About using, missusing and abusing Kabalite Warriors

OK, I think this is a topic in need oft clarification. And its discussed in the very wrong thread.
Maybe our good Count can meld the posts together.

Since Blasters are all bad now, because they take their old profile to 9th edition, where only D3+3 is ok,
we talked about the use and usefulness of Kabalites. I dont think them bad. Actually I like them.
With the standard T3, 1W, 4+/6++ they are pretty squishy, but they are cheap with 8pts per model.

What was said? Ah! The DL only hits on 4+, when moved. The Shardweapons are too bad.
Well, they are only troop choices, after all.

I will write more, but I want to wait, until we have it all in here.

Trueborn are great. A unit of 10 with two Blasters and a Dark Lance, slapped in a Raider, is practically a mainstay of my lists currently. Very reliable firepower, more durable than a Ravager, and has the advantage of being able to secure an objective when needed. Great unit all round.

Base Kabalites are harder for me to throw into lists currently. Before saying anything about Kabalites specifically, the obvious problem here is that they're competing in the Troops slot with Wyches, which are flat out incredible and I have no issue with spamming. So what do the Kabalites bring to the table that might make them worth a look?

They're slightly more durable at range, with a 4+/6+++ at the start of the game. Not a huge advantage given how easy AP is to come by, the fact that they're still T3 W1, and how few other ways there are to buff their durability; they're no Skitarii.

Poison shooting. We've discussed this ad nauseam over the last few years. It's okay. In a lot of situations it's worse than or equal to basic Bolter fire, in rarer situations it's better. It shines versus high Toughness and weak armour opponents, so this may become more relevant as more Codexes get released (Orks being the obvious enemy to watch for).

Special and heavy weapon access. Shredders are great, Blasters are okay (but feel a bit weaker now thanks to remaining at D6 damage). Splinter Cannons and Dark Lances aren't ideal on them, since they both suffer the Heavy penalty to move now and you need to take a full 10 man unit to get access to them. Splinter Cannons are also an awkward weapon that doesn't really seem worth it outside of very specific match-ups (e.g., I've had them do well versus Custodes).

And... that's basically it for the specific advantages of Kabalites over Wyches. The durability also evaporates when you compare them to Wracks, which are more durable in most cases and also have a range of special weapons to choose from.

So, fundamentally, unless you're absolutely desperate for ranged poison you're left with an awkward situation where Kabalites don't really have anything to sell them over our other two Troops choices. I also think the change to Splinter Cannons really harmed Venom synergy with Kabalites; when they were Rapid Fire they wanted to reach Blaster range, but now they want to hang much further back. It feels very awkward to play.

As you gents have said, Trueborn are a different animal to the usual Warrior squad.

I tried to avoid the Archon and just ran 10 regular Warriors with the Trueborn loadout (lance + 2 blasters), and it was OK. Since then, it has come to my attention that units inside transports cannot use the re-roll strat (units inside transports can "never be affected at all or in any way"), so they are worse than I expected.

I am seeing people run double Trueborn in a lot of lists. The second Master Archon/Trueborn are sometimes in a Cult/Coven patrol, so they just lose out on any Obsession (but still legal).

With Scourge having access to all the special weapons, I dont really see what role the Warrior fills in the Meta. As others have said, at 8pts a Wrack is a better pick IMHO.

But the models are pretty cool, so there is that!

Warriors seem like they're in a bit of an awkward position at the moment.

Wyches and Wracks both received significant buffs. Indeed, both now have AP-1 on their melee attacks (which is a major buff) and the Liquifier Gun was also buffed. Plus, being melee units, they're also eligible for PfP rules (advancing and charging and hitting on 2s) as well as Blade Artists.

Meanwhile, Warriors got a slightly better armour save and +1 attack . . . on a ranged unit. Meanwhile, their already pitiful guns received no buffs whatsoever, meaning they're still stuck as water pistols in an edition where Bolters are putting out twice the firepower as at the start of 8th.

A 5-man Wrack squad with 2 Liquifiers puts out 2d6 S4 AP-1 D1 shots that auto-hit, followed by 11 S3 AP-1 (AP-2 on 6s) D1 Poison 4+ melee attacks.
A 5-man Wych squad with a Blast Pistol puts out one 6" Blaster shot plus 4 S1 AP0 D1 Poison 4+ shots at 12", followed by 21 S4 AP-1 (AP-2 on a 6) D1 attacks.
A 5-man Warrior squad puts out 1 18" Blaster shot and 8 S1 AP0 D1 Poison 4+ shots at 12" (for completeness' sake, you could also charge them for 11 S3 AP0 D1 attacks... good luck with that ).

The Warriors are not significantly cheaper than the others and yet their damage seems so piddly in comparison.

They're also in an awkward position because, as alluded to already, they can't take advantage of many of the buffs that the others can. PfP and Blade Artists are all about buffing melee, so Warriors get no advantage with their guns. What's more, Succubi and Haemonculi and buff Wyches and Wracks respectively, without them needing to depart from their normal roles. By comparison, the Archon is a melee character with zero ranged ability wanting to buff a ranged squad with zero melee ability. And even then, he can't buff them at all unless they completely disembark from their transport. Not exactly a shining beacon of synergy (but then I just view the Archon as a ~90pt Trueborn-Tax at the best of times).

It's a shame because I like Warriors in terms of aesthetics and the general 'gunboat' tactics but with this codex I'm just not seeing a reason to include any (non-Trueborn) units of them over Wyches or Wracks.

I'll just list a few advantages they have over Wracks/Wyches.

They don't need to get close to the enemy to deal damage. Their output might be lower but it's significantly safer and easier to deliver.

They are ideal for staying inside transports to safeguard Obsec since they don't need to be on the field to perform.

They are more durable at range, especially when in cover. Wyches are very weak to small arms fire, wracks are better with more toughness and a 6++ and 5+++ but Kabalites in cover have a 3+ which is great against low AP shooting.

Along with Wyches they are a source of PGL.

A source of AT weaponry, blasters are unreliable but saturated anti tank weapons in MSU squads make them hard to clear.

Poison Tongue Kabalites could end up being pretty interesting into Orks and are good in several other matchups. Don't work against Snakebites though.

There is a limit to how many close combat units that can effectively engage enemies due to the fact that they need to fit on the table. I could make a list with 90 Wyches in it but it would be unlikely that all of them could fight in the same turn. Range units don't have that problem.

Those are the benefits I could think of and some of them are pretty minor, I just wanted to cover as much as I could.

I don't think Kabalites are auto includes by any means. If you just want to fill out the Troop requirement Wyches will probably do more for you. If you want the specific things that they do, they're certainly worth taking in my opinion.

I wanted more cheap obsec to hold objectives and anti-tank. I think Kabalites fill that hole well. Wyches would be much more vulnerable and while Wracks could do it they eould literally just sit there. They're not the most exciting unit in the book but I think their usefulness look a lot worse on paper than in game.

I feel like warriors are a much better choice if you take then as Obsidian Rose.

edit: though poisoned tongue should work out okay for them as well.. but I was thinking more about 24" blasters and shredders.

Im thinking of switching out of OR to BH (and a RSR) for turn 1 advance+charge for my 3 Incubi squads. Going to try that out later this weekend, but loosing the +6" range will be a hard pill to swallow.

Maybe poison shooting will make a come-back when Orcs get their turn at an "OP" codex. I know I got a lot of Kabs already painted and waiting on the shelf.

Black heart kabalites in squads of 5 get to reroll the balster hit, which is pretty good.

The trueborn always hitting on 2+ no matter what are also pretty good, you can outfit them with full darklight setup (2 blasters and a lance) and get better antitank firepower than a ravager for cheaper.

Or you can go for 2 shredders and a dark lance (I don't like the splinter cannon), you'll get a unit that can delete infantry almost as well as a 4 shredders squad of scourges (and even better if the enemy has some minuses to hit on their side, since they can ignore it), and with an auto-hitting (2+ reroll, so almost auto-hit) dark lance as a bonus.

I know blasters are more popular, but don't forget that the shredder, much like our poisonned weapons, is still just as effective as ever against, say, the new T5 orks.

Patayou wrote:

I know blasters are more popular, but don't forget that the shredder, much like our poisonned weapons, is still just as effective as ever against, say, the new T5 orks.

Not against Snakebite Orks with their transhuman physiology.

You assuming max 6 shots with Blast, or 3.5 average shots?

fisheyes wrote:

You assuming max 6 shots with Blast, or 3.5 average shots?

can't talk for him but I usually assume 4 shots when calculating blast weapon damage, that's the average when shooting at units of 6 to 10 models ((3+3+3+4+5+6)/6), which i find is the most frequent situation.

For sure, no question there.

I just like my Scourges for Shredder caddies better than Warriors. Shredder density means a lot, plus 80 pts that can also score ROD and screen out enemy ROD units is pretty nifty.

Last game they did a lot of damage in a DE mirror match. Really hard to keep them alive, but when they work, BOY do they work

I like to WWP a 20 poisoned tongue kabalite unit. I drop it near a vehicle I need dead, activate metalotoxin and watch the dreadful face of my opponent when I shoot 4 lance-weapon AND 32 shots that wound on 3+

dumpeal wrote:

I like to WWP a 20 poisoned tongue kabalite unit. I drop it near a vehicle I need dead, activate metalotoxin and watch the dreadful face of my opponent when I shoot 4 lance-weapon AND 32 shots that wound on 3+

Edited to prevent the spread of my ignorant misinformation!

rtynd057 wrote:

dumpeal wrote:

I like to WWP a 20 poisoned tongue kabalite unit. I drop it near a vehicle I need dead, activate metalotoxin and watch the dreadful face of my opponent when I shoot 4 lance-weapon AND 32 shots that wound on 3+

Not to burst your bubble but I’m fairly certain Metalotoxin and poison tongue do not stack. Metalotoxin specifies that the attacks against vehicles wound on a 4+. Not that the attacks become poison and then benefit from other buffs to poison.

That may just be my reading of the time though!

If you really want to maximize your poison you go Torturous Efficiency + Merciless Razorkin anyway and those should work. PT is only really good if you absolutely want the redeploy Stratagem.

rtynd057 wrote:

Not to burst your bubble but I’m fairly certain Metalotoxin and poison tongue do not stack. Metalotoxin specifies that the attacks against vehicles wound on a 4+. Not that the attacks become poison and then benefit from other buffs to poison.

That may just be my reading of the time though!

Actually, it just includes vehicles to the legit targets. So it definetly stacks with Poisoned Tongue.

It also stacks with consumate weaponsmaster, so whipping a tank apart is very possible.
5 attacks with poison 3+, AP-3, D2 can really hurt, especially with the fight twice ability.

Zenotaph wrote:

rtynd057 wrote:

Not to burst your bubble but I’m fairly certain Metalotoxin and poison tongue do not stack. Metalotoxin specifies that the attacks against vehicles wound on a 4+. Not that the attacks become poison and then benefit from other buffs to poison.

That may just be my reading of the time though!

Actually, it just includes vehicles to the legit targets. So it definetly stacks with Poisoned Tongue.

My apologies you are correct!! Sorry I was working from memory. Should have verified before speaking up!

Thank you for posting the correct information.

Great ideas Archons!

Has anyone tried running 10 truborn Poison tongue with blasters and DL defending an objective rather than placing them in transport?It could be decent bait for a trap maybe?

But the Raider is too good. Descent movement, ablative wounds, added DL.
A 10elf squad just parked on an objective is too easy prey. And since you only got 1-2 squads of trueborn...
It may be different with standard kabalites, but I wouldnt recommend it with the one unit always hitting on 2+.