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Dark Eldar players: do not sleep on Mandrakes

Warhammer 40,000′s 8th edition gave Mandrakes a big lift, thanks to a couple things:

-the deploy from reserves mechanic -mortal wounds

back in 7th they got incredible cover save bonuses and an... all right ranged weapon. It beat their 5th edition incarnation, where they couldn’t even shoot unless they had a pain token. In 7th, the baleblast was assault 2, s4, ap4, an apologetic cough of an attack on an expensive platform competing with blasterborn and a threat to basically nothing. It had Soulfire, the rule half of us forgot to use, which had a 50% chance of doing an extra bolter hit’s worth of maybe damage.

Now? The baleblast is still s4 assault 2, but it’s ap -1... and on a 6 to wound, it procs a Mortal Wound. That is the good shit my friends. Combine that with their ability to deploy from reserves and you’re always going to be firing at something. You get enough Mandrakes flinging enough baleblasts and the enemy will melt fast.

They’re great against horde units. I’ve used them to punish GSC acolytes and Genestealers. They’ll punish heavy weapon squads, like Devastators, if they’re out of position. So far they’re one of the most reliable ways to put lots of Mortal Wounds on a target -- Reavers can only take 3 caltrops or grav talons, each of which will do a Mortal Wound on a 4+... and if you want 3, you’re paying 270 points on top of any other wargear because Reavers are bonkers expensive now.

The catch? Mandrakes can’t take a punch. A 5+ invulnerable save and 6+ Power From Pain save won’t protect them from 150 points worth of any Troops choice you care to name firing back. They’re Strength 4 native and swing 3 times each in the Fight phase, but overwatch fire will rip them apart, and at 19 points per model you don’t want to be cavalier with their lives. Using cover won’t save them either - their base save is 7+.

You’ll want someone else to make the charge. Team up with a Raider of Wyches to really dry gulch an enemy unit - thin their ranks with baleblasts, eat overwatch with the Raider, then send in the Wyches (and maybe the Mandrakes) to finish the job.

The longer they stay alive and out of combat, the more they can throw baleblasts and pile up those delicious mortal wounds. After years of struggling to find a role, or being eclipsed by 6th/7th edition deathstars, Mandrakes embody the Dark Eldar “glass cannon” ethos. It’s about time.

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8th Edition Battle Report: Wych Cult Drukhari vs. Genestealer Cults

I played my first game of Warhammer 40,000 8th edition in Vassal yesterday, based on leaks. My opponent and I chose 1500 point lists: he went with Genestealer Cults and I tried a Wych Cult Dark Eldar army.

The composition was roughly so:

GSC:

1 Primus with a bunch of Acolyte buddies, set up in ambush 1 Patriarch with 20 Purestrain Genestealers, set up in ambush 2 Goliath Rockgrinders with clearance incinerators, sort of a halfway point between a heavy flamer and the cannon on a Hellhound 3 Goliath trucks with autocannons, each full of Neophytes sporting a mix of shotguns, flamers, and mining lasers

Dark Eldar:

1 Archon in a Raider full of Wyches 1 Succubus in a Raider full of Wyches 1 Raider full of Wyches 7 Mandrakes in reserve 10 Hellions 5 Scourges with 4 heat lances 1 Cronos Parasite Engine 1 Ravager with dark lances

The mission we rolled was The Scouring with Hammer and Anvil deployment. He went first, because he had the smaller deployment. I expect it’s a fair bet if you’re playing as GSC, you’ll go first.

Turn 1:

The Cult came out swinging. The trucks made a rolling advance straight for me and his ambush dice were hot: the Primus and Acolytes jumped up behind my Ravager and got to move closer before making their charge. The Patriarch and Purestrains did the same with my Hellions, who I had stashed in cover.

The Patriarch shot a Raider with mind bullets, taking off a few wounds. The trucks peppered my Raiders to no great effect. The -1 penalty to hit on the move did his Autocannons no favors. His ambushing units did far better: the Acolytes put on a clinic and knocked out 7/10 of the Ravager’s wounds before it could even open fire. (I left the Ravager out of position, thinking I needed to shield it from shooting, but made it a prime target for ambushers.) And then the Purestrains charged.

Overwatch with 10 splinter pods managed to kill only one Genestealer. His Patriarch swung first, killing four Hellions all by his lonesome. Here’s where I learned the power of command points. I spent 2 CP to sequence-break and make a counter-offensive with the Hellions, who swung into the Genestealers and killed several of them, getting them close to below 10. The surviving Purestrains easily ripped the Hellions apart, winning First Blood.

Without those command points he would have cleared through the Hellions with zero losses. Instead I whittled the Genestealers down to a manageable level.

On the bottom of turn 1, I got to retaliate. The Ravager moved away from the Acolytes, the Raiders with the Succubus and Archon disembarked to fight the Genestealers, and my Mandrakes stepped out of the shadows behind the Acolytes. The Cronos lurched in behind the Wyches.

My dark lances singed one of his Rockgrinders and a Goliath transport, but didn’t do enough harm to hinder their capabilities. I kept the Scourges back and generally withdrew from his advancing trucks to deal with the infiltrators in the back field. The Scourges and Mandrakes burned all of the Acolytes to a crisp, leaving his Primus in the corner of the board with no cover. Some shooting at the Patriarch didn’t do much: he ate a dark lance hit but only lost 2 wounds, and any splinter pistol wounds he took went into the blob of Genestealers who used their “get down, Mr. President!” rule to tank hits for him.

In Assault, the wyches, Archon and Succubus killed off the Patriarch and his surviving Genestealers, earning me Slay the Warlord.

Turn 2:

The trucks move even closer. Firing on the move does them no favors, but the autocannons start to take their tolls, and the Rockgrinders are close enough to shoot their Clearance Incinerators. He shoots my Ravager to bits and leaves one Raider hanging on with a single wound.

On my turn, the Mandrakes creep toward the Primus and wound him 11 times with Baleblasts, plus about three mortal wounds from rolling 6s to wound. The Primus does not survive.

One squad of Wyches moves deeper into ruins to sit on an objective. Another squad, which lost a couple models, piles back into a Raider with both of my HQs. Finally, the last Wych squad I kept inside a Raider disembarks. At a full 10 models, I put three hydra gauntlets on them to see what they could do. I rush them toward a wounded Goliath truck, accompanied by Scourges, who swoop forward to within the half-distance range of their heat lances.

Four heat lances make short work of the Goliath. The Wyches charge into the Neophytes who stumble out and I forget what Overwatch does to Wyches. He has two flamers, so the Wyches are burnt down to nearly half strength before they close in - but the survivors kill the Neophytes without much trouble.

Turn 3:

He’s seen what my Scourges can do and wants them dead. He disembarks his remaining two Neophyte squads from surviving trucks, which, this turn, stay still. The improvement to his accuracy takes a toll on my forces: his shooting kills two Scourges and cripples another Raider. His Neophytes take aim at my Cronos, but disembarking spoils the aim of their mining lasers. In the end, the Cronos takes only one wound.

In the assault phase, to the Cult’s glee, one of the Rockgrinders charges into my Raider with 1 wound left and rips it apart with the saw-teeth of his drilldozer.

At the bottom of 3, Power from Pain has ramped up to the point where all my Wyches now hit on 2s (and the Cronos hits on 3s). The objective-hugging Wyches move closer to the Rockgrinder that just smashed their ride, ready to do some Hail Mary wounds with their noodle arms if they have to. The Succubus jumps out of the Raider in which she embarked last turn and heads down to help those Wyches. (I gave her the drugs with +2 movement so she’s skating around the board at a ridiculous 10”.)

The embarked Wych Squad and the Archon head in the opposite direction to menace one of the Neophyte squads. The depleted Wyches who killed one of the Neophyte squads last turn race down to join them. The Cronos glides forward in between both.

The Mandrakes run into another set of ruins, positioning to claim an objective next turn.

My shooting dice are hot. With only two heat lances left, the Scourges melt a Goliath truck into slag. One of my two surviving Raiders lines up its dark lance and blows up one of the Rockgrinders I’ve been plinking at all game, the one my Succubus and her Wyches prepared to assault. He rolls a 6 and the ensuing explosion does 3 mortal wounds to the Succubus and Wyches. Ouch.

He’s packed his two Neophyte squads together, so the Cronos charges in, tying up both, absorbing Overwatch fire to no effect. The Wyches and Archon rush in behind them and wipe out both squads of Neophytes. Because the Goliath truck behind them didn’t move, the Cronos consolidates forward to tie it up in close combat. (We couldn’t find any rules that say you cannot do this. If we missed this, please let us know.)

Turn 4:

The Cult player, with only two models on the board, decides to concede at the end of his turn. He moves his Goliath truck away from the Cronos, freeing it from assault, but leaving it unable to fire its guns this turn. The surviving Rockgrinder swings around to burn down half of one Wych squad with its incinerator, then charges in. Its drilldozer catches air, but my Wyches fair to put even a single wound onto the machine in return. Victory to the Dark Eldar! Moral victory to the surviving Rockgrinder!

Final thoughts:

Scatter-free, mid-game deployment is scary good. Is this what Space Marines have enjoyed with their drop pods all this time? If you play against Genestealer Cults, count on them putting a serious hurt on the units in your vanguard on turn 1. Mandrakes are excellent counter units who can punish big squads of light infantry or small heavy weapon squads. They will wreck unprotected Devastators.

Auras are nice. With the Cronos and Succubus together, nearby Wyches rerolled 1s both to hit and to wound. With the Patriarch nearby, I had to kill all 20 of his attendant Genestealers because they were immune to morale checks.

Morale checks are nailbiters, especially for a unit as fragile as Wyches. I came close to losing more Scourges, but was able to keep them on the board because I didn’t remove the squad leader. It may be wise to keep some command points in your back pocket to auto-pass a clutch morale test.

Dark Eldar still need a lot of high-strength, high-damage guns to deal with vehicles. Haywire grenades seem to have stopped existing. The Archon is a weenie now: with no way to increase their Strength, a huskblade is a waste of points (it does d3 damage per strike, but has less AP than a power sword). Fortunately their close combat weapons are priced accordingly: an Agoniser, once like 20 or 25 points, is now 4.

The improvements to Dark Eldar are not immediately obvious until you play. Dark Lances pack a greater punch. We could see a big difference between the Goliaths, with autocannons hitting on a 5+ on the move, and Dark Eldar craft which could do the same at 3+. Wyches hitting on 3+ (and later 2+) give them a respectable damage output, especially if there’s a Succubus or a Cronos nearby. Being able to choose combat drugs gives them even more utility. I still wouldn’t send them into a fair fight, one on one… but they can set up unfair fights with greater ease.

Now, I wonder how they’ll do against Astartes...

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You: nooo! my eldar jetbikes are bad now!

Me:

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Observations about characters in 40K 8th Edition

Lelith Hesperax, contrary to her lore for at least five years, gains access to combat drugs. her parents, pastor and D.A.R.E. officer are very disappointed with her

I love that Kharn can ONLY fire his pistol in overcharge mode. he probably chewed off the safety toggle.

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yo why the fuck are reaver jetbikes now 30 points per model

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guess it’s too much to ask for /tg/ to calm down for even five minutes with the ironic-but-not-really racism huh

I like fast-moving discussions about Warhammer 40,000 but their 40k general threads can’t go 10 posts without someone going septic for cool fash points

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I should be working like gangbusters to finish my Dark Eldar vehicles in advance of 8th edition, but they are so AWFUL to put together

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Bugs Bunny accidentally transformed the word nimrod into a synonym for idiot because nobody got a joke where he sarcastically compared Elmer Fudd to the Biblical figure Nimrod, a mighty hunter.

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April Request 17: Lelith Hesperax reading a book on a couch https://www.patreon.com/luth

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Dark Eldar Hellion by Sick Joe.

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People are hyperventilating that the marines in the 8th edition starter set will be truescale and make their existing collections look like squatting children in armor.

meanwhile, ork players are looking at the news that their codex will be invalidated and replaced with fresh rules like

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Some quick thoughts:

-This is what’s gonna get me back into the hobby. Breaking backwards compatibility is a necessary step to start everyone on the same footing. It’s not a perfect solution; I’m going to pour one out for Chaos players who finally got bespoke legion rules for the first time since 2007 only to have them taken away not even a year later. But Games Workshop has iterated on basically the same ruleset since 1998. It’s past time for GW to clear out the bloat and try something new.

-The writing of the FAQ sets an excited and penitent tone. The message they’re trying really hard to convey is “we heard you, and this is the Warhammer 40,000 you wanted to play.” If you had told me 10 years ago that GW would ever take this kind of position with its customers, I wouldn’t have believed you.

-It’s clear GW has learned from Age of Sigmar. AoS fell on its ass from the get go but pivoted quickly when customers screamed for matched play rules. The General’s Handbook model of annual, revised point costs will do a lot of work to address codex creep, and the inevitable change of design priorities mid-edition.

-I’m really looking forward to this edition. It’d be nice to dust off my models and actually play with them.

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I wonder how many Chaos Marines switched sides back to the imperium a few years into the heresy when their commanders started turning into Daemon Princes.

“Hey um, the boss just turned into a snake, is that like a normal Primarch thing? Could he always do that? Is he going to turn back or…?”

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this is your march 31, 2017 reminder that in the world of Warhammer 40,000, according to Dan Abnett’s Unremembered Empire, aliens killed Martin Luther King Jr. because they thought leaving him alive would lead to the ultimate victory of Chaos

do 40k authors ever like, talk to black people? could not someone have looked at this passage and gone “uhhhhh”

I mean there’s nothing stopping you from saying MLK had to die because civil rights for black people is the REAL evil but maybe a middle-aged white guy from old blighty is not the right voice to tell this particular tale

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OK but this is pretty buck wild: $1 gets you close to $50 worth of Horus Heresy novels. There are only a few here worth a tinker’s damn, and I might chip in just to get a digital copy of Horus Rising since I lost my paperback.

But after the last 8 years of the grognard tax on these books, charging $2 for a digital pamphlet about boltguns, staggered releases of $50 prestige tomes a month before affordable mass market editions (TALON OF HORUS I’M LOOKING RIGHT THE FUCK AT YOU)...

if you told me Games Workshop was willing to leave money on the table in the name of building goodwill and spreading their brand, I wouldn’t have believed you before today.

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The two kinds of video battle report:

American: *car salesman voice* HEY I’m guy fieri and this is my opponent, guy fieri and let’s mash the latest tourney meta darlings into a pile in the center of the game board!!

U.K.: hello goys I’m here wiv me Block Legion speartip, did you know Goico can soaive you fifteen puhcent on caw insurance *gently positions a true-to-fluff army collected since 1998 with a friend doing the same*