Drazhar – Not the fail you first think…

Let’s get this out the way straight up. Drazhar is expensive for what he is. I 100% agree he is overpriced – I would like to see him drop a good 50 points or at least let me make a unit of Incubi troops… or grab a ++ save… but that’s not what we are going to talk about…

So what is Drazhar and what can he do? What does he bring to the table?

Well, first up he is not too shabby in terms of stats. Good WS, S&T 4, high initiative, good base attacks, 2+ armour, fearless, eternal. All good stuff. On top of this we have preferred enemy vs IC’s, more attacks when we roll 6’s to wound or for saves and most important – the ability to manipulate the combat thanks to darting strike. He lacks grenades, which is frustrating on occasion and I think he should have the bloodstone as well but we work with what we have.
His demi klaives allow him to tailor to the opponent he is facing (+2S is always preferred unless you have FC or your facing T3 enemies) and even threaten vehicles rear armour. Infact, against most 2W IC enemies, Drazhar should manage a one turn kill on the charge (5 attacks, 4.44 hits due to PE, 3.7 wounds due to S6, 1.85 unsaved wounds after a 4++ and then 1 extra attack from onslaught, 0.88 hits, 0.73 wounds, 0.36 unsaved). So against librarians, chaplains and the like – draz should slaughter them prior to taking a hit back. 3W models are not where you want to be as you will almost certainly not kill the target.

So Drazhar is an OK assassin. Incubi make OK assassins. What do Incubi do best? Kill troops. Guess what Drazhar does best!

Drazhar is perfectly capable of taking on a full 10 man squad of marines or 30 orks and winning reliably. Why? 2 words – Darting Strike. The trick is to ensure he charges on his own to maximise the use of this power. With no unit attached, he can move about the combat where you see fit. It allows you to avoid powerfists and the like – so easily infact that you don’t need the ++ save. Against the regular guys, you have your 2+ and with a little effort, FNP. He is a very good tarpit where he simply bounces around the unit, avoiding the worst attacks until the unit is toast.

I always disembark and charge separate. ALWAYS. The incubi he joined generally don’t need him anyway. Ironically, he works very much like a small unit of Incubi, delivering good damage and then winning in the opponents turn. Over a 2 assault phases, 6-8 kills between his attacks, onslaught and riposte is more than achievable and a couple of fearless wounds should finish the enemy.

Darting strike can also let you get away from things you can’t fight… say you get charged by a dread – bad news given you need 6’s to glance. Charge the dread with any other unit and engage another enemy nearby – a vehicle is ideal. Use darting strike to jump away from the dread and get back to killing troops or even better become unengaged by only being in combat with a rhino or the like. It works really well with wyches!

Lastly, the meta in todays environment can lead to Drazhar soaking a fair volume of fire. With the auto cannon and missile launcher being favourites to deal with mid level armour, Drazhar has 2+ saves and eternal making him very durable. Yes, plasma and melta will still end him quickly but if your bringing overwhelming power to bear on 1 point (you are right? You do play dark eldar right?) then the opponent must decide – stop Drazhar or stop everything else.

Having used him at a tourney I can say i was pleasantly suprised at some of the tricks you can pull and what he can acheive. Sing out with any questions otherwise, i hope you found this helpful!

Using him always alone is what i thought as much, just like Lelith.

THey are like 2 sides of the one coin, both overpriced, one can easily kill troops and things with 1 powerweapon, Lelith on her own can kill low-number elite squads like purifiers, sang guard etc. (and butcher all non-marine troops)

But they both are kinda crappy when facing terminators.

just not sure how he avoids power wep/fist attacks unless the fist/wep is engaged already they only need to be within 2" of a model engeged with him, ie, pretty much any time he is engaged with the entire squad on his own without another unit

Also a smart opponent wont put his fists/weps in a position where you can engage them with your charge (lets say the middle of the unit) so often even if you do engage said unit with another one they can still choose where the power weapons attacks go.

Its possible that Drahz can kill a whole tac squad before the fist takes all his wounds ? but hten what ?

That said surely you get best use of him when the enemy are engaged with another unit as there is that possibility that their fist or whatever is already engaged then he's free to go where he likes without fear of taking fist hits ? once you kill off the rest of the unit drahz will almost certainly kill the fist before it gets to go agin ?

As you say though for a character thats suppsoed to be some sort of amazing assissin/exectioner (fluff) its grates a bit that you kinda have to hide from 3 wound characters with any sort of invuln .....

yeah lelith just blows through Geq , DE do this anyway , then you read her fluff and she's this brilliant undefeated master of single combats, but her rules don't represent that in any way , needing 5's means she will often just bounce from Marines ......

I agree, anything without a power weapon or fist in it will be decimated by drazhar however ,most reasonable characters have a 4++ these days and a power fist equivalent is really common ...

How do you solo a sqaud with a fist in it ? or do you just have to accept that taking a couple of wounds will prob happen ?

EDIT: hor do you take out 30 orks with a claw in it single handed ? they all pile in around you and no matter where you move to it's pretty likely the claw will be within 2" of someone engaged with you ? if there are less than 30 it becomes less and less likely you can avoid the claw on your own ?

my problem is you guys want so much out of a character. Yes Lelith is supposeably unbeatable and Drazhar is a master assassin, but Calgar roflstomped an Avatar in 1 v 1 combat, Sciarius takes out ork Dreads with a power sword, Failbaddon rules all and cant be stopped, Kharn slaughters entire armies... do I have to go on???

GW builds up their characters to be the end all be all nothing short of a titan can stop them. That being said if they actually put rules for them like that on the TT, then we would end up with HeroHammer all over again. That was a terrible time for this game, and I would never like to see it back.

Draz has some amazing things going for him. Heck I would say he is the best PL template out there, if only for his damage output and darting strike. He has the potential to whipe out 5 man marine squad (and if you think anyone runs more than 5 in a non-KP game... you are surely mistaken) He does his job well. Now is he worth his points??? Competitively no, but he isnt unplayable (thats for our super master assassin's distinction...) And I think Massaen put up some great points on how to use him.

Uhm, I think we are entitled to expect a certain amount from a 175-230 point character ? watching a 175 point 'master gladiator' bounce of the most common troop types in the game coz rolling strings of 5's is difficult is more than a little underwhelming.

I know plenty of people running large units competitively, partially because people go in expecting people to only turn up with fives ....

Massans points are Indeed quite good , as soon as someone can answer a couple of my questions up there Ill sTfu and gleefully concede he's better than total rubbish, for the record DE excel at mushing little five man squads, its almost the bread and butter of the army, giving them yet more stuff to do that with and overpricing it (something we all agree on here ) was a fail IMO.

too bad there's not a like button, cause i would use it on that last two comments.

The problem I have with DE IC's aren't what they can do (with the exception that for his point cost, I think Vect should have EW), the problem is that point costs are too high for some simple things that a IC needs...

There are some IC's that I love and have no problem using. Lellith, Rackarth, Baron, Duke... depending on the army, all those are great choices for their point costs. Vect needs EW to be the equal of other models his point equivalent. Almost any other IC out there is going to ID him on a single unlucky roll... for 240 points, there should be only a couple of things in the entire game that should put him down in 1 shot. Likewise, Draz needs a invul save for his point cost. He's basically wearing terminator armor, would a simple 5++ be too much to ask? i mean... a model thats 50 points cheaper (and almost as nasty all things considered) gets a 4++/3++cc, you would think that they could at least find some way to give the guy some chance to shrug off a pw...

It's the same problem I have with MCs... all it takes is a single lucky force weapon to take em down, since theres no way their thick ass armor thats been evolved to ignore all types of crazy ass wounds will ignore a ccw... >.<

Quote :

Also a smart opponent wont put his fists/weps in a position where you can engage them with your charge (lets say the middle of the unit) so often even if you do engage said unit with another one they can still choose where the power weapons attacks go.

Pile in happens at the end of the combat, Darting Strike working at the begining.


WHatever clever way your opoonent has placed his powerfist you can always just place Drazhar to the farthest models of his. And when charging him you can place him anywhere you like.

The sad fact about him is that he can only start in ride with Incubi, and thats hell of a lot of point concentration.
it'l be infinitely more pleasing if he can start with just 3 wracks.

The "defenders react" 6" move takes place before combat. Darting strike is after that, but still be hard to avoid powerfist being with in 2" of model in base.

Yeah I meant defendets react, and agree 2 inches plus model is a loong way, ima going to run him my next few games and see how he goes, maybe he'll be able to get out the way, I think he would work well charging into a witch pit maybe ?