Are Taloï ... bad?

Hey all,

So, I am just starting what I want to be a solo (or as close to solo) Coven army as possible, and while I know it would be wise to wait for the dex to drop, I'm already buying some of the stuff I know I am going to need in any case: Haemmonculi, transports, and now wracks and pain engines.

The issue is that I really would like to play this as a low modelcount army especially because my other army is Guard <ducks> and so it would seem to make sense to go heavy on the pain engines. But looking at their index rules they just don't seem to have enough punch for their points. It seems like the best coven bang for your buck is just going with a lot of Wracks.

What has been the community's experience with Taloï so far this edition and how are you arming them?

Would a Spearhead detachment of several pain engines and some extra stuff play well?

Do not touch the Talos. It isn't good. It is bad at melee, bad at range, and isn't even particularly tanky.

Wracks are definitely the way to go for Covens. Grots are mediocre. Talos are flat out bad. The Haemie is pretty okay and is our best CC HQ.

Talos are so bad they're beyond anything else I've seen this edition.

Pain engines and Urien are our tankiest option by a reasonably wide margin.

Given we currently don't have tools to kill hordes, tying them up with pain engines is probably our best bet. The Cronos has a slight edge of the Talos on that front. That's the only real positive for pain engines.

There could be significant tweaks in the Codex, but as of right now, I can't see a good in game reason to play coven units.

Kiblam loves his pain engines. You can find him on youtube.

If you want low model count, you'll need them. But anyone building a new codexless army in this edition should do so slowly. It'd suck to focus on wracks and then they become unplayable

Im no expert, but I watched someone play a talos in a 500pt game. It lost most of its wounds getting up the table.... made an amazing 12 inch charge....then killed one (1) guardsman in cc. Then he played me, and it didnt make it halfway up the board..... So I wouldnt suggest it

Taloi have 3 problems
- Low speed for a CC unit
- Low damage output (seriously...)
- Not that great of a tankiness in 8th edition standards

Which means it will probably not reach CC, and if it does, it will only stay there for a turn or 2, not enough to deal significant damage. I wouldn't touch that unit at all.

Wracks on the other hand are really excellent. Ossefactor in particular is very good.

GW needs to decide what the Talos is supposed to be and actually make it good at that. It suffers from low volume of attacks, making it useless against hordes, low strength, making it useless against vehicles and rubbish AP, making it useless against elites. GW need to completely rework the stats of both the Talos itself and the weaponry it can carry as the current version is utter rubbish.

Chain Flails needs to be something like the Death Guard's Flail of Corruption (S+2, AP-2, D2, D3 hit rolls per attack, excess damage carries over to other models in the target unit) to make it effective against hordes.

The macro-scalpels and/or Ichor Injector can then be re-designed to be the anti-elite tool, with a significant AP and multiple damage.

It also needs movement/deployment options. It can't even make use of a WWP at the moment.

Talos are laughably bad. I want to model mine with pillows instead of claws so it is an accurate representation of how it fares in combat. Enemies better beware or they will get a facefull of feathers!

I'm here to add, they are really bad, dont play with them at all (until the codex and then we'll see)

In my circles of friends, when we were playing 7th, I used to use the dark artisan a lot and they learned to fear it. Now, talos sucks, but my friends didn't realy realised it yet. They tend to avoid them instead of shooting them, because the dark artisan was near unkillable.

@dumpeal wrote:

In my circles of friends, when we were playing 7th, I used to use the dark artisan a lot and they learned to fear it. Now, talos sucks, but my friends didn't realy realised it yet. They tend to avoid them instead of shooting them, because the dark artisan was near unkillable.

B.c of that and CTC formation thats why they are bad, GW sold enough of them.

I think GW got a lot of complaints about the strength of the coven supplement in general from everyone that didn't play dark eldar and didn't realize that CTC and Dark artisan were really the only competitive options the dark eldar had ... They weren't op ... They were in line pretty much everything else on 7th edition ... But because those formations could tear apart a standard Marine army they had to be nerfed ... Hard ...

@Archon_91 wrote:

I think GW got a lot of complaints about the strength of the coven supplement in general from everyone that didn't play dark eldar and didn't realize that CTC and Dark artisan were really the only competitive options the dark eldar had ... They weren't op ... They were in line pretty much everything else on 7th edition ... But because those formations could tear apart a standard Marine army they had to be nerfed ... Hard ...

Nah, when you have 24 Plasma shots that 1 dont hurt them and a 3++ re-rolling on T5 12" movement guys with Hit and run. Some coven wasnt bad at all.

Or you got Tyrants with +1 damage on their already OP brain leech devourer ton of shots

Best idea ever.

Since everything can change before the codex drops:
Buy the models you like best but don't invest to much.
If you like the models take 1 (unit) of each, possibly 2 heamies. And for the rest see when the codex drops. This already gives you something to paint and a start for when the codex drops and if a unit is bad, unless you go for competetive play in a normal game 1 or 2 bad units is usually not that detrimental, and if you like the models why not.

You might now go for wracks since they are pretty ok, and they get a price increase in the codex and thus they will still be bad. It is only half a year at most you will have to wait, so don't invest to much in what is good now.

Indeed, avoid anything that has been good in 7th or the index as GW will nerf it into the ground so people buy other stuff. And avoid Wyches and Bloodbrides, GW has no idea what to do with them.

I see a lot of "They were good in the last edition. They sold a lot of units. They will make them suck this edition, to force the player to buy other units." Is it because of the cynism of the dark eldar players? Would a game company sabotage their own game for the sole purpose of selling more?

@dumpeal wrote:

I see a lot of "They were good in the last edition. They sold a lot of units. They will make them suck this edition, to force the player to buy other units." Is it because of the cynism of the dark eldar players? Would a game company sabotage their own game for the sole purpose of selling more?

No b.c GW is a business and Andy Chambers himself even openly have said they do this.

ADD: Andy CHampbers was one of the main guys back in 2nd and 3rd, he left at the end of 3rd. He is now helping with Drop Fleet Commander.

On a side note i love that game, but they are the same price as GW for 1/2 the size models and requires all new terrain (its smaller scale).

@dumpeal wrote:

Would a game company sabotage their own game for the sole purpose of selling more?

Of course they would!

@dumpeal wrote:

I see a lot of "They were good in the last edition. They sold a lot of units. They will make them suck this edition, to force the player to buy other units." Is it because of the cynism of the dark eldar players? Would a game company sabotage their own game for the sole purpose of selling more?

I think it's a bit harsh to call this sabotage. If a unit is very popular, both in terms of appearing in lists and volume of models sold, then that suggests that it probably does need to be toned down a bit... or other things in the army need to be improved. That's not necessarily intended to fleece players, it is actually trying to make a better game.

It does get a bit frustrating for players when buying a new unit is as expensive as it can be in 40k, though.

I wouldn't even blame it on popular so much as powerful. The two most competitive options from the last edition the corpsethief claw formation and mass reavers both got incredibly nerfed. Maybe they weren't the most popular or commonly run builds but they worked.

Now look at the ravager. Last edition it wasn't really in the best spot and many people didn't run them in mass like now.

The patterns of what plays well does seem to be a revolving door to advance sales. I'm sure there were plenty of guys that picked up DE in 5th and had 3 ravagers that when 7th dropped picked up a talos or two to build a dark artisan or corpsethief claw.

And yes talos are trash right now

@lament.config wrote:

I wouldn't even blame it on popular so much as powerful. The two most competitive options from the last edition the corpsethief claw formation and mass reavers both got incredibly nerfed. Maybe they weren't the most popular or commonly run builds but they worked.

Now look at the ravager. Last edition it wasn't really in the best spot and many people didn't run them in mass like now.

The patterns of what plays well does seem to be a revolving door to advance sales. I'm sure there were plenty of guys that picked up DE in 5th and had 3 ravagers that when 7th dropped picked up a talos or two to build a dark artisan or corpsethief claw.

I actually (you can go back and see my posts) was doing the 30 Reavers and CTC untill i tested out all vehicles (9/10 of them was completely empty) i had something like 12 venoms and 14 Raiders (All the vehicles i owned and i had to used my Star/voidweavers to make up a couple lol) it actually did really well. Beat my friends DA Plasma bike spam with St Celestine Deathstar list lol.