COOKBOOK: The strategic warlord traits

The strategic warlord traits got a massive boost this edition, almost all the results are beneficial to us. What makes this even better is that a battle forged army gets to re-roll the warlord trait.

I present some delicious recipes for your degustation!

1. Conquerer of Cities:

Take some reavers, put them in a ruin, add jink as required. The end result should be a most enjoyable 2+ cover save.

Take a raider full of grotesques, flat out into a ruin on your opponents half. Enjoy watch him poor disproportionate amounts of shooting into a 3+ cover save raider.  

2. Night attack:

Take some reavers, add jink as required. The end result should be a most enjoyable 2+ cover save on your first turn.

If going first, take a raider full of grotesques, flat out into a ruin on your opponents half. Enjoy watch him poor disproportionate amounts of shooting into a 3+ cover save raider.

3. Master of the Ambush:

Take a talos or two and infiltrate them... profit?

Take some grotesques, add a haemonculus, garnish with a webway portal, infiltrate, make sure keep some surprises in reserve.

4. Strategic genius:

Take Vect, seize on a 3+.

5. Divide and conquer:

Best served against reserve heavy armies. Else Re-roll to avoid disappointment.

6. Princips of Deceit:

Go first, add raider with torment grenade launcher, flat out towards three enemy units, at the start of your opponents turn make those three units test for pinning at -1.

I hope you enjoyed these dishes and that they give you a taste of the wonderful strategic and tactical culinary experience 7th edition has to offer!

If I might add?

STRATEGIC

Master of Ambush:
Take one Haemonculus. Apply to Mandrakes.
or
Blasterborn. No Venom I know, but a turn one sacrifice-salvo isn't to be sniffed at.


PERSONAL

Master of Defence:
Take Drazhar. Add to unit of Incubi. Giggle.

I approve of your delicious offering. Allow me to serve up an additional course.

In all honesty, I won't be aiming for Night Attacker any more, as it's not -as- good, but it's certainly my favourite of the three main tables for Dark Eldar. Master of Ambush and Strategic Genius look to be my new favourites. Strategic Genius with the reserve re-rolls is what I'll be aiming for with my Sliscus orbital raid army.

Other things of note:
Command - Master of the Vanguard is what Coordinated Assault used to be (+1 to charge range) and applies to all units within 12", also applies to run moves; Target Priority is utterly amazing for a Kabal based army, Coordinated assault for Wych cult and other combat based forces. Rest of the table is not bad - my second pick table.

Personal - Can't make use of this as much as some armies can, but Master of Manoeuvre and Legendary fighter aren't awful. Master of Offence and Tenacity are easily achievable with pain tokens. Would take Command/Strategic instead of Personal 90% of the time.

Tactical - Maelstrom of War specific.
1 - seems pretty good should you draw/roll multiple dodgy/impossible objectives, but situational. Good for those times where your opponent has no flyers or psykers and you have both those objectives at once.

2 - One of the worse options. A situational one use only thing that isn't even guaranteed to work. Might still be useful though and could potentially change the game.

3 - Good for us. We're fast enough to take advantage of having the extra objective on turn 1, and can use it to put ourselves a point ahead of the opponent. This gets worse the more objectives you start the game with; very good in Tactical Escalation, not so great in Deadlock.

4 - Rubbish unless you start with a load of impossible/tricky to achieve ones. Remember that if you discard them you can never achieve them as you can't redraw or re-roll the same objective. And you get the trait BEFORE you get to generate your first objectives. My pick for worst option on the chart as you have to bank on getting horrible objectives on turn 1 precisely, otherwise it's useless.

5 - I like this one. There are 14 objectives that can use this. We have the speed and firepower to get the ones that rely on mobility or killing multiple units. Would keep this and hope I get the right objectives.

6 - Best one on the chart. Amazing for Dark Eldar as we have the mobility to get the warlord's unit right to that target, and can basically double down on one objective per turn.

Also, here's a cheeky tip. Warlord can be ANY character now. Doesn't have to be HQ, doesn't have to be highest leadership. With the reaver buff, I suspect an Arena Champion warlord might be quite useful...

Wait a sec...
Are you saying that ANY character can be warlord in 7ed???
Like, Dracon, Hecatrix, Abberation???

Please use the English language to the best of your ability. Chat/leet speak is against the rules and has been edited. Cheers - Cavash.

Actually, that is interesting.

Just checked the Warlord rules (page 124).
Not only does it in fact say you can nominate any character (not just an Independent One), but it has removed the restriction that it needs to be the one with the highest Ld. So yes, ANY character can be your Warlord!

Yup yup. ANY character now. Which means we don't need to worry quite so much about preserving killy characters. I can't see it becoming a huge issue, but it does give you a few more tactical options (I really do think that in certain circumstances an Arena Champ warlord might be a good ploy).

Bonus style points for having an Aberration in charge and farming out Ld4 to everyone via inspiring presence.

One would expect Vect to have been FAQ'ed to "Always the Warlord", but no such thing. Odd, not to mention unfluffy.

I'm really liking the look of the Command table. With two results giving broad to hit buffs, the +1 charge distance, and move through cover to let me park my Raiders in cover with impunity (I always fail my DT tests:()... I like it a lot.

Strategic has certainly got better, too. I like your recipes Mushkilla, hopefully they are quite spicy... for our opponents

Squidmaster wrote:

Blasterborn. No Venom I know, but a turn one sacrifice-salvo isn't to be sniffed at.

I think dedicated transports get to infiltrate with their parent units now?

DingK, maybe Vect is just there to observe, and punish any mistakes later!

Clearly, unlike the arrogant mon-keigh, Vect is more than willing to let someone else wear the crown when out in public. No sense putting a target on his own noodle unless necessary.

(Although, when I hit the board with 9 Fire Dragons in the Dais of Destruction, it's gonna get necessary PDQ.)

DingK wrote:

One would expect Vect to have been FAQ'ed to "Always the Warlord", but no such thing. Odd, not to mention unfluffy.

I'm pretty sure the design team put a grand total of 5 minutes into each FAQ. Fluff was the least of their concerns.

It's not completely unfluffy: Vect allowed Urien to lead the invasion on Rubikon despite taking part himself, so there's precedence of Vect taking a backseat.

Thanks for the great tips. As enjoying playing with my 9 reavers, I'm gonna try those Warlord Traits this weekend!

If a new Codex is inbound though, I can imagien Vect having a personal Warlord Trait, which would clear up why he doesn't HAVE to be the Warlord.