Played My First Game of the New Codex. Here are My Thoughts.

[Master Antaeus]

Today I played 2000 points Drukhari vs Chaos Space Marines Fellhammer Siege Host.

His Army:

Chaos Lord (with one of the legionaries)

Master of Sexecutions (with chosen)

Terminator Sorcerer in bastion plate, which I know is illegal but I didn't really care (with terminators)

2x Legionaries (5 each with 2 heavy melee, melta, 2 chainswords, icon) both units in a rhino

Chosen (max, 4 combis, 4 plasma, 2 twin accursed weapons, icon) in land raider

Cultists in rhino

Terminators (5, 3 combis, 1 twin accursed, reaper, 1 fist)

Vindicator

Forgefiend (2 hades, ecto)

Heldrake with hades

Helbrute (lascannon, heavy flamer)

My Army (Realspace Raiders)

Archon

Succubus

Haemonculus

Drazhar

3 kabalite units, 2 in raiders, one has archon, one kab split between strat reserve and a venom)

Wyches in raider with Succubus

10 incubi in raider with Drazhar

2 ravagers with dark lances

Talos (2 macro scalpels, twin heat lance)

Voidraven Bomber with missiles

5 mandrakes

Initial Thoughts - 
Army + Detachment Rule
It feels like half an army rule plus half a detachment rule.  Realspace Raid starts with 6 pain tokens, I never came close to running out.  Almost every unit you would want to empower has an ability that goes off in one phase and you'll almost never be in a position to spend all of them at once and accomplish anything.

There are 21 datasheets in this codex (same as Votann, an army that came out in 2022.  Not bitter or anything).  Every unit has a minimum of two datasheet rules and 21 of those rules (the pain ones) have extremely specific activation and use criteria.  The mental overhead of playing this army is not for the faint of heart, though practice will go a long way.  This game took just over 3 hours to play and the mental strain of running this army, reminding my opponent of his rules and trying to explain my own rules made me feel like I had been jumped in an alley.

The Army as a Whole
This army is even more fragile than it was before--not that the units have gotten worse, but the game's lethality has overtaken this late codex, which is why I suspect we will see first day points drops.

 

For all that this army lacks synergy between units (though the new scourges change that somewhat), you CANNOT send any unit anywhere alone, even in a transport.  In the two games I've played, I have made the mistake of spreading out twice and it has cost me dearly both times.

 

The army is slow for what it is and the point in the edition we are at.  Non-wyches, and the Talos all move 7".  So do clunky Aeldari.  About half the dreadnoughts in the game move 8" now.  Bjorn moves 9" and all bespoke Space Wolves and Emperor's Children move 7".  Someone told me Drukhari were supposed to be fast but in practice, only Wyches are fast.  The entire army is allergic to any kind of widespread advance and charge and struggles to kill max sized units before those big units tear out the heart of your army.

 

Pistols are death.  By the muses, it gets old pulling off the perfect charge, killing 3/4 of an enemy unit and getting slaughtered on the opponent's next turn.  I found I barely had enough dark lances to kill all the vehicles I needed to while simultaneously wishing I could afford to put disintegrators on my ravagers to rip up infantry.  Again, points drops would help this somewhat.

Units
Archon - Goonhammer says you'll never see an archon with a pistol again and I agree, the soultrap is such an excellent addition to the archon, it makes me resentful we had to wait this long for it.  6 attacks with a S5, d3 huskblade is absolutely ill.  Unusually, there's still a decent use case for all three of the melee options.  Rips up regular and even elite infantry, but mine lost his shadow field to a chaos lord's Lord of Chaos ability after he failed to kill the chaos lord, but then he killed the chaos lord on his next turn after the legionaries had pistoled his entire bodyguard to death.

 

Kabalite Warriors - Almost wholly unchanged except for the pain ability (two levels of re-roll wounds) which is an absolute joy to have access too.  Even so, when you can pay 45 more points for 10 intercessors, they are probably overcosted.  The combination of re-roll hits with the archon and re-roll wounds goes a long way toward making the bodyguard squad shine.  Everyone else is still pretty much a bunch of sticky objective chumps.

 

Succubus + Wyches - Amazing threat range. 3" + 8" + d6" + 2d6" is an average 22" threat range out of a transport without command point shenanigans.  All the pain abilities of this unit revolve superbly around getting them to combat.  You have to be so careful as even incidental or desperate overwatch will kill 4/5 your squad and anyone with so much as a hand flamer will flambe your squad before they get even close.  I got them into my opponent's terminator squad without getting them shot at all.  They killed 3 terminators with average rolls.  Then my opponent spent a command point on giving his terminators weapons PISTOL and the wyches and their leader evaporated without further contribution.  Good unit?  Maybe, but they're not plug and play.  You need to soften up your target first and unless you give them lethal hits, you can forget about using them against any kind of vehicle in all but the most desperate of situations.

 

Haemonculus + Wracks - Great at sitting on objectives and the Haemonculus can theoretically regenerate its unit, but in practice, you will only get away with this once before your opponent commits enough basic bolter fire to wipe them out.  I managed to regenerate them once and then the entire unit was killed by 1 chosen with a combi weapon and twin accursed and a master of executions using grenades.  They lost their FNP 5+, which is fine, it just slowed the game down while the wracks died to slightly less bolter fire than kills them now.

 

Incubi + Drazhar - Supposed to be lethal against infantry, and Drazhar, the premier assassin of Commorragh somehow lacks Precision on his weapons.  This unit has like a page of special rules that support its fight and it does a great job, except that I got Drazhar and all 10 incubi into a 9 strong squad of chosen being led by a master of sexecutions and only managed to kill 7 chosen before the MoE effortlessly killed Drazhar and two chosen killed 8 incubi and pistoled the rest to death during my opponent's turn.

 

Mandrakes - Amazing.  Scored the majority of my points while the rest of my army bounced off tough chaos stuff and failed to kill anything.  Literally snuck around the table doing actions and grabbing objectives while the rest of my army choked on sausage.

 

Ravagers - Man, I want to love ravagers and re-rolling hits on alpha strikes did them some favors, but if you are running dark lances like I do, it can be extremely frustrating to drop 6 dark lances on a vindicator, sneak 2 of them through, not kill it outright and then watch that vindicator proceed to kill one ravager on its next turn and then overwatch the other to death on the turn after.
 

Edited October 5 by Master Antaeus

[Zoatibix]

Thanks for writing that up. 
 

It does sound as if we need to get three or four factors (a mix of units / characters/ strats / abilities) onto enemy units to deal with them.

 

 

[Master Antaeus]

Oh.  I left some units out.

 

Talos - I only had room for one and it was monstrously effective.  I would drop a unit of kabs and a raider and run three more in a 2x2 configuration.  Absolute gold.  Resilient, annoying, and just punchy enough to menace heavy infantry.  My opponent was apoplectic that my slow, flying dreadnought for a little more than half the price of any astartes dread could put 9 wounds on a vehicle in shooting and was, in some ways, harder to kill than a normal dread.

 

Voidraven Bomber - The ultimate assassin is back.  Drazhar may not have precision, but 4 S14 dark lance shots wherever you need them *almost* justifies this thing's eye-watering points cost.  Its ability to strip cover from an enemy unit is icing on the cake and combined with the shard scourges +1 AP to everything, this army actually has some synergy now.  Worth the points?  Probably not, but it scared the crap out of my opponent and that does count for something.  I do recommend a rapid ingress.  This thing costs the same as 3 talos and to get your points worth, you need it moving, bombing and shooting for as much of the game as possible.

 

Venom: The only vehicle besides the Vyper to have exactly the same defensive profile since 8th edition.  Stealth will not save it.  Until you are ready to lose it, it needs to be parked behind a wall where its passengers can jump back in.  Interestingly, if its passengers do manage to outpace where you put it and you have CP to spare, you can always raid and fade 7" towards it and THEN use its rule to get back in.

 

Raider: Same stats, rules are better in every way.  You might want to get some kind of token or sticky note to keep track of which rule you gave it.

[brother_b]

Thank you for the write up. As someone who’s been casually interested in the Drukhari for some time your feedback is disappointing , but appreciated.

 

I continue to feel extremely underwhelmed with 10th, it just feels like a card game with combos moonlighting as a board game pretending to be a tabletop miniatures game.

 

How many Kabalite did you bring total?

[Master Antaeus]

30.  It's still very much a wargame.  Someone wrote on Reddit that Codex: Drukhari is written to challenge one person and one person only: Skari.

 

I highly recommend you check out his videos on YouTube (Skaredcast) as he plays at an extremely high level and is great at explaining why he is doing what he is doing.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

40k App has updated with the new points. My olde Skysplinter and Wager lists have both shot up by 100-150pts

[Ulfast]

Wow, that was a huge increase of points. As it seems our army is not the most popular and hard to master, will this new points make it even harder, especially for new players to get into it?

[Ming the Merciless]

Kabalites (15), Raiders(10), Venoms(5), Ravagers(15), Wyches(10), Incubi(5), Mandrakes(10). Will find out next week if the revised power from pain rule justifies the increases.

[Galron]

Ouch, all of those units I use in large numbers lol