40K Tactics: Lillith on my Mind

Vidar delivers a tactica on Lillith.

We’ve got a guy in the shop who loves Lilith.  I mean, he talks in iambic pentameter about her.  He runs her in every DE list he has and after helping him through several games and giving him some advice on her utility, I decided to give the ol’ girl a run.  You know check her out, see if she’s viable.

So, Lilith is Comarragh’s Arena Champion.

Let’s look at her stats, equipment, then cost.

First, Lilith weighs in with an incredible WS 9!  Now normally this doesn’t matter much.  You either get a 4+ to hit or a 3+, but with Lilith, it matters because for each WS point above the highest WS of your enemy in CC gives you and additional attack.  So, on average Lilith will get 10 attacks (4 attacks base + WS 9-WS 4=5, +1 for the additional CC weapon) before the charge bonus.  Combine this with her I 9 and she is hitting nearly everything first with more attacks than a Grey Hunter MSU squad. Plus, WS5 will hit her on 5’s.

Now that looks great but Lilith has S 3 and T 3.  The weight of attacks she can bring to bear is offset with that S 3.  The average Toughness in the game is 4, meaning she’s wounding on 5’s.  So Lilith has an average of 10 attacks, hitting on 3’s meaning 6-7 hits, but wounding on 5’s meaning out of 6-7 hits she wounds 2-3. That puts her on par with most elite CC characters.  Of course, her attacks ignore armor saves which means 2-3 dead marines a turn.  Ok, not bad.  Add in the fact she is carrying a shardnet and thereby reducing the weight of incoming attacks by 1 and that helps a lot.

Lilith’s low toughness means she is more susceptible to Instant Death. Since she doesn’t have Eternal Warrior she falls to that Power Fist pretty frequently…even if it’s on an IG officer!  Of course she has a 3++ save in CC so she should be pretty resilient once she’s actually there.  I think that even with that 3++ save and the shardnet reducing attacks in b2b she should probably not be put against that Power Fist because 17% of the time she will die in one shot.  When fighting a full 10 man marine squad, put her against the rank and file troopers and place any other shardnets against that power fist.  They reduce the number of kills you suffer from the Fist and she can’t be singled out.  Use Lilith and the rest of the Wyches to overwhelm the entire squad with wounds before you put the Queen Amazonian against a one shot, one kill 25 point weapon.

Now, Pain Tokens make Lilith a lot more viable.  Feel No Pain makes her decent and Furious Charge makes her Badass!  That S 4 means a 17% increase in wounds and that means a much better combat resolution.

Now all of this lends itself to what I consider the most important thing to remember about Lilith:  Despite her cost, Lilith is NOT a frontline, deathstar-eliminating IC.  Lilith is a skirmisher.  Her low strength, low toughness, high maneuverability (via Fleet), and weight of attacks makes her an ideal back field skirmisher.  Put her in charge of 9 Wyches and put them all in a Raider, then place her on a flank and Turbo-Boost her up that flank.  There should be enough threats in your army for your enemy to lock on to to give her a chance of getting at those Long Fangs, Devastators, Scouts, or similar units.  Usually these units are low in model count compared to a scoring unit and their danger to your vehicles needs an immediate answer and that’s a Turn 2 assault by Lilith.  Targets with low model counts are ideal because Lilith and her wyches should tear through them in one turn and gain the all important pain token.

Now she isn’t really that expensive.  I know, I know.  She’s 175.  But load her with a troop choice like Wyches and send her to take that back-field objective and she can get some work done for you.  But in order for this to work well, you need to keep that deathstar CC unit focused on something tastier, like Vect.  Team these two together and you have 2 brutal CC units with very different focuses.  One for the masses (Lilith) and one to pound deathstars (Vect).  Most enemies are focused on a single hammer unit, not the two you can manageably field with the Dark Eldar.  But, like their Light brethren, use the right tool for the job.  Lilith isn’t the beatstick Vect is, she’s a skirmisher, a back-field nightmare to your enemies.

Now, I will tell you what Lilith is bad at: high toughness targets.  Her huge number of attacks is completely offset by wounding on 6’s.  So against some ‘Nids and Plague Marines she sucks.  My buddy (the afore mentioned Lillith lover)sank her into my Death Guard and they wrecked her and her squad.  She could only get one or 2 dead marines a turn because she just can’t wound them.  So, find the lowest toughness enemy unit and focus on that.

The real question is then:  Is Lilith worth the points?  If you use her synergistically she can add a lot of depth to your force.  That’s what you’re paying for, another blade to stick in your opponent’s back, just the way the Dark Eldar like to do things!