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!

This thing only goes to eleven...

A quick, late-night chat this, but I saw something today that brought home a thought I'd been having for a while. Specifically, it was about Cyberpunk 2077 and the developers' decision to go first-person with it, but the issue goes a far bit deeper than that.

Now, I'm not all that happy with CDPR's decision, but here's the thing- that's as far as it goes. On the miff-o-meter, it's a 4 at most- miffed, possibly even grumpy, but that's it. To read the Internet headlines, however, I'm apparently part of a 'backlash' or I'm 'outraged' or 'furious'. A lot has been said recently about how gaming, be it video-gaming, hobby games like 40k,  PnP RPGs or whatever needs to be more 'inclusive' and one of the things used to justify that statement is a perception that gamers are angry man-children who won't hesitate to throw their toys out of the pram the instant something in their favourite pastime isn't exactly as they want it to be.

I had to do it- they nerfed my Dreadnought!

That suits the internet news machine, of course. It's much more click-worthy to talk about gamers being 'outraged' at women being depicted as front-line troops in a WWII game than it is to say that they're scratching their heads at the idea a bit from a historical perspective. A nice juicy wrapper of misogyny makes the argument far more likely to explode into an ad-revenue generating flame-war. Never mind that many of the people raising the historical points had no problem with women in FPS games in a more modern setting where it makes sense- if they complain, they must be knuckle-dragging chauvinists. And of course you can rely on a few useful idiots to send Twitter death-threats to the developers into the bargain.

There's a related issue there about whether games set in historical periods should be criticised for not sticking to the social norms of those eras. This one cuts both ways- I've commented before on the (terrible) pirate-themed game "Raven's Cry" being pilloried because its cast were violet, foul-mouthed racists despite the fact that by all accounts pirates of the 17th century most certainly were all that and worse. It seems to me that there's a thin wedge being driven in here- if we say that historical accuracy isn't important, it makes it harder to use it as an 'excuse' for content and attitudes in a game that people consider 'problematic'- people say you're using the setting because you want to push those attitudes. But I digress to the extent that I'm going to stick this paragraph in italics.

To get back to the point- I think we've known for some time that the internet has a problem with nuanced discussion. It's hard, though by no means impossible, to find any forum or thread discussing a contentious point without someone getting angry and personal about it. The media, or at least that part of it that relies on clicks to survive, doesn't help, turning every disagreement into a massive, community-splitting Armageddon. I think that much of the time, the truth of the matter is quite different, and many of these things actually only have the majority of the relevant communities wanting their quite sensible points to be heard. The problem is that as soon as the Red Lanterns of the internet turn up- and if they aren't there initially, some hack will soon see to it that they're summoned-that's it. The reasonable people check out or watch silently in despair as someone claiming to agree with them proceeds to act like Pol Pot has possessed their keyboard.

The problems with this are twofold. Firstly, it allows people with an agenda against a given community- and it can be any community, from gamers to S&M devotees to Vegans- to paint that community as a bunch of angry cretins. Secondly, it allows developers, film producers and other creatives to make hideously bad decisions and then often look like heroes for standing by them because the Red Lanterns turned up to attack them over it. Other times, of course, those same creatives are simply making a decision that's unpopular with a small but vocal clique of their so-called fans and standing by it is exactly the right thing to do. The problem is that in an online world where everything only goes to eleven, those two situations look very much the same.

Can you Keep a Secret?

Not pictured: An official Keeper of Secrets

There's been a bit of chat recently about the possibility that we might see a new Keeper of Secrets model, or maybe even a new wave of Slaanesh Daemons in general, as the Age of Sigmar story rolls onward. At the moment, the Keeper is in a very odd place on the 40k battlefield.

Hurt Me Plenty
The Keeper of Secrets is by some distance the weakest of the four Greater Daemons (if we're lazy and lump the various forms of Bloodthirster, Great Unclean One and Lord of Change together). It's fast-moving, true, and certainly capable of doing some damage with its close combat attacks and a couple of psychic powers, but all it has between it and a first-class one-way ticket to the Warp is T7, a 5++, and 12 Wounds. Compared to the considerably cheaper Winged Daemon Prince, which has 3+ armour and the protection of being a Character with less than 10 Wounds, the Keeper is almost impossible to, er, keep on the table for more than a turn.

I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me...
In part, this is understandable due to the state of the current Keeper model. With no nice new plastic combi-kit to call its own, we can see why the Keeper might be a little lacking in the rules department, too. But even this doesn't entirely make sense. Compare this:

I'm scary, honest

With this:

Jog on, pipsqueak

Now, although those two pictures aren't quite in the same scale, they're both on 60mm bases. We can see that in terms of mass, the current Keeper and the Daemon Prince are about the same, though if they were getting ready for a weigh-in I suspect the Prince would be desperately cutting water whilst the Keeper ordered a Big Mac Meal. The point is that going by the models, there seems no reason why the Keeper should have 4 more Wounds and suddenly be a fire magnet whereas the Prince gets to sit happily in the sweet spot. As things stand, the Keeper is what my Grandmother might have called 'Too tall for Dick and too short for Richard'- it's supposedly a big target, but it's simply not tough enough to roll in that league. It's like putting Manny Pacquiao in a fat-suit and on stilts and then throwing him up against Vitali Klitschko.*

You gets what you pays for (sort of)
Now, to be fair to the authors of the Daemon Codex, they at least made the Keeper considerably cheaper, to the tune of about 100 points, than the other Greater Daemons. But I'd argue that in its current state it's not even worth as much as a Daemon Prince unless you're lucky enough to run into another army with next to no shooting. There's also really not a lot you can do to protect the thing. (It doesn't help me that my Keepers are third-party models and are far bigger than they really should be)

No way is this hiding behind a Soul Grinder

There are Stratagems that can help, at least a little. You can reserve the thing with Denizens of the Warp, but that just delays the problem- the Keeper can't do much when it arrives other than throw a few powers and hope to make a 9" charge. Warp Surge can boost it to a 4++ for a phase but that still feels very flimsy, especially when poison or Deathwatch special issue ammo is about. (It's particularly perverse (appropriately) that Hellfire rounds, designed to kill Tyranids, are considerably better at killing the Keeper than they are at killing the armoured Big Bugs)

You could also try to summon one with Daemonic Ritual. Stop laughing at the back! (The advantage of this is that at least you can then spend the points on something else that might be useful and easier to summon.)

Don't get me started on the Daemon version of Delightful Agonies only granting a 6+ FNP when the Astartes version is 5+. Seriously. Don't Go There.

Where do we go from here?
Hopefully it's not too much to expect for any new Keeper kit to be accompanied by new rules, just as those for the other Greater Daemons were. So, what might we do to the Keeper to help it stay alive long enough to do something, assuming that dropping below 10 Wounds so it can hide isn't an option?

One possibility might be to simply ignore that aspect of the Character rule. Rather than dropping the Wounds of the Keeper, give it a special rule called, say, Bewitching Glamour, that means that the Keeper can only be shot if it's the closest target. Another might be that old favourite, a -1 To Hit for shooting attacks to go with the one it already has in close combat.

We could also consider giving the Keeper a version of the old Look Out Sir rule, perhaps allowing it to take a 2+ save against a hit in exchange for putting a Mortal Wound on a Slaanesh Lesser Daemon within 6". This would make using it to support Daemonettes much more viable, rather than the situation at the moment where it's basically suicide.

Of course, these are only my quick thoughts on the subject, and it's quite possible that GW will surprise and delight Slaanesh players if and when the new model is released, and not just because it'll mean Slaanesh is Still A Thing.

I'm keeping my fingers and... other extremities crossed.




*Note to boxing nerds: I have no idea how that would actually go, but I know how the people who wrote the weight rules would expect it to go.

When a Cauldron of Blood and a Raider love each other very much....

I know I've been a little quiet on here recently, but I've been busy behind the scenes. I thought today I'd show off my first re-rebooted Raider.

The idea for this model goes back all the way to my earliest days of posting on DA, with Version 1 of the model using the old-style Raider and the metal Cauldron parts. When both models got updated to be, in GW's typical style, bigger, madder and more complicated, I toyed with replacing the model with a new version but at the time I had no appetite for re-doing the entire army. Finally, however, I've got around to re-jigging the entire force for 8th Edition- I've already made 30 Witch Elf/ Wych hybrids so now it's time to start on the motor pool.

As I usually do with such projects, I built another Raider stock first to get the idea of how the kit worked, and tested various versions of the idea on it. For a previous project, I had parts of the Cauldron kit lying around, so I used the pre-assembled stairs to test fit and work out how to cut things about to get everything to fit. I failed to notice a bit of flash on the stairs, which I used in this build, until waaaay too late but you can't see it and I'm not telling you where it is, so nyah.

Obligatory butt-shot.

Eventually I settled on cutting the platform which the Avatar statue goes on down shorter until the stairs would just about reach it, slightly shortening the boom that supports the Cauldron, and having the stairs lead down to the well before the front gunner's position. That sounds a lot easier than it in fact was. Possibly due to the alterations to the boom, the Cauldron was poorly supported and moved about even when glued, so I reluctantly used the two crew with the spears as a structural element- they're glued solid to the model and hold everything in place. This was exactly as irritating during painting as you might expect. The rear platform was also then supported by cutting down all the struts that wouldn't fit until they just about would.

A problem I was left with was that there are two holes in the Raider deck for pegs that support the central rack which holds the Aethersail. I could have simply filled these with Green Stuff but that would have left two very obvious blanks in the deck, so instead I covered the rear one with a couple of salvaged slave girls from an older model, and the front one with a pile of skulls from GW's oh-so-handy recent set. This also meant that the Death Hag who's serving as commander/ gunner can still rest one foot on hers without looking out of place. I added a pistol-grip to the Disintegrator, since she wasn't going to be holding it, by splicing in the end of a spare splinter rifle- since I'm going to need a fair few Wych-crewed Raiders I'm probably going to use this dodge again. A little Green Stuff cleaned up the merge.

Peekaboo slave girl. She's older than the rest of them, but she wears it well.

The rear fighting platform has a small magnet buried in it. This can just about support the Avatar statue, which isn't in these shots because it's not 100% painted and would have made the model deeply awkward to photograph. Primarily, though, the platform will be used to hold the Succubus leading the raid until she gets out. In a plan so cunning that you can brush your teeth with it, I'm going to have her standing on another skull, which will have a magnet in it, allowing me to remove her from her base and stand her on the Raider, so at least one won't have an inexplicable circle of green grass on board.

Finally a top tip for models with flying bases- before choosing which 'stem' to use, dry-fit the candidates into the receiving hole. Most of the time, one will fit snugly enough that you can pop the model on and off with some confidence, as is the case here. Wear may change that, but for transport reasons you really, really don't want to be gluing them.

That's probably just a vat of combat drugs. Why does it have a bone in it? Why not?

Painting- yep, I painted it. It was deeply irritating (I find this sort of build is impossible to paint pre-assembly) so I'm not saying any more about that, TYVM.

Leverage: A new short story

To follow up on the release of The Third Mirror, I've written another Thelenic Curriculum short. This one is called 'Leverage' and is set at roughly the same time as The Oath of Sherenith.

As always, if you find the story interesting, you can buy the first book, The Wake of Manadar, on kindle or paperback right now from Amazon, as well as reading both that book and The Third Mirror for free digitally with Kindle Unlimited. Think of it like Patreon, only it only costs £2 once...

Alternatively, if you'd just like to learn a bit more about the world of the books, head on over to the Thelenic Curriculum Landing Page.

The Law of Unintended Consequences

It's a well-known fact that tweaking a game like 40k is complicated. With the enormous amount of factions, special rules, models, rules (and differing interpretations of said rules) in the game now, anything GW does to fix an issue runs a very real risk of breaking something else. Several of the changes in The Big FAQ and its related documents have done just that.

Kabalites Can't Have Spearheads, and other stories
Of all the Codexes for 8th Edition, you'd expect the Drukhari to be the most compatible with the most recent FAQs, seeing as it came out something like a week before them. However, the unique way that DE are split into Kabalites, Cults and Covens poses some pretty serious issues, at least in 'events'. It's already  well documented that due to the limit on Detachments, the DE's ability to gain Command Points by taking multiple Patrols doesn't work very well, but what's been discussed less is that the changes also deprive them of some Detachments altogether. For example, one list I was playing about with had a Wych Cult Battalion, supported by a Kabalite Spearhead. However, this was a 1000 point list and at that point level, you can only take two of each Datasheet, and since Kabalites only have one Heavy Support choice (Ravagers) it's not possible for them to take a legal Spearhead. Even at higher point levels, the fact that most of the DE sub-factions only have one HQ choice, plus the special characters, means that even if you could take multiple detachments, you'd soon have no-one legally available to lead them.

Yes, somehow they nerfed Sisters of Battle
If you're a Sororitas player you probably read that last part going 'yeah, cry me a ***** river.' However bad the limits are for Drukhari, they're much, much worse for Sisters of Battle. With a grand total of one HQ choice that isn't a special character (plus Celestine and maybe Uriah Jacobus, depending on your tolerance for shotgun-toting hillbillies) it starts to get really, really tricky to field more than one Detachment. It's sort of ironic that in an update that was supposed to crack down on 'soup' armies, Sisters have been all but forced to field other Imperials to make legal lists.

You can't see me because I'm not hiding
I've talked before about the fact that I think the current Character targeting rules are dumb, and the most recent changes have done little to change my mind. I understand that Rhino Sniping was a thing, and I even made some suggestions to address it in the previous post, but GW still don't seem to think there's anything wrong with units being forced to not shoot at a model which is literally the only thing they can see to shoot at. The idea that a player can lock a unit in combat so they can't be shot, and then have a character standing behind them who can't be shot because there's a closer unit is silly, and it's the sort of thing that makes any game a hard sell to new players. Sure, old hands know about all the exploits the rule is there to stop, but to a newcomer "your guys won't shoot him because they don't think he's important." sounds plain daft. I miss Look Out Sir!

You can't hit me because I said so
This is the worst one for me, the real gear-grinder. The FAQs confirm that if a player manages to place his models in such a way that enemy models can't get into base contact with them, most typically by standing on any elevated floor of a GW ruin, then they can't be Assaulted. Doesn't seem to matter if you're a Knight Titan or a Lord of Skulls who one might expect to be quite pleased to not have to bend down so much, and no-one much cares that you've got a Jump Pack or even that you're standing on the level above with a Power Lance, they're immune. Fill a Ruin floor with Scouts, and 2000 Daemonettes can do nothing to them apart from give them some funny dreams. Put Alaitoc Rangers there and a buff or two later you can push Orks into the 7+ to hit bracket for their shooting whilst making it impossible to charge you because bricks.

Of all the changes, this is the one I think is going to cause the most trouble. GW better hope that the players at live-streamed tournaments get the hint and drop assault units like they're on fire, because the pros are going to abuse this one until it begs for mercy. At my own FLGS we've generally just house-ruled this sort of situation as a Wobbly Model Syndrome scenario, but that's not going to fly at Adepticon or Throne of Skulls, I fear.

The Inevitable Cheerful Bit
I should say, though, that overall I like the intent of the Big FAQ, if not all of the results. Hopefully GW will continue to listen to feedback and the kinks will get ironed out. Hopefully....