Hello everyone and welcome back to the Corroad to Nova! If you have no idea what anyone is talking about here then check out the introductory article here, or if you’re just wondering who the hell I am then read my part 1 here.
Last time I was talking about my army to Nova, or lack of firm plans thereof. Two weeks on, and that position hasn’t completely cleared up. I still have a multitude of different options, and I still haven’t picked one of them. What I have done, as I mentioned at the end of the previous article, is to buy all of them at once. I now have:
- A complete Harlequins army, with all the options I’m likely to want
- Basically all the Craftworlds stuff I could care to choose from
- As previously, my entire Drukhari army
- The stuff to make my planned Adeptus Mechanicus list
- And of course, the huge pre-existing collection of Space Marines, Blood Angels, Imperial Guard, and Imperial Knights
You can’t say I haven’t given myself options. Some of these are more challenging as painting projects than others – for example, if I decided to go hard into Harlequins, I’d have to paint the whole army from start to finish, whereas staying with Drukhari I quite possibly won’t need to paint anything at all – except to update my Ravagers, which are a) knackered and b) still toting dark lances.
I also have in mind, during all of this, the new ITC faction rankings. I am nowhere near anything in these at the moment, but that Drukhari ranking looks mighty tempting – although there’s two great players already in the category in the form of Ridvan Martinez and Joe Maylam.
So let’s try and distil this down a bit. Here’s the army I’m actually playing right now:
The list is:
+ ARMY FACTION: Drukhari
+ TOTAL COMMAND POINTS: 13
+ TOTAL ARMY POINTS: 1,999
== Battalion Detachment == Drukhari [1088Points] 5 CP – Prophets of the Flesh
HQ: UrienRakarth (90) – [5PL] [90]
HQ: Haemonculus (70), agoniser (4), stinger pistol (5), The Vexator Mask (relic) – [5PL] [79]
TR: 5 Wracks (45) – [3PL] [45]
TR: 5 Wracks (45) – [3PL] [45]
TR: 5 Wracks (45) – [3PL] [45]
HS: 3x Talos (75), macro-scalpel (4), chain-flails (3), two haywire blasters (16) [18PL] [294]
HS: 3x Talos (75), macro-scalpel (4), chain-flails (3), two haywire blasters (16) [18PL] [294]
HS: 2x Talos (75), macro-scalpel (4), chain-flails (3), two haywire blasters (16) [12PL] [196]
== Battalion Detachment == Drukhari [911 Points] 5 CP – Kabal of the Black Heart
HQ: Archon (70), blaster (17), venom blade (2) – [4PL] [89] – WARLORD, Labyrinthine Cunning, Writ of the Living Muse (relic)
HQ: Yvraine (132) – [7PL] [132]
TR: 5 Kabalite Warriors (30) – [2PL] [30]
TR: 5 Kabalite Warriors (30) – [2PL] [30]
TR: 5 Kabalite Warriors (30) – [2PL] [30]
HS: Ravager [80], 3 disintegrators [45] – [7PL] [125]
HS: Ravager [80], 3 disintegrators [45] – [7PL] [125]
HS: Ravager [80], 3 disintegrators [45] – [7PL] [125]
DT: Venom (55), 2x splinter cannon (20) – [4PL] [75]
DT: Venom (55), 2x splinter cannon (20) – [4PL] [75]
DT: Venom (55), 2x splinter cannon (20) – [4PL] [75]
I’ve had one (1) practice game with this, where I played against a Chaos army almost entirely consisting of Dreadnoughts or equivalents. I won that game, barely, after 5 Talos died on my first turn. I got incredibly unlucky with saves, failing something like 12 out of 15 4+ invulnerables, and also no less than 3 Talos exploded, so that really hurt. That game can be considered something of an aberration, so I shouldn’t necessarily take it to heart. I have another practice game coming up, in our local league, and we’ll see how I get on there.
The strengths I see for the army so far is that, stacking it on saves aside, it’s pretty tough and hard to shift. Talos are murder machines who scare almost everything in the game to some extent. The Venom-riding Kabalites lend me some extra anti-infantry punch, and also are able to roam around the board independently and score far-reaching objectives. Ravagers are evergreen, although very vulnerable to getting blown up in short order. Yvraine provides a useful source of mortal wounds and a key deny. I should rarely see an army and think “I have nothing I can do here.”
On the other hand, it’s fairly slow, and the majority of my stuff ends up moving along together in a great big clump. This gives me powerful control of the centre, but can make it hard to deal with dispersed threats. Without Doom and Jinx, all my shooting has become less reliable than it was. Also, it’s screamingly obvious which ITC secondaries you need to pick against me – Gangbusters and Big Game Hunter practically choose themselves, and they’re not that hard to score.
One thing I’m considering in this is to shift things around so I can take the Yncarne. Joe Maylam had success at the Bolter Drill RTT that I ran recently using a very similar build but with the Yncarne in place of Yvraine, and it definitely opens up a new dimension – the ability to redeploy instantaneously can really mess with people, and in a list which is otherwise relatively slow-moving it’s extremely helpful to be able to drop him in where he’s needed (subject to a small number of conditions, like “accidentally” getting some Kabalites killed near a key target).
Alternatively, maybe it’s time for the return of Venom spam. This wasn’t successful last time I tried it out, but I also had a weird compromised army with a bit of Craftworlds stuff in it and I didn’t really practice it prior to going to Last Chance Open, so maybe things can improve on that front.
I have a fair few opportunities to practice in tournament play. Coming up in July is the Bristol City Open, although annoyingly that’s 1750, and then a small RTT at the Oxford Outriders. After that I’m attending the London Open in August. Three events gives me a good chance to try out different things, not to mention our ongoing ITC league which should be a regular source of good games.
What I’m getting as I write this out is that yeah, maybe I should be playing Drukhari, since that’s what I keep talking about. Not having to paint hard towards something in the run-up is good too, since it gives me the chance to play lots of games. Just gotta get my Ravagers done up nicely and fix up a few other bits and pieces. Sorry Craftworlders, maybe next year.
