Which Cult ??

Dual CAD 1500

Haemonculus, Liquifier, VB, Crucible 85
Succubus, Agoniser, Blast Pistol 100
3 Broodbrides, Haywire, Razorwire, Syren, VB, PGL, Venom 2x SC 145

Haemonculus, Liquifier, VB, Shattershard 80
Succubus, Agoniser, Blast Pistol 100
3 Broodbrides, Haywire, Razorwire, Syren, VB, PGL, Venom 2x SC 145

4x 5 Wyches, Haywire, Venom, 2x SC 500

3 Reavers, Cluster Caltrop, Heat Lance 98

2x Ravager, Dissies, Nightshields, TGL 240

I really want to test out that Broodbride squad, lol. So many attacks for such a small squad, no? The list has AI/AT galore. It is fast has a lot of scoring units but is quite fragile. Well, that is DE no? Six venoms and two ravagers should do some damage ... that is a heck of a lot of dakka.

I'm just left looking at it thinking that the Bloodbrides aren't bringing anything to the party besides being a more expensive Wych option.

Consider how he's using it though.

The scenario is this (and Im assuming an enemy it makes sense to charge, obviously)

Rnd 1, move up, fire everything.

Rnd 2: Fire everything thats left, charge.

Now the thing is, he's going to drop a small blast assault Grenade, plus a blast pistol and a Liquifier, all onto the unit before charging. No codex with me but if the Succubus could take a grenade she could split off before the assault, fire another grenade and then charge separately. but either way, there is a fair amount of damage being donw before they get there. So the 3 BloodBrides are there to sheath the real threat and help out/give venoms. but the assault could be totally adequate after the shooting, blasts and Templates go off in round 2.

Also this is 1500. So. He isn't facing the usual larger and more dangerous more kit'd out type stuff. People are more likely to min/max just like he did here. And when they do, it makes the Blood Brides and Succubus's jobs easier an makes them a more practical choice than they would be at larger points limits.

So its just food for thought but I can see what he's after. The wyches are actually probably his anti-tank but even the disintegrator cannons can do that duty on lighter vehicles (not well but then, it's 1500 so you wont HAVE as many to deal with).

The broodbrtides are the cheapest delivery system for the succubi and in assault they will handle most units. Double charging with wyches they certainly will. It is a simplistic list to be sure but at 1500 should have the punch to deal with most lists I believe.

egorey wrote:

The broodbrtides are the cheapest delivery system for the succubi and in assault they will handle most units. Double charging with wyches they certainly will. It is a simplistic list to be sure but at 1500 should have the punch to deal with most lists I believe.

Well...if the goal is 'cheapest' then I would say the answer is - no, they are not, as clearly Wracks would serve better in that regard.

If it is 'cheapest with HWGs' then, again, Trueborn fit the bill better, and in many ways are arguably better as far as providing ablative wounds (giving up the 4++ but having a 5+ versus explosions, overwatch, and regular shooting if you happen to be exposed to it). Also, their shooting capabilities are actually quite superior, and in many ways that would be more helpful for most targets that I could see wanting to have those Bloodbrides assault - I'd rather take some Trueborn with HWGs, pistols, and a Blaster or something against it.

Both of those also fit the bill as far as providing the Venom - which is another aspect I could see in arguing for the Brides.

Also, even compared to the obvious direct competition - Wyches, I'm not sure it measures up.
The Wyches would be 5, in a Raider w. FF (to fit the Haem and Syren) with all the same gear (though I left out the Razorflail, as functionally if you want that you probably ought to just buy another Wych)
It's 155 vs. 145

So at 10 points more expensive you get +2 HWGs +2Wounds +2 attacks (which, statistically, is better than the razorflail, especially on a charge round where the squad is +2 attacks again) -1 v. blade attack
That looks like a pretty reasonable shift for the points.
The only big change there is the -12 s.cannon shots for +1 lance or +3 dissie depending on goals and needs.
Oh, and also the gains for being Troops as far as objectives go, which isn't a small nor bad benefit either, and some more s.pistol shots just for laughs (though I'll admit that's exceedingly minor).

I'm just trying to assess the logic of choosing Brides over the other available options and figure out what the gains are. I feel the Brides only fit a very specific goal, and that goal has to include 'I want a Venom, and also want Wyches - not Trueborn' because otherwise I think vanilla wyches or Trueborn fill the role better regardless of which role you're hoping for.

Well wyches are out. I want the venoms for sure. You need a squad of five so they cannot deliver the succubus and haemie. Not sure what you are thinking there. Now truborn ... one point less ... take overwatch a bit better, have a lower initiative, cannot take a razorflail I (this is an assault squad w/ succubus after all) and the PGL is ten points more. So overall, I think brides beat out the truborn.

So the choice is between truborn and brides (and the cost difference is three points before upgrades). I'm not saying the wyches are worse. I use four squads of them. And a razorflail most certainly makes up for one wyche I believe. So we are at 155 vs.145 for the equivalent of four wyches. Not terrible. So yes it boils down to - do I want those splinter cannon shots or one dissie. I want the SCs.

I did enjoy the breakdown though. It does lend one to sitting down and re-evaluating. And yes wracks are the cheapest ... but I don't want them assaulting with my succubus. The biggest plus is of course that wyches are troops but in 7ed this is not as crucial as you know.

egorey wrote:

So the choice is between truborn and brides

Just to play devil's advocate here, you COULD get 3 incubi cheaper than your upgraded bloodbrides, and they would arguably be better in CC, and better at ablative wounds, while giving up the haywire grenades.

I think it's really silly that a succubus can't take a PGL. Every level of wyches has access to a PGL, except for the pinnacle of wychiness. If it wasn't for this little tidbit right here, I'd pretty much always recommend incubi over everything else when it comes to a succubus delivery system.

egorey wrote:

Well wyches are out. I want the venoms for sure. You need a squad of five so they cannot deliver the succubus and haemie. Not sure what you are thinking there. Now truborn ... one point less ... take overwatch a bit better, have a lower initiative, cannot take a razorflail I (this is an assault squad w/ succubus after all) and the PGL is ten points more. So overall, I think brides beat out the truborn.

I think you are overlooking the multiple aspects of an assault squad.
You cite the razorflail and assault like the razorflail is...impressive in some way.

For basically equivalent points (an increase of 2) I can go with Trueborn with HWGs and the PGL and shardcarbines. Functionally that is giving me 9 attacks at initiative 11 to the Wyches 3.
Those will hit on 3+ and wound on 4+ (and also are AP5

The Brides then hit at Init 6 instead of 5 for the Trueborn (with +3 attacks compared to them at that point) Now, against most targets where I'm going to believe that the Trueborn or the Bloodbrides attacks are going to make much of a difference, I tend to think the difference between Init 5 and 6 is pretty academic.

Also, if you'd like to argue that +3 attacks and 3-4 of them being razorflails in assault is going to make a lick of difference compared to +6 splinter rounds during shooting prior to assault...well, I'd be curious to see the target. Even with the Venomblade in the mix, the shardcarbines are probably going to do better, and if you really wanted you could go with a v.blade and pistol on the Dracon, but I still tend to suspect that the additional poison shooting would serve you better against pretty much any chosen target outside of one with an amazing cover save and low toughness and armor. And at that stage I'm not sure why you would need the extra assault oomph in any case. I think as far as damage output goes Trueborn are actually provably more functional than Bloodbrides - and I don't even think Trueborn are very good in assault. The Brides are silly expensive for what they are (+3 points for +1 attack per model, whoo-hoo).

What I'm advocating is the belief that, point for point, the Trueborn are better or equivalent to the Brides in inflicting damage via an assault once you factor in all they'll be able to do. In addition, when you consider the role or HWGs, the armor save is actually quite solid in helping to protect your Succubus, and for the minor downgrade in assault power (which I submit is easily matched by the firepower upgrade) I can't think of an assault target that would end up making much of a difference on.

@Betray - the loss of the PGL though makes a vast difference on the assault capability of the unit, at that stage you'd need to slide in an Archon and you can't build that sort of Archon for the same point value that you get with the Succubus even with the saved points from the Incubi. (14 saved versus an extra 25 spent - 11 point difference, and loss of haywire capability and invulnerable save on Archon. You could drop it to a 6 point difference if you dropped the HWGs off the Archon and admitted the unit had to focus on assaulting infantry...but hen your goal is to silly spam Venoms what's the point of an assault unit that has to handle only infantry?)

Thor665 wrote:

@Betray - the loss of the PGL though makes a vast difference on the assault capability of the unit,

I don't know that it does, really. The succubus already has grenades, so she will be going at initiative anyhow(it's on a model per model basis, not whole unit). So only the incubi will be attacking at initiative 1, and only if they charge through cover. With a unit size of 5, I think you could manage not charging through cover fairly often. But even if they do, they have 3+ armor saves. Against most targets, they're going to be around at initiative 1 anyhow, then in subsequent rounds of combat, attack at their higher initiative and probably finish off whatever unit they're fighting.

I did also considered the same thing BTW did.. incubi. I'm personally a huge fan of incubi (Im a re-convert) and I've returned to running 5 no frills to hunt scoring units on the terrain packed boards we play on. They've been stellar every game since their return, even against daemons.. go figure.

Thing is duck wants to try the brides and the succubus blends infantry well enough on her own.

Personally I would prefer to see the brides in a raider with larger squad sizes. Your dedicating mucho character support to each unit and at over 300 pts each the unit needs to be semi durable because those units WILL be the focus of concentrated firepower.

The other alternative I see is to cut down to a single unit, although if your like me you don't do unit testing with just 1-ofs..

I don't know how you costed the units ...
3 Truborn, Hauywire, 3 Shardcarbine, Dracon, VB, PGL = 87
3 Broodbrides, Haywire, Razorflail, Syren, VB, PGL = 80

So we have a 7 pt difference actually. But yes you get 6 more poison shots and that is decent indeed. Four will hit, two will wound and you might kill one model. My razorflails reroll to hit and to wound. I get +3 attacks. I'm curious to see how you figure that there is that much of a difference ( of course this depends to on the target's save. So they should do one kill as well. About even unless my math is completely off. But meh, we get down to the 5+ vs. thr 6+ against shooting but the 4+ vs the 5+ in assault. Pretty even I would say. But yes truborn are not bad at all.

You cannot equip a Venom blade and a shardcarbine - the point difference comes from dropping the venom balde, making it a 2 point difference as I mentioned.

The math would be as follows (Feel free to double check my math - it is late, and I'll admit to doing a couple computations twice as I did catch myself gakking up, but I'm pretty sure the below numbers are correct.);

Trueborn would get 9 poison shots and 10 attacks on charge
Bloodbrides would get 3 poison shots and 4 attacks, 4 razorflails and 5 v. blades.

So;

Trueborn vs. MEQ = 1.56 dead
Trueborn vs. GEQ = 5.22 dead

Brides vs. MEQ = 2.11 dead
Brides vs. GEQ = 4.30 dead

So, against Eldar, Guard, Orks, and infantry Daemons with moderate toughness, the Trueborn perform better.
Against Marines, Chaos Marines, and Necrons the Brides perform better.

Trueborn will have the edge versus pretty much anything T5 or greater as it will enhance their strengths.
Brides will perform better as armor saves *and* toughness decrease which...is basically targets that won't matter much.
There might be some odd bend points involving armor saves and toughness combos as I imagine there is probably some sort of combo that will enhance the venomblade effect pretty well.

I will also admit I'm not figuring the drugs - but flails and v.blades tend to get moderate drug fluctuations - but give the Brides a small bump across the board and you're probably in line, I don't think it's enough to push the GEQ one into balance enough to change the basic perception.

So the debate is more or less -.5 dead Marines vs. +1 dead Guardsman. (and, actually, I bet you could get the numbers better with -1 shardcarbine + v.blade and s.pistol for the Dracon, as at that point he racks up the same value as the v.blade,a dn really the v.blade was a solid part of the Marine part, and it probably wouldn't negatively affect their Guard killing numbers)

Which, though it doesn't utterly sell my Trueborn point (though I still would argue they are the more adaptable unit) it does at least hold my point that, yeah, they hold up well as an alternate assault platform vs. Wyches.

I will also note, that it just occurred to me that I didn't consider the effects of overwatch (and I refuse to go back and do it now ) - I think it is very fair to suggest that if this was worked in it would strongly favor the Trueborn as they would never take more damage than the Wyches, would likely take less - and their damage numbers would be less effected because their damage output is largely in the shooting stage, not the assault stage, so can't be weakened by Overwatch kills which could hurt the Wyches performance drastically if more than 1 wound was taken.

I think my core point is - at the stage I can argue that using Trueborn in the assault is equivalent or superior to using Bloodbrides in the assault - that I have shown how badly designed Bloodbrides are.
At the end of the day I think that was sort of my core point

Really I still think you should use Wyches in Raiders Very Happy


Please avoid double posting. Use the edit function - Vasara

You have convinced. I am a tough sell but I think wyches in a raider w/dissies and aethersails would make the most sense here much as I would love to try out the brides - just because you know. It gives me four more OS troops and I think I can squeeze the points.

Yeah, and also remember, the gained FNP effect from the Haem benefits more the more bodies you have - so as you gain bodies you're exponentially increasing the durability of the unit because they're all getting FNP right off the bat.