Updated Retinue

Dark Eldar lord retinue
taken as part of same hq selection as archon/vassel lord, if taken archon/vassel lord must deploy with retinue
unit size: 4-15 of the following;
0-10 incubi
0-10 trueborn
up to two incubi/trueborn may replace their punisher/splinter rifle for shredder or blaster(pts as trueborn upgrade)
up to two trueborn may replace their splinter rifles with splinter cannon or darklance
any trueborn may replace splinter rifle with (splinter pistol and ccw) or shardcarbine (pts as trueborn entry)
all trueborn may take plasma and/or haywire (pts as trueborn entry)
if retinue containes 5 or more incubi, one may take klaivex upgrade (pts and options as incubi entry)
if retinue containes 5 or more trueborn, one may take dracon upgrade (pts and options as trueborn entry)
may take venom, raider, or tantalus for dedicated transport

unit size changed to fit in transports, limits of number of incubi/trueborn to prevent abuse of klaivex powers/dukes poison ability with over sized units. Blaster option on incubi or trueborn so people can use old model of assault weapon incubi, or trueborn with blaster if they don't have old models.


Vassal lord 45pts, hq choice
Ws6 Bs6 S3 T3 W2 I6 A3 Ld9 Sv 4+/6++
wargear: ghostplate, ccw, splinter pistol, plasma grenades
may take same options as archon, but may not take clone field or shadow field

stats based of old dracon with boosts archon received with new codex, except for ld. Shadow field use to be 1 per army, so it went on archon instead of dracon, so ghost plate is the best the vassel gets. I added it to base to avoid super cheap bare bones build.

As I have understood it, Trueborn aren't very likely to be included in a retinue as they are not that trustworthy (as written in the description of the Sslyth), so I'm not sure about this. However, I do think having an Incubus or two as an option in the retinue would be nice.

Should it just be warriors then?
Reasoning for trueborn could be
1) It could be looked at as sycophants following archon around
2) a dracon that rose to archon keeping his old squad around(as loyal as dark eldar get, since they rise together and fight together so long),
3)keeping the friends close and enemies closer.

Most archons would use incubi or Sslyth as bodyguard. Old codex retinue people used incubi, or incubi with a few warriors. Personally, I used to take 5-6incubi, lord, maybe a haemie or drazier, then just fill rest of raider with warriors.

I considered adding "any models from the court of the archon may be attached to retinue, as long as court doesn't drop below minimums and retinue doesn't exceed 15 models" or adding "0,4-12 court of archon(following numbers of court entry, so if any court are taken at least 4 must be)" after 0-10 trueborn. Both wordings seemed awkward, and changed retinue greatly from old.

No, I meant no warriors as well when I said no trueborn. I'd say that a smaller number of Incubi should be able to add to the court/retinue, as well as adding some options to the other guys there - on Sorrowshards topic, it was f.ex. suggested that the various models wasn't mandatory, that each lhamanean made the poisoning better, and also that they affected all the models and not just the archon (so that you wouldn't have to take an ur-ghul/lhamaean/whatever if you don't want to, but if you took three lhamaeans everyone without power weapons/the like would have poisoning (2+).

The old codex retinue was 5-10 incubi and/or warriors, I was trying to update it as an alternative to court of archon, and because splinter raid apoc formation requires retinue that no longer exits.
The lhamaeans are still dark eldar, and it says nothing about them being more trust worthy. So, they would pose same issue as warriors I figure.
Nobody(that I saw at least) took a mostly warrior retinue with old codex, so maybe a more incubi/ssylth then warriors/lhamaeans restriction. That way the plotting sycophants/rivals would be outnumbered by the bodyguards. the medusae/ur-ghuls don't seem like they would plot against or be good bodyguards for the archon.


Maybe 3-10 incubi and 0-7trueborn, the number of incubi must always be greater the trueborn
or
0-10 incubi
0-7 trueborn
0-2 lhamaeans*
0-3 ssylth*
0-2 medusae*
0-5 ur-ghul*
number of trueborn/lhamaeans may not exceed the number of ssylth/incubi
*if any are taken archon may not take a separate court
in both version unit size would stay 4-15