10th ed data sheets

krayd wrote:

Archon_91 wrote:

I was building a list the other day, focusing in a way to get the most useless stratagem we have (alliance of agony) to work and I think I found a way to make it a pain token generator based solely on an interation that I'm not entirely sure works but RAW I think does ... so rereading the cronos ability if there is a cronos near each of the three units selected to be empowered by the one pain token ... my understanding is that you would get to roll 3 times to generate a pain token so that one pain token can generate 3 for 1CP ... or even more if multiple of these units are within range of multiple cronos

That's my read on it as well. I fully expect it to eventually get errata'd to 'If one or more Cronos are within 9" '

Yeah, looking back at the cronos rule, I'd say this is the way it works. Unfortunately, it'd be pretty difficult to keep a single cronos close to all 3 of these units, but if you had 3 separate cronos units so that they could move to different areas of the map, you could create a pretty large "field" where almost every unit you targeted with a pain token would generate a roll for another one. And that is definitely a valid strategy, while still being effective to use with the "alliance of agony" stratagem.

Also, when abusing it with the "alliance of Agony" stratagem, while you have to possess 1 CP to trigger it, you don't actually have to spend the CP. You automatically get it back with labyrinthine cunning.

If you ran 3 cronos, for an investment of 150 points, assuming none of their auras overlapped, you could generate 3 rolls from aliance of agony during every phase. If you overlapped them, you could generate 9 rolls during every phase for the first turn while only spending 1 token.

If you were to go first, you could potentially put 3 venoms in the backfield that you disembark these 3 units from, spend 1 pain token to use alliance of agony in the movement phase, shooting phase, charge phase, and fight phase, generating a total of 36 pain token rolls off of 4 pain token spends. Then, due to the acrobatic aerialists rule, you could embark them again at the end of the fight phase so they weren't sitting ducks to shooting. Returning an average of 18 additional pain tokens in round 1(bringing your total up to 20), that should be enough to play normally afterwards, spreading out the cronos units to give you field coverage and keep you swimming in pain tokens for the rest of the game.

It would actually be pretty hilarious to do this against someone else who was deep striking their entire force.

Despite the clear potential for abuse, I'm still not certain this would be a very viable strategy(keeping them together, I mean). The requirements for being able to use the alliance of agony at all are expensive, even if you go with the cheapest options. And if I'm going to spend those kinds of points on 3 HQs and their accompanying units, I'd prefer for them to be useful. In this scenario, they're a cute gimmick, but utilizing that gimmick to it's maximum potential requires that you put them in a specific position, and I think options for positioning are one of the single greatest benefits that Drukhari have going for them at this point, so maximum abuse on this, nullifies that.

That said, now that you've pointed this out, I could definitely see merit in adding a full compliment of 3x2 Cronos to an army list to give their aura a bit more AoE and staying power. They would also help fill the role of posing some danger to biker units with their S5 ignores cover blasts and torrents. I'd just spread them across the battlefield to ensure that the aura covered the areas where I'd primarily try to attack from. Due to their relatively low points cost, you could put 2 units of them in strategic reserves to come on to the board in round 2 in a better position, and just have 1 unit of them move up the middle.

Let me kick this around in my head for a few and I'll see what kind of list I can come up with.

Ok, after giving it some thought, here's a list that could abuse the cronos' rules:

Archon w/Blast Pistol and Labyrinthine Cunning 115
Lelith Hesparax 105
Haemonculus 75

10 Kabalites w/ Full weapon options 120
10 Kabalites w/ Full weapon options 120
10 Wyches w/Full weapon options 110
10 Wracks w/Full weapon options 130
1 Court of the Archon 95
3 Raiders w/dark lances 270
2 Venoms w/Double Splinter Cannons 160
3 Cronos w/spirit vortex 150
1x5 Scourges w/Heat Lances 240
2x5 Scourges w/Haywire Cannons 120
2 Ravagers w/Triple Dark Lances 190

2000 Points total

Shots:
11 Dark Lance Shots
16 Haywire Shots
4 Heat Lance Shots
2 Blaster Shots
7 Blast Pistol Shots
2d6 Shredder Shots
18 Splinter Cannon Shots
20 Splinter Rifle Shots
1d6 Eyeburst Shots
3d6 Spirit Syphon Shots
3d6 Spirit Vortex Shots
3 Shardcarbine Shots
2 Hexrifle Shots
2 Ossefactor Shots
2d6 Liquifier Gun Shots
3 Stinger Pistol Shots

This is how I would organize the units:

Archon Leading footslogging kabalites w/court
Raider 1: Lelith and wyches
Raider 2: Half of Wracks with Splinter Pistols and Liquifier Guns
Raider 3: Half the KW unit w/ Blaster, Shredder & Dark Lance to create mini Ravager
Venom 1: Other Half of KW unit with Splinter Cannon & Sybarite for grenades
Venom 2: Half of wracks with hexrifles and ossefactors + Haemonculus

Putting the Haemonculus in the venom with the hexrifles and ossefactors due to the acrobatic aerialists rule so that they can disembark for alliance of agony shenanigans, then embark back on the venom after the fight phase. It allows them to be on the map and eligible for the alliance of agony strategem during your turn, but inside a transport during the opponent's turn to keep them a bit safer.

As for how it plays, I made this list to be compliant with putting 100% of your units in reserve at the start of the game. The archon and his unit, along with the 3x cronos units are the only ones without deep strike, coming in at 480 points, so under 25%. In general, I would plan for a turn 2 alpha strike against your opponent, but you could also bring in everything except the archon and his unit via deep strike on turn 1 if there is an advantage to it. This would potentially allow you to start getting full use of the pain token abuse shenanigans on turn 2.

If you bring the Archon's unit on the board with all 3 cronos in an area where they can also cover lelith and the haemonculus' unit, you could potentially abuse the overlapping aura strategy on turn 2 to empower them every phase, actually have the empowerment be useful, and still generate 18 pain tokens on average. That ends up being enough to empower your entire army in the shooting phase on the turn they arrive, while still having 5 pain tokens to spare. With good target selection, this should result in even more pain tokens from killing some units.

The venom and raider kabalites give you a mobile tactics tool to secure objectives with their sticky objectives rules. I would consider using the Rapid Ingress Strategem to bring either sticky objective KW's on the board to cap an objective on the enemy turn, or to bring Lelith on in a safe spot to prepare for a disembark/charge on your turn.

If anyone wonders why I keep bringing Lelith, the answer is that she basically makes the entire unit of wyches not suck. With a normal succubus, you'd have to spend almost as much as lelith when including the enhancement for her, and it still wouldn't be even close to as good. You COULD put a normal succubus in and just let them suck, but I don't think the 35 point difference is worth that. In a pinch, if you find yourself 15 points or less over the points limit when building a list, you could swap out Lelith for a Succubus w/Blood Dancer, but the wyches won't be as effective against MEQ or better.

For a relatively straightforward list that plays like we used to and just ignores alliance of agony shenanigans, this might not actually be that bad:

1 Archon w/Blast Pistol 85
5x10 Kabalite Warriors with Full weapons options 600
5 Raiders w/Dark Lances 450
5 Venoms w/ Double Splinter Cannons 400
2x5 Scourges w/Haywire Blasters 240
1x5 Scourges w/Heat Lances 120
2x1 Cronos w/Spirit Vortex 100


1995 Total points

Shots:
10 Dark Lance Shots
16 Haywire Shots
4 Heat Lance Shots
5 Blaster Shots
9 Blaster Pistol Shots
5d6 Shredder Shots
2d6 Spirit Syphon shots
2d6 Spirit vortex shots
45 Splinter Cannon Shots
50 Splinter Rifle Shots

It plays simple. Ignore the fact that you have an archon for the most part put him wherever you want. Divide KW units in half, putting blasters, dark lances, and shredders in raiders. Put sybarites and splinter cannons in venoms. Zoom around the board with sticky objectives on 10 fast vehicle units that are specialized between anti-monster/vehicle raiders and anti-infantry venoms. All venoms are equipped with grenades in case you need a little extra anti-vehicle "umph" in a round. Use pain tokens on scourges to crack hard targets.

I've also thought about allies lists, since drukhari can include Harlies or Corsairs as allies, but honestly they don't generally seem to add much for us.

Flipping it the other way, and going with a Ynnari army, there are a couple cool interactions that can be had, but they're overshadowed by the incredible number of tools Aeldari have available to them right now. The fact that Drukhari taken in a Ynnari force can't benefit from either power from pain, nor from strands of fate miracle dice means that, in general, including drukhari units in a Ynnari force just actively makes the Ynnari force worse, possibly with the sole exception of Scourges.

Am I misunderstanding the rules? Is it possible for Drukhari units to benefit from the detachment rules of a Ynnari detachment if they're a part of it? I know drukhari have the "Aeldari" keyword, but it seems like they're specifically referring to the FACTION keyword. If anyone has seen clarification on this one way or the other, I'd appreciate hearing about it!

Archon Einstein wrote:

Am I misunderstanding the rules? Is it possible for Drukhari units to benefit from the detachment rules of a Ynnari detachment if they're a part of it? I know drukhari have the "Aeldari" keyword, but it seems like they're specifically referring to the FACTION keyword. If anyone has seen clarification on this one way or the other, I'd appreciate hearing about it!

This is currently unclear. The core rules refer to all keywords as keywords, so it at least *seems* that Ynarri Drukhari benefit from the detachment rule. It seems odd that they would throw AELDARI in the keyword list without intending for there to be some interaction. Given the nature of 10th edition army building, they could have easily left it out.

Of course, the Ynarri rules seem pretty hastily thrown together anyway, but it would be odd for Drukhari Ynarri to get no benefit at all from being Ynarri.

krayd wrote:

Archon Einstein wrote:

Am I misunderstanding the rules? Is it possible for Drukhari units to benefit from the detachment rules of a Ynnari detachment if they're a part of it? I know drukhari have the "Aeldari" keyword, but it seems like they're specifically referring to the FACTION keyword. If anyone has seen clarification on this one way or the other, I'd appreciate hearing about it!

This is currently unclear. The core rules refer to all keywords as keywords, so it at least *seems* that Ynarri Drukhari benefit from the detachment rule. It seems odd that they would throw AELDARI in the keyword list without intending for there to be some interaction. Given the nature of 10th edition army building, they could have easily left it out.

Of course, the Ynarri rules seem pretty hastily thrown together anyway, but it would be odd for Drukhari Ynarri to get no benefit at all from being Ynarri.

Ok, well if that's the case, Ynarri primary might end up being significantly better than running pure Drukhari. Can still run 50% drukhari units if you want. Scourges would be pretty good targets for Aeldari miracle dice, and drukhari transports could give deep strike to aeldari units like fire dragons and wraithguard.

It's definitely not drukhari, but it is likely one of, if not the most effective way to use drukhari models at the moment.

Archon Einstein wrote:

Ok, well if that's the case, Ynarri primary might end up being significantly better than running pure Drukhari. Can still run 50% drukhari units if you want. Scourges would be pretty good targets for Aeldari miracle dice, and drukhari transports could give deep strike to aeldari units like fire dragons and wraithguard.

It's definitely not drukhari, but it is likely one of, if not the most effective way to use drukhari models at the moment.

They won't benefit from Fate Dice because they don't have Strands of Fate. They will get the 1 hit/1 wound reroll ability from the detachment, however.

krayd wrote:

Archon Einstein wrote:

Ok, well if that's the case, Ynarri primary might end up being significantly better than running pure Drukhari. Can still run 50% drukhari units if you want. Scourges would be pretty good targets for Aeldari miracle dice, and drukhari transports could give deep strike to aeldari units like fire dragons and wraithguard.

It's definitely not drukhari, but it is likely one of, if not the most effective way to use drukhari models at the moment.

They won't benefit from Fate Dice because they don't have Strands of Fate. They will get the 1 hit/1 wound reroll ability from the detachment, however.

That would be perfect for raiders with a single dark lance on them, but looking at the transport capacity rules, it looks like in Ynnari armies, Ynnari/Aeldari units can't use Drukhari transports, but Drukhari models could use Aeldari transports. I wonder if this is intentional, or an oversight?

This means that corsairs taken as Drukhari allies can't get access to ANY dedicated transport, unless it's an oversight and they fix it somehow.

Archon Einstein wrote:

That would be perfect for raiders with a single dark lance on them, but looking at the transport capacity rules, it looks like in Ynnari armies, Ynnari/Aeldari units can't use Drukhari transports, but Drukhari models could use Aeldari transports. I wonder if this is intentional, or an oversight?

This means that corsairs taken as Drukhari allies can't get access to ANY dedicated transport, unless it's an oversight and they fix it somehow.

Yeah, I was really disappointed to find that Corsairs lost the Drukhari keyword, especially since, in the webstore, Corsairs are part of the Drukhari catalog. Maybe GW thought that they didn't need transports, due to having a Scout move.

RAW, Ynarri Drukhari can use Aeldari transports. Have no idea if this was intentional - I suspect that it was an unforeseen consequence, kind of like what happened when Ynarri were first introduced in 7th edition. For about a month or two, you could have Ynarri Dark Reapers sitting in Raiders which gave them a fast-moving platform that could jink for a 4++ and not inhibit their ability to fire out of it. Then GW errata'd to lock everyone back to their codex transports.

Archon Einstein wrote:

I've also thought about allies lists, since drukhari can include Harlies or Corsairs as allies, but honestly they don't generally seem to add much for us.

Death jesters and void reavers can generate pain tokens by forcing battleshock tests in your shooting phase (death jester by killing a model in a unit and void reaver by just hitting a unit)
Our army rule doesn't care who forced the battle shock test just that one was failed to generate a pain token

Archon_91 wrote:

Archon Einstein wrote:

I've also thought about allies lists, since drukhari can include Harlies or Corsairs as allies, but honestly they don't generally seem to add much for us.

Death jesters and void reavers can generate pain tokens by forcing battleshock tests in your shooting phase (death jester by killing a model in a unit and void reaver by just hitting a unit)
Our army rule doesn't care who forced the battle shock test just that one was failed to generate a pain token

Yeah, I did recognize death jesters as one potential addition to our army. I'm just not sure they're worth the points cost in most circumstances. It's 70 points for a T3 model that won't benefit from being in cover because he has a 6+ armor save, so he'll always rely on his 4++. And lone operative is nice, but if your opponent commits to killing him with shooting, he will die. Also, because he can't benefit from any of the DE options for rerolls, his shooting just ends up not being that great for us.

On the other hand, in a Ynnari list with miracle dice, he's a mortal wound machine. 4 Hits for every 6 you apply to hit, and 2 mortal wounds for every 6 you apply to wound. If you had the dice for it, you could get 24 mortal wounds out of him in a single round of shooting: Enough to bring down a wraithknight or imperial knight by himself. Of course, this isn't the most efficient use of fate dice. Speaking of wraithknight, if used on his heavy D-cannons, for every 3 6's from fate dice, you get 12 mortal wounds to assign. If you only use 1 dice on the wound roll on a natural hit, you'll average 7 mortal wounds per single die used. That's probably the most efficient weapon to use them on in the army.

I did just have a thought. When a leader is commanding a unit, the book says that they are considered part of that unit for all rules purposes. So, for instance, if Yvraine was leading a group of Kabalite warriors and was part of that unit for all rules purposes, that would mean she has the drukhari infantry keyword while leading that unit, right?

I believe so, as a leader with the "infantry" keyword transfers "infantry" to the unit he is leading if that unit doesn't have it already

I've been kicking around ideas on a Ynnari list, but honestly, I don't see much reason to play Ynnari other than my personal desire to include drukhari units. When I try building a list, I end up coming up against so many barriers that I feel like it's pushing me to just play pure Aeldari and not have to take Yvraine.

So I spent a bit of time putting together what I think would probably be a very effective Aeldari list, in general...However, something funny happened. As I was thinking about what the list's weaknesses might be, I realized that it is basically vulnerable to most of the Dark Eldar lists I made previously, simply because the ability to deep strike in your entire army is so powerful, but when I ran some math-hammer to figure out what the average number of models I could kill with one of the above lists in the Aeldari list I came up with, it was pretty underwhelming. The aeldari list I came up with spams windriders, and the Drukhari REALLY struggle against things that aren't either infantry, vehicles, or monsters.

Having my entire army shoot at windriders with stealth, I only came up with killing about 15 models, which isn't an insubstantial amount, but against the army list I was running numbers on, it was only 2 windriders units (counts as 4 for pain token purposes). That would leave 27 windriders firing 162 scatter lasers, a wraithknight, the yncarne, and 3 d-cannon support weapons on the table to fire back. I suspect it would get ugly super-quick.

The change to poison absolutely wrecked drukhari. If it weren't for that change, the numbers against an army like this wouldn't be so brutally lopsided. We could take dissies to be better against biker units, but that gimps us pretty hard against vehicles and monsters. That said, I don't think we have much of a choice. Jetbike spam is going to be alive and well with the current Aeldari codex, and we will have to have an answer for it to be at all competitive.

It wasn't until I compared my Aeldari list in a mental mock combat against my Drukhari list that I realized just how bad the "anti-infantry" weapons could be. Strength 2??? Give me a break. They literally do nothing to bikers/mounted/cavalry/monsters, which they used to wound on 4+. I feel like GW made a major oversight with this change, in trying to oversimplify rules.

I will try to come up with something using dissies to make up for GW's mistake. Anyone else have any ideas?

Strangely enough the answer I came up with while thinking about this problem was wyches, incubi, grots, and talos, or Scourge with shredders ... wyches would keep bikes locked up in combat and if they wanted to fall back they would take a couple of mortal wounds simply from the forced desperate escape checks otherwise it would be drown them in liquifier, shredder auto hits and then beat them down with talos or grot cc ... or a surprisingly good cc unit is the archon with his court, with lethal hits, always fights first, and empowered wound rerolls ... could do some damage, I understand our melee options are paying for the sins of 9th edition but it's basically all we have against t4/5 non infantry without over committing with blaster/darklances that isn't making our Scourge dedicated shredder platforms

Archon_91 wrote:

Strangely enough the answer I came up with while thinking about this problem was wyches, incubi, grots, and talos, or Scourge with shredders ... wyches would keep bikes locked up in combat and if they wanted to fall back they would take a couple of mortal wounds simply from the forced desperate escape checks otherwise it would be drown them in liquifier, shredder auto hits and then beat them down with talos or grot cc ... or a surprisingly good cc unit is the archon with his court, with lethal hits, always fights first, and empowered wound rerolls ... could do some damage, I understand our melee options are paying for the sins of 9th edition but it's basically all we have against t4/5 non infantry without over committing with blaster/darklances that isn't making our Scourge dedicated shredder platforms

How do you get any of them into charging range of bikes without getting chewed up by 216 scatter laser shots first? Since our transports can no longer move, disembark, then charge due to the loss of the "open-topped" rule, when wyches disembark from a transport that got them somewhere they want to be, they either have to stay embarked until they're in a position to disembark/charge in the same turn, or they have to disembark and stand there for your opponent's entire turn before charging, either getting shot to shreds, or potentially having your charge target move 20" away, or both.

So, without open-topped transports, how do we reliably get our melee units into melee with fast units like jetbikes?

You can deep strike 1 unit on your opponent's turn using rapid ingress, but that is limited to only 1 unit, and there is still significant potential there to get borked, since rapid ingress happens before the opponent's shooting, charge, and fight phases.

Honestly I don't know, outside of some creative use of cover

The 8th/9th edition tactic of charging a transport in to tank overwatch before charging the unit in should still work to avoid overwatch on the unit (unless the unit you're charging is all armed with pistols, in which case your opponent can pop overwatch at the end of the charge phase and still fire at units that are in engagement range), at least in theory. You do have to be more careful with positioning (since you have less freedom in your movement path when charging), and terrain placement will make it a lot more difficult as well.

krayd wrote:

The 8th/9th edition tactic of charging a transport in to tank overwatch before charging the unit in should still work to avoid overwatch on the unit (unless the unit you're charging is all armed with pistols, in which case your opponent can pop overwatch at the end of the charge phase and still fire at units that are in engagement range), at least in theory. You do have to be more careful with positioning (since you have less freedom in your movement path when charging), and terrain placement will make it a lot more difficult as well.

Yeah, I suppose if you charge a raider or venom into a unit, that could help close more distance, but it's far from being consistent, and with the new movement rules regarding units that fly not being able to move horizontally past terrain, closing distance in our transports is going to be far from easy. In many cases, I expect you'd be better off having 8" movement infantry over having 12" movement with fly, which strikes me as being pretty silly.

So, I came up with a new list, considering the things we have been discussing.

But before I get to it, I'm going to give you all a snippet of the conversation from when a certain Haemonculus, named Gaines Vorktchop, who decided 'upgrading' the Drukhari splinter weapons to only work on infantry, had to present the (unauthorized)change to Vect.

"No, no, seriously. It kills them BETTER, you see? Therefore it's an UPGRADE, I assure you!"
"What do you mean, what about cavalry? We don't need to be able to use it on cavalry, or on tyrannids, or bikers. We can use other things for that, right? This right here, it's GREAT for killing infantry."
"Armor? Pshh, why would it need to pierce armor?"
"Wait, no, please, stop. Wait!" The sound of a mailed gauntlet clapping on a shoulder is followed by a heavy sigh of relief. "Oh, thank you my lord, I thought you were angry for the briefest of moments. So....I can go?"
"Excellent! Wonderful! I'm going to be famous in Commorragh!"
For the first time, Vect's response was clear to the listener, "Yes, you are."
Gaines let out a mad cackle as he spoke, "The one who made splinter weapons BETTER! I am off, back to my laboratory!"  
The conversation concluded with the sound of his footsteps echoing, leaving the chamber, clearly pleased with himself.

Gaines Vorktchop never showed back up at his laboratory. Somehow, the story of this exchange began being told throughout Commorragh, in shady parlors, whispered in hushed tones among the crowds of the arena.
By the time the Overlord's new Tantalus Flagship was commissioned and revealed, everyone in the city had heard the tale of the mad Haemonculus that disappeared. It came as no surprise to anyone when said flagship bore the still living, stretched flesh of someone that looked suspiciously like Gaines Vorktchop upon it's shock prow, just below it's primary disintegrator cannon, of which it has many. Those who have been close to the flagship report that the shock prow screams, apologizes, and begs for mercy, almost continuously. The name of the new flagship is Artificer's Folly.

So, without further ado, I call this list, "Artificer's Folly", in honor of the famous Gaines Vorktchop:

1 Archon w/blast pistol 85
1x10 Kabalite Warriors w/all weapon options 120
1 Raider w/Dissies 90
1 Venom w/Dual Splinter Cannons 80
3 Ravagers w/Dissies 285
1 Cronos w/spirit vortex 50
3x5 Scourges w/Heat Lances 360
2x2 Talos w/Haywire Cannons, Talos Gauntlets & Ichor Injectors 360
3x3 Reavers w/Agonizers, Heat Lances & Grav Talons 225
2 Razorwing Jetfighter w/Disintegrators & Splinter Cannons 340

1995 Points Total

Shots:
42 Disintegrator Shots
15 Heat Lance Shots
8 Haywire Cannon Shots
2d6+ Razorwing Missile Shots
1 Dark Lance Shot
1 Blaster Shot
5 Blast Pistol Shots
1d6 Shredder Shots
1d6 Spirit Syphon Shots
1d6 Spirit Vortex Shots
15 Splinter Cannon Shots
22 Splinter Rifle Shots

All shots in the army wound T5 on 4+ or better with the exception of the splinter shots, which can be focused on infantry if your opponent has any. This list resolves the issue that drukhari currently have against non-infantry models. Against extremely high toughness enemies like knights, it would require you to focus your heat lances, blasters, pistols, and dark lance to reliably bring them down quickly, but you can put almost your entire army into deep strike at the beginning of the game, with the exception of 1 unit of Talos, which can be the target of "insensible to pain" to make them a pain for your opponent to remove. If you shoot for a turn 2 deep strike beta strike, you can bring all the pain at once to generate some good pain tokens. A good rule of thumb is to always use pain tokens on the Talos' units during their shooting phase if they have a legitimate target for their haywire cannons, as they'll usually be the most likely target to earn you more pain tokens. Once they've killed a unit, they're considered permenantly empowered, and you don't have to bother empowering them any more.

In general, this list uses the "power from pain" detachment rules to use pain tokens, but otherwise ignores most of the faction-specific leaders and associated special rules, simply to be able to include as much firepower as possible to mitigate our troops' inability to wound non-infantry. In this case, paying for the archon, and in fact the Kabalite warriors/raider/venom is more of a tax than a benefit for the army, but since you're paying 85 points for the leader, and 120 for a unit to put him in, the raider and venom provide at least SOME utility by allowing you to split and specialize the units. Splinter cannon and splinter rifles in the venom w/a grenade sybarite, and other special weapons in the raider with the archon to crack harder targets while having 2 units with the "stiky objectives" rule.

Due to the way pain token generation works, you really want to focus on making sure you finish units off, as it is far more reliable than waiting until they potentially fail a battle-shock test in your opponent's turn, and killing them in your turn allows you to immediately use the pain token on your next shooting unit to keep the snowball rolling.

The downside of this list is that it only starts with 4 pain tokens, so it really depends on you killing some units to start things off. On the plus side, there are enough dissies in the list to average 25 unsaved wounds on space marine bikers per turn, or 33 on Aeldari jetbikes and similar, without considering other weapons at all.

Honestly, if it weren't for the sticky objectives, I would have skipped the kabalites, raider, and venom altogether, swapped the archon out for a succubus that I kept in reserve the entire game, and used the 305 points I saved to pay for another unit of 2 Talos, 3 more reavers(bringing a squad to 6), and another cronos. If someone is looking for a list with a little more AV punch, they can still do that. And in the last round, assuming all goes well, you can walk the succubus onto the battlefield to declare victory.

While I doubt it'll ever reach anyone important enough to acknowledge or understand it, I sent a refined, edited version of the above story to games workshop:

As a reward for such a fine job on the new Drukhari rules, I'd like to give Games Workshop the full literary rights to a short story that I've written in their game universe! Deliver it with my regards, please!

The scene is set in one of the halls of Commorragh, where a certain haemonculus, named Gaines Vorktchop, who decided 'upgrading' the Drukhari splinter weapons to only work on infantry, had to present the unauthorized change to Vect. The conversation was heard, but not seen, by some working in that hall. Reportedly, this is what they heard:

"No, no, seriously. It kills them BETTER, you see? Therefore it's an UPGRADE, I assure you!"
"What do you mean, what about cavalry? We don't need to be able to use it on cavalry, or on tyrannids, or daemons, or bikers. We can use other things for that, right? This right here, it's GREAT for killing infantry."
"Armor? Pshh, why would it need to pierce armor?"
"Wait, no, please, stop. Wait!" The sound of a mailed gauntlet clapping on a shoulder is followed by a heavy sigh of relief. "Oh, thank you my lord, I thought you were angry for the briefest of moments. So....I can go?"
"Excellent! Wonderful! I'm going to be famous in Commorragh!"
For the first time, Vect's response was clear to the listener, "Yes, you are."
Gaines let out a mad cackle as he spoke, "The one who made splinter weapons BETTER! I am off, back to my laboratory!"  
The conversation concluded with the diminishing sounds of Gaines' giggles and footsteps echoing, leaving the chamber, clearly pleased with himself.

Gaines Vorktchop never showed back up at his laboratory. Somehow, the story of this exchange began being told throughout Commorragh, in shady parlors, and whispered in hushed tones among the crowds of the arena.

By the time the Overlord's new Tantalus Flagship was commissioned and revealed, everyone in the city had heard the tale of the mad haemonculus that had disappeared after "improving" all of Commorragh's splinter weapons. It came as no surprise to anyone when said flagship bore the still-living, stretched flesh of someone that looked suspiciously like Gaines Vorktchop upon its shock prow, just below its primary disintegrator cannon, of which it had many. Those who have been close to the flagship report that the shock prow screams, apologizes, and begs for mercy, almost continuously. The name of the new flagship is Artificer's Folly.

As the rumor goes, when first stepping foot on the deck of the Artificer's Folly, Vect reportedly looked upon the many disintegrator cannons with disgust before requesting a haemonulus by the name of Da'Fill Kaelly to come perform a full, in-depth review of the drukhari armoury for revisions and refitting.

Honestly, I think *poison* should have been a keyword where
[Poison] a weapon with this word is considered to be a poison weapon. Weapons with this keyword add 1 to their wound roll when wounding any non [vehicle] or non [titanic] unit

Archon_91 wrote:

Honestly, I think *poison* should have been a keyword where
[Poison] a weapon with this word is considered to be a poison weapon. Weapons with this keyword add 1 to their wound roll when wounding any non [vehicle] or non [titanic] unit

I mean, I would take about anything right now. I think your idea has merit, but ultimately, if they were getting rid of poison, they should have known that they needed to completely redesign splinter weapons. S2 with anti-infantry as an army's CORE weaponry is laughable. Even S3 would have been a huge improvement. As of now, it takes a 6+ to wound eldar or guardsman on horses/bikes, which is silly AF.

Honestly, "Anti-Infantry" doesn't even make sense in the context of the game. Why don't bikers and horsemen have the "infantry" keyword? It's not like they cease to be bipedal fleshy creatures when they throw one leg over a crotch-chair.

I don't know how the "anti-infantry" ability can even be justified to not work against things like that, from a flavor/fluff perspective. If splinter weapons aren't poison any more, what are they, and why don't they work if someone has a pet or a motorcycle?

I think it goes to the base of the idea of "simplified not simple" and decided that "anti" would target specific things within an army and thus they broke an army down into different parts taking from the 9th edition "core" mechanic and a complete misunderstanding of how players would go about building lists when given the freedom to "put whatever you feel like playing in!" While giving specific guidelines and slight incentives for including specific things *anti-infantry* would be a lot stronger if every army HAD to take at least 3+ battle line units as 99% of those are infantry but not putting that stipulation in means you can build entirely infantry free (or 99% free because of being forced to take a warlord) army lists which basically bricks most of our faction ... and once again this is a very Druhkari specific problem... so it isn't going to get much focus

The basic problem is there's nobody at GW who plays Drukhari. The 5th edition book was the last book for Dark Eldar players by a dark Eldar player. Since then, 6th was a stripped to basics approach. 7th was based on 6th, 8th based on 7th, 9th based on 8th, and 10th based on 9th.

The basic concept is a slow-moving, fragile, combined arms core of HQs with their signature units following them around on foot, then some fast moving elements to either shoot or do melee.

The problem is the slow moving, fragile core of footslogging HQs and troops that don't function well on foot is a BAD design concept--particularly since they adopted this philosophy at the same time they decided webway portals should be redesigned to not support that playstyle at all.

I think the real problem is the "no model, no rules" approach that GW has been taking ever since they lost that lawsuit like 8 years ago. We get it, GW doesn't want to allow anyone else to make money off of their game, but this is very much throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

The game, and the lore was so much richer and more fun when they didn't restrain themselves from creating character unless they specifically had a model for that character. I honestly don't even get what the problem was with losing the lawsuit. They encouraged players to craft their own Duke Sliscus or whatever since they didn't have a model for him, but they get mad when another company makes a model that is appropriate for said character? It doesn't make sense. In either case, they weren't getting the money for the model, so I don't see what the problem was.

So, to punish the company that "stole" their IP, they dump gasoline on their IP and light a match. Sounds legit.

The entire WH40k franchise has been suffering since this change towards their new scorched earth policy. They rushed to get models made for their most popular/most beloved factions, and burnt everyone else's characters to the ground.

Of course, none of this helps them make good decisions regarding things like splinter weapons and drukhari, but there's a simple fix for that. Bring Phil Kelly back to write the Drukhari stuff. I've seen Tau players complaining about his writing for them, saying he doesn't "get" Tau culture and such. On the other hand, DE players have nearly universally lauded his cultural depiction of DE, which took them from 1980's hair band villains to a culture with depth. He still works for GW. I don't get why they don't assign him to DE.

Another thing. Instead of working on sculpts for any of the awesome characters we lost, we got an unimpressive archon that pales in comparison to the old model, and a hideous do-over of Lelith that makes her look ugly when she's supposed to be beautiful. And a succubus model that could have easily just been a single weapon option and hair extension/head in the wych kit.

Instead of a new succubus, archon, and Lelith, there are so many things that could have been better:

Duke Sliscus
Lady Malys
Baron Sathonyx
An archon on a jetbike
An archon with wings

Any of these options would have replaced things we USED to be able to field with DE and got players excited. But, NAH, let's just re-do the art with less talented sculptors and give them nothing new.