Rave Review: Dark Eldar Bloodbrides & Wyches

Colour by MajesticChicken

Hello again folks, bit late with the DE review this week as I have been on a bit of a cooldown as I did a bunch of articles in a short space of time this past seven days, including compiling the photo's for my upcoming Spacewolves Showcase on Mindofthedeamon, and  I also did a feature article for Hop on Monday about paint scheme / palette selection and implementation.

Going to be talking about Wyches today and including the Bloodbrides as they are essentially the same thing. May as well kill to birds with one stone.....

Stats wise Wyches are fairly unremarkable , well in all stats bar one they have I6 which Im sure you will agree is fairly hectic for a troops choice , if you loose a combat to these girls, bad times ahead.

Some people complain about the str3 , I tend to agree with the frustration that a predominantly T4 gaming environment brings , if the balance of armies being played were more even I think str3 would be, well average.... Fortunately there are a couple of things that help the girls strike with a bit more sting than half trained, very depressed human cannonfodder.

Actually it could be worth mentioning the fragility 'issue' here too, as it is largely caused by their stats, T3 and a 6+ save out of combat ? Im not going to lie to you, they die horribly if caught in the open or their transport explodes which is alot as DE seem to think manufacturing their vehicles out of an advanced version of nitro glycerine is a jolly good plan .....

One option which you can use to mitigate this somewhat is to start them off with a haemo in the unit, his pain token will confer FnP (assuming you dont get one from drugs) which makes them three times less likely to be vaporized by their own ride and/or most small arms, in this instance it is a trade off though, as in order to have a haemo along you will have to drop a unit member to fit in a raider, which means less special weps and also if you want him moving with them, you loose fleet. So a downside if coming in on foot from a portal, although I guess you can move him away on the turn they arrive leaving the token with them, this has an advantage in that outside a raider you can run a much larger squad, more models benefiting from a pain point is a good use of resources.  Otherwise in a raider squad the should probably just leave him behind if you are not sure they can reach with a standard move + assault, you DO NOT  want to get stranded as your opponent will end them extremely easily outside of combat, plus the haemo can still fly around in his shiny new raider liquifying things and giggling.

Basic stuff that comes in their package includes:

Close combat weapon, pistol and plasma grenades - run of the mill basic kit for a cc unit .

Combat drugs:

  hypex look, shoes !!- errr not a huge fan of this one but it does make your run moves more reliable ? I recommend throwing models around and kicking tables when you roll this, perhaps accuse your opponent of rigging the dice .....

Serpentin Sexist comment ! - not terrible, it helps slightly with the 'hitting like a girl' problem as you will get more hits on your predominantly ws 4 opponents and therefore more chances to wound it will also offer a little protection from ws5 opponents, so not bad there will be no need to try and knock your opponents models over with dice rolls to make yourself feel better.

Grave lotus YOU forgot my birthday!- Now they are angry @ str 4 they can also glance down vehicles as well as actually wound t4 FC wyches have str5 with this ;o) maybe not time to break out the special dice and elastic tape measure... some chocolate perhaps ?

Painbringer Crimson tide !- This is hands down my favorite, statistically slightly better chance of wounding T4, and much better on anything they will need 6's on, also makes for far more stable amounts of wounds generated. Also the agoniser you may or may not have bought the unit just got real ugly. - you are perfectly justified to get those people you hired to come and heckle your opponent to join in on this one , you will no doubt impress everyone and earn the respect and love of everyone.

Adrenalight The toilet seat was up !! Another good one , helps with getting more hits /wounds/kills than you would without. I think you are ok to just note it down and continue here, though snide remarks about Spaze marehnz are always acceptable if unsure how to proceed.

Splintermind Omnomnom chocolate - free pain token , fnp will do nicely , if you already packed your haemo then they will have FC too , but if not, no worries its a short trip to FC and you will loose less girlies on the way. - the dice have obviously decreed your opponent is unworthy cattle, refuse to make eye contact for the rest of the game and only communicate through your 'mouthpiece'-one of the guys you hired to do cheer routines in the background will do .....

So yeah the drugs can help , sadly they are random , which means I'm tempted to shy away from them in competitive lists , however, wyches do not really perform their function by killing stuff , I mean its nice but not the point to including them in a list , the last and possibly most important thing they get as standard is a 4++ in CC , yup ,a troop with 4++ in cc that costs 10 points per model, nice 

At this point you can probably see they wont be killing much of anything in cc, however with a 4++ and the potential for FNP also they are a brilliant tarpit unit, chuck em at some Termies or Twolves etc to bog them in combat, with the addition of some other upgradess they can tie up almost anything for a while . Some people rely on powerful cc units to win games, wyches can seriously hamper that anything with massed power weapons are wasted points on wyches. If nothing else the main purpose of wyches is to blunt the cc effectiveness of your opponents derp stars and main combat units, this allows the rest of your army to go to work, and hopefully if the wyches hold them up for long enough, assuming they eventually die you should often be in a position to destroy the remains of the enemy squad on your own terms.

Upgrades:

Razorflails - costs ten points - get re rolls to hit and wound - not  really sold as it clashes with some of the drug results not really worth a whole wych Imo.

Hydra gauntlets - these are the gamble weapon , a potential d6 plus 3 attacks on the charge and gains benefits from all the drugs, I tried them in a couple of games but my rolling was terrible so they did nothing of note, More str 3 attacks does not seem to do very much, again not convinced they are worth 10 points 

Shard net + impaler - For me this is the best upgrade as it makes wyches better at what they are good at in the first place, tarpit central by making them even  harder to kill in cc, it also makes them a good home for Characters, careful and clever positioning of the nets can really help you out and reducing attacks at a character with shadow or clone fields is golden.... shenanigans to be had for all ;o) , take as many as you can. Thne learn to use them.

Haywire grenades - these are actually starting to grow on me, a unit with these and nets will beat down a dreadnought quite reliably if my tests are anything to go by, it is an expensive upgrade, but pending more testing I feel they are largely worth it as its more or less the only anti tank CC you gonna get, one trick you can use is multi charges charge the tank and aim to 'clip' an enemy squad, dump as many grenade attacks onto the tank as you can and then avoid retaliation in cc with a unit. with dark lances it seems there will be quite a few immobilized and stunned vehicles going around, massed haywires can really speed up the process of finishing them off, there is one small thing that makes me hesitate, there is some debate online weather the 4++ will protect them from explodes results, pending Faq this could effect your decision to equip them, though in my experience you are far more likely to glance it to death by immob and wep destroyed than actually exploding it... first outing for my wyches they killed a demolisher and a chimera, can't complain. 

Obviously if you are tight on points and just specifically want them to tarpit then the grenades can be dropped, 20 points for a squad IS expensive.

Hekatrix- one more attack and LD nine, I would get her for the LD9 alone, due to your poor damage output, you may find the wyches loosing by small margins over protracted combats quite alot, to be effective as a tarpit they need to stay put, ld 9 is well worth the extra points, you can consider dropping her if their is an IC with the unit of course.

Colour by MajesticChicken

Blast pistol - Not keen on these usually as the range of 6 is crap and you will be running often, the circumstantial opportunity to fire these let alone the fact that inferno pistols piss all over them makes it hard to justify the 15 points down the toilet, However, I feel there are some reasons to consider them in wych squads if you can afford it. For starts they offer them a chance to either pre stun/immobilise a dreadnought, making it a simple job to haywire the jesus out of it, they also gives a last chance to open a transport and assault if your lances fail (they will often) obviously you are better if you have a character along with one too, a succubus is still cheap with one, also a couple of blast shots will help thin out tougher opponents  on the way in making your job easier as wyches are best when they outnumber. In this mech environment its nice to have a cc unit that can still effect tanks as it is conceivable that they wont have a non mech unit to assault.

Phantasm launcher - essentially 10 points for defensive grenades as the squad had offensives anyway, dunno, not sure I see the point, it does indeed make them even better tarpitters when charged, but GW recently faq'd that defensive grenades wont work vs counter charge, wtf ? and they (spaze mareenhz) can stack FC with it ?!?!  so as essentially due to the inherent mobility of DE I think this of situational use at best, shame as it would have been nice in mach ups with spaze wolves.

Venom Blade - Cheap , always a good choice as it threatens mc's and kills with wound saturation.

Power wep - half the price of an agoniser and will benefit from FC and all the drugs results , defo worth consideration.

Agoniser - The 'safe' default, reliable choice, but god DAMN its costly, for what is effectively a str 4 power wep (or worse vs t3) most of the time, its like british car insurance, they know you need it so get away with charging twice what its worth, some of the pricing in this book I find highly questionable. Pending much testing I may consider only running pow weps or Vblades instead as 20 points is ridiculous , its nothing anywhere near as good as a power fist. 

Blood Brides - I look on this as upgrading wych squad to 2 attacks a piece and increased access to special weapons, really quite good bodyguard unit as you can get three shardnets and a character in a transport where with plain wyches you will only get one, also it's actually not as bad shelling out the 20 points for the agoniser here as the Syren has 3 attacks basic so better points to kills ratio, I bet it hardly edges out the venom blade. So consider these hitty Wyches, with a suitably tooled character they can tie up and likely kill any cc unit in the game. Having Lelith with a unit almost certainly means anyone trying to target her is at -3 attacks, lol 

In all honesty a plain 2 net build wyche unit is essentially just as tarpitty as Bloodbrides if not more so with points a factor. I find it hard to include Bloodbrides in my lists as Incubi outright kill shit better which I like, not to mention those pornographic models,  I also cant not take at least 2 Trueborn squads, hell I find it hard not to take 3 every single game. Incubi do often justify their inclusion by largely brutalizing everything they touch. I would honestly just reserve Bloodbrides for a cult theme list, though I suppose they are worth a try as escorts for a clone field Archon as I have yet to make more than one or two saves with a shadow field and am starting to give up on it.

Lelith, There's a new kid in town... "Show's over, Motherfethers" 

An interesting unit, nothing else quite like them in 40k, their killing power is quite low but killing power is not often a strong point of most troop units anyway, the ability to give even dedicated CC units a hard time can be golden if you know how to work the advantage, shardnets used well will have people tearing their hair out.

I get the feeling most people will either love or hate them depending on what they are trying to do, attempts to force a square peg into a round hole may result in some hating.

Coming next !! Next DE unit review is likely wracks, as for Eldar Its dire avengers, 

El Diablo is frenziedly cobbling together our spacewolves army showcase, you may even see part one before christmas.

night