10th Edition Competitive Faction Focus: Drukhari

With the release of 10th edition now firmly behind us and more than a month of competitive games in the books it’s time to start taking a deeper look at each of the game’s factions. In this series we’ll talk about each faction, what they have to offer, how they play, and talk about a few list concepts to consider.

You can find all the Faction Focuses that we’ve published here.

In today’s article, Lowest of Men takes a look at the dark children of Commorragh, the Drukhari. The hated Asuryani might be outshining them a little right now, but they’ve still got some pretty powerful tools to play with, which we’ll explore today.

Why Should You Play This Faction?

Want a bit of that sweet elf glass-cannon play experience, but don’t fancy easy mode with the goody two-shoes version? Love an army that can cover incredible distances and punch exceptionally hard at range? The Drukhari were terrors in early 9th edition and have paid for their sins with a much changed style and index in 10th, but remain a force to be reckoned with in the hands of a skilled general. Kabalite-heavy vehicle based lists are the order of the day, and if you enjoy the idea of a sinister Realspace Raid dropping from the sky to unleash a withering hail of Darklight shooting and venomous Splinter weaponry, then there is plenty of fun to be had here.

Five Things You Need to Know

1. It’s back to the old ways: Drukhari were melee blenders last edition but this time around they are a shooting and scoring army first and foremost. You have access to some extremely efficient ranged weaponry, and extremely quick units that can utilise Fire and Fade to cover enormous ground for scoring purposes. Drukhari can build lists that score the 10th Tactical cards for fun, and unleash devastating Beta strikes into the unwary. To quote our magnificent Archon Skari: EVERYTHING is going to die. It’s on you to make sure it does so at the right times, in the right places.
2. Kill your darlings: An Archon wouldn’t waste time carting minions around for the sake of sentimentality, and neither should you. Wyches and Incubi were incredible heavy-lifters in 9th edition but have been nerfed horrifically in 10th, and until they’re costed as if you’re losing one unit to overwatch every turn they’re not going to cut it (don’t even get me started on Hellions). Massed close combat is over, for now. Kabalites, Raiders, Ravagers, and Scourges are your entourage henceforth. Stock up on Dark Lances and Splinter fire and unleash hell from a distance until combat starts looking more viable for us again.
3. Power from Pain is a sensational faction resource: The ability to place full rerolls to hit wherever you want it and smooth out your advance and charge rolls is incredible. Managed carefully Power from Pain pays for itself, as you utilise Cronos regeneration, the Art of Pain enhancement, and careful target selection to ensure you stay topped up on torment across the game and keep hitting at maximum efficiency. Get sloppy with your shooting or resource management and your potential drops right off, so learning to utilise this properly is key to winning games with the Dark Kin at the moment. Our stratagems and enhancements are a little lacklustre in the main, but this is where the money is.
4. Strike on your terms: Every Drukhari vehicle has built in deep striking ability now, and Scourge can hop out from behind walls, shoot, and hop back. We are more fragile than ever so it is imperative that you get your blows in before the opponent can shoot back. Deep strike anything you can’t safely hide, use fire and fade mechanics as much as you can, and pick your battles carefully whilst playing around Overwatch as much as is elfenly possible. Power from Pain can fuel a horrendous go-turn at a distance and it is much better to hit extremely hard in turn two than partially in turn one at the sake of enormous casualties.
5. Mandrakes. Mandrakes. Mandrakes. A 70 point teleporting unit with Stealth, an invuln, and a tiny footprint. The stuff that high secondary scores are made of! Mandrakes provide enormous value to the Drukhari as they blip around the board making life easier whilst your guns get to work. Multiple squads are worth their weight in gold. Keep them alive for the late game, they get more valuable the longer the battle rages. And just tell your opponent you’ll always be picking them up at the end of their turn unless you say otherwise at the start of the game – you’ll forget to do this a LOT.

What Are the Must-Have Units to Start This Faction?

30 to 40 Kabalites, Raiders and Venoms, Ravagers, Scourges, and Mandrakes. This is the core, and it shoots, scoots, and scores. Kabalites can sticky objectives and jump out to deny primary later in the game. Dark Lance fire destroys hard targets and elite enemy infantry, and Mandrakes score cards that require you to go to faraway places and do sneaky things. Stick a couple of Cronos in to help regenerate your pain tokens as you shoot, and you are good to go.

Kabalites: they make objectives sticky, they have good guns for killing hard targets AND chaff, they bring valuable OC 2, and they are reasonably priced. They’re going to score you points, deny the enemy points, and die in droves. Sneak them around the edges and into the opponents weak spots to wreak havoc. They have GRENADES, so remember to utilise these for cheaky chip mortals via the stratagem.

Ravagers: With pain tokens on them Ravagers provide enormous value as hard target removal, capable of crushing enemy vehicles and slaying Terminators and Custodes profiles. Dark Lances (Strength 12, AP 3, Damage D6+2), are the weapon of choice, though a Disintegrator Ravager with rerolls can bully infantry squads. T9 and a 6++ doth not a durable vehicle make, so make sure to hide them carefully to avoid them being destroyed by return fire.

Venoms: These can scoot rapidly to key spots in the battlefield and hide out of sight, ferrying Kabalite shooting forwards. Kabalites can at present get out, shoot, then hop back into the Venom via Athletic Aerialists, so exploit this aggressively. Splinter Cannons (3 shots at Anti-Infantry 3+, Ap 1, Damage 2) pack solid overwatch with SUSTAINED HITS 1, so a Kab squad with a third cannon inside a Venom makes for a nice surprise volley into a squishy enemy unit that gets too close.

Scourge: Four Dark Lances on a package that can jump out, shoot, and jump back, or yeet itself up the board via it’s own ability and / or Fire and Fade to score relevant cards and threaten lightly held objectives. Late game plays with Scourge can win games, but don’t give them up too cheaply and be wary of artillery. Drukhari lives may be cheap, but Scourge ain’t! You can also run them with Haywire (ANTI VEHICLE 4+ Damage 3) to help break down tough vehicles that our Lances may struggle with.

Mandrakes: As alluded to above, these have unparalleled scoring play. With Fade Away you can disappear at the end of your opponents turn and reappear wherever you like (outside of 9) in your next reinforcements step. It works in turn one too, and it gives you a unit that can investigate signals, deploy teleport homers, and tick off crucial corners for Engage or Behind Enemy Lines.

Cronos: This little tentacled fella gives you the chance to regenerate Pain Tokens on a 4+ when units within 9 utilise them. They can hide, screen space, and with Insensible to Pain you can make them -1 to wound to deflect enemy shooting. Incredible value at 50 points.

Character wise the Archon offers Vect for stratagem disruption and is a good carrier for the Art of Pain enhancement to give you an additional pain token every command phase. Sadly this is our own worthwhile enhancement at the moment and none of our characters are really essential (they’re all on the naughty step after destroying hopes and dreams for a whole edition last time), but Lelith, Urien and Drazhar could all have a place for souping up one combat unit or creating a Wrack Tarpit. Just don’t divert too many funds away from the ‘shoot them to death’ plan!

A quick shout out to Talos and Voidraven Bombers, both of which offer something different that may compliment your particular game plan. Talos are durable, bring mortal wound output for tanks, and can stick about in combat in a way our other units simply can’t. The Voidraven boasts excellent heavy guns and the chance to bomb enemy targets for further mortal wound application. Is it a bit of a gimmick unit? Yes. Does that mean it won’t work? Absolutely not.

How Does This Faction Secure Objectives?

Stealing ground is easy, holding it is harder. This is the Drukhari way. Shoot your opponent off of positions or sacrifice Kabalites to deny primary with their high OC, and carve out spaces on the board where the opponent cannot threaten you to lock down ground with your boats, sticky the objectives with Kabalites, and then move on to take more ground.

Our Raiders and Ravagers have decent OC so don’t be afraid to make bully charges onto points to deny primary at a pinch, and maybe even throw in a cheeky Tank Shock! Rapid Ingress on a Raider with Kabalites can also be great for sneaking in behind the enemy to punk a poorly defended point and seize it for yourself. Above all else, make the opponent spend more time worrying about reclaiming their own objectives, and yours will be safer as a result. Apply pressure and project it away from our weak spots.

How Does This Faction Handle Enemy Hordes?

Primarily, with poison. The army can throw out a lot of ANTI INFANTRY 3+ shooting with Kabalite weaponry, Shredders give you some flamer shots for chaff removal, and you can use Grenade and Tank Shock to whittle squads down further. Wracks with Liquefier Guns can also do a job here. Lelith and Wyches are solid infantry blenders too, and horde clearance is the biggest reason to consider using her.

How Does This Faction Handle Enemy Tanks and Monsters?

For anything below T12, Dark Lances kick ass. You can throw down a hail of D6+2 damage, hitting very reliably and can get additional wound rerolls from Prey on the Weak to finish off a damaged target. You have to hose down one or two targets at a time and make sure you confirm your kills, and threat overload can be a struggle at times, so manage the distance between you and anything big and punchy carefully!

Scourge and Talos with Haywire are our most reliable damage dealers for Vehicles at T12 or higher, but you have to decide how important teching for that specific profile is (they’re far, far less flexible into other targets).  I’ve already highlighted Grenade and Tank Shock for chip mortals above but, surprise, it works for big things too! You’ve got an army full of grenade toting dudes in vehicles, might as well make hay with it. At this moment in time big T12 targets with Towering are one of the biggest issues for the Drukhari, so make sure you hide and then hit them hard with everything you can rather than engaging them piecemeal and getting picked off if you bounce.

What Combos Should You Build Around?

Wait for the Drop

10 Kabalites, a Raider, and a Pain Token. Triple Ravagers and Pain Tokens. Scourge with Pain Tokens. And a cheeky Cronos sitting there, making googly noises, refunding said tokens on a 4+. It isn’t massively complicated, but it absolutely slaps. Drop from reserves and unleash hell.

Leading from the Back

An Archon with a support unit sitting backfield giving out further tokens with Art of Pain, ready to use his Agents of Vect to make an enemy stratagem expensive. Late game he can sally forth to cause mischief with the fall back of his 2+ invuln to help him stick around. Just don’t fail it on the first roll…

Travelling Players

Harlequins offer some synergies to the Dark Kin, as well they should. A Death Jester or Solitaire gives us access to LONE OPERATIVE we would otherwise miss out on, for objective shenanigans. The latter is also a lovely precision blender in his own right. You can also try Voidweavers- these add to the theme of hulls with guns we already have going on, are easy to hide and obnoxious to remove with their 4++, and, to top it off, targets they hit have to take Battle-Shock tests, which can net us even more pain tokens! A few Harlequins can definitely offer some key utility options to a Drukhari build.

Army Lists

10th has not been as kind to the Drukhari as it has been to some other armies out there right now, but a number of faction specialists have continued to perform. Here are three X-1 builds. Two hail from the genius of Dark Eldar lifer Archon Skari and Drukhari faction specialist Robert Kimpton. Both lean heavily into the tools alluded too above. There is also a podium placing effort from George McCoulough of the Realspace Raiders, who highlights the punchy potential of a Talos centric build!

Skari’s ‘Raiders of Doom’ – 7th Place – TGX Warhammer 40k Tournament

Army List - Click to Expand

George McCoulough’s ‘Oven Ready Coven Heavy’ – 2nd Place – Hellstorm Allstars Heat 3

Army List - Click to Expand

Rob Kimpton’s ‘Boaty McBoatface’ – 6th Place – Warhammer World Golden Ticket Event

Army List - Click to Expand

Final Thoughts

The Drukhari Index is a powerful finesse tool that really opens up in skilled hands. The army has taken a heavy hit to some of its coolest combat units and characters, but remains a fast, punchy, and technically rewarding army to play. They are a solid army to master the demands of 10th with as they are extremely well placed to score the cards and boss the missions, but as things stand the broken ‘haves’ of the 10th landscape will have the edge on you in games, and the index is definitely a flop for those who were hoping for continued melee prowess. As the meta adjusts and outliers are toned down the Drukhari should benefit, and they remain a wonderful option for any budding evil masterminds out there.

That wraps up our look at the Drukhari but there are a lot more faction focus articles on the way, so stick around to catch those! If you have questions or feedback feel free to drop us a comment, or email us at contact@goonhammer.com