A New Way With Mandrakes

Just been thinking, There must be a way to save our favourite shadowy losers.

Visualise this...

...Your trueborn fight a bit, they then get into close combat...
...And suddenly their number are doubled as a mandrake pack who have been piggybacking the trueborns shadows emerge and join the fight.

They would cause Fear, of course, what could be worse than expecting to fight, say ten, evil eldar, only to find their very shadows are alive, and hungry.

(We have to sell this idea to the trueborn of course, Who might not like the idea of carrying such a nasty companion in close proximity to themselves...or of being possibly upstaged by Aerlindrach scum.)

A further rule could be the mandrakes are `bound` to the trueborn, and though they can be deployed and dedeployed at will (When in shadow they cannot be harmed) are not autonomous.

(how they are `bound` is a job for the fluff writer)

This would make them lose their infiltrate ability...unless they are attached to scouts.

(There could be all sorts of troops/characters who had a tame mandrake, including under certain circumstances other eldar...possibly even a Luminati inquisitor...A mandrake would be a novel pet...when they are not spying on such a xenos for Vect...or their own kings)

What do you think?

Strategically it would benefit them more to be bound to Beasts or Wyches or another assault unit.

Im surprised no ones tried this?

Has everyone all given up on Mandrakes?

Tengu wrote:

Im surprised no ones tried this?

Has everyone all given up on Mandrakes?

It's a neat idea but I don't think Trueborn would be the correct choice, or indeed whether you would need to tie them to a particular unit type rather than picking a single unit at the start of the battle.

"Mandrakes are creatures of darkness. They begin the game with a pain token."

That'd be a nice start, and would go a long way towards fixing them. As would this:

"One mandrake may be upgraded to:

Nightfiend...............-pts
Kheradruakh............-120 pts"

Kheradruakh loses his ability to just appear anywhere on the board (as it is totally useless) but keeps the Decapitator. Any model he chooses as his preferred enemy grants an additional victory point if he kills them in a challenge. Not that useful, but fluffy.

"Mandrakes have the Daemon special rule."

Because why should we get the penalties of the daemon rule against Grey Knights but none of the advantages?

Failing that, make Kheradruakh essentially the Dark Eldar version of Illic Nightspear - independent character, shrouded, any mandrakes waiting to outflank can deep strike withing 6" without scattering, pain token, daemon. It's actually not beyond the realms of possibility. You'd see people buying the stunning models that are mandrakes with just a little jiggling of the rules.

Hopping from terrain to terrain would be a unique idea too. I'd worry that piggybacking them on a unit would make something that has to survive even more of a fire magnet than it already is, so you end up losing the unit carrying them and having the mandrakes just arrive on a board edge or something. But it's cool from a fluff perspective  

ASSASSINS!!!!!
Delves have a special upgrade / unit, assasins, they sit in a unit, and pop out when that unit makes it to CC

How awesome would that be for mandrakes?
Either they disguise themselves as the parent, apparate next to them, or full on possess them!
Unit makes it combat and *boom* demons appear.
Probably need a boost to both effectiveness and points

Moving this - someone pointed out it was in the Tactics forum when it is clearly a new rule idea being discussed, and thus belongs in Rule Development.