Let's talk about Wyches

[Vel'Cona]

 

I'll be trying 10 wyches in a raider with all the special weapons running the red grief obsession in my first game on Saturday, I'll report back on how they do.

 

Gonna try Deep Striking them with Screaming Jets?

[Lord Asvaldir]

Depends on my opponent and the list I'm facing so we'll see. I'm going to try and get a full battle rep up as well. 

[Withershadow]

With Ravagers being only for Kabal, heat lances are the only real weapon we have for character sniping. The strength is inadequate for vehicles, but it does well against character models.  The re-rollable D6 should make melting characters' faces off a lot more reliable.  That is the only way I can see squeezing some use out of

 

Also, the flyover mortal wound stratagem is better than I thought, you get +1 on the roll if the target is infantry, so 20 hellions flying over a unit is 20 dice that deal mortal wounds on 5+. Pretty brutal. Doesn't change their fragility and general suckiness (and in fact a bigger footprint of 20 makes it that much worse), but I may proxy the other 10 for a unit of 20, and run them behind a wall of Venoms and Raiders to keep them from being shot to pieces.  I expect I will just fall back to 9-man Reaver squads, though.

[micahwc]

Any thoughts on bringing bloodbrides from the index? About 1.5x more expensive per wych, but an extra attack each.

[Lord Asvaldir]

Bloodbrides were also meh, now they are just a complete joke. Wyches went down to 8pts/m and went up an attack in their stats, so bloodbrides have no more use.

[Vel'Cona]

Bloodbrides were also meh, now they are just a complete joke. Wyches went down to 8pts/m and went up an attack in their stats, so bloodbrides have no more use.

 

So wait, they kept Bloodbrides but deleted Trueborn?

[Slips]

 

Bloodbrides were also meh, now they are just a complete joke. Wyches went down to 8pts/m and went up an attack in their stats, so bloodbrides have no more use.

 

So wait, they kept Bloodbrides but deleted Trueborn?

 

No, theyre also gone.

[GrinNfool]

 

Bloodbrides were also meh, now they are just a complete joke. Wyches went down to 8pts/m and went up an attack in their stats, so bloodbrides have no more use.

 

So wait, they kept Bloodbrides but deleted Trueborn?

 

Its more accurate to say they removed wyches IMHO.  "Wyches" are now what bloodbrides were, but at a cheaper cost than what wyches used to be.  Essentially what they did was give wyches the bloodbrides statline, lower the cost to 1 less than the wyches used to cost, and gave em a 6++.  Whats sad is they had to do all that just to make players even consider using them.  There are very few troops you could replace with an elite, lower the cost to below the old troop cost, and toss in an invuln, and not have players go, "Thats an auto include!"  That we are still debating if wyches are good or just ok, is telling of just how terrible they were lol.

[Lord Asvaldir]

I think it's safe to say that for 8pts wyches are a pretty good bargain. I'm not sure the ideal loadout for them yet or which trait to run them with in most games, but they look good to me. 

 

I don't see it as bloodbrides replacing wyches, I see it as wyches finally have the stats they deserve, and they actually feel like expert gladiator fighters like they were supposed to be now. 

[micahwc]

I didn't realize they got an extra attack. Seems like bloodbrides out the index are worthless. I can see some edge cases for trueborn, mostly for filling a transport with a bunch of blasters or dark lances, as an escort for an archon.

[Calyptra]

I don't think anybody's terribly broken up about losing Bloodbrides. They didn't have distinctive lore - they were just better Wyches - and they didn't do anything different for the army.

[Lord Asvaldir]

Yeah I bet lol, bloodbrides were always pretty useless. If the removal of bloodbrides was the cost of making wych's rules actually match their lore, it's a price I was more than happy to pay. 

[Slips]

Have the digital codex in hand ^_^

[Withershadow]

Picked up the loot today same time as my internet order arrived.

 

Codex, cards, 3 old starters, 2 new starters, 2 packs of scourges, and a pair of ravagers. Should get me to a decent starting place.

 

I was going to ditch the Succubus on bartertown, but when I read that they can take Wych weapons too now, there are a lot of interesting builds.  I will probably end up tossing 2 of the archons though, not too much customization with that model and I have several others (GW and third party) I intend to draft into service.  Tenebrael Shard will make a great Poison Tongue archon with Djinn blade.

[Lord Asvaldir]

Wow that's a lot of models and a super solid start to an army, you'll have a lot of building and painting to do in the next couple weeks. 

 

Succubus isn't a bad model, you can probably get two succubuses that look somewhat different out of it. Archon on the other hand, yeah it's such a terrible mono pose. The armor is nice but I've decided I think I can make a cooler model from a mix of scourge and kabalite models, so I'll be replacing my archon with a kitbash. 

[Withershadow]

I actually like the Archon (with a head swap), but even with different arms that “stand on a rock” pose is too similar. Raging Heroes has so many great models that can stand in for various Drukhari models, and I am looking forward to a lot of the AoS elf models being great conversion fodder.

The Naga ladies will be my Sslyth. The eyeless dudes with sculpted tendril hair will be my Mandrakes. That giant turtle is going to be a really messed up Raider for my Coven (or a tantalus if it’s big enough). I could even see myself using those snake/dragon riders as Hellions.

Painting will have to wait. I am // this close to finishing my Guard (only 4 tanks and 6 bullgryns left, plus a few miscellaneous advisor modes). Assembly should be fun though. I got two weeks of time off, one week will be spent boozing and   in Costa Rica to really get that Drukhari mind set going, then it’s go time.

[Vel'Cona]

I'd like to see that Naga conversion when you have a mock-up . . . the Sslyth models are neato but just too darn expensive for my tastes :)

[Withershadow]

I'd like to see that Naga conversion when you have a mock-up . . . the Sslyth models are neato but just too darn expensive for my tastes

Easy enough.

 

 

Take some spare warrior arms for the weapons, and there you go.

 

The whole range is amazing. I like these girls too:

 

May use them as extra skimpy Wyches, or at the very least just buy the heads to use on my Wyches.

 

Even these can make for some fun kitbashing opportunities with Scourges (although I love the scourge models, so maybe not).

 

[Lord Asvaldir]

Yeah scourge models are too good already to pass up on replacing with something else. 

 

Originally I thought the archon pose was fine, but the more I look at the archon I made the more unhappy I am with it. I'll be converting up a new archon with a much more dynamic pose, make him appear as if leaping in the air using some scourges legs than kitbash the rest with warrior bits. 

[Halandaar]

I had intended to grab some of those Sisters of Slaughter to use as Bloodbrides, but seeing as they've been scrapped, I'll save my cash (they are offensively expensive for an infantry kit).

[Ranwulf]

The Red Grief Succubus is amazing. With a 3++ Inv save, 4 attacks of Strength 6, Ap-3 with 1D3 damage, rerolling hits, I managed to kill Helbretch yesterday. The fact that she is cheap to make adds a lot of her value.

 

Ran

[Withershadow]

I love the troll succubus with Traitor's Embrace and a shardnet. You can't fall back out of combat, and if you kill me I explode! WAHAHAHAH!

[Lord Asvaldir]

That is a fun trolly unit but I think I'd prefer the build Ranwulf mentioned, that's probably one of the beast beatstick succubi you can make. Plus for their pts cost it's actually a really good bargain. Other good succubus would probably be the 3 extra attacks whip and cult of strife blood dancer trait, with possibly up to 9 attacks on the charge with 6s getting extra hits man that's a high output. 

 

Have to say I think our characters can be good, the only problem is it requires relics/traits. So you get 2, 3 at most good beatstick characters but the base archon for say 70pts isn't something I want to take 2-3 of. 

[Slips]

I also like the idea of an "RNG Succubus" from Cult of Strife using the Phial Bouquet Artefact, Stimm Addict WLT and Hyperstimm Backlash Strat.

• You get 2 Drugs at the start of the game; if you roll good, both of them are the same so: +2S/A/T or +4Move/LD
• One extra random (hopefully the same as those youve stacked if you were lucky) drug every turn. So possibly: +3S/A/T or +6Move/LD
• Hypertimm Backlash Trait to double all of this at the cost of D3 Automatic Mortal Wounds (hope you have a chronos nearby to try and heal her) for +6S/A/T or +12Move/LD

With an Archite Glaive, this POSSIBLY gets you a(n)*:

• S11 Succubus (S3 + 6 [hyperstimm] + 2 [glaive]) for when you need to wound pretty much everything on 2s, I guess? Shame its only 1 damage...
• Succubus with T9 for when you want her to be REALLY hard to kill.
• Succubus with 10 Attacks; but wait you're Cult of Strife so, sometimes, 11 Attacks.
• A 20" Movement for when you want your Succubus to be faster than the Flash, I guess.
• An LD 20 Model for...reasons..?

*provided the stars align just so; in practice, this'll probably literally never happen.

 

Another potential, when facing character heavy armies, is the Soul-Trap shenanigans Archon with the Soul Thirst Warlord Trait add the Djinn Blade to taste; Husk Blade is usually good enough.

• Everytime you kill a character your Archon gains: +1A/S/LD if you use the strat.
• +1 Wound previously lost from killing a Character; useful for counteracting the Djinn Blade if youre using it.
• A permanent +1A from the Warlord Trait if you charge and stuff.

It'll probably only ever work that one time vs regular opponents, however.

[Lord Asvaldir]

I really like the pumped up combat drugs succubus idea. Very random, but just sounds like fun, especially in those rare occasions when you get +3 strength/attacks. Only issue I think is two drugs are fairly useless- the ws and ld drug, both of which won't do anything really for the succubus. Don't like that 1/3 chance of getting something useless. 

 

Djinn blade archon is pretty solid I think. I ran one in my first game with the famed savagery trait from the flayed skull kabal and when he's charging or is charged he's 8 s5 attacks, such a solid output compared to any pre-codex archon. Soul-trap stratagem is cool, but definetly situational.