Drukhari Reboot: Fangs, Wings, and Thoughts

The Great Rebooting continues! Above you can see the Archon of my Kabalite contingent, Ophidia Zeras, Archon of the Hidden Fang. As you can see she's got some friends with her, three Sslyth made primarily from Daughters of Khaine Melusai. More detail on how these models were made can be found on my DA here.

The Hidden Fang are a former Commorite street gang who managed to steal a large number of combat skimmers, which is reflected in my current army by three Ravagers (which are undergoing replacement at the moment). Since these form a Spearhead, there are only five Warriors at the moment!

I've also finished the Scourges for the army:

'Standing on a Book' photography style borrowed from someone else's blog..

As you can see they're based on Khinerai and all carry Blasters except the leader, who has a Blast Pistol and a Power Lance. (DA link here for more details.)

I got a bit of a surprise last weekend when I realised that our FLGS was running a 2k tournament. Despite these models being finished the night before, I already had them written into a list that was suitable, so I gave them a try.

It did Not Go Well.

Some clarification- though I recorded two losses and a draw, I didn't think the games went too badly. We were on a fairly tight time limit and in all three games I was starting to turn the situation around before time caught up with us. I was particularly pleased with my first game, in which I took on a pure Knights list and was able to destroy several despite my 30 Wyches really not having the tools to hurt them much. (One did finish off a Knight with her Hydra Gauntlets though, which was amusing.)
The new models also did quite well, with the Scourges making pests of themselves and the Archon and her Sslyth making an impact, even if she single-handedly lost me the last game when her Raider blew up and took no less than five Warriors and a Sslyth with it before dumping the survivors in front of an Eldar gun-line. Shadow Fields can only take so much!

The biggest problem I'm finding with this edition's version of Dark Eldar is that you get very little protection from bad dice. Since Archons can't hand out their re-roll of 1s to hit whilst standing in a Raider or Venom, it's very hard to deal with those days when you can't seem to roll well- in my last game, for example, I fired no less than six Dark Lance shots before I scored a hit- and this was needing flat 3+. That's the sort of thing you have re-roll bubbles for, only Drukhari really don't. Something like a Command Vehicle rule or even Stratagem to allow an Archon to lead from his Raider/ Venom would help a lot.

I've said it before, but Drukhari also really, really miss the Lance rule. The lack of it (the short version is that Dark Lances and other Darklight weapons used to damage Vehicles on 4+ at worst) means that outside of the S9 Void Lances on the Voidraven it's very hard to reliably damage tough targets. Thermal Lances, at S6, are almost worthless for anti-vehicle work and Haywire Blasters are really, really weak. This issue is compounded by the fact that unless you go with Haemonculus Covens, Drukhari have barely any melee weapons that can damage vehicles. There's no close combat weapon available to either Wyches or Kabalites above S6 (7 with combat drugs). There's also no Stratagem to give +1 to Wound in either the fight or shoot phases, which for an army with such low Strength on most of its attacks is a real pain.

Probably the best symptom of how 8th Edition and Drukhari aren't quite meshing right now is the fact that many players are taking Disintegrators over Dark Lances, especially on Ravagers. In the first blush, this seems daft- Disintegrators are anti-infantry weapons, something that Drukhari armies with all their access to Poison and massed splinter fire shouldn't need too much more of. But because of the odd way Toughness works in 8th, once a vehicle passes T8 Disintegrators are better against it than Dark Lances are, and even on lower Toughness targets the volume of dice makes them almost as good against Vehicles (and of course a lot better against Infantry).

I'm an old traditionalist who still remembers the days when the fact that Raiders had Dark Lances meant each of my transports could potentially one-shot a Land Raider, so I'm persevering with the 'bigger' gun for now, but believe me, I'm eyeing the performance of my Disintegrator Ravager very carefully....

WIP shot! Help.

Drukhari Reboot: Showcase

Since I've finally completed Phase 1 of replacing practically my entire Dark El- sorry, Drukhari army, I thought it was about time for a showcase post. Of course since you read this blog religiously- and I apologise if the notification that this post had gone up disrupted any other plans you might have had for the day- you've already seen the Command Raider from a while back.

But now there's more.

Oh, so much more.

Such needful things!

First up are my twin sister Succubi, Hypatia the Henna-Haired Harridan and Ritala, the Lashtongue. Hypatia, with the Blood Glaive, is currently the Warlord but Ritala would love to claim the title and also the other half of the Gleaming Visage, their mother's mask. These two are based on the Gemini Twins from Rumbleslam, and have a hidden feature- due to a magnet concealed in the skull each is standing on, they can do this:

I'm quite pleased with how that worked out, though on the army's first outing yesterday I, er, forgot to bring them with me. So their Raider-surfing debut is yet to come! (I put them in the carry case as soon as these photos were taken, so they shouldn't miss the bus next time.)

Next up are the Reavers:

As usual, I've used magnets to allow the weapons on the two special weapon bikes to be swapped out. At the moment, going on the theory that two Blasters aren't all that likely to do much on their own, I'm using Heat Lances with a view to killing Characters that rely on an armour save to survive. I still think that someone hasn't noticed that the Lance rule isn't a thing any more, since using the things against vehicles is so unreliable.

My Wyches are all converted from Witch Elves now, which leaves me with a sizeable pile of old metal and plastic Wyches just sort of sitting there. Anyway, the reboot has allowed me to do this:

And match them to this:

Now the idea here is that each Wych squad has its own distinct hair colour, which matches that of the crew of the Raider they ride in. So above, for example, we have the Daughters of Xereus and the Conveyance of Xereus, which they ride in. A minor, well, sort of minor, error I made was that since the Daughters were made a long time ago as a squad of Bloodbrides, they have three Shardnets which is of course two more than they really need. So in practice, the hair thing only applies to the standard Wyches, the specialists have different colours which do at least help them stand out in a squad.

So, the next squad are the Nightshade Coven:

You'll probably spot right away that there's four special weapons in there. I grouped them by hair colour for the shot since this whole thing also served as a census of sorts. Old hands might notice that one of the Wyches, rather than Hydra Gauntlets, is a traditionalist who's gone with Hydraknives. (Made, shockingly, by sticking two knives together). This unit has mostly Wych arms, making them look a bit more muscular than those using Witch Elf limbs, so it usually has the +1 Strength combat drug. That's also why the Hekatrix has a Power Sword.

Now, that brings up a little side-point which I was looking to mention- tracking combat drugs. My FLGS recently acquired a laser engraver and has therefore been engraving anything into everything that can't get away fast enough, so I commissioned a set of these:

If you like to live dangerously and roll up all your Drugs, these dice let you do it without having to look up the result, and regardless of how you generate your bonuses you can then use the dice as a marker. The red dice is a turn counter that also tracks what level Power From Pain is at. Handy, and available here. Back to the models!

One more Wych squad, the Sisterhood of Screams after their Screamer Pink hair. In practice, I go with one each of the three Wych special weapons since all three are pretty decent now. I'm sure one of those fellows with a spreadsheet will tell us all which one is 'best' eventually, but I like how all of them came out so I'm keeping them.

I nearly forgot to mention that I was really cross to discover that there was indeed a Shock Prow part and the bloody thing only comes in the Ravager kit. Darn you Games Workshop, darn you to heck!

Next up will be the Kabalite side of the force, once it's done, along with Sslyth, and Scourges. That's going to include three Ravagers though, and so far I have one which is still in the box, so don't hold your breath.

Oh, and get back to that important thing I interrupted. Sorry!