Codex Drukhari Preview: Stratagems

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2018/03/30/codex-drukhari-preview-stratagemsgw-homepage-post-3/

Agents of Vect has the potential to absolutely cripple an enemies strategy. Love it.

Uh. Crucible of Malediction is a 2 command point stratagem now? What the frak?

Agents of Vect is exactly the kind of stratagem that I was hoping for, though!

@Burnage wrote:

Uh. Crucible of Malediction is a 2 command point stratagem now? What the frak?

Yeah, that sucks - Perhaps the haemonculus will get something to compensate?
Incubi will be murderous in packs of 10.
Lightning reflexes is good - could make all the difference in a key fight
Soul trap is situational, but has great potential.

Love the change to Drazhar, and the Incubi potentially doing a lot more damage!

@Bad-baden-baden wrote:

@Burnage wrote:

Uh. Crucible of Malediction is a 2 command point stratagem now? What the frak?

Yeah, that sucks - Perhaps the haemonculus will get something to compensate?

I hope so, because right now it looks like our only psychic defense just got nerfed heavily. Free and once per Haemonculus to 2 command points and only once per game....

The first one seems awful. The soul trap seems meh. The Agents of Vect though is, even for the cost, absolutely amazing. Some strategies resolve entirely around being able to use a stratagem.

Lightning fast is just the same as craftworlds but still great. If mandrakes keep their blanket minus 1. Then they like banshees can tarpit some hard hitting units.

And lastly the incubi one is... good enough? With Drazhar's +1 to hit it's very deadly.

ESE can you confirm (when you're not busy with the baby) if " you can easily pack in CP" is accurate for Drukhari? In playtest did you find yourself with more than 7-9?

Meh. Some of these stratagems seem very costly (looking at you, Crucible and Lightning-Fast Reactions), and without full dataslates it's hard to judge whether or not they're worth it.

Also this:
"...and while the Command Point cost may seem steep, you’ll be able to pack loads into your Drukhari list with ease."
We've only seen the way to do it with Patrols, and it's nothing revolutionary compared to a Batallion plus another Detachment. Is there more? I certainly hope so.

Gutted. As a free item the crucible was weak. But 2 CPs? I'll not be using that again then.

Some of the other stratagems do seem quite nice though. Especially liking the Agents of Vect stratagem!

Soul trap seems good, Drazhar finally might make his points back, they didn't even change the name from the craft world Codex for Lightning Fast Reflexes, but it's still useful, and Vect's seems fun, but expensive. I don't think it'll be worth the tax to make a Black Heart detachment though

@The Red King wrote:

The first one seems awful. The soul trap seems meh. The Agents of Vect though is, even for the cost, absolutely amazing. Some strategies resolve entirely around being able to use a stratagem.

Lightning fast is just the same as craftworlds but still great. If mandrakes keep their blanket minus 1. Then they like banshees can tarpit some hard hitting units.

And lastly the incubi one is... good enough? With Drazhar's +1 to hit it's very deadly.

ESE can you confirm (when you're not busy with the baby) if " you can easily pack in CP" is accurate for Drukhari? In playtest did you find yourself with more than 7-9?

It's unmodified 6....so less good but still neat.

Crucible nerf....ouch.

We can get a mental number of CP's.

With the Haemonculus warlord trait you get an additional D3 to the 7 you start with. Combine that with the Black Heart's return CP's on 6's it adds up.

If your opponent starts with 7 cps, on average you're looking at 11-12 Cps per game for DE.

And the Soul Trap is now also a stratagem and not (as I had hoped) a wargear option or at least a relic?

Shame. We'll have to see if the Huskblade finally gets a buff so that it may be viable to take. Otherwise the +1S would be wasted on an Agoniser Archon.

The other Stratagems range from meh to awesome. The Crucible being 2CP is a bit much if you ask me. Sure it will hurt Grey Knights or Thousand Sons but it is not really reliable.

Lightning-fast Reflexes is nice. -2 to-hit on Venoms or our Flyers is gravy. It can also help out our fragile units in close combat.

Agents of Vect oozes fluff. Love it. Shame that the Kabal of the Black Heart is nowhere near as good as the other Kabals. Still, I might include an Black Heart Archon to get the WT that refunds CPs. It seems like our army will use a hefty amount of CPs so getting some back (or some extra with a POF Haemy) seems good.

Well ... I like the change to Drazhar and the onslaught strategem is nice for the Incubi ... But it does feel a bit lacking with the "unmodified hit roll of 6" still good though.

3 words: an absolute crap

And the codex preview ends without seen nothing about the units of the codex, or how the mandrakes, incubus or scourges interact with detachments of the kabals, covens and cults.

Dont worry I am sure by tomorrow night we will know everything in it!

As a Craftworlds player Ich can tell you that lightning fast reactions is very strong. Especially against 4+ base armies. Agents of Vect may be absolutely devastating against some armies.

@Burnage wrote:

Uh. Crucible of Malediction is a 2 command point stratagem now? What the frak?

My first thought too..............

Well this is... incredibly disappointing.

Actually it did kinda hint at how they interact with them "free agents of Commorahg are free to choose who they fight with, they may not gain your obsession but you can take them in your lists without losing yours"

Those stratagems are pretty weak. Agents of Vect is good but the tax of bringing a detachment of Dark Heart Kabal just to use it is bad. The Crucible being once per game and 2CP is also insanity since it still only does d3 damage. I wanted a hammer and all I got were wrenches.

Man I don't understand whats so upsetting here? Did people really ever make use of the crucible in the first place? I played a haemonculus easily 50+ times in 8th, and I think the bloody artifact went off once and did 1 damage to a daemon prince. It sucks that it's now basically a useless stratagem, but the rest of these are looking pretty good.

Other than agents of vect I'm not overly impressed, and the crucible change is absolutely abysmal

- Crucible feels like a downgrade, but the removal from the profile probably lowers the price, or gives room for a more useful ability. I won't use it very often, though.

- Soul-trap is pretty cool. Doesn't work against Squad champions, though, but against some armies it will be cool. And if you play against another Dark Eldar (with tons of HQs), things can get hilarious.

- Lightning-fast reactions : a bit expensive, but since it can be used on so many targets, it's a nice trick to hide in your sleeve. I know I'm gonna be scarce in CP though, so probably won't use it often.
Best used on a VRB or a RWJF to stack with the "hard to hit" bonus.

- Agents of Vect : very expensive, but can be deadly. Denying the "Moral immunity" stratagem can be super, super useful for example. Many great applications, but if you don't roll a 6 you're losing a lot of CP. Might be useful to spend a CP to reroll the die here if you roll a 1.

- Onslaught : hmm, okayish. If there is a way to give them a hit bonus, then okay. If not, it's pretty weak.

- Drazhar change : YES.


A lot less exciting infos here. I hoped for some HQ infos...

Quote :

Man I don't understand whats so upsetting here? Did people really ever make use of the crucible in the first place? I played a haemonculus easily 50+ times in 8th, and I think the bloody artifact went off once and did 1 damage to a daemon prince. It sucks that it's now basically a useless stratagem, but the rest of these are looking pretty good.

It was a good answer to Genestealer and brimstone smite-spam.

I don't see why these stratagems are upsetting, we all knew there were going to be stratagems that were awesome and stratagems that were crap, we've seen a fair bit of the awesome, and now with crucible (never used the wargear, have no plans on using the stratagem) we've seen some of the more useless one's ...

It might be that crucible is a stratagem in addition to the once per battle ability, so that we don't have to hoard haemonculi for psycher battles.