The Helliest Hellions

[Calyptra]

There's a lot of ways to approach the new Codex, with so many synergies and moving parts.

 

Today, I sat down with it and wondered what I could do in order to get the most out of a unit of Hellions. (And now I really need to paint some Hellions, in addition to everything else I really need to paint.)

 

The Cults of Strife and the Cursed Blade both let you get +1 attack and +1 strength (obsession + drugs), which is really good, but I think the Red Grief are Helliest. Here's why.

 

The Red Grief obsession lets you advance and charge. For 1 CP you can use the Eviscerating Fly-By strategem to cause mortal wounds on 5+ on infantry for each Hellion that moves over them when you advance (theoretically 10D6). Then, because splinter pods are assault weapons, you can shoot them. 10 Hellions = 30 shots. Then, because of the Red Grief obsession, you can charge them.

 

It seems too fun not to do.

[Halandaar]

There's a lot of ways to approach the new Codex, with so many synergies and moving parts.

 

Today, I sat down with it and wondered what I could do in order to get the most out of a unit of Hellions. (And now I really need to paint some Hellions, in addition to everything else I really need to paint.)

 

The Cults of Strife and the Cursed Blade both let you get +1 attack and +1 strength (obsession + drugs), which is really good, but I think the Red Grief are Helliest. Here's why.

 

The Red Grief obsession lets you advance and charge. For 1 CP you can use the Eviscerating Fly-By strategem to cause mortal wounds on 5+ on infantry for each Hellion that moves over them when you advance (theoretically 10D6). Then, because splinter pods are assault weapons, you can shoot them. 10 Hellions = 30 shots. Then, because of the Red Grief obsession, you can charge them.

 

It seems too fun not to do.

 

In my first game I went with the +1S from Cursed Blade and +1T Combat Drug, and they did successful work tying up a Daemon Prince for the majority of the game.

 

That said, when I came back and thought about how to get even more out of them I came to the same conclusion you have; advance because Eviscerating Fly-By, fire because Assault Weapons, charge because Red Grief, then next turn fall back, fire again and charge again because Hit & Run. I'll definitely be going with this tactic next time :)

[Vel'Cona]

They just seem like a lot of points for how squishy they are.  Certainly good torrent, certainly good melee potential in terms of attack density, and the flexibility to fall back at will is awesome.  But the ppm count and lack of armour-punching options are issues I struggle to overlook, especially given that 5+/6+ FnP @ T3 isn't going to keep them on the table under a stiff breeze.

[Lord Asvaldir]

Hellions might not be big winners in the new codex, but I love the models, I absolutely need to buy some asap, and I want to make a unit of 10+ work in my lists so I'm glad we're discussing hellions. 

 

In terms of obsessions, I think hellions might actually be the only wych cult unit that can reasonably benefit from any of the traits. Wyches are probably better off with strife/cursed blade for the stat boost, while you want red gried of reavers, but hellions really get some mileage out of any of the traits. I'd probably lean towards using cursed blade because +1 strength lets you double on on already being s4, and the boost upto 5 comes in real handy against anything t4/5. Also if you want to go overboard and take a unit of 20, you absolutely need the moral immunity. 

 

That being said I think Calyptra has a good point about red grief. The flyover stratagem is nifty, but you have to advance to use it. If you advance with a hellion unit of the other two units, you lose out on charging and that's not great. Red grief reavers on the other hand will have no problem flying over a unit, inflicting mortal wounds and splinter shots on them, and then charging in to finish them off in melee. 

 

I do also think though that Vel'Cona has a good point about them being squishy. I mean hellions make wyches look tough, and hellions are significantly more expensive. I think the only way to really make hellions work is to run them alongside reavers. Reavers can move in faster and tie up any problematic shooting unit that might shoot hellions off the board, or just present a faster, bigger threat that your opponent wants to deal with more than hellions. 

 

Definitely need to get some hellions and start playtesting with them regardless. 

[Calyptra]

They just seem like a lot of points for how squishy they are.  Certainly good torrent, certainly good melee potential in terms of attack density, and the flexibility to fall back at will is awesome.  But the ppm count and lack of armour-punching options are issues I struggle to overlook, especially given that 5+/6+ FnP @ T3 isn't going to keep them on the table under a stiff breeze.

Oh, I'm not talking about whether they're actively good, or point efficient. My premise was this: You want to, for whatever reason, bring a unit of Hellions. How can you get the most out of them?

 

But to address your major concerns about them; first, of course they're fragile. The whole army is fragile. You need to use their speed to keep them out of sight, or screened behind Raiders, or webway them in, etc. Like almost everything else in the army, if you let your opponent shoot them they will die, and it will be your fault for letting your opponent shoot them. Don't let your opponent shoot them.

 

As for punching armor, I'm not sure if you mean vehicles or armored infantry. Hunting vehicles isn't their job, though Cursed Blade Hellions can swing at strength 6 with the right drugs. As for heavy infantry, yeah, they suffer a bit from lacking AP, but they should make up for it somewhat with shenanigans.

 

If you pull the Red Grief silliness on a unit of 10 space marines, you should kill 3 of them with fly-by mortal wounds, 2 to shooting, and then (assuming +1 attack drugs and an agonizer for the Helliarch) 4 or 5 more in melee combat.

 

Also, their glaives do 2 damage, which means they'll make multi-wound infantry particularly unhappy.

 

I don't know if they're a competitive choice, but they seem fun and able to do stuff. I'll definitely play with them, if I can ever get mine assembled and painted.

[Jacques Corbin]

What about the Helliarch? I say Stunclaw and Splinter Pistol with Phantasm Grenade Launcher.

 

I plan on going Cursed Blade with mine. Big blob of 20, just to take advantage of the only losing 1 to morale. That's 40 shots of poison being spit at the enemy.

 

Again, some of you are engaging in "analysis in a vacuum" for units. It's a Dark Eldar army folks, everything is scary and threatening, and we force our opponent to make hard choices, and play like whatever choice was made, was the wrong one. Our opponent starts second guessing their decisions, and our Drukhari only get stronger each turn.

[Withershadow]

I think a guaranteed D2 is better than an extra mortal wound on 6+. The splinter pistol can't be fired alongside the pods anyway. The PGL is a no-brainer.

 

The stratagem, and potential for giant pile of D2 attacks are their strength and dying like flies is their weakness.  The answer to strengthen the strength and mitigate the weakness is LOTSA dudes. 20-man units have issues with morale before turn 4, so the most obvious choice seems to be Cursed Blade.  Solves morale issue and also gives you S5, which you can stack with the A bonus to deliver up to 61 S5 attacks that hit on 2+ (with Power from Pain.. turn 3 or stratagem) and re-roll 1s to hit from a nearby Succubus. This doesn't count the 20 dice you can roll fishing for mortal wounds.

[Lord Asvaldir]

The only problem with the flyover mortal wounds stratagem is you have to advance to use it, and if you advance then no charging which is bad for hellions that need to get into combat. You could of course run red grief, but then you miss out on the s5 and being fearless in a 20 man blob, so I think it's a hard choice between those two obsessions. 

[micahwc]

Give them the +1 strength combat drug for S5 with their weapons. I haven't been too impressed with them so far, but I've only got 2 games with them. First game they all got shot to death before they could do anything. Second game they killed two Necron destroyers, but both came right back immediately afterwards; that was after shooting and charging with them. (They were also supported by a unit of scourges that managed to miss two blaster hits and not wound with 2 blaster hits).

 

They are in contention for my least well performing unit so far; Reivers are in a close second but I think that's just because I'm using them wrong.

[Spiritual Liege]

They are in contention for my least well performing unit so far; Reivers are in a close second but I think that's just because I'm using them wrong.

I haven't played a game yet with the codex but Reavers look fantastic. Such a low point-cost for what they bring.