanting to kill everything, and it’s holding you back. Check out Skarii’s battle reports, he does great with dark eldar and gets great mileage out of these units that you claim can’t do a job for us.

Let's be fair, here.
The problem we're dealing with isn't really that people don't understand how to play Dark Eldar in 9e. Just look around and you'll see, over and over, that people are saying "Yes I know that we can score wins by laser-focusing on objectives and forgoing actually engaging with the enemy".
What's going unacknowledged in your statement, then, is that players don't just want to win - they want to win with a particular playstyle. In this case, most Drukhari players seem to want to win by playing fast-moving fragile but deadly units that dismantle the enemy force by bringing the "right tool for the job" - haywire on vehicles, incubi on elite infantry, gunboats on massed infantry.
Not by having wracks sitting on objectives all game while sslyth spread out to keep away deep strikes.

It's how we see the archon problem being discussed too. It's clear that Drukhari players don't, in fact, want the Archon to be sitting near a trio of relatively immobile fire-platform Ravagers reading from Vect's poetry book.
It's not that this hasn't been the best way to use an Archon - the existence of the term "basic bitch spearhead" shows us that it's a well-known faction standard. It's that this isn't the way we want our HQs to work. I think it's safe to say that if Games Workshop did a Sunday Preview tomorrow that showcased a jetbike archon built for charging past enemy lines and slaughter their vulnerable rear guard, the general response would be riotous cheering. (Yes yes it would be cautious optimism at best because we're all whiners by nature, but you get what I mean) Not because we can't just use mandrakes or red grief jetbikes for a similar role, but because it's closer to how we want Archons to play than the "Spoken Word Poetry Night" we've been doing since our 8e codex dropped.

WrackYourBrains wrote:

Aha ok that makes sense. If you don’t like dark eldar’s play style then they’re probably not the army for you. You’re looking for harlequins or blood angles by the sound of it!

You are probably right. Thing is, they WERE my play style. They were my playstyle to the tune of probably, over the years, about £1000 (probably evenly split between my current army and my old 4th ed one). I like their lore. I like (granted, only 2/3rds) of their models. I like my paint job (amateur as it is). An incremental edition change like 8th to 9th (rather than a reset like 7th to 8th) shouldnt make me go "Ok, so my choice is stop playing for 5 years, or spend another £500+ for an army I am unfamiliar with and unsure if I will like". Because until someone hands me millions, its option 1 every time. And that really makes me cross.

mynamelegend wrote:

WrackYourBrains wrote:

Honestly it sounds like you don’t play 9e. You’re stuck in an old 8e of wanting to kill everything, and it’s holding you back. Check out Skarii’s battle reports, he does great with dark eldar and gets great mileage out of these units that you claim can’t do a job for us.

Let's be fair, here.
The problem we're dealing with isn't really that people don't understand how to play Dark Eldar in 9e. Just look around and you'll see, over and over, that people are saying "Yes I know that we can score wins by laser-focusing on objectives and forgoing actually engaging with the enemy".
What's going unacknowledged in your statement, then, is that players don't just want to win - they want to win with a particular playstyle. In this case, most Drukhari players seem to want to win by playing fast-moving fragile but deadly units that dismantle the enemy force by bringing the "right tool for the job" - haywire on vehicles, incubi on elite infantry, gunboats on massed infantry.
Not by having wracks sitting on objectives all game while sslyth spread out to keep away deep strikes.

It's how we see the archon problem being discussed too. It's clear that Drukhari players don't, in fact, want the Archon to be sitting near a trio of relatively immobile fire-platform Ravagers reading from Vect's poetry book.
It's not that this hasn't been the best way to use an Archon - the existence of the term "basic bitch spearhead" shows us that it's a well-known faction standard. It's that this isn't the way we want our HQs to work. I think it's safe to say that if Games Workshop did a Sunday Preview tomorrow that showcased a jetbike archon built for charging past enemy lines and slaughter their vulnerable rear guard, the general response would be riotous cheering. (Yes yes it would be cautious optimism at best because we're all whiners by nature, but you get what I mean) Not because we can't just use mandrakes or red grief jetbikes for a similar role, but because it's closer to how we want Archons to play than the "Spoken Word Poetry Night" we've been doing since our 8e codex dropped.

Masterfully put. 8th had its problems, but lots of the basic things still behaved the way I felt they should. HQs were a let down, but gunboats were effective, and we had melee options (even if I didnt like Coven - at least they existed). The changes to 9th (not the changes to Drukhari specifically) reinforced the things I didnt enjoy, and took away the focus on things I did.

I would certainly cheer for that archon. It might have a terrible stat like, but I would buy it in a heart beat. Because I would rather lose attempting to remove as many enemy models from the board as possible than "win" without inflicting a wound.

Yeah I’ve been playing for the same amount of time. Harlequins have come along and taken our niche of being fast and fragile and deadly. I do miss things like blasterborn and 3e killer archons.

But hey, channel that inner archon. Adapt and overcome.

Got some people bitching about our rules but actually they simply don’t like 9th Ed.

Got some people saying they can’t take Raiders because their OCD means they can’t bear the empty spaces on the Raider if they only take 5 troops with a HQ!

Legitimate ways of taking 9 Wyches with a Succubus being ignored.